The necessity for understanding the cultural influences upon philosophic and artistic expression has long been subverted by the attention given to theoretical or artistic giants, who come to represent entire ages.  Shakespeare may serve as the best example, insofar as the Renaissance stage—undoubtedly the most prolific and richest literary period of any age in the West—is known and studied as the “Shakespearean Stage,” which lends a name and provides a focus to an era that inadvertently eclipses some of the finest dramatists the world has known.  In most courses of study, Shakespeare appears as the cultural icon around whom, it is believed, his contemporaries revolved, when in fact Shakespeare’s genius is more a synthesis and reflection of his contemporaries than a unique, unparalleled talent.  That is not to say, of course, that Shakespeare was not exceptional, but merely to emphasize that genius may be a product of a given culture as much as the defining element within it. 

 So too Freud, obviously not the inventor of human sexuality, worked within the older schema of Faculty Psychology in order to postulate a theory of psychic energy predicated on two “drives” endemic to humanity, Life and Death.  But then Freud was a product of the nineteenth century, and, as such, was influenced by Darwin, Hegel, and the era’s predilection for scientific inquiry, which had more validity in shaping his genius than does his historical reputation for “originality.”  More specifically, as with Darwin, Freud was the recipient of opprobrium because he was the last messenger, not the first.  That is to say that, in a long line of both artistic and philosophic expression, a culture tends to single out the individual who, as savior or sinner, becomes identified with the age as opposed to understanding the properties of an epoch.  Freud’s concern with the displacement of psychic energy, the recognition of its repression and the importance of the “dream-work” in unmasking that denial, and a frank acknowledgment of the influences of both heredity and environment in shaping the psyche have today been simplified into the mythic “human sexuality,” wherein lay people use the vocabulary of what we have termed Freudian psychology without understanding its most basic concepts.  “Freudian” has passed into the Western cultural lexicon much as “Shakespeare” has: with little understanding, less reading, but a general consensus that the namesake represents genius.

        Our final cultural icon will be Hitchcock and his contribution to the art of film.  While it is difficult to imagine anyone working in film today who has not been influenced by the so-called “master of suspense,” Hitchcockian technique is illustrative of stage dramas and the street performances of ballad singers of the early years of twentieth-century London.  Yet Hitchcock, through the films he directed and those directors he influenced, will long be recognized as the supreme talent in an art form we are only now coming to understand.  The influences of film upon society cannot be overstated in a culture such as America (Hitchcock’s adopted home) where people go to the movies almost as often as those who attended the theater in Shakespeare’s day—and, when we factor in its influences upon television, we find more than a cultural pastime.  Rather, the medium has entertained but just as often enraged, been used as propaganda for the worst excesses of a people, and today more than ever finds itself blamed for violence and other behavioral deficiencies.  We no longer accuse literature of instigating through imagination the worst excesses of behavior, but have instead turned to the illusory world of movies for being overly “realistic” and gratuitous in its graphic depictions—the censors no longer need protect us from licentious books or the smut of Freud because the new enemy is film, wherein the imagination is secondary to the literal representation.  And it may be, in looking at the psychology of a passive medium as opposed to the active imagination that reading requires, that an overly-emphatic emphasis upon the visual does have negative effects that we are only now beginning to realize.  But whether the argument has merit or not, it serves to illustrate the power of cinema, especially when we realize that, as an art form, it is still in its infancy.

        This course will thus permit students to recognize in some detail the works of these “geniuses,” yet afford a cultural study of the eras that produced them, so as to ask the appropriate question: which came first—the culture or its defining talent?  Toward that end, we will repeatedly ask, in light of the topics for discussion, whether genius is an exceptional gift capable of transforming an age, or the unique ability of the few to synthesize and to reformulate the artistic, philosophic, and cultural expressions of entire peoples into coherent, definable statements that capture the essence of an era.  By studying these three exemplars, we can best grasp the vast cultural changes—and reflections by future generations—that these recognized geniuses either caused or summarized in their work.  Moreover, we will endeavor in this course not only to study the individual talents and cultural background that produced these talents, but to link them: we will consider the so-called “Freudian” aspects found in Shakespeare, Freud’s own fascination with Shakespeare and his strange penchant for believing that William Shakespeare was not the author of the plays that bear his name, as well as the Shakespearean aspects of Hitchcock’s work and its obvious indebtedness to Freud.

       Students will come to understand the cultural relevance in shaping a discipline or stirring individual imagination, as well as to appreciate the cross currents of thought in otherwise seemingly disparate fields of study.  Furthermore, students will learn why Freudian psychology, for instance, still maintains relevance as a system of thought that must be understood, if for no other reason than to provide a point of departure for situating contemporary psychological inquiry, or come to appreciate its prevalent and justifiable uses as a behavioral and philosophic schema in understanding literary creations that predate Freud.  Such interdisciplinary goals, it is hoped, will benefit students in various disciplines in general, and help them more fully to comprehend these diverse cultural periods in particular.  The course is a 3000-level course In order to take advantage of class experiences students may have had in introductory courses--the study of Shakespeare in an Introduction to Literature course, for example, or the rudiments of elementary psychology. 

       Course Outline:

Week one: The cultural background of Elizabethan England

Week two: The Elizabethan stage; Hamlet

Week three: Poets and dramatists; Hamlet

Week four: Shakespeare’s reputation; King Lear

Week five: “Re-inventing” Shakespeare; King Lear

Week six: The cultural background of nineteenth-century Europe

Week seven: An overview of Freudian psychology

Week eight: The “Dream-Work”; therapy and techniques

Week nine: “Civilization and its Discontents”: sixty years after Freud

Week ten:  Freud’s fascination (obsession) with the works of
       “Shakespeare”

Week eleven: The cultural background of the first half of the Twentieth Century in America

Week twelve: The American cinema and the “Hollywood style”: a
        brief history

Week thirteen: Auteur theory; “Psycho”

Week fourteen: Hitchcockian technique; “Vertigo”

Week fifteen: Film and Freud; “Spellbound”

         Course Requirements:  Besides class discussion and lecture, students will be required to take two examinations—a midterm and final—as well as write three short papers of approximately five pages on each of the three areas of study: Shakespeare’s drama, Freud’s psychology, and Hitchock’s films.  In addition, individual reports will be assigned to groups of three students each, in which they will provide the class with pertinent cultural background on a given era.

      Special Requirements: Students will be asked to set aside one night a week outside class for three weeks in order to view the movies in their entirety—Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. is suggested.

   Required Reading and Viewing: The following represents a list of primary works that student’s will read or view.