Aesthetic Hysteria - The Great Neurosis in Victorian Melodrama and Contemporary Fiction

Aesthetic Hysteria is a deconstructive psychoanalytic study of hysteria, using literary texts to foreground a telling encounter between two growing discourses within English studies: that of emotion/affect and trauma studies. It brings together several academic foci - the history of medicine, aesthetic theory, speech act theory, feminism, and gender and performance studies. The study uses its theoretical and philosophical questioning of a cultural phenomenon to interrogate the politics and ends of theory, and is timely in addressing similar anxieties dominating contemporary critical and cultural theory.

List of contents

Preface Acknowledgments Chapter One: Introduction: Stuck in the Gullet of the Signifier: Desire, Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Hysteria Chapter Two: Too Much, Too Little: The Emotional Capital of Victorian Melodrama Chapter Three: Missed Encounters: Repetition, Rewriting, and Contemporary Returns to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations Chapter Four: Broken English: Neurosis and Narration in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy Chapter Five: Emetic Theory: Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

About the author

Ankhi Mukherjee is Associate Professor in the Faculty of English, University of Oxford, UK.

Summary

Aesthetic Hysteria is a deconstructive psychoanalytic study of hysteria, bringing together several academic foci - the history of medicine, aesthetic theory, speech act theory, feminism, and gender and performance studies.

Product details

• Authors: Ankhi Mukherjee, Ankhi (Wadham College Mukherjee, Mukherjee Ankhi
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 16.11.2011
• EAN: 9780415512985
• ISBN: 978-0-415-51298-5
• No. of pages: 140
• Series: Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; LITERARY CRITICISM / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Feminist, Feminism & feminist theory, Literary theory, Feminism and feminist theory, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form