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How do Victorian novels, those detailed imaginative records of psychic interiority and social life, put into language the aspect of our interior lives that seems most stubbornly nonlinguistic: that is, the insistent claims and impulses of erotic desire? If Victorian culture valued reason and accountability over sheer erotic fulfillment, and at the same time represented love and desire as important social experiences, then how did the Victorian novel represent the process of reasoning about desire without diluting its intensity or making it mechanical? In "Bad Logic," I argue that a surprising array of novelists, including Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, George Meredith, and Henry James, registered the troublesome opacity of erotic life by experimenting with forms of "bad logic," from hasty conclusions to contradictions to tautologies, and finally to the ethical and erotic possibilities of vagueness. These forms bring into view the limitations of logic as a rubric for moral accountability, while at the same time they work as ironic and tacit ways of speaking and thinking about erotic desire. In other words, in the Victorian novel, the singular, embodied feelings of erotic life are imagined not as ineffable, nonsocial, or fully beyond the explanatory powers of logic and the rational mind. Rather, erotic desires represent a profound depth of psychic and affective life that, even in its resistance to sound propositional language, wants to be understood. The resurgence of interest in theories of logic in nineteenth-century England was in fact intimately related to the philosophical problem of the deep, idiosyncratic self that seems to exceed scientific knowledge about thought and its structures, but which nonetheless guides so much of psychic, ethical, and erotic life. Philosophers and social critics as diverse as Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, George Boole, and George Eliot took up the stubborn problem of logic and its complex relationship to character. But it was the realist novel, I argue, that allowed for the fullest development of this problem through its own strategies for developing fictional character and representing the fullness of psychic and affective life and its often difficult social expression. That the Victorians talked and wrote endlessly about sex and sexuality, in a variety of medical, scientific, sociological, and psychological vocabularies, has been taken for granted since Foucault provided us with our most enduring account of the Victorian "logic of sex." With "Bad Logic," I enter into an ongoing reappraisal of Foucault's influence on the study of sexuality by suggesting that the Victorian impulse toward talking about and representing sexuality and desire may have had a more complex rationale than a utilitarian desire to manage and regulate sexual behaviors. Foucault's late work turned to sexual practice or ethos as a potentially utopian alternative to the "discourse" of sexuality, and yet I argue that novelistic representations of eroticism in language can extend well beyond issues of social power and regulation. Rather, they insist upon the ethical significance of erotic life and upon the importance of balancing the imperatives of rationality against the imperatives of idiosyncrasy. They take seriously, in other words, the difficulties of registering the impulses of the body in language. In addition, "Bad Logic" takes a new approach to a very old question in the study of the novel: how does this genre balance idiosyncrasy with social compromise, or assimilate the individual consciousness to the historically specific social pressures that necessarily shape it? Many critics have answered this question either by detailing the ways in which the novel form itself habituates the individual to ideology (Bersani, Armstrong, D. A. Miller), or on the other hand by showing that some normative models of social intelligibility, such as the liberal ideal of detachment or the ethical ideal of perfectionism, are not incompatible with a powerful model of individual agency (Anderson, Hadley, A. Miller). In "Bad Logic," I propose that in the Victorian novel, even the opacity of erotic life finds its way into models of sociability. Moreover, I show that novelists struggle to make their theories of ethical responsibility capacious enough to accommodate the insistent pressure of erotic desire as it tries to make itself heard.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 704-723). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Orientador: Paulo César Andrade da Silva / Banca: Gabriel Victor Rocha Pinezi / Banca: Juliana Santini / Resumo: Em Eu receberia as piores notícias dos seus lindos lábios (2005), Marçal Aquino constrói uma narrativa amorosa tensionada por uma diegese da violência, a partir de níveis narrativos distintos, nos quais se desdobram as várias facetas do amor, sobretudo o erótico, que põe em relevo a imagem do corpo, a partir da instância emotiva de um "eu" que ama. Partindo da hipótese de que o tema do amor se engendra nas formas da obra literária, dos sentidos do erótico à estrutura narrativa no romance, esta dissertação tem como objetivo analisar a configuração do discurso erótico-amoroso em torno da presença do corpo, utilizando-se do aporte teórico-crítico advindo de Bataille, Barthes, Paz, Schopenhauer, Rougemont, Soble e Morin. Objetiva-se, ainda, explorar a decodificação do erotismo, figurativizado na dualidade da protagonista Lavínia, a partir dos conceitos como simbiose amorosa por dominação e servidão de Fromm. Pretende-se também mostrar, por meio de uma leitura analítico-interpretativa, como a tessitura da temática amorosa é organizada na construção da narrativa em contraste com a temática da violência, valendo-se das categorias narrativas propostas por Genette. / Abstract: In Eu receberia as piores notícias dos seus lindos lábios (2005), Marçal Aquino constructs a love narrative tensioned by a diegese of violence, from distinct narrative level, in which the various facets of love unfolds, especially the erotic, which highlights the body image from the emotional instance of the "I" who loves. Starting from the hypothesis that the love theme is engendered in the forms of literary work, from the meanings of erotic to narrative structure in the novel, this dissertation aims to analyze the configuration of erotic-loving discourse around the presence of body, using the theoretical-critical contribution coming from Bataille, Barthes, Paz, Schopenhauer, Rougemont, Soble e Morin. The objective is also to explorer the decoding of eroticism, figurativized in the duality of protagonist Lavínia, from the concepts of symbiotic relationship by domination and servitude of Fromm. The intention is also to show, through a analytic-interpretative reading, ho the texture of love theme is organized in the construction of narrative in contrast to the theme of violence, using the narrative categories proposed by Genette / Mestre

This thesis comprises two works: a novel ‘Libertine’ and a monograph ‘A writer’s reflection’. ‘Libertine’contemplates the eroticising and brutalising of being, and sex as currency, as need and as sacrament. It is set in a city where war is the norm, nightmare the standard, and ancient deities are called upon to witness the new order of killing technologies. The story is narrated by a woman chosen to be the consort of the General, a despostic war leader who believes that he has been chosen by the goddess Kali. She journeys deep into a horror which exists not only around her, but also within her. ‘Libertine’, by melding the erotic and the Gothic, tells the story of a woman enacting the role cast for her in the complex theatres of war. ‘A writer’s reflection’ discusses the themes of the novel, introducing the notion of existential erotica. The existential experience particular to the expression of the erotic being is discussed, and the dilemma which arises from a self yearning to merge ecstatically with an/other in order to obtain a heightened or differently valued self. This theme is elaborated in ‘Libertine’ with regard to subjectivity and the broader issues of nausea, horror and choice, drawing on the conventions of Gothic literature and apocalyptic visioning. This visioning, as eroticised death worship, is found in a Sadian credo of cruelty, the tantric rituals of Kali devotion, and the annihilating erotic excess propounded by Bataille. The monograph illustrated that ‘Libertine’ is not a re-representation of these elements, but an original contribution to the literature of erotica. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis deals with the representation of the erotic body in the works of the most important authors of French sixteenth-century poetry, particularly those of the Pleiade. By "erotic body" we mean a body that is involved in activities of carnal love, a type of love which is considered, during the Renaissance, as the opposite of a more chaste and spiritual kind of love. Our hypothesis is that the textual representation of such a body is coherent throughout the sixteenth century. Since poetic expression is governed by rules of decency during this period, description of the erotic body cannot be direct; its expression depends on analogy and attenuation techniques. Analogy, besides its allusive quality, creates the image of a body "open" to the cosmos rather than one that is fragmented and hermetic. Beauty holds a central position in the imagery of the erotic body. It is a very conventional beauty whose qualities (white, round, hard and smooth) transform the female form into a veritable statue. On the contrary, ugliness and disease are used to sanction behaviour that would otherwise be seen as reprehensible. The erotic art shown in poetry is framed by orthodox morals that condemn certain acts such as sodomy. The guiding principle is one of moderation. Erotic art is also based upon gestures that are fluid and capricious, quite the opposite of a fixed posture. Gestures are made in varied ways, from biting to tickling. However, kissing is the most important practice; it literally kills and resurrects the lover. The center of Renaissance erotic art is the loving couple, whose relations consist of requital and sometimes also of restraint. The game of feigned resistance allows lovers to reconcile these two extremes and to create an erotic relationship that embraces opposition and collaboration between the sexes. The most sought-after locations in Renaissance eroticism are always the same: bucolic surroundings offering a corner away from others' eyes. Temporality on the other hand is variable: stages of life, seasons, holidays, all lend themselves to carnal love. However, the instant reveals itself as the most erotic moment, not because it allows direct pleasure but because it concentrates desire under the guise of a call to carpe diem or of fictitious times (wishes, prayers), thus offering an imaginary satisfaction.