Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud

ISBN-13: 9780521622806 / Angielski / Twarda / 1998 / 252 str.

Carolyn Dever; Carolyn Denver

Opis

Victorian culture is famous for its idealization of mothers and families, yet the popular novels of this period frequently feature mothers who are dead or otherwise absent. Through an analysis of the work of Dickens, Collins, Eliot, Darwin and Woolf, Carolyn Dever discusses this apparent paradox. She shows how the idealized dead mother is fundamental to the Victorians' idea of origins, and later becomes the central figure of Freudian psychoanalysis. Dever demonstrates that Victorian literature and psychoanalysis have much to teach us about each other.

Recenzje

"...a shrewd and elegant account of the meaning of maternal loss in psychoanalysis..." SEL

Spis treści

Preface; 1. The lady vanishes; 2. Psychoanalytic cannibalism; 3. Broken mirror, broken words: Bleak House; 4. Wilkie Collins and the secret of the mother's plot; 5. Denial, displacement, Deronda; 6. Calling Dr. Darwin; 7. Virginia Woolf's 'Victorian novel'; Notes; Index.