"If we pierce any artist's legend", Edel claims [in his latest book, Stuff of Sleep and Dreams], "we discover an all-too-troubled human." Piercing the artist, and the "human" behind the artist, he discovers an all-too-troubled legend. The legend is called "literary psychology".

Literary psychology seeks the emotions and the persona within the work as distinct from the person of the artist. It is an attempt to study the metamorphoses of the unconscious materials of literary art into conscious image and symbol; and the metamorphoses of fancy into the finished work shaped by language and tradition.

The finished work re-imagines or re-enacts the troubles of the life, and thus assists the writer to come to terms with them.

It is a powerful legend, ambitious in scope yet accessible to common experience. Edel means, I think, to test both its explanatory power and its aesthetic power. How much does it...