The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis

Combining literature and psychoanalysis, this collection foregrounds the work of literary creators as foundational to psychoanalysis.

Grounded in the complex history of literature and psychoanalysis, this volume introduces and explains the challenges of interpreting contemporary forms of literacy and media, and new mentalities through psychoanalytic methodologies.The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis explains the link between literature and psychoanalysis for students, critics and teachers. It offers a twenty-first century resource for defining and analyzing the psychoanalytic dimensions of human creativity in contemporary society. Essays provide critical perspectives on selected canonical authors, such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin It also offers analysis of contemporary literature of social, sexual and political turmoil, as well as newer forms such as film, graphic narrative, and autofiction. Divided into five sections, each offering the reader different subject areas to explore, this volume shows how psychoanalytic approaches to literature can provide valuable methods of interpretation. It will be a key resource for students, teachers and researchers in the field of literature and psychoanalysis as well as literary theory.