ENGLISH

Death-Drive: Freudian Hauntings in Literature and Art

By Robert Rowland Smith

Book information

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Year
2010
ISBN
0748640398, 9780748640393
Google Books ID
I6z3D_IKq2oC
Open Library ID
OL24088104M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
791 kB (810202 bytes)
Series
The Frontiers of Theory
Pages
233\233
Orientation
yes
Scanned
no
Time added
2012-02-04 16:00:00

Description

Robert Rowland Smith compares Freud's work on the death-drive to other philosophies of death, particularly those of Pascal, Heidegger, and Derrida, and applies it to Shakespeare, Mark Rothko, and Katharina Fritsch. Smith asks whether artistic creativity is actually a form of destruction and whether the seduction of fine words places us at risk of death. He proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artwork and literary text have a death-drive of their own, the effects of which translate into imaginary, rhetorical, and "artistic" worlds. Smith also provides a valuable introduction to the rich scholarship on the death-drive since the time of Freud.

Similar books