i'm really sad that psychoanalytic criticism has fallen out of favor

because i'm really pretty into it. theory in general usually takes a little grappling for me - lc's curriculum was a little theory-lite, to be completely honest - but thanks to professor tom schoeneman, psychoanalysis is an arena in which i feel particularly comfortable. not that i believe any of it. i was pretty jealous when a classmate presented on ecocriticism yesterday and said things like "our canon" and "our mission." not that i want to be an ecocritic, nature is pretty ok but i like sleeping indoors and zealotry makes me uncomfortable even when i agree with it, it's just that it's probably really satisfying to believe in the lens through which you read literature. i love the psychoanalysts, but most of what they have to say is pretty self-congratulating flatulence. but it's also really interesting, and i find i have a lot more positive things to say about it when it's applied to literature instead of people, especially since a lot of contemporary authors have read Freud and Lacan and so you know that some of them, at least, have it on the back burner while they're writing.