by Andrea Freud Loewenstein (1993)
Biases held by artists have been a constant source of controversy in appraisals of their works, most recently in critiques of such authors as H.L. Mencken and Paul de Man. Should the belief systems of these thinkers be taken into account in assessing the value of the works which they made public? Andrea Freud Loewenstein here undertakes to address this crucial issue. At the heart of her study is an examination of the figures of Jew and woman in the works of three British male authors written between 1929 and 1945. While instances of misogyny and anti-Semitism were not uncommon in the literature of the period, Loewenstein argues that a hatred and fear of women was often the dominating preoccupation of their work, from which stemmed the intertwined and closely related loathing of Jews. Basing her interpretations on biographical information and on the close analysis of a large body of fiction by each author, Loewenstein reconstructs the psychological system through which each one envisions the world, showing how Jews and women function in their texts, and in each individual psychopathology, as a representation of the Other. Ranging far beyond a narrow study of three authors, Loewenstein situates the works studied in the context of the history of Jews in Britain, concentrating on recent historical scholarship on Britain and the Jews in the 1930s. She questions the widespread belief that the British government was a friend to the Jews and shows, as evident in the double-talk and hypocrisy behind some British governmental policies, that Britain instead actively collaborated in the Jews' destruction. To provide a greater context for her argument, Loewenstein presents a timeline of the history of the Jews in Britain. Firmly grounded in a range of disciplines, Loathsome Jews and Engulfing Women is a masterful blend of history, psychology, and literary criticism.
Tim Hitchcock and Michèle Cohen
This collection of essays provides a framework within which to understand 18th-century men. The book is divided into four parts looking at: sociability, virtue and friendship, violence, and sexuality.
Roxann Wheeler
Wheeler (English, Ohio State U.) compares Enlightenment science's speculations on human variety in natural history with accounts in civil histories, travel literature, and fiction, finding that black skin was not the most damning characteristic used by Brits to elevate themselves above the colonized. While Brits did prize paleness, Wheeler shows th.
Daniel Juan Gil
Celebrating the ability of corporeal emotions to interpret connections between people who share nothing in terms of societal structure, Before Intimacy shows how these works of early modern literature provide a discourse of sexuality that strives to understand status differences in erotic contexts and thereby question key assumptions of modernity."--Pub. desc.
John A. Ochoa
"Going beyond the simple narrative of self-defeat, this book presents a model of failure as a source of knowledge and renewed self-awareness. Studying the relationship between national identity and failure, John Ochoa revisits the foundational texts of Mexican intellectual and literary history, the "national monuments," and offers a new vision of the pivotal events that echo throughout Mexican aesthetics and politics."--BOOK JACKET.