The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
One. The Ideology of Asceticism
1. Ascetic Linguistics
2. Technique and the Self
3. The Signs of Temptation
4. Narrative on Trial
Two. Discipline and Desire in Augustine's Confessions
1. The Language of Conversion
2. Profit and Loss in the Ascesis of Discourse
3. The Fertile Word
Three. A Passion of Representation: Grünewald's Isenheim Altar
1. Anonymity, Modernity, and the Medieval
2. Conceptual Narrative
3. A Passion of Representation
4. Asceticism and the Sublime
Four. Philosophy and the Resistance to Asceticism
1. Nietzsche: Weakness and the Will to Power
2. Saint Foucault
Five. The Ascetics of Interpretation
Notes
Works Cited
Index