The reading for Tuesday, Sigmund Freud’s essay “On Mourning and Melancholia,” is now up under the Readings tab. Please read pages 243-250. I’m also posting below a sketch of an outline of the essay to help you read. I’ll stress that this outline should not be used in place of reading the essay. Class on Tuesday will be very difficult for you if you do not read and annotate Freud’s essay in advance. Remember, annotation can (and should!) include notations of moments that puzzle you. You should also make sure to look up words and concepts you don’t understand, having first consulted the outline.
We’ll be thinking about Freud’s essay alongside Melancholia. How might Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia help us understand Justine’s depression? How might Freud’s theory help us develop or modify the theories about apocalyptic film we’ve been discussing?
UPDATE: Here’s an example of a really great scene analysis from the pre-draft assignment. There are some very minor issues, but, overall, this is a useful model for going from observation to analysis: “The Earth Is Evil”