Search results for ""author frances ferguson""
The University of Chicago Press Pornography, the Theory: What Utilitarianism Did to Action
When we think of debates about pornography, what first comes to mind is the question of whether it should be banned or protected. But perhaps we should ask instead what pornography tells us about the way individuals are valued or represented. Combining literary criticism and political theory, Frances Ferguson describes the affinities between pornography and less controversial representations to provide a better understanding of its harms and to demonstrate how it works. Pornography first developed in western Europe during the late eighteenth century in tandem with the rise of utilitarianism, the philosophical position that stresses the importance of something's usefulness over its essence. Through incisive readings of Sade, Flaubert, Lawrence, and Bret Easton Ellis, Ferguson shows how pornography - like utilitarian social structures - diverts our attention from individual identities to actions and renders more clearly the social value of such actions through concrete literary representations. Only when pornography is used to expel individuals from social structures or institutions that promote value, Ferguson argues, is it potentially dangerous. Impassioned, judicious, and deeply informed, Pornography, the Theory will prove to be essential reading for anyone interested in literature and its cultural history.
£26.96
Johns Hopkins University Press The Wordsworthian Enlightenment: Romantic Poetry and the Ecology of Reading
Over the past four decades, Geoffrey Hartman's voice has been one of the most important and profound in contemporary literary theory. Most noted for his scholarship on Wordsworth and Romanticism, Hartman developed throughout his work an original conception of the relationship between literary and critical writing that is still considered a deeply significant contribution to the field. In The Wordsworthian Enlightenment, the most important contemporary critics of Romantic poetry and trauma reflect on Hartman's work and its lasting influence. This collection of sixteen essays-including a new essay from Hartman-provides a wide-ranging and thorough perspective on recent approaches to Romanticism. Contributors: Leslie Brisman, Yale University; Gerald L. Bruns, University of Notre Dame; Cathy Caruth, Emory University; Helen Regueiro Elam, University of Albany; Frances Ferguson, University of Chicago; Paul H. Fry, Yale University; Kevis Goodman, University of California at Berkeley; Ortwin de Graef, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium); Robert J. Griffin, Texas A & M University; Geoffrey Hartman, Yale University; J. Douglas Kneale, University of Western Ontario; Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara; Peter J. Manning, Stony Brook University; Donald G. Marshall, Pepperdine University; J. Hillis Miller, University of California at Irvine; Lucy Newlyn, Oxford University; Patricia Parker, Stanford University.
£53.67
