Arguing that psychoanalytic method enlarges and enriches the significance of literature by discovering a fundamental unconscious structure governing meaning and form in the literary text, Elizabeth Dalton presents both a new and lucid reformulation of the theory of psychoanalytic criticism and a penetrating study of Dostoevsky's great novel, The Idiot. In answering the objections to psychoanalytic criticism, she contends that the method--if properly understood--can be used without falling into reductionism and without recourse to the author's biography. She then deals with such...

Arguing that psychoanalytic method enlarges and enriches the significance of literature by discovering a fundamental unconscious structure governing meaning and form in the literary text, Elizabeth Dalton presents both a new and lucid reformulation of the theory of psychoanalytic criticism and a penetrating study of Dostoevsky's great novel, The Idiot. In answering the objections to psychoanalytic criticism, she contends that the method--if properly understood--can be used without falling into reductionism and without recourse to the author's biography. She then deals with such...