...Title: Author(s): Publication Details: Source: Document Type: The Carnivalesque in A Midsummer Night's Dream David Wiles Shakespeare and Carnival after Bakhtin. New York: St. Martin's Press, Inc., 1998. Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 82. Detroit: Gale, 2004. From Literature Resource Center. Critical essay Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning [(essay date 1998) In the following essay, Wiles examines the festive and carnivalesque elements in A Midsummer Night's Dream. According to the critic, the play was historically part of an "aristocratic carnival" used to celebrate weddings in upper-class society.] Carnival theory did not begin with Bakhtin, and we shall understand Bakhtin's position more clearly if we set it against classical theories of carnival.1 From the Greek world the most important theoretical statement is to be found in Plato: The gods took pity on the human race, born to suffer as it was, and gave it relief in the form of religious festivals to serve as periods of rest from its labours. They gave us as fellow revellers the Muses, with Apollo their leader, and Dionysus, so that men might restore their way of life by sharing feasts with gods.2 This is first a utopian theory, maintaining that carnival restores human beings to an earlier state of being when humans were closer to the divine. And second, it associates carnival with communal order. Plato argues that festive dancing creates bodily order, and thus bodily and...
Words: 8623 - Pages: 35
...The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud (1900) PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION Wheras there was a space of nine years between the first and second editions of this book, the need of a third edition was apparent when little more than a year had elapsed. I ought to be gratified by this change; but if I was unwilling previously to attribute the neglect of my work to its small value, I cannot take the interest which is now making its appearance as proof of its quality. The advance of scientific knowledge has not left The Interpretation of Dreams untouched. When I wrote this book in 1899 there was as yet no "sexual theory," and the analysis of the more complicated forms of the psychoneuroses was still in its infancy. The interpretation of dreams was intended as an expedient to facilitate the psychological analysis of the neuroses; but since then a profounder understanding of the neuroses has contributed towards the comprehension of the dream. The doctrine of dream-interpretation itself has evolved in a direction which was insufficiently emphasized in the first edition of this book. From my own experience, and the works of Stekel and other writers, [1] I have since learned to appreciate more accurately the significance of symbolism in dreams (or rather, in unconscious thought). In the course of years, a mass of data has accumulated which demands consideration. I have endeavored to deal with these innovations by interpolations in the text and footnotes. If these additions do...
Words: 226702 - Pages: 907
