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The Writing of AnxietyBombs and Roses: the Writing of Anxiety in Henry Green’s Caught

The Writing of Anxiety: Bombs and Roses: the Writing of Anxiety in Henry Green’s Caught [Roses are not generally thought to be objects of anxiety. They are objects of desire, or perhaps sometimes objects that arrest desire by their invitation to aesthetic contemplation, but only for the phobic could a rose really be said to be an occasion for dread. Writing during World War II, Henry Green (‘a trembling green’) suggests otherwise. In this description of the London Blitz from his 1943 novel, Caught, everything comes up roses. First among literary clichés, roses lend themselves to this kind of effusive figurative estrangement, and Green is certainly by no means the only British writer in World War II to note that the fire and the rose are one.2 In Caught, however, Green’s roses wreathe desire and dread together so tightly that the psychoanalytic cliché — war is sex — snaps back into the tautology that Freud, perhaps, always intended.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

The Writing of AnxietyBombs and Roses: the Writing of Anxiety in Henry Green’s Caught

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References (29)

Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2007
ISBN
978-1-349-28456-6
Pages
55 –74
DOI
10.1057/9780230592025_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Roses are not generally thought to be objects of anxiety. They are objects of desire, or perhaps sometimes objects that arrest desire by their invitation to aesthetic contemplation, but only for the phobic could a rose really be said to be an occasion for dread. Writing during World War II, Henry Green (‘a trembling green’) suggests otherwise. In this description of the London Blitz from his 1943 novel, Caught, everything comes up roses. First among literary clichés, roses lend themselves to this kind of effusive figurative estrangement, and Green is certainly by no means the only British writer in World War II to note that the fire and the rose are one.2 In Caught, however, Green’s roses wreathe desire and dread together so tightly that the psychoanalytic cliché — war is sex — snaps back into the tautology that Freud, perhaps, always intended.]

Published: Oct 6, 2015

Keywords: Real Thing; British Writer; Black Railing; Trauma Theory; Death Drive

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