This book is a comparative study of 12 works of fiction broadly representative of the Western canon. Its aim is to discover what gives these 12 works their lasting appeal and vitality over and beyond their formal qualities. It focuses on the interplay of text and subtext within each work after defining these terms at the outset. It then compares its 12 sample classics systematically in a conclusion that argues from the works themselves to classics in general.

Binion's key finding is that for a piece of fiction to feel deep, whole, and great, as classics do, its text must be underpinned...

This richly illustrated volume explores the eroticization of death in the literature, art, and music of the nineteenth century, and in the popular culture of our time.

Death was the natural enemy of love in the arts of the West until the late eighteenth century, when the two mated in artistic fancy to celebrate death as a font of sensual bliss. Through the nineteenth century, voluptuous visions of death pervaded high culture. Keats fell half in love with easeful death, and, as Heine told it, Life only warms in death's cold arms. For Whitman, death was the word of the sweetest song....

The rich and fascinating life of Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) has been reconstructed by Professor Binion on a vast documentary basis, and his findings contradict all earlier versions of her life. Frau Lou was a woman of prodigious intellect, a woman of letters, and a powerful personality. She was closely linked with many of the great cultural figures of the time, often before they achieved recognition. This was the case with Nietzsche, Rilke, Freud, Ferdinand Tonnies, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler, and Martin Buber. Frau Lou not only relates but interprets Lou's life, and...

The rich and fascinating life of Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) has been reconstructed by Professor Binion on a vast documentary basis, and his findings contradict all earlier versions of her life. Frau Lou was a woman of prodigious intellect, a woman of letters, and a powerful personality. She was closely linked with many of the great cultural figures of the time, often before they achieved recognition. This was the case with Nietzsche, Rilke, Freud, Ferdinand Tonnies, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler, and Martin Buber. Frau Lou not only relates but interprets Lou's life, and...