A Cultural Citizen of the World
Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings

S. S. Prawer

Cover of A Cultural Citizen of the World

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

17 July 2009  •  156pp

ISBN: 978-1-906540-42-5 (hardback)  •  RRP £80, $110, €95

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Based on an intensive study of the original German text of Freud's writings, letters and journals, S. S. Prawer's new book is the first to make a full and systematic map of Freud's use of English literature. The great psychoanalyst has long been acclaimed as a polymath, as a practical doctor who was also a theoretician, as a writer of non-fiction which was also a counterpoint to the great novels of the early twentieth century, and as an essayist who, like Montaigne, absorbed all of the cultural world around him.

Freud was fascinated by writings from many nations and languages, and his use of books in English shows the great range of his reading: from Shakespeare to Bernard Shaw, Henry Fielding to George Eliot, Mark Twain to Thornton Wilder; from scientific works by Maxwell and Darwin to the economics of Adam Smith, Malthus and Keynes, and from psychology and anthropology to the origins of religion. Though Freud's genius was unique, his sense of being a citizen of a world far wider than Vienna was not, and it can tell us much about the exchange of ideas across national and linguistic frontiers. Though he was a reader par excellence, he was also a case study in how world literature can be used by men and women who are not professional literary scholars or critics – and of how much it can come to mean to them, and for their sense of who they are.

Siegbert Prawer is a Fellow of the British Academy, Professor Emeritus of German Literature and a Fellow of the Queen’s College, Oxford.

Reviews:

  • ‘This magisterial survey of British and American intellectual history from the sixteenth century to the present, as viewed through the lens of the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, confirms once more that Prawer remains one of our discipline’s leading spokesmen and luminaries.’ — Robert K. Weninger, Comparative Critical Studies 7.2–3, 2010, 395-401
  • ‘Based on an intensive study of the original German text of Freud’s writings, letters, and journals. This is the first book to make a full and systematic map of Freud’s use of English literature. Freud was fascinated by writings from many nations and languages, and his use of English shows the great range of his reading... Though he was a reader par excellence, he was also a case study in how world literature can be used by men and women who are not professional literary scholars or critics - and of how much it can come to mean to them, and to their sense of who they are.’ — The Year's Work in English Studies 2011, 691)
  • ‘Shows the remarkable range of reading and the gift for lively and attractive expression that characterized all his work... The result is much the fullest study of Freud’s Anglophilia that has yet been written.’ — Ritchie Robertson, Modern Language Review 108.4, October 2013, 1262-64 (full text online)

Bibliography entry:

Prawer, S. S., A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings (Legenda, 2009)

First footnote reference: 35 S. S. Prawer, A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings (Legenda, 2009), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Prawer, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Prawer, S. S.. 2009. A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Prawer 2009: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Prawer 2009: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

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