Examines images of horror in Victorian fiction, criticism, and philosophy.
Focusing on the recurring metaphor of Medusa's head, The Medusa Effect examines images of horror in texts by Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a series of Victorian artists and critics writing about aesthetics. Through nuanced and innovative readings of canonical works by Freud, Nietzsche, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, A. C. Swinburne, and George Eliot, Thomas Albrecht demonstrates the twofold nature of these writers' images of horror. On the one hand, the analysis illuminates how the representation of something seen as horrifying-for instance, a disturbing work of art, an existential insight, or a recognition of the fundamental inaccessibility of another person's consciousness-can serve a protective purpose, to defend the writer in some way against the horror he or she encounters. On the other hand, the representations themselves can be a potential threat-epistemologically unreliable, for instance, or illusory, deceptive, fundamentally unstable, and potentially dangerous to the writers. Through a psychoanalytically informed literary analysis, The Medusa Effect explores crucial ethical and epistemological questions of Victorian aesthetics, as well as underexamined complexities of the mechanisms of Victorian literary representation.
| ISBN: | 9781438428680 |
| Publication date: | 15th July 2010 |
| Author: | Thomas Albrecht |
| Publisher: | SUNY Press an imprint of State University of New York Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 166 pages |
| Series: | SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture |
| Genres: |
Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology Philosophy: aesthetics Literature: history and criticism |
Examines images of horror in Victorian fiction, criticism, and philosophy.
Focusing on the recurring metaphor of Medusa's head, The Medusa Effect examines images of horror in texts by Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and a series of Victorian artists and critics writing about aesthetics. Through nuanced and innovative readings of canonical works by Freud, Nietzsche, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater, A. C. Swinburne, and George Eliot, Thomas Albrecht demonstrates the twofold nature of these writers' images of horror. On the one hand, the analysis illuminates how the representation of something seen as horrifying-for instance, a disturbing work of art, an existential insight, or a recognition of the fundamental inaccessibility of another person's consciousness-can serve a protective purpose, to defend the writer in some way against the horror he or she encounters. On the other hand, the representations themselves can be a potential threat-epistemologically unreliable, for instance, or illusory, deceptive, fundamentally unstable, and potentially dangerous to the writers. Through a psychoanalytically informed literary analysis, The Medusa Effect explores crucial ethical and epistemological questions of Victorian aesthetics, as well as underexamined complexities of the mechanisms of Victorian literary representation.
The Medusa Effect features in the following genres: Psychoanalytical and Freudian psychology, Philosophy: aesthetics, Literature: history and criticism
The Medusa Effect is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Medusa Effect was written by Thomas Albrecht and published by SUNY Press an imprint of State University of New York Press
The Medusa Effect has 166 pages
Yes it is part of SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture series