Supposing the Germans “Defeated Great Britain in the Present War”: Freud’s Death Drive on Three Levels of Narrative Communication in Vita Sackville-West’s Grand Canyon
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RIS BIB ENDNOTESupposing the Germans “Defeated Great Britain in the Present War”: Freud’s Death Drive on Three Levels of Narrative Communication in Vita Sackville-West’s Grand Canyon
Publication date: 03.2020
Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2020, Volume 15, Issue 1, pp. 27-37
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843933ST.20.003.11747Authors
Supposing the Germans “Defeated Great Britain in the Present War”: Freud’s Death Drive on Three Levels of Narrative Communication in Vita Sackville-West’s Grand Canyon
Published in 1942, Vita Sackville-West’s Grand Canyon presents an alternative history of the Second World War. The novel is literally suffused with the theme of death, but to discern it, one has to read it between lines. The aim of the paper is to argue that the threat of death is manifested in Grand Canyon on three levels of narrative communication proposed by Manfred Jahn: action, fictional mediation and non-fictional communication. Moreover, the paper proves that the way in which the novel is haunted by death on each of these levels corresponds to Sigmund Freud’s theory of death drive, according to which: (1) the individual’s life-producing instincts (“Eros”) are complemented by his death drive (“Thanatos”); (2) the whole civilisation is led by the death drive of individuals.
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Information: Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2020, Volume 15, Issue 1, pp. 27-37
Article type: Original article
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
Poland
Published at: 03.2020
Article status: Open
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND
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English