Drawing on philosophical and psychoanalytic methods of interpretation, Richard Kuhns explores modern transformations of an ancient poetic genre, tragedy. Recognition of the philosophical problems addressed in tragedy, and of their presence up through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophical texts, novels, and poetry, establishes a continuity between classical and modern enactments. Psychoanalytic theory in both its original formulations and post-Freud developments provides a means to enlarge upon and inform philosophical analyses that have dominated modern discussions.
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This book places the contribution of psychoanalysis to the understanding of art within a philosophical framework and seeks to show by argument and example the potential and unrealized power of psychoanalytic theory for a philosophy of art and culture.