Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-century French LiteratureIn the 19th century, literature shared with the medical and psychological sciences a strategy of examining the most extreme manifestations of human desire. While fetishism, sadism and masochism still resonate as concepts with critical currency, necrophilia has received little attention. In this groundbreaking study, Lisa Downing rescues necrophilia from the margins of sexual desire, relocating it as a symptom and a pervasive fantasy of modern subjectivity. Drawing case material from the 19th century French canon, the author brings works by Baudelaire and Rachilde into dialogue with foundational European texts of sexology and Psychoanalysis. She reads against the grain of traditional Freudian theories of sexuality, the conventions of 19th century literary scholarship, and feminist critiques of the 'masculine' morbid aesthetic in order to bring to light a model of desire whose problematic nature afflicts existing discourses about sexuality and gender in 19th century France and beyond. |
Contents
Introduction I | 18 |
Death in Psychoanalysis | 46 |
The Poetics of Baudelaires Liebestod | 67 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic artistic attempt Barnabas Baudelaire Baudelaire's beautiful becomes behaviour Bersani c'est century Charles Baudelaire contemporary corpse critical cultural d'une dead body death drive degeneration Delacroix's Dennis Nilsen described destructive discourse discussion dream emotional erotic eroticism fantasy female feminine feminist femme fetishism figure French Freud Freudian Gallimard gender Grand Saigneur homme human idea identification images imagination instinct Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel jeune Krafft-Ebing Leo Bersani libidinal linked literary literature London Malcolm Bowie male Malreux Marie marquis Marquis de Sade masculine Maurice Barrès metaphor Monsieur Vénus morbid mort mourning murder necrophilia necrophilic nineteenth nineteenth-century novel object Oxford Paris phantasy Pleasure Principle poem poetic psychical psychoanalytic Psychopathia Sexualis Rachilde Rachilde's Raittolbe Raoule representations represents rhetoric Sade Sade's sadism seen sexology sexual desire sexual perversion social suggests symbol tête texts textual theory Thérèse Raquin Tour d'amour tout transformation University Press vampire victim woman women writing Yves Yves's