The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis

Description

This volume is an introduction to the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature. Jean-Michel Rabate takes Sigmund Freud as his point of departure, studying in detail Freud's integration of literature in the training of psychoanalysts and how literature provided crucial terms for his myriad theories, such as the Oedipus complex. Rabate subsequently surveys other theoreticians such as Wilfred Bion, Marie Bonaparte, Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj Zizek. This Introduction is organized thematically, examining in detail important terms like deferred action, fantasy, hysteria, paranoia, sublimation, the uncanny, trauma, and perversion. Using examples from Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare to Sophie Calle and Yann Martel, Rabate demonstrates that the psychoanalytic approach to literature, despite its erstwhile controversy, has recently reemerged as a dynamic method of interpretation.

Jean-Michel Rabate is the Managing Editor of the Journal of Modern Literature. He is also founder and senior curator of Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, where he organizes exhibitions, conferences and lectures. Since 2008, Rabate has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also on the editorial boards of Interfaces, James Joyce Quarterly, the James Joyce Annual, the European Journal of English Studies, Modernism/Modernity, English Text Construction, and Word and Image. Rabate currently serves on the board of the University of Pennsylvania Press.