Last week I wrote my analysis on Formalism and Carnivalesque, and with the reading of Shklovsky and Bakhtin, coupled with class discussion and Dr. Wexler’s incorporation of the Bananas defamiliarization clip, I have a pretty decent comprehension of the material. I was concerned, however, over what I felt was complex material of Saussure semiology last week, and I was relieved to be able to grasp it better in a quick discussion with a classmate-Jan—and then Dr. Wexler’s advertisement exercise, which distinguished the signification process of the signifier and the signified, i.e. semiotics.
At class’s end I overheard an animated conversation between Eric and Dr. Wexler of “archetypes” in the movie Clockwork Orange, which I would have found more interesting had I seen the movie in the last thirty-five years and had retained Northrop Frye’s discourse on “The Archetypes in Literature” better, so the next day I went to Best Buy and bought the Clockwork Orange DVD—which I hope to see soon, and I reread Frye.
We do have a lot of theorists to cover in class, and I hope we can spend some more time in discussing Frye, and Tzvetan Todorov. Frye, I believe, tied in Carl Jung’s psychoanalysis theory of the collective archetypical memory to his “archetypes” in literature. Todorov’s discourse on narratology is very structured; it is interesting how he creates “a scientific knowledge of literature” (Leitch 2022).
For tomorrow’s class, I have read Sigmund Freud, and I can see how one can incorporate his theories to literature as he has done with Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. Later tonight, I will read Jacques Lacan. It is interesting, but I think Todorov up to this point is the only critic who remains living. Tomorrow, I look forward to the class presentation and Dr. Wexler’s lecture and exercises.
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