ABSTRACT
This chapter briefs the growth of a literary performance from a psychoanalytical standpoint. It assumes that the author at some time of his life was placed amidst circumstances the reality of which jarred on him, offended his sense of beauty, wrecked his happiness and frustrated his most cherished desires. Two of the most famous love stories of the eighteenth century which had a personal background, and whose evolution have been told by the authors, themselves, were Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise (1760), and Goethe's Sorrows of Werther (1774). The authors have given us accounts of the birth of these novels. Both of these geniuses had been frustrated in their loves; as a result they created mental fantasies and lived in a more pleasant world of their own creation, and finally, bursting with desire for expression, produced their novels. Psychoanalysis sheds some light on the nature of genius, and especially literary genius.
