Literature and Culture: Literature and Psychology

Catalog description

Freud famously said, Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me. Freud recognizes that literature dramatized human psychology long before psychologists studied it as a science; he also suggests that, because literature and psychology traverse similar ground, they can be mutually helpful in understanding human nature and culture. We will begin our course by studying the foundations of psychoanalysis (Freud, Jung, and Adler), examining how these theories have influenced both writers and literary scholars. Later in the semester, we will explore how feminism, theories of race, and other culturally-minded theories have challenged these foundations and, consequently, also affected literary studies. Specifically, we will consider how evolving understandings of human psychology, especially those that recognize cultural differences, parallel a shift in how we create and interpret literature. Through close-analyses of Willa Cathers A Lost Lady, Tennessee Williamss A Streetcar Named Desire, Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye, a selection of classic fairytales, and short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and others, we will examine how different psychological theories of human behavior relate to character development, plot movement, and reader response.