This study explores three works in which the protagonist undertakes to fashion a literary artwork out of himself: Ovid's »Ars Amatoria«, Kierkegaard's »Diary of the Seducer«, and Thomas Mann's »Felix Krull«. For each work, particular attention is paid to the self-conscious interplay between the author's project of book-making and the character's project of self-making, as well as to the effect of changing notions of self-identity on the protag...
Downing's highly original, thorough, and rewarding book is certain to emerge as an indispensable critical reference-point for scholars and students in the area of narrative theory, problems of realism, and 19th-century German prose. . . . A nearly ideal combination of intellectual scope, erudition, and originality." --Thomas Pfau, Duke University
After Images explores the intersections of photography, archaeology, and psychoanalysis and their effect on conceptions of the subject and his formation or Bildung in the literature and theory of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All three disciplines emerge out of the same historical context, and both photography and archaeology had major impacts on how psychoanalysis came to conceive of the subject, his memory, and the forma...
