After the Lovedeath Paperback - 2000

This book proposes that the forms of selfhood mandated as normal in modern Western culture both promote and rationalize violence against women.

"In this brilliant extended essay, Lawrence Kramer once again brings his formidable skills as a literary critic and musicologist to bear on nineteenth-century culture. . . . As always, Kramer surprises his readers with bold new insights; he compels us to return to poems, stories, and sonatas we thought we knew."--Susan McClary, author of Feminine Endings

"This book makes its readers understand the stakes of a crucial debate while itself raising that debate to a higher stage. Its powerful, original vision of gender informs remarkable readings of individual texts. The style, uniquely personal and invariably effective, often reaches a level of eloquence rare in academic prose. Kramer has a distinctive voice and uses it to dramatic effect."--Sandy Petrey, author of Speech Acts and Literary Theory

"Enormously important. . . . [This book] takes a crucial next step from previous cultural-critical work. Its determination to speak directly to the problem of sexual violence by way of certain cultural products--rather than the other way around, as countless previous authors have done--is a weird and wonderful gesture. I wouldn't have thought it could be done, but I find quite persuasive Kramer's demonstration that readings like these can authorize such a diagnosis."--Ruth A. Solie, editor of Musicology and Difference