Lacan and fantasy literature : : portents of modernity in late-Victorian and Edwardian fiction / / by Josephine Sharoni.

• Superior document: Contemporary psychoanalytic studies, volume 23
• VerfasserIn: Sharoni, Josephine,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill-Rodopi,, [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Contemporary psychoanalytic studies ; volume 23.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (245 pages).

Eschewing the all-pervading contextual approach to literary criticism, this book takes a Lacanian view of several popular British fantasy texts of the late 19th century such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula , revealing the significance of the historical context; the advent of a modern democratic urban society in place of the traditional agrarian one. Moreover, counter-intuitively it turns out that fantasy literature is analogous to modern Galilean science in its manipulation of the symbolic thereby changing our conception of reality. It is imaginary devices such as vampires and ape-men, which in conjunction with Lacanian theory say something additional of the truth about – primarily sexual – aspects of human subjectivity and culture, repressed by the contemporary hegemonic discourses.

Table of Contents

Introduction -- The Modernization of Britain 1870–1914 -- Lacan and the Question of Evidence -- Lacan’s Reconsideration of Totem and Taboo -- Science and the Thing: Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World -- The Missing Name-of-the-Father: She -- The Recuperation of the Thing: ‘The Horror of the Heights’ -- The Name-of-Science: The Invisible Man -- The Re-inscription of the Name-of-the-Father: Dracula -- Conclusion.