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 ...
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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.
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