What is psychoanalytic criticism and how can it be justified as a type of criticism in its own right? In this new and thoroughly revised edition of her classic textbook, Elizabeth Wright provides a cogent answer to this question and a wide-ranging introduction to psychoanalytic criticism from Freud to the present day.
Since each school of psychoanalysis has its own theory of the aesthetic process, the field is complex. Adopting a critical perspective, Elizabeth Wright focuses on major figures and texts in psychoanalysis and in literary and art criticism: classical psychoanalysis; Jungian analytic psychology; objects-relations theory; French psychoanalysis; French anti-psychoanalysis; feminist psychoanalytic criticism. Across these divisions certain problems recur, problems which conceal themselves in a wide range of surprising places, from Shakespearean tragedy to performance theatre from magic realism to detective fiction, from the German Lied to Wagner. These areas are investigated with reference to rival psychoanalytic theories, while connections are traced between the aesthetic process and the psychoanalytic approach.
Already established as the leading introduction to the field, this new edition of Psychoanalytic Criticism will be essential reading for students of literature and literary theory, psychoanalysis, feminism and feminist theory, cultural studies and the humanities generally.
Tabella dei contenuti
Preface.
Introduction.
Part One. .
1. Classical Psychoanalysis: Freud.
2. Classical Freudian Criticism: Id-Psychology.
3. Post-Freudian Criticism: Ego-Psychology.
4. Archetypal Criticism: Jung and the Collective Unconscious.
Part Two.
5. Object-Relations Theory: Self and Other.
Part Three. .
6. Structural Psychoanalysis: Psyche as Text.
7. Post-structural Psychoanalysis: Text as Psyche.
Part Four. .
8. Psychoanalysis and Ideology I: Focus on Subversion.
9. Psychoanalysis and Ideology II: Focus on Dialectic.
Part Five.
10. Feminist Psychoanalytic Criticism.
Conclusion.
References.
Further Reading.
Index.
Circa l’autore
Elizabeth Wright, University of Cambridge