Understanding Sublimation in Freudian Theory and Modernist Writing

Luke Thurston

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English

Routledge
03 July 2024

Literary theory; Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Psychology; Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology)

Series: Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature

What is at stake in Freud’s enduring preoccupation with a process supposedly diverting sexuality into cultural activity? In this study, a leading scholar of psychoanalysis and literature re-opens the old question of sublimation in a critical reading that explores one of the last remaining puzzles of Freudian thought. Using the rigorous framework provided by Jean Laplanche, Luke Thurston resituates sublimation as an unfinished Freudian concept bound up with a much wider history of philosophical and literary reflection. Exploring the misunderstanding and reinvention of sublimation both in accounts of cultural history and in Lacan’s celebrated reading of Antigone, Thurston challenges some of the prevalent assumptions still seen in contemporary “theory.” Thurston links his critical investigation of psychoanalysis to modernist literature, discovering both parallels and alternatives to Freud’s idea of sublimation in little-known works by May Sinclair and David Jones. The study concludes by arguing that these modernist artists, both of whom were significantly affected by trauma during the First World War, produced work radically at odds with the established canons of representation, and that this “anti-hermeneutic” art can be linked to a “Copernican” sublimation, a process not controlled by the ego but vitalizing it and decentring its habitual structure.

By: Luke Thurston
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032494456
ISBN 10: 103249445X
Series: Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature
Pages: 234
Publication Date: 03 July 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction Sublimation—The Unfinished Theory Part 1 Metaphor and Metapsyche Theoretical Prologue: Translating Sublimation Chapter 1 Freud: the Cleavage of Sense and Horror Chapter 2 Sublimation and the Ethical Chapter 3 Sublimation and Anti-Hermeneutics Interlude Sublimation, War and Modernism Part 2 Modernism: Drives and Defences Chapter 4 May Sinclair at the Front Chapter 5 Halsing David Jones Conclusion Primal Sublimation

Luke Thurston is Director of the David Jones Centre at Aberystwyth University. He is the author of James Joyce and the Problem of Psychoanalysis (2004) and Literary Ghosts from the Victorians to Modernism (2012), the co-editor (with Scott Brewster) of The Routledge Handbook to the Ghost Story (2018) and the translator of Jean Laplanche’s The Unfinished Copernican Revolution (2020).