Dimensions of Delicacy

Dimensions of Delicacy is a radical study of the conceptual and deconstructive force of delicacy. The book argues that delicacy embodies antithetical qualities of modern discourse: the sophistication of narratives and the fragility of relations. The language of delicacy aestheticizes narratives of moral integrity, historical knowledge and collective responsibility, but simultaneously articulates the pursuit of the ethical in terms of hesitant gestures, elusive ends and precarious bonds. Through a series of thought-provoking associations the book explores the interplay between the poetics and the politics of delicacy in the poetry of Keats, Rilke and Pasolini, supplying a fresh interpretation of cognitive and affective modes of experiencing modernity. This scholarly study of the notion of delicacy probes its linguistic, literary and theoretical dimensions and will be of particular interest to lecturers and students of poetry and critical theory.