The Potentials of Psychological Approaches to Literature

The interplay of literature and psychology, the cross-section of these areas opens up vast possibilities for literary studies, but, at the same time, they cause just as many dilemmas: the reader enters an uncertain terrain when s/he endeavours to lay down the foundations for his/her reading at the cross-sections of the two disciplines. This paper sets out to answer a number of strategically posed questions: in what kind of conceptual discourse can we interpret the psychological representations of literary texts? What are at stake at such interpretations? Another aim of this investigation is to find a conceptual and discursive structure in which the novels of Mór Jókai can be analyzed within the framework of psychological criticism.

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