Poe and Psychoanalytic Criticism. Whose Unconscious is It Anyway?

Table of contents:
◊ The Unconscious: from Psychoanalysis to Literature, from Literature to Psychoanalysis
◊ Critical-psychoanalytic Approaches to Poe: from Author to Critic
◊ Poe, the Unconscious and the Scene of Reading: a Descent into the Text

In “Poe and Psychoanalytic Criticism: Whose Unconscious is it Anyway?" Lorelei Caraman launches a fascinating critical hypothesis by turning, not towards the psychoanalysis of the literary work, nor towards that of its author, but towards the psychoanalysis of the critics who write about the author and/or their works. Her study investigates the boomerang effect of criticism or, in hermeneutic terms: its coming back upon itself.
Reversing the usual subject-object analytic path, the author seeks to penetrate into the intricacies of the critical act itself. Consequently, the American Romantic writer Edgar Allan Poe on whom the book is centered becomes a cultural pretext for a more subtle exploration: namely, that of the more obscure dimensions of any critical gesture with hermeneutic implications.

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