Graduation Year
2011
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Granting Department
English
Major Professor
Elizabeth Hirsh, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Tova Cooper, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Susan Mooney, Ph.D.
Keywords
discourse, power, psychoanalysis, subjectivity, unconscious
Abstract
Vita Sackville-West's autobiographical novel The Edwardians lends itself to a double reading: both Freudian and Foucauldian. The Freudian conflict between desire and prohibition plays out in the unresolved Oedipus complex of its protagonist Sebastian, son of the Duchess of Chevron; repression drives Sebastian's behavior in all his relationships. The novel also depicts an upper-class Edwardian society incited to discourse in a Foucauldian sense--a society in which sexual gossip functions as a discourse of power. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this incitement is produced by repression, and functions as a symptom of it. The relationship between repression and incitement suggests the possibility of a theoretical rapprochement between Freud and Foucault.
Scholar Commons Citation
Coley, Aimee Elizabeth, "Repression/Incitement: Double-Reading Vita Sackville-West's The Edwardians Through Freud and Foucault" (2011). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3044
