Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

Tragedy and Transference in D.M. Thomas’s The White Hotel

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

Sheils, Barry and Walsh, Julie (2013) Tragedy and Transference in D.M. Thomas’s The White Hotel. Psychoanalysis and History, Vol.15 (No.1). pp. 69-89. doi:10.3366/pah.2013.0122

Research output not available from this repository, contact author.
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/pah.2013.0122

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

In the novel The White Hotel, D.M. Thomas's superimposition of a Freudian-style case history onto a traumatic event of World War II explores both the necessity and the gratuitousness of representing trauma. The novel's primary device of relating the sexual fantasies of its protagonist Lisa Erdman/‘Frau Anna G.’, depicted as being a psychoanalytic patient of Freud's, to the massacre of over 30,000 Jews at Babi Yar in 1941, is an enduringly controversial one. The notoriety of Thomas's novel though, stems not only from its difficult treatment of the sexual desire of a victim of the Shoah, but also from the critical disbelief regarding the author's production of an original text. In this article we suggest that these sites of controversy are intimately linked. Allegations that Thomas was guilty of literary theft – of plagiarizing a more ‘authentic’ account of the historical events at Babi Yar – resonate with criticisms of the novel's gratuitous representations of sex. Ultimately, however, it is through this gratuitousness, evident in the novel's formal commitment to repetition, that Thomas's work invites reflection on the difficulty of an ethics of representation by implicating the aesthetic concerns of literature with those of psychoanalysis and historical fact. Specifically, we shall suggest that Thomas's positioning of the term anagnorisis – a critical term referring to the moment of recognition or clarification in tragic drama – is central to this project.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Divisions: Other > Institute of Advanced Study
Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Journal or Publication Title: Psychoanalysis and History
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISSN: 1460-8235
Official Date: January 2013
Dates:
DateEvent
January 2013Published
Volume: Vol.15
Number: No.1
Page Range: pp. 69-89
DOI: 10.3366/pah.2013.0122
Status: Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Published
Access rights to Published version: Open Access

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item
twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us