Acts of Literature

Acts of Literature, compiled in close association with Jacques Derrida, brings together for the first time a number of Derrida's writings on literary texts. The essays discuss literary figures such as Rousseau, Mallarmé, Joyce, Shakespeare, and Kafka, and comprise pieces spanning Derrida's career.

Sigmund Freud

The work of Sigmund Freud has penetrated almost every area of literary theory and cultural studies, as well as contemporary culture. Pamela Thurschwell explains and contextualises psychoanalytic theory and its meaning for modern thinking.

Freud And Fiction

This work is an examination of four fictional texts on which Freud himself wrote; a fragmentary poem by Empedocles, Hebbel's "Judith and Holofernes", Jensen's "Gradiva" and E.T.A.Hoffmann's "The Sandman". In her analysis, Kofman is concerned to reassess these texts in the light of Freud's reading of them and to highlight what he misses out. She argues that Freud's claim to give faithful summaries of these works conceals his own editing and distortion of the texts.

The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definitive Text

First published by Sigmund Freud in 1899, The Interpretation of Dreams considers why we dream and what it means in the larger picture of our psychological lives. Delving into theories of manifest and latent dream content, the special language of dreams, dreams as wish fulfillments, the significance of childhood experiences, and much more, Freud, widely considered the “father of psychoanalysis,” thoroughly and thoughtfully examines dream psychology.

Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

This collection of essays provides students of literary critical theory with an introduction to Freudian methods of interpretation, and shows how those methods have been transformed by recent developments in French psychoanalysis, particularly by the influence of Jacques Lacan.