Death-Drive Freudian Hauntings in Literature and Robert Rowland Smith

April 2010 Hb 978 0 7486 4039 3 £65.00

256pp 234 x 156 mm 3 b&w illustrations

A new theory of aesthetics in which artworks have a death-drive of their own

Description The Author Robert Rowland Smith takes Freud's work on the death-drive and compares it A former Prize Fellow of All Souls with other of death, focusing on the work of Pascal, Heidegger and College, Robert Rowland Smith Derrida, giving a valuable introduction to the rich tradition of work on the death- has written widely on , drive since Freud. Smith then applies this theory to literature and art in a new way - psychoanalysis and literature, to Shakespeare, Rothko and Katharina Fritsch and more - he asks whether artworks including Derrida and Autobiography. are dead or alive, if artistic is actually a form of destruction, and whether He is a founding editor of the award- our ability to be seduced by fine words means we can avoid putting ourselves at winning journal, Angelaki and an risk of death. original member of the Forum for European Philosophy. Now Through this approach, Smith proposes a new theory of aesthetics in which artworks independent, he also writes non- and literary texts have a death-drive of their own, not least by their defining ability fiction that applies philosophy to to turn away from all that is real, and where the effects of the death-drive mean that everyday life. we are constantly living in imaginary, rhetorical or 'artistic' worlds. Series Key Features The Frontiers of Theory • Presents an original theory of aesthetics inspired by theories of death-drive • Analyses both theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis Readership • Offers both an in-depth treatment of Freud and an overview of subsequent philosophies of death Academics, postgraduates and upper level undergraduates in , Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Art Criticism. Practising psychoanalysts or psychotherapists.

Literary Studies

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