Literary Trauma: Sadism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in American Women's Fiction (Psychoanalysis and Culture) - Softcover

Horvitz, Deborah M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 079144712X ISBN 13: 9780791447123

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2000

Synopsis

Examines representations of political, psychological, and sexual violence in seven novels by American women.

This book examines portrayals of political and psychological trauma, particularly sexual trauma, in the work of seven American women writers. Concentrating on novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Pauline Hopkins, Gayl Jones, Leslie Marmon Silko, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood, Horvitz investigates whether memories of violent and oppressive trauma can be preserved, even transformed into art, without reproducing that violence. The book encompasses a wide range of personal and political traumas, including domestic abuse, incest, rape, imprisonment, and slavery, and argues that an analysis of sadomasochistic violence is our best protection against cyclical, intergenerational violence, a particularly timely and important subject as we think about how to stop "hate" crimes and other forms of political and psychic oppression.

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Horvitz teaches at Salem State College and at the School at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 079144712X
• ISBN 13: 9780791447123
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180