Original Ambivalence: Autobiography and Violence in Thomas de Quincey

Original Ambivalence explores a powerful psychic and existential dilemma running through the works upon which the reputation of Thomas De Quincey (1785-1869) as a prose artist has always rested: the dream-centered, visionary autobiographies that began in 1821 with The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and concluded in 1849 with The English Mail-Coach. Employing the theories of and insights afforded by René Girard's «fundamental anthropology, » the study demonstrates how De Quincey's best known works both invoke and react against the Romantic assumptions of universality, originality, and authenticity which are their basis.