Original Ambivalence

"Original Ambivalence" explores a powerful psychic and existential dilemma running through the works upon which the reputation of Thomas De Quincey (1785-1869) as a prose artist has always rested: the dream-centered, visionary autobiographies that began in 1821 with "The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" and concluded in 1849 with "The English Mail-Coach." Employing the theories of and insights afforded by Rene Girard's -fundamental anthropology, - the study demonstrates how De Quincey's best known works both invoke and react against the Romantic assumptions of universality, originality, and authenticity which are their basis."