The Unconscious in Literature

The Oedipus Complex, the Death Drive, and the Unsymbolic Void
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-85701-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 166 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 395 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment

This book aims to investigate the unconscious in literature using Freudian and Lacanian psychology. The works of Thomas Hardy, William Golding, and Iris Murdoch are discussed from Chapter 1 through to Chapter 8. Based on the argument in these chapters, this volume considers the environmental problem by examining the unconscious in the literary texts, including poetry, in the light of philosophers and critics on ecology in Chapter 9. There is a focus on the Oedipus complex, the death drive, and the unsymbolic void, as they have much relevance to each other in the unconscious, and underlie the plots and leitmotifs of the literary texts discussed. The author, furthermore, carefully examines the complicated relationship between the unsymbolic void within nature and the unconscious of human beings in our environment.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sugimura, Yasunori

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Chapter One

The Psychological Significance of the Double Ending in The Well-Beloved

Chapter Two

The Internal Forces of the Plot in A Pair of Blue Eyes

Chapter Three

The Symbolic Fixed and Dissolved in Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Chapter Four

A Reconsideration of the Dual Relationship and the Cosmic Perspective in Lord of the Flies

Chapter Five

Nature and Human Beings in The Inheritors

Chapter Six

The Black Hole and the Death Drive in Darkness Visible

Chapter Seven

The Unsymbolic Void amidst the Light in ‘Miss Pulkinhorn’

Chapter Eight

The Depiction of Nature and its Originality in Iris Murdoch’s Fiction

Chapter Nine

The Unrepresentable within Nature

Conclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Yasunori Sugimura is Professor Emeritus at Otaru University of Commerce, receiving his Ph.D. from Tohoku University. He has published articles on Thomas Hardy, William Golding, and Iris Murdoch in major journals including The Modern Language Review, and has been a visiting scholar at Darwin College, University of Cambridge. His most recent publication includes The Void and the Metaphors: A New Reading of William Golding’s Fiction with Peter Lang.