The Erotic Motive in Literature. By Albert Mordell. Published by  Bon: and Liveright, New York, 1919, Pp.  250.

This is an especially interesting book for psychoanalysts, as it is an attempt to apply the psychoanalytic principles to literary criticism. The author deals with the general aspect of the subject in a few introductory chapters illustrating the principles involved by frequent references to literature and to the lives of authors, and in the latter part of the book he takes up particularly studies of Keats, Shelly, Poe and Hearn. Perhaps the main thesis of the book is that an author's literary productions cannot be adequately understood without reference to his life, particularly of course to those events in his life of marked emotional value. There is a very interesting chapter on sexual symbolism in literature which is widely illustrated by literary references.

While the book in a sense only elaborates the relations between the life of the author and his works, which has been understood to be of importance by literary critics for a long time, still this elaboration is along the lines which have become familiar to us as a result of psychoanalytic research and therefore results in a very much more definite understanding of the relationship of the work with the author's life than has been possible heretofore. The lines of inquiry are also fairly clearly laid down so that in taking up the problem of a literary work it is quite evident the directions in which the author's life needs illumination in order to explain it. This book should be welcomed by psychoanalysts as a very well conceived application of psychoanalytic principles to literary criticism.

White.