The Self on Trial

Literary Form and Psychological Analysis
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-041-17293-2
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 180 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

The Self on Trial is an inquiry into the self and its pathological behaviors. The author observes 20th-century fiction and studies it through a psychological reading. It is evident that the century has produced self-destructive characters whose behaviors and choices are an ultimate form of consummation — primitive, elementary, and inexplicable. Why cannot Prufrock ask the overwhelming question? What is the reason for Humbert’s sexual attraction to Lolita? Why do we destroy what we love the most? The author reveals, through literary representations, aberrations of the ego that come into existence when already existing psychological dispositions meet a specific social habitat.

An important contribution, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative literature, world literature, philosophy, psychology, poetry, and modern fiction. It will appeal to those who try to understand the nature of one’s inexplicability.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Castelli, Alberto

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Identity. A Chamber of Torture 2. The Love Song of the Underground Men 3. The Forces of Inner Life: Young Törless and Holden Caulfield 4. Mourning and Melancholia in A Farewell to Arms 5. Lolita and Laide: The Curse of Youth 6. The Orphans of Love 7. Eastern Dynamics: A Love for Death 8. The Museum of Innocence: A Museum Without Innocence

Über Autor(innen)

Alberto Castelli is a writer and a well-established scholar at Hainan University, China. Chiefly, his interests lie within Modernism, Postmodern dynamics, and Cross-Cultural Studies. His most recent publications include Love, Despair, and Modernism in Literature and Fyodor Dostoevsky When Beauty Saves the World both published by Routledge.