Shame on You: A literary perspective on shame and guilt - Softcover

Larsen PhD, Gorm; Rasmussen, Rene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8740832171 ISBN 13: 9788740832174

Publisher: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2021

Synopsis

Shame and guilt are quintessential human emotions. They are reflective emotions and also what we might call social feelings; they affect individuals as well as collective cultures. Shame and guilt are similar in that they both reveal a failure of the self in regard to common norms. However, shame concerns the self and a person’s self-identity, whereas guilt is linked to specific actions towards others. SHAME ON YOU explores shame and guilt in a Western and Scandinavian context focusing on a wide range of authors: from 19th century writers such as Carlo Collodi and Henrik Ibsen through modernist writers such as Frans Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes and Marguerite Duras to contemporary writers such as Elizabeth Gilbert, Charlotte Roche and Yahya Hassan. The individual chapters focus on the cultural alteration of shame and guilt – an alteration that is indicated for example by pointing out the contrast between the repression of sexuality that has historically been prevalent and the demand for enjoyment today. This development also implies a change in the position of the subject. Hence, the focus on shame reveals a change in the subject’s relation to him- or herself. The book has a mainly literary perspective, but the first three chapters open with theoretical and historical assessments of shame and guilt.

About this title

About the Author

Gorm Larsen is Associate Professor at Department of Communication, Aalborg University, Copenhagen; Head of the research group Communication Dynamics. He has for years studied and written about narratology and especially the act of narration in fiction in light of Bakhtin. Currently, he is doing research on shame and guilt in media and literature from a philosophical and social psychological point of view. He is author, theme-editor as well as co-editor-in-chief of the Danish online encyclopaedia of literature.<br /><br />Rene Rasmussen is Associate Professor Emeritus, in Danish literature at the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen.

Edition details

• Publisher: University Press of Southern Denmark
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 8740832171
• ISBN 13: 9788740832174
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 230