Foundations of Literary
Analysis - Fall 2005 - Prof. Steve
Evans
Reading
Syllabus Subject to change; check back frequently click
here for current week
week
one
7 September
- Wednesday
Log:
Introduction to course and to one another. Objects of attention
and evaluation (songs, films, poems, novels, etc.). Should the
English Department be abolished? Secondary proficiency in a foreign
language: a debate about its value. Other languages in the room?
The project of extending your literacy. The pop song and
the poem. The literacy you possess already, and the literacy
the English Major asks of you. Hermeneutics (study of interpretation)
& semiotics (study of signs).
9 September
- Friday
Text Book
(TB) 02-12 Story and Storyteller
Critical Terms (CT) 225-232 Culture by Stephen
Greenblatt
Hand out: entry on "Culture" from Raymond Williams's Keywords
Assignment:
Position paper, printed hard copy due Monday in class: At present,
in order to earn a Bachelors Degree in English at the University of
Maine, students must demonstrate "intermediate proficiency"
in a language other than English. In eight hundred (800) words or less,
argue either for the maintenance of this requirement or for its abolition.
Log:
Quiz covering readings in Pratt/Labov, Williams, and Greenblatt.
Discussion of quiz. Williams and the concept of multi-layered,
historically-compounded "keywords." Movements in time
and across languages. Language as an echo chamber. For
instance, "truth." Is all truth relative? Not
for Plato and the Christian tradition. Nietzsche's challenge
to timelessness of truth. Kinds of truth, and the disciplines.
A fundamental question: are there things that literature, and
only literature, "knows"? The boundary between ordinary
and literary discourse. All literature has a linguistic foundation,
but is it reducible to that basis? Pratt's sociolinguistic work
in Boston. Who authors our language? Speakers continuously
reshape and revise the lexicon. Of bubblers, packies, and things
"all stove in." Genre and authorship: straight outta
Comptomright to the mall food court. Greenblatt's assertion
that great literary works are "contexts unto themselves."
Practical issues: marking up texts, creating working conditions
in which concentrated thought is possible, reading and rereading.
Scholarship, from the Latin word for "free time" (schole).
week
two
12 September
- Monday
TB 12-18
The Literary Anecdote
CT 429-446 In Place of an Afterword by Frank Lentricchia
Log:
In advance of a more sustained discussion of Lentricchia on Wednesday,
voicing and discussion of Wallace Stevens's poem "Anecdote of the
Jar." In Andy's voice, then in Kathy's, and finally in Rachel's.
Vocal quality as what remains after phonemic information has
been extracted. To read aloud is to interpret: that is, to choose
between competing possibilities (of pronunciation, for example).
What the poet wrote, and what we readers read. Substitution of
"I" for "it" in lines three and nine. The
question of who does the thinking and talking in a human subject: the
ego and/or the unconscious? Do we always say what we mean, or
mean what we say? Preliminary observations and mark-up of "Anecdote":
Tennessee, slovenly, "of a port in air," dominion.
Turning to Pratt, Labov, and the six features common to all narratives
(according to them): abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation,
resolution, and coda. Commencement (abstract) and conclusion
(coda) of narrative temporality (story time). The journalistic
elements: who, what, when, where (orientation). Disturbance of
the scene set (complicating action), and the elmination of that disturbance
(resolution). Evaluation: persuading the auditor or reader to
remain in story time with you. Warding off the ever-threatening
"so what." Examples from film, ordinary life, and literature.
Very brief discussion of two literary anecdotes: Brent Staples's
"Blake," and "Ordnance" by Walter Benjamin.
Honing initial argument: the six features may not always be present,
but their absence is itself notable (absent presence).
14 September
- Wednesday
TB 19-29
The Short Story
Begin reading Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
Log:
Preview of passage identification quiz scheduled for Friday.
On Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style (and Barbara Wright's
heroic translation thereof). The day's focus: Frank Lentricchia's
account of "Someone Reading." Axiom: reading is rereading.
Digression on Joyce's Ulysses. Lentricchia's essay:
its project, structure, and subject matter. Difficulties and
resistances. Apprenticeship to the discursive universe of literary
studies. This is how people talk there. Consult Times
Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, New York Review
of Books, etc. Unfamiliar words, terms, and phrases, among
them: prolepsis, the modern literary theory of aesthetic autonomy, "structure
unstructured yet still, somehow, structured" (437). (Addendum:
perhaps we can consider Frank Gehry's architectural designs, for instance
at Bilbao,
as a manifestation of what Lentricchia is getting at?) Autonomy
= auto- (self) + nomos (law). Brief review of "art for art's
sake" and "formalisms" of various stripes. Proleptic
= anticipated, flashed forward. The politics of language: class,
colonialism, region. Axiom: to interpret is to assign a text
to one or more contexts. The contexts mentioned by Lentricchia:
poem itself ) corpus ) period & movement ) national literature )
national politics of imperialism. Does Lentricchia's essay provide
a persuasive interpretation of "Anecdote of the Jar"?
Does it show you things about the poem that had either not occurred
to you, or that you had observed but not consciously articulated?
Or did it further obscure this already enigmatic poem? Lentricchia
intends his reading of one poem to demonstrate general principles governing
the reading of all poems, indeed of all reading whatsoever. Are
you persuaded?
16 September
- Friday
TB 19-29
The Short Story
CT 66-79 Narrative by J. Hillis Miller
Quiz: Identification
of passages by author (texts drawn from TB, CT, Exercises in Style,
and handout from first day)
Log:
After the passage identification quiz, we reviewed the stories by Kate
Chopin, William Carlos Williams, and Grace Paley in Text Book.
Synopses and discuss of each story in turn. Williams and
the "savage brat." Paley's narrator and her struggle
to craft a story at once believable and enjoyable to her ailing father.
First discussion of Hillis Miller. The phenomenon of "repeat
viewing." Examples from everyday life.
week
three
19 September
- Monday
TB 29-57
Character and Confrontation
CT 39-49 Writing by Barbara Johnson
On Monday afternoon a videotape of Rebel
Without a Cause (dir. Nicholas Ray; 1955) will be placed on reserve
at the Media Resource Center at the Fogler Library (2nd floor). I recommend
that you view it prior to class on Wednesday, 28 September. (Naturally,
if you'd prefer to rent or borrow it and watch at home at your leisure,
feel free to do so.) A detailed synopsis of the film is available here.
Log:
Review of J. Hillis Miller's essay on "Narrative."
Why stories? Why the same stories? Why new ones? Orderly and
predictable symbolic universe, in contrast to "real life"
(where autonomy and predictability can be in short supply). A
child's relationship to stories, and ours. Play it again.
Conversation about some of the "repeat viewing" class members
did over the weekend. Religion as provider of fundamental stories.
A partial turn to "literature" in wake of Enlightenment.
Wallac Stevens's idea of poetry as "supreme fiction."
Close look at Hillis Miller's central claims, made on p75 following
the poems. Comparison of Hillis Miller's universalizing claim
and the competing claim made by Pratt-Labov. Situation - Reversal
- Revelation; Prosopoeia or personification; Nuclear figure, complex
word,or trope. Attention to the medium of language. Prosopon
(Gk. face), poeisis (Gk. to make). Nuclear figure likened to
the "complex words" of Raymond Williams ("Culture"
handout).
21 September
- Wednesday
TB 29-57
Character and Confrontation
CT 23-38 Structure by John Carlos Rowe
Log:
Notice of a terminology quiz projected for Monday, 26 September.
First up: Barbara Johnson's essay on "Writing." The
Saussurean theory of the sign and the emergence of modern linguistics
(Johnson 40-41). Precedents in antiquity and theology.
The "Adamic" theory of language: words referring to things.
Saussure's bracketing of the referent. Sign: signified
/ signifier. The arbitrary joining of meaning to matter, sense
to sound. And a second axis of arbitrariness: sign to referent.
Looking ahead to Roger Brown's thesis that words refer to categories,
not directly to things. Graphic medium: marks on a surface.
At what point do they become signifiers? Phonetic medium: sound
waves originating with the speaker as decoded by the listener.
Listening to Larry Eigner speak. Breanne's laryngitis.
Two signifieds intersecting same signifier: tear (noun) /tear (verb).
To voice is to interpret. Two signifiers for one signified:
homonymy and synonymy. The logic of "supplementarity"
detailed on p45. Hierarchical binaries: speech (+) / writing
(-), for instance. And within a patriarchal social formation: male (+
/ female (-). Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's thesis that gender
domination is the foundation of all other forms. Small lesson
on Socrates, Plato, and the relationship between speech and writing.
Turn to Erving Goffman and "character contests."
Elaboration of Hegel's scenario of the "struggle to the
death for recognition." Masters and slaves. Incident
along the footpath, and all the zero-sum contests that take the same
form. The domestic sphere as scene for character contests: parents/children.
The erotic sphere. Postponed Esslin until Friday: pay
attention to terms he adapts from Aristotle's "Poetics" to
discuss commercials.
23 September
- Friday
TB 29-57
Character and Confrontation
CT 23-38 Structure by John Carlos Rowe
Log:
Further discussion of Goffman's concept of "character contests."
Rules of eye contact, path-finding and path-claiming.
Zero sum games, competing for limited resources such as space, time,
attention. Examples from everyday life. Turn to Esslin
on Aristotle. The six features common to all successful dramatic
narratives according to Aristotle: muthos, ethos, dianoia, opsis, lexis,
and melopoeia. The first three are primary and concerned with
"object" of mimesis. Second three are secondary, though
still essential. Opsis concerns the "manner" of mimesis. Lexis
and melopoeia are "media" of mimesis. Peripeteia defined
and discussed. Deus ex machine defined and discussed.
week
four
26 September
- Monday
CT 105-117
Author by Donald Pease
TB 29-57 Character and Confrontation
David Bordwell, "Classical Hollywood Cinema" (handout)
First
Paper due 5 October
Choose a literary or cinematic narrative of some length and subject
it to an analysis using the concepts and categories we've discussed
in the first month of this class (Labov and Pratt's six common elements,
Hillis Miller's more elaborate account of narrative universals, the
distinction between plot and story, manifest versus latent content,
Aristotle's terminology as used in Esslin, Goffman's concept of character
contests, Bordwell's structuralist analysis of films, etc.).
It is up to you, first, to determine which theoretical framework (or
blend of elements from different frameworks) best accounts for the
actual operations of the narrative you've selected and, second, to
make a convincing case for the superiority of the method of analysis
you've chosen over competing models.
A successful paper will make an interesting choice of the object to
be analyzed, demonstrate a firm and detailed grasp of the categories
and concepts employed in the analysis of that object as well as a
critical attitude toward them, and sustain its analysis in a consistent
and well-structured manner throughout the length of the paper.
Format: a paper not to exceed 2000 words in MLA format, using 10-12
point font, double spacing, and one-inch margins.
Log:
Review of terms prepared in advance of the quiz, including: coda, prosopopoeia,
panegyric, melopoeia, manifest/latent, semiotics, polysemy, binaries,
hierarchical binaries, trope, axiom, supplemenent, aesthetic autonomy.
Thirty minutes spent on quiz. Preview of first paper assigment.
No time to discuss lovely diagram synopsizing Pease's history
of the "author." Reserved for further discussion Friday.
28 September
- Wednesday
Discussion
of Bordwell & Pease
Rebel Without a Cause, dir. Nicholas Ray, 1955 (on reserve at Fogler)
Log:
Further elaboration on first paper. Discussion of Bordwell's
essay, which completes our initial survey of narratological theories.
Fabula (story, latent content) and syuzhet (plot, manifest content).
Dual track: heterosexual romance + other sphere of action.
Problem-solving and deadlines. Two meanings of montage: a restricted
one synonymous with "summary" (see below); a more general
one, based on the French montrer or to show. Any cutting
together of two images that results in a "third meaning."
Composition: sequences and punctuation. The canonical
narrative tempos: ellipsis, summary, scene, stretch, and pause.
Unity of time, space, and action: from Aristotle to Hollywood.
Examples: Groundhog Day, Queneau's Exercises, North
by Northwest, The Lady in the Lake, others.
30 September
- Friday
Conclude
your reading of Exercises in Style by Queneau
Plot synopsis preparatory to first paper due in class
Log:
To Pease and the author, finally. Historical development of the
category. Auctor > author > genius > critic > author
reader
(Barthes) > author function (Foucault) > foundational authors
(Foucault). Transition from monarchy and aristocracy to democracy.
Emergence of public spheres of debate. And of a demand for "news."
"Representative" government. The genius as distillation
(and elevation) of author. A different kind of "vertical"
relationship. The trickier end of our graph: Barthes & Foucault.
"Foundational" authors as return of the auctor
concept?
week
five
3 October
- Monday
TB 57-61
Representation and Its Complications
CT 11-22 Representation by W.J.T. Mitchell
Log:
Focus on "Representation" by Mitchell. Mimesis in Plato
and Aristotle. Representation (broad translation), imitation
(narrower), mimicry (narrower still). Learning by looking to,
doing as (others do). The axis of communication (maker-beholder)
and the axis of representation (sign-referent). Photography in
the age of pixel manipulation. Distorted representations.
Man Ray's photograph (Text Book 59) and Magritte's painting (Text
Book 60). Interpretation of elements and manner of framing.
First pass through e.e. cumming's "r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r"
(TB 61). Mimesis of a movement (verb) rather than a static
entity (noun). Modernist practices of representation.
5 October
- Wednesday
Draft of
first paper due in class
CT 177-185 Value/Evaluation by Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Log:
More voicings of poem by e.e. cummings. Return to Mitchell's
essay on "Representation." Peirce's categories of signs,
organized by relationship of sign to referent. Earlier than and
distinct from Saussure's theory, which it supplements nicely.
Motivated signs and arbitrary signs. Symbol: sign has arbitrary
relationship to referent. Icon: sign resembles referent.
Index: sign is existentially linked to referent, is caused by it, or
proximate to it.
7 October
- Friday - No Class
week
six
10 October
- Monday - Fall Break - No Class
12 October
- Wednesday
TB 63-72
The Linguistic Basis of Metaphor
TB 72-74 Metaphor in Three Poems
CT 80-90 Figurative Language by Thomas McLaughlin
Log:
Discussion of Barbara Herrnstein Smith's account of "evaluation"
(focused on Critical Terms 181-82). And a preview of the
logic of metaphor. Let X stand for Y in circumstance Z.
The example of paper money. The dollar store. Exchange
values and use values. Composition and evaluation: the writer
as critic. The receiver of the text and the finite resource of
attention. The transformative performance of texts: remakes,
translations, stagings, etc. Informal but overt verbal judgments.
Institionalized forms of evaluation. Does Herrnstein Smith
adequately address issues of power / authority / censorship?
Roger Brown's theory of categorical reference (Text Book 63-72).
Dr. Itard and the Wild Child (Victor). Words refer first
to categories, which can then be applied to particular things.
Chairs, books.
14 October
- Friday a recording of this class session exists
TB 74-83
Metaphor and Dream
CT 147-62 Unconscious by Françoise Meltzer
Log:
Review of Brown and his theory of "categorical" reference.
McLaughlin's essay on "figurative language."
Meaning in excess of the literal. Meaning in excess of intention.
The use a "figure" is to take a risk. Nike ad
reproduced in Text Book 156. Samson the first suicide
bomber? "Be a Marine." Framing certain traits
of category "in" and framing others "out."
Major "figures of speech" (McLaughlin 83-84): metaphor, personification,
apostrophe, simile, metonymy. The axis of substitution (metaphoric,
paradigmatic) and the axis of combination (metonymic, syntagmatic).
Of crosses and crowns. Changing topic: the "rubric"
by which first papers are evaluated.
week
seven
17 October
- Monday
TB 83-87
Surrealist Metaphor
CT 147-62 Unconscious by Françoise Meltzer
Paper
One returned with comments / rubrics.
Log:
Freudian categories (Text Book 74-77). Latent and manifest,
dream work and work of intepretation, condensation, displacement, and
"imagery." Discussion of dream life. Overview
of Freud's major concerns and topics. His "texts":
symptoms, dreams, jokes. "All dreams are the representation
of a wish as though it were fulfilled." Problems with that
formulation. Post-traumatic stress after World War I forced Freud
to reconsider. Discussion of first paper.
19 October
- Wednesday
TB 128-142
Hidden Meaning: Parables and Allegory
CT 369-386 Desire by Judith Butler
Log:
Overview of revision process. How to prepare your revision report.
Discussion of binaries governing the Meltzer and Butler essays
on "unconscious" and "desire." Human~animal, conscious~unconscious
(Freud), master~slave (Hegel), signified~signifier (Saussure), reason~desire.
The unconscious as social fact, as linguistic fact, as residue
of animal infrastructure upon which "the human" is overlaid?
Plans for revision of first paper.
21 October
- Friday
TB 128-142
Hidden Meaning: Parables and Allegory; focus on brief parables
CT 121-134 Interpretation by Steven Mailloux
week
eight
24 October
- Monday
TB 128-142
Hidden Meaning: Parables and Allegory; focus on brief parables
TB 128-142 Hidden Meaning: Parables and Allegory; focus on "A Night-Sea
Journey"
CT 135-46 Intention by Annabel Patterson
Submit
hardcopy of "revision report" in class.
26 October
- Wednesday
TB 128-142
Hidden Meaning: Parables and Allegory; focus on "A Night-Sea Journey"
TB 87-94 Poetic Uses of Metaphor
CT 163-177 Determinacy/Indeterminacy by Gerald Graff
28 October
- Friday
TB 87-94
Poetic Uses of Metaphor
Poetry Handout
week
nine
31 October
- Monday
TB 94-103
Metaphor as a Basis for Thought
TB 87-94 Poetic Uses of Metaphor
Poetry Handout
Final
day to submit revision of paper one.
2 November
- Wednesday
TB 94-103
Metaphor as a Basis for Thought
CT 203-222 Rhetoric by Stanley Fish
TB 87-94 Poetic Uses of Metaphor
Poetry Handout
4 November
- Friday - No Class
TB 106-113
from AIDS and Its Metaphors
week
ten
7 November
- Monday
TB 113-128
Arguing with Metaphor: Analogy and Ideology
CT 306-321 Ideology by James H. Kavanagh
9 November
- Wednesday
TB Transforming
Texts (2): Sleeping Beauties
11 November
- Friday
TB 162-176
Transforming Texts (2): Sleeping Beauties
TB 207-210 On Interpretation
week
eleven
14 November
- Monday
TB 210
- 229 Bettelheim and Prose on "Sleeping Beauty"
16 November
- Wednesday
Texts &
Research: The Mystory
18 November
- Friday
Texts &
Research: The Mystory
week
twelve
21 November
- Monday
Second
Paper Due - Using the methods and concepts modeled over the past
month of analyzing songs and poems, develop your own sustained analysis
of one of the approved poems. Target length: no less than 1000, and
no more than 2000, words. Due at the start of class.
23 November
- Wednesday
No classs
25 November
- Friday
No classs
week
thirteen
28 November
- Monday
TB 248-262
Materials on Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther
CT 263-273 Gender by Myra Jehlen
30 November
- Wednesday
TB 262-274
Roland Barthes: The Fragment
2 December
- Friday
TB 262-274
Roland Barthes: The Fragment
CT 274-287 Race by Kwame Anthony Appiah
week
fourteen
5 December
- Monday
TB 274-313
Fragments of Identification: A Guide
CT 288-305 Ethnicity by Werner Sollors
7 December
- Wednesday
TB 274-313
Fragments of Identification: A Guide
Discussion
of The Gleaners and I by Agnes Varda (on reserve at the Media
Resource Center)
9 December
- Friday
TB 274-313
Fragments of Identification: A Guide, focus on Eunice Lipton's "History
of an Encounter: Alias Olympia" (282-291)
CT 406-427 Class by Daniel T. O'Hara
week
fifteen
12 December
- Monday
CT 354-369
Imperialism/Nationalism by Seamus Deane
14 December
- Wednesday
CT 429-446
In Place of an AfterwordSomeone Reading by Frank Letricchia
16 December
- Friday
CT 429-446
In Place of an AfterwordSomeone Reading by Frank Letricchia
Finals
Week
19 December
- Monday
Cumulative
final examination, normal room, 1:30-3:30pm
Final Project
and any revised projects due at exam
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