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

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kucich, John.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Masochism in literature.

Social classes in literature.

Imperialism in literature.

Great Britain--Colonies--History--19th century.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612129681

9781282129689

1282129686

9781400827404

140082740X

OCLC:

355813913