Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (Literary Studies)

__Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture__ Cover 1 Death, Desire and Lossin Western Culture 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 10 I THE ANCIENT WORLD 34 Eros and Thanatos, Change and Loss in the Ancient World 36 2 'All Words Fail through Weariness': Ecclesiastes 69 3 Escaping Desire: Christianity, Gnosticism and Buddhism 76 II MUTABILITY, MELANCHOLY AND QUEST: THE RENAISSANCE 90 4 Fatal Confusions: Sex and Death in Early Modern Culture 92 5 'Death's Incessant Motion 104 6 Death and Identity 117 7 'Desire is Death': Shakespeare 135 Ill SOCIAL DEATH 150 8 The Denial of Death? 152 9 Degeneration and Dissidence 161 10 Between Degeneration and the Death Drive: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness 178 IV MODERNITY AND PHILOSOPHY: THE AUTHENTICITY OF NOTHINGNESS 184 11 The Philosophical Embrace of Death: Hegel 186 12 Heidegger, Kojève and Sartre 194 V THE DESIRE NOT TO BE: LATE METAPHYSICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 204 13 Dying as the Real Aim of Life: Schopenhauer 206 14 Freud: Life as a Detourto Death 213 VI RENOUNCING DEATH 232 15 The Philosophy of Praxis and Emancipation: Feuerbach, Marx, Marcuse 234 VII THE AESTHETICS OF ENERGY 262 16 Fighting Décadence: Nietzsche against Schopenhauer and Wagner 264 17 Ecstasy and Annihilation: Georges Bataille 282 18 In Search of Potency: D. H. Lawrence 291 VIII DEATH AND THE HOMOEROTIC 306 19 Wrecked by Desire: Thomas Mann 308 20 Promiscuity and Death 327 21 The Wonder of the Pleasure 345 Notes 362 Bibliography 389 Index 408

Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a rich testament to our ubiquitous preoccupation with the tangled web of death and desire. In these pages we find nuanced analysis that blends Plato with Shelley, Hölderlin with Foucault. Dollimore, a gifted thinker, is not content to summarize these texts from afar; instead, he weaves a thread through each to tell the magnificent story of the making of the modern individual.

Theological Studies

This is a work of breath-taking scope and reach. ...impressive command of sources and penetrating vision....

Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a rich testament to our ubiquitous preoccupation with the tangled web of death and desire. In these pages we find nuanced analysis that blends Plato with Shelley, Holderlin with Foucault. Dollimore, a gifted thinker, is not content to summarize these texts from afar; instead, he weaves a thread through each to tell the magnificent story of the making of the modern individual. An immensely important book, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture promises to change the way we understand desire, sexuality and the very notion of identity. Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a rich testament to our ubiquitous preoccupation with the tangled web of death and desire. In these pages we find nuanced analysis that blends Plato with Shelley, Hölderlin with Foucault. Dollimore, a gifted thinker, is not content to summarize these texts from afar; instead, he weaves a thread through each to tell the magnificent story of the making of the modern individual. Because the full texts for all Greek prose authors before Herodotus (c. 485-c. 425 BC), and all philosophical writing before Plato (c. 428-c. 348 BC), are lost, we know their writings only through quotations, reports and paraphrases in latter literature which survived the collapse of ancient civilization. The relationship between sex and death has long intrigued Western thinkers. Dollimore traces this preoccupation from the works of the philosophers of the ancient world, through the early Christian theologians, to the 19th and 20th centuries and our supposedly sophisticated perspective