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(free) >   Profile   Log in to check your private messages   Log in  The Mechanics of Fiction          literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org Forum Index -> Literature View previous topic :: View next topic   Author Message Sitaram Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079 Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:56 pm    Post subject: The Mechanics of Fiction lecielestbleu7 : i am confused actually finishing my paper\ literarydiscussions: what confuses you lecielestbleu7 : psychology or psuchoanalysis literarydiscussions: i did quite a bit of reading in that, perhaps 100 books literarydiscussions: though some years ago perhaps 15 years ago lecielestbleu7 : owh man lecielestbleu7 : can you tell me what shoukd i use to analyze my topic? literarydiscussions: well.... there are so many different schools of psychoanalysis.... literarydiscussions: it is amusing to read a book from the 1960s entitled 'The Pooh Purplex"..... which is a parody of different styles of analysis literarydiscussions: by a professor named Crew i think, i have the book here literarydiscussions: one chapter is a parody of Freudian literary psychoanalysis... entitled "The Underside of Pooh" literarydiscussions: the reason why this book is good, is it demonstrates to us how the same text may be looked at from so many different psychologies and philosophys, and the analysis seems equally plausible lecielestbleu7 : a parody of freud? lecielestbleu7 : yea lecielestbleu7 : and i need to stand where i should stand literarydiscussions: a parody of the various "critics" and their styles of analyzing literarydiscussions: refresh my memory about your paper... lecielestbleu7 : i want to show that the author of the books, use breakdown of the female characters to reconstruct the conventionof the society literarydiscussions: which books are you working with lecielestbleu7 : the awakening and the yellow wallpaper literarydiscussions: ok.... well... though i am not familiar with those..... i would say that any analysis or interpretation must flow naturally from the pages, as the intention of the author, to be natural and convincing,... rather than taking some "system" like for example freudian analysis, and "imposing" upon the work from the outside... lecielestbleu7 : yea literarydiscussions: in fact, just today, for example.... i was reading DH Lawrence "Sons and Lovers" and I was thinking of writing an essay entitled "Fiction and Mechanism" lecielestbleu7 : i realise that literarydiscussions: now, here is the idea which came to me... literarydiscussions: as i read the novel,..... certain phrases and passages JUMP OUT AT ME.... and being, shall we say, key moving parts, which are installed their by the author to make the mechanics, the mechanism, function as the author desires... literarydiscussions: now... stop and think.... if i had some machine before me, and i DO as a matter of fact, a COMPUTER... literarydiscussions: now, if i think of REMOVING various parts, to see what happens without them... well, if i remove the decal which says Dell or Microsoft or Intel, nothing happens... literarydiscussions: if i remove the speaker.... still works , but no sound... literarydiscussions: but... if i unplug the electric cord, or pull out the pentium chip... then i discover that IT CEASES TO FUNCTION AS WHAT IT WAS INTENDED.. literarydiscussions: so, by analogy,.... if we look at the literary work.... and isolate certain sentences and phrase, or even characters,.... or characteristics of a given character... well, obviously.... some will be like the mfg logo decals... literarydiscussions: remove them and the work is the same... lecielestbleu7 : what degree is this lesson? literarydiscussions: BUT if we isolate certain elements of the work, and demonstrate HOW the work would cease to function as the same thing.... literarydiscussions: i am just sharing with you the though of this morning literarydiscussions: in the event that it would spark some idea about how to analyze your two works literarydiscussions: now.... for example.... regarding female characters... let us consider this.... literarydiscussions: Freud, for example was very patriarchal and somewhat mysogynistic.... literarydiscussions: now.. Freud had many disciples, all of whom broke away literarydiscussions: the most significant disciple, with respect to your paper, is Karen Horney (pronounced horn-EYE) with stress on second syllable literarydiscussions: she is perhaps the first female to earn a medical degree in germany... literarydiscussions: now she came to the USA,... and developed a theory which contradicted Freuds notion of neurosis... literarydiscussions: freud presumed that the dynamics of Victorian society, with repression of sexuality, led to neurosis.... since he assumed that the sex libido drive was the key force in the personality... literarydiscussions: but Karen Horney, coming to America, where things were far more free sexually,... observed that there were shy people who became neurotic when forced by a society to be more sexual... literarydiscussions: that it was not sexuality per se which could create neurosis... but rather..... some environment which pushes us to a behavior contrary to our individual nature... literarydiscussions: now.... with regard to the female character... here is something crucial observed by Asar Nafisi in "Reading Lolita in Tehran"... literarydiscussions: when her young women college students read 'Daisy Miller' by Henry James... they were all struck by something which american students would not even notice.... lecielestbleu7 : what? literarydiscussions: these young women live in a society where a woman is punished for being self-willed and outspoken.... literarydiscussions: they were awestruck by the women in Daisy Miller who were so powerful, self willed, liberated... literarydiscussions: now, as a high school student, in USA, reading daisy miller,... i did not give a second thought to such women because they were exactly like my mother, who was self-willed, agressive, outspoken, individualistic... literarydiscussions: i apologize for rambling a bit... but i feel if i can get some ideas out on the table.... some of them might spark something for you in your project... lecielestbleu7 : yea literarydiscussions: so, you see, we are dealing here with a kind of "theory of relativity".... lecielestbleu7 : yea literarydiscussions: it is not SIMPLY the psychodynamics of the author and the authors society and culture and era.... but the COMBINATION, the interaction, with our own personal lense, of OUR psychodynamics, culture, values, though which we view that book lecielestbleu7 : i realize that literarydiscussions: now....to repost your main statement: i want to show that the author of the books, use breakdown of the female characters to reconstruct the conventionof the society literarydiscussions: we may speak of two kinds of deconstruction... literarydiscussions: first, the destructive analysis i mention, analogous to removing various parts of a mechanism, to see how it effects it.... literarydiscussions: to isolate and remove or alter various aspects of the novel, to discover, or argue, in a "what if scenario", what makes the thing tick... versus what is the decorative watch fob or wrist band literarydiscussions: but,.... from the fiction work's point of view.... literarydiscussions: the work of fiction is deconstructing and altering reality in some fashion.... to perform THE EXACT SAME KIND OF ANALYSIS on reality... literarydiscussions: or our perception of it... literarydiscussions: an excellent but simple minded example is a movie i have here on DVD, which portrays a world of whites and blacks, in which the blacks are the dominant educated affluent majority, and the whites are the oppressed second class citizens... literarydiscussions: in a simple minded way, we see how that fictional work distorts and reconstructs reality, in order to analyze it,.... or help us to see it in a different way.... literarydiscussions: a different example, which comes to mind, is Ursula LeGuinn, "The Left Hand of Darkness", where she describes a world of beings who are ...(i forget the propper term)l..... oh yes, hermaphrodites... literarydiscussions: during an individuals lifespan,.... the enter into periods of reproductive fertility,... and the transform sometimes into male, and sometimes into female... literarydiscussions: now, of course LeGuinn is working with science fiction/fantasy.... literarydiscussions: but this is a genre in which we may VIVIDLY see the deconstruction, reconstruction and distortion of reality in the fiction... literarydiscussions: is any of this seeming helpful to you lecielestbleu7 : yea lecielestbleu7 : a lil bit literarydiscussions: well, you see,... i am somewhat handicapped in not having read the works in question... literarydiscussions: but.. we should be able to take any number of works, and apply the same notions to them... literarydiscussions: i suppose , the fictional work, is like a TWO WAY MIRROR... the author is on the one side, either living or dead, and we are on the other side... literarydiscussions: sometimes, as we gaze into this fictive mirror, we see ourselves, our world, but distorted slightly, as in a fun house mirror... literarydiscussions: other times, we catch a glimpse THROUGH the mirror, at the character and intentions and psychodynamics of the AUTHOR... literarydiscussions: but... in the fictive mirror... there is a MIDDLE REALM,.... which is the world created by the fiction.... literarydiscussions: and when we enter into that,.... we lose our self, and enter as either a character, or perhaps as an omniscient 3rd person observer, much like a God of this virtual world... lecielestbleu7 : sitaram literarydiscussions: now... given that your project concerns the concept of feminism, the female role in society,... the female persona.... then, this adds an additional and a special spin lecielestbleu7 : thanks 4 d information and the sharing literarydiscussions: well,... its the best i can do on short notice lecielestbleu7 : but i think i have to go literarydiscussions: ok.. email any time, or message.... this is interesting literarydiscussions: 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