MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 02689cam a2200313 i 4500
001 2013029974
003 DLC
005 20140710081617.0
008 130829s2013 nyua b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2013029974
020 $a9781441100818 (hardback)
040 $aDLC$beng$cDLC$erda$dDLC
042 $apcc
050 00 $aPN56.S5$bB97 2013
082 00 $a809/.933538$223
084 $aLIT006000$2bisacsh
100 1 $aByrne, Romana.
245 10 $aAesthetic Sexuality :$ba Literary History of Sadomasochism /$cRomana Byrne.
264 1 $aNew York :$bBloomsbury,$c2013.
300 $a192 pages :$billustrations ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
520 $a"To understand why the concept of aesthetic sexuality is important, we must consider the influence of the first volume of Foucault's seminal The History of Sexuality. Arguing against Foucault's assertions that only scientia sexualis has operated in modern Western culture while ars erotica belongs to Eastern and ancient societies, Byrne suggests that modern Western culture has indeed witnessed a form of ars erotica, encompassed in what she calls 'aesthetic sexuality'. To argue for the existence of aesthetic sexuality, Byrne examines mainly works of literature to show how, within these texts, sexual practice and pleasure are constructed as having aesthetic value, a quality that marks these experiences as forms of art. In aesthetic sexuality, value and meaning are located within sexual practice and pleasure rather than in their underlying cause; sexuality's raison d'etre is tied to its aesthetic value, at surface level rather than beneath it. Aesthetic sexuality, Byrne shows, is a product of choice, a deliberate strategy of self-creation as well as a mode of social communication"--$cProvided by publisher.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 177-189) and index.
505 8 $aMachine generated contents note: -- 1. Introduction - Aesthetic sexuality: a literary history of sadomasochism2. Universal perversion and the laws of judgment: the Marquis de Sade3. Brutal beauty: Swinburne's Poems and Ballads and Mirbeau's Le Jardin des supplices4. Tragic self-shattering I: Nietzsche's aesthetics5. Tragic self-shattering II: delirious materialism in Bataille's L'Erotisme and Histoire de l'uil. Tragic self-shattering III: mortifying metaphysics in Reage's Histoire d'O and Berg's L'image7. Sadomasochism as anti-aesthetic theatre8. Conclusion - Fashioning BDSM todayWorks CitedIndex.
650 0 $aSex in literature.
650 0 $aSadomasochism in literature.
650 7 $aLITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory.$2bisacsh