Psyche and Text

Beginning his study of character with Sophocles' The Antigone and Shakespeare's Othello, Sussman then goes on to locate the underpinnings of twentieth-century notions of the grandiose and of subjective emptiness in the Romantic exploration of the sublime. Discussions of characterization in Kafka, Joyce, and Beckett lead to an extended reading of Musil's A Man Without Qualities. To show the increasing awareness of narcissistic psychopathology in contemporary popular culture, Sussman also includes readings of "Citizen Kane" and "The Silence of the Lambs."