Although recent scientific discoveries about the genetic and biochemical components of manic-depressive psychosis have radically revised our understanding of the etiology and psychodynamics of this illness, psychological studies of Virginia Woolf's life and work have generally remained tied to Freud's outmoded model of loss-induced neurosis. This model appeals to critics because it readily imposes coherence on often inconsistent biographical data, but it fails to account for psychotic breakdowns and tends to disparage Woolf with its emphasis on the infantile and evasive aspects of art. Since Woolf's symptoms do fulfill the manic-depressive paradigm, a consideration of how contemporary psychiatric theory alters our reading of her life may also explain the therapeutic value of her bold experiments in fiction as well as her profound insights into subject-object transactions and the pitfalls of interpretation in general.

Woolf called Orlando a “joke,” an “escapade,” and critics have taken her at her word. Although an enormous amount has been written about Woolf, the novel that celebrates her love for Vita Sackville-West tends to be ignored, dismissed as an anomaly, or explained as something other than what it is. But the things we joke about are often the things we care about too much to risk seriousness. The bold and dazzling achievement of Woolf's “joke” only becomes clear when Orlando is set in the context of the love that inspired it and seen against the social, historical, and literary background in which it was conceived.

Emerson's economic thought has most often been interpreted from the perspective of a Marxist analysis of trade and production. Such a perspective fails to distinguish between the different levels of Emerson's thinking—spiritual, commercial, and natural. Following the logic of symbolic exchange employed as a critique of Marxism by Mauss, Bataille, Baudrillard, and others, this essay argues that Emerson's economy of expenditure not only contradicts the basic premises of Marxist doctrine but also alters our understanding of such fundamental Emersonian concepts as self-reliance and compensation.

Paradise Lost traces evil through three inceptions—Satanic, Adamic, and historical. Each origin seems to envision a different etiology: Satanic evil springs exclusively from the self in an instant of radical “Pelagian” freedom. Adamic evil emerges from the ambiguous interplay between self and seductive environment. Historical evil contaminates the whole race by means of necessary “Augustinian” inheritance. Ricoeur's analysis of the “Adamic Myth” and original sin clarifies etiological traditions Milton assimilates from Christian symbol, myth, and dogma. Through Ricoeur, we can identify the contrasting modalities of evil (inherited and imitative, physical and moral, ontological and existential, necessary and free, communal and individual) fused in Paradise Lost. Ricoeur's work reveals Milton's text to be a subtly inclusive etiological myth, one whose complex genesis of evil recovers Scripture's fullness of meaning in a new mythopoesis.