Melville, Shame, and the Evil Eye

Joseph Adamson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at McMaster University. He has also written Northrop Frye: A Visionary Life and Wounded Fiction: Modern Poetry and Deconstruction.

"It is a very erudite book, bringing together sound scholarship in several areas: comparative literature, psychoanalysis, history, and philosophy. Yet, it is very well written and easy to follow. I found it fascinating, very clear to read, excellent." — Léon Wurmser, author of The Hidden Dimension and The Mask of Shame"There is no better literary study of any corpus using psychodynamic notions, and none which wields the contemporary literature on shame with anything like the skill and coherence demonstrated by Adamson." — Benjamin Kilborne, Los Angeles Institute & Society for Psychoanalytic StudiesJoseph Adamson's Melville, Shame, and the Evil Eye makes an important contribution to the study of psychoanalysis and literature. Adamson is the first literary critic I know of to make an extended use of psychoanalytic studies of shame. His book is also a valuable addition to recent narcissistic—including Kohutian—investigations of literature. He proves to be a careful and trustworthy guide through the fascinating complexities of the various shame theorists he investigates." — J. Brooks Bouson, Loyola University of Chicago

• AcknowledgmentsA Note on Abbreviations IntroductionMelville and shame Part One. Shame and Attachment Chapter OneHow to Make a Misanthrope Chapter TwoMortifying Inter-Indebtedness Chapter ThreeThe Inexorable Self Part Two. Shame, Resentment, and Envy Chapter FourMotiveless Malignity Chapter FiveTurning the Tables Part Three. The Evil Eye Chapter SixDangerous Mergers Chapter SevenThe Evil EyeEpilogue"That Truth Should Be Silent I Had Almost Forgot" Notes Works Cited Index