ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book explores some of the broad ways that our curiosities function, particularly when such interests are understood alongside one of their primary consequences: attachment. It considers how the connections born out of curiosity pivot on an affective bearing that is receptive to new ways of understanding both the personal and the social world. The book examines how such a dynamic might function in especially useful ways through our diverse engagements with literature. It describes the instances of textual befriending as a means of elucidating queer concerns, albeit with slightly more fraught dynamics. The book observes a comparable dynamic at work in the singularly negative reaction that the narrator of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance inspires in the novel’s readers. The issues discussed in the book are about significance of literary studies, about the value of humanistic inquiry and about what counts within culture.
