Scenes of Intimacy Reading, Writing and Theorizing Contemporary Literature [Paperback]

Scenes of Intimacyanalyzes the representation of acts and relationships of intimacy in contemporary literature, the effect this has upon readers, and the ways these representations resonate with, complement, and challenge the concerns of contemporary theory. Opening with an in-depth interview with literary critic, Derridean, and novelist Professor Nicholas Royle, the volume contains eleven further essays that move from intimate scenes of familial and pedagogic legacy, on to representations of love, of sex, and finally to scenes of death and dying. The essays are textually attentive to how literary techniques create intimacy, and draw upon new and notable theoretical positions and critics from queer theory, affect studies, psychoanalysis, poststructualism and deconstruction to ask difficult and uncomfortable questions about intimacy and its representation. Across the genres of poetry, autobiography, journals, love letters, short stories and novels,Scenes of Intimacyshows that contemporary literature poses new possibilities and questions about our intimate relationalities, their failures and their futures.

Part I: Intimate Scene-Setting\ 1. Making a Scene: Towards an Introductory Anatomy of Contemporary Literary Intimacies,Jennifer Cooke\ 2. Professor Nicholas Royle in Interview with Jennifer Cooke: The Intimacies of Theory and Fiction: on Telepathy, Veering andQuilt,Jennifer Cooke\Part II: Legacies, Love, Sex and Death: Scenes of Intimate Reading and Writing\ 3. Reading the Intimacies of Shame in Edwidge Danticat'sBreath, Eyes, Memory?Elina Valovirta\ 4. Citation as Intimacy in Janet Frame's Work,Sylvie Gambaudo\ 5. Poetic Intimacy, Poetic Legacy: Keston Sutherland and J. H. Prynne,Aaron Deveson\ 6. Textual Intimacies: Letters, Journals, Poetry,Simon Smith and Felicity Allen\ 7. The Ethics of Everyday Intimacy: Talking about Love in Raymond Carver,Catherine Humble\ 8. lc-