Table of Contents

1. On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act 2. Magical Narratives: On the Dialectical Use of Genre Criticism 3. Realism and Desire: Balzac and the Problem of the Subject 4. Authentic Ressentiment: Generic Discontinuities and Ideologemes in the "Experimental" Novels of George Gissing 5. Romance and Reification: Plot Construction and Ideological Closure in Joseph Conrad 6. Conclusion: The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology Index

About the Author

Fredric Jameson is Professor of French at Yale University. He is author of Marxism and Form; The Prison-House of Language; and Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist.

Reviews

"A major work of critical theory... The Political Unconscious integrates and refines a vast body of theoretical work, demonstrating a superb mastery of the field of contemporary criticism. The result ... is a compelling, forceful argument in favor of the primacy of Marxism over contending strategies of interpretation."-Nineteenth-Century Fiction "Monumental ... Its learning and range of references are exceeded only be the imperial embrace of its complex argument, whose elaboration never imposes a sacrifice of clarity... Indispensable for all university and college libraries."-Choice "Fredric Jameson is the best Marxist critic writing today, possibly the best social-historically oriented critic of our time. It seems impossible for him to write anything that is not illuminating in an original way. There is no cant, no cliche, no jargon in his work, only sustained dialectical reflection, His thesis concerning the political content of 'the unconscious' is provocative but theoretically grounded and demonstrated by close readings of texts worthy of the best formalists. No one else encompasses as many positions within a disciplined critical practice. The Political Unconscious is a major work, and it should be read by historians, social scientists, and philosophers, as well as by literary scholars."-Hayden White, University of California, Santa Cruz