“We live forwards but we understand backwards.” –Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Even though we may not be aware of it, we all carry within us a story about our lives that describes who we are. We’ve had experiences from which we’ve learned lessons, and from those experiences and lessons we’ve formulated a set …
King, Stephen. Mr. Mercedes New York: Scribner, 2014 448 pages ISBN–13: 978–1476754451 I don’t read a lot of Stephen King’s works because I don’t like horror. But I do love mysteries, so when I saw King’s latest book described as a “straight-up mystery,” I went for it. Technically, Mr. Mercedes is not a mystery—in …
“Mr. Mercedes” by Stephen King: The Power of Characters Read More »
During a recent book group discussion of John Updike’s novel Rabbit, Run, someone said, “I don’t particularly like any of the characters in this book.” I had to admit that I agreed with this assessment, but that truth doesn’t affect my appreciation of the book. This seemingly casual reference to not liking fictional characters …
Aiken, Conrad. “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” (1934) In The World Within: Fiction Illuminating Neuroses of Our Time Edited by Mary Louise Aswell Notes and Introduction by Frederic Wertham, M.D. New York: Whittlesey House, 1947 Related Post: “The World Within”: Introduction I remember discovering this story in an anthology of American short stories back …
The World Within: Fiction Illuminating Neuroses of Our Time Edited by Mary Louise Aswell Notes and Introduction by Frederic Wertham, M.D. New York: Whittlesey House, 1947 The World Within was one of the first literary collections assembled to spotlight a psychological approach to literature. It couples a literary editor’s introductory remarks with analysis …
There’s been a lot in the news lately about a study suggesting that children do not gain accurate knowledge of the natural world by reading stories with human-like animals. Dr. Patricia A. Ganea, of the psychology department at the University of Toronto, and colleagues examined how books that present animals with human characteristics (that …
Do Books with Anthropomorphic Animals Hinder Children’s Learning about Nature? Read More »
We know that time travel is impossible. Yet when we pick up Octavia Butler’s Kindred or Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, we don’t stop reading when we see characters moving through time. No, we accept that the story the author wants to tell requires time travel, and we allow it to exist in the …
“Breaking Bad” and the Willful Suspension of Disbelief Read More »
In today’s curation for Literature & Psychology I’ve come across this article: Escaping ‘Horrible Sanity’: Teaching Victorian Literature and Psychology Here Serena Trowbridge, Lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University in the U.K., introduces the module she teaches on Victorian literature and psychology. The rest of the article, written by one of Trowbridge’s students, describes …
A University Module on Victorian Literature and Psychology Read More »
Have you noticed how similar are the stories of Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, and Harry Potter? All three of these ordinary fellows set out on a long journey, fraught with danger, to undertake a task with a little help from their friends. When Joseph Campbell examined the mythologies of the world’s major civilizations, he …
Literature & Psychology is a collection of interdisciplinary news items that I aggregate daily (well, almost daily) through ScoopIt. Literature & Psychology is also a new category of blog post here. Of course, there’s a story behind it. About 35 years ago I completed the coursework, though not the dissertation, for a doctorate in …
