Informed by the voices of Freud and Lacan regarding the nature of language and desire, Inaugural Wounds examines the ways in which five major nineteenth-century English writers explored the trajectories and shapes of desire. Arguing that we need to give to novels the same kind of close scrutiny we give to poetry, author Robert Lougy suggests that when we do so, we discover that they often astound us by the resonance and range of their language, as well as by their ability to take us to strange and haunting places.
The five narratives examined—Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, William Thackeray’s Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure—testify to the mysterious origins of desire. Although each of the novels tells its own story in its own way, they share a fascination with the nature of desire itself.
Drawing upon recent work that has challenged historicist approaches toward nineteenth-century British literature, Professor Lougy uses the insights of psychoanalysis to enable us to more fully appreciate the depth and power of these novels. Of great value to Victorian and psychoanalytic scholars, Inaugural Wounds will be useful for teaching undergraduates as well.
Informed by the voices of Freud and Lacan regarding the nature of language and desire, Inaugural Wounds examines the ways in which five major nineteenth-century English writers explored the trajectories and shapes of desire. Arguing that we need to give to novels the same kind of close scrutiny we give to poetry, author Robert Lougy suggests that when we do so, we discover that they often astound us by the resonance and range of their language, as well as by their ability to take us to strange and haunting places.
The five narratives examined—Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit, William Thackeray’s Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth, Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, and Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure—testify to the mysterious origins of desire. Although each of the novels tells its own story in its own way, they share a fascination with the nature of desire itself.
Drawing upon recent work that has challenged historicist approaches toward nineteenth-century British literature, Professor Lougy uses the insights of psychoanalysis to enable us to more fully appreciate the depth and power of these novels. Of great value to Victorian and psychoanalytic scholars, Inaugural Wounds will be useful for teaching undergraduates as well.
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Inaugural Wounds: The Shaping of Desire in Five Nineteenth-Century English Narratives
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Inaugural Wounds: The Shaping of Desire in Five Nineteenth-Century English Narratives
216Hardcover
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780821415634 |
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Publisher: | Ohio University Press |
Publication date: | 06/30/2004 |
Pages: | 216 |
Product dimensions: | (w) x (h) x 0.70(d) |