Wounded Body

Dennis Patrick Slattery is Interdisciplinary Coordinator and Core Faculty Member, the Mythological Studies Program, Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is the author of The Idiot: Dostoevsky's Fantastic Prince.

• Foreword Acknowledgments 1. IntroductionThe Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh 2. Nature and NarrativesFeeding the Fictions of the Body in Homer's Odyssey 3. Wandering Wounds and Meandering WordsThe Tragic Body of Memory in Oedipus Rex 4. Speak Daggers But Use NoneDenmark's Wounded Body 5. Rousseau's ConfessionsAutobiography, Body Cleansing, and the Invention of the Paris Sewer System 6. Corrupting Corpse versus Reasoned AbstractionThe Play of Evil in The Brothers Karamazov 7. The White Whale and the Afflicted Body of Myth 8. Rebellious Things and Deepening Wounds in the Life of Ivan Illych 9. Wounds and TattoosMarking the Mystery in Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation" and "Parker's Back" 10. The Narrative Body and the Incarnate Work in Toni Morrison's Beloved 11. Concluding Reflections Notes Works Cited Index

"Slattery is a master at the art of revealing how body and psyche are held together by delicate strands." — The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal"Slattery's approach is mythological (and phenomenological), and so his conception of the body, embodiment, incarnation, and wounding has important religious ramifications that would, I imagine, be disputed by the sort of skeptical ideological criticism so prevalent today. But it is precisely this distinctive approach—largely Jungian and archetypal in inspiration—that I think has value, and it is one that has been unfortunately neglected and unfairly dismissed by the mainstream of today's criticism." — Joseph Adamson, author of Melville, Shame, and the Evil Eye"Through wisely chosen narratives, Slattery reveals a literary life of gesture and feeling, pain and remembering, that also evokes the soul of our own bodies in the imagining of their inevitable wounds. The Wounded Body, so closely attuned to the archetypal psychology of Western epic, masterfully and passionately conducts us to treasures of meaning deep within the metaphors of those magnificent citadels of our incarnation." — Daniel C. Noel, author of The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities