The construction of evil in literature

[stillill]

Hello,
I have to write a proposal about 'what is literature', the task is a bit confusing and i dont even understand it entirely so I wont go into that but, anyway, I need to pick a 'theme' and a theory. I am going to use psychoanalysis and discuss the construction of the 'dark side' of humanity and how there is perhaps a little bit of evil within us all. I need to pick two books to talk about and so far I am thinking of doing A Clockwork Orange but I'm having trouble picking another book. Any ideas? Thank you very much!

Edit: also, could anyone please suggest some books that deal with neuroses? Thanks again.

[matthewlha]

Try Blood Meridian or Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy. Maybe Deliverance by James Dickey or Grendel by John Gardner. Or Macbeth by Shakespeare. Or, if you want to go the adolescent literature route, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.

[aeroport]

"Lord of the Flies" might also be appropriate - also from the adolescent pile.

[TEND]

'Heart of Darkness' by Joseph Conrad?

[PeterL]

Edit: also, could anyone please suggest some books that deal with neuroses? Thanks again.

You might want to read Post-traumatic Culture by Kirby Farrell. He tried to explain some themes of horror. His psychological ideas are largely drawn from Ernest Becker's work.
The introduction to that book is on his website http://www.people.umass.edu/kfarrell/

[babyblue5]

The writings of the old Church wisemen (e.g., Philocalia) may be of great help.
Long before modern analysis and Freud, monks had to confront all the attacks of the mind and developped very interesting and useful methods of dealing with them. For cases more complicated than neurosis though, professional/religious help is indicated.

[mono]

Hello, stillill, welcome to the forum. :)
For a few books worth mentioning in what you search, I recommend Diary Of A Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley, Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (especially Rochester's wife), Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, almost any short story by Edgar Allan Poe, Crime And Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot all by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, and The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James.

You chose a very interesting topic, and I wonder of where you will go with this essay with such a fascinating subject. In most cases, I have found darkness and negativity more written of, for logical reasons, but I never thought of their construction. Keep us updated of how the essay goes. ;)

[subterranean]

I don't think someone has suggest Crime and Punishment yet. I think it's also a good option.

[Pensive]

How about Wuthering Heights? Does it count?

[Nightwalk]

Hello stillill. Compelling topic you chose. Here are the books I recommend:

1) Choderlos de Laclos - Les Liaisons Dangereuses

2) Mario de Sa-Carneiro - The Great Shadow ( and Other Stories )

Happy reading.

[Virgil]

Try Blood Meridian or Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy.
I just finished Cormac McCarthy's new novel, No Country For Old Men and that has one of the most disturbing construction of evil I have ever come across. I highly recommend the novel.

[vili]

Philip K. Dick envisioned Palmer Eldritch in his novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch as the embodiment of evil. I find this rather intriguing, as I feel that one can also read the character as representing art (over what could be seen as more sense-based "entertainment"), and it is not a long leap to see him as Christ, either.

Neuroses of all sorts also populate just about all of Dick's books. He is, of course, labelled a sci-fi author and may not (and quite justifiably so) be considered as good a writer as most of the other names so far mentioned, but as a thinker I think he was an intriguing case. Sure, he may have written the same novel over and over again with a different title and different characters, but at least he knew how to write that one. ;)

[vili]

Also, I don't know if a play will do, but Shakespeare's Macbeth is obviously an interesting case in terms of evil. I once presented a paper in an international conference, arguing for Macbeth's innocence and the fact that no evil can exist in his world. However, I am not entirely sure how succesful I was with my argument.

A lot of the renaissance drama in general is worth exploring for the concept of evil.

[Nightwalk]

A lot of the renaissance drama in general is worth exploring for the concept of evil.

Hello vili. What works are you referring to?

[vili]

Hello vili. What works are you referring to?
A very good question, actually. You just caused me to blankly stare at the screen for some half a minute, unable to produce any straightforward answer. Maybe I should think before I make generalisations that I *think* are true, but when I actually start to look at them, they seem somewhat less straightforward.

But obviously, the concept of evil in renaissance drama (and I am referring to the English renaissance here, as I have close to no knowledge of renaissance literatures from outside England) is less straightforward than it is in medieval drama. In renaissance the concept of evil is not simply presented (although much can and has also been made of the way evil is presented in medieval drama), but it is, I think, explored with more richness and consideration. Sure, you get the really "evil" villains such as Shakespeare's Richard of Gloucester, Aaron and perhaps Macbeth, but there is also a more complicated type of evil there, as in Shylock or Caliban or, say, Marlowe's Faustus. (Let us not forget Iago, either.)

Some have also seen the Sisters in Macbeth as the embodiment of evil.

Then there are the people who become or create evil by making wrong decisions and ending up in impossible situations, such as the one Lear puts himself into, or the whole story of the Winter's Tale, or perhaps Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (where, as it often seems to be in renaissance drama, evil comes with madness, and madness with evil -- you could actually also add Hamlet to the mix, now that we are at it). I remember someone also arguing about Prospero's being evil, which would make the whole issue even more interesting, considering that The Tempest is traditionally considered as Shakespeare's attempt to write his own career into a single play (thus making Prospero Shakespeare). (But don't believe everything Shakespeare critics say, for you will go mad...)

At least revenge tragedy, which was especially popular in the early renaissance, is in itself preoccupied with the question of whether revenge is justified by God, or in fact the doings of evil. (The body counts in Kydd's Spanish Tragedy and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus would perhaps suggest the latter.) I am trying to come up with examples from comedy, but nothing really emerges -- unless you think of Volpone in Jonson's Volpone as evil, but I think that is somewhat far-fetched.

As you can probably see, I am not an expert in renaissance drama, so I may just be desperately trying to save my argument here. ;) I do know some Shakespeare, and a little bit of some of his contemporaries, but I suppose the idea that renaissance drama is preoccupied with the concept of "evil" is either a pipe-dream or I must have read it somewhere and it has stuck with me since. I'll let you know if I can come up with anything more convincing than what I have scribbled here. :)

[vili]

I actually think that I underestimated medieval drama in the post above. Although it is perhaps not the norm, there still exist some rather more complex medieval works dealing with evil, the best and most famous example probably being The Second Shepherd's Play. In poetry (and rather earlier), Grendel and Grendel's mother in Beowulf are also quite much more than just straightforward incarnations of evil, despite of descending from Cain.

Note that I am again limiting myself to discussing English literature, as that is what I have at least some knoweldge about. I have no idea how these topics were dealt with elsewhere.

[Nightwalk]

Helo vili, thanks for the replies. The reason why I asked was because I wanted to familiarise myself with Renaissance drama, particularly with the subject of evil, a topic which interests me a lot especially in literature.