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Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film

ENGL 292.403
instructor(s):
TR 9-10:30 am

 

“Psychoanalysis, Literature and Film.”This class will introduce students to the links between psychoanalysis, literature and film. We will take Sigmund Freud’s works on the arts and literature as a point of departure, studying Freud’s integration of literature in the training of psychoanalysts. Literature and film offer crucial examples with which one can test, verify or question the points of insertion of psychoanalytical concepts such as hysteria, transference, paranoia and the Oedipus complex. Using several novels and films across different genres, we will also consider deferred action, fantasy, sublimation, the uncanny, trauma, and perversion. We will see that, despite recent controversies, psychoanalytic approaches to literature and film provide a dynamic method of interpretation.Bibliography:Marguerite Duras, The Ravishing of Lol Stein (Pantheon, 1986)Sigmund Freud, The Schreber Case; The Uncanny; The Psychology of Love (Penguin, 2002, 2003, 2006).Yann Martel, Life of Pi (Mariner, 2003).Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (Harper, 1999).Jean-Michel Rabaté, Introduction to Literature and Psychoanalysis (Cambridge U. P., 2014) 

 

fulfills requirements
Elective Seminar of the Standard Major
Sector 1: Theory and Poetics of the Standard Major
Sector 6: 20th Century Literature of the Standard Major