Literary trauma
Subtitle: sadism, memory, and sexual violence in American women's fiction
By: Deborah M. Horvitz.
Series: SUNY series in psychoanalysis and culture
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Albany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 169
Subjects: American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Psychological fiction, American -- History and criticism.; Psychoanalysis and literature -- United States.; Women and literature -- United States.; Psychic trauma in literature.; Sex crimes in literature.; Violence in literature.; Sadism in literature.; Memory in literature.
Description: "This book examines portrayals of political and psychological trauma, particularly sexual trauma, in the work of seven American women writers. Concentrating on novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Pauline Hopkins, Gayl Jones, Leslie Marmon Silko, Dorothy Allison, Joyce Carol Oates, and Margaret Atwood, Harvitz investigates whether memories of violent and oppressive trauma can be preserved, even transformed into art, without reproducing that violence.

The book encompasses a wide range of personal and political traumas, including domestic abuse, incest, rape, imprisonment, and slavery, and argues that an analysis of sadomasochistic violence is our best protection against cyclical, intergenerational violence, a particularly timely and important subject as we think about how to stop "hate" crimes and other forms of political and psychic oppression."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-163) and index.