Description
Book SynopsisDemonstrates the centrality of aesthetics and the literary to studies of otherness and cultural contact. Drawing on literary theory, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, this title contends that literature facilitates contact with cultures that may seem foreign to us.
Table of ContentsPreface Acknowledgments I. The Otherness of Poetic Language 1. Reading, Otherness, and Cultural Contact II. Nonsense, Dream, and Chaos: The Otherness of Literary Language 2. Nonsense and Metacommunication: Reflections on Lewis Carroll 3. Joyce, Cage, and Chaos: Finnegan's Wake, Roaratoria, and French Feminism III. Witches, Mothers, and Male Fantasies: The Otherness of Woman 4. Seduced by Witches: Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in the Context of New England Witchcraft Fictions 5. The Multiple Lives of Addie Bundren's Dead Body: On William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying IV. Trauma, Transgression, and Transference: The Otherness of Gender 6. Traversing Spaces of Otherness: Djuna Barnes's Nightwood 7. "While She Lives She Invites Murder": On Marguerite Duras's The Malady of Death Notes Works Cited Index
