Topics for Seminars in Psychology and Literature

1. The Confessional Mode

   Plato, The Apology of Socrates
   Augustine, Confessions
   T‘ao Ch‘ien
   T‘ang Poetry

   Medieval Lyrics: A Selection

   The Archpoet, "His Confession"
   Alfonso X, "The Scorpions"

   Dante, almost all of the pilgrim’s interlocutors, notably Farinata (Inferno X); Pier della Vigne (Inferno XIII); Guido da Montefeltlro (Inferno XXVII), Ugolino (Inferno XXXII–XXXIII)
   Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue; The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale
   Kenko, Essays In Idleness
   Sor Juana, A Reply to Sor Filotea de la Cruz
   Rousseau, Confessions
   Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journals
   Lu Xun, Wild Grass
   Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows
   Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
   Inuit Songs
   Neruda, "Tonight I Can Write"

2. Cultural Pressures on Families in Crisis

   The Rāmāyana of Vālmīki
   The Mahābhārata
   Beowulf
   Thorstein the Staff-Struck
   The Tale of the Heike
   Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone
   Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
   Tagore, Punishment
   Faulkner, Go Down Moses: "The Bear"
   Zhang, Love In a Fallen City
   Peynetsa, The Boy and the Deer
   Wright, The Man Who Was Almost a Man
   Bachmann, The Barking
   Achebe, Things Fall Apart
   Mahasweta, Breast-Giver
   Munro, Walker Brothers Cowboy

3. The Freudian Model and its Precursors

   Genesis, Chapters 1–4, 22, 27; The Story of Joseph
   Aeschylus, The Oresteia
   Sophocles, Oedipus the King
   Euripides, Medea
   Chaucer, The Wife’s Prologue and Tale; The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale
   Ferdowsoi, Shâhnâme
   Murasaki, The Tale of Genji
   Ariosto, Orlando Furioso
   Shakespeare, Othello; Hamlet
   Ibsen, Hedda Gabler
   Freud, Dora
   Kafka, The Metamorphosis
   Rulfo, Pedro Paramo
   Lispector, The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman

4. Gender Definition

   Sappho
   Ovid, Metamorphosis, selections from Books IX and X
   Petronius, The Satyricon
   Dante, Inferno, Cantos XV and XVI
   Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale
   Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (Bradamant and Richardet)
   Whitman, Song of Myself
   Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor
   Proust, Remembrance of Things Past
   Mann, Death in Venice
   Brecht, The Good Woman of Setzuan

5. Identity in Crisis

   The Epic of Gilgamesh
   Genesis; The Story of Joseph
   Sophocles, Oedipus the King
   Ovid, Metamorphoses
   Cervantes, Don Quixote
   Shakespeare, Othello; Hamlet
   Dickinson, Poems
   Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author
   Eliot, The Waste Land
   Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman
   Kafka, Metamorphosis
   Dadié, The Hunter and the Boa
   Borowski, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the Gas Chamber
   Lispector, The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman
   El Sadaawi, In Camera
   Yehoshua, Facing the Forests