Mss141
Spring 2003
Paper 1 Topics

 
Stage One: Select one of the topics below (or develop another in consultation with me) and prepare a short 5-10 minute oral presentation of the ideas, problems, argument you are going to develop in the paper. These short oral presentations will take place in your small groups on February 19.

* The presentation may be very informal. It is ideally a conversation you'll have with your group members who may ask you questions or give you additional ideas to think about as you work on the paper. This stage is simply an exploration of what you will later work through in formal writing.

* The same day as the oral presentation, please submit to me a ONE-PAGE summary of the presentation: your ideas, what you want to focus on, the questions you will ask, etc. This is also very informal-- a kind of paper proposal-- though it should be typed and double-spaced.

The first draft of the paper will be due on February 26.

Stage Two: The first draft of the paper should be about 5-6 pages, double-spaced. This is an analytical paper you will complete using the texts we have read for class and your own ideas. No outside research should be necessary. I'm interested in your ideas and the way in which you can support an argument through careful analysis.

Topics:

If you have another topic, please do not hesitate to present it to me.

1. The Usefulness and Limitations of Freudian Dream Analysis: following Freud's method as detailed in The Interpretation of Dreams, take one of your own dreams and interpret it. Can you find examples of dream distortion, condensation and/or displacement? Can you discover the fulfillment of a wish? Use this exercise as a means with which to evaluate Freud's method. What is the usefulness of the method and what are its limitations?

2. Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (1945): The film supposedly uses Freudian dream analysis to unravel a mystery. But is the film faithful to Freud? See the film in its entirety (on reserve at ATS) and determine exactly which Freudian principles it espouses and which it neglects. Why might the filmmakers have made the choices they did?

3. Dream and Wakefulness: How does Gautier play with the relationship between the dream world and the "real" waking world in "The Coffee Pot" and/or "The Dead in Love"? How do these stories reverse commonly held notions about the relationship between dream and waking life (such as the ones Freud mentions in chapter one of The Interpretation of Dreams)? What overall picture of dream does Gautier present?

4. Narrative on the Couch: literary analysis often makes use of psychoanalytic techniques to interpret a narrative. How would you read "The Coffee Pot" or "The Dead in Love" as a Freudian or a Jungian? Analyze one of these stories using the principles and ideas from either method: Freud would look for distortion, examples of condensation, displacement, and of course wish fulfillment, whereas Jung would focus on the archetypes present in the literary dream and what they may be trying to tell the dreamer. Do you find that these methods yield interesting analyses of the story?