> Editorial Reviews
>

>>From Publishers Weekly

>
> In his prodigiously intelligent, deeply challenging and ultimately
> rewarding book, Dollimore (Sexual Dissidence) argues that the death/
> desire dynamic, while banefully associated in recent times with AIDS,
> is not a new or alternate phenomenon but was crucial in the formation
> of Western culture. In chapter after chapter, inspired, finely honed
> analysis of canonical works of philosophy, fiction, drama and more
> shows how early civilization's ambiguous ideas about death repeat
> themselves and shape gender and identity. In the Renaissance, for
> example, death was fused with desire via the concept of mutability and
> its inherent paradox. To put it simply, if man loves most what is
> fleeting (especially beauty, which will eventually fade), then will
> his desire always be unfulfilled. Similarly, Socrates, accused of
> corrupting the youth of Athens, willingly takes the poison that kills
> him and his cravings while "the sun is still on the mountains,"
> putting a strange twist to Seneca's carpe diem. Since Dollimore's
> analysis is structured by intellectual trends rather than by era,
> there is a dizzying effecthere, and one begins to wonder what kind of
> "non-specialist" reader the author has in mind, particularly given the
> density of many of the thinkers he takes on. Yet his hopeful
> conclusion works toward a way out of the death/desire rubric with
> convincing passion.
> Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
>

>>From Booklist

>
> The German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer once said that "without death
> there would hardly have been any philosophizing." Dollimore attests to
> this thought in his engaging study of death and its corresponding link
> to desire. In presenting funereal discourses of thinkers, writers,
> poets, and other literati throughout the ages, he offers a substantial
> contribution to Western intellectual history. As he examines the
> conversations between philosophers and writers, beginning with the pre-
> Socratics and finishing with postmodern theorists, his findings prove
> interesting--death has always been linked to desire in Western
> culture. He touches upon the work of almost every conceivable thinker:
> Heraclitus and Camille Paglia, Machiavelli and Marx, Shakespeare and
> Wagner, and, of course, the venerable Foucault. He concludes with a
> study of homoeroticism and AIDS, perhaps the most poignant modern
> example of desire linked with death. Although a little shaky on facts
> that are not within his usual academic milieu, and despite some
> antiquated bibliographic sources, Dollimore presents a marvelous,
> enrapturing, and accessible work for both the scholar and the armchair
> philosopher. Michael Spinella
>
> Choice - 3/99
> "This will be an important book for all those engaged in cultural
> criticism."
>
> Theological Studies
> "This is a work of breath-taking scope and reach. ...impressive
> command of sources and penetrating vision...."
>
> Library Journal
> "...this immensely wide-ranging account repays careful study."
>
> Publishers Weekly
> "Prodigiously intelligent, deeply challenging and ultimately
> rewarding...."
>
> Review
> ...a pean to performing loss and desire. -- Bryn Mawr Review of
> Comparative Literature
> ...this immensely wide-ranging account repays careful study. --
> Library Journal
> This is a work of breath-taking scope and reach. ...impressive command
> of sources and penetrating vision... -- Theological Studies
> Prodigiously intelligent, deeply challenging and ultimately
> rewarding... -- Publishers Weekly
> ...an impressively versatile survey... Death, Desire and Loss in
> Western Culture is a boldly transhistorical book from one who would
> lay claim to the title of cultural materialist. -- London Review of
> Books
> In [Dollimore's] engaging study of death and its corresponding link to
> desire. . . . he offers a substantial contribution to Western
> intellectual history. . . . Dollimore presents a marvelous,
> enrapturing, and accessible work for both the scholar and the armchair
> philosopher. -- Booklist, starred review
> This will be an important book for all those engaged in cultural
> criticism. Highly recommended for upper-division undergraduates
> through faculty, and for general readers. -- Choice
> The union of thanatos and eros is a central topos of Western
> literature. Jonathan Dollimore has drawn upon this compelling theme as
> the scaffolding upon which to construct nothing less than a history of
> Western culture, from the Greeks and the Hebrew Bible, to our
> society's most urgent confrontation with AIDS. Monumental in
> conception and magisterial in execution, Death, Desire and Loss is an
> original and provocative meditation on the history of Western thought,
> and on one of the most sublime themes. -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
> Another brilliant accomplishment from one of Britain's foremost
> theorists of literature and sexuality. This is a superb reading of
> philosophies of death and structures of desire, classical, early
> modern and postmodern. An important and compelling book that speaks to
> key issues of our time. -- Marjorie Garber
> Probing and perceptive, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is
> truly a tour de force. -- Roy Porter
> [Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture] throws fascinating light
> on the way we have been living and loving and dying for the last two
> and a half millenia.
> Dollimore's reach is vast.. -- Richard McCoy, Winter 2000
>
> Book Description
>

>>From Odysseus' seduction by the song of the Sirens to Oscar Moore's

>
> 1991 novel A Matter of Life and Sex, whose protagonist courts death
> through sex and dies of AIDS, the frustrated relationship between
> death and desire has fixated the Western imagination. Philosophers
> have grappled with it and poets have told of its beauty and pain. In
> this strikingly original work, cultural critic Jonathan Dollimore once
> again demonstrates his remarkable ability to take on the complex and
> reveal its relevance with eloquence and grace.
>
> Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture is a rich testament to our
> ubiquitous preoccupation with the tangled web of death and desire. In
> these pages we find nuanced analysis that blends Plato with Shelley,
> H