Title Paranoia and Modernity Cervantes to Rousseau / John Farrell

Published Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2006. (Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2015)

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Description 1 online resource (341 p. ) Series Book collections on Project MUSE Contents Agent and other -- The responsible knight -- The knight errant -- Luther and the devil's world -- The terrors of reform -- The science of suspicion -- The demons of Descartes and Hobbes -- Pascal and power -- The art of polite disguise -- Swift and the satiric absolute -- A flight from humanity -- Invisible agents -- Rousseau's great plot -- An attempted escape -- Epilogue : paranoia and postmodernism Summary "Don Quixote is the first great modern paranoid adventurer.... Grandiosity and persecution define the characters of Swift's Gulliver, Stendhal's Julien Sorel, Melville's Ahab, Dostoyevsky's Underground Man, Ibsen's Masterbuilder Solness, Strindberg's Captain (in The Father), Kafka's K., and Joyce's autobiographical hero Stephen Dedalus.... The all-encompassing conspiracy, very much in its original Rousseauvian cast, has become almost the normal way of representing society and its institutions since World War Two, giving impetus to heroic plots and counter-plots in a hundred films and in the novels of Burroughs, Heller, Ellison, Pynchon, Kesey, Mailer, DeLillo, and others."-from Paranoia and ModernityParanoia, suspicion, and control have preoccupied key Western intellectuals since the sixteenth century. Paranoia is a dominant concern in modern literature, and its peculiar constellation of symptoms-grandiosity, suspicion, unfounded hostility, delusions of persecution and conspiracy-are nearly obligatory psychological components of the modern hero.How did paranoia come to the center of modern moral and intellectual consciousness? In Paranoia and Modernity, John Farrell brings literary criticism, psychology, and intellectual history to the attempt at an answer. He demonstrates the connection between paranoia and the long history of struggles over the question of agency-the extent to which we are free to act and responsible for our actions. He addresses a wide range of major authors from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, among them Luther, Bacon, Cervantes, Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Swift, and Rousseau. Farrell shows how differently paranoid psychology looks at different historical junctures with different models of agency, and in the epilogue, "Paranoia and Postmodernism," he draws the implications for recent critical debates in the humanities Notes Includes index Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Description based on print version record Subject Personality and culture. Agent (Philosophy) Paranoia in literature. Paranoia -- Philosophy Civilization, Modern -- Psychological aspects LITERARY CRITICISM -- Semiotics & Theory. Agent (Philosophy) Civilization, Modern -- Psychological aspects Paranoia in literature Personality and culture Form Electronic book Author Project Muse. LC no. 2005017717 ISBN 9781501732423 1501732420 0801444101 9780801444104

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