Thalia Trigoni | Universitat Rovira i Virgili (original) (raw)
Book by Thalia Trigoni
London and New York: Routledge, 2021
This book reassesses the philosophical, psychological and, above all, the literary representation... more This book reassesses the philosophical, psychological and, above all, the literary representations of the unconscious in the early twentieth century. This period is distinctive in the history of responses to the unconscious because it gave rise to a line of thought according to which the unconscious is an intelligent agent able to perform judgements and formulate its own thoughts. The roots of this theory stretch back to nineteenth-century British physiologists. Despite the production of a number of studies on modernist theories of the relation of the unconscious to conscious cognition, the degree to which the notion of the intelligent unconscious influenced modernist thinkers and writers remains understudied. This study seeks to look back at modernism from beyond the Freudian model. It is striking that although we tend not to explore the importance of this way of thinking about the unconscious and its relationship to consciousness during this period, modernist writers adopted it widely. The intelligent unconscious was particularly appealing to literary authors as it is intertwined with creativity and artistic novelty through its ability to move beyond discursive logic. The book concentrates primarily on the works of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, authors who engaged the notion of the intelligent unconscious, reworked it and offered it for the consumption of the general populace in varied ways and for different purposes, whether aesthetic, philosophical, societal or ideological.
Papers by Thalia Trigoni
English Studies, 2014
This article seeks to establish that, according to Lawrence, human nature is a conjunction of two... more This article seeks to establish that, according to Lawrence, human nature is a conjunction of two distinct cognitive components: the mental and the bodily, each of which is capable of performing complicated reasoning processes. Integral to this view is his notion of the bodily unconscious, which he conceived of as an autonomous and intelligent thinking agent. Lawrence developed this theory as a reaction against the Freudian formulation of the unconscious and the increasing tendency in contemporary scientific thought to mechanise the body and its cognitive processes. Bringing Lawrence's own theory of the unconscious to the centre of our attention will offer us a better understanding of Lawrence as a theorist and literary writer, opening new vistas of thought against which to reassess his literary output.
This chapter seeks to establish that William James articulates an ontological and aesthetic theor... more This chapter seeks to establish that William James articulates an ontological and aesthetic theory wherein the body is conceived of as capable of performing complicated forms of cognition even as it does not possess the conceptual apparatus of the discursive, conscious mind. In order to corroborate this thesis, I will be looking into various contexts, including James’ notion of the selective nature of sensory perception that shapes experience, his distinction between percept and concept, and his theory of emotion. Another major context that provides valuable insight into James’ aesthetics is the field of arts. These case studies help demonstrate how James’ view of the body as an intelligent cognitive agent appears to have a much more powerful sway over the mind than we have hitherto been able to detect.
In this chapter, I focus primarily on the gladiatorial scene of Women in Love through the lens of... more In this chapter, I focus primarily on the gladiatorial scene of Women in Love through the lens of Lawrence’s appropriation of the scientific concept of allotropy to describe the constituent elements of human nature. Lawrence describes a battle between two conflicting worldviews: between Birkin on the one hand, who stands for the spontaneous, the dark and the unconscious, and who is associated with the industrial element of coal; and Gerald on the other, who embodies the spirit of industrialisation and mechanization, and is associated with the diamond, that is, with the world of light and consciousness. This battle, I maintain, is an allotropic gladiatorial whereby the hostility of the one against the other is juxtaposed to an inner and subtle unity between them in the form of an organic connection. It is on this allotropic relation between technological mechanisation and the spontaneous and organic that this essay will focus in order to provide a nuanced picture of Lawrence’s attitude towards the tectonic cultural shifts that were taking place during his time.
Confessions and related writings was not with opium but rather with dreams: opium was "important ... more Confessions and related writings was not with opium but rather with dreams: opium was "important to [De Quincey] as an agent of vision only indirectly, in that he believed it produced more dreams, and finer ones, than would occur otherwise" (Lindop 1993, 391). Indeed, in De Quincey's own words, the purpose of his Confessions "was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs potentially to human dreams" (De Quincey 2013, 81). In 1968, Hayter argued that "De Quincey was the first writer, and he is perhaps still the only one, to study deliberately, from within his personal experience, the way in which dreams and visions are formed, how opium helps to form them and intensifies them, and how they are then re-composed and used in conscious art" (Hayter 1968, 103). In the 1845 "Introductory Notice" to the "Susperia de Profundis," De Quincey stressed the oneiric interest of the Confessions, pointing out that "the revelation of dreaming" is his primary subject matter: "The Opium Confessions were written with some slight secondary purpose of exposing this specific power of opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but much more with the purpose of displaying the faculty itself " (De Quincey 2013, 81). And in the 1856 edition of the Confessions, he rewrote the Preface to draw attention to the fact that his purpose in "Confessions was to emblazon the power of opium-not over bodily disease and pain, but over the grander and more shadowy world of dreams" (De Quincey 1856, 99). De Quincey meticulously observed and recorded his own symptoms, exercising "a watchful attention which never remitted even under sufferings that were at times absolutely frantic" (De Quincey 1851, 163). He gave equal weight to both the positive and negative aspects of opium usage. "[T]hou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples […] beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos," wrote De Quincey, and "'from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,' callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the 'dishonours of the grave. Thou only givest these gifts to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!" (50). He rhapsodized about his heightened perceptions while under the drug's influence, but he was equally eloquent about the depressive and often horrifying states that came with the drug: "But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state" (De Quincey 2013, 53). Upon reading De Quincey's Confessions, one may thus be easily tempted to categorize the drug's symptoms into two basic sets of experience,
Theory Now: Journal of Literature, Critique and Thought 6:1, 2023
The central thesis of this essay is that Dickinson's work has significant implications for a crit... more The central thesis of this essay is that Dickinson's work has significant implications for a critical medical humanities open to the interface between language and embodiment. We show that by employing what Kristeva would refer to as a highly effective and aesthetically potent genotextuality, Dickinson manages to transmit pain and grief. She thereby enables a process of de-insulation and sharing, which can have therapeutic effects on the reader/listener. Here, suffering is not refined into erudition, beauty or even nothingness as a result of denial. Dickinson, we argue, becomes one of Kristeva's poet-surgeons of abjection, a poetess who cultivated not only a loyalty to malaise, but also a loyalty to overcoming the inability to share that malaise. The means by which Dickinson accomplishes this effect, we demonstrate, is via the semiotic pulsions of her language that have the potential to facilitate the establishment of a democracy of proximity, one that resonates with the deepest levels of human experience.
London and New York: Routledge, 2021
This book reassesses the philosophical, psychological and, above all, the literary representation... more This book reassesses the philosophical, psychological and, above all, the literary representations of the unconscious in the early twentieth century. This period is distinctive in the history of responses to the unconscious because it gave rise to a line of thought according to which the unconscious is an intelligent agent able to perform judgements and formulate its own thoughts. The roots of this theory stretch back to nineteenth-century British physiologists. Despite the production of a number of studies on modernist theories of the relation of the unconscious to conscious cognition, the degree to which the notion of the intelligent unconscious influenced modernist thinkers and writers remains understudied. This study seeks to look back at modernism from beyond the Freudian model. It is striking that although we tend not to explore the importance of this way of thinking about the unconscious and its relationship to consciousness during this period, modernist writers adopted it widely. The intelligent unconscious was particularly appealing to literary authors as it is intertwined with creativity and artistic novelty through its ability to move beyond discursive logic. The book concentrates primarily on the works of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, authors who engaged the notion of the intelligent unconscious, reworked it and offered it for the consumption of the general populace in varied ways and for different purposes, whether aesthetic, philosophical, societal or ideological.
English Studies, 2014
This article seeks to establish that, according to Lawrence, human nature is a conjunction of two... more This article seeks to establish that, according to Lawrence, human nature is a conjunction of two distinct cognitive components: the mental and the bodily, each of which is capable of performing complicated reasoning processes. Integral to this view is his notion of the bodily unconscious, which he conceived of as an autonomous and intelligent thinking agent. Lawrence developed this theory as a reaction against the Freudian formulation of the unconscious and the increasing tendency in contemporary scientific thought to mechanise the body and its cognitive processes. Bringing Lawrence's own theory of the unconscious to the centre of our attention will offer us a better understanding of Lawrence as a theorist and literary writer, opening new vistas of thought against which to reassess his literary output.
This chapter seeks to establish that William James articulates an ontological and aesthetic theor... more This chapter seeks to establish that William James articulates an ontological and aesthetic theory wherein the body is conceived of as capable of performing complicated forms of cognition even as it does not possess the conceptual apparatus of the discursive, conscious mind. In order to corroborate this thesis, I will be looking into various contexts, including James’ notion of the selective nature of sensory perception that shapes experience, his distinction between percept and concept, and his theory of emotion. Another major context that provides valuable insight into James’ aesthetics is the field of arts. These case studies help demonstrate how James’ view of the body as an intelligent cognitive agent appears to have a much more powerful sway over the mind than we have hitherto been able to detect.
In this chapter, I focus primarily on the gladiatorial scene of Women in Love through the lens of... more In this chapter, I focus primarily on the gladiatorial scene of Women in Love through the lens of Lawrence’s appropriation of the scientific concept of allotropy to describe the constituent elements of human nature. Lawrence describes a battle between two conflicting worldviews: between Birkin on the one hand, who stands for the spontaneous, the dark and the unconscious, and who is associated with the industrial element of coal; and Gerald on the other, who embodies the spirit of industrialisation and mechanization, and is associated with the diamond, that is, with the world of light and consciousness. This battle, I maintain, is an allotropic gladiatorial whereby the hostility of the one against the other is juxtaposed to an inner and subtle unity between them in the form of an organic connection. It is on this allotropic relation between technological mechanisation and the spontaneous and organic that this essay will focus in order to provide a nuanced picture of Lawrence’s attitude towards the tectonic cultural shifts that were taking place during his time.
Confessions and related writings was not with opium but rather with dreams: opium was "important ... more Confessions and related writings was not with opium but rather with dreams: opium was "important to [De Quincey] as an agent of vision only indirectly, in that he believed it produced more dreams, and finer ones, than would occur otherwise" (Lindop 1993, 391). Indeed, in De Quincey's own words, the purpose of his Confessions "was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs potentially to human dreams" (De Quincey 2013, 81). In 1968, Hayter argued that "De Quincey was the first writer, and he is perhaps still the only one, to study deliberately, from within his personal experience, the way in which dreams and visions are formed, how opium helps to form them and intensifies them, and how they are then re-composed and used in conscious art" (Hayter 1968, 103). In the 1845 "Introductory Notice" to the "Susperia de Profundis," De Quincey stressed the oneiric interest of the Confessions, pointing out that "the revelation of dreaming" is his primary subject matter: "The Opium Confessions were written with some slight secondary purpose of exposing this specific power of opium upon the faculty of dreaming, but much more with the purpose of displaying the faculty itself " (De Quincey 2013, 81). And in the 1856 edition of the Confessions, he rewrote the Preface to draw attention to the fact that his purpose in "Confessions was to emblazon the power of opium-not over bodily disease and pain, but over the grander and more shadowy world of dreams" (De Quincey 1856, 99). De Quincey meticulously observed and recorded his own symptoms, exercising "a watchful attention which never remitted even under sufferings that were at times absolutely frantic" (De Quincey 1851, 163). He gave equal weight to both the positive and negative aspects of opium usage. "[T]hou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples […] beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos," wrote De Quincey, and "'from the anarchy of dreaming sleep,' callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the 'dishonours of the grave. Thou only givest these gifts to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!" (50). He rhapsodized about his heightened perceptions while under the drug's influence, but he was equally eloquent about the depressive and often horrifying states that came with the drug: "But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state" (De Quincey 2013, 53). Upon reading De Quincey's Confessions, one may thus be easily tempted to categorize the drug's symptoms into two basic sets of experience,
Theory Now: Journal of Literature, Critique and Thought 6:1, 2023
The central thesis of this essay is that Dickinson's work has significant implications for a crit... more The central thesis of this essay is that Dickinson's work has significant implications for a critical medical humanities open to the interface between language and embodiment. We show that by employing what Kristeva would refer to as a highly effective and aesthetically potent genotextuality, Dickinson manages to transmit pain and grief. She thereby enables a process of de-insulation and sharing, which can have therapeutic effects on the reader/listener. Here, suffering is not refined into erudition, beauty or even nothingness as a result of denial. Dickinson, we argue, becomes one of Kristeva's poet-surgeons of abjection, a poetess who cultivated not only a loyalty to malaise, but also a loyalty to overcoming the inability to share that malaise. The means by which Dickinson accomplishes this effect, we demonstrate, is via the semiotic pulsions of her language that have the potential to facilitate the establishment of a democracy of proximity, one that resonates with the deepest levels of human experience.