An irnvaluable and eminently readable.gulde to literary study-Juliet Flower McCannell, University of, rrvine.

In critical theory, transgression has remained largely associated with illicit actions, the breaking of laws and moral codes, and the reading of particular sexual behaviours.

Transgression prowdes an exemplary introduction to the labyrinthine modes of reading that we now realize Irterary texts demand.It s an irnvaluable. and eminently readable.gulde to literary study-Juliet Flower McCannell, University of, rrvine.In critical theory, transgression has remained largely associated with illicit actions, the breaking of laws and moral codes, and the reading of particular sexual behaviours. As such, it can often be seen as a central theme n literary works,Julian Wolfreys both supplements such thinking and challenges the limits of transgression as a narrowly conceived critical notion, to explore fundamental and far-reaching questions concerning the cultural and historical formation of identity, Wolfreys:ntrocluces the student reader to the study of the key concept of transgression elps the reader to interpret ana anayse the idea from a number of current theoretical stanaDolnts demonstrates how texts from different cultural and historical eras can be read to examine the workings of the oartcular concept ana the way in which it has changed over tlme.

From Epic Verse. through Satire and Gothic h terature, to modernist literature and beyond,Transgression strips the nobon to ts most Daslc level and reworks it through tightly argued chapters and close reaamgs of texts from various historical :eriods. It is essential reading for students, teachers and scholars of Literature.Julian Wolfreys is Professor of Modern Dterature and Culture in the Department of English and Drama at Loughborough Untversty. He is General Editor of the Transitions series ana has pubhshed numerous books on Iterary theory ana nneteenth- and twentiethcentury English Iterature.

General Editors Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Transgressions or, Beyond the Obvious

 Recognitions and misrecognitions

 Conventions of transgression

 Clearing the ground

 Shifting positions

 Transgressions: subject, space and time

 Rethinking transgressions

Part I Making the Modern Subject

 The Endlesse Worke of Transgression: The Faerie Queene

 and the darke conceit of Early Modern Identity

 Introduction

 Woman as culturalfunction in the Early Modern period

 ProducingElizabeth

 The difference of desire

 The one and the other

 Producing Una

 Authority Usurpt: Dryden, The Modern Subject and the

 Transgressive Entry ofLiterature onto the Scene of HiJtory

 Transitions

 Violent time

 Sovereignty and subjectivity

 Subjectivity and literature

 Transgression and counter-transgression: MacFlecknoes double readings

 Monarchy and its others

 Literature

Part II Haunted Subjects

 Victorian Gothic: Towards an Ethics of Transgression

 Exploring unauthorized margins

 Gothic transmutations

 Gothic fragmentation

 Wuthering Heights and the demands of the past

 Le Fanusrevenancy

 Ethical transgressions

 Gauzy impressions conjured out of nothing: Venice li-bas or, les lieux de la

 Going with the flow

 The question of the city, apropos transgression

 Theflash of a passage, the affirmation of limited being, the transgressive sublime

 Phantom snapshots

 The indirection of transgression

 The serial and spectral

 Vernon Lees ghostly voice

 Venetian impressions

 Transgressionslightning flash

 The differential field of modernity

 The music of the city: an interlude

 Rhythms of Venice

 Uncanny and disquieting city

 The transgressive experience of anywhere

Afterword

Notes

Works Cited

Index of Proper Names and Titles