Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters)

Reading the Sphinx unearths buried conflicts in religion, myth, and the memory of Egypt in the West, illuminating issues of identity, inheritance, gender, and sexuality through cultural productions ranging from Herodotus to Freud. "Reading the Sphinx unearths a buried cultural history haunted by Egyptian ghosts, Lynn Parramore examines issues of western identity, inheritance, gender, and sexuality through the interlocking stories of nineteenth-century collectors, conjurers, artists, travelers, and psychic explorers as they encounter Egyptian antiquity. Bringing together cultural analysis, literary history, and psychology, Parramore explores the productions of a wide range, of fascinating figures, from Herodotus to Freud. Reading the Sphinx is a new cultural history that traces the suppression, distortion, and, ultimately, the resurrection of maternal powers from the crypt of memory."--BOOK JACKET