Psychoanalytic_Criticismy
Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalytic criticism builds on Freudian theories of psychology. While we don't have the room here to discuss all of Freud's work, a general overview is necessary to explain psychoanalytic literary criticism.
The Unconscious, the Desires, and the Defenses
Freud began his psychoanalytic work in the 1880s while attempting to treat behavioral disorders in his Viennese patients. He dubbed the disorders 'hysteria' and began treating them by listening to his patients talk through their problems. Based on this work, Freud asserted that people's behavior is affected by their unconscious: "...the notion that human beings are motivated, even driven, by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware..." (Tyson 14-15).
Freud believed that our unconscious was influenced by childhood events. Freud organized these events into developmental stages involving relationships with parents and drives of desire and pleasure where children focus "...on different parts of the body...starting with the mouth...shifting to the oral, anal, and phallic phases..." (Richter 1015). These stages reflect base levels of desire, but they also involve fear of loss (loss of genitals, loss of affection from parents, loss of life) and repression: "...the expunging from consciousness of these unhappy psychological events" (Tyson 15).
Tyson reminds us, however, that "...repression doesn't eliminate our painful experiences and emotions...we unconsciously behave in ways that will allow us to 'play out'...our conflicted feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress" (15). To keep all of this conflict buried in our unconscious, Freud argued that we develop defenses: selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among others.
Id, Ego, and Superego
Freud maintained that our desires and our unconscious conflicts give rise to three areas of the mind that wrestle for dominance as we grow from infancy, to childhood, to adulthood:
id - "...the location of the drives" or libido
ego - "...one of the major defenses against the power of the drives..." and home of the defenses listed above
superego - the area of the unconscious that houses Judgment (of self and others) and "...which begins to form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex" (Richter 1015-1016)
Oedipus Complex
Freud believed that the Oedipus complex was "...one of the most powerfully determinative elements in the growth of the child" (Richter 1016). Essentially, the Oedipus complex involves children's need for their parents and the conflict that arises as children mature and realize they are not the absolute focus of their mother's attention: "the Oedipus complex begins in a late phase of infantile sexuality, between the child's third and sixth year, and it takes a different form in males than it does in females" (Richter 1016).
Freud argued that both boys and girls wish to possess their mothers, but as they grow older "...they begin to sense that their claim to exclusive attention is thwarted by the mother's attention to the father..." (1016). Children, Freud maintained, connect this conflict of attention to the intimate relations between mother and father, relations from which the children are excluded. Freud believed that "the result is a murderous rage against the father...and a desire to possess the mother" (1016).
Freud pointed out, however, that "...the Oedipus complex differs in boys and girls...the functioning of the related castration complex" (1016). In short, Freud thought that "...during the Oedipal rivalry [between boys and their fathers], boys fantasized that punishment for their rage will take the form of..." castration (1016). When boys effectively work through this anxiety, Freud argued, "...the boy learns to identify with the father in the hope of someday possessing a woman like his mother. In girls, the castration complex does not take the form of anxiety...the result is a frustrated rage in which the girl shifts her sexual desire from the mother to the father" (1016).
Freud believed that eventually, the girl's spurned advanced toward the father give way to a desire to possess a man like her father later in life. Freud believed that the impact of the unconscious, id, ego, superego, the defenses, and the Oedipus complexes was inescapable and that these elements of the mind influence all our behavior (and even our dreams) as adults - of course this behavior involves what we write.
Freud and Literature
So what does all of this psychological business have to do with literature and the study of literature? Put simply, some critics believe that we can "...read psychoanalytically...to see which concepts are operating in the text in such a way as to enrich our understanding of the work and, if we plan to write a paper about it, to yield a meaningful, coherent psychoanalytic interpretation" (Tyson 29). Tyson provides some insightful and applicable questions to help guide our understanding of psychoanalytic criticism.
Carl Jung
Jungian criticism attempts to explore the connection between literature and what Carl Jung (a student of Freud) called the “collective unconscious” of the human race: "...racial memory, through which the spirit of the whole human species manifests itself" (Richter 504). Jungian criticism, closely related to Freudian theory because of its connection to psychoanalysis, assumes that all stories and symbols are based on mythic models from mankind’s past.
Based on these commonalities, Jung developed archetypal myths, the Syzygy: "...a quaternion composing a whole, the unified self of which people are in search" (Richter 505). These archetypes are the Shadow, the Anima, the Animus, and the Spirit: "...beneath...[the Shadow] is the Anima, the feminine side of the male Self, and the Animus, the corresponding masculine side of the female Self" (Richter 505).
In literary analysis, a Jungian critic would look for archetypes (also see the discussion of Northrop Frye in the Structuralism section) in creative works: "Jungian criticism is generally involved with a search for the embodiment of these symbols within particular works of art." (Richter 505). When dealing with this sort of criticism, it is often useful to keep a handbook of mythology and a dictionary of symbols on hand.
[6/2, 11:17 AM] +92 344 2859759: Mathew Arnold - A Short Biography
Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.
Where did Matthew Arnold live?
Laleham
What is Matthew Arnold famous for?
Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator.
What is touchstone method given by Matthew Arnold?
Touchstone Method is a term coined by Matthew Arnold, the famous Victorian poet and critic. He introduced the term in his essay “Study of Poetry” to denote short but distinctive passages, selected from the writing of great poets, which he used to determine the excellence of passages or poems which are compared to them.
What is the study of poetic meter and form called?
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.
Who was Thyrsis?
"Thyrsis" (from the title of Theocritus's poem "Θύρσις") is a poem written by Matthew Arnold in December 1865 to commemorate his friend, the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, who had died in November 1861 aged only 42. The character, Thyrsis, was a shepherd in Virgil's Seventh Eclogue, who lost a singing match against Corydon.
What is grand style?
The grand style (also referred to as 'high style') is a style of rhetoric, notable for its use of figurative language and for its ability to evoke emotion. The term was coined by Matthew Arnold.
What is poetic form?
Poetic form refers to a poem's physical structure; basically, what the poem looks like and how it sounds. Elements like the poem's type, stanza structure, line lengths, rhyme scheme, and rhythm express its form. Together, content and form make meaning, which is the message the poet gives to the reader.
What does the poem Dover Beach mean?
Terms of Art. "Dover Beach" is a melancholic poem. Matthew Arnold uses the means of 'pathetic fallacy', when he attributes or rather projects the human feeling of sadness onto an inanimate object like the sea. At the same time he creates a feeling of 'pathos'.
Who is the speaker of the poem Dover Beach?
While the speaker and his companion could be any two English lovers, it is supposed by many that the speaker of "Dover Beach" is the poet himself, Matthew Arnold, who, with his new wife, spent their honeymoon at the Straits of Dover near the time of the poem's writing (1851).
What is the sea of faith in Dover Beach?
The Sea of Faith movement is so called as the name is taken from this poem, as the poet expresses regret that belief in a supernatural world is slowly slipping away; the "sea of faith" is withdrawing like the ebbing tide.
Dover Beach - Wikipedia
Is Dover Beach a dramatic monologue?
Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" is a dramatic monologue because the poet is addressing a silent audience. The effect is of one person directly addressing another, while the reader listens in. For example, tradition has it that Arnold composed "Dover Beach" during his honeymoon, and that the silent audience is his bride.
What are his principal writings in poetry and Essays?
Having survived exposure to the storms of passion in the Alps, Arnold still felt the need for a love and companionship compatible with the needs of ordinary human nature, and before long he was attracted by the charms of a more suitable English girl, the daughter of a judge. The conventional courtship which followed, and which produced some charming lyrics, was prolonged until Arnold could obtain a position with an income that would support a wife. He achieved this when Lord Lansdowne had him appointed inspector of schools in April 1851, and the marriage to Frances Lucy Wightman took place in June. Though his first volume of poetry, The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (1849), and the second, Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852), both published under the pseudonym "A.," received limited attention and were soon withdrawn from circulation in spite of praise from a discerning few, Arnold continued writing poetry. His reputation was established with his third volume, Poems: A New Edition (1853), the first published under his name. It omitted "Empedocles on Etna" and the early poem "The New Sirens," but contained two new poems which have been widely known and liked ever since, "Sohrab and Rustum" and "The Scholar-Gipsy." Most of Arnold's best poems are in these volumes--except "Dover Beach," which, though not published until 1867, has been convincingly assigned to 1851 by Kenneth Allott.
In 1865, Arnold published Essays in Criticism: First Series. Essays in Criticism: Second Series would not appear until November 1888, shortly after his untimely death. In 1866, he published Thyrsis, his elegy to Clough who had died in 1861. Culture and Anarchy, Arnold's major work in social criticism (and one of the few pieces of his prose work currently in print) was published in 1869. Literature and Dogma, Arnold's major work in religious criticism appeared in 1873. In 1883 and 1884, Arnold toured the United States and Canada[8] delivering lectures on education, democracy and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1883.[9] In 1886, he retired from school inspection and made another trip to America.
How Mathew Arnold died?
Arnold died suddenly in 1888 of heart failure whilst running to meet a tram that would have taken him to the Liverpool Landing Stage to see his daughter, who was visiting from the United States where she had moved after marrying an American. Mrs. Arnold died in June 1901.
Touchstone Method by Methew Arnold
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Poetry is something which sustain, console and interpret life for us. Arnold had given a very high position to poetry that it is a substitute for religion. Arnold says "The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry". At this point, Arnold offers his theory of Touchstone Method.
Arnold’s touchstone method is a comparative method of criticism. According to this method, in order to judge a poet's work properly, a critic should compare it to passages taken from works of great masters of poetry, and that these passages should be applied as touchstones to other poetry. Even a single line or selected quotation will serve the purpose. If the other work moves us in the same way as these lines and expressions do, then it is really a great work, otherwise not.
Arnold wants us to avoid the false evaluation of the historic estimate and the personal estimate, and to attain to a real estimate by learning to feel and enjoy the best work of the real classic, and thus to appreciate wide difference between it and all lesser work. If you want to know whether any poetic work is of a high quality, we should compare it with specimens of poetry of the highest quality. According to him the most useful method of discovering the worth of poetry is "to have always in one’s mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry". The real classics can serve as the touchstone by which the merit of contemporary poetic work can be tested. This is the central idea of Arnold’s Touchstone Method.
Arnold was basically a classicist. He admired the ancient Greek, Roman and French authors as the models to be followed by the modern English authors. The old English like Shakespeare, Spenser or Milton were also to be taken as models. Arnold took selected passages from the modern authors and compared them with selected passages from the ancient authors and thus decided their merits. This method was called Arnold's Touchstone Method. He quoted the two lines from Milton;
"And courage never to submit or yield
And what is else not to be overcome"
It has been said that the sentiment or the moral here is noble, but that the diction and movement are faulty. Perhaps, in offering these two lines as a specimen of the highest poetry, Arnold just tripped.
However, this system of judgment has its own limitations. Arnold would probably have agreed that his method of comparing passage with a passage is not a sufficient test for determining the value of a work as a whole. Arnold himself insisted that we must judge a poem by the 'total impression' and not by its fragments. But we can further extend this method of comparison from passages to the poems as whole units. The comparative method is an invaluable aid to appreciation of any kind of art. It is helpful not merely thus to compare the masterpiece and the lesser work, but the good with the not so good, the sincere with the not quite sincere, and so on.
Arnold seems to go too far insisting all the time on work of the highest excellence in literature. It is not fair to demand that "all hills should be Alps". There may be an excellence in some minor poetry worthwhile on its own account. Arnold expresses the view that good literature will never lose its currency. There might be some vulgarization and cheapening of literary values, as a result of the increase in numbers of the common sort of readers, but the currency of good literature is ensured by, "the instinct of self-preservation in humanity." So strong is Arnold’s faith in the value of poetry of the highest kind. Arnold declared that it would be much better to disregarded the mass of current literature. By this method we can set apart the alive, the vital, and the sincere from the shoddy, the showy and the insincere.
He declared, "In poetry, it is the glory, the eternal honour that charlatanism shall find no entrance".
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