000 03717cam 2200385 a 4504
003 DLC
005 19970830050404.6
008 970127s1997 mou b s001 0 eng
010 $a97000274
020 $a0826211232 (alk. paper)
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dDLC$dOrLoB-B
050 00 $aPS374 F265$bS66 1997
050 00 $aPS374.F265$bS66 1997
082 00 $a813/.0108355$221
100 1 $aSpilka, Mark.
245 10 $aEight lessons in love :$ba domestic violence
reader /$cMark Spilka.
260 $aColumbia :$bUniversity of Missouri Press,$cc1997.
300 $ax, 373 p. ;$c25 cm.
520 $aThe title of this book is deliberately ironic.
Domestic violence is not about love as we understand it, but
about the need for men to reassert their threatened or lost
command in a relationship. Eight Lessons in Love is a
critical study of fictional treatments of that ironic
problem, offering a radical new way of reading and teaching
those works as drastic lessons in power and control.
520 8 $aDrawing on his recent experience as a volunteer
group co-counselor of male batterers, and on his lifelong
experiences as a scholar, editor, and critic in the field of
fiction studies, Mark Spilka has developed a way to apply
present professional understanding of domestic violence to
fictional attempts to cope with the theme.
520 8 $aThis critical sampler includes Spilka's essays on
the stories included: James Joyce's "Counterparts," Ernest
Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," John Cheever's
"Torch Song," George Eliot's early novella Janet's
Repentance, D. H.
520 8 $aLawrence's "The White Stocking," Ann Petry's
"Like a Winding Sheet," John Steinbeck's "The Murder," and
Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Wife Killer," Each critical
assessment of these stories is followed by the text of the
relevant tale or novella so that readers can move
comfortably from one to the other.
520 8 $aUsing such professional devices as the Anger
Iceberg Chart and the Power Ladder, and such key
professional concepts as "male accountability" and "female
collusion," Spilka asks new questions about these stories
and sheds surprising new light on both their literary and
their current social implications.
520 8 $aHe asks why Hemingway rewards his dying
protagonist with heaven, for instance, in "The Snows of
Kilimanjaro," when that bravely self-critical man has spent
most of his dying days verbally abusing his safari wife; or
why Joyce primes his buffeted male protagonist for vengeful
domestic violence in "Counterparts," but whisks the man's
wife out to evening chapel service so that a child receives
the abuse that was surely meant for her.
520 8 $aSpilka shows how all these writers are keenly
aware of domestic abuse as it affects themselves and their
characters, and how they struggle honestly to cope with the
issues of violence and sometimes overcome or assuage them in
later fictions. The stakes in domestic violence are
extraordinarily high: life or death. What better place to
gain new awareness of their implications than in the depths
of Eight Lessons In Love, where we can investigate the
specific and dramatic ramifications of each story.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 363-369)
and index.
650 0 $aShort stories, American$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aShort stories, English$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aFamily violence in literature.
650 0 $aFamily violence$xFiction.
650 0 $aShort stories, American.
650 0 $aShort stories, English.
915 $aMark Spilka is I. J. Kapstein Professor Emeritus
of English at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
910 $agv lc2 11/05/97
902 $a970830AF0701
