Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study [Hardcover]

John V. Knapp (Editor), Kenneth Womack (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2003

The development in recent years of the intersections between the family and literary study continues to emerge as one of the most productive and illuminating arenas of contemporary critique. In addition to addressing the family dynamic through which a given literary character develops a fully realized sense of self, family systems therapy allows readers to examine the patterns by which characters function in their larger intimate systems, whether those systems be social, institutional, or even global. As the intellectual foundation for the forms of therapy practiced by the majority of contemporary American and European psychotherapists, the study of family systems therapy and its intersections with literary works affords readers with an illuminating glimpse into the terminology and processes involved in this dynamic form of critique. Perhaps most significantly, family systems therapy allows critics to consider the distinctly social interactions that characterise our pathways to interpersonal development and selfhood.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John V. Knapp is Professor of English, with a joint appointment in modern literature and in teacher education, at Northern Illinois University.
Kenneth Womack is Assistant Professor of English and Coordinator of the Honors Program at Penn State University's Altoona College. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 333 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Delaware Pr (June 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087413823X
• ISBN-13: 978-0874138238
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,185,130 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kenneth Womack is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Penn State Altoona. He is the author or editor of numerous books exploring literary and popular culture. Much of his current work is devoted to examining the aesthetic qualities of the Beatles' unparalleled achievement. He has published three books devoted to the group, including Reading the Beatles: Cultural Studies, Literary Criticism, and the Fab Four (2006), Long and Winding Roads: The Evolving Artistry of the Beatles (2007), and The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles (2009).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Description of book's contents, July 29, 2004

By 

John V. Knapp "author" (DeKalb, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study (Hardcover)

*Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study* Edited by John V. Knapp and Kenneth Womack

The development in recent years of the intersections between the family and literary study continues to emerge as one of the most productive and illuminating arenas of contemporary critique. As an interpretative mechanism, family systems therapy (fst) provides scholars and readers alike with a revelatory social psychology for evaluating the nature of the

familial structures that often mark our textual experiences. In addition to addressing the family dynamic through which a given literary character develops a fully realized sense of self, family systems therapy allows readers to examine the patterns by which characters function in their larger intimate systems, whether those systems be social, institutional, or even global.

*Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy and Literary Study* offers a collection of original essays that reflects both the substantial critical interest in this important contemporary field of inquiry, as well as its wide range of forays into such disciplines as feminism, gender studies, ethnicity, race, and cultural studies. Divided into three

descriptive sections, Reading the Family Dance includes interdisciplinary essays that address various literary works in terms of family systems therapies respective approaches to our understandings of the self, the family, and the world. The essays in this volume range through much of the imaginative literature in English, including British works, ethnic and

canonized American texts, and even the translation of a Brazilian novel; although many of the works analyzed in this collection were published in the twentieth century, Reading the Family Dance features essays devoted to Shakespeare and to various works of nineteenth-century fiction as well.

The volume begins with John V. Knapp's comprehensive and wide-ranging introduction to family systems therapy and literary study. In addition to providing readers with an intellectual history of the discipline, Knapp establishes a contemporary scholarly foundation for the ensuing collection. The essays by Kenneth Womack, Rosemary Babcock, Gary Storhoff, and Lee Ann De Reus included in the volume's first section, "The Self:

Family Systems Therapy and the Quest for Identity," examine a host of issues related to the development of the self, including the onset of personal identity, sibling differentiation, and interpersonal communication.

In the volume's second section, "The Family: Family Systems

Therapy and the Discourse of Community," the essays by Joan I. Schwarz, Steven Snyder, Jerome Bump, Sara Cooper, and John V. Knapp discuss the vocabularies of community that assist families as they develop into functional units or, conversely, into dysfunctional factions. In Reading the Family Dance's final section, "The World: Reading Family Systems Therapy in Extremis," the essays by Todd F. Davis, James M. Decker, Marco

Malaspina, and Denis Jonnes explore the ways in which our culture often manifests itself in larger family systems. The essays in this section examine the ethics of these larger communities through their analyzes of Hollywood's entertainment culture, Renaissance-era family dynamics, and America's postwar family system.