01 Tuesday Feb 1

Katie Dillon’s Notes for February 1
Class began with a short quiz to test our knowledge of what we’ve learned so far. Afterwards, we briefly discussed our first paper in which we will analyze two poems, or one, using two of the theoretical perspectives we have discussed. The drafts for these papers will be used in class for a peer review workshop next Tuesday and the final papers will be due next Thursday. We then began discussion of psychoanalytic criticism based of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis which focuses on the unconscious drive which motivates all human behavior and is balanced through the id, ego, and superego. To analyze a piece using the this method, the reader should find the unconscious meaning of the characters or author by looking beyond the conscious meaning. The reader should also be looking for defense mechanisms, which are procedures for avoiding painful admissions or the recognition of unconscious desires. Some examples of these are fixation, rejection, sublimation, and repression. One of the more common themes found by using the psychoanalytic method is the Oedipus Complex, wherein a male child (3 to 5 years) has a sexual attachment to his mother and thus sees his father as a rival. Critics who use this method often find examples of the Oedipus Complex, or the Electra Complex (the female equivalent) in many different varieties of literature. Another way to perform a psychoanalytic criticism of literature is from a Lacanian perspective. This method is derived from Jacques Lacan’s adapted psychoanalysis based on the real, imaginary, symbolic, and mirror stages. A criticism performed from this approach would involve finding contradictory meanings through the wording of the text. It would also require considering examples of the mirror, imaginary, real, or symbolic states in the text. The reader would also need to look for examples of metonymy (a part representing the whole) and metaphor. The class moved on to practicing a psychoanalytic reading of Hamlet. We discussed the representation of Hamlet’s mother as frail and lacking reason, while Hamlet’s father was portrayed as Herculean. Interestingly, Hamlet depicts both himself and his uncle as the anti-Hercules. A psychoanalytic approach suggests that Hamlet has an Oedipus Complex not with his father, but with his uncle, represented by the many unconscious references to sex. To conclude, we had a brief writing workshop to discuss thesis, which lays out what and how one will argue something in an essay and proves something that is not obviously stated within the text. We broke off into groups to perform a structuralist or deconstructionist reading of a poem and form a thesis. My group discussed Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib.” We chose a deconstructionist thesis, taking history into account, and said, “Initially a reader would think that Byron is praising the victory of the Judeo-Christian army, but in reality he is commenting on the beauty of the Arabic army.”