ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud felt that by applying the methods of psychoanalysis to art and literature, one might decipher the underlying meaning and intention of the creator, much as one analyzes the manifest content of a dream to unearth the latent content at play beneath the surface. The method of scansion has been applied throughout the arts, music, literature and poetry as well as in psychoanalysis, and in many ways the effect is similar. Historically, in poetry scansion is a method of describing the rhythm of a poem through the breaking up of its lines or verses into feet; working on meter, marking the locations of stresses, accented and unaccented syllables, and so on. Resonant of the fundamental cut inherent in subjectivity itself, scansion highlights the divide between conscious and unconscious, self and other, dream and waking states. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
