Literary Legacy of Child Sexual Abuse - Psychoanalytic Readings of an American Tradition

It examines the representation of child sexual abuse in five American novels written from 1850 to the present. Legal and therapeutic interventions respond with their disciplinary resources to these questions as they concern victims, perpetrators, and witnesses. Literary criticism offers another analytic framework

List of contents

A Personal Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Reading Stories, Asking Questions
Chapter 1: Telling in Her Own Time: Shame and the Delay of Disclosure in The Scarlet Letter
Chapter 2: Loose Screws and Loose Ends: The Value of Uncertainty in The Turn of the Screw
Chapter 3: Parody, Perversion, and Pedophilia: Consent and the Pornography of Art in Lolita
Chapter 4: The Colors of Shame: Varieties of Racism in The Bluest Eye
Chapter 5: The Wound and the Blessing: Witnessing for One and for All in Gilead
Afterword: What Fiction Can Do for Life
Index

About the author

Beverly Haviland is a Visiting Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in American Studies at Brown University. She is the author of Henry James's Last Romance: Making Sense of the Past and the American Scene and the editor of The Sense of the Past in The Complete Fiction of Henry James.

Summary

It examines the representation of child sexual abuse in five American novels written from 1850 to the present. Legal and therapeutic interventions respond with their disciplinary resources to these questions as they concern victims, perpetrators, and witnesses. Literary criticism offers another analytic framework

Product details

• Authors: Beverly Haviland, Haviland Beverly
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.11.2024
• EAN: 9781032519012
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3251901-2
• No. of pages: 252
• Series: Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / General, North America, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Comparative Literature, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Feminist, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary theory, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000