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Madness in Fiction

Literary Essays from Poe to Fowles

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  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Mark Axelrod-Sokolov

    1. Department of English, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA

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  • Provides a sustained examination of canonical writers from a unique point of view - via the notion of madness

  • Examines a range of European and North American writers

  • Provides both a writer’s perspective and a critic’s perspective, since the author writes both fiction and criticism

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
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  2. The Madness of Insult in Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado

    • Mark Axelrod-Sokolov
    Pages 1-16

  3. The Madness of Starvation in Hamsun’s Hunger

    • Mark Axelrod-Sokolov
    Pages 17-40

  4. The Madness of Marginalization in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

    • Mark Axelrod-Sokolov
    Pages 41-58

  5. The Madness of Madness in Hesse’s The Steppenwolf

    • Mark Axelrod-Sokolov
    Pages 59-76

  6. The Madness of Romantic Obsession in Fowles’ The Collector

    • Mark Axelrod-Sokolov
    Pages 77-91

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 93-98
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Keywords

About this book

This book examines one work dealing with madness from each of five prominent authors. Including discussion of Fowles, Hamsun, Hesse, Kafka, and Poe, it delineates the specific type of madness the author associates with each text, and explores the reason for that - such as a historical moment, physical pressure (such as starvation), or the author’s or his narrator’s perspective. The project approaches the texts it explores from the perspective of a writer of fiction as well as from the perspective of a critic, and discusses them as unique manifestations of literary madness. It is of particular significance for those interested in the interplay of fiction, literary criticism, and psychology.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA

    Mark Axelrod-Sokolov

About the author

Mark Axelrod is Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department of English at Chapman University, USA, Director of the John Fowles Center for Creative Writing, and Editor of Mantissa, the literary journal of the Fowles Center. He has won a number of fiction and film awards, as well as Fulbrights and NEA grants, and has published extensively in fiction, non-fiction, film, and literary criticism. His publications include Poetics of Prose (Palgrave, 2016) and Notions of the Feminine (Palgrave, 2015).

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