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Futile Pleasures : Early Modern Literature and the Limits of Utility / Corey McEleney.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Fordham University Press, [2017]Copyright date: ©2017Description: 1 online resource (256 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780823272655
  • 9780823272686
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 820.9/003 23
LOC classification:
  • PR421 .M29 2017eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Futilitarianism: An Introduction -- 1. Pleasure without Profit -- 2. Bonfire of the Vanities -- 3. Art for Nothing's Sake -- 4. Spenser's Unhappy Ends -- 5. Beyond Sublimation -- Coda: Less Matter, More Art -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: Honorable Mention, 2018 MLA Prize for a First BookAgainst the defensive backdrop of countless apologetic justifications for the value of literature and the humanities, Futile Pleasures reframes the current conversation by returning to the literary culture of early modern England, a culture whose defensive posture toward literature rivals and shapes our own.During the Renaissance, poets justified the value of their work on the basis of the notion that the purpose of poetry is to please and instruct, that it must be both delightful and useful. At the same time, many of these writers faced the possibility that the pleasures of literature may be in conflict with the demand to be useful and valuable. Analyzing the rhetoric of pleasure and the pleasure of rhetoric in texts by William Shakespeare, Roger Ascham, Thomas Nashe, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton, McEleney explores the ambivalence these writers display toward literature's potential for useless, frivolous vanity. Tracing that ambivalence forward to the modern era, this book also shows how contemporary critics have recapitulated Renaissance humanist ideals about aesthetic value. Against a longstanding tradition that defensively advocates for the redemptive utility of literature, Futile Pleasures both theorizes and performs the queer pleasures of futility. Without ever losing sight of the costs of those pleasures, McEleney argues that playing with futility may be one way of moving beyond the impasses that modern humanists, like their early modern counterparts, have always faced.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780823272686

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Futilitarianism: An Introduction -- 1. Pleasure without Profit -- 2. Bonfire of the Vanities -- 3. Art for Nothing's Sake -- 4. Spenser's Unhappy Ends -- 5. Beyond Sublimation -- Coda: Less Matter, More Art -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Honorable Mention, 2018 MLA Prize for a First BookAgainst the defensive backdrop of countless apologetic justifications for the value of literature and the humanities, Futile Pleasures reframes the current conversation by returning to the literary culture of early modern England, a culture whose defensive posture toward literature rivals and shapes our own.During the Renaissance, poets justified the value of their work on the basis of the notion that the purpose of poetry is to please and instruct, that it must be both delightful and useful. At the same time, many of these writers faced the possibility that the pleasures of literature may be in conflict with the demand to be useful and valuable. Analyzing the rhetoric of pleasure and the pleasure of rhetoric in texts by William Shakespeare, Roger Ascham, Thomas Nashe, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton, McEleney explores the ambivalence these writers display toward literature's potential for useless, frivolous vanity. Tracing that ambivalence forward to the modern era, this book also shows how contemporary critics have recapitulated Renaissance humanist ideals about aesthetic value. Against a longstanding tradition that defensively advocates for the redemptive utility of literature, Futile Pleasures both theorizes and performs the queer pleasures of futility. Without ever losing sight of the costs of those pleasures, McEleney argues that playing with futility may be one way of moving beyond the impasses that modern humanists, like their early modern counterparts, have always faced.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)