So I've been doing a lot of research, reading a lot of different books in new areas I've never really explored before in any of my other english lit classes (literary psychology - who knew?) and this are starting to take shape. Sort of.
Usually I never have a clear picture of the paper until it's written but I can definitely say I'm focusing mainly on Fight Club and Jekyll and Hyde. The use of dreams/sleep to create dual consciousness in the main characters, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (which was in the self help section of the library, can you believe that!) which changed the way people were able to understand and discuss consciousness openly.
I know I want to show the progression of these topics in literature from the 19th century to the present, where it's going in the future since many people find Freud's theories to be pretty outdated at this point. I've been reading a couple of books by J Allan Hobson, a book on experimental literary psychology by Leon Edel, obviously Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, I skimmed through some literary crit books on madness in literature which weren't as helpful as I originally hoped, but it did give me the idea to maybe add a section in my paper on authors who are mentally unstable - like our good friend Virginia Woolf. I definitely want to bring up her and James as they're both good examples of late 19th, early 20th century writers that were able to capture consciousness in a new, intricate way.
Yeah I realize I don't really have a motivating question yet and maybe my topic could still use some fine tuning, but it's definitely improved since last time so I'm feeling pretty positive about it.
Comments (1)
Not much I can really say but keep on keeping on. From the sound of it you may feel like me- much to say and read, not enough time to write.
Posted by Valerie | December 3, 2007 7:46 PM
Posted on December 3, 2007 19:46