EL 68H – LITERATURE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
Instructor: Aylin Alkaç
E-mail: alkacayl@boun.edu.tr
Schedule: W 6 7 8 (TB 480)
Office: TB 508
Office Hours: Friday 14:00-16:00
Course Requirements: Students are expected





attend all classes and participate actively in class discussions
come to class having read the assigned material for the day
write six response papers on the themes of their choice (max. 1000 words)
make a presentation on a text (not from the syllabus)
write a paper of 4500-5000 words
Weekly Reading Schedule:
Week 1
Feb. 10
Introduction to literature and psychoanalysis
S. Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), chapters 2,
3,4, 6 (sections A, B, C, D and I) and 7 (C).
R. Con Davis, “Introduction: Lacan and Narration”
Week 2
Feb. 17
Trauma and Mourning
S. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
“Mourning and Melancholia”
Poems by Keats and E. A. Poe
Week 3
Feb. 24
Father and Law - Transgression
S. Freud, “On Oedipus” from Interpretation of Dreams
J. Lacan, from Ecrits
S. Felman, “Beyond Oedipus: The Specimen Story of
Psychoanalysis”
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Week 4
March 2
(M)other and Desire
S. Freud, from Interpretation of Dreams
E. Jones, “A Psychoanalytic Study of Hamlet”
J. Lacan, “Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet”
S. Zizek, “Hamlet Before Oedipus”
W. Shakespeare, Hamlet
Week 5
March 9
The Uncanny and the Abject
S. Freud, “The Uncanny”
J. Kristeva, from Powers of Horror
E. T. A. Hoffman, “The Sandman”
C. Perrault, “Blue Beard”
Angela Carter, “Bluebeard”
Week 6
March 16
Subject and Gaze
J. Lacan, “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’”
J. Derrida, “The Purveyor of Truth”
R. Con Davis, “Lacan, Poe, and Narrative Repression”
S. Zizek, “Why does a Letter Always Arrive at Its Destination”
E. A. Poe, “Purloined Letter”
Week 7
March 23
Fantasy
G. Deleuze, Coldness and Cruelty
L. von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs
R. Polanski, Venus in Furs (film)
S. Zizek, “The Seven Veils of Fantasy”
Week 8
March 30
Woman and Feminine Sexuality
J. Lacan, “God and Woman’s jouissance”, “A Love Letter”
L. Irigaray, from Speculum of the Other Woman, from This Sex
Which is Not One
H. Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”, “Sorties”
Week 9
April 6
Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve
Week 10
April 13
Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho
Don Delillo, Point Omega
Week 11
(April 20)
Spring Break
Week 12
April 27
Racial Subjects
F. Fanon, from Black Skin, White Masks
H. Bhabha, “Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial
Condition”
Week 13
May 4
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Week 14
May 11
Presentations on Chosen Topics
Suggested Readings:
J. Lacan,
 Four Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis
 The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
 From Ecrits,
o The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis
o The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud
o The Signification of the Phallus
o The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious
o The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience
J. Kristeva


From Revolution in Poetic Language, Chp. 1 The Semiotic and the Symbolic
Desire in language : a semiotic approach to literature and art
S. Freud


From Ego and Id, Chp. III Ego and the Superego
“The Unconscious”
S. Zizek


Looking Awry
From Metastases of Enjoyment, “Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing”
Articles:

“The Oedipus Problem in Freud and Lacan”, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Critical Inquiry, Vol.
20, No. 2 (Winter, 1994), pp. 267-282