Mental Geographies: Thinking, Curiosity, and Desire in the Psychological Novel
This panel proposes to explore the ways in which the form of the novel may be seen as a way of encountering human inwardness. In particular, the panel aims to locate a specific language and method for describing the portrayal of psyche within the novel. What is meant by “psychological fiction,” what the French call roman d’analyse? What does this form, which proposes to occupy terrain nominally belonging to the discipline of psychology, say about hybrid, creolized discourse in literary form? If the so-called psychological novel is to have value and not merely repeat the findings of other disciplines, it must reveal aspects of human inwardness that could not have been revealed in quite this way by any other form. What are these revelations, and what language do we have for describing them? Papers focusing on such authors as Proust, James, Tolstoy, Madame de Lafayette, Stendhal, Austen, Wharton, Svevo, or others, and such topics as curiosity, epistemophilia, desire, action, and narratability are invited. Through these various lenses this panel wants, ultimately, to discover how these novels think.