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Rapture: Literature, Addiction, Secrecy

This monograph engages with ‘states of heightened awareness’ and seeks to connect with the notion of addiction as an alternative to the moral law. Drawing on theoretical perspectives including Freud and Derrida, it addresses a wide range of authors, of different periods and working in different genres: from Blake to Faulkner, from Nietzsche to J.G. Ballard, from Hölderlin to Sylvia Plath. Throughout questions are raised as to the very possibility of communication and attention is drawn to rapture as metaphor for creativity and as psychological condition. The arguments are intensive and complex, and informed by acute and detailed textual readings.