See now, I could see if you'd said, "I don't agree with X's analysis, or with Y's opinion of Dylan, no thanks." That's fine, no problem. But why add the personal sting, Andrew? "your critical faculties, if they exist" and so on. When you say something like this, I understand it as a personal swipe, at Jurica or me or whoever, it doesn't matter, it all makes me feel hesitant to post an opinion again. I wish we could just talk and disagree here without taking it to that level.Andrew McGeever wrote: 4. The attempted template of Freud/ Jung on this poem/song does disservice to Leonard Cohen: you don't need early 20th century pseudo-science to criticise a poem...use your intelligence, your imagination, your critical faculties, if they exist.
5. The reference to Bob Dylan summed up the lack of critical faculties on the part of the writer.
On the "let's agree to disagree level," in my opinion it is perfectly valid to use Freud and Jung in literary analysis, though it's not everyone's bag. If you take a course in lit theory, for example, you will find the texts include an array of critical approaches, from the psychoanalytic to the mythical to rhetorical/formal to political, marxist, feminist, etc. There is no "ground zero" of analysis, one with no theoretical assumptions behind it; there are always assumptions we begin with, even if we are unaware of them.
Meaning no harm to you,
Janem