From:
        Dianne Hunter <[log in to unmask]>

8:42 AM

Margaret Church wrote a psychoanalytically-inflected study of time in the
modern novel about 40 years ago.

dh

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>Approved-By:  Norman Holland <[log in to unmask]>
>Date:         Sun, 18 Feb 2001 17:51:47 -0500
>Reply-To: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
>              <[log in to unmask]>
>Sender: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
>              <[log in to unmask]>
>From: Norman Holland <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      Query: The Psychoanalysis of Time
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>From:
>        Ellen Moody <[log in to unmask]>
>
>Sat 2:59 PM
>
>I am wondering if anyone has written an essay or book
>on the uses of time in novels from a psychoanalytical
>perspective.  One of the reasons I have been vague
>about what I want to do in the book I have now
>talked too much of on this list is I am still casting about.
>The ideas I began with have begun to seem
>unworkable, or at least I am increasingly thinking I
>will not be able to work them out in the way I originally
>proposed.
>
>What I am doing right now as a last step before
>beginning to write is studying Austen's texts closely
>and what continually emerges for me is her intense
>consistent, incessant attention to time.  My most
>recent publication is called "A Calendar for Sense
>and Sensibility"; it was published by _Philological
>Quarterly_ just this past fall (if anyone's interested
>the full citation is 79 [Fall 2000], 233-266.).  What
>I did was argue from the calendar I found extant
>in the text that the novel was originally epistolary.
>At the same time I drew calendars from all the
>novels and most of this my husband put on my
>website.  As part of my book, I am just now
>engaged in revising much of this, and as I crawl
>slowly through each book -- geologizing away
>-- I am developing a chronology of her writing
>life and materials for a chapter on literary
>allusion.
>
>However what really gets me is how obsessive she
>is -- because I am not making these calendars up.
>They are really there, and if inconsistent here and
>there, sustained across the novels. It's like watching
>a clock tick, minutes, half-hours, hours notched
>off, and then a sudden freeing for psychological
>and dramatic expansion.
>
>Anyway what I would like to read or be able to talk
>about is what kind of personality does this.  I think
>that's what I want to understand.  If there is an
>essay in the vein of Bachelard, that would be fine,
>but I would be glad to read less "poetic" generalised
>kinds of musings.  My views of Austen's personality
>and books cohere to some extent with one of the
>esteemed members of this list:  Bernard Paris.
>But I take an approach more like D. W. Harding
>or P. M. J Scott.  Of recent feminists I like Nina
>Auerbach, and agree more or less with Marilyn
>Butler about Austen's conscious conservativism,
>and think Q. D. Leavis's very old essays are
>still important.
>
>I apologise for all these details about this
>specific author.  I am hopelessly
>prolix.  I do know about studies of epistolarity in
>relation to time:  I have written about and studied
>epistolarity, first for my dissertation and most
>recently for a lecture I gave to the Trollope Society
>(which was published in _Trollopiana_ and which,
>with the permission of the chairman, I put on my
>website, http://www.JimandEllen.org/epistolarity.html)
>
>Can anyone cite some good studies of the
>uses of time from a psychoanalytic point of
>view?
>
>Ellen Moody
>