by Marites Bundoc
Literary critics have used various theories through the lens of which they interpreted and analyzed works of literature, from Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Poetics to Marxism to the modernist “queer” theory and the psychoanalytic approaches of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries[1].
In my master’s at Tiffin, I wrote a paper on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” and my research introduced me to the Freudian scholar Princess Marie Bonaparte of France, whose work The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psycho-analytic Interpretation, created a global blueprint on how to analyze Poe’s works [2]. Many other scholars, who said that Bonaparte’s fans completely ignored the formal elements of Poe’s works in favor of psychoanalysis, criticized this bandwagon, but it remains one of the most widely used approach to the analysis of Poe’s stories and poems.
Oedipus Rex, a play by Sophocles, was part of my Comparative Literature major curriculum at the University of the Philippines. To avert the prophesy on the boy’s fate that he will, one day, kill his own father and marry his own mother, the baby’s father, King Laius of Thebes orders a servant to kill the baby but the servant, pitying the baby prince, does not kill him but puts it outside of the kingdom where he was found by a shepherd who takes him to the king of Corinth. He was adopted and raised by the Corinthian king as his own son. Later, Oedipus hears an oracle predicting that he will one day kill his father and marry his mother. Since Oedipus did not know that he was adopted, he left Corinth to escape his fate but, on his way, he meets a caravan that tries to put him off the road. In his hubris and impulsiveness, he slays them all, including the king of Thebes, who is his biological father. He chances to go to the kingdom of Thebes and marries the now widowed Queen Jocasta, who is his real mother. The play ends in a tragedy where he punishes himself for the crimes he has done, to save his people from a plague that is caused by his wrong actions. This was the origin of the Oedipus complex.
The id, ego, and superego are concepts in psychoanalysis used by Freud to treat his patients. The id is the innate part of the mind where impulses are seated. The ego is the intermediary between the id and the superego, the latter being the ethical aspect of the personality. I also encountered these theories as I researched Edgar Allan Poe’s work.
Bourgeoise was the middle class that rose in England during the late seventeenth century. They were the new-rich class which earned their wealth from profitable trade and from the empire’s expansion abroad, acquiring colonies. Some of the bourgeoisie’s burgeoning capital also came from slave trade. This class had the capital needed in a commercial economy brought about by the Industrial Revolution. They were often in conflict with the proletariat, the working class.
Capitalism is a system of private ownership, which controls the economics of a country. In this system, the people, not the government, own most businesses. The United States, The United Kingdom, and Singapore are examples of capitalist countries.
Proletariat is the social class that comprises the labor force of a country. They are the working class, dependent on wages from their employers. Their only asset is their capacity to work.
Marxism is a socio-political system whereby ownership of industrialization is shared by the people. It is anti-capitalism. It was a brainchild of Karl Marx, who preached the ideology of socialism [3].
The word revolution evokes the French Revolution, the revolution of the masses against czarism in Russia, the English Revolution, and the Philippine Revolution. Those were bloody revolutions that effected a change of government among those nations. There were peaceful revolutions also, like Gandhi’s non-violent revolution that eventually obtained India’s independence from British Rule and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s passionate cry for equality of races and the closing of the economic divide between the whites and the blacks in America.
Marxism, bourgeoisie, proletariat, and revolution are inter-related concepts. In Marxism, the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy are eventually toppled down by a revolution from the grassroots, the members of the proletariat and the poor. Gramsci talks about the intellectuals leading this kind of revolution in the concept of hegemony, an intellectual and moral control[4]. These concepts can be applied to the analysis of such literary works as Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, among others. These novels talk about a revolution by the masses, as inspired or instigated by the intellectuals in society. Les Mis is about hunger and poverty, which corrupt an individual’s soul. This hunger will eventually lead to a revolution by the masses against the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. In a similar vein, ATale of Two Cities talks about the beginnings of the French Revolution, which eventually led to the execution of most of the aristocracy in France, including the beheading of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. In that story, some of the French aristocrats managed to escape to London where they hid in fear for their own lives. Thus, Dicken’s novel talks about Paris and London, two cities characterized by class divide and by the mounting disillusion of the proletariat and the despair of the poor.
I heard these concepts in the context of the novels I have mentioned, when I read them and saw them in the movies. I also read about the life of Nicholas and Alexandra, the last czar and czarina of Russia and saw films and documentaries about the downfall of Russian autocracy. Karl Marx passionately despised the Romanov Dynasty, and his ideas influenced its overthrow. The movie The Last Emperor was likewise about the end of centuries of Empire, at the dawn of communism in China. A course in contemporary literature that I took at Harvard via edx was about Eileen Chang, who grew up in Hong Kong. The course professor Dr. David Damrosch interviewed a Harvard doctoral student who had first-hand knowledge of Eileen Chang as her one-time professor in English at a university in China. The interview was about Chang’s works, which were mostly inspired by her own experience while growing up in Hong Kong at the wake of communism in Mainland China.
Literary criticism has always been one of my favorite niches to undertake. There is so much you can talk about and explore in this area. You are welcome to share your ideas or experiences in your analysis of works that you are passionate about. I would love to hear your perspectives.
[1] Stevens, Anne. Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction. 2nd ed., Ontario, Broadview Press,2021, pp 5-8.
[2] Bundoc, Marites. “Monomania in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’” Term Paper, Tiffin University, 2023. http://www.tiffin.edu.
[3] Stevens, Ibid. “Karl Marx,” pp. 136-40.
[4] Ibid., p. 200.
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