The Narcissus Theme from «Fin de Siècle» to Psychoanalysis: Crisis of the Modern Self

Description

The story of Narcissus, who falls in love with his own image in a spring, has fascinated writers and thinkers ever since Ovid first gave poetical form to the myth in his Metamorphoses. This study systematically investigates the elaborations of the theme at the turn of the century around 1900. It argues that a sense of crisis in the modern foundation of selfhood explains the heightened interest in Narcissus during this period. The book investigates three different aspects of the theme: as a symbol of a poetic apotheosis of the self in French Symbolism; as a narrative of a dissolving self in English, Austrian and French decadent literature; and as the concept of narcissism in sexology and psychoanalysis, where self-love provides an instinctual foundation of the self. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations and A Note on Quotations 1. Introduction Theoretical Considerations Theme Intertextuality Myth The Narcissus Tradition Crisis of the Modern Self Fin-de-Siècle Decadence Subjectivity and Selfhood The Modern Self The Tensions of Modern Selfhood Previous Research 2. Crystalline Reflection: The Symbol as Refuge from Life Poetic Apotheosis Valéry I Gide Mauclair de Régnier Conclusions Narcissus as a Polemical Figure in Fin-de-Siècle Poetics de Bouhélier Gilkin, Giraud, Bernard Gasquet Conclusions Living with the Constitutive Incompleteness of Being Royère Valéry II Conclusions 3. Narcissus Comes of Age: Narratives of a Dissolving Self Faust and the Modern Narcissus (Wilde) The Intertextual Situation and the Narcissus Theme The Mirror Scene The Faust Theme and the Opposition between Basil and Lord Henry The Pathetic Fallacy and Narcissic Mirroring The Modern Faust-Narcissus Conclusions Knowledge and Otherness (Andrian) The Narcissus Reference Selfhood and Otherness Knowledge Initiation and Bildung Princes of Lost Origins Narcissus suspicious of himself (Adam) Narcissus and the Androgyne (Scheffer) Narcissus as Pharaoh (Lorrain) Conclusions 4. The Birth of the Concept out of the Narcissus-Like Tendency: A Drive-Theoretical Foundation of the Self Narcissism as Perversion (Binet, Näcke, Ellis) Literary Responses to the Sexological Concept (Chassé, Gourmont) Narcissism in Psychoanalysis The Ways of Appropriation: Metaphor and Myth (Freud, Rank, Pfandl) Aspects of Narcissism and Their Relation to the Literary Theme (Sadger, Freud, Rank) Myth and Psychoanalytic Bildung (Freud) Conclusions 5. Summary and Conclusions Appendix A: The Narcissus Theme in the Works of Salomé and Rilke Appendix B: The Narcissus Theme 1890–1930 Bibliography Index of Names