Guide to Week 3: Tuesday
In the web page hyperlinked to this week's reading in Tyson, I have abstracted key terms and theoretical principles that identify various authors who helped create this critical theory and its interpretive methods. After you have read Tyson, review the terms and principles, and make sure you understand them. The first portion of our discussion will be a review of Tyson, and then we will look at some broader issues like those below.
If you are unfamiliar with Sigmund Freud's life and work, you should consult this timeline, produced by the Freud Museum (London), which situates his work within the historical developments of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Note, however, that this site actively recruits visitors to undertake Freudian analysis, and for this reason it must be considered a lobbying organization with ideological and pecuniary interests in representing Freud's work, rather than a scholarly site. Consider this aspect of the site as evidence of the powerful long-term effects of psychoanalytic theory and critical methods which live on long after their founder's death. Think about the forces which produce these effects, from irrational teacher-student loyalties to practitioners who have discovered genuinely productive results from applications of the theory to interpreting unusual patterns in works of literature. If you have not already done so, click here for a survey of common psychoanalytic interpretive terms necessary to using the theory's methods.
Be aware that interpretations which argue that a psychoanalytic approach reveals a hidden truth about a work of literature bear a hidden burden of proof that becomes obvious the moment the readers ask, "Why does this behavior/speech/event have to be the product of hidden psychological causes rather than obvious rational causes?" Two tests will help you determine whether your psychoanalytic insight will withstand that scrutiny:
The first question involves weeding out the likely proposed rational counter-explanations, and doing that succinctly in your introduction will put your readers' minds at rest regarding your thoroughness--you are not merely following an irrational hunch, yourself. The second tends to clinch the argument, since the ability to predict non-obvious traits of the text is a quasi-scientific test of an interpretation's legitimacy.