We looked at Freud and Narcissus, thinking particularly of gender. The result was of course to look first at Narcissus and Echo as if they were people whom one could analyze, and as models of selfhood that comment on the human condition. To go one step further, think of Narcissus and Echo as parts or potentials for a single self—the self to self-intersted to see outside itself, and the self so intersted in external validation it looses its voice and its substance. Freud usefully sets us on a path to make these kinds of readings.
Freud and Ovid agreed on the significance of youth in Narcissus’s condition, and on the attraction the narcissist has for others. Freud’s idea that narcissism is a disease for men, because women are supposed to be self-involved because of their biological natures, we rejected in principle, and found an ally in our stance in Ovid. Freud, with this idea, is clearly limited by his own era, but his position reflects a strong current in Western thought about gender, and about Narcissus. We had to agree that a female Narcissus, admiring herself in a mirror, would be a conventional image, and a less interesting reversal, than the male Narcissus Ovid provides us.
Ovid’s compassion for Echo is obvious, her plight is, er, echoed by the voiceless Io, Daphne, and others. Ovid draws attention to these voiceless women, by including so many of their stories, by being their voices. Is this a critique of a social injustice? Is this a statement of a tragic fact? Is there a larger pattern to their silencing? What does all this silence mean in the face of Ovid’s interest in storytelling, in having a voice?
Franz Kafka
(1883-1924)
born
writes in German
wrote our story in Fall of 1912, published in October 1915
displays symptoms of TB in 1917, spends rest of life in hospitals
Doors & stairs
The window
The picture and its frame
The beetle
Food/Nurishment
Comment on Modernity
Psychoanalytic
Myth and Folklore
Given that Ovid’s Metamorphoses
is all about meaning through context, what does the context of the Metamorphoses provide to “Metamorphosis”?
Knowing Ovid will make some features in “Metamorphosis” stand out, increase in
significance; what are they?
Obviously one must begin with the transformation itself—how is Gregor’s transformation similar and how is it different from transformations in Ovid? What do you learn from this comparison?
What characters from Ovid have traits in common with Gregor?
I can only think of Arachne, of the top of my head, who turns into an insect of any sort. She, as you will see later, is transformed into a spider by Minerva, the goddess of skills and crafts, for being too proud of her work. But there are others who loose their voices… their lives…
Homework due Wednesday—so I can finish grading your first homeworks by Monday.
The Theban cycle of myths in Ovid—all the rest of Bk III & parts of Bk IV
Euripides’ Bacchae
Nietzche
“Goddess of Quotas”
We’ll be running about a day behind, but I’ve cut the Argonautica, so we’ve got free space to use.