Psychological Criticism

Because of the lack of time we had in class on 2/17 to practice the psychological criticism and to discuss and analyze "A&P," I have decided to postpose Essay #1. In other words, you DO NOT have to do Essay #1. Also, you DO NOT have to read the poems and "An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge," and you DO NOT have to prepare response papers. I have decided on a different homework approach. The revised homework assignment follows:

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT

DUE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2010,

@ 6:00 P.M.

STEP ONE: LEARN ABOUT THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM: Your homework assignment will be to familiarize yourself with the Psychological Criticism by exploring the following links. Once you feel comfortable with the Psychological Criticism, check the bottom of this post for the writing assignment:

Psychological Literary Criticism Power Point Presentation (these are the slides I incorporated into tonight's lecture): http://www.mccd.edu/faculty/pirov/Engl1B/Psychological_files/frame.htm

Psychological Approach (Freudian) AND Mythological and Archetypal Approach to Literature (scroll down on this link) (great link; easy to understand): http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:8W6cGadguK0J:www.whrhs.org/faculty_web/rbumiller/documents/Literary_Criticism_and_Theory.doc+psychological+criticism+literature&cd=23&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari

Psychological Criticism (brief overview; easy to understand): http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/psycho.crit.html

Psychological Criticism (very thorough; good chart and breakdown; easy to understand): http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:oU9DLB_ksHoJ:www.westga.edu/~pburgey/Literary%2520Criticism/Psychological%2520Criticism.doc+psychological+criticism+literature&cd=26&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari

Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”: A Psychological Reading (rather intense, but take what you can and leave the rest): http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/criticaldefine/psychessay.pdf

Psychological criticism: An approach to literature that draws upon psychoanalytic theories, especially those of Sigmund Freud or Jacques Lacan to understand more fully the text, the writer, and the reader. The basis of this approach is the idea of the existence of a human unconscious: those impulses, desires, and feelings about which a person is unaware but which influence emotions and behavior. Critics use psychological approaches to explore the motivations of characters and the symbolic meanings of events, while biographers speculate about a writer's own motivations. For model essays and exercises on psychological criticism, go to the VirtuaLit Interactive Fiction Tutorial. conscious or unconscious, in a literary work. Psychological approaches are also used to describe and analyze the reader's personal responses to a text. http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/litgloss/LitGlosscode/litgloss_p.html

Psychological Criticism and “Jane Eyre” (rather intense, but some good stuff, even if you are not familiar with "Jane Eyre"): http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~rlbeebe/what_is_psychoanalytic_criticism.pdf

STEP TWO: WRITE ABOUT THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM: Click on the following link, scroll down to the bottom of the web page, and "Ask yourself the following questions" and prepare answers for (1) Young Goodman Brown in "Young Goodman Brown," and (2) Sammy in "A&P"; http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:oU9DLB_ksHoJ:www.westga.edu/~pburgey/Literary%2520Criticism/Psychological%2520Criticism.doc+psychological+criticism+literature&cd=26&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safai

You may type or handwrite your answers, but be sure you answer all the questions. You will answer the questions once for Young Goodman Brown and once for Sammy.

If you have any questions regarding the assignment, send me an e-mail at english102wcc@gmail.com, and I will get back to you as quickly as possible.