The Stuttering Son: A Literary Study of Boys and Their Fathers examines stuttering, a condition which overwhelmingly affects boys, in terms of the complex relationships a number of male authors have had with their fathers. Most of these writers, from Cotton Mather to John Updike, were themselves stutterers; for two others, Melville and Kafka, the focus shifts to how similar family tensions contributed to their interest in the related condition of anorexia. A final section looks at the patricidal impulse lurking behind much of this analysis, as evident in Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Nietzsche. By focusing on the issue of a boy’s emotional development, this book attempts to re-establish the value of a broadly psychological approach to understanding stuttering.
Author(s): Myron Tuman
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 235
City: Cham
Foreword
Preface – “A Different Drummer”
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Prez and Me – Five Core Beliefs, One Hypothesis, and Two Stuttering Sons
“An Excess of Sensibility” – A Point of Contention and a Second Hypothesis
References
Part I: The Son Who Stutters
Chapter 2: Stuttering Orators and Their Counterparts
Demosthenes and Wendell Johnson – The Ambitious Orator
Moses – A Reluctant Orator
Cotton Mather – The Minister’s Son
Charles Lamb and Somerset Maugham – The Nostalgic Son
References
Chapter 3: Five Victorian Sons
James Malcolm Rymer and Martin Tupper – A Curious Pair
Lewis Carroll – The Son of a Bully
Henry James – Another Son of a Bully
Arnold Bennett – The “Successful” Son
References
Chapter 4: Four Modern Sons
Philip Larkin – The Splenetic Son
Updike – The Verbose Son
David Mitchell and David Shields – Two Contemporary Sons
References
Part II: The Son with Other Challenges
Chapter 5: The Guilty Son
Freud (and Freudians) on Stuttering
Freud and His Father
The Stuttering Son and the Ego Ideal
Billy Budd – Melville’s Ego Ideal
References
Chapter 6: The Anorexic Son
Deleuze and Bartleby
Melville’s Absent Father
Kafka’s Hunger Artist
“Before the Law”
References
Chapter 7: The Patricidal Son
Dostoevsky – The Epileptic Son
Hamlet – Shakespeare’s Stuttering Son
Nietzsche and the Trauma of Speech
References
Chapter 8: Afterword
Index
