The Gendering of Melancholia : Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature / Juliana Schiesari.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schiesari, Juliana, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

European literature--Renaissance, 1450-1600--History and criticism.

European literature.

Grief in literature.

Women and literature.

Melancholy in literature.

Depression, Mental, in literature.

Loss (Psychology) in literature.

Feminism and literature.

Psychoanalysis and literature.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 278 p. )

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The pantheon of renowned melancholics-from Shakespeare's Hamlet to Walter Benjamin-includes no women, an absence that in Juliana Schiesari's view points less to a dearth of unhappy women in patriarchal culture than to the lack of significance accorded to women's grief. Through penetrating readings of texts from Aristotle to Kristeva, she illuminates the complex history of the symbolics of loss in Renaissance literature.The pantheon of renowned melancholics-from Shakespeare's Hamlet to Walter Benjamin-includes no women, an absence that in Juliana Schiesari's view points less to a dearth of unhappy women in patriarchal culture than to the lack of significance accorded to women's grief. Through penetrating readings of texts from Aristotle to Kristeva, she illuminates the complex history of the symbolics of loss in Renaissance literature.Schiesari first considers the development of the concept of melancholia in the writings of Freud and then surveys recent responses by such theorists as Luce Irigaray, KaJa Silverman, and Julia Kristeva. Schiesari provides fresh interpretations of works by Aristotle, Hildegard of Bingen, and Ficino and she considers women's poetry of the Italian Renaissance, key works by Tasso and Shakespeare, and the writings of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Lacan. According to Schiesari, male melancholia was celebrated during the Renaissance as a sign of inspired genius, at the same time as public rituals of mourning led by women were suppressed.The Gendering of Melancholia will be stimulating reading for scholars and students in the fields of feminist criticism, psychoanalytic and literary theory, and Renaissance studies, and for anyone interested in Western cultural history.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Gendering of Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia"

Chapter 2. Black Humor? Gender and Genius in the Melancholic Tradition

Chapter 3. Appropriating the Work of Women's Mourning: From Petrarch to Gaspara Stampa, and from Isabella di Morra to Tasso

Chapter 4. Soverchia maninconia: Tasso's Hydra

Chapter 5. Mourning the Phallus? (Hamlet, Burton, Lacan and "Others")

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Mrz 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781501718373

1501718371

OCLC:

1080550881