What is Psychoanalytic literary criticism?

Psychoanalytic literary criticism, which was mainly developed from the works of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan,  is still one of the key literary theories to study and understand any literary text.  Traditionally there are some canonical literary texts that are favorites to the psychoanalytic critics like Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Here in my present paper I will try to make a psychoanalytic literary criticism of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. At first, I will try to define what is psychoanalytic literary criticism and then try to make a psychoanalytic reading of Hamlet applying the key ideas of psychoanalytic criticism. 

What is Psychoanalytic literary criticism?

Psychoanalytic literary criticism can simply be defined as an approach to literature which aims to apply some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literary works. The psychological principles which are used in Psychoanalytic literary criticism were mainly developed by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. One may psychoanalyze a particular character within a literary work, but it is usually assumed that all such characters are projections of the author's psyche.

The key concepts which are used in Psychoanalytic criticism include but not limited to unconscious, repression, sublimation, super-ego, id, Infantile sexuality, Oedipus complex, libido, oral, anal, and phallic, transference, projection, Freudian slip, dream work, displacement ,etc.

What is Modernism? What are the Characteristics of Modernist Literature?

‘Modernism’, in a broader sense, is modern thought, character, or practice breaking away from  the rules, traditions and existing ways of writing practiced by earlier authors before the 20^th century. In art, modernism breaks away with the ideology of realism and makes use of past through the use of flashback, recapitulation, and incorporation. This rebellious attitude flourishes between 1900 and 1930 has, as its basis, the rejection of European culture for having become too corrupt and artificial. This dissatisfaction with the moral bankruptcy of everything European led modern thinkers and artists to explore other alternatives, especially primitive cultures. In literature, ‘modernism’ grows out as a reaction to realism and naturalism. Generally literary texts after World War I as well as belonging the above qualities are considered as modern text.

Characteristics of Modernism:

Modernism marks a strong and intentional break with tradition and it is also related to politics, religion etc.. Though modernism becomes prominent after traditionalism so knowing the difference between these two ‘ism’ is important. Traditionalism, which is based on tradition, is a dominant way of life,, There are always pre-determined rules, explanations for people and their life in traditionalism. Objectivism is another important point in traditionalism. There is one truth for everything in traditionalism. High class people are more important than middle or low class people in traditionalism because it gives importance for elevated style. On the other hand, as modernism is a break with tradition, so this break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views. According to modernism, there is no such thing as absolute truth. All things are relative. Another thing, where in traditionalism objectivism is an important point, modernism gives importance to subjectivism.

Championship of the individual through the celebration of inner strength is one of the most prominent characteristics of modernism and in this regard it differs from realism. This ‘ inner strength’ of the individual is expressed through four literary ‘isms’- subjectivism, impressionalism, expressionalism and surrealism. Realism attempts to portray external objects and events as the common or middle class people see them in every day life, impressionalism tries to portray the psychological impression that these objects and events make on characters, emphasizing the role of individual perception and exploring the nature of conscious and subconscious mind. Whereas realism attempts to portray external objects and events, expressionalism tries to explain the inner vision, emotion or spiritual reality. Whereas, realism attempts to portray external objects and events as they are verisimilituded, surrealism tries to liberal the subconscious to see connection overlooked by the logical mind.

Modernism in Literary texts:

In literature, Literary Modernism has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe and North America. The period of high modernism is twenty years from 1910 to 1930. Some of the high priests of the movement in literature are T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Wallace Stevens, Franz Kafka etc.. The characteristics of the literary modernism that are followed by these writers are given below:

First of all, a new emphasis on impressionalism and subjectivism, that we mentioned earlier, which focus on how we see rather what we see. In this regard a new literary technique, stream of consciousness’, is employed by James Joyce and his followers such as Virginia Woolf in their writings. Then, regarding narrative technique modernist literary texts are away from the apparent objectivity provided by such features as: omniscient external narration, fixed narrative point of view. However, language is also an important device of modernism to differentiate a literary text from other texts. In modern literary text emphasizes on colloquial language rather than formal language.  Finally, a new liking for fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives are obvious in modernist literary texts. For example- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot are superb example of fragmented forms.

Thus, modernism originated from the corruption, decadence and frustrations in the post-war psyche of the western people marks off from the previous literary tradition that got reduced to cold formalism and traditionalism.

How does Elaine Showalter use Ardener’s Diagram to redefine the relationship between the “dominant group” and “muted group in her essay 'Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness'?”

Women have been left out of culture and history because history is considered to be a male centered term. Again there are some places where men cannot enter. In defining female culture, historians make a clear distinction between the male considered appropriate roles, activities, tastes, behaviors for women and the reality of women’s lives. Women’s sphere is defined and maintained by men. By this, women constitute a muted group.

To redefine the relationship between the “dominant group” and “muted group” Showalter takes help from Ardener’s Diagram. By the term “muted” Edwin Ardener suggests problems both of language and power. Both muted and dominant group (male) unconsciously generates beliefs but the dominant group controls the forms or structures which make the muted group bound to express their beliefs through the allowable forms of dominant structure. Ardener shows a diagram on the relationship of the dominant and muted group.

In the diagram, much of the muted circle “Y” falls within the boundaries of dominant circle “X”, there is also a crescent of ‘Y” which is outside the dominant boundary and is called “wild”. This wild zone is considered as women’s culture specially which means literary no man’s land, a place forbidden to men. The opposite thing happens to man’s “X” zone. Experimentally, it stands for the aspects of the female lifestyle which are outside of men. “X” zone of male alien to women. But metaphysically it has no corresponding male zone because all of male consciousness is within the circle of dominant structure and female knows all about male. Here from the male point of view, the wild “Y” is always imaginary. In terms of cultural anthropology, women know what the male crescent is like but men do not know what is in the wild.

In some feminist criticism, the wild zone becomes the place for the women-centered criticism, theory and art. It makes the invisible visible, the silent speak. French feminist critics would like to make the wild zone the theoretical base of women’s difference. In their texts, the wild zone becomes the place for the revolutionary women’s language, the language of everything that is repressed. Many forms of American radical feminism also romantically assert that women are closer to nature or environment. So, they should build the place fully independent from the control and influence of “male dominated” institutions- the news media, the health, education legal systems, art, theatre and literary worlds.

But we must admit that no writing is possible without dominant structure. No writing, no criticism, no publication is fully independent from the economic and political pressures of the male dominated society. The most important implication of this model is that women’s fiction can be read as a double voiced discourse containing a ‘dominant” and “a muted story.”

The concept of a woman’s text in the wild zone is a playful abstraction. Women’s writing is a “double voiced discourse” that always embodies the social, literary, and cultural heritages of both the muted and the dominant.  Every step that feminist criticism takes toward defining women’s writing is a step toward self- understanding as well. Women writing are not then inside and outside of the male tradition, they are inside two tradition. Indeed, the female territory might well be envisioned as one long order, not as a separate country, but as open access to the sea.

The more important aspect of Ardener’s model is that there are muted groups other than women such as the blacks in America. In America the blacks belong to the muted group and the white dominant group. The dominant structure may determine many muted structures. For example a black America woman poet may be affected by both racial and sexual politics. So, cultural situation should not determine women’s writing, but women’s writing should be considered in the background of cultural pattern.

This reminds Alien Showlter about the duty and responsibility of female writers. A female writer who writes under the influence of the male dominated culture is more or less influenced by that culture. Now the duty of gynocriticism is to precisely map out the cultural field of women and prevent the influences of the dominant look on the muted group.

Regarding the major literary movements, Elaine Showlter says, in the history of literature women also have no place. The movement Renaissance was not a movement for women. The Romantic Movement was also not for women. Now it is the duty of “gynocriticism” to provide women with a respective place in the history of literature.

In order to make the rule of muted group more clear Alien Showlter says, from female perspective a text is not only mothered but also parented. A women’s text confronts both paternal and maternal forerunner and must deal with the problems and advantages of both lines of inheritance.

Thus, women’s text is rich in the experience of both muted group and dominant group. In this way, she uses Ardener’s model to show the condition as well as the possibility of women.

Why does Barthes Want to Liberate the Text from Authorial Control in The Death of the Author?

Roland Barthes, a critic and an advocate of structuralism and post structuralism, proclaims that “the birth of the reader must be at the most of the death of the author”. It is his point of turning towards post structuralism. It is such an assert that struck at the very heart of traditional literary studies and that has remained one of the most controversial tenets of post- structuralism.

Barthes most important work of literary criticism is probably S/Z (1970), an exhaustive commentary on a Balzac short story “Sarasine.” Barthes aims to show how they carry many different meanings simultaneously on different levels. In S/Z, this demonstration is linked to a distinction between the         “Lisible”            or readerly classic text and the “Seriptible” or “writerly” modern text. Readerly classic text makes its readers passive consumers, writerly modern text invites its readers to an active participation in the production of meanings that are infinite and inexhaustible.

As Barthes, writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral composite, oblique space where subject disappears, and where all identity is lost. The author enters into his death and writing begins.

Actually, the idea of giving a text to the authority of an author is a long term process. It has been related to Middle Ages, English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation. All these revolutions give credit to the “human person” an individual for a text. The author still reigns in histories of literature, biographies of writers, interviews, magazines. Thus the image of literature centers round the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his ideas and criticism also is directed to that end. The explanation of a work is usually sought in the man or woman who produced it. Thus the author becomes creator, God.

Though the sway of the author remains powerful, it goes without saying that certain writers have long since attempted to loosen it. Stéphane Malarme, French symbolist poet, felt the necessity to substitute language itself for the person. For him, it is language, which speaks, not the author. Only language acts and performs. His entire poetics consists in suppressing the author in the interests of writing. It is seen to restore the place of the reader.

Proust himself was visibly concerned with the relation between the writer and his characters. Proust gave modern writing its epic. By a radical reversal, he made of his very life a work for which his own book was the model.

The removal of the author is not merely a historical fact or an act of writing. It utterly transforms the modern texts. The text is hence-forth made and read in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent. The temporality is different. When we believe that author is present, we conceive him as the past of his own book. Book and author stand automatically on a single line divided into a before and after. The author is thought to nourish the book as a father of his child.

In complete contrast, the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text. The scriptor exists to produce but not to explain the work. Here is no linear relation, no preceding or exceeding, no subject or predicate. The modern scriptor has no other origin than the language itself. The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others in such a way as ever rest on anyone of them. Succeeding the author, the scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humors, feelings and impression but rather this immense dictionary the source of writing. Thus the modern scriptor buries the author and traces a field without origin. 

To attribute an author to a text is to impose a limit on that text. When the author has been found, beneath his work, the text is explained. A text is made up of multiple writings drawn from many cultures. But its multiplicity is focused & that place is the reader not the author. The reader is the space where all quotations making up the text are inscribed without any of them being lost. The author is dead here at the cost of the readers birth. However the reader is without history, biography, psychology. He is not personal; rather he is “someone” who holds the traces together in a single field by which the text is constituted.

Barthes rightly says that a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. The destination is the reader where the author is absent completely. Classic critics has never paid attention to the reader, & always emphasized on the author. Barthes argues that we should now come out of the arrogant antiphrastical so called society & give writing its future overthrowing the myth, “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.”

Discuss the critical ideas of Ronald Barthes as expressed in The Death of Author

Ronald Barthes, French literary critic and theorist of structuralism and post-structuralism announces the death of the author in order to have birth of the reader. Barthes prolific output is consistently innovative and inventive to make him one of the most important and influential critics of the twentieth century. It is as assertion that struck at the very heart of traditional literary studies and that has remained one of the most controversial tenets of post-structuralism. He was a writer who disconcerted his disciples as well as his opponents by continually rejecting one kind of discourse in favor of another, and to this extent lived the assertion simultaneously with the text.

 As for Bathes, writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. It is neutral, composite and oblique space where subject disappears and where all identity is lost. As soon as a fact is narrated with a view to acting no longer directly but intransitively on reality, the disconnection between the author and the writing occurs. The voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, and writing begins.

Actually, the idea of giving a text to the authority of an author is a long term process. Barthes argues that the traditional notion of the author is a product of the rationalist and empiricist thought of the Middle Ages that ascribes a central importance to the individual human being- for a text. It is the person of the author that is more important than the text. So, we see the author still reigns in histories of literature, biographies of writers, interviews, magazines etc. We also see in men of letters as anxiousness to unite their person and their work through diaries and memories. Thus the image of literature centers round the author, his person, his life, his tastes, his ideas and criticism also is directed to that end. It is usually thought that the “explanation” of the text is found in the man or woman who has written it. Thus the author becomes the creator, God, and thus a theological entity who knows only about his creation, his work.

Though the influence of the author remains powerful, many pre modern writers have tried to challenge the centrality of the author. In France, Stephen Mallerme was undoubtedly the first whose poetry reaches the point at which language can be said to be “speaking itself” through an impersonal writing. For him, it is language which speaks, not he author. It ceases to be either a psychological expression of the poet’s subjectivity or a representation of something external to its own workings. Mallermie’s entire poetics consists in suppressing the author in the interests of writing. Despite the supposed acuity of his psychological analyses, Proust has, according to Barthes, written the epic of modern writing. Surrealism and linguistic ideas also tried to remove the author from the fixed and ever-occupying place.

The removal of the author is more than an historical fact or an act of writing. But it means to transform the modern text in such a level that it seems the Author is totally absent. Here the temporality is different. When we believe that the Author is present, we conceive him as the past of his own book; book and author stand automatically on a single line divided into a before and an after. Here the author is father, the book is his child, thought, and nourished by his father. But the idea of the modern scriptor of is different. The modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text but no linear relation, no preceding or exceeding, no “here and now” with the immediate enunciation of it. It follows that “writing does not mean an operation of recording, notation, representation and depiction.” But it is a “performative”, a rare verbal form in which the enunciation has no other content than the act by which it is uttered. Thus the modern scriptor buries the Author and traces a field without origin- or which, at least, has no other origin than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into question all origins.

Thus a text is not a line of words with a single theological meaning or the message of the Author- God but a multi- dimensional space in which a variety of non- original writings blends and clash.(Like Collase). The text is a combination quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture. The writer actually can not writer, but to mix writings, to place the ones with the others, as never to rest on any one of them.  He should know that his “wish to express himself” is a grotesque one because the “inner thing” that he wishes to translate is only a ready-formed dictionary; its words have man synonyms and can express indefinitely his thinking through those words. So, the modern scriptor, succeeding the Author, has no passions, humors, feelings, impressions but rather this immense dictionary (is) the source of his writing. To Barthes, life is only the imitation of the book which itself is only a tissue of signs infinitely deferred.

 According to Barthes, to give a text an Author opens the path of victory for the critic and a critic may easily explain the text. Thus the critic finding out the Author “explained” the text. But modern idea wants to suppress the critic along with the Author. When the author is removed, the claim to decipher a text is futile. So in the crowd of writings, nothing is to be “deciphered” but to be “disentangled”. The space of writing is to be ranged over; writing ceaselessly posits meaning. In precisely this way literature, by refusing to assign an ultimate meaning to the text, liberates what may be called an anti theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary, because it refuses to fix the meaning in God and his hypostases- reason, science and law.

According to Barthes, a text is made up of multiple writings drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogues, parody, contestation. But there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not the author. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up writing are inscribed without any of them being, lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. But this destination can not be personal. The reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. Classic criticism has never paid an attention to the reader, for it, the writer is the only person in literature. To give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth. In short, the death of the Author signals the liberation of the reader by the by the very assertion that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”