On Reading the Will – Law and Desire in Literature and Music

This book examines the human will, will power/willfulness, the will to death or to power, and the lack of will. The book surveys many texts - from Augustine, Shakespeare, Dickens, George Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence - in order to analyze the history of its different concepts: rational/irrational drive, sexual appetite, or just testamentary, so asserting identity beyond death. The book also draws on philosophies of the will in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and studies music as the embodied will in Wagner and Verdi. Additionally, considering the law and its prohibitions as a form of the will, it sees how these produce a perverse will. Drawing on Freud and Lacan, the book studies interrelationships between: the law which prohibits and the desire which wills, how desire creates the law, and the law desire. What stands out is that the individuals studied are fascinated by the will as unknowable and irresistible, as rational and countermanding rationality, as divided and imperious force. Chapters include how wills motivate plots in Shakespeare and the Victorian novel. Discussions of opera and Nietzsche focus on the will as an unconscious force. With sustained discussion of texts, and supporting arguments through a range of key thinkers in cultural theory, this book is indispensable for readers of literature, law, music, and philosophy.