Published: 2021-12-31

“The Rite of Pain” Childhood in the Works of Géza Csáth

Maciej Libich Logo ORCID
Section: Explorations and Autopsies
https://doi.org/10.31261/Rana.2021.4.03

Abstract

The author of the article analyses the image of childhood in the short stories of Geza Csáth (1887–1919) in order to demonstrate how the Hungarian modernist writer critiques and subverts modern conceptualisations of childhood as idyllic and innocent. By referencing the works of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and, most importantly, Melanie Klein, the author proves that Csáth’s short stories about childhood are strongly rooted in psychoanalytical thought, with some of them being surprisingly similar to now-canonical descriptions of psychoanalytical case studies. As it is shown, in such stories as Black Silence, Matricide or Little Emma, the modernist writer portrays his young characters as subject to the same suffering as adults, and as evil from their earliest years.

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Citation rules

Libich, M. (2021) “‘The Rite of Pain’ Childhood in the Works of Géza Csáth”, Rana. Literatura - Doświadczenie - Tożsamość [Wound. Literature – Experience – Identity], (2 (4), pp. 1–16. doi: 10.31261/Rana.2021.4.03.

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No. 2 (4) (2021)
Published: 2022-04-01


eISSN: 2719-5767
Ikona DOI 10.31261/rana

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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