(Part two of three in a series of articles on Zelda, psychology and literary criticism)
In order to continue my study of A Link Between Worlds and Dark Triad, I would like to first explore what lead to the interaction between psychology and literature. After all, how can I examine the text without first finding an appropriate means of doing so?
It almost goes without saying that Sigmund Freud had a great impact on the world, both as a whole and within the discipline of psychology. I say great, but I really mean "large, far-reaching." A great deal of his ideas have since been shown to be faulty, sexist, or just plain weird.
One such concept is the Oedipus complex. To summarize, Oedipus, a young king, accidentally murders his father and marries his own mother. Freud extended this plot element into the explanation of a complex which could be applied to both real-life and literary instances. Freud maintained that, in real life, the complex was too far below the surface of consciousness to be actively recognized. Literature, then, presents our unconscious desires in a form we can actively examine.
In my experience, Freudian-Oedipal analysis reads too much detail into the text. Freud's approach was practically obsessed with sex and sex-related phenomena to the point that this element is all it's known for today. Even in the upper level psychology classes I took, the basic formula was Freud = sex.
Anyway, in my career as an English major, Freud came up primarily in classes taught by the head os the department, Dr. Little. The chief example of this occurred in the Shakespeare class, especially in regards to Hamlet. In fact, that is the most prevalent pairing I see, in terms of literary criticism. Besides the titular story of Oedipus, Hamlet is the second most common story I've seen addressed by Freudian criticism. Annoyingly so, actually. Hamlet's like a Elizabethan Oedipus, in that regard. (Not to mention I've seen Hamlet entirely too much, in all the intro lit classes I've taken... but that's just a personal complaint. Shakespeare wrote other good stuff, ya know!)
Another Freudian concept I've seen in literary criticism is the idea of the id-ego-superego. The id represents primal desires, the superego wants order and discipline, and the ego is left to maintain the balance between the two. I've written at least one paper talking about characters in terms of their roles as either id, ego or superego. As a simple tool, a hermeneutic, to talk about desires, id-ego-superego is a great concept for literary criticism. However, it borders on being too simplistic.
Thankfully, other forms of psychoanalytical criticism came about after Freud. Now the question is this: can concepts and ideas applied to real-life people be convincingly and appropriately applied to fictional characters? Unlike some Freudian critics, I am not seeking to analyze the author, but rather, a character within the text.
First, one must acknowledge the limits of media to depict human beings. No one character can comprehensively depict all of the subtle nuances of the human psyche. Nevertheless, good characters can still speak to readers and demonstrate the "human condition" quite nicely.
Second, using psychological analysis on a character is a one-way situation. One cannot actively ask a character why her or she did something, or why he or she thought a certain thought. Analyzing a character is more imprecise than doing so in real life.
That being said, psychological techniques still provide valuable information when applied to literary characters. Recently, psychologists have been studying the idea of the Dark Triad (DT). In many of the papers I've read or perused, the authors use fictional characters from pop culture to explain the concepts within the realm of the DT personality. Because of this, I feel that an examination of the character Hilda from A Link Between Worlds is possible, and will most likely yield interesting results.
Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!
The Legend of Hilda: The Dark Triad
Or, go back and read the first part on my other blog, here:
The Dark Triad, or, Cool Jerks
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References:
Hall, Vernon. A Short History of Literary Criticism. New York: New York University Press, 1963. Print.
