Lexington Books The Opposite of Desire: Sex and Pleasure in the Modernist Novel

Product Description In The Opposite of Desire, Tonya Krouse argues that explicit depictions of sex and sexuality operate as central sites of modernist aesthetic experimentation. In order to explore the aesthetic repercussions of these scenes in the novels of Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and James Joyce, Krouse resists the common critical approach of reading such representations through theories of desire, obscenity, or pornography. Instead, she examines these depictions in terms of "the opposite of desire," or pleasure, and this approach allows Krouse to historicize these authors' preoccupations with entering into discourses on sex and sexuality. Examining explicit representations of sex and sexuality in modernist novels, Krouse asserts that these scenes provide a lens through which to examine modernist aesthetic interests as well as the centrality of issues surrounding sex, sexuality and gender in the modernist period. Approaching scenes of sex and sexuality with the aid of Michel Foucault's theories about sexual discourses, The Opposite of Desire thoroughly examines modernist attempts to put pleasure into representation. Review The writers under study here grapple with the literary representation of pleasure, of putting the joy, the pain, the potential for ecstatic transcendence and abysmal degradation of sex into words. This book clearly shows the difficulty of capturing such a human experience.--English Literature In Translation, February 2010 This is a lively and provocative discussion of issues of pleasure and sexuality in Modernist texts. In addition to analyzing the usual suspects, D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce, Krouse offers a provocative interpretation of Virginia Woolf's focus on perverse and marginalized sexualities. Making auspicious use of poststructuralism and Foucault's theories, Krouse provides a scintillating re-examination of some prickly issues in Modernist fiction.--Suzette A. Henke, Thruston B. Morton, Sr. Chair of Literary Studies, University of Louisville About the Author Tonya Krouse is assistant professor of English at Northern Kentucky University.