The Theater of Trauma

The Theater of Trauma is a groundbreaking rereading of the relations between psychology and drama in the age of Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and their many brilliant contemporaries. American modernist Theater of Trauma drew its vision from the psychological investigation of trauma and its consequences among them hysteria and dissociation made by French and American psychiatrists such as the great Pierre Janet, Alfred Binet, William James, Morton Prince, and W.E.B. Du Bois; the European and American «dissociationist culture» that developed around their work; and the resulting trauma of World War I. American dramatists' deep resistance to Freud's suppression of trauma challenges the equation of Freud and modernism that has become commonplace in modernist criticism.

Auteur

The Author: Michael Cotsell received his Ph.D. in literature (Victorian studies) from Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, England. He taught in Zimbabwe and Northern Ireland before joining the University of Delaware's English Department in 1989. His research is primarily concerned with the relations of trauma and culture, particularly with reference to American and postcolonial literatures. Dr. Cotsell was Associate Editor of The Dickens Companions series and General Editor of the English Literature and the Wider World series. He is the author of The Companion to «Our Mutual Friend» and Barbara Pym and editor of Our Mutual Friend in The World's Classics series. He has published and delivered papers on a wide variety of topics from Charles Dickens, John Henry Newman, and Victorian masculinity to David Mamet, Sam Shepard, and semiotics and trauma.

Résumé
«Michael Cotsell reminds us of the existence of a conceptual framework that carries tremendous explanatory power in its capacity to cogently link the realm of the psychological and personal to that of the social and political. The continued ubiquity of trauma and dissociation in contemporary life render the dissociationist perspective as relevant today as it was in the modernist epoch. Consequently, the significance of 'The Theater of Trauma' extends well beyond the specific territory it covers; it lies in its potential to open new vistas for psychology, for literary criticism, and a wide spectrum of other disciplines concerned with the interface between society and individual experience.» (Steven N. Gold, Former President, International Society for the Study of Dissociation)
«Michael Cotsell makes an intriguing case for the importance (which has, until now, been virtually ignored) of the theories of the French psychologist Pierre Janet to the modernist movement in literature.» (Thomas J. Cousineau, Professor of English, Washington College, Maryland)