Literary Criticism Class #1. What Is Theory? “a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding...
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Transcript of Literary Criticism Class #1. What Is Theory? “a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding...
What Is Theory?
• “a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions”
(Terry Eagleton, After Theory, p.2)
Why Study Critical Theory?
• To acquire tools for analysis
• To understand the most dominant “grand-narrative” of our time
• To enter a “discourse community”
(Whose theory are we talking about? Western? French? Continental? American? )
• “Linguistics is not simply a stimulus and source of inspiration but a methodological model which unifies the otherwise diverse projects of structuralists.”
• (Culler, Structuralist Poetics, 4)
• Barthes: “I have been engaged in a series of structural analyses which all aim at defining a number of non-linguistic ‘languages’”
• (Essais critiques, 155; qtd in Culler, Structuralist Poetics, 4).
Food for Thought
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using linguistics to study other cultural phenomena?
The SignThe Sign Signified
(signifié): a concept
Signifier
(signifiant): a sound-image (or a written mark)
“Arbor”
I.• “The meanings we give to
words are purely arbitrary, and . . . these meanings are maintained by convention only” (Barry 41).
• Against “reference,” essentialism, or mimetic representation, namely, one-to-one correspondence between words and things
Possible exceptions
• 1. Onomatopoeia: “shatter,” “clash,” “tick-tock,” “drip-drop”
• 2. Interjections: “哎呀 !” “Ouch!” “Damn!” “Gosh!” “Shit!”
II.• "In language there are only diff
erences" (Saussure, Course in General Linguistics).
• “The meanings of words are . . . relational” (Barry 42).
• The definition of any given word “depends for its precise meaning on its position in a ‘paradigmatic chain,’ that is, a chain of words related in function and meaning each of which could be substituted for any of the others in a given sentence” (Barry 42).
• Saussure’s example: “we feel the 8.25 p.m. Geneva-to-Paris Express to be the same train each day, though the locomotive, coaches, and personnel may be different. This is because the 8.25 train is not a substance but a form, defined by its relations to other trains. It remains the 8.25 even though it leaves twenty minutes late, so long as its difference from the 7.25 and the 9.25 is preserved. Although we may be unable to conceive of the train except in its physical manifestations, its identity as a social and psychological fact is independent of those manifestations” (Culler 11).
Binary Oppositions
• “Indeed, the relations that are most important in structural analysis are the simplest: binary oppositions” (Culler, 14).
• good / eviloriginal / copy
primary / secondaryinside / outside
reality / appearanceessence / accident
• http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html
• soul / bodypure / corrupted
father / sonmale / female
speech / writing
• http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html
• center / marginsnormal / deviant
natural / unnaturalstraight / gaywhite / blackself / other
• http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html
• truth / fictionphilosophy / myth
sciences / humanitiesclassical / romantic
modern / postmodernpoet / critic
http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html
• sex / gendermaster / slave
high culture / pop culture
base / superstructurewaking / dreaming
latent content / manifest contentthe library / the web
• http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html
IBM AppleStructure Repetition Non-repetition
Disconnected lines
Joined lines
Color Monochromatic Polychromatic
Cold Warm
Form Substance (“bold”)
Outline
Straight Curved
the paradigmatic chain
• “What goes without saying” → ideology
• What is “conspicuous by its absence” → flout conventional expectations → value
• (Daniel Chandler, “Semiotics for Beginners,” http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem05.html)
III.• “Language constitutes our
world . . . Meaning is always attributed to the object or the idea by the human mind, and constructed by and expressed through language: it is not already contained within the things” (Barry 43).
Langue vs. Parole• Parole: an individual remark
(specific, diachronic)
• Langue: a wider containing structure (synchronic, ahistorical)
• "Structuralism is the search for unsuspected harmonies..."
• (Lévi-Strauss, qtd. in http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/levi-strauss_claude.html)
Myth = Language
Similarities Made of units that are put together based on certain rules
Binary opposition as the basis of structure
Myth mythemes nature vs. culture; the raw vs. the cooked; patricide vs. incest
Language phonemes,
morphemes,
sememes
“good” //“not good”; “good” //“bad”; “good” //“evil”
Lévi-Strauss
• “[T]he individual tale (the parole) from a cycle of myths did not have a separate and inherent meaning but could only be understood by considering its position in the whole cycle (the langue) and the similarities and difference between the tale ad others in the sequence” (Barry 46).
• “A structural anthropologist may examine the customs and rituals of a single group of people in some remote part of the world not simply to understand them in particular but to discover underlying similarities between their society and others”
• (Dobie, Theory into Practice, 140)