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Details for article 13 of 15 found articles
| Title: |
Patriarchal Pressures: portraits of fathers in the autobiographies of Darwin and Nabokov |
| Author: |
Stelzig, Eugene |
| Appeared in: |
Life writing |
| Paging: | Volume 2 (2005) nr. 1 pages 19-39 |
| Year: |
2005 |
| Contents: |
In this article I examine the ambivalent presentation of fathers by two modern autobiographers whose paternal portraits are marked in different ways by the pressures of patriarchy. While resisting the temptation to reduce these complex father-son relationships to any easy psychological formula (Oedipus complex), I use a broadly humanistic Freudian framework in my psychological and literary analysis of the ambiguous and layered presentations by Darwin and Nabokov of the paternal burden or pressure in their autobiographies. As is evident in their very different accounts, the manner in which Darwin and Nabokov did their life's work by differentiating themselves from the powerful models of their fathers — Darwin by way of a repressed hostility masquerading as father-worship to the point of hypochondriacal dysfunction, Nabokov by way of an aesthete-intellectual's ironic self-distancing from the seigneurial ideal of a beloved parent — indicates two very different filial responses, short of a direct or open challenge to the father's authority, to the Victorian ideal of the family patriarch. |
| Publisher: |
Routledge |
| Source file: |
Elektronische Wetenschappelijke Tijdschriften |
Details for article 13 of 15 found articles
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