Power To Hurt

About the Book

Digging into works of alienation

Chosen as the Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book in its year of publication, Power to Hurt delves into the question: how do readers use literature as equipment for living?

Tackling modernism and postmodernism, William Monroe outlines the attitudes and ideas surrounding virtue criticism's place as an alternative to literary theory. Monroe focuses on works by T. S. Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, and Donald Barthelme to demonstrate that their alienistic texts may be filled with belligerence--but also contain virtues like trust and the promise of solidarity with the reader. By considering these vital texts as responses to personal situations and institutional practices, Monroe brings literature back to the common reader and shows how it offers functional responses to the dysfunctional situations of modern life.

Astute and acclaimed, Power to Hurt investigates virtue criticism and offers a fresh look at the merits and vices of alienation.