Psychoanalytic critics are not agreed on the probable application psychoanalytic concepts to the literary works. No doubt, all the psychological concepts cannot be applied to every literary work. However, some concepts in psychoanalytical criticism can be applied to the literary works. The task of the critic is to see which concept operates in the literary text in a way which yields a meaningful coherent psychoanalytic interpretation. The psychological approach to the study of literature has been the most abused approach. The scholars and critics most commonly employed psychological approach as an interpretative tool to enhance their understanding and appreciation of literature. Psychological interpretation offers various ways to understand …show more content…
The nightingale displays his abilities to sing and an unconscious behavior. Being a very self-conscious writer, Keats had vision of looking beyond Nightingale’s singing. He visualizes something sad, unhappy and painful in the song of nightingale. The poet is not able to present the bird in its full and perfect form. His art has failed to capture the beauty and ugliness in the song of nightingale. The nightingale is an ecstatic and oblivious singer. The bird sings not of present time or not even this world. The song of the bird is unhampered in the ‘full-throated ease’ of its singing by the realities of a world where (as stanza three states) ‘but to think is to be full of sorrow’. The poem vividly portrays Keats’s attempt to free himself from the self which thinks of the present world. He wants to join his true poetic self and recoiling to his ‘sole self’ as the song fades. Freud’s terms ego, id, and super-ego are useful to study Keats’ attempt to free from his unconscious self. The super-ego of the author impels poet to free from the worldly attachment –id represented by the nightingale. When the poet attempts to give up his id, he is reduced to a ‘sole’ self, without any imagined
The similarities between the poems lie in their abilities to utilize imagery as a means to enhance the concept of the fleeting nature that life ultimately has and to also help further elaborate the speaker’s opinion towards their own situation. In Keats’ poem, dark and imaginative images are used to help match with the speaker’s belief that both love and death arise from fate itself. Here, Keats describes the beauty and mystery of love with images of “shadows” and “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” to illustrate his belief that love comes from fate, and that he is sad to miss out on such an opportunity when it comes time for his own death.
Psychoanalytic criticism is a type of literary criticism that analyzes and classifies many of the forms of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature. As the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines psychoanalysis, as a form of therapy that is concluced by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind' (Barry 96). One of the most popularized
Reading a narrative from a psychoanalytic perspective can prove to be a sometimes frustrating experience. Psychoanalysis often disregards the actual texts and verbal context of a piece of literature in favor of the Freudian and Lacanian ideas, which seek to find encrypted motifs in the depths of every creation in order to reveal the author’s unconscious mind. Nevertheless, the critiques of psychoanalytic interpretation of literature claim that such interpretations focus on the content of the text at the expense of the literary form and temporal dimension, which can reduce the literary plots to lifeless machinations. Furthermore, psychoanalytic interpretation of a text may tell us less about the author’s unconscious mind and more about the
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory plays a major role in literature, and it is usually described as psychoanalytic literary criticism. Moreover, the psychoanalytic theory incorporates two contradictory critical theories. The first theory focuses on the text itself without having influences of additional sources. From the view of first psychoanalytic theory, the reader can understand the text by analyzing the characters, dreams, conflicts, symbols, and the unconscious desires of the characters. Furthermore, the second theory argues that in the literary work, the dreams, desires, and emotions presented in the work are usually related to author’s own personal experience and the life. For instance, in order to understand the literary work of an
The psychoanalytic lens is one of many ways to observe a work of literature. By
In literature, it is generally agreed that 'The Nightingale invites the beholder to explore something beyond the merely human '. Both Keats and Finch imitate this concept in 'Ode to a Nightingale ' and 'To the Nightingale ' by using poetic form and language to show the qualities of a bird that inspires them to look beyond the physical and in Finch 's case, challenge the confines of human restriction whilst asserting poetry as a human necessity.
The literal surface of a work of literature is sometimes called the “manifest content” and treated as “manifest dream” or “dream story.” The psychoanalytic literary critic tries to analyze the latent, underlying content of the work, or the “dream thought” hidden in
Psychoanalysis was started and influenced by Sigmund Freud. The object of psychological literary theory is to analyze the phycology of the author or the characters in the book. Applying psychological analysis to the Metamorphosis will require a critique to identify vital Freudian concepts such as; consciousness, unconsciousness, Oedipus complex and phallic symbol.
This poem that I am going to be focusing on is titled "Ode to Autumn",
The twenty-four old romantic poet John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” written in the spring of 1819 was one of his last of six odes. That he ever wrote for he died of tuberculosis a year later. Although, his time as a poet was short he was an essential part of The Romantic period (1789-1832). His groundbreaking poetry created a paradigm shift in the way poetry was composed and comprehended. Indeed, the Romantic period provided a shift from reason to belief in the senses and intuition. “Keats’s poem is able to address some of the most common assumptions and valorizations in the study of Romantic poetry, such as the opposition between “organic culture” and the alienation of modernity”. (O’Rourke, 53) The irony of Keats’s Urn is he likens
On the other hand, John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” is another interesting poem set in London, which tells the story of a nightingale that undergoes pain and suffering caused by a loss of human life but remains alive. Like in “the Raven” the latter the poem demonstrates clearly that pleasure is temporary and that human beings are mortal (Fogle 81). In the literary piece, Keats envisages the shortcomings of the physical environment and considers his own life gone when the nightingale song sets in. As such, the poet contrasts between the eternal nightingale and temporal life of human beings in an immensely imaginative way that integrates the primary factors affecting life including weather and natural aesthetics such as flower. Weather rejuvenates the power of the nightingales as evidenced in their covering of the heath. Like “the Raven,” however, “Ode to a nightingale” shares the theme of human mortality, spirituality and kindness, and isolation among the bereaved.
The purpose of psychoanalytic criticism is to offer the reader a better understanding of a literary piece by the analysis and interpretation of certain aspects through psychoanalytical theory. The aim, as is the case with all critical approaches, is to go beyond the surface structure and into the deep structure of a text, this time through the study of the psyche and by looking for patterns which are significant and convey meaning. The focus of such an approach is either the author, the intricate mechanisms of his own mind, which explain how and why the text came into being, or, in some cases, the characters, whose psyches can shed further light on the content.
Keats, on the other hand, uses the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to express his perspective on art by examining the characters on the urn from either an ideal or realistic perspective. In the beginning, Keats asks questions regarding the “mad pursuit” (9, p.1847) of the people on the Grecian urn. As the Grecian urn exists outside of time, Keats creates a paradox for the human figures on the urn because they do not confront aging but neither experience time; Keats then further discusses the paradox in the preceding stanzas of the poem. In the second and third stanza, Keats examines the picture of the piper playing to his lover “beneath the trees” (15, p.1847) and expresses that their love is “far above” (28, p.1848) all human passion. Even though
“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret.” (Keats) In “Ode to A Nightingale,” John Keats is the narrator who is in a state of drowsiness and numbness when he sees a nightingale and then goes on to explain his encounter with the bird. Although the surface level meaning of the poem is a man expressing his thought to and about a bird, there is a deeper meaning that can be seen when you investigate the literary devices used. Keats uses imagery, tone, and symbolism to display the theme of pain and inner conflict between life and death.