I’d forgotten about Dr. Seaman’s request for our paper proposals, which seem so far back now that my paper’s all done with and only three finals separate me and home.  But here it is, as requested.  I took Marie de France’s lai, “Equitan,” and performed both an object-oriented reading (ANT) and a psychoanalytical (Freudian) reading of the text.  I chose a Freudian analysis as my second contemporary critical reading approach as I couldn’t think of any reading less concerned with objects than Freud’s, especially when examining the id, ego, and superego.  By reading characters in a work as representatives of the psyche and focusing on the importance of an individual’s mind, objects lose their importance. For example, a bath is no longer a bath, but a representation for a man’s desire to return to his mother’s womb which reflects his immaturity.  The bath is a product of the mind that isn’t really there and has no agency whatsoever.  Even when an object is important to the tale, its power is merely a reflection of the subconscious.  So reduced are things in a Freudian reading that they no longer can be called objects- they’re visible but aren’t really there.
I argue that a Freudian reading of a text diminishes the power of things to a level below even that of objects, and as such, analyzing a text via an object-oriented approach adds new depth and meaning to a work.  The relevance of ANT and other object-oriented approaches can be verified through this comparison.