Our readings this week had appropriate timing with current events yet again! I really appreciated the Differences chapter in TT and its citation of very similar statistics to those fuelling the Occupy protests which had an extremely eventful week of raiding and re-prioritising.

The Wife of Bath reading on psychoanalysis was fun as well. I like how Freud suggested this approach, then it was interpreted by different people of different times and places, and we are left with the head-cocking notion that we can psychoanalyse a text to psychoanalyse the characters to psychoanalyse the author and then we look at how we analysed all that so we can psychoanalyse the reader. Uhhh. Okay! I really enjoy looking at all the levels of the literature experience psychologically. I am naturally inclined to look at things in life in psychological ways so it is nice when I can carry that over to literature. It’s definitely a useful tactic for strong characters like the Wife. I can definitely think of a few examples where psychoanalysis isn’t useful on a character level, though. For example, the characters in Hard Times do not come across as particularly psychologically profound. I suppose it is useful to apply this to Charles Dickens because it points to the distance he felt at the time, the way he felt industrialism was prohibiting him from engaging deeply with others. And maybe that brief analysis is wildly telling about the way I see things! Oh the multi-faceted application of literary theory.

It was very useful to look at the two project proposal examples in class today. I’ve actually yet to have to do a project proposal at the College and was feeling kind of lost about the whole thing. I do feel a bit better now, albeit not entirely because I have the daunting deadlines of other assignments looming overhead. Speaking of which, off to the lands of productivity!