Figures of the Pre-Freudian Unconscious from Flaubert to Proust

This book examines nineteenth-century debates over the existence of the unconscious, demonstrating how they influence the writing of Flaubert, Proust and others.

Michael R. Finn (Author)

9781316635964, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 July 2019

252 pages
23 x 15.3 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

'Finn charts the quarrels that took place in the second half of the nineteenth century over the very existence of the unconscious, and, later, the debates over the creative potential of the unconscious, all in anticipation of Freudian contributions and discoveries, and of Proustian thought. … The scope of the study is illuminating …' Kate Rees, French Studies

An original, wide-ranging contribution to the study of French writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book examines the ways in which the unconscious was understood in literature in the years before Freud. Exploring the influence of medical and psychological discourse over the existence and/or potential nature of the unconscious, Michael R. Finn discusses the resistance of feminists opposing medical diagnoses of the female brain as the seat of the unconscious, the hypnotism craze of the 1880s and the fascination, in fiction, with dual personality and posthypnotic crimes. The heart of the study explores how the unconscious inserts itself into the writing practice of Flaubert, Maupassant and Proust. Through the presentation of scientific evidence and quarrels about the psyche, Michael R. Finn is able to show the work of such writers in a completely new light.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Before Freud: The Quarrel of the Unconscious in Late Nineteenth-Century France
1. Reflex action, unconscious cerebration, subliminal self
2. The double brain and cerebral topography
3. Hallucination and hypnotism
4. The quarrel of the unconscious
5. The French unconscious, Janet and Freud
Part II. Flaubert: Hysterical Duality, Hallucination and Writing: 6. The divided writer
7. Flaubert bi-gendered
8. Hector Landouzy, Salammbô and hysteria
9. The critics and Flaubert's divided self
10. Absorption, hallucination, writing stance
Part III. Maupassant, Charcot and the Paranormal: 11. Charcot, Le Horla and ambient psychic research
12. 'Les magnétiseurs': Pickmann vs Donato
13. Dualities and doubles
14. Figuring the Maupassantian unconscious
Part IV. The Unconscious Female/The Female Unconscious: 15. Fictions of female physiology
16. The late-century female brain and education
17. Four female writers on the female brain
18. Femme fatale, femme inconsciente
Part V. Hypnotism, Dual Personalities and the Popular Novel: 19. Experimental crimes, real crimes
20. Dual personality, hypnotism and the French fin-de-siècle novel
21. Sex, hypnotism and the unconscious
22. A more sophisticated unconscious?
Part VI. Proust, the Intellect and the Unconscious: 23. Trials of the intellect
24. The unconscious and creativity: 1900
25. The 'natural' unconscious: Proust and Maeterlinck
26. Toward the Proustian unconscious
26.A Willpower and the creative
26.B Unconscious anticipation
26.C Deep, behind, within: articulating the unconscious
Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Conscious & unconscious [JMTC], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]