Peter L. Rudnytsky, Psychoanalysis and the Patriarchal Tradition: Augustine to Milton. Psychoanalytic Horizona. New York, London, et al.: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025, xi, 287 pp.

We have often hoped for a solid interpretive approach to medieval and early modern literature from a psychoanalytic perspective. The present book promises to achieve just that because Peter L. Rudnytsky is not only Professor of English at the University of Florida, but he also trained and certified as a psychoanalyst in 2010. He proudly refers to his Doktorvater, Harold Bloom, and stands up in opposition to Gayle Rubin’s definition of ‘patriarchy’ (1973), promising a new reading of several medieval and a larger number of early modern European texts through the lens of psychoanalysis. There are ten chapters, six of which have appeared in print before, but here I can engage only with the first three dealing with Augustine, Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The others address Shakespeare and Milton.