Fictions of intoxication (D. H. Lawrence, Joseph Conrad, Sigmund Freud)

Often invoked but rarely analyzed, “intoxication” appears in so many and such varied discourses—from medical to moral, philosophical to poetic—that it seems to belong to all and none of them. It can refer to states both mental and physical, positive and negative—in short, to drunkenness in all its incarnations. Because it is an infinitely capacious term, writers have been able to exploit “intoxication” for centuries.; Despite—or perhaps because of—its ubiquity, however, the term and its signifieds have received surprisingly little critical attention. Fictions of Intoxication addresses this critical gap. It treats literary intoxication not as a discrete or easily identifiable phenomenon unto itself, but as a marker of larger epistemological and ontological concerns. Fictions of Intoxication looks at the intimate relationship between inebriation (whether literal or metaphorical) and inscription, and at the centrality of intoxication, in its many and varied forms, to literary production and constructions of the self.; Chapter one examines the significance of intoxication in the western literary tradition, from Plato through the twentieth century, with an emphasis on canonical English literature. I suggest that, while “intoxication” appears everywhere in literature, the so-called “cult of temperance” of the late 19th century put extreme pressure on the term, with enormous metaphysical repercussions: the stable, “sober,” consistent, and Cartesian self of the Victorians gave way to the fractured, fragmented, and “intoxicated” self of the moderns, writers whose works were profoundly affected by the temperance rhetoric of their age.; Chapters two, three, and four treat the works of Sigmund Freud, Joseph Conrad, and D. H. Lawrence, respectively, all of whom came of age during the rise of temperance. Their works embody what I suggest is a quintessentially modern anxiety about and preoccupation with intoxication. In their writings, whether autobiographical, fictional, or theoretical, these authors relentlessly depict intoxication as that which constitutes, but also threatens to annihilate, the self. It is the basis for—and that which constantly threatens to undo—their larger literary projects. Their preoccupation with intoxication, overlooked by critics, is fundamental to their work, and crucial to our understanding of modernity itself.