Wileyblackwell 1994. Softcover, 256 pp.
In the light of poststructuralist theory, and with reference to the work
of Lacan and Derrida in particular, Catherine Belsey argues that
fiction - including poetry, drama and film - is paradoxically the most
serious location of writing about desire in Western culture. Beginning
with the celebration of true love in contemporary popular romance, and
the reluctant scepticism of postmodern novels, she goes on to explore
past representation of passion by Chretien de Troyes, Malory, Spenser,
Donne, Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Tennyson and Bram Stoker. Belsey also
discusses the role of desire in the utopian writings of Plato, More and
William Morris, as well as its treatment by a range of speculative
feminists, from Charlotte Perkins Gilman to Marge Piercy.