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  3. Figures of the Pre-Freudian Unconscious from Flaubert to Proust
  • Cited by 12
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      29 July 2017
      25 July 2017
      ISBN:
      9781316882153
      9781107184565
      9781316635964
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316882153
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.49kg, 250 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.4kg, 254 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Literature, Area Studies, European Literature, European Studies
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    • Selected: Digital
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    Subjects:
    Literature, Area Studies, European Literature, European Studies
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    Book description

    An original, wide-ranging contribution to the study of French writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book examines the ways in which the unconscious was understood in literature in the years before Freud. Exploring the influence of medical and psychological discourse over the existence and/or potential nature of the unconscious, Michael R. Finn discusses the resistance of feminists opposing medical diagnoses of the female brain as the seat of the unconscious, the hypnotism craze of the 1880s and the fascination, in fiction, with dual personality and posthypnotic crimes. The heart of the study explores how the unconscious inserts itself into the writing practice of Flaubert, Maupassant and Proust. Through the presentation of scientific evidence and quarrels about the psyche, Michael R. Finn is able to show the work of such writers in a completely new light.

    Reviews

    ‘Clear and precise in its arguments, Finn's book draws illuminatingly on an impressive range of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sources, from medical treatises and theses, medical and cultural history to writers' correspondence, biography, literary fiction, reception studies and literary criticism. Finn has produced a book that enlivens our thinking and enriches our understanding of the place of pre-Freudian unconscious during a period when developments in medicine, psychology and psychiatry in France were informing and being reflected in creative writing of various sorts.'

    Adam Watt - University of Exeter

    ‘… an excellent and important project … This detailed rereading of scientific discourse is in turn enriched by literary deployments of psychic phenomena. The research is thorough. The claims made are original and insightful.'

    Janell Watson - Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

    'Finn charts the quarrels that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century over the very existence of the unconscious, and, later, the debates over the creative potential of the unconscious, all in anticipation of Freudian contributions and discoveries, and of Proustian thought. … The scope of the study is illuminating …'

    Kate Rees Source: French Studies

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