Psychoanalytic Criticism
Helen Garners controversial novel The First Stone (1995) tells the story of a sexual harassment case in a Melbourne university, and attempts to analyse the power relations between men and women. By applying psychoanalytic criticism to this novel it clearly becomes an interesting work of investigative journalism that could be classed as valued Australian literature.Psychoanalytic Criticism is defined by Moon (1992, p.97) " as seeing literary texts as representing the unconscious thoughts and desires shared by members of a culture. It provides a way of exploring the social construction of personal identities, especially through the readers interaction with the text." Psychoanalysis is a theory developed by Sigmund Freud where concentration is placed on the unconscious life of individuals, however recent conceptions of psychoanalysis see it as a way of 'decoding' the sexual symbolism of literary texts in order to uncover the authors unconscious obsessions. Stevens and Stewart (1996, pp.108-109) state that " Freud viewed literature as the fantasy projection of the artist" and
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Ormond College, Stevens Stewart, Grip Dirty, Book Review, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Helen Garners, Sigmund Freud, Peter Pierce, Helen Garner, PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM, psychoanalytic criticism, unconscious fantasies, garners unconscious fantasies, controversial novel stone, literary texts, stevens stewart, australian literature, organs consent, throughout novel, valued australian, garners controversial novel, valued australian literature, novel stone, garners unconscious, sexual organs consent,
Approximate Word count = 762
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
 |
