Freud, Day Dreaming and Interpreting Literature

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‘Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather, rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him? It would be wrong to think he does not take that world seriously; on the contrary, he takes his play very seriously and he expends large amounts of emotion on it. The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real.’ (Freud, “Creative Writers and day-Dreaming”) What are the implications of this passage on how we ought to interpret literature, and do you agree with them? In his essay, ‘Creative Writers and day-Dreaming,’ Freud likens the creative writer to a child at play. The associations and theories he drawers from this can not only be linked to the writer but can also be used to interpret the readers approach to literature, in particular the novel. As a young child one accepts what they are told by their parents as fact, in the same way they accept what the author tells them through their narration of their novel as fact. Yet the child who once accepted literature as truth develops into a sceptical reader, and thus must begin to switch off their critical faculties in order to play along with the novels alternative version of reality. The reader must once again use skills more often associated with youth, such as imagination, to escape the reality of the world. Freud posits, in a similar way to that of the reader, that the creative writer ‘creates a world of his own,’ as if to escape his reality. Freud places the creative writer as a God like figure, giving him control through the use of his imagination. Yet in the next sentence he seemingly contradicts this by saying the writer in fact ‘rearranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him.’ Thus he seems to posit two different ideas, the first being that the writer creates a new world, distinct from

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