Main description:

Includes a first-hand account of the experience of depersonalization

Examines depersonalization in relation to well-known literary texts, including Camus's The Strange and Sartre's Nausea, and shows how the concept of depersonalized writing can be found in the work of literary theorists, including T.S. Eliot, Roland Barthes and Viktor Shklovsky

Explores how creative writers can make use of the lessons learned from the study of depersonalization to arrive at a deeper understanding of writing

Contents:

Part 1

Autobiographical

Chapter 1

Land Without Feelings: A Depersonalization Memoir

Part 2

Psychological

Chapter 2

Like Looking in Fairyland: The History and Pathology of Depersonalization

Chapter 3

The Sound a Noise Makes when it Ceases: The Literature of Depersonalization

Chapter 4

Making the Stone Stony: Depersonalization in Literary Theory

Part 3

Practical

Chapter 5

A Moonlit Interval: Showing and Telling in Fiction

Chapter 6

The Odour of a Rose: Showing and Telling in Poetry

Chapter 7

Crossing the Threshold: Quests, Epiphanies, Liminality