The Fiction of Relationship

by Arnold Weinstein

"A clear and straightforward discussion of the ways in which literatures and their compartive study must depend upon the problematics of interpersonal and other relations. . . . This study will prove as useful as it is wide-ranging, and, indeed, comparative in the good sense." -Mary Ann Caws. Graduate School, City University of New York "Here is a comparatist working at the peak of his powers.... Weinstein moves easily from Goethe and Flaubert to Kafka or Joyce or Boris Vian. Locating fictions of relationship 'at the heart of both literary criticism and human affairs' and acknowledging his own 'distinctly humanistic' concerns, Weinstein writes in an urgent tone and eloquent voice, inflecting the theme of 'relationship' in every in its surrender to the erotic, in its frenzied drive for control of the other, in its ability to confer identity or eclipse difference.... When he couples texts (e.g., William Burrough's Naked Lunch and C. de Laclos's Les liaisons dangereuses), he takes risks that bear brilliant fruit. Exploring famous texts and relatively unknown ones, Weinstein infuses the traditional study of fiction with new energy." -Choice Arnold Weinstein is Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is author of Vision and Response in Modern Fiction (Cornell) and Fictions of the 1550-1800 (Princeton).

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Dr. Arnold Weinstein is the Edna and Richard Salomon Distinguished Professor at Brown University, where he has been teaching for over 35 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in Romance Languages from Princeton University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Among his many academic honors, research grants, and fellowships is the Younger Humanist Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer Award as a visiting professor at Stockholm University, Brown University's award as best teacher in the humanities, Professeur InvitÈ in American Literature at the Ecole Normale SupÈrieure in Paris, and a Fellowship for University Professors from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Weinstein is the author of many books, including Fictions of the Self: 1550ñ1800 (1981); Nobody's Home: Speech, Self, and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo (1993); and A Scream Goes Through The House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life (2003). Northern Arts: The Breakthrough of Scandinavian Literature and Art from Ibsen to Bergman (Princeton University Press, 2008), was named one of the 25 Best Books of 2009 by The Atlantic. Professor Weinstein chaired the Advisory Council on Comparative Literature at Princeton University, is the sponsor of Swedish Studies at Brown, and is actively involved in the American Comparative Literature Association.