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The mutilating God : authorship and authority in the narrative of conversion / Gerald Peters.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, �1993.Description: 1 online resource (178 pages)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 0585184712
  • 9780585184715
  • 1122053711
  • 9781122053716
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: Mutilating God.DDC classification:
  • 809/.93592 20
LOC classification:
  • PN212 .P48 1993eb
Other classification:
  • 17.93
Online resources:
Contents:
The Hieroglyphic Phase -- The Hieratic Phase -- The Demotic Phase -- Conversion and the Symbolic Order -- Authorizing the Self in Joyce's Portrait -- Freud's "Magic Slate" and Stephen Dedalus's Aesthetic -- The Mirror of the Text: Rilke's "Other Self" -- Rilke's God -- The Vicissitudes of an "Instinct" in the Conversion of Paul -- Inside the Writing Machine: The Diary of Winston Smith -- Reforming Desire -- Unified Self/"Docile Body" -- Epitome: The Dream of Salvation -- Epilogue: Kafka's "Nightmare."
Action note:
  • digitized 2010 committed to preserve
Summary: This theoretically sophisticated yet highly readable study presents a genealogy of the uses of conversion narratives in linking individual identity to various forms of social authority. In The Mutilating God, Gerald Peters shows how these narratives have been used in different ways to negotiate between private motivation and social authority in the production of an identity.Summary: Drawing on theories of Freud and Lacan, Peters traces the evolution of the conversion narrative from primitive initiation rituals through the classical and Christian traditions to poetic uses in modern literature. He examines works by Plato, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Montaigne, de Sade, Rousseau, De Quincey, Carlyle, Joyce, Rilke, Orwell, and Kafka, focusing particularly on writers of the modern period.Summary: Peters argues that the concept of conversion can be connected to the magical transformations of the human body in the initiation practices of early cultures. In later monotheistic or "logos" centered societies, these rituals were transformed into the narrative patterns and metaphors that link individual identity with metaphysically grounded forms of social unity and power. In the modern world conversion narratives have become a means of both liberation and coercion. If they have become a strategy by which individualized identities undermine traditional forms of social authority, they are also, ultimately, the means by which political entities impose their ideological visions of totality on others.
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Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-175) and index.

Print version record.

The Hieroglyphic Phase -- The Hieratic Phase -- The Demotic Phase -- Conversion and the Symbolic Order -- Authorizing the Self in Joyce's Portrait -- Freud's "Magic Slate" and Stephen Dedalus's Aesthetic -- The Mirror of the Text: Rilke's "Other Self" -- Rilke's God -- The Vicissitudes of an "Instinct" in the Conversion of Paul -- Inside the Writing Machine: The Diary of Winston Smith -- Reforming Desire -- Unified Self/"Docile Body" -- Epitome: The Dream of Salvation -- Epilogue: Kafka's "Nightmare."

Use copy Restrictions unspecified star MiAaHDL

Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL

Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. MiAaHDL

http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212

digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL

This theoretically sophisticated yet highly readable study presents a genealogy of the uses of conversion narratives in linking individual identity to various forms of social authority. In The Mutilating God, Gerald Peters shows how these narratives have been used in different ways to negotiate between private motivation and social authority in the production of an identity.

Drawing on theories of Freud and Lacan, Peters traces the evolution of the conversion narrative from primitive initiation rituals through the classical and Christian traditions to poetic uses in modern literature. He examines works by Plato, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Montaigne, de Sade, Rousseau, De Quincey, Carlyle, Joyce, Rilke, Orwell, and Kafka, focusing particularly on writers of the modern period.

Peters argues that the concept of conversion can be connected to the magical transformations of the human body in the initiation practices of early cultures. In later monotheistic or "logos" centered societies, these rituals were transformed into the narrative patterns and metaphors that link individual identity with metaphysically grounded forms of social unity and power. In the modern world conversion narratives have become a means of both liberation and coercion. If they have become a strategy by which individualized identities undermine traditional forms of social authority, they are also, ultimately, the means by which political entities impose their ideological visions of totality on others.

English.

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