Bernard J. Paris

In Character and Conflict in Jane Austen’s Novels, Bernard J. Paris offers an analysis of the protagonists in four of Jane Austen’s most popular novels. His analysis reveals them to be brilliant mimetic creations who often break free of the formal and thematic limitations placed upon them by Austen. Paris traces the powerful tensions between form, theme, and mimesis in Mansfield Park, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion. Paris uses Northrop Frye’s theory of comic forms to analyze and describe the formal structure of the novels, and Karen Horney’s psychological theories to explore the personalities and inner conflicts of the main characters. The concluding chapter turns from the characters to their creator, employing the Horneyan categories of self-effacing, detached, and expansive personality types to interpret Jane Austen’s own personality. Readers of Jane Austen will find much that is new and challenging in this study. It is one of the few books to recognize and pay tribute to Jane Austen’s genius in characterization. Anyone who reads this book will come away with a new understanding of Austen’s heroines as imagined human beings and also with a deeper feeling for the troubled humanity of the author herself.

A Psychological Approach

Character and Conflict in Jane Austen's Novels

Sidney Homan

Norman Norwood Holland

00 What sort of person was William Shakespeare? Although we know few of the facts of his life, modern psychological techniques enable us to glimpse the man behind the works. The essays in this volume explore the conflicts he dealt with, the defenses he used, and the way writing, acting, and directing served him psychologically. What sort of person was William Shakespeare? Although we know few of the facts of his life, modern psychological techniques enable us to glimpse the man behind the works. The essays in this volume explore the conflicts he dealt with, the defenses he used, and the way writing, acting, and directing served him psychologically.

Shakespeare's Personality

Karen Horney is regarded by many as one of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of the 20th century. This book argues that Horney's inner struggles, in particular her compulsive need for men, induced her to embark on a search for self-understanding.

A Psychoanalyst's Search for Self-Understanding

Karen Horney

This motivational analysis of the protagonists in Thomas Hardy's three most widely read novels--Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Jude the Obscure--highlights an often-overlooked aspect of his art. Bernard J. Paris shows Hardy's genius in creating imagined human beings. He demonstrates that while Hardy tends to blame external conditions for his characters' painful fates, their downfalls are due to a very complex combination of cosmic, social, and psychological factors. Hardy's characters are usually discussed primarily in thematic terms. The characters are are so richly portrayed, Paris argues, that they can be better understood independent of Hardy's interpretations, in motivational terms and he utilizes the psychologist Karen Horney's theories to recover Hardy's intuitions. The characters are full of inner conflicts that make them difficult to fathom, but the approach Paris employs explains their contradictions and illuminates their troubled relationships--shedding light on these expertly crafted imagined human beings. This psychological approach to Hardy's characters enables us to understand his characters and gain insight into the implied authors of the works. In addition, the approach shows Hardy's authorial personality. We can see that Hardy treats some defensive strategies more sympathetically than others. Given his view of life as a general drama of pain, resignation, like that of Hardy's character Elizabeth-Jane, is the strategy he prefers.

Character and Fate in Hardy's Major Novels

A General Drama of Pain

One of literature's greatest gifts is its portrayal of realistically drawn characters--human beings in whom we can recognize motivations and emotions. In Imagined Human Beings, Bernard J. Paris explores the inner conflicts of some of literature's most famous characters, using Karen Horney's psychoanalytic theories to understand the behavior of these characters as we would the behavior of real people. When realistically drawn characters are understood in psychological terms, they tend to escape their roles in the plot and thus subvert the view of them advanced by the author. A Horneyan approach both alerts us to conflicts between plot and characterization, rhetoric and mimesis, and helps us understand the forces in the author's personalty that generate them. The Horneyan model can make sense of thematic inconsistencies by seeing them as the product of the author's inner divisions. Paris uses this approach to explore a wide range of texts, including Antigone, "The Clerk's Tale," The Merchant of Venice, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Wuthering Heights, Madame Bovary, The Awakening, and The End of the Road.

A Psychological Approach to Character and Conflict in Literature

Imagined Human Beings

Professor Bernard J Paris

Studies in Thackeray, Stendhal, George Eliot, Dostoevsky, and Conrad

A Psychological Approach to Fiction

"Psychology helps us to talk about what the novelist knows, but fiction helps us to know what the psychologist is talking about." So writes the author of this brilliant study. The chief impulse of realistic fiction is mimetic; novels of psychological realism call by their very nature for psychological analysis. This study uses psychology to analyze important characters and to explore the consciousness of the author and the work as a whole. What is needed for the interpretation of realistic fiction is a psychological theory congruent with the experience portrayed. Emerging from Paris' approach are wholly new and illuminating interpretations of Becky Sharp, William Dobbin, Amelia Sedley, Julien Sorel, Madame de Renal, Mathilde de la Mole, Maggie Tulliver, the underground man, Charley Marlow, and Lord Jim. The psychological approach employed by Paris helps the reader not only to grasp the intricacies of mimetic characterization, but also to make sense of thematic inconsistencies which occur in some of the books under consideration. For students of human behavior as well as students of literature, the great figures of realistic fiction provide a rich source of empathic understanding and psychological insight.

"Psychology helps us to talk about what the novelist knows, but fiction helps us to know what the psychologist is talking about." So writes the author of this brilliant study. The chief impulse of realistic fiction is mimetic; novels of psychological realism call by their very nature for psychological analysis. This study uses psychology to analyze important characters and to explore the consciousness of the author and the work as a whole. What is needed for the interpretation of realistic fiction is a psychological theory congruent with the experience portrayed. Emerging from Paris' approach are wholly new and illuminating interpretations of Becky Sharp, William Dobbin, Amelia Sedley, Julian Sorel, Madame de Renal, Mathilde de la Mole, Maggie Tulliver, the underground man, Charley Marlow, and Lord Jim. The psychological approach employed by Paris helps the reader not only to grasp the intricacies of mimetic characterization, but also to make sense of thematic inconsistencies which occur in some of the books under consideration. For students of human behavior as well as students of literature, the great figures of realistic fiction provide a rich source of empathic understanding and psychological insight.

A psychological approach to fiction

A noted Eliot scholar explores how we become different interpreters of literature as we undergo psychological change. In a probing analysis that has broad implications for theories of reading, Bernard J. Paris explores how personal needs and changes in his own psychology have affected his responses to George Eliot over the years. Having lost his earlier enthusiasm for her "Religion of Humanity," he now appreciates the psychological intuitions that are embodied in her brilliant portraits of characters and relationships. Concentrating on Eliot's most impressive psychological novels, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, Paris focuses on her detailed portrayals of major characters in an effort to recover her intuitions and appreciate her mimetic achievement. He argues that although she intended for her characters to provide confirmation of her views, she was instead led to deeper, more enduring truths, although she did not consciously comprehend the discoveries she had made. Like her characters, Paris argues, these truths must be disengaged from her rhetoric in order to be perceived.

Changing Responses to Her Experiments in Life

Rereading George Eliot

The State of Play presents an essential first step in understanding how new digital worlds will change the future of our universe. Millions of people around the world inhabit virtual words: multiplayer online games where characters live, love, buy, trade, cheat, steal, and have every possible kind of adventure. Far more complicated and sophisticated than early video games, people now spend countless hours in virtual universes like Second Life and Star Wars Galaxies not to shoot space invaders but to create new identities, fall in love, build cities, make rules, and break them. As digital worlds become increasingly powerful and lifelike, people will employ them for countless real-world purposes, including commerce, education, medicine, law enforcement, and military training. Inevitably, real-world law will regulate them. But should virtual worlds be fully integrated into our real-world legal system or should they be treated as separate jurisdictions with their own forms of dispute resolution? What rules should govern virtual communities? Should the law step in to protect property rights when virtual items are destroyed or stolen? These questions, and many more, are considered in The State of Play, where legal experts, game designers, and policymakers explore the boundaries of free speech, intellectual property, and creativity in virtual worlds. The essays explore both the emergence of law in multiplayer online games and how we can use virtual worlds to study real-world social interactions and test real-world laws. Contributors: Jack M. Balkin, Richard A. Bartle, Yochai Benkler, Caroline Bradley, Edward Castronova, Susan P. Crawford, Julian Dibbell, A. Michael Froomkin, James Grimmelmann, David R. Johnson, Dan Hunter, Raph Koster, F. Gregory Lastowka, Beth Simone Noveck, Cory Ondrejka, Tracy Spaight, and Tal Zarsky.

Bernard J. Paris

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