Martin S. Lindauer
State University of New York, College at Brockport

The psychology of literature covers a very wide field. Included are studies
of authors and their creativity, investigations of readers and their reac-
tions to literature, and analyses of literary texts for their psychological
referents. Psychological content, whether explicit or implicit, occurs in
such diverse literary forms as poetry, the short story, the play, and the
novel. The latter offers numerous possibilities: According to Burgess
( 1978), there are about 30 different types of novels, but the most direct
reference to mental life is found in the psychological novel. This form
highlights the introspections, streams of consciousness, inner and per-
sonal experiences, and feelings and emotions of a few literary characters.

The psychological novel is a fairly recent form. Boccaccio, writing in
the fourteenth century, was its first exponent. The earliest "literary psy-
chology" is attributed to a group of unknown authors from ancient Greece
( Jastrow, 1915; Mackinnon, 1944; Roback, 1968). Their "psychological
portraits" are brief literary sketches of personality types like the fool, the
flatterer, and the virtuous woman. Early psychological analyses in literary
contexts are also found in discussions of creativity and catharsis in Plato
and in Aristotle ( Strelka, 1976).

Psychological content, whatever literary form it takes, can be repre-
sented thematically or symbolically; and it may be contained in units of
language as small as the metaphor. Psychological analysis is not only
directed to the content of literary forms, but also toward a work's struc-
ture--the time, place, action, plot, and characterization; and in the case
of poetry, to such elements as metre and rhythm. Even the subtleties of a
work's style (e.g., romanticism or realism) could be the focus of psycho-
logical attention. Aside from psychology's concentration on the work,
whatever direction it may take, analyses can be appreciably expanded by

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