Jung believed that great literature compensates for collective psychic imbalance, either by offering alternatives or by reflecting the imbalance. In this study, Snider explores Jung’s theories by focusing on a wide selection of Western literature. Included are chapters on Merlin as he was portrayed by Victorian authors, Swinburne’s Tristram of Lyonesse, Virginia Woolfs Orlando and The Waves, The Member of the Wedding and Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the poetry of W. H. Auden.
Table of Contents
Jungian Theory and Its Literary Application
The Archetypal Wise Old Man: Merlin in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
The Archetypal Self in Swinburne’s Tristram of Lyonesse
A Jungian Analysis of Schizophrenia in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Androgyny in Virginia Woolf: Jungian Interpretations of Orlando and The Waves
Two Myths for Our Time: Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding and Clock Without Hands
The Archetype of Love in the Age of Anxiety: W. H. Auden