Gisela Brinker-Gabler, professor of Comparative Literature, has authored a new book: Image in Outline. Reading Lou Andreas-Salom茅 that introduces the reader to the important fin-de-si猫cle thinker who was more than just a friend of Rilke, Nietzsche and Freud. The study was published in 2012, both as a printed volume and an e-book, by Continuum Publishing (now Bloomsbury), New York and London. The book focuses on three works by Andreas-Salom茅 (1861-1937): her most discussed essay, 鈥淭he Human Subject as Woman,鈥 the travel journal of her 鈥渉omecoming鈥 and reinvention of Russia, and her mourning tribute to Rilke, a book written in 1928, two years after Rilke鈥檚 death (Eng. You Alone Are Real to Me, 2003). The journal Choice has recommended Brinker-Gabler鈥檚 book in its March 2013 edition: 鈥淭hough focusing on three works, the author makes generous use of Andreas-Salom茅‘s rich oeuvre and filters her analysis through the prism of Walter Benjamin, Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Dilthey, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, F茅lix Guattari, et al. to make her point that Andreas-Salom茅 was part of the avant-garde of her generation, contributing to understanding of gender differences, advancing psychoanalysis with a varied view of narcissism and a subtle concept of post-mourning, furthering modernism’s critique of rationalism and positivism, helping to shape that paradigm shift at the turn of the 20th century.鈥
Gisela Brinker-Gabler
April 30, 2013