Charm in Literature from Classical to Modernism Charmed Life

Charm in Literature from Classical to Modernism: Charmed Life discusses charm as both an emotional and aesthetic phenomenon. Beginning with the first appearance of literary charm in the Sirens episode of the Odyssey, Richard Beckman traces charm throughout canonical literature, examining the metamorphoses of charm through the millennia. The book examines the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Proust, Joyce, Mann, and others, considering the multiplicity of ways charm is defined, depicted, and utilized by authors. Positioning these poems, dramas, and novels as case studies, Beckman reveals the mercurial yet enduring connotations of charm.  

I. Preface.- II. The Sirens in Homer.- III. Charm in Chaucer.- IV. Spenser versus Charm.- V. Shakespeare and Charm.- VI. Milton and Dryden.- VII.  Pope.- VIII. Charm transfigured.- IX. Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron.- X. Gaskell, Thackeray, and Joyce.- XI. Acerbic Charm; Ludic Charm.- XII. Proust.- XIII. Charm and Cleverness in Joyce.- XIV. Mann’s Felix Krull.

Richard Beckman is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Temple University, USA.  He is the author of Joyce’s Rare View: the Nature of Things in Finnegans Wake (2007), and has published numerous articles and essays in the James Joyce Quarterly and the Journal of Modern Literature.