ABSTRACT

First published in 2003.  This volume aims to re-establish an interest in poetry by integrating questions of prosody and aesthetics with political literary inquiry. The broader theoretical goal is nothing less than a rehabilitation of the concepts of affect and imagination, though the study also argues against anti-formalist approaches to literature.

chapter |22 pages

Chapter One The Anatomy of Decision

Modernist Bodies and the Meaning of “No”

chapter |30 pages

CHAPTER TWO The Rack of Enchantments

“New Love” in Rimbaud's Illuminations

chapter |22 pages

CHAPTER THREE Jouissance of the Commodities

Rimbaud against Erotic Reification

chapter |25 pages

CHAPTER FOUR Empire of the Closet

Erotic Colonization in The Waste Land

chapter |25 pages

CHAPTER FIVE Perversion's Permanent Target

Hart Crane and the Uses of Memory