1st Edition

The Unconscious in Literature The Oedipus Complex, the Death Drive, and the Unsymbolic Void

By Yasunori Sugimura Copyright 2025
166 Pages
by Routledge

166 Pages
by Routledge

166 Pages
by Routledge

This book aims to investigate the unconscious in literature using Freudian and Lacanian psychology. The works of Thomas Hardy, William Golding, and Iris Murdoch are discussed from Chapter 1 through to Chapter 8. Based on the argument in these chapters, this volume considers the environmental problem by examining the unconscious in the literary texts, including poetry, in the light of philosophers... Read more

Introduction

Chapter One

The Psychological Significance of the Double Ending in The Well-Beloved

Chapter Two

The Internal Forces of the Plot in A Pair of Blue Eyes

Chapter Three

The Symbolic Fixed and Dissolved in Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Chapter Four

A Reconsideration of the Dual Relationship and the Cosmic Perspective in Lord of the Flies

Chapter Five

Nature and Human Beings in The Inheritors

Chapter Six

The Black Hole and the Death Drive in Darkness Visible

Chapter Seven

The Unsymbolic Void amidst the Light in ‘Miss Pulkinhorn’

Chapter Eight

The Depiction of Nature and its Originality in Iris Murdoch’s Fiction

Chapter Nine

The Unrepresentable within Nature

Conclusion

Biography

Yasunori Sugimura is Professor Emeritus at Otaru University of Commerce, receiving his Ph.D. from Tohoku University. He has published articles on Thomas Hardy, William Golding, and Iris Murdoch in major journals including The Modern Language Review, and has been a visiting scholar at Darwin College, University of Cambridge. His most recent publication includes The Void and the Metaphors: A New Reading of William Golding’s Fiction with Peter Lang.