Melancholia, memory, and selfhood in John Banville's Ancient Light

Abstract

AbstractThis study focuses on melancholia as a landmark in the interpretation of John Banville's Ancient Light and attempts to untangle manifestations of the protagonist's melancholy through Freud's concept of the individual's response to a loss, employing Mourning and Melancholia as the theoretical basis. According to Freud, melancholia is an abnormal psychological state in dealing with loss, and it illuminates the representation of the Alex character in Ancient Light. In the Freudian sense, each of the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to the object is brought up and subjected to hypercathexis. Through this lens, I read Ancient Light as an attempt to investigate melancholia's influence over memory, showcasing how melancholia exacerbates memory anomalies for the melancholic individual. Moreover, I utilise a melancholic's identification with the lost object as a ‘loss‐repudiation’ strategy to suggest that melancholia poses a threat to the sense of self.