Corey McEleney on Futile Pleasures in Early Modern Literature

Assistant Professor of English Corey McEleney's just-published book Futile Pleasures: Early Modern Literature and the Limits of Utility was the subject of a piece in Fordham News. The article begins:

When you derive pleasure from reading literature, reciting poetry, and/or watching a play it must be good for you, yes? After all, it’s not time spent idly, but rather it’s time spent for the mind and the soul, no?

“Pleasure also has a dark side,” said Corey McEleney, Ph.D., who explores the subject in Futile Pleasures: Early Modern Literature and the Limits of Utility (Fordham University Press, 2017).

“It is difficult to negotiate between a pleasure that can lead to something good and a pleasure that can lead to something harmful,” said the assistant professor in the Department of English. “That’s precisely what Renaissance writers were grappling with—particularly when it came to the pleasures of literature.”

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