ENGLISH

Death-drive : Freudian hauntings in literature and art

By Freud , Sigmund; Freud , Sigmund; Smith , Robert Rowland

Book information

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Year
2010
ISBN
0748640398, 978-0-7486-4039-3, 9780748641710, 0748641718, 9781282749740, 1282749749
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
1 MB (1301170 bytes)
Series
Frontiers of theory
Edition
1
Pages
215\233
Time added
2015-12-23 22:00:00
-- 1856-1939. Aesthetics. Esthetics. Freudian TheoBereavement. FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS -- DeathBereavement. LITERARY CRITICISM -- GeDeath instinct. Death in literature. Death in art.GriefSigmund

Description

Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and compares it with other philosophies of death--Pascal, Heidegger and Derrida in particular. He also applies it in a new way to literature and art - to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch, among others. He asks whether artworks are dead or alive, if artistic creativity isn't actually a form of destruction, and whether our ability to be seduced by fine words means we don't put our selves at risk of death.In doing so, he proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks and literary texts have a death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability to turn away from all that is real, and where the effects of the death-drive mean that we are constantly living in imaginary, rhetorical or 'artistic' worlds. The book also provides a valuable introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death-drive since Freud

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