Writing the Mind: Representing Consciousness from Proust to Present

I exist because I think… and I can’t stop myself from thinking." – Jean-Paul Sartre, NauseaWriting the Mind: Representing Consciousness from Proust to Darrieussecq explores the works of seven ground-breaking thinkers and novelists of recent history to compare and contrast the varying representations of the conscious and the unconscious mind. Kemp’s elegant study also charts the rise and wane of Freudian influence on literature through the twentieth century, and the emergence of cognitive and neo-Darwinian ideas at the dawn of the twenty-first. "My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop. Grounding his study in the writings of philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and

Simon Kemp is an Associate Professor of French at Sommerville College in Oxford

"Kemp’s study of the mind in the modern European novel is a skilful and elegant book which will be required reading for anyone interested not only in how literature explores inner worlds, but in what these explorations tell us about conceptions of the mind more generally. The book provides a sharply intelligent account of competing theories yet is not theory-driven, preferring instead to consider how ideas about consciousness at a given moment in history stack up against the complexities of inner worlds as writers portray them." -- Professor Shirley Jordan, Queen Mary University of London