Yu-Jin Chung. “The Portrayal of Shell Shock in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Its Role as the Initial Stage for New Logos.”
My Honors thesis is about psychiatric Darwinist influence and the Freudian analysis of the failure in examining shell shock in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. As there are two perspectives on mental illness, the logic of the thesis will be built upon the question of why psychiatric Darwinism in treating mental illnesses did not work, and why the Freudian analysis in examining the failure is crucial in understanding Mrs. Dalloway. These two questions will be the foundational logic that will drive my literary analysis and perspective on Woolf’s novel. The main argument that I will have for the thesis is that psychiatric Darwinist view on mental illnesses failed to treat patients like Septimus because this perspective became a social norm, or what Freud puts as “god,” in Britain in the early 20th century. Specifically speaking, the argument of my thesis will be criticizing the foundational view that psychiatric Darwinism had in mental illnesses because it is the fundamental reason for the failure. Then I will strengthen my criticism on the failure by using the Freudian analysis. The Freudian approach that I will take will be based on his essay “The Future of an Illusion.” Then I will argue that Sir William and Dr. Holmes are unable to examine Septimus because the psychiatric Darwinist view on mental illnesses became a norm, or the “god,” or “religious doctrines,” as Freud puts it.
Also, the crucial questions that I will answer are why Freud’s ideas matter in discussing shell shock, and how my analysis on Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis contributes to understanding the social phenomenon that continues to influence the present. Thus, the thesis will reveal the crucial points that modernists wanted for the future and the psychic legacy that World War I left to humanity.
Scott MacKenzie. “Two Astronomers Walk into a Bard – An Analysis of Shifting Cosmologies in Shakespeare’s Plays”
My topic is about how Shakespeare’s plays, Richard II, Troilus and Cressida, Julius Caesar, King Lear and Hamlet, involved themselves in representations of celestial order, in order to understand whether these plays were in conversation with the transitioning modes of thinking regarding the order of the universe and humankind’s place in it in order to map Shakespeare’s thinking about the significance of the social, political, and cultural impact of the shifting understandings of the order of the universe. I want to examine the references in these plays by exploring not only the words of texts, but the characters who utter these words. I also want to examine the structure of the scenes within the plays and the rhythm and meter of verse for clues. I also want to examine scholarship regarding theater as a form, as well as examine how the physical structure of the theater itself added to the conversation.
I will argue that the plays I am examining are not merely historical artifacts. They incorporate and converse with other modes of thinking and with other texts. Understanding how words were used and how theater was placed within the conversation brings new or more robust
meaning to the words contained within a play and spoken on a stage. I want to explore the polysemic space where words can mean two things at once. The complexity revealed will give a sense of the tension and anxieties attributed to shifting modes of thought, considering how
important social and political order were connected to the order of the heavens. As words took on new meanings so did institutional and cultural structures. Understanding the disruption in meanings will help understand the disruption of early modern ideological structures. Understanding how metaphors were conceived and used will offer new insight into impact of shifting cosmological ideas.
