So this journal I’m going to devote to “The List,” in order to keep things manageable (and at a manageable length), but then I’m going to write another one (immediately...either later tonight or tomorrow) which will to synthesize some of what I’m reading, as well as give me an outlet for questions and my own thoughts/theories (since I’m sort of in the position of writing theory).
The List:
Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel - I’m just over page 200 in this text which is a little less than halfway to completion. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know how much
I like this text. I feel like it creates more questions than it answers. It’s not theory, it strikes me as more of a critical text (let me know what you think about this). Fiedler spends more time looking at literary texts and analyzing said texts than doing theory. To be clear, it certainly seems that he is applying some theory to these analyses, but he has not outrightly defined, outlined, or set the parameters of this theory. The closest he gets, really, is in the beginning of the text where he talks about Richardson’s
Clarissa
; here he states, “In
Clarissa , the mythology of the Sentimental
Love Religion, the bourgeois Liebestod is defined once and for all; and the bare outline of its plot, its mythos, at least, should be familiar to anyone interested in the history of the novel” (62).
Fiedler then goes onto, essentially, give a plot summary. The problem I have with this is twofold. First, it’s highly unlikely that
Clarissa is the *source* of the Liebestod (love-death); there is some evidence that suggests the love-death has persisted throughout time (going back to our earliest literature), but that, as a theme, it exploded in the 19th C.
I am, of course, interested in this explosion (i.e. why did it rise so exponentially), how this peak affected culture...specifically women, and how we can use this thematic device to, perhaps, both interrogate and build (as well as support/subvert) feminist theory. Simply put, I think we can use this thematic device to create theory and engage with theory. So back to Fiedler, he has no evidence to support his claim that Clarissa is, essentially, the source of the Liebestod . Secondly,
“a mythos” does not a theory make; the “mythos” is the structure, the plot, and while Fiedler gives us an excellent plot summary/breakdown he never tells us what this structure means ...answering that question is creating theory (something he doesn’t do, or hasn’t done yet).
It seems he’s using something by which to gauge his analyses of the various texts, but he never tells us what and I find this outrageously unhelpful. He also constantly references “The
Sentimental Love Religion,” but never outlines what this is (although he capitalizes it, like The
Cult of True Womanhood which suggests that it may have been commonly known). He does bring in some history, which can be helpful; I find it helpful. I definitely want to look more into this Sentimental Love Religion, that may yield some interesting pieces. We’ll see what happens with the rest of the text, but so far it hasn’t yielded as much as I thought it might.
Binion, Rudolph. Love Beyond Death: The Anatomy of a Myth in the Arts (1993).
I read this book last weekend and it was amazingly helpful as well as being utterly infuriating. Binion held a PhD in history from Columbia and taught at Columbia, Rutgers, and MIT; he is also considered to be the found of psychohistory (a subfield of history). Given that his degree is in History his critique of this phenomena is largely historical, meaning he provides example, after example, after example of occurrences of the love-death in the 19th C. and he restricts these examples (for the most part) to literature and art. The good thing about this is that I now have a ton of examples
I can use as evidence for the existence of the liebestod and explore in an analysis capacity. The

bad thing about this is that Binion rarely analyzes any of the examples he lists; the text, for the most part, is merely a recounting of events in art and literature that pertain to this theme.
Although, I suppose it helps his credibility and authority that he doesn’t extend himself beyond his area of expertise, but again...no theory. There are several wonderfully helpful moments in the text. For one, Binion supports and gives examples of the existence of the love-death prior to the
19th C. He opens his text by saying:
“Throughout the nineteenth century plus a little before and after, high culture in the West was rife with visions of death and seductive and of sex and death intermixed. Here there was no mere bumper crop of morbid fancies recurrent from the time immemorial. Here was rather a whole new departure, which therefore calls for historical explaining” (1).
And later in the text he suggests that all one has to do is skim the texts or glance at the art of the
19th C. to recognize the obsession with the love-death. Again, his critique reinforces not only the existence of the liebestod, but the prevalence of it in the 19th C. and I find it interesting that a theme that was so common, so widespread, and one that commanded so much attention (and may still) has received so little academic attention. So while the text provided relatively little theory it gave me lots of examples from which I can build (or build into) theory. More pieces!!!
Gediman, Helen K. Fantasies of Love and Death in Life and Art (1995).
Gediman is a psychoanalyst who earned her degree from the New York University. She is both a trainer and a supervisor for the New York Freudian Society. She’s not a professor, however...her full time job is running her own practice. I haven’t read this book yet. I’ve looked at a few pages in the
Introduction and this is the one where she claims that Western culture has an aversion to giving liebestod language (which is why the German term has become internationally known)...she cites a source on this (just from the few pages I’ve read she seems to cite a lot...which is good). I think this text will provide some good information and I like that it’s, essentially, psychoanalysis because that’s just another perspective to synthesize in moving towards a larger picture/theory.
Kramer, Lawrence. After the Lovedeath: Sexual Violence and the Making of Culture (1997).
Kramer teaches English and Music at Fordham University and has been published before on the
19th C., theory, and culture. I’ve only looked at the first ten pages or so, but this looks much more theoretical and also looks like it contains a variety of examples. Most of the examples look to be of a musical nature, but those can be added to Binions to create a larger context and provided he does some analysis and offers up some bits of theory there is a possibility they can be transferred onto literature or altered slightly to transfer. We’ll see.
Bronfen, Elisabeth. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity, and the Aesthetic (1992). I used a couple bits of this text for my thesis, but it was largely irrelevant and a bit over my head at the time. It’s extremely theoretical and in the psychoanalysis vein; her writing style sucks...it’s academese taken to the 9th level and to be quite honest, psychoanalysis was one area that I always wanted to stay out of (ironically I now find myself, with this topic, up to my eyeballs in it) so it takes me quite a bit longer to process this type of theory. That said, this text is definitely worth revisiting.

Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-De-Siecle Culture
(1986). I heavily relied upon this text for my thesis, specifically the chapter entitled “The Cult of
Invalidism; Ophelia and Folly; Dead Ladies and the Fetish of Sleep.” A fascinating chapter and while it doesn’t name “liebestod” it discusses (perhaps unknowingly) that theme. It offers up little bits that could be appropriated for theory, but largely provides literary and artistic examples of death or sleep and focuses on the eroticization of these images. Additionally, really exciting, this chapter talks a lot about real women in the 19th C. who were attempting to model, in reality, this eroticized feminine ideal, resorting to anorexia (which resulted in death for more than a few) in order to model this “invalidism” or corpse-likeness (as Binion would say) that the culture was so obsessed with.
Romanska, Magda - In this vein Romanska wrote two articles (which are on my larger computer) regarding the eroticization of death in the nineteenth-century and like Dijkstra she illustrates in her articles how real women sought to mimic the en vogue feminine ideal of the dying woman...often at great cost to themselves. Romanska, in one article, suggests that the nineteenth-century marks the first outbreak (possibly even origin) of Anorexia Nervosa. I think this is an interesting claim, primarily because of the continued existence of this disease while we may have seen the first outbreak, peak, or even the labeling of the disease in the nineteenthcentury it has not receded. If anything, it has peaked further or remained at a high level and I think this fact has something to say to theory, to the existence of feminine ideals (specifically in our current culture), and if we can tie an increase in this disease directly to the eroticization of death and the liebestod, then what does it say that the presence of the disease has not decreased?
Possibly that we still idealize female death, and by extension the liebestod. However, Romanska has other good points too and she does an excellent analysis of Ophelia (the artistic renditions circa 19th C.).
Praz, Mario. The Romantic Agony (1970). It looks like there is some interesting stuff in this book...too bad it’s due back to ILL in like three days (what’s up with the ridiculously short check-out time?). Anyway, I haven’t gotten too far into it, but it talks about the origins of
Romance which I think is really important to my timeline (which I’ll talk about in my next journal). It looks like this text would provide some theory, some textual evidence, and some analysis of text so I’ll try to skim quickly; however, a third of this text is in french (mostly the text he does analysis on...primary sources) which is unfortunate as he offers no translation and I don’t speak French...so I just have to guess at what’s going on during those bits.
Clack, Beverly. Sex and Death (2002). This book is really fun...it basically deals with philosophical attitudes towards sex and death over the centuries: beginning with Plato and ending with Seneca. So, it’s ALL theory (specifically explanations of philosophical theory), but as it’s philosophical in nature it is something that will have to be worked into gender theory, psychoanalytic theory, and coincide with the history and culture of the time. Again, piecing it together; it’s a piece. I’m particularly interested in de Sade’s philosophy on love and death because that would have been a major factor (if not the launching point) for the love-death in the
19th C.
Kolbenschlag, Madonna. Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye (1979).
Dowling, Colette. The Cinderella Complex (1981).

Pipher, Mary. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (1994).
These three books primarily attempt to create theory using real-life and literary examples. All three, essentially say the same thing (which I’ll look at in a later journal). I’ve read all three...they are all invested in exploring the position of women (primarily the secondary, submissive position)...all three of these would complement, to a degree, de Beauvoir, and
Firestone. Additionally, all to varying degrees address the “culture of the romance” how that affects our self-building. Kolbenschalg’s text, in my opinion, is the most complex. Each chapter is dedicated to looking at how a common fairy tale archetype plays out on real women; so each chapter starts with an analysis of a popular fairy tale (i.e. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty,
Cinderella, Goldilocks...etc.) and then the rest of the chapter (which is the bulk) is dedicated to demonstrating how this archetype informs women or how women live out this archetype (how history and culture fed into the establishment and maintenance of these archetypes, the impact playing out these archetypes have on women, and what this means for woman and her place in our culture).
So, these are the texts that specifically (almost solely) address and deal with the love-death. I’m sure there are other texts that talk about it (even if they don’t know they are talking about it). I have Gilbert and Gubar’s
Madwoman in the Attic
; I have Nina Auerbach’s
Romantic
Imprisonment (which might bring something to the table). The challenge here is the lack of theory which means synthesizing the scattered information available on the love-death, adding to it, and then fitting it into feminist/gender theory because I really believe that this phenomena has something to say to theory and vice versa and combining the two, I think, will give us more insight into theory (theory which in a way explores, explains, and rules our culture) as well as provide greater clarity to a phenomena that exploded in the nineteenth-century and has, most likely (at least I hope to get there) persisted into the 20th and 21st centuries. I’m sure you can see that I’m a little obsessed with this topic *laughs* I worked with it in a very limited capacity for my MA thesis (primarily the Angela Carter’s works), but realized, then, the absence of theory so
I’d like to resolve that and work towards then utilizing that theory and background to interrogate
20th and 21st century texts...you know...like BDSM.