Psychological Realism in 19th Century Fiction

Download or read book Psychological Realism in 19th Century Fiction written by Debashish Sen and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of psychological realism in select works from nineteenth-century fiction, namely Fathers and Sons, Anna Karenina, The Mill on the Floss, and Jane Eyre. It shows how psychoanalytic theories may be applied to illuminate various aspects of the psyches of characters in these texts. The book provides evidence that theories like John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory and Karen Horney’s Personality Theory can go a long way in enhancing our understanding of literary characters, the meaning of the text, its relation to its creator, and the author’s psychology. As such, it brings forth a novel view of literary criticism, and will serve to convince the reader that a critical approach devoid and dismissive of the psychological aspect is incomplete and hurts literary criticism on the whole.