A psychoanalytical criticism of Edmund Spenser's Fairie Queene - Research Paper Example

? A psychoanalytical criticism of Edmund Spenser's Fairie Queene December 4, Psychoanalysis was proposed by an Austrian Neurologist Sigmund Freud who suggested it for the treatment of psycho patients by determining the circumstances which they have faced. In the light of his theories, the critic is done over the famous epic poem The Fairie Queene by Edmund Spenser. The poem represents virtues & their victory over evils, so the people who recognize & understand the actual moral of the poem; they know that success always prevails with righteousness. Moreover, there are romantic emotions involved particularly distressed women whose nights leave them for any reason so they find someone else to accompany them. The typical human emotions & instincts are described in a very persuasive manner. Spenser also flatters the kingdom & the queen so as to reward him as her favorite & with money; he actually presented an ideal England with nobility & peace everywhere. A psychoanalytical criticism of Edmund Spenser's Fairie Queene “I am continually occupied with psychology- really metapsychology. Traine’s book L’ Intelligence gives me special satisfaction. I hope something will come of it. The oldest ideas are really the most useful ones, as I am finding out belatedly. I hope to be well supplied with scientific interests till the end of my life.” (Holt, Robert, Freud. 1989) The words are from the famous Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud who is considered as the father of psychoanalysis. He was born in May 1856 & died in September 1939 due to mouth cancer, & developed several theories regarding human psychology which includes the intense topics like unconscious mind, repression, memories, conscience, instincts, ego, pleasure & drive etc. With the help of these theories, he became able to deduce a clinical method called psychoanalysis, particularly for the treatment of psychopath patients, which include a proper sitting with the analysand (patient) & a comprehensive dialogue between him & the psychoanalyst. The patient is asked to make himself relax & wander inside his memory lanes. The psychoanalyst walks side by side along with the patient in his memories & guides him with his clues or subjective points which lead the patient to the tender or hurt corner. The patient turns himself inside out & gives words to his feelings & emotions, his dreams & his fantasies, thereby allowing the psychoanalyst to recognize the reason behind the patient’s immoral behavior & thus try to resolve that unconscious problem or eradicate it from the core of the patient. This process not only helped in psychopathology but also inspired many other developments in psychotherapy, like the treatment for multiple personality disorders which also arise due to some sort of psychological trauma. Freud’s theories explain the connections between human activities, his conscience & the surroundings or circumstances around him through which any human being feels leisure or pleasure or gets depressed. According to him, the human mind is like an iceberg which all the way sank into the great ocean, only except its tip, which he called the consciousness. According to him, the huge ocean in which the iceberg has sunk is the vast number of desires, wishes or dreams which every human being go through in his entire life. The desires can be of any kind & due to any motivations regarding the particular circumstances. Freud divided this iceberg into three topologies; the conscious, the unconscious & the preconscious. Conscious part includes those things of which we are fully aware & about which we usually talk & think, without any hesitation. Our memory constitutes a part of our conscious, though it is not visible but can be recalled at any time. Freud termed this memory as the preconscious, which may also include one’s thoughts & perceptions. The preconscious constitutes the second topology of Freud’s iceberg analogy. The third topology contains the entire unconscious mind which is like a reservoir of mixed feelings, emotions, memories and thoughts etc which are outside of the consciousness. Freud said that the unconscious is responsible for the behavior of a person as it mostly contain the things which influenced him/her, like unpleasant feelings of conflict or pain or some pleasant feelings of trust & love since childhood. These feelings drive one’s behavior into positive or negative directions. These three aspects, the conscious, preconscious & the unconscious make up the whole personality & the psychology of a human being & are responsible for the particular behavior of any individual (Gines, Et Al. 2003). In the year 1923, Freud described his new theory which says that human personality constructs of the id, ego and the superego. The most basic & primitive part of our personality is our id which maneuvers according to the pleasure activities and when it finds the required pleasure, which can be of any kind, it simply hunt for immediate satisfaction. According to Freud the life and death instincts called eros & thanatos respectively, are the integral parts of the id which are run by a continuously flowing & dynamic internal energy termed as libido. The flow of Libido is regulated by the Ego which varies with the circumstances & the demands. Ego is considered to be purely objective & it acts as a command & control centre of our personality. It uses the defense mechanism to protect anyone from anxiety & depression whenever the memory or the unconscious retrieves something unpleasant or undesirable. The superego is some kind of conscience which behaves like a judge & makes standards, rules & moral values for an individual human being. Whenever a person does something wrong or bad, the superego generates feelings of guilt & shame or vice versa. It always struggle for perfection & idealism. Early childhood development era of a person performs a great role in this manner as his/her behavior depicts the experiences of childhood. Freud named this time as “the psychosexual years of development”. (Sigmund Freud.2011) Thus Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis mainly revolves around finding out or realizing the cause of disturbance by judging the past experiences from the unconscious part of the patient’s memory. By studying many different cases, he generalized the fact that the attitude of a person in a society or behavioral aspects of every human being are steered by his emotional state which is buried deep into his unconscious & are difficult to determine as the human mind does not give permission to anyone to interfere in its privacy & therefore it has created a kind of defense barrier around itself. Hence the psychoanalysts usually face a kind of resistance due to the presence of this barrier of the patient’s mind when they try to determine the cause of his psychological problems. Using the psychoanalytical techniques, there are about twenty two theories proposed so far concerning the psychoanalysis & the stages of human mental development. Some famous names include Lacanian psychoanalysis, Interpersonal psychoanalysis, Culturalist psychoanalysis, Relational psychoanalysis, Interpersonal-relational psychoanalysis, Intersubjective psychoanalysis, Modern psychoanalysis etc. All these theories have been inspired from Freud & are an extension of his ideas but have their own tactics to cure the psycho patients. There are also psychopathology techniques for the cure of patients having mental disorders. The mental problems are not by birth but are developed due to unfortunate circumstances like sexual harassment, poverty, lack of appreciation, negligence from the parents in childhood, disputed or single parents etc. Some patients feel guilty & blame themselves that they may have done something very wrong in their past, like crimes, but some patients have gone well far beyond the border lines & are not willing to make an honest living & become a good & responsible citizens again. Such people are termed as psychopaths & there are special techniques to mould them towards well being & rehabilitation. Thus regarding our social & moral values, Freud’s theories can be divided into two major categories. First category includes the general acquisition of any kind of knowledge by children from their homes & surroundings, like adaptation of language or general ideas regarding sexuality. Most children want to have a romantic & affectionate relationship with their parents & this is because they had seen the affection & love between the parents with other kids. Second category relates with the religious ideas, moralities & social ethics or any kind of violence happening in the society. Psychoanalysis gains much fame when it was named as “the interpretation of dreams”. That was the time (1900) when mostly people do not give much importance to dreams, but when Freud started interpreting dreams as a combination of events occurred to someone in his/her past. Ancient interpreters take dreams to be a prediction for the upcoming events in the future. This change in the traditional approach & the interpretation of dreams as a part of one’s unconscious caused revolution in the field of psychology (Robert Bocock. 1983). Regarding to our paper on the psychoanalysis of Edmund Spencer’s "The Fairie Queene", first get a brief view about the author & the poem. Edmund Spenser was a famous English poet born in the year 1552 & died at the age of 47 in the year 1599. He was recognized by his well versed poetry in the English era of modernism & renaissance. He is popular for his long epic poem The Fairie Queene, which is written in the praise & honor of Tudor dynasty which started from the year 1485 with first monarch Henry Tudor & lasted till 1603 when Queen Elizabeth I was in power. Infact during Spencer’s time, Elizabeth I reign was firm over the whole England so the poem is mainly a fantastical allegory of Queen Elizabeth I. Spencer wanted a permanent place at Elizabeth’s court as her only & favorite poet, that is why he wrote the poem in a very gallant & archaic style using classical analogies & fantasies & the modern era English vocabulary also called the medieval time vocabulary. Spencer had intended his poem to become a series of total twelve books, with each book focusing on one of the twelve private virtues, but sadly, he was only able to find some time for the completion of six of them till his death, & those books were based on the separate issues of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice & Courtesy. The set of first three books was published in the year 1590 and second set of three books was published in 1596. Each of these six stories focus on an individual King Arthur’s knight with the importance of the virtue in the particular story. The villains are the characters having opposite side of the described virtue & the hero knight fights for the truth & justice (Pendergast, John S. 2006). Spenser was considered to be the Poet of poets as he emerged during the renaissance era & he modernized the English literature with his magical words. He was like a bridge between the medieval and early modern periods in English literature. His work was inspired from modern times poets like Geoffrey Chaucer and the continental poets Francesco Petrarch. Spenser himself was greatly admired by poets of all times including William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron, John Milton, Percy Shelley and Alfred Lord Tennyson. He was the first one who introduced a number of different poetic techniques & demonstrated the form's full potential. Besides the flattering of queen, he purposed an Ideal England full of virtues & chivalry. Critics, on the other hand, believe that Spenser’s work is too hard to imagine as it is full of fantasies & imaginations & anyone having a quick imaginative power can completely understand it. The allegorical similarities are sometimes very familiar or sometimes get hard to understand. But overall the poem is a good depiction of human psychology & emotions. The allegories are only to describe a situation of that time & cannot be implied on today’s modern world & its code of ethics (Spenser, Wauchope. 1911). Spenser has described the love & affection between humans very beautifully i.e., between the night & his beloved & he showed how the sexual relations affect human behavior in either positive or negative way. Whenever the loved ones go through the turmoil of separation from one another, either worldly or divine, it is always painful as humans are sensitive & they need a companion for fulfillment of their sexual desires. Hence according to Freud’s theory, sexual & romantic relationships are the primary cause of human pleasure or distress & their effects remain in their unconscious. The poem also describes the relationship between two females, one of them who act & dresses like a male member is the representation of masculine strength & she is attracted by other females who are more feminine as compared to her. Thus they both make up a relationship which includes their both body & souls as they do not have a male for fulfilling their desires. The knight is away on the war & the lady is depressed & wants a companion for her. On the other hand, critics say that Spenser itemized the body parts of a woman who is actually a mistress & in this way he makes a woman “a good combination of different pieces” to look at, which cannot be considered a moral thing. Young people who read the poem may get attracted towards sex in a way which cannot be considered good for them. People can become sexual criminals & may harass others particularly children. The hero of the poem move from one woman to another, praising her body & features only, not indulging in a loving relationship with her, which may cause harmful effects on young people when they read the poem (Spenser Studies 2008). The Faerie Queene also contains biblical allegory which makes it a kind of religious poem which explains the power of virtues, so it affects positively over human psychology that good always win no matter whatever the hardships come in its way. So the poem is a kind of motivational rhyme towards good deeds & avoiding evil things or the social crimes. According to Freud’s theory, social crimes are mainly caused by the people who have been through distressed circumstances in their past. The poem educates young people so about nobility & gentleness so that they become good citizen of the society. The analogy in the poem describes two levels, one describes the moral, philosophical and religious aspects which mainly comes from the heroic side and represents all Christians. The second level focuses on the political, social and religious aspects which are represented by Queen Elizabeth I. Spenser flattered the Queen as a symbol of wisdom, morals & nobility & praise the entire dynasty. His objectives were to symbolize an ideal ruler for England along with a permanent place or stipend from the Queen. He was not wealthy by born & he saw poverty & had limited resources as compare to other people. This was embedded in his unconscious & he was not aware of it that whenever he flatters the queen for money he only makes himself more pitiful instead of making himself respectable. That is exactly according to the Freud’s theory of unconscious as it is responsible for the behavior of a person because it contains the most influenced things of one’s entire life (The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser). Spenser also takes the idea of using analogies in describing the wars in which England have participated in history or during his time. The analogy of knights fighting with each other in fairy land is taken to describe England’s defeat from Spanish Armada during that time. It may be a depiction of the controversies between Protestants & Catholics. He used such allegories which are not easy to match with a particular case, in order to avoid any kind of defame. Moreover, the poem is written according to that particular era of time, when battles were fought to take over thrones & it was considered a chivalrous act. According to some critics, Edmund Spencer wanted fame & money so he used his most offensive weapon, his poetry for this purpose, which proved very fruitful for him as he received continuous money from Queen’s court in the name of pension & get famous by writing exceptional English poem of that time. But it may not be considered very true as he himself said that he wanted people to get gallant & adapt virtues & he wanted to play his part in betterment of society (Spenser, Stoll, Kaske. 2006). Some people, particularly the opponents of Spenser, also argue that he versed such ideas in his poem which motivate towards bloodsheds & wars in England. This is not also true & again a misinterpretation of his psychology. According to Freud, every human being is a clear depiction of his past & Spenser might have seen poverty or mediocre circumstances but he was never like a warrior himself, although he was once appointed as a knight in an England war & was then rewarded of his gallantry with a small town & a residence. So the psychoanalysis of the Fairie Queene implies much of the Freud’s theory & verifies it with the description of human behavior of the characters & by Edmund Spenser himself. Bibliography Holt, Robert R, and Sigmund Freud. Freud Reappraised: A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Theory. New York: Guilford Press, 1989. Print. Bocock, Robert. Sigmund Freud. Chichester: E. Horwood, 1983. Print. By Gines, Et Al. “General Psychology”, Phillipine copyright 2003. Rex book store Inc Sigmund Freud (Compiled by Himmat Rana in May 1997) < http://www.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/freud.htm> retrieved on 4/12/2011 The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser , retrieved on 4/12/2011 Spenser Studies Vol. 23, 2008. (309–315) Spenser, Edmund, Abraham D. Stoll, Carol V. Kaske, and Dorothy Stephens. The Faerie Queene. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co, 2006. Print. Davis, Walter. "Spenser and the History of Allegory." English Literary Renaissance. 32.1 (2002): 152-167. Print. Spenser, Edmund, and George A. Wauchope. Spenser's the Fairie Queene: Book I. New York: MacMillan, 1911. Print. Spenser, Edmund, Thomas P. Roche, and C P. O'Donnell. The Faerie Queene. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978. Print. Read More