Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature

by Valeria Finucci (Editor), Regina Schwartz (Editor)

Overview

Drawing on a variety of psychoanalytic approaches, ten critics engage in exciting discussions of the ways the "inner life" is depicted in the Renaissance and the ways it is shown to interact with the "external" social and economic spheres. Spurred by the rise of capitalism and the nuclear family, Renaissance anxieties over changes in identity emerged in the period's unconscious--or, as Freud would have it, in its literature. Hence, much of Renaissance literature represents themes that have been prominent in the discourse of psychoanalysis: mistaken identity, incest, voyeurism, mourning, and the uncanny. The essays in this volume range from Spenser and Milton to Machiavelli and Ariosto, and focus on the fluidity of gender, the economics of sexual and sibling rivalry, the power of the visual, and the cultural echoes of the uncanny. The discussion of each topic highlights language as the medium of desire, transgression, or oppression.


The section "Faking It: Sex, Class, and Gender Mobility" contains essays by Marjorie Garber (Middleton), Natasha Korda (Castiglione), and Valeria Finucci (Ariosto). The contributors to "Ogling: The Circulation of Power" include Harry Berger (Spenser), Lynn Enterline (Petrarch), and Regina Schwartz (Milton). "Loving and Loathing: The Economics of Subjection" includes Juliana Schiesari (Machia-velli) and William Kerrigan (Shakespeare). "Dreaming On: Uncanny Encounters" contains essays by Elizabeth J. Bellamy (Tasso) and David Lee Miller (Jonson).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400821501
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/17/1994
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	441 KB

About the Author

Valeria Finucci is Professor of Romance Studies and Regina Schwartz is Professor of English, both at Duke University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Worlds Within and Without 3
The Insincerity of Women 19
Mistaken Identities: Castiglio(ne)'s Practical Joke 39
The Female Masquerade: Ariosto and the Game of Desire 61
Actaeon at the Hinder Gate: The Stag Party in Spenser's Gardens of Adonis 91
Embodied Voices: Petrarch Reading (Himself Reading) Ovid 120
Through the Optic Glass: Voyeurism and Paradise Lost 146
Libidinal Economies: Machiavelli and Fortune's Rape 169
Female Friends and Fraternal Enemies in As You Like It 184
From Virgil to Tasso: The Epic Topos as an Uncanny Return 207
Writing the Specular Son: Jonson, Freud, Lacan, and the (K)not of Masculinity 233
List of Contributors 261
Index 263

What People are Saying About This

Mazzotta

The new historicism, which in recent years has become the predominate mode of reading the Renaissance, rarely manages to account for the 'literariness' of literary texts. I see [this book] as redressing the new historicism's sin of omission.
— Giuseppe F. Mazzotta, Yale University

From the Publisher

"The new historicism, which in recent years has become the predominate mode of reading the Renaissance, rarely manages to account for the 'literariness' of literary texts. I see [this book] as redressing the new historicism's sin of omission."—Giuseppe F. Mazzotta, Yale University

Editorial Reviews

"Desire in the Renaissance is impressive in its range, and shows how comprehensive the use of psychoanalytic theory in literary criticism has become. At their best, the essays demonstrate the power of psychoanalysis to elucidate the convoluted workings of literary language, and argue for its peculiar compatibility with the dizzying gamesmanship of early modern texts."—-Katy Emck, Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

Desire in the Renaissance is impressive in its range, and shows how comprehensive the use of psychoanalytic theory in literary criticism has become. At their best, the essays demonstrate the power of psychoanalysis to elucidate the convoluted workings of literary language, and argue for its peculiar compatibility with the dizzying gamesmanship of early modern texts.

Times Literary Supplement - Katy Emck

Desire in the Renaissance is impressive in its range, and shows how comprehensive the use of psychoanalytic theory in literary criticism has become. At their best, the essays demonstrate the power of psychoanalysis to elucidate the convoluted workings of literary language, and argue for its peculiar compatibility with the dizzying gamesmanship of early modern texts.
— Katy Emck

Times Literary Supplement