ABSTRACT

This work, first published in 1919, is an endeavour to apply some of the methods of psychoanalysis to literature. It traces a writer’s books back to the outward and inner events of their life and to reveal of their unconscious. This unconscious is largely identical with the mental love fantasies in our present and past life. Since the terms ‘unconscious’ and ‘erotic’ are almost synonymous, any serious study of literature which is concerned with the unconscious must deal impartially with eroticism.

chapter I|19 pages

Introduction

chapter II|11 pages

Eroticism in Life

chapter III|20 pages

Dreams and Literature

chapter VIII|11 pages

Genius as a Product of the Unconscious

chapter IX|14 pages

Literary Emotions and the Neuroses

chapter XI|22 pages

Sexual Symbolism in Literature

chapter XII|7 pages

Cannibalism: The Atreus Legend

chapter XIII|20 pages

Some Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism

chapter XIV|10 pages

Keats’ Personal Love Poems

chapter XV|11 pages

Shelley’s Personal Love Poems

chapter XVI|17 pages

Edgar Allan Poe

chapter XVII|7 pages

The Ideas of Lafcadio Hearn

chapter XVIII|7 pages

Conclusion