English 67

Although I am far from mastering the Judith Butler piece, I mus say that my reaction to it was something like repulsion, discomfort. If I simplify my reading of the Bluth passage by interpreting her as merely saying that society arbitrarily attaches “feminine” or “masculine” distinctions to one’s behaviors. When a young boy plays dress-up, [...]

Butler persuasively describes the lack of a non-”inscribed” body, that is, one that is free from being always already interpreted. The problem is that we cannot imagine a body in the absence of interpretation, because to do so would be to imagine one independent of a culture, and language, which themselves already interpret and reinscribe [...]

So, the more I replay my statement from class today in my head, the more I realize I’m an idiot.  I came to the revelation today that it may be impossible to FEEL one’s own gender.  Unfortunately, in reaching this conclusion during my speech, I think I portrayed it and myself incorrectly.  What I meant to say is [...]

Gilbert and Gubar talk extensively about the “Madwoman,” the “monster,” the “female rage” and my mind draws grotesque images of a messy-haired rag-covered and inevitably wide-eyed creature that storms attics and breaks social orders with the power of its (or hers?) madness and rage. Where is the limit of “healthy” feminism and are we not [...]

Because I had to rush through this attempt at reading Milton via psychoanalysis, a fuller reading is offered here.
My attempted psychoanalytic reading of Milton’s “On Shakespeare 1630” takes as its starting place Harold Bloom’s idea of the The Anxiety of Influence which, briefly summarized, revises Freudian Oedipal theory to create a theory of literary influence [...]

While reading Plato’s Pharmacy, I came upon a theme that seems to be recurrent in the study of literature: The difficulties involved in translation. Earlier, Guillory mentioned the loss of authenticity that accompanies translating a work from its original language for the sake of convenience. Derrida takes a different spin on the issues of translation. [...]

[my notes for week three are appended]
Derrida wrote Dissemination (where Plato’s Pharmacy first appeared) in 1972, before anyone used the term “deconstruction.” As Lynn points out, this term has become a word without a referent. That doesn’t make it meaningless, but it ironically points to the lack of a stable “there” which words can [...]

Lynn details Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind extensively in chapter seven. Focusing on the sexual aspects of psychology, Lynn holds that “the unconscious is inherently sexual” and “acts of literary criticism and psychological analysis begin to look very much alike.” While embedded sexual deviancy remains evident in a variety of literary works, Lynn (from [...]

If you are like me and just read the chapter number and hit the books, hopefully this helps, “Minding the Work” is Chapter 7 not 6.

There seems to be different views on the role that the author and the reader each play in the reading of a text. It seems that the reader can easily skew the author’s primary intentions, if they are completely unaware of the author’s background. Ch.7 of Lynn’s Texts and Contexts discuss the use of psychological [...]