A psychoanalytic perspective on reading literature: reading the reader

"What are the unconscious processes involved in reading literature? How does literature influence our psychological development and existential challenges? A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature offers a unique glimpse into the unconscious psychic processes and development involved...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Roth, Merav (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Abingdon, Oxon Routledge 2020
Series:Art, creativity, and psychoanalysis book series
Subjects:
Online Access:Volltext
Summary:"What are the unconscious processes involved in reading literature? How does literature influence our psychological development and existential challenges? A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Reading Literature offers a unique glimpse into the unconscious psychic processes and development involved in reading. The author listens to the "free associations" of various literary characters, in numerous scenarios where the characters are themselves reading literature, thus revealing the mysterious ways in which reading literature helps us and contributes to our development. The book offers an introduction both to classic literature (Poe, Proust, Sartre, Semprun, Pessoa, Agnon, and more) and to the major psychoanalytic concepts that can be used in reading it - all described and widely explained before being used as tools for interpreting the literary illustrations. The book thus offers a rich lexical psychoanalytic source, alongside its main aim in analysing the reader's psychological mechanisms and development. Psychoanalytic interpretation of those literary readers opens three main avenues to the reader's experience: 1) The transference relations toward the literary characters 2) the literary work as means to transcend beyond the reader's self-identity and existential boundaries and 3) mobilization of internal dialectic tensions towards new integration and psychic equilibrium. An Epilogue concludes by emphasising the transformational power embedded in reading literature. The fascinating dialogue between literature and psychoanalysis illuminates hitherto concealed aspects of each discipline and contributes to new insights in both fields"--
Physical Description:1 online resource (xvi, 320 pages)
ISBN:9780429750007
0429750005
9780429422782
0429422784
9780429749995
0429749996
9780429750014
0429750013

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