Erotic Faith: Being in Love from Jane Austen to D. H. LawrenceIn this profoundly original and far-reaching study, Robert M. Polhemus shows how novels have helped to make erotic love a matter of faith in modern life. Erotic faith, Polhemus argues, is an emotional conviction—ultimately religious in nature—that meaning, value, hope, and even the possibility of transcendence can be found in love. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, Polhemus shows the reciprocity of love as subject, the novel as form, and faith as motive in important works by Jane Austen, Walter Scott, the Brontës, Dickens, George Eliot, Trollope, Thomas Hardy, Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Samuel Beckett. Throughout, Polhemus relates the novelists' representation of love to that of such artists as Botticelli, Vermeer, Claude Lorrain, Redon, and Klimt. Juxtaposing their paintings with nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts both reveals the ways in which novels develop and individualize common erotic and religious themes and illustrates how the novel has influenced our perception of all art. |
Contents
The Feather Plucked from Cupids Wing | 1 |
Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice 1813 | 28 |
Walter Scotts The Bride of Lammermoor 1819 | 55 |
Emily Brontës Wuthering Heights 1817 | 79 |
Charlotte Brontës Villette 1853 | 108 |
Charles Dickenss Great Expectations 186061 | 137 |
George Eliots The Mill on the Floss 1860 | 168 |
Anthony Trollopes Phineas FinnPhineas Redux 186974 | 196 |
Thomas Hardys Far from the Madding Crowd 1874 | 223 |
The Joyce of Love and the Language of Flowers 190439 | 251 |
D H Lawrences Lady Chatterleys Lover 1928 | 279 |
The Art of Love and Love among the Ruins | 307 |
Notes | 313 |
335 | |
349 | |
Other editions - View all
Erotic Faith: Being in Love from Jane Austen to D. H. Lawrence Robert M. Polhemus Limited preview - 1995 |
Erotic Faith: Being in Love from Jane Austen to D. H. Lawrence Robert M. Polhemus Limited preview - 1995 |
Erotic Faith: Being in Love from Jane Austen to D. H. Lawrence Robert M. Polhemus No preview available - 1990 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic amorous artist Bathsheba beauty body Botticelli Bride of Lammermoor Cathy chapter characters Charlotte Brontë Christian consciousness culture D. H. Lawrence Darcy death Dickens Elizabeth Emily Brontë emotional erotic desire erotic faith erotic love eroticism Estella express fall in love fate feeling female fiction figure flesh fuck George Eliot Hardy Hardy's Heathcliff human ideal imagination incest James Joyce Jane Austen Joyce Joyce's Lady Chatterley Lady Chatterley's Lover language libido lives London look lovers Lucy Lucy's Madame Max Maggie male marriage marry means Mellors mind Miss Havisham moral mother narrative nature nineteenth-century novel novelist painting Pandora passion pastoral Phineas picture Pip's political Pride and Prejudice prose Ravenswood relationship religion religious renders repression romantic romantic love says scene Scott seems sense sexual shows social spirit symbol things tion Trollope Venus Victorian Villette vision vocation woman women words writing Wuthering Heights York