Objects of Desire : The Madonnas of Modernism / Beryl Schlossman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schlossman, Beryl, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256 p.) : 18 halftones

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Continuing her highly regarded analysis of modernism and its relation to earlier periods of literature and thought, Beryl Schlossman explores secular modernist use of female characters—'madonnas of modernism'—as emblems of forbidden desire. Although these works appear to depict characters who assume conventional gender roles, Schlossman asserts, their renderings of scenes of love ultimately blur gender identity and dissolve it in the text. Through an innovative use of style, her literary examples articulate an art of seduction and an aesthetic that transforms, suspends, or erases identity—individual, gender, social, and cultural. Schlossman traces the origins of modernist views on love to Plato's Symposium and Sappho's poems. She recounts how these works were crucial to the creation of a Renaissance culture of love, how elements of this culture reappeared in the romantic movement, and, finally, how Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and others reshaped this aspect of romanticism in their own writings. According to Schlossman, Flaubert and Baudelaire inaugurated a modernist sensibility; in their works eroticism shares secular and religious qualities. Their figures of love were ultimately reinscribed by Joyce in his texts of high modernism, which were themselves influenced by the style of Yeats.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Taking the Veil

1. Platonic Love: Socrates, Diotima, and the Virgin Mary

2. Love's Bitter Mystery: Edenville and Nighttown

3. “Che Vuoi? ” Desire and the Seductions of Art

4. Encore Performances: The End of Don Giovanni

5. Bloom in Church: Beautiful Figures and Virgin Brides

6. Isolde at Sea: Jealousy, Erotics, and Poetics

7. Writing and Erasing the Feminine: Sappho's Eros, Modernist Poetics, and the Madonna

Conclusion: Virgin or Madonna

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

1-5017-3895-X

OCLC:

1178769120