A Poetics of Neurosis

While psychiatry and the neurosciences have dismissed the concept of neurosis as too vague for medical purposes, literary studies have in recent years adopted the term by virtue of its abstractness. This volume investigates the verbalization of neurosis in literary and cultural texts. As opposed to the medical diagnostics of neurosis in the individual, the contributions focus on the poetics of neurosis. They indicate how neuroses are still routinely romanticized or vilified, bent to suit aesthetic and narrative choices, and transfigured to illustrate unresolved cultural tensions.

Elena Furlanetto (Dr.) is a lecturer at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her main research areas include American literature, postcolonial literatures and empire studies, post-9/11 cinema, and poetry. Dietmar Meinel (Dr.) is a post-doc in American literary and cultural studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research interest include 19th-century America, animation films, and visual culture.