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Imperial masochism : British fiction, fantasy, and social class / / John Kucich



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Autore: Kucich John Visualizza persona
Titolo: Imperial masochism : British fiction, fantasy, and social class / / John Kucich Visualizza cluster
Pubblicazione: Princeton, : Princeton University Press, c2007
Edizione: Course Book
Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (272 p.)
Disciplina: 823/.89353
Soggetto topico: English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism
Masochism in literature
Social classes in literature
Imperialism in literature
Soggetto geografico: Great Britain Colonies History 19th century
Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- A Note On Texts -- Introduction. Fantasy and Ideology -- Chapter One. Melancholy Magic -- Chapter Two. Olive Schreiner's Preoedipal Dreams -- Chapter Three. Sadomasochism and the Magical Group -- Chapter Four. The Masochism of the Craft -- Conclusion -- Index
Sommario/riassunto: British imperialism's favorite literary narrative might seem to be conquest. But real British conquests also generated a surprising cultural obsession with suffering, sacrifice, defeat, and melancholia. "There was," writes John Kucich, "seemingly a different crucifixion scene marking the historical gateway to each colonial theater." In Imperial Masochism, Kucich reveals the central role masochistic forms of voluntary suffering played in late-nineteenth-century British thinking about imperial politics and class identity. Placing the colonial writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Olive Schreiner, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad in their cultural context, Kucich shows how the ideological and psychological dynamics of empire, particularly its reorganization of class identities at the colonial periphery, depended on figurations of masochism. Drawing on recent psychoanalytic theory to define masochism in terms of narcissistic fantasies of omnipotence rather than sexual perversion, the book illuminates how masochism mediates political thought of many different kinds, not simply those that represent the social order as an opposition of mastery and submission, or an eroticized drama of power differentials. Masochism was a powerful psychosocial language that enabled colonial writers to articulate judgments about imperialism and class. The first full-length study of masochism in British colonial fiction, Imperial Masochism puts forth new readings of this literature and shows the continued relevance of psychoanalysis to historicist studies of literature and culture.
Titolo autorizzato: Imperial masochism  Visualizza cluster
ISBN: 1-282-12968-6
9786612129681
1-4008-2740-X
Formato: Materiale a stampa
Livello bibliografico Monografia
Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
Record Nr.: 9910821286003321
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