The Nets of Modernism: Henry James, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Sigmund Freud

by Maud Ellmann

Overview

One of the finest literary critics of her generation, Maud Ellmann synthesises her work on modernism, psychoanalysis and Irish literature in this important new book. In sinuous readings of Henry James, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, she examines the interconnections between developing technological networks in modernity and the structures of modernist fiction, linking both to Freudian psychoanalysis. The Nets of Modernism examines the significance of images of bodily violation and exchange – scar, bite, wound, and their psychic equivalents – showing how these images correspond to ‘vampirism' and related obsessions in early twentieth-century culture. Subtle, original and a pleasure to read, this book offers a new perspective on the inter-implications of Freudian psychoanalysis and Anglophone modernism that will influence the field for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521681094
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/30/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Maud Ellmann is the Randy L. and Mervin R. Berlin Professor of the Development of the Novel in English at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: what hole?; 2. The modernist rat; 3. Strandentwining cables: Henry James's The Ambassadors; 4. The Woolf woman; 5. The darkened blind: Joyce, Gide, Larson and the modernist short story; 6. The name and the scar: identity in The Odyssey and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; 7. Skinscapes in Ulysses; Afterword; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

'This intellectually adventurous, vividly written study conveys powerful new ways to see psychoanalytic criticism and modernist fiction.' James Joyce Literary Supplement

From the Publisher