The Poetics of Tenderness

The Poetics Of Tendernessa Literary-Critical Essay On Love Grounded In The Developmental Theory Of The British Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott And Shaped By Recent Work On The Neurobiology And Anthropology Of Love. Itmaintains That Sexual Love Is Not Merely An Artifact Or “Invention” Of Culture But A Vital Manifestation Of The Culture-Making Power Itself. Calling Upon Andreus Capellanus Plato Schopenhauer Freud William James Hardy Dreiser And Fitzgerald D.H. Lawrence And Tom Stoppard Among Others The Book’S Aim Is To Turn The Discussion Of Sexuality Around--To Substitute For Ideas And Figures Of Violence And Predation Which Have Dominated Our Sexual Imaginary For More Than Four Decades Much Older And More Durable Associations Of Sex And Love With Care Affection Beauty Memory Worthiness And Ideality. It Argues For A Resurrection Of Tenderness And Holds Out The Possibility That Even Where Anything Goes Love May Yet Be A Source Of Sweetness And Light That Mutual Respect Equity Justice And Decency In The Spheres Of Sex And Love Will More Likely Flow From Compassion And Sympathy Than From Anger Fear Suspicion Mistrust Resentment And Bitterness. Close Readings Of Two Widely Read Novels Dickens’ Great Expectations And Nabokov’S Lolita Preside Over The Discussion Exploring These Authors’ Distinctively Detailed And Probing Accounts Of Love’S Unfolding In Particular Social Cultural Historical And Psychological Settings.Both Novels Proceed From Deep Within The Authors’ Interior Life; Both Novels Release Love From Its Normally Deep Entanglements With Intimacy And Isolation Compatibility And Incompatibility Social Place And Social Possibility Inspiring In Their Narrators A Prolonged Introspective Inquiry Into An All-Consuming Preoccupation Which Ultimately Restores Them To The Moral Order.