Monash University Handbook 2010 Undergraduate - Unit

Synopsis

This unit will provide students with a theoretical framework within which to undertake a psychoanalytic reading of a number of texts, across a number of genres. This will involve consideration of certain key concepts within psychoanalytic theory, accessed primarily through the reading of a number of essays by Freud and Lacan. Psychoanalysis will then be used as a primary lens for reading. This involves the consideration of texts which overtly make use of the ideas and/or methodologies of psychoanalysis- such as Woolf's Mrs Dalloway or poet Anne Sexton's "To Bedlam, and Part Way Back" - in addition to a wider range of differently motivated texts - eg crime fiction or the Hollywood melodrama.

Objectives

Students completing this unit have gained:

1. Knowledge and a working understanding of selected psychoanalytic texts.

2. Knowledge of a broad range of cross-genre literary texts.

3. Further skills of literary analysis, enriched by the application of certain psychoanalytic concepts.

4. Insight into the critical and theoretical debates concerning the production of a gendered subjectivity within literary texts.

5. The necessary skills for contributing to critical discussion and producing scholarly written argument.

Assessment

Written work: 50% (2500 words)
Class test: 40%
Participation: 10%

Contact hours

One 2-hour seminar and one 1-hour lecture per week and occasional 2 hour screenings

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

English

Prerequisites

A first-year sequence in literary studies or equivalent.