“We Had the Experience But Missed The Meaning”: On The Relevance of Lacanian Categories in the Analysis of Fiction

Autori

  • Hedwig Schwall Catholic University of Leuven

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v9i0.3688

Parole chiave:

John Banville, Seamus Deane, Jacques Lacan, Novels.

Abstract

After having shown the three paradoxes of literature (the master being mastered by his literary tools, the reader’s identification versus her critical stance, the text combining thematic unity and vital inconsistencies) we look at how several Lacanian concepts have their impact on a narrator’s style: the twofold psychic system, three phases that mould our perception, the function of the father figure, the notion of the Other, the others and the “objects o”. It is in the relationship to the object o, where the two different energies of our psychic system meet, that we find out which type of person we are: neurotic, psychotic
or perverse. As it is mainly the hysteric neurotic and the paranoiac psychotic type who figure most often as narrators in literature, we look at how the former type is realized in Banville’s The Book of Evidence and in Deane’s Reading in the Dark while the latter, the psychotic type, permeates the narrative of Banville’s Mefisto. Indeed, the protagonist’s pathological narcissism which steers him now into megalomania, now into a death wish (unification with the Other he lost at birth), make him
utterly confuse inner and outer worlds, literal and metaphorical meanings.

Biografia autore

  • Hedwig Schwall, Catholic University of Leuven

    SCHWALL, HEDWIG is a senior lecturer at the Catholic University of Leuven and Kortrijk where she teaches English literature and literary theory (especially psychoanalysis); at the European Business School Brussels she teaches German. In her publications she focuses on contemporary Irish literature (all genres) and on the contemporary English novel. She is president of the BAAHE, Belgian Association of
    Anglicists in Higher Education and secretary of EFACIS, the European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies. She is currently working on “The Importance
    of Imagination in Religion”, a book on possible links between literature, psychoanalysis and religion.

Pubblicato

2007-06-17

Fascicolo

Sezione

Fiction

Come citare

Schwall, H. (2007). “We Had the Experience But Missed The Meaning”: On The Relevance of Lacanian Categories in the Analysis of Fiction. ABEI Journal, 9, 11-25. https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v9i0.3688