Objects of Desire: The Madonnas of Modernism

Beryl Schlossman

Published by Cornell University Press 1999

Objects of Desire

The Madonnas of Modernism

Beryl Schlossman

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501738951

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Beryl Schlossman is Associate Professor of French and European Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Her books include The Orient of Style: Modernist Allegories of Conversion and Angelus Novus, a book of poems.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Taking the Veil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I. Eros the Bittersweet
1. Platonic Love: Socrates, Diotima, and the Virgin Mary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
2. Love's Bitter Mystery: Edenville and Nighttown Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
PART II. The Two Loves
3. “Che Vuoi? ” Desire and the Seductions of Art Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
4. Encore Performances: The End of Don Giovanni Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
PART III. Triangles of Desire
5. Bloom in Church: Beautiful Figures and Virgin Brides Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
6. Isolde at Sea: Jealousy, Erotics, and Poetics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
7. Writing and Erasing the Feminine: Sappho's Eros, Modernist Poetics, and the Madonna Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
Conclusion: Virgin or Madonna Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 256
Illustrations
- Other: 18 halftones

eBook

Published: January 24, 2019
ISBN: 9781501738951