Literary Criticism Class #1. What Is Theory? “a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions” (Terry Eagleton, After Theory, p.2)

Literary Criticism

Class #1

What Is Theory?

• “a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions”

(Terry Eagleton, After Theory, p.2)

•Why Study Critical Theory?

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? )

Structuralism

• “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?

Ferdinand de Saussure

(1857-1913)

The SignThe Sign Signified

(signifié): a concept

Signifier

(signifiant): a sound-image (or a written mark)

“Arbor”

I.• "The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary” (Saussure)

I.• “The meanings we give to

words are purely arbitrary, and . . . these meanings are maintained by convention only” (Barry 41).

Equusㄇㄚˇ Horse “Mimi”

• Against “reference,” essentialism, or mimetic representation, namely, one-to-one correspondence between words and things

woman woman woman woman

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).

syntagmatic chain

Paradigm

atic chain

Horizontal axis

Vertical

axis

mat

bat

• I bought my hat in an antique store.

cat

rat

hovel

shed

hut

• Ms. Su lives in a house.

apartment

mansion

palace

• 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

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem05.html

IBM AppleStructure Repetition Non-repetition

Disconnected lines

Joined lines

Color Monochromatic Polychromatic

Cold Warm

Form Substance (“bold”)

Outline

Straight Curved

“面子”• Group work: Identify the binary opposites.

L’Homme Sans Tête

• (directed by Juan Solanas)

• Group work: Identify the binary opposites.

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).

• Problems with Descartes’ idea: “I think therefore I am”?

• World language Imediator

Langue vs. Parole• Parole: an individual remark

(specific, diachronic)

• Langue: a wider containing structure (synchronic, ahistorical)

Noam Chomsky

• Competence → Langue

• Performance → Parole

武松打店• Group work:

(1) Identify binary oppositions

(2) Discuss how language constitutes our world.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

(1908-)

• "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”

Discussion• The method in “Incest and Myth”

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)

“口吐蓮花”• Group work: (1) Identify binary oppositions. (2) Similarities with “面子” ?

•The End