Open AccessWriting the “Love Letter” from the Lack: The Economy of Absence in Hazlitt’s Liber Amoris
Author(s) -
Peter B. Ford
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
e-rea
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1638-1718
DOI - 10.4000/erea.357
Subject(s) - behold , pleasure , narrative , ambivalence , value (mathematics) , literature , face (sociological concept) , art , philosophy , psychology , psychoanalysis , art history , mathematics , linguistics , statistics , neuroscience
My state is this, that I shall never lie down again at night nor rise up in the morning in peace, nor ever behold my little boy’s face with pleasure while I live — unless I am restored to her favour. (Hazlitt 78, 142)William Hazlitt’s intensely ambivalent Liber Amoris functions on a number of different narrative levels. These narrative levels, however, seemingly lie outside much expressible literary value for many Hazlitt critics, both contemporaneous with Hazlitt and more contemporary with c..