THE SCHISMATIC WANTED(A) TO MAKE ISLAM A WORLD RELIGION(B) TO CHOO...
10. The Schismatic wanted
(A) to make Islam a world religion
(B) to choose the caliphs themselves
(C) to let Ali take Mohammed’s place as leader
(D) to divide Muslims into various sects
Reading 2:
Sigmund Freud was not a literary theorist. However, he did contribute to critical theory
through both his theories and his use of art to show that the application of psychology can
extend to the highest forms of cultures. Freud was always interested in literature, and he drew
some of the best illustrations of his theories from classic poems and plays.
Freud saw the unconscious as the impetus of both cultural and psychic activity. Therefore,
the same principles operated in both, and that the same mechanisms – such as displacement and
symbolization – applied. While Freud was not the first to note the importance of the
unconscious mind, he was the first to attempt a coherent theory of its operation and function.
He argued that the unconscious operates according to universal law, and is crucial to all aspects
of mental life that involve fantasy, or diversion from reality. From this point of view, it is
natural to apply Freudian principles to imaginative literature. Writers transform individual,
unconscious fantasy into universal art - a kind of formal fantasy halfway between a reality that
denies wishes and a world of imagination in which every wish is granted.
In focusing on the unconscious origins for literature, Freud was in a sense reviving the
traditional idea of divine inspiration. [1] Philosophers and art theorists have often turned to
such a theory of the imagination to explain multiple meanings, repetition, and any apparent
disorder in art. Similarly, psychoanalysis uses the theory of the unconscious to explain
examples of “disorder’ in consciousness, such as dreams.
[2] This analogy allowed Freud to suggest that fantasies called art could be interpreted in
the same way as dreams. Writers, as Freud noted, have always seen great significance in
dreams. In his view, portrayals of dreams in works of literature supported his own theories
about their structures, mechanisms, and interpretation. For example, the mechanisms of
displacement and symbolization obviously resemble the literary devices of metaphor and
symbolism.[3]
Critics of Freud have objected that the non-logical processes of the unconscious do not
resemble the conscious effort that results in work of literature. Freud would reply that while
conscious thought is necessary to produce works of art, the creative sources of art remain in the
conscious. In this view, conscious activity merely obscures what is truly important in art. What
interested Freud were the deep unconscious structures literature shares with myth and religion,
as well as with dreams. The apparent individuality of literature was not as significant as its
ultimate universality. [4]