From Library Journal
Shattuck (literature, Boston Univ.), the author of The Forbidden Experiment (Kodansha, 1994), enters the culture wars with an examination of the limits of knowledge and the breaking of taboos. Drawing on impressive erudition, he examines the themes of dangerous or forbidden knowledge, the limits of curiosity, and the corrosiveness of doubt in Western literature with detailed examinations of Faust and Frankenstein, as well as Emily Dickinson, Milton, and Melville. In turn, Shattuck examines the special cases of scientific knowledge and sexual liberty. Denying that he is a Luddite, Shattuck offers little about how to curb such knowledge. Nevertheless, he makes an impressive and eloquent case of the dangers of forbidden knowledge and human presumption. For academic collections.?Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, Ga.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Even before Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider made things better with butter in Last Tango in Paris, before Showgirls hit the big screen last year, humanity has been compelled by the forbidden and immoral. Roger Shattuck has written a comprehensive, nuanced exposeof this search for the forbidden throughout the history of Western culture, proving that humanity has been perplexed by the perverse and the proscribed since the origins of civilization, puzzling over this trait through religion, literature, and philosophy. Shattuck develops his thesis by drawing from across the canon, including biblical tales of morality, Milton's Paradise Lost, several versions of Faust, Shelley's Frankenstein, Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dickinson, Melville, Camus, and more. Shattuck's work culminates in a painstaking and searing critique of the works of the Marquis de Sade as the ultimate antithesis of the rules of civilization. A brilliant analysis of the history of Western culture, Shattuck's latest work is a cogent, stimulating read. Ted Leventhal
From Kirkus Reviews
An eminent scholar's exploration of a crucial theme in Western literature and culture: forbidden knowledge. Shattuck (Literature/Boston Univ.) has published many books, including a well-known study of modernism (The Banquet Years, 1968) and a biography (Marcel Proust, 1982) that earned its author the National Book Award. His new book embodies his vision of what literary criticism ought to be (as opposed to current academic trends in literary studies). First, its theme is one of importance to people other than professional literary critics. Second, its language is urbane and engaging. Third, Shattuck writes with originality and imagination yet remains loyal to scholarly standards of evidence and argument. The book traces the problem of forbidden knowledge from its origins in myth and folklore (Prometheus, Pandora, Eve, and Faustus) up through the more modern attempt to deal with its meaning for our moral well-being. He has especially strong chapters on Milton's Paradise Lost, which he sees as a turning point in our understanding of the theme, and Melville's Billy Budd, which he praises by damning comparison with Camus's The Stranger. He also writes about Frankenstein, Emily Dickinson, Mme. de Lafayette. The latter two share the theme of renunciation, the obverse side of the forbidden knowledge topos. The second half of Shattuck's book attempts to negotiate the treacherous pass from literature to real life: Forbidden knowledge as literary theme is supposed to shed light on the moral dilemmas of scientists who worked on the atomic bomb and those who remain at work on the Human Genome Project. Here he is less persuasive. But as a consolation prize we get a wonderfully impassioned chapter against the Marquis de Sade who, according to Shattuck, does not deserve the serious attention that scholars have showered on him. A fine, challenging, and timely work of scholarship and criticism. (First serial to the New York Times Book Review; Book- of-the-Month/History Book Club alternate selections) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
Mr. Shattuck, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the wide range of his learning, writes engagingly and clearly about both literature and science. -- The New York Times Book Review, Mary Lefkowitz
Shattuck first traces, through literary examples, the destruction of the idea that there are things we ought not to know; and then, through artistic and scientific "case studies," he presents a philosophical justification for reintroducing that idea into contemporary life. The root of the problem with his book lies, I think, in Shattuck's consistent slighting of religion and his apparent inability to perceive that some theological notion of the sacred is necessary to undergird the idea that there are things we ought not know. The consequences of his religious tone-deafness are discernible even when it comes to literary analysis. His otherwise perceptive reading of Emily Dickinson, for example, is hurt by his failure to notice that her poems praising reticence and abstinence are dominated by religious imagery.
But the real problems arise when he moves from literary analysis to philosophy. Lacking the theological support his own study of Milton suggests he needs, Shattuck attempts to place limits on knowledge by relying solely on a nonreligious moral intuition that there ought to be such limits. Immanuel Kant went down this road, and it is perhaps not surprising that Shattuck ends up with an analysis very much like Kant's--arguing that we can discern whether a piece of knowledge is forbidden by examining the will of the person seeking it. -- Commentary Magazine, December 1996, J. Bottum
About the Author
Roger Shattuck is University Professor and Professor of Modern Foreign Languages and Literature at Boston University.
![Frankenstein [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2001] Marry Shelley](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41VqJQPKVNL._AC_SF480,480_.jpg)
