Freudian Inspirations: Psychoanalysis and the Arts

This course engages with the central concepts and motifs of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and how they relate to works of literature, art, and film. What do Sophocles, Ovid, and Hoffmann tell us when we read Oedipus Rex, The Metamorphoses , and The Sandman today? How does our understanding of these texts differ from or resemble Freud’s reading of them? And when we engage art that cites psychoanalytic concepts—such as Hitchcock’s Marnie or Lars von Trier’s Melancholia —do we recognize the Freud we encounter in our readings of his own texts? (In English; all students welcome)