Professor Of Desire Research Articles

Self-Actualization Tendencies in Interpersonal Relationships in Philip Roth’s The Professor of Desire

ABSTRACT Actualization of the self is observed as the paramount detriment for maintaining healthy and long-lasting relationships. The current article is focused on analyzing the self-actualizing tendencies in the protagonists Herbie Brataskky and David Kapesh in Philip Roth’s novel The Professor of Desire. In our current era married relationships are at stake. The divorce rate is increasing day by day and so many people are experiencing trauma. This article is an attempt to locate the solution of such deteriorating relationships through fictional characters. A good relationship between husband and wife is the source for the growth of every civilization. It also helps the people to remain happy and healthy. Through the analysis of the novel, The Professor of Desire, it has been observed that when the protagonist tends to move toward self-actualization, he is able to establish a good and healthy relationship with his partner at the end of the novel by learning self-actualizing techniques.

The Art of Being Philip Roth

The Art of Being Philip Roth

Existential Kepesh and the Facticity of Existential Roth: The Breast, The Professor of Desire, and The Dying Animal

The article argues that Philip Roth's Kepesh saga — The Breast (1972), The Professor of Desire (1997), and The Dying Animal (2001) — dramatically morphs, with regard to sexuality and imaginative flight, Sartre's account, in Being and Nothingness ( L'etre et le neant , 1943), of the origins and possibilities of consciousness and their relation to desire. Indeed, desire, the dominant theme of Roth's trilogy, corresponds to Sartrian outlooks on transcendent possibility or existential freedom. In Being and Nothingness , moreover, Roth appears to have located, identified with, and artistically transformed outlooks on consciousness and artistic creativity. Roth's inspiration for imagining a character who exists as a breast, sans body, may also have emerged from Sartre's treatise, the outlooks of which allow for better appreciation of the concerns and fictive possibilities suggested by The Professor of Desire and The Dying Animal .

In the Roth Archives: The Evolution of Philip Roth's Kepesh Trilogy

As least narratively coherent of Roth's recurrent narrators, David Kepesh is also one of Roth's most enigmatic characters. Perhaps this is excusable; Roth wrote Kepesh novels during vastly different eras, and, as such, they reflect vastly different interests. For all frustration this can induce in readers desiring a clearly-defined trilogy, arguably Kepesh's incongruity and ambiguity helped Dying Animal (2001), third and final novel in Kepesh trilogy, receive a significant amount of scholarly attention in recent years. Velichka Ivanova and Debra Shostak are among critics who convincingly interpret novel as a critique of certain kinds of toxic masculinity. In addition, Shostak evaluates how Kepesh trilogy explore[s] consequences for sexuality and self-concept when gendered perspective of a consciousness shifts position (Countertexts 7)-highlighting ludic skittishness of trilogy as a unit.Scholars have remarked very little on this skittishness and have largely considered first two novels in trilogy to be a faint embarassment. For example, in his monograph Philip Roth, David Brauner makes an indicative argument that The Dying Animal is, along with other Kepesh novels, among [Roth's] weaker (223). Whilst increase in scholarly work done on Dying Animal has mitigated this, little work on previous two novels exists,2 resulting in an absence of scholarship that offers prolonged examinations of construction of books as a trilogy. As such, gap between first Kepesh novel (The Breast, 1972) and second (The Professor of Desire, 1977) is particularly important insofar as it reflects a commitment on Roth's part to avoid a linear narrative of either surreal Kafkan fantasy or Bildungsroman character study.The rise in studies of Kepesh novels (or, at least, figure of Kepesh as represented in Dying Animal) has been coterminous with scholarly usage of Philip Roth Papers in Library of Congress, an archive whose vast collections of Roth-related material remain underutilized in Roth scholarship to date-although it has been deployed in recent works by Shostak, Patrick Hayes, and Josh Lambert, amongst others. These trends are crucial to this article, as is Shostak's notion of the gendered perspective of a consciousness shift[ing] position, a conception of trilogy that accounts for Roth's penchant for abrupt transformation and narrative inconsistency.This article argues that perceived faults of Kepesh novels can mask their more subtle usefulness for Roth scholarship; in particular, by exploring differences in first two Kepesh novels, a sense of their significance within Roth's work can emerge. Beginning with a close reading of unfinished sequels to Breast, this article will first track paths not taken and explore what their absence reveals about text that would become Professor of Desire. Branching into a discussion of unusual publication history of Breast, this article will then explore how Roth came to modify text, positing that such changes evidence an uncertainty over novel's representation of psychoanalysis in particular. Finally, this article will discuss how techniques it has employed can provide a platform for a reexamination not only of value of these works, but of role of psychoanalysis in Roth's career more broadly.1. UNFINISHED SEQUELS TO THE BREASTThe Breast did not remain a static text in Roth's bibliography. Evidence from both Philip Roth Papers and subsequent published versions of text reveal novella to be in a consistently uncertain position; whilst it arguably represents a definable cultural moment (the growing disenchantment with psychoanalysis amongst American intelligentsia), it is also demonstrably a work that Roth agonized over as his career progressed. This instability deepens sense of fundamental unease that is detectable on a contextual, theoretical, and narrative level within novel. …

Annual Bibliography of Philip Roth Criticism and Resources—2016

Annual Bibliography of Philip Roth Criticism and Resources—2016 Mike Witcombe (bio) What follows is a bibliography of Philip Roth-related texts published during 2016, including critical works (books, book chapters, journal essays, and special journal issues). All entries will reflect the format as defined in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook (2016). All sources are arranged in alphabetical order according to the author's last name. Individual essays included in edited collections are grouped in "Book Chapters" and are cross-listed according to MLA style. Digital book editions, such as those designed for Amazon's Kindle and Barnes and Noble's Nook readers, are not included in this listing. Given the recent growth in e-book technology, digital versions of Roth's texts are becoming standard practice. This being the case, none of these e-book versions are included in this bibliography. Readers and researchers can easily visit online booksellers to find digital editions. Mike Witcombe Mike Witcombe is Lecturer in English Literature at Bath Spa University, where he researches contemporary Jewish-American fiction. He is currently co-editing an essay collection for the Open Library of the Humanities titled "New Voices in Jewish-American Fiction," and has additional research interests in baseball fiction, videogames, and the history of psychoanalysis. His article on Roth's drafting process for the Kepesh novels was published in Philip Roth Studies 13.1 (Spring 2017). BOOKS McDonald, Paul and Samantha Roden. Philip Roth Through the Lens of Kepesh. Humanities-Ebooks, 2016. Google Scholar EDITED COLLECTIONS AND SPECIAL ISSUES Gooblar, David and Aimee Pozorski, editors. Roth After Eighty: Philip Roth and the American Literary Imagination, Lexington Books, 2016. Google Scholar EDITED COLLECTIONS AND SPECIAL ISSUES Gooblar, David and Aimee Pozorski, editors. Roth After Eighty: Philip Roth and the American Literary Imagination, Lexington Books, 2016. Google Scholar BOOK CHAPTERS Brauner, David. "Performance Anxiety: Impotence, Queerness, and the 'Drama of Self-Disgust' in Philip Roth's The Professor of Desire and The Humbling." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 61-78. Google Scholar Brühwiler, Claudia Franziska. "'A Human Being Lives Here': Philip Roth on Scandals and the American Presidency." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 29–42. Google Scholar Calder, Alex. "'I told my wrath, my Roth did grow': Anger in Operation Shylock." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 95–108. [End Page 133] Google Scholar Coughlan, David. "Exit Ghost Writer: Philip Roth." Ghost Writing in Contemporary American Fiction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 97–114. Google Scholar Douglas, Christopher. "Recapitulation and Religious Indifference in The Plot Against America." If God Meant to Interfere: American Literature and the Rise of the Christian Right, Cornell UP, 2016, pp. 117–50. Google Scholar Gelbart, Amy. "'[Sticking] to a plan completely": Performance, Affective Adaptation, Memory, Pretend Play, and Suicide in Philip Roth's The Humbling." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 149–66. Google Scholar George, Joseph. "Assimilation and Appropriation: Contest and Collaboration in Global Suburbia." Postmodern Suburban Spaces: Philosophy, Ethics, and Community in Post-War American Fiction, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 163–80. Google Scholar Guillain, Aurélie. "Stalkers, Furies and Comforters: Roth's Grave Comedy of Persecution." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 79–94. Google Scholar Hayes, Patrick. "'With an accomplice no less brilliant than Jean Genet': A Comparative Approach to Roth's Autofiction." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 43–60. Google Scholar Mack, Michael. "Ageing and Modern Jewish Writing and Thought." The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Aging, edited by Geoffrey Scarre, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 149–67. Google Scholar Morley, Catherine. "'My Kinsmen, My Precursors': Philip Roth, Epic, Influence, and Bardic Proclivities." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 109–26. Google Scholar Nadel, Ira. "Roth @ 25: Publishing Goodbye, Columbus." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 19–28. Google Scholar Newton, Adam Zachary. "'I was the prosthesis': Roth and Late Style." Gooblar and Pozorski pp. 127–48. Google Scholar Parks, Tim. "Philip Roth." Life and Work: Writers, Readers, and the Conversations Between Them. Yale UP, 2016. yale.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.12987/yale/9780300215366.001.0001/upso-9780300215366-chapter-009 Google Scholar Pozorski, Aimee. "Introduction—After Eighty: Philip Roth and the American Literary Imagination." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. xiii-xxii. Google Scholar Shechner, Mark. "Newark: The Shtetl." Gooblar and Pozorski, pp. 167–80. Google Scholar Shostak, Debra. "'Every...

Bored with Barthes: ennui in China

Between 11 April and 4 May 1974, Roland Barthes visited Mao’s China. Accompanying him on the trip were François Wahl and, representing Tel Quel, Julia Kristeva, Marcelin Pleynet, and Philippe Sollers. Barthes published a short, disaffected piece on the experience in Le Monde shortly after his return, but the true scale and level of his disappointment did not become apparent until 2009, when several journals that he filled during the trip were published in French as Carnets du voyage en Chine; an English translation, Travels in China, followed in 2012. After tracing the neglected history of boredom in Barthes more generally, this essay examines the overwhelming ennui articulated in Travels in China. If Barthes is, as Steven Ungar argued many years ago, a professor of desire, I propose here that he is also a professor of boredom. What Travels in China allows us to see is the significance of Barthes’s discussions of ennui and the relationship between boredom and the familiar Barthesian theme of doxa. Scholarly accounts of ennui tend to overlook Barthes or reduce him to a single line from The Pleasure of the Text, but I argue that we might correct this oversight and begin at last to read Barthes as a remarkable professor of boredom.

Philip Roth's Chekhovian Formula: Suicide and Art in <em>The Humbling</em> and <em>The Seagull</em>

ROTH, CHEKHOV, AND A GUNIn Philip Roth's Humbling (2009), actor Simon Axler suddenly and inexplicably loses his magic. Axler is devastated and, much like Mickey Sabbath before him, contemplates throughout the novel without finding the means to go through with it. Only when he intuits that he will have to act role does he succeed with his self-destructive plan: [H]e would have to pretend [. . .] that he was Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev in the concluding scene of Seagull' (139-40). Axler finally shoots just as Treplev does in Anton play. Accordingly, Claudia Roth Pierpont remarks: [T]his is man who keeps gun in his attic, and knows his (309).Pierpont alludes to Chekhov's principle of plot-construction that, according to Roth's own Nathan Zuckerman, refers to Chekhov's famous dictum that pistol hanging on the wall in Act One must eventually go off in Act (Counterlife 108). gun goes off in both Seagull and Humbling, but the apparently indispensable Konstantin Treplev is troubling plot device in Roth's novel. protagonist of comedy Seagull (Chayka, 1895) aspires to be great, innovative writer and to win the heart of his beloved, but when he fails as an artist and as lover, he kills himself. Treplev commits because he has never found his magic-arguably fitting counterpart to Axler's dilemma. On still closer inspection, however, Axler's accomplishment looks more curious: play ends with Dr. Dorn's laconic comment, The fact is, he's shot himself (Seagull 125)1- Treplev, it must be noted, is never seen committing in the concluding scene of Seagull. puzzling question is therefore: How could Axler enact that is never properly performed? How could he kill as Treplev, considering that whoever character never holds pretend gun, never pulls pretend trigger, never pretends to kill onstage?Anton influence on Roth can be tracked throughout much of his career. Roth has taught college courses on Chekhov; he has adapted last play Cherry Orchard for production with Claire Bloom and attempted to adapt the short story The Name-Day Party for television (Pierpont 76, 142, 102). Chekhov is also continual reference point in Roth's original fiction: in 'I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting'; or, Looking at Kafka, Aunt Rhoda gets part in Three Sisters, play that has been read to her from the opening line to the final curtain by none other than Dr. Franz Kafka (Reading 298). Other performances of Chekhov are recalled in Sabbath's Theater (129) and Prague Orgy (14, 59). story He and She provides premise for Nathan Zuckerman's playlet of the same name in Exit Ghost (146). His college essay on E. I. Lonoff, which describes his literary idol as Gogol filtered through the humane skepticism of (Ghost 13), had already testified to the fact that Zuckerman is no less knowledgeable about Chekhov than David Kepesh, who, in Professor of Desire, is immersed in story worlds while he struggles with book on the Russian writer. No wonder that Pierpont calls Chekhov one of Roth's presiding literary gods (93). Roth's allegiance to Chekhov might be enough to explain Axler's choice. However, considering how many suicide plays would have provided Axler with more obvious foundation for acting out his suicide-among them even Ivanov, in which the eponymous protagonist shoots onstage before the final curtain-it is surprising that Roth resorts to Seagull to finish off his novel and his character. Adding further to the riddles of this intertextual connection, Axler comes up with list of plays, musing about their curious abundance in canonical literature and wondering whether is a formula fundamental to the drama (Humbling 39). …

Philip Roth's Professor of Desire in the Light of Its French Translation

The article analyzes Henri Robillot's 1979 translation of Philip Roth's The Professor of Desire (1977) into French. It demonstrates the manner in which apparently minor stylistic choices, slight omissions, and more generally the stylistic treatment of male and female characters in the translation constitute a strategy of excessive interpretation and gender politics traced back to the critical reception of Roth's work. Through the analysis of the translation, the article aims to improve the analytical perception of the novel.

"Lectura para Personas de Amplio Criterio": Censorship in the Translations of Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and The Professor of Desire

This article focuses on the effects of censorship on the translations of two of Roth's novels into Spanish: Portnoy's Complaint (1969) and The Professor of Desire (1977). These two novels, published in Spanish for the first time in 1977 and 1978 respectively — a period when Spain had barely left behind General Francisco Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975) — suffered various forms of censorship. The article shows how the four criteria (Abellán 1980) used by the censors of the period — sexual morality, linguistic decorum, politics and respect for religion as an institution — were applied in the case of these two Roth novels.

Annual Bibliography of Philip Roth Criticism and Resources—2006

What follows is a bibliography of Philip Roth-related texts published during 2006, including primary works by and interviews with Roth, critical works (books, book chapters, and journal essays), book reviews and newspaper profiles, and adaptations of Roth's fiction. With the exception of the interview listings, all sources are arranged in alphabetical order according to the author's last name. Only the original American editions of Roth's works are listed below. Of the book reviews, only substantive pieces appearing in major English-language publications are included. All critical sources not published in English are listed under the section in Foreign Languages. In the case of reprinted works, all original publication information is listed along with its more current bibliographic information.Beginning with this year's bibliographic update, only initial page numbers (when available) will be included for all newspaper-related entries. Given the increasing reliance on newspaper databases such as LexisNexis and Access World News, and because many readers now get their news from online editions of newspapers, exact pagination has become less of a necessity when researching these kinds of media sources. Scholars can now find newspaper reviews and profiles through simple searches of periodical databases and online newspaper archives, and in most cases, these resources provide no page information that corresponds with the hard copy. However, because many magazines and journals have not yet gone the way of most newspapers-except in the case of PDF reproduction where an exact digital photograph of the original hardcopy is made available-Philip Studies will continue to list complete page information for those sources in its annual bibliographic update. Online publications such as Slate and Nextbook are listed without page information.Works by RothEveryman. Boston: Houghton, 2006.Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977: The Great American Novel/My Life as a Man/The Professor of Desire. Ed. Ross Miller. New York: Lib. of Amer., 2006.Interviews (Arranged Chronologically)Philip Roth, Haunted by Illness, Feels Fine. Interview with Charles McGrath. New York Times 25 Apr. 2006, late ed., Arts sec: 1.Roth Returns with Life and Death of Everyman. Interview with Robert Siegel. All Things Considered. 2 May 2006. Natl. Public Radio. (Link to streaming audio archived at . Transcript of interview, Roth Returns with Life and Death of Everyman. Lexis-Nexis. .)Philip Discusses Everyman. Interview with Terry Gross. Fresh Air. 8 May 2006 Natl. Public Radio. (Link to streaming audio archived at . Transcript of interview, Novelist Philip Discusses His New Novel Everyman. LexisNexis. .)Philip Roth. Interview with Christopher Lydon. Open Source. 29 May 2006. Public Radio Intl. (Link to mp3 audio archived at .)Philip Roth's 21st Century. Interview with Mark Lawson. Mark Lawson Talks to. BBC4, London. 3 June 2006.Old Age Is a Massacre. Interview with Volker Hage. Spiegel Online. 25 Aug. 2006. 15 June 2007 .BibliographiesRoyal, Derek Parker. Annual Bibliography, Philip Criticism and Resources-2005. Philip Studies 2 (2006): 172-76.Books and Special Journal IssuesFranco, Dean J. and Race. Spec. issue of Philip Studies 2 (2006) 81-176.Kinzel, Till. Die Tragodie und Komodie des amerikanischen Lebens: Eine Studie zu Zuckermans Amerika in Philip Roths Amerika-Trilogie. Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag Winter, 2006.Posnock, Ross. Philip Roth's Rude Truth: The Art of Immaturity. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. …

Race, Class, and Shame in the Fiction of Philip Roth

A central irony that runs through Roth's work is that where his protagonists attempt to evade the importance of ethnicity, they ultimately make it the defining element of their personal relationships. The characters in Portnoy's Complaint (1969), My Life as a Man (1974), The Professor of Desire (1977, and The Human Stain (2001) attempt to find through their intimacy with the cultural Other some element of their essential identity, the "true self," that they believe is stanched through the ethnic or racial associations that define them. In his three initial novels depicting elements of his own marriage gone sour, as well as later in The Human Stain, Roth portrays characters who attempt to escape what they perceive as a shameful element of their cultural heritage through their relationship with one of the many embodiments of his late wife, Margaret Martinson Williams. These men's efforts to escape the associations of their ethnicity through the cultural Other ultimately alienates them from the identity that they hope to realize.

The Dying Animal (review)

Reviewed by: The Dying Animal Jay Halio The Dying Animal, by Philip Roth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. 156 pp. $23.00. Eroticism has always been a part of Philip Roth’s fiction, but until recently death has scarcely entered as a major subject, certainly not in the context of eros. In Sabbath’s Theater (1995) and The Dying Animal (2001) both eros and thanatos figure prom inently. Whether this reflects Roth’s current preoccupations, a result perhaps of his own [End Page 164] advancing age and past serious illnesses, I cannot say, though it would hardly surprise me if that were true. We have learned, however, not to make too close a connection between fiction and autobiography. Roth has been emphatic about that, as his surrogate, “Philip,” says in Deception, referring to the critics: “I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so if I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.” It’s not likely that in The Dying Animal David Kepesh is Roth’s surrogate. Resurrected from The Breast (1972), which is not mentioned, and The Professor of Desire (1977), which is only once alluded to, David Kepesh is close enough at 70, when the novel opens, to Roth’s age (67); but almost everything else about him is not. Kepesh is a radio and television celebrity, a critic of culture and a parttime professor at a college in New York. Roth has long since given up teaching and was never a media star. Kepesh likes to bring the students from his senior seminar in “Practical Criticism” to his apartment after their final exam, and it is then that he chooses the one he will sleep with. Long divorced from his (unnamed) wife and estranged from their only child, Kenny, who despises him, Kepesh has lived since the 1960s a life fully given to hedonism, or the unconstrained life of pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. “A rake among scholars, a scholar among rakes,” he recounts his story to an unspecified listener, probably a woman, a current mistress, but hardly Dr. Spielvogel (in Portnoy’s Complaint) or any other psychotherapist. The story focuses mainly upon a Cuban-American beauty, Consuela Castillo, she of the beautiful breasts who was once Kepesh’s student and later his lover. Kepesh digresses from time to time to recount his affairs with others, such as another former student, Carolyn Lyons, who enters his life again years afterwards with almost disastrous results during his affair with Consuela. This digression and others usefully put the story of his obsession with Consuela into perspective. Throughout, Kepesh details and defends his hedonism, abetted by his friend, the Irish poet George O’Hearn, who, though still married and a father of grown children, not only eggs David on to ever greater sexual triumphs, but almost rivals him in his own numerous amours. Their code seems to be summed up in the idea that “only when you fuck is everything that you dislike in life and everything by which you are defeated in life, purely, if momentarily, revenged. Only then are you most cleanly alive and most cleanly yourself” (p. 69). But immediately after articulating this idea in both its negative and positive aspects, Kepesh remembers death: “Sex is also the revenge on death.” Death is important to remember, and in its context he recognizes that even sex is limited in its power. “But tell me,” he asks his listener, “what power is greater?” (p. 69). For David Kepesh, nothing else seems to be. When George suffers a severe stroke and dies soon after Kepesh visits him, witnessing his last erotic gestures, David begins to realize more fully [End Page 165] than ever death’s primacy. It further confronts him devastatingly when, after a lapse of six years, he receives a desperate call from Consuela, who now is afflicted with what she fears may be a fatal cancer of the breast. Death is the mother of beauty, as Yeats once suggested, but it is not for David Kepesh. For him, as it must be for others like him...

Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire

Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire

Steven Ungar, Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire

Steven Ungar, Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire

Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire

Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire

The Professor of Desire

The Professor of Desire

The Professor of Desire

The Professor of Desire