Date of Award
Summer 2019
Degree Type
Masters Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
School
Humanities
Committee Chair
Eric Tribunella
Committee Chair School
Humanities
Committee Member 2
Monika Gehlawat
Committee Member 2 School
Humanities
Committee Member 3
Alexandra Valint
Committee Member 3 School
Humanities
Abstract
Psychoanalysis has a history of using literature to explain and augment its theories. What is more unusual is when a work of fiction finds itself structured around pre-existing psychoanalytical theory. Algernon Blackwood’s Jimbo: A Fantasy (1909) is a children’s novel reminiscent of a combination of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In the novel, the titular character is a seven-year-old boy with an overactive imagination who is traumatized by his governess before suffering an accident that places him into a coma. The coma results in Jimbo entering a bizarre fantasy world which he journeys through with a version of his governess. The resulting narrative becomes one of childhood trauma and repression, seemingly structured around Freud’s long buried seduction theory, a theory of childhood trauma caused by sexual abuse. The novel serves as a case study, while also illustrating how children’s literature can take an active role in shaping and building upon psychoanalytic theory.
Copyright
2019, Kristina Schluter
Recommended Citation
Schluter, Kristina, "“The Monster of Her Own Creation”: Freud’s Seduction Theory and Algernon Blackwood’s Jimbo: A Fantasy" (2019). Master's Theses. 670.
https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/670
Included in
Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons
