Power to hurt : the virtues of alienation
William Monroe addresses what William J. Bennett ignores in The Book of Virtues: How do readers use literature as "equipment for living"? Tackling modernism and postmodernism, Monroe outlines "virtue criticism," an alternative to current theory. He focuses on works by T.S. Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, and Donald Barthelme to demonstrate that these alienistic texts are not just filled with belligerence but are also endowed with virtues, such as trust and the promise of solidarity with the reader. By considering these vital texts as responses to personal situations and institutional practices, Monroe brings literature back to the common reader and shows how it offers functional responses to the dysfunctional situations of modern life. Readers interested in literary criticism, American culture, and the relationship between ethics and literature will be fascinated by virtue criticism and Monroe's fresh look at the virtues and vices of alienation
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xi, 243 pages ; 24 cm
9780252023514, 9780252066573, 025202351X, 025206657X
36386944
Strategies, performances, virtues
A performance paradigm
Reading, empathy, alienation
Virtue criticism as cultural criticism
Necessary troublemakers
"Heaven's graces" : gnostic strategies
"Sweetest things" : aesthetic strategies
"Nature's riches" : parabolic strategies
Reluctant performers
"Others but stewards" : T.S. Eliot's gnostic impulse
"Lords and owners" : Vladimir Nabokov's sequestered imagination
"The basest weed" : Donald Barthelme's parabolic fairy tale