Foundations of Literary Analysis - Spring 2005 - Prof. Steve EvansOn ideology. Legitimating systems of dominance. Taking on and living out the identity the system allots to "people like me." • Gender as ideological system: masculine (+) /feminine (-). An aside on Simone de Beauvoir. One is not born a woman, one becomes one. How does one take up and live out the apparently "natural" fact of one's gender? • Ideology and false consciousness: a captivity narrative, a gothic tale, a conspiracy theory. Is there an "author" of ideology? Who spins the web of lies? For whose benefit? The paranoiac strand of ideology critique. • Althusser's distinction between the repressive state apparatuses (RSAs) and the ideological state apparatuses (ISAs). Among the ISAs: education, the family, church, the media, literature & art, the juridical system. • Social authorship of identity and individual authorship. The role of the family in the reproduction of hierarchical systems: is mom ideological? • Beware the spatializing metaphor: is there an "outside" to ideology? Does it go "all the way down"? Determinacy and indeterminacy. And the related questions: is consciousness coextensive with ideology? is language? • Matt's example of floating trash island guy and other apparent exceptions: Robinson Crusoe, Nell (in film of that name), Dr. Itard's wild child. • The emancipatory claims of ideology critique in the period of the French and American revolutions (the "philosophes" in France) and in the mid-19th century work of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and others. • The citizen as ideological category. The "universalism" of the bourgeois revolutions. • From the citizen to the consumer in recent U.S. culture. • Depression, anger, and other responses to the concept of ideology. Class cancelled due to instructor illness—second papers due in Neville 304 by 3:30pm. Analysis of "Ode to the West Wind" by Shelley. In memory of the U.S. poet Robert Creeley, 1926-2005. • Analysis of "Diving into the Wreck" by Rich. Three interpretive modes: Kermode ("members only"), Sontag ("leave it be"), and Eco ("go for it, but in the final instance the text decides"). Initiation, aesthetic appreciation, interpretative action. Close listening to and interpretation of "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" by The Postal Service (lyrics Ben Gibbard). • Further interrogation of the act of interpretation. Looking ahead to English 271. • First act: marking up the text, identifying "interpretables." • Interpretation as translation. And as "free association" (in Freud's sense). And as framing: X means Y in context Z. • To interpret is to assign a text (or message or utterance) to a context (see Graff's essay on "Determinacy / Indeterminacy" in Critical Terms). • The text's language: apartment complex (manifest) - prison (latent) - purgatory (latent). Identity badges and smeared black ink. Who's speaking? And to whom? For whose benefit? Genderless pronouns and gendered assumptions. "Dry" (not crying, not drinking). Guilt and responsibility. • Going out on a limb. Overreading required. Noticing the "remainder." • Techniques for avoiding "frame lock" (clinging to the first interpretation that occurs to one). • What place does sound patterning occupy in your analysis? • The community of interpretation. Saint Patrick's day tales (let's just say, some had a context for learning the word "over-imbibed"). • Examination of metaphor and other forms of figurative language in three songs: "Alice" by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan; "Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left" by Andrew Bird; and first verse of "The Whole World" by OutKast's Andre 3000. Becoming active interpreters. Listening, reading, identifying, interpreting. Review of psychoanalytical concepts from Tuesday. Analysand: discourse: analyst :: author: text: reader. Wo es war, soll ich werden (where it was, there shall I come to be). The it and the I. Split subject ($): It/i. The first world war, battle trauma, and Freud's turn to the "death drive" in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. If the author is a split subject (It/I), and the reader too (It/I), and the text is overdetermined by unconscious forces, how in the world can we hope to communicate? • Aside on Jung and the collective unconscious. Species memory, transcultural archetypes. • The concept of "transference" and the problem of embodying mastery (authority) in the domain of teaching. Analysand: discourse: analyst :: student: discourse: instructor. (Except analyst's retain the weapon of silence, whereas instructors, like analysands, must talk.) • Misadventures of transference in UMaine classrooms. Introduction to key concepts in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The Cartesian "cogito ergo sum" ("I think therefore I am"). The Freudian displacement: "I am not where I think, and I think where I am not" (see Eagleton chapter). The Cartesian formula equates the human subject with the ego. Freud views the subject as internally riven; an arena in which different agencies compete. The "models" Freud proposed and revised over the course of thirty years. See Meltzer 150-51: descriptive, dynamic, systematic. Conscious, preconscious, unconscious. Ego, superego, id. The "mirror stage" according to Lacan, operation of induction into the Imaginary domain. Held captive by an image: I am that image. And the "nom de pere" (name of the father or patronym), an induction into the patriarchal Symbolic order: I am that name. Which just leaves the Real. The Oedipus complex, it's "universality." Incest taboo and exogamy. Drives, desires, repression, and civilization. For Lacan, being-in-language entails a primordial repression (castration) and a fundamental surrender of mastery. My meaning resides in (signs interpreted by) others. Can Freud account for female identity and desire? What has this to do with literature? Working on texts: dreams, slips of the tongue, jokes. And on "symptoms" that can be translated textually ("the talking cure"). Chris's anecdote of mistaken identity, the law, metaphor (x is taken for y) and metonymy (x knows y and is therefore substitutable for y). • Reminder about first paper. • WJT Mitchell on "Representation." Aristotle's division of mimesis (representation) into three categories: object (what is represented), manner (how it is represented), and means (medium through which it is represented). Axis of representation: sign (dab of paint) --- referent (stone). Axis of communication: maker/sender --- beholder/receiver. X means Y in context Z. Charles Sanders Peirce. Three kinds of sign: icon (sign resembles referent), symbol (sign arbitrarily linked to referent), index (sign caused by or otherwise really related to referent). Decay of the indexical function of photographic and cinematic signs in the age of pixels and Photoshop. Peirce's "symbolic" and Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of the linguistic sign. Sign, signifier/signified; referent. The linguistic basis of literary practice. Onomatopoeia (language that attempts to be "iconic" in Peirce's sense; sound mimics sense). Two more axes to grind (out of Saussure): the paradigmatic axis (vertical, substitution, metaphor) and the syntagmatic axis (horizontal, combination, metonymy). Cf. Daniel Chandler's Semiotics for Beginners. The outfit you wore today (syntagm) and the closet you selected it from (paradigm). Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Families or fields of substitutable terms. Review of Roger Brown and links to Turner and Fauconnier's account of metaphorical processes in cognition (overview here): input 1, input 2, generic space, blended space. "Running the blend." McLaughlin on "Figurative Language," esp. 83-84. Metaphor, personification (prosopopeia), apostrophe, simile, and metonymy. "Metonymy accomplishes its transfer of meaning on the basis of associations that develop out of specific contexts" (McLaughlin 83). For example: the cross as site of Christ's crucifixion. Proximity, contagion. In metonymic chains, "next to" translates as "like." "You are the company you keep." • Web resource Semiotics for Beginners. Brief definitions of key concepts from Saussure. Text of Abbott and Costello's routine "Who's on first" (courtesy of Molly) and mp3 file. A comical confusion between function words and content words. Plans for break? • Review of reception theory. Degrees of agency accorded to the reader. Where is the meaning made and by whom? Authorial intention - the work itself - the reader. Essentializing vs. historicizing approaches to literary analysis. And immanent ones vs. contextualizing ones. Specters of interpretative anarchy (anything can be made to mean anything). Stanley Fish. But consensus is not unusual and multiple interpretations are sometimes to be preferred to univocal ones. The pleasures of polysemy ("many meanings"). Frustrations with the difficulty of our readings—especially Eagleton. The desire to know. At the doctor's office: "they have theories for that?" Imagining a context where the difference between Iser's theories and Jauss's (say) actually matter. Analogy of our work to that of acquiring a foreign language. • Roger Brown's thesis: linguistic reference is categorical. Against the "Adamic" theory of language (words are names for things). Categories can be thought of as bundles of traits, some common and stable, some idiosyncratic. Metaphor as trait swapping. Sun, lemon. Herrick's "Delight in Disorder." Voiced by Brenna, then by Megan. Categories: clothing, eros, politics, art. "Kindles." Hot with three ts. Shift in meter at line four. Brief lesson in English prosody and the transition from Latin to the various national languages. The lyric poem and the pop song. Discussion day in Steve's absence: see individual reading journals (on FC folder) for the substance of the meeting. Lecture on Eagleton's "Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Reception Theory" chapter. The three H's: Hegel - Husserl - Heidegger. Consciousness is consciousness of. Bracketing out the world? The phenomenological "reduction." And the "eidetic" abstraction: raising to universal forms. The transcendental subject. Conditions of any possible experience. Centrality of time and temporality in phenomenological analysis. The broken hammer. Attending to and attending away from. Essence is existence. Heidegger's fascism. Hermeneutics and the practice of interpretation (looking ahead to Eng 271). Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960). Joining the conversation. Conservative tenor of hermeneutic project. Aside about Homer (in answer to Chris). Reception theory and the problem of degrees of readerly agency. Watching for Eagleton in all this. First remarks on Roger Brown's theory of linguistic categories and the operations of metaphor (see Text Book 63-72). The feral child. Words point to categories, not things. Review of concepts introduced on Tuesday. Preliminary discussion of "the semiotics of high school." Anecdotes and typologies (see on-line reading journals). Screening of 20-minute clip from Rebel Without a Cause. The escalating chain of character contests leading up to "chicken run." Discussion of Donald Pease's essay on the "Author" in connection to Herrnstein Smith's essay on "Evaluation" (esp. 180-82) and John Guillory's essay on the "Canon" (all from Critical Terms). Pease's genealogy of the author. Auctor (definitive precedent from antiquity) > Author (autonomous self-fashioning individual bringing the news) > Genius (distillation of author into purest quantum of self-determining free self-realization) > Critic (new locus of meaning) > (Death of the) Author / Birth of the Reader (Barthes) > Author Function (Foucault) > Fundamental Authors (Foucault's term for writers like Freud and Marx). Authorship, authority, agency. Cultural styles. Preliminary remarks on Rebel Without a Cause. James Dean and the clothes you wore to class today. Madonna clones in early 1980s southern California. Jim Morrison and Arthur Rimbaud (in response to Brian). Herrnstein Smith's five dimensions of evaluative practice (CT 180-82), with special focus on "c" (restagings, citations, transformations, and translations of texts). Guillory on the canonical (and by extension of the biblical metaphor: the apocryphal and the heretical as well). Canonical value is determined institutionally via curricula, syllabi, classrooms, etc. First quizzes scored and returned (61 possible points). Should advertisements be among the objects analyzed in English Departments? The case for and against. What would Eagleton say? And Pease? Brand supplants author function (Sandra's point). Poet Lew Welch, probable author of "Raid Kills Bugs Dead." Redundancy (kills dead) as example of Hillis Miller's third narrative dimension (see below). Credibility and authority in literature and in advertising. Are ads expressive of contemporary culture? Commodification and reification ("thingification"). Martin Esslin's Aristotelian approach to commercials. The dramatic structure of "persuasive manipulation." It's all Greek to me. Anagnorisis (recognition; revelation). Dianoia (transformed manner of thinking). Peripeteia (reversal of fortune). Deus ex machina (solution that arrives from outside the framework of the plot, as from the gods). Angels in America. Links between Esslin and Goffman. The dramatic structure of the "run-in." Examples from everyday experience (Rian, Caiti, Brian). Author, narrator, character. Outcomes: Win-Lose, Win-Win, Lose-Lose. Hegel's struggle to the death for recognition and the subject positions that result from it: master/slave. Uneven matches: young and old, college student and cop, etc. An anecdote of abusive fathers, rampaging sons, rookie cops, and jury members who believe all teenage boys probably deserve to be strangled to death. J. Hillis Miller revisited. Three-dimensional definition. Dimension I: situation-reversal of situation-revelation. Dimension II: Prosopopoeia (alphabetic character / psychological Character; protagonist-antagonist-witness). Dimension III: Nuclear, core, or key "figure" or "trope." Example of "The Grizzly Bear." Chiasmus. Which side are you on: Pratt-Labov, Hillis Miller? Bordwell handout: a structuralist account of 97% of the films you've ever seen or will see. Schjeldahl handout: example of the ways "evaluation" can bristle in every sentence one writes. Getting paid to evaluate and opine. The long road to The New Yorker. First quiz on recent readings, terms, and concepts. Review of answers and discussion. The importance of the author function in the human sciences. Looking toward Pease's essay on the evolution from "auctor" to "author." The historical genesis of categories and concepts that now seem "natural." Eagleton's account of the "rise of English." Identifying prose styles—and beginning to develop one's own. Quick first pass through Hillis Miller's more elaborate account of narrative acts. Why do we need stories at all? Why do we need the same stories? Why do we always need more stories? Focus on the argument found on page 75, the paragraph beginning: "Both of these miniscule narratives…." Three indispensable elements: plot, personification, patterning. Trope = Greek for "turn," hence "turn of phrase." Prosopopoeia: prosopon (Greek: face), poiesis (Greek: to make). Personification as "putting a face to" something. Aristotle's Poetics as inaugural text in Western literary criticism. Anagnorisis, or recognition (Hillis Miller: "revelation"). Aside on intellectual self-defense and not losing arguments to jerks. In praise of Erving Goffman, American sociologist. His thesis: that the presentation of self in everyday life is, intrinsically, theatrical. Hegel, the struggle for recognition and its effects on identity formation. The "stream of little losses and gains." Seinfeldian "hand." The "residue" left by the outcomes of prior contests: "the outcomes that have been usual" for us are carried on our faces, in our posture and gestures. The "loser" as subject position. Verbal trailer for Rebel Without a Cause. Review of Labov-Pratt and the six categories. Without "complicating action" we'd probably not be talking about the other five. On Raymond Queneau, author of Exercises in Style, and the workshop for potential literature (OuLiPo). Rehearsal of anecdotes heard and analyzed over the weekend. Life and death on Maine's roads. The burning barn. The great carwash robbery. The poker victory. "We're not changing topics until all six narrative functions have been accounted for" (Kiel). Stories within stories. Imperfect narrators, partial stories, failures to fend off "so what." The orientation that goes on forever. Mise en abyme and mise en scene. Evaluation embedded in narrative versus evaluation imposed in the telling. Review of terms from Thursday last (collage, montage, story~plot, latent~manifest, etc.). And a first look at the "literary" anecdotes of Benjamin, Staples, Auster, and others. About the on-line reading journals. Ordinary discourse and literary discourse: is there a qualitative difference between the two, or is it more a matter of shading and circumstance? First attempt at distinguishing between plot (manifest text) and story (latent text). Sigmund Freud. William Labov and sociolinguistics: the study of the social dimension of linguistic communication. How does one speak with a friend, with one's boss, with one's lover? The case of "dude." By speaking, one succumbs to the interpretation of others. Who speaks thus? Who says "stove in"? On accents and vernacular. Retelling the two anecdotes out of Labov: the noble dog who will not harm his master's duck; the fight to the death over a last cigarette. Small lesson on montage. In the Hollywood sense: radical condensation of story time, glimpsed in a discrete sequence of juxtaposed shots. Montage in the more general sense: any cutting together of two (manifest) images that produces a third (latent) meaning; i.e. shot A next to shot B produces meaning C not present in either A or B considered separately. D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein. Along with collage (in visual arts) and radical juxtaposition (in textual practice), montage is a key device in the modernist canon. Anecdote as smallest unit of narration. Pratt's adaptation of Labov's sociolinguistic studies. The six functions common to all narratives according to Pratt: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution, coda. Introduction to class and to one another. Semiotics: the study of signs. What we've been paying attention to lately. Aside on the ritual viewing of particular movies: a sampling (Napoleon Dynamite, Rear Window, etc.). In praise of your hermeneutic (that is, interpretative) skills: mastery of the sitcom, the 3 minute pop song, the vast array of hypermediated American cultural life. Our goal will be to extend these skills into unfamiliar areas as well as to supply you with new concepts and categories that will be of use to you as an interpreter of culture. Literature is situated in a complex and hierarchical field of media that includes television and the internet, radio, film, and other industrial cultural machines. Which media would you miss were they gone? Literature no longer indispensable for the reproduction of dominance in US culture. What function does a "marginal" medium serve? Repository of "authority" and "credibility"? Of historically enduring—perhaps even "universal"—values otherwise denied or ignored? |
