Lit Theory

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<h1> ENGL956: Literary Theory for the Teacher and Scholarly Writer</h1> <h3> Dr. Kenneth Sherwood Spring 2017</h3> [[Major Works]]

Select an author: <h2> Formalism / New Criticism</h2>\ [[Viktor Shklovsky]] [[Cleanth Brooks]] [[Monroe Beardsley and W.K. Wimsatt]] <h2> Structuralism </h2>\ [[Jonathan Culler]] [[Ferdinand de Saussure]] [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] [[Roland Barthes]] [[Mikhail Bakhtin]] [[Michel Foucault]] <h2> Post-Structuralism </h2>\ [[Friedrich Nietzche]] [[Gilles Deleuze]] [[Jacques Derrida]] [[Roland Barthes]] [[Barbara Johnson]] <h2> Reader-Response </h2>\ [[Stanley Fish]] [[J.L. Austin]] [[Kathleen McCormick]] [[Return to Home->StoryInit]]

[[Russian Formalism]] [[New Criticism]] [[Structuralism, Linguistics, and Narratology]] [[Post-Structuralism]] [[Rhetoric, Phenomenology, and Reader-Response]] [[Psychoanalysis and Psychology]] [[Return to Home->StoryInit]]

<h2>Russian Formalism / New Criticsm </h2>\ [["Art as Technique" - Shklovsky]] [["The Formalist Critics" - Brooks]] [["The Intentional Falacy" - Beardsley & Wimsatt]] <h2> Structuralism, Linguistics, and Narratology </h2>\ [["Course in General Linguistics" - Saussure]] [["The Structural Study of Myth" - Lévi-Strauss]] [["Mythologies" - Barthes]] [["What is an Author" - Foucault]] <h2> Rhetoric, Phenomenology, and Reader-Response</h2>\ [["How to Do Things with Words" - Austin]] [["Not So Much a Teaching as an Intangling" - Fish]] [["Interpretive Communities" - Fish]] [["Teaching, Studying, and Theorizing the Production and Reception of Literary Texts" - McCormick]] <h2> Post-Structuralism </h2>\ [["Différance" - Derrida]] [["The Death of the Author" - Barthes]] [["From Work to Text" - Barthes]] [["Writing" - Johnson]] <h2> Psychoanalysis and Psychology </h2>\ [["The Interpretation of Dreams" - Freud]] [["The Uncanny" - Freud]] [["Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena" - Winnicott]] <h2> Marxism, Critical Theory, and History </h2>\ [["The German Ideology" - Marx]] [["Theses on the Philosophy of History" - Walter Benjamin]] [["Ideology and the Ideological State" - Althusser]] [["New Historicism" - Montrose]] <h2> Gender Studies and Queer Theory </h2>\ [["Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience" - Adrienne Rich]] [["The Laugh of the Medusa" - Cixous]] [["Epistemology of the Closet" - Sedgwick]] [[Return to Home->StoryInit]] <h2> Ethnic, Indigenous, Post-Colonial, and Transnational Studies </h2>\ [["Orientalism" - Said]] [["An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness" - Achebe]] [["Playing in the Dark" - Morrison]] <h2> Cognition, Emotion, Evolution, and Science </h2>\ [["Narrative Empathy" - Suzanne Keane]] [["Literary Brain: Neuroscience, Criticism, and Theory" - Patrick Colm Hogan]] [["Planet Hollywood" - Moretti]] <h2>mals, Humans, Places, and Things </h2>\ [["On Actor Network Theory: A Few Clarifications" - Latour]] [["The Animal Turn, Literary Studies, and the Academy" - Jennifer McDonell]] [["Ecocriticism" - Marland]] [["Eating Things: Food, Animals, and Other Life Forms in Lewis Carroll's Alice Books" - Michael Parrish Lee]]

<center><img src="media/shklovsky.jpg" alt="Viktor Shklovsky" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/brooks.jpg" alt="Cleanth Brooks" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/wimandbeard.jpg" alt="Monroe Beardsley and W.K. Wimsatt" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/culler.jpg" alt="Jonathan Culler" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/saussure.jpg" alt="Ferdinand de Saussure" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/levi.jpg" alt="Claude Lévi-Strauss" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/barthes.jpg" alt="Roland Barthes" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/bakhtin.jpg" alt="Mikhail Bakhtin" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/foucault.jpg" alt="Michel Foucault" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/nietzche.jpg" alt="Friedrich Nietzche" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/deleuze.jpg" alt="Gilles Deleuze" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/derrida.jpg" alt="Jacques Derrida" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/johnson.jpg" alt="Barbara Johnson" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/fish.jpg" alt="Stanley Fish" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<center><img src="media/austin.jpg" alt="J.L. Austin" /></center> [[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

[[Return to Major Authors->Major Authors]]

<h2> Brief Summary </h2>\ Shklovsky's "Art as Technique" seeks first to define what makes art "artful," and then to apply the definition to poetry and literature. For Shklovsky, art is that which defamiliarizes the commonplace. He argues that humanity lives in a passive, habitualized state, taking life for granted because the day-to-day grind has become automatized. Art, then, is anything that forces the perceiver to slow down and notice things, "to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged" (9). To apply this theory to literature, Shklovsky uses both Tolstoy's works (primarily "Kholstomer" and //War and Peace//) as well as examples of poetry (Pushkin). In short, Shklovsky ultimately decides that good literature, following his definition of art as technique, is that which makes the familiar seem unfamiliar (or, to use his term, defamiliar). For example, Tolstoy employs a horse as a narrator to call attention to the strangeness of humanity, and Pushkin "roughens up" language by employing unusual diction and word choice.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Most of humanity lives in an automatic state, i.e., we don't notice the world. * Art is anything that defamiliarizes us; anything that snaps us out of this automatic state. * Good literature and poetry do the same thing; they make us stop and notice the world or the language employed.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "The technique of art is to make objects "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult..." (9). * "After we see an object several times, we begin to recognize it. The object is in front of us and we know about it, but we do not see it" (9). * "In the light of these developments we can define poetry as //attentuated, tortuous// speech" (13). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Cleanth Brooks' essay "The Formalist Critics" is a defense of Russian Formalism. In the essay, Brooks posits that the correct role of the critic is to analyze the text and the text alone, divorcing all criticism from considerations of the author's biography or authorial intention, as well as that of the reader and any interpretations that a specific reading might bring. A work is to be judged "as-is," the critic laboring under the assumption that the person perceiving the work is the "ideal reader," i.e., a perfect someone who can appreciate a work's irony, allegory, allusion, metaphor, etc., as opposed to a seven-year-old who can barely grasp the literal meaning of the text. Brooks describes this theoretical reader as "a central point of reference," while simultaneously acknowledging that no such person actually exists. Still, he persists, saying that the search for such a reader is a defensible tactic. Brooks' literary criticism is in direct contrast to many others, including Historicism, Reader-Response, and Psychoanalysis.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * A text should be judged on the merits of the text alone. * The author's "intention" is what survived into the work; asking what he or she meant is irrelevant. * The reader should be assumed to be "ideal" - one who can fully understand the text's complexities.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "The formalist critic, because he wants to criticize the work itself, makes two assumptions: (1) he assumes that the relevant part of the author's intention as realized is the "intention" that counts ... And (2) the formalist critic asssumes an ideal reader" (17). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2> Brief Summary </h2>\ Wimsatt and Beardsley’s essay, "The Intentional Fallacy," is based on the idea that the meaning of a text does not originate from the intentions of the author. Their argument is based on the discrepancy that can exist between the intention and the end result in the production of a literary text – an idea that they have termed intentional fallacy. This is fallacy is created when the critic falls into the trap of assuming that he knows what the author intended – which according to Wimsatt and Beardsley is highly unlikely. As part of the New Criticism movement, this proposition called for an objective evaluation of texts as independent subjects for analysis, free from the romantic trappings imposed by traditional methods of critical analysis. The proper object of study is how texts work, as opposed to the socio-historical context in which it was written. As an analytical tool, intentional fallacy therefore, refers to the separation of text from biographical and sociological factors, by doing a close reading to reach the universal truth a successful literary text should embody. This is also foundational to their critique of the value and use in analysis of metaphor, literary allusions. Finally, the authors consider whether footnotes or allusions should be considered as "part of the work," ultimately concluding that they should be read as is, with no further investigation to their meaning or to what they allude.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Like Brooks, Beardley & Wimsatt argue for the separation of the text from the author during criticism. * A critic assuming the author's intent is the eponymous "Intentional Fallacy." * A text is universal, in the sense that any meaning to be derived from the work is objective and will be found in the words themselves.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "We argued that the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desireable..." (30). * "Critical inquiries, unlike bets, are not settled in this way. Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle" [the author] (40). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2> Brief Summary </h2>\ Though not a literary criticism per se, Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics" nonetheless profoundly impacted contemporary and subsequent critics such as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss. His semiology sought to bring stucture to the mechanics of language, that is, Saussure tried to define the underlying rules that made lanugage and thus communicationc possible. His primary contributions consisted in defining //langue// and //parole//, in distinguishing the //signifier// from the //signified//, and in realizing that the relationship between words and ideas is arbitrary. With regards to //langue// vs. //parole//, "the former is a system, an institution, a set of interpersonal rules and norms, while the latter comprised the actual manifestations of the system in speech and writing. It is, of course, easy to confuse the system with its manifestations, to think of English as the set of English utterances. But to learn English is not to memorize a set of utterances; it is to master a system of rule snd norms which make it possible to produce and understand utterances." (135)\ The signifier/signified relationship seeks to explain how signs are created. In short, the speech act of saying "tree" is the signifer; the object that pops up in our minds which represents "tree" is the signified; finally, a sign is the combination of these two, as represented in the following illustration:\ <img src="media/sign.gif" />\ Lastly, with regards to the arbitrary nature of the sign, Saussure means that the relationship between the signifier and signified in language is never necessary (or "motivated "): one could just as easily find the sound signifier arbre as the signifier tree to unite with the concept ‘tree’. But more than this, it means that the signified is arbitrary as well: one could as easily define the concept ‘tree’ by its woody quality (which would exclude palm trees) as by its size (which excludes the "low woody plants " we call shrubs ). (Saussure. Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Online)\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Saussure differentiated between //langue//, or the formal rules of a language, versus //parole//, or the system as it is actually used. * Saussure defined a sign as an arbitrary combination of a signifier (the speech act of saying tree) with a signified (the mental image connected with the word). * This ultimately leads to the conclusion that words are "defined" because they are <b>not</b> another word. \ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitray. Since I mean by sign the whole that results from associating the signifier with the signified, I can simply say: the linguistic sign is arbitrary" (139). * "The linguistic entity is not accurately defined until it is //delimited//, i.e., separated from everything that surrounds it on the phonic chain" (162). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Lévi-Strauss' "The Structural Study of Myth" is aptly named; the article seeks to determine the underlying structure, or explanation, for the creation and similarities of myth. Myths, Lévi-Strauss argues, are strikingly similar across both time and space, containing comparable plot elements independent of culture, location, or even era. He argues that myths form common patterns (which he dubs //mythemes//) that can then be arranged in a form that coincides with "the structural law of the myth" (185). This form, however, is fluid; each version of a myth gets its own chart of mytheme bundles, which allows for comparison and simplification. What is striking, however, is that even though an individual myth's patterns might be indiosyncratic in their placement, their existence seems to be consistent with a broader system independent of culture or time. Lévi-Strauss uses both politics as well as a number of creation myths in his analysis of the structural patterns of myth.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Myth can be understood as a repetition of common patterns called //mythemes//. * An individual myth's structure is analyzed by examining the placement of these mythemes within the story. * Myth, though manifesting differently across time and culture, shares a strikingly large number of similarities in its patterns.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "Myth, like the rest of language, is made up of constituent units" (181). * "What if patterns showing affinity, instead of being considered in succession, were to be treated as one complex pattern and read as a whole?" (182). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2> Brief Summary </h2>\ Roland Barthes’ article "Mythologies" is actually a collection of selections taken from his book by the same name, hence why the article seems a tad disjointed. The work is split into two distinct sections: the theoretical part, which contains structuralist theory in the vein of Saussure, and the applied part, which contains examples of myth functioning in modern (1950’s) society. Though the first section can seem a bit unwieldly at first glance, the underlying principles are fairly simplistic. To grotesquely simplify his point, this section simply serves to demonstrate how myth and allegory function from a structuralist point of view, that is to say, that signs in society often mean more than the simple signifier-signified relationship of conventional speech. The second section of this work seeks to demonstrate how those greater meanings are created and perpetuated through society and to what end. By using modern, concrete examples, Barthes shows how myth, which is often thought of as tales told through the ages, is in fact created and perpetuated in modernity.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Barthes builds on Saussure's "signifier/signified" to demonstrate how myth creates additional meaning. * Myth is not "dead," but still created in modern culture. * Barthes is famous for using modern examples while analyzing myth, e.g., professional wrestling and dish soap advertisements. * Barthes argues that modern culture, i.e., myth, is used to enforce norms and "other" anything else.\ <center><h2> Select Quotes </h2></center>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * "But myth is a peculiar system, in that it is constructed from a semiological chain which existed before it: it //is a second-order semiological system//" (196). * "I rather fear that the final justification of all this Adamism is to give to the immobility of the world the alibi of a 'wisdom' and a 'lyricism' which only make the gestures of man look eternal the better to defuse them" (204). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Foucault’s “What is an Author?” was a lecture delivered in 1969 two years after the publication of Barthes’ famous essay “Death of the Author.” Foucault was affected by Becket’s famous statement: “What does it matter who is speaking?” In short, Foucault argues that the idea of Author (with a capital A) is distinct from that of the author^^1^^. The first is an idea, created by readers and critics and is greater than the latter, which is the historical, real human being who composed a given text, in the sense that an Author invites discourse and "lives" as a sort of writerly meme. The Author is a concept, a non-human that promotes discursive practices, what Foucault dubs the //oeuvre//, such as the works of Freud and Marx. The human being, Sigmund Freud or Karl Marx, is separated from the ideas and discourse which their writings sparked. When we talk about Freud in literary criticism it is generally understood that we are discussing psychoanalytics, the id, the ego, the superego, etc., and not the man himself unless otherwise indicated. Further, those affected by Freud's writing who likewise pursued psychoanalytics such as Lacan are devoured by the term "Freudian," becoming as much a part of the concept as Freud's own works. The author, then, is the historical human being, and is generally of little significance when it comes to criticism. The critics and the readers generally decide who or what these writers are up to, not the real, human individual.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Foucault divides the concept of the author into the Author (big A) and the author (little a). * The Author is not a human, but the ideas created by a historical writer (//oeuvre//), e.g., when we discuss Freud in criticism we discuss psychoanalytics, not the person. * The author is a human, but is of little consequence and cannot even control how they or their works are perceived by their audience.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "The author's name manifests the appearance of a certain discursive set and indicates the statues of this discourse within a society and a culture" (222). * "Once can say that the author is an ideological product, since we represent him as the opposite of his historically real function" (228). </span> <b>1:</b> The use of Author and author (big A and little a) are my method of distinguishing the two ideas; Foucault does not use this distinction in his essay. [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ J.L. Austin's "How to Do Things with Words" is a series of lectures that explore //performatives//, a unique speech act that has a real-world effect. The tone of the lectures is one of uncertainty; he is actively working through his ideas in the text. Austin begins by defining two separate parts of speech, constatives and performatives. A constative is a sentence that portrays something as true or false, or, in other words is a simple statement. For example, 'it is snowing outside today' is a simple statement that can be either true or false. A performative, on the other hand, is a sentence that indicates an action and //actually makes that action happen.// Instead of reporting a message, it acts upon the world, it does something. For example, when a bride and a groom say ‘I do’ during their wedding, these words enact the marriage; it is not until they are uttered that the marriage is considered valid. In other words, a constative is and a performative does. Performatives depend on context and reception; these are known as felicity conditions. Felicity conditions are the rules under which the perfomative can be enacted, which Austin defines as follows: the performative should be enacted by the proper authority, its enactment should be clear and understood by witnesses, and it should //able// to be executed, e.g., I can't get legally married if I already am married to someone else. If the perfomative doesn’t meet these conditions, then it doesn’t have the power to denote action. Austin's lectures dote on the "infelicitous" instances of performatives in order to identify when a performative actually works.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Austin distinguishes between common statements (//constatives//) and statements that have real-world effects (//performatives//). * A performative causes an effect, e.g., saying "I do" at your wedding causes you to become married. * Performatives only work (are felicitous) if the performer has the proper authority, can (legally or physically) perform, and has witnesses who agree with the performance.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "We were to consider...some cases and senses...in which to //say// something is to //do// something; or in which //by// saying something or //in// saying we are doing something" (165). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Fish's "Not So Much a Teaching as an Intangling" is essentially a defense of John Milton's //Paradise Lost// that preceded his theories regarding Reader-Response. Critics of Milton's work point out a number of instances in which the writing seemed to fall short in some way, either a metaphor did not work well or the writing seemed stilted. Such critics attributed these mishaps to the author's shortcomings. Fish, a Milton scholar, retorts by arguing that the "bad writing" is intentional by Milton, a way to remind readers of their own shortcomings. In an epic detailing the fall of Satan and man, Fish reasons that an artistically whole work would not simply lecture to the reader, but invite them to realize that they, too, are just as fickle and faulty as Adam. According to Fish, by employing metaphors that could be easily misread, Milton invites the reader to make mistakes and assumptions, much like the chief protagonist of his story (ignoring, for a moment some critics' claims that Satan is actually the protagonist). The result, then, is Fish's conclusion that reading //Paradise Lost// is experiential; it is a good work if the reader becomes, in effect, part of the tale. In short, Fish wants us to understand that the difficult experience of reading any poem cannot be taken as a judgment of the failing of its author; instead, we might see that experience as a process implemented by the author himself/herself to guide readers to the best cognition and understanding, just as John Milton did. <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Fish rebutts the claim that //Paradise Lost// has poorly constructed passages by arguing that they are intentionally "bad." * He argues that the exercise of muddling through poor metaphors and stilted writing mirrors the confusion and mistakes made by Adam. * Thus, Fish concludes, reading Milton is experiential, and a reader participates in the story by feeling what the protagonist feels through reaction to the text. <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "Milton's purpose is to educate the reader to an awareness of his position and responsibilities as a fallen man, and to a sense of the distance which separates him from the innocence once his" (195). * "Milton's method is to re-create in the mind of the reader (which is, finally, the poem's scene) the drama of the Fall, to make him fall again exactly as Adam did and with Adam's troubled clarity, that is to say, 'not deceived'" (195). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2> Brief Summary</h2>\ In “Interpretive Communities,” Stanley Fish makes the bold claim that texts are meaningless until they are read, i.e., interpreted. This is in direct conflict with New Criticism and Russian Formalism who argue that the value of a text exists only in the words themselves and how they form a work; for Fish, the contrary is true. The written word has //no// meaning until a reader confronts the words and gives them meaning. Further, Fish argues that the interpretation of a text can vary from person to person, or even reading to reading (that is, the same person can read a text differently depending on their experiences, mood at the time, or even consciously choose an alternate interpretation). The majority of his article is directed at rebutting the objection that people often //do// read texts similarly. For example, most of the English-reading world agrees that Hamlet is a tragedy and not a comedy. Fish responds that people who "agree" on a text are part of an "interpretive community:" they share similar experiences, prejudices, culture, language, etc., etc. and thus employ a similar interpretation upon a text, arriving at a (mostly) similar understanding. There is nothing in Hamlet that makes it a tragedy unless we bring our own understandings of death, loss, and revenge to the text when we interpret it.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * A written text is meaningless until it is interpreted. * A text is interpreted differently each time it is read, even by the same person. * A text can be interpreted similarly by multiple people because the share the same "interpretive community," i.e., they possess the same culture, beliefs, experiences, etc.\ <center><h2> Select Quotes </h2></center>\ * "This, then, is the explanation both for the stability of interpretation among different readers (they belong to the same community) and for the regularity with which a single reader will employ different interpretive strategies and thus make different texts (he belongs to different communities)" (219-220). * "For if there are no fixed texts, but only interpretive strategies making them, and if interpretive strategies are not natural, but learned (are therefore unavailable to a finite description), what is it that utterers (speakers, authors, critics, me, you) do?" (220) </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Kathleen McCormick believes that the production and reception of literary texts should be taught in such a way that students understand the readings. Students can become “active makers of meaning” by being given access to discourses that allow them to historicize the production and reception of the text, while also situating themselves as historical subjects in relation to the text (319). McCormick points out how there is not only a gap between real and constructed readers but also between the student and the teacher when a text is being discussed in the classroom. To eliminate this “gap,” McCormick suggests students have access to cultural, historical, and theoretical discourses that could be of assistance to their readings and knowledge. McCormick then goes on to list in detail how this can take place in the classroom: 1) Students are to construct a reading of the historical formation in which the text was produced. This reading does not include investigating specific references in the text, but “symptoms” of “tensions or contradictions of the social formation within which the text was produced” (324). 2) Readers are to expand this view to determine how this text has been “reproduced throughout history,” meaning how the text has been used or appropriated (even unintentionally) by larger historical forces for “particular ideological ends” (324). 3) Students develop their own reading of a text using their voice as a “social subject immersed in contradictory cultural systems, balanced between autonomy and [social] determination” (325). In other words, they should apply their own singular historical conditions. McCormick wants readers to ask questions that could not have been asked at the time the text was written, with the understanding that “posing such ‘later’ questions,” means that students are “repositioning and reappropriating the text for particular ends, not discovering transcendent truths about its ‘original’ meanings, or subsequent, secondary, readings” (325). <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * McCormick argues that there is a disconnect between how literary texts //are// taught and how they //ought// to be taught. * She argues that students need to be situated within a text, given access to historical, cultural, and theoretical discourses that discuss the work. * She likewise argues that the students' modern interpretations should be considered; a modern interpretation is just as valid as an antiquated, "official" reading. * This allows the students to retain control over their learning in a way previously not possible.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "One of the ways in which student readers of literature can be enabled to work with critical awareness in that balance between autonomy and determination is by being given access to discources that can allow them to read and study literarry texts from the standpoint of their //production// and //reception//" (319). * "...when given some theoretical tools for critical and historical investigation, students are enabled to engage intellectually and emotionally ... to pose their own questions to it [a text] in dialogic relation to those of the past, and most importantly, to develop interpretations of it that make it address their historical condition" (328).\ </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Derrida's //Différance// is an essay that seeks to determine how words become parsed into meaning or, more accurately, how they don't. The eponymous //différance// is a punny term (because its root word, //differer// can mean both to differ or to defer in French) coined by Derrida to describe two separate ways that language is indeterminate. //Différance// is also a jab at the common notion that speech trumps the written word in communication; the misspelling is only noticeable if one reads the word. Hearing it pronounced will not tip off the listener to the intentional typo. For Derrida, meaning of a word is forever deferred. Imagine a dictionary that points you to another word that points to another word that points to yet another, ad infinium. Because we must use words to define words, a solid, concrete meaning can never be arrived at. Similarly, a word only derives its definition because it does //not// mean something else. For example "cat" only means the small, four-legged creature who consumes all my tuna because "dog," "snail," "monkey," etc., etc., do //not// mean the small, four-legged creature who consumes all my tuna. These two concepts, of deferral and difference are the heart of Derrida's essay. <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Différance is both a pun and an attack on the notion that language favors speech over written text. * The first meaning of //différance// suggests that because we use words to define words, meaning can never be arrived at - we always need more words to define the words we have used. * The second meaning of //différance// suggests that words only have meaning because we have arbitrarily decided that "c-a-t" refers to my feline and not "d-o-g." This holds true for all words - meaning is only acquired because the words are different from one another.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences" (482). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ //The Death of the Author// is probably the most famous essay of the reader-response movement. Drawing on Derrida's ideas that meaning is deciphered at the moment of reading, and that that meaning is forever deferred or changing, Barthes declares that a distinct separation between text and author is necessary. Similar to his essay, //What is an Author?,// Barthes here separates the living human being who composed a text from the idea of the author; to Barthes, even though a work is written by a particular person, the idea of said author created by the general reading public could reject that work if it is too anomalous (for example if a text is not representational of Mark Twain's most popular works, that particular text might be deemed a one-of and relegated to obscurity). The author is a social/cultural/political construct. Because the reading audience has the ultimate say in even who the author //is//, the reading audience ultimately decides, too, what the text means. Thus, the author's intentions are unimportant, and so too are any interpretations other than the readers'. Barthes suggests that reader-response theory simultaneously kills the author (because his or her intentions no longer matter) and also kills the critic (because his or her interpretations no longer matter). All that matters is what the reader determines to be the text's interpretation.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * The idea of the author is constructed by the reader and by social/cultural/political forces. * Because of this, the physical human author is no longer important (his or her intention effectively "dies"). * Meaning is deciphered by the reader and by iterpretations manifested by social/cultural/political forces.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "The reader has never been the concern of classical criticism; for it, there is no other man in literature but the one who writes. We are now beginning to be the dupes no longer of such antiphrases...the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author" (521). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Barthes' //From Work to Text// is an acknowledgment of the way in which literary criticism was changing in the wake of Derrida, Freud, Marx, and others. Barthes (somewhat ironically) develops a binary: the old way of reading is to treat language as a //work;// the new method is to treat it as a //text.// In short, a work is an easily categorizable, completed object. A reader could examine it, take in the intended meaning, and then move on. For example, treating Conrad's //The Heart of Darkness// as an anti-colonialist novella and nothing more would be to treat it as a //work.// If, however, the reader treats the novella as a //text,// then the meaning of the work opens up drastically. It certainly //could// be an anti-colonialist work, but from whose perspective? What about the characters' psychology? How are women treated? What about the natives? What does the novella say about the reader? How are the workers treated in the text? What about the environment? Of course, as Derrida suggests (and Barthes seems to agree with), the analyses and possible meanings are endless. Thus, Barthes' essay is simply an awareness of the changes in how literature was being approached, a change from a stagnant, measurable object into something hazier with no defined edges or meaning. \ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * //From Work to Text// demonstrates Barthes' awareness of the changing nature of literary criticism during his era. * The old way of examining language is to treat a literary object as a //work:// a static thing that could be classified and categorized. * The new way is to treat literature as a //text:// a fuzzy object that could be interpreted many (read: endlessly) different ways.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "A change has lately occured, or is occurring, in our idea of language and consequently of the (literary) work..." (523). * "The Text is plural. This does not mean only that it has several meanings but that if fulfills the very plurality of meaning: and //irreducible// (and not just acceptable) plurality" (525). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Barbara Johnson's //Writing// is in effect a summary of a number of philosophers' arguments about writing itself. She begins by acknowledging the tautology of writing about writing: An author is using a tool to describe what he or she is doing with the tool. Johnson then goes on to briefly summarize the works of Mallarme, Barthes, Saussure, and Derrida. She examines Barthes' //text// versus //work//, Saussure's signifier/signified relationship, as well as Derrida's différance and logocentrism (the idea that speech is favored over text, historically).\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Writing about writing is tautological. * This work is essentially a synthesis/summary of Barthes, Sassure, and Derrida.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "An essay about writing, therefore, is an unclosable loop: it is an attempt to comprehend that which it is comprehended by" (528). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

[[Return to Movements/Theories->Movements/Theories]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Freud's //Interpretation of Dreams// is perhaps his most famous work; he alters the conception that dreams are to be interpreted literally, and instead posists that they shuold be "read." Freud argues that human beings repress a large portion of their personality in order to peacefully coexist in society, e.g., not punching the barista because he or she messed up your coffee. These repressed portions of our brains are played out in our dreams, but are //not// done so literally. Freud coins the terms //manifest content// and //latent content// to describe the multivalence properties of dreams. The //manifest content// is that which is literally happening in the dream. It is what we, after awakening, can describe to someone. The //latent content//, however, is what the dreams actually mean, and are generally the result of our repressed selves. Freud analyses a number of patient dreams in order to demonstrate his methodology of finding meaning. He (possibly) also coins the term //overdetermined// when discussing symbolism in dreams; often, a single object, say a cigar, has multiple meanings, multiple interpretations that point to the one signified. The act of substituting an object for the latent, repressed meaning is one of displacement, Freud argues. The repressed idea is unacceptable in our real lives, so too, is it unnacceptable even in our dream state. So for example, the idea of me wanting to kill someone is replaced by a rock in my dream.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * Dreams are not literal; they must be interpreted. * The contents of the dream are the expressions of repressed emotions. * //Manifest content// is the literal events of the dream; //latent content// is the deeper, repressed meaning. * Objects in dreams are //overdetermined//; they can be interpreted a number of different ways.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "Every attempt that has hitherto been made to solve the problem of dreams has dealt directly with their //manifest// content as it is presented in our memory" (578). * "The first thing that becomes clear to anyone who compares the dream-content with the dream-thoughts is that a work of //condensation// on a large scale has been carried out (579). </span>

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Freud's essay //The Uncanny// discusses a special type of fear, the uncanny, that he experienced in some of his patients. He begins by offering a myriad of definitions across a variety of languages to demonstrate both that the feeling is immanently human - it is irrespective of culture or time - and also to point out how slippery the idea of the uncanny actually is. Some languages describe the uncanny as "being at home" while others describe it as "the strange or uncomfortable." Freud ultimately settles on the now-popular idea that the uncanny is "being at home but it is not home." In other words, something familiar has become defamiliarized in an unsettling way. Freud goes on to wrestle with the idea by using a popular story of the time, //The Sandman//, to pinpoint exactly what he feels makes something uncanny. One of his ideas is that repetition can make something uncanny; others argue that it is something that is human but not-quite, such as a doll or an automaton. Freud makes two conclusions: the first is that the uncanny exists because we encounter a superstition that we thought we had repressed, and the second is that the uncanny is more readily encountered in fictional texts rather than real life because an author has ultimate control over a reader's expectations.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * The uncanny is when the familiar becomes unfamiliar, e.g., when you are in your home but something about it does not feel homey. * The uncanny is rooted in repression of superstition; when we encounter a situation that we feel we had rationally repressed we feel uncanny. * Literature is an easier avenue to achieve the uncanny than reality.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "As soon as something //actually happens// in our lives which seems to confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny" (608). * "//...there are many more means of creating uncanny effects in fiction than there are in real life"// (609). </span>

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Winnicott suggests that the task of the mother is to disillusion the child from the notion of omnipotence. He argues that in the earliest stages of infancy, the child is under the misconception that the mother’s breast and the infant are one, that the infant can summon the breast as if by magic. The mother’s job, then, is to teach the child that this is not the case through gradual disappointment, i.e., she does not immediately and magically appear the instant the infant wants her to. This leads Winnicott to the conclusion that all a child needs is a “good-enough mother” – someone who can devote time to the child in the early, formative months who need not possess “cleverness or intellectual enlightenment” (631). Further, Winnicott focuses on the emotional and psychological development of infants via the segment between the oral phase and the attaining of the first “Not-Me” possession in a child’s life. Winnicott refers to elements in this phase as “transitional phenomena,” and the object a child attaches itself to as the “transitional object.” He explains that his focus centers upon the sequence of events which leads a child away from a constant dependence on the mother towards a healthy attachment to an object (a small toy, doll, blanket, bear, etc.). Winnicott illustrates, via one case study of a mother’s relationship with her two sons, how a successful transition can lead to a successful adulthood (and conversely, how no transitional object, or a failed transition, can lead to anxiety, an unhealthy attachment to one’s mother into adulthood, etc.).\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * According to Winnicot, infants believe they are "omnipotent," that their desires and wishes are instantly fulfilled. * He argues that the "transitional object" teaches infants about "Not-Me;" others exist in the world * Dependence on this object is healthy; without an appropriate transitional object, the child will not grow into a "normal" adult.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "I am here staking a claim for an intermediate state between a baby's inability and growing ability to recognize and accept reality" (625). * "...the mother's main task (next to providing opportunity for illusion) is disillusionment" (632). </span>

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Marx is one of, if not the, biggest names in Materialism studies. In this essay he outlines briefly how a human being is slave (in more meanings than one) to the material reality in which he or she is born. Marx traces the history of how his current capitalist society came to be, starting as far back as the tribal/village state. He then goes on to discuss how modern society functions as a kind of perpetual struggle between the dominant and oppressed classes, the //bourgeoisie// and the //proletariat.// Marx argues that the ideology of a given era is the ideology of the dominant class, and that to control the means of material wealth is also to control the political/culture wealth. Many would say that he is calling for a revolution, the oppressed rising up against the ruling class. However this is not entirely accurate.Marx suggests that this relationship is tenuous and will eventually collapse.(He was wrong, or at least, it hasn't happened yet.)\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * A person is defined by their material world, not their ideological one. * Modern capitalism exists as a perpetual struggle between classes. * Those who control the material wealth likewise control the ideological premises that society is founded upon. * Marx believes this situation will naturally resolve and the class sturggle will collapse.\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production" (730). * "... the rule of a certain class is only the rule of certain ideas, [and] comes to a natural end..." (735). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ Benjamin's "Theses" is a strange theory selection in that its language is almost poetic. He uses unusual sentence structures and flowery diction to meditate on how the past is perceived in the present, and how our present material situation came to be. Like Marx, Benjamin asserts that our modern material world was built on the backs of anonymous laborers - a reality which many choose to ignore or forget. He uses doom and gloom language to underscore how our modern society was and still is a product (pun intended) of exploitation.\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ * History is not 'how it was' but how we perceive it. * His current perception of that history ignored the injustice of exploitation of workers, as per Marx. * His essay is unusual in both formatting and diction. <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ * "To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it 'the way it really was.' It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger" (738). * There is no document of civiliziation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism" (739). </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]

<h2>Brief Summary</h2>\ <h2>TL;DR</h2>\ <span style="text-align:left;">\ <center><h2>Select Quotes</h2></center>\ </span> [[Return to Major Works->Major Works]]