Selective Readings of Modern

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Selective Readings of Modern Contemporary
Literary Theories

• Textuality, Sexuality
• and the Postmodern Ethics
• An Introduction

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Discussion Starters

• What is(are) your interested field(s) and how
  do you do literary criticism?
• Which theoretic issues and literary theory do
  you like? Can you give some examples to discuss
  them?
• Examples of Theoretic Issues 1.
  Representation, Structure, Writing, Discourse,
  Narrative, Figurative Language, Performance,
  Author, Interpretation, Intention,
• 2. Unconscious, Determinacy/Indeterminacy,
  Value/Evaluation, Influence, Rhetoric,
• 3. Culture, Canon, Popular Culture, Literary
  History, Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Ideology,
  Diversity, Imperialism/Nationalism, Desire,
  Ethics, Class

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My Questions

• What is beyond poststructualism?
• How do we discuss the issues of value, ethics
  (i.e. right or wrong), and meanings of human
  conduct when the absolute truths in human history
  have been challenged?
• How is political action and ethics possible when
  human subject is seen as divided, barred, fictive
  and fragmentary?

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Outline

• Why? How is it related to Literary Criticism?
• How?
• Suggested attitudes
• The focus of our course
• Contextualizing our focus before and after New
  Criticism

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Why Theory?

• Pro
• -- the problem with using we ?
  Interdisciplinary clip 2
• -- A tool box of pluralism. It provides us new
  frameworks and perspectives helps us ask new
  questions of the texts we study and about our
  lives. Clip 3 (Marina Warner)
• -- democratization of English Studies. clip 4
• e.g. my own experience

• Con
• -- no longer literary study, ignoring the
  beauty or essence of literature (e.g. Frank
  Kermode clip 1 E. Said clip 5)
• -- keep politics lukewarm a mere word play or
  mind game abstract and obscure separate from
  reality or politics
• -- fetishization of theories (T. Eagleton)
  clip 3

Video Literary Theory what has it done for us?
Terry Eagleton, Frank Kermode, Edward Said and
Marina Warner
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How?

• Read with an active mind. (Do not feel
  oppressed by the difficult languages.)
• Always read to get the main points (to find the
  questions the theory asks) and to ask questions.
• Always try to relate and to map. (Its
  impossible to separate all the theoretical
  discourses into mutually exclusive theoretical
  schools.)

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Theory as an Activity vs. Theory as a body of
knowledge

• In the former, theory is taught as a means of
  understanding the world in the latter,
  theorizing is encouraged as a pedagogical
  practice in which students become actual
  participants in the use of theory. (Henry
  Girouxs ideas explained by Storey)
• Its better to know how to theorize than to
  memorize all the theoretical jargons.

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General Questions to ask

• What are the theorists main concerns? What
  questions does s/he ask and how does s/he answer
  them? Do you have any questions?
• What are the theorists key terms? How are they
  defined?
• What is the theorists method? Is a methodology
  explicitly laid out or is it implied?
• (modified from Doxography versus Inquiry by
  Donald G. Marshall. Sadoff 84)

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Articulation vs. Application

• Application one-to-one correspondence between a
  theory and a text
• Articulation (??) of theories and texts, of
  different theories connecting, negotiating,
  translating.
• wrestling with the angels The only theory
  worth having is that which you have to fight off,
  not that which you speak with profound fluency.
  (Stuart Hall textbook 1901)

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The focus of our course Textuality, Sexuality
and the Postmodern Ethics

• Textuality structure of myth, narrative, signs
  from work to text to intertextuality and
  discourse
• Deconstruction/Framing of author, of (symbolic)
  language and of deconstruction
• Sexuality construction and representation of
  gender and sexuality performativity
• ? Topics Other and the postmodern ethics

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Before and After New Criticism

• Before ref. http//www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Cr
  iticism/new_criticism/traditional.htm
• New Criticism Practical Criticism, Formalism
• After Structuralism Basic ideas of Ferdinand de
  Saussure?
• 1. The synchronic vs. the diachronic langue vs.
  parole// competence vs. performance
• 2. Language is a system of difference. Meaning
  occurs in binary opposition between two signs.
  (e.g. toy, boy)
• 3. sign signifier and signified the connection
  between them is arbitrary.

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Structuralism e.g. V. Propp

• syntax as the basic model for their analysis
  Subject predicate Actant (agent) function
• Propp for him there are 7 "spheres of action"
  (villain, hero, false hero, donorprovider,
  helper, dispatcher, princess and her father.)
  and 31 functions.
• e. g. Cinderellas modern versions
• Cinder Edna Edna -- no fairy godmother as
  helper Cinderella -- marriage not the happy
  ending.
• Hollywood versions Working Girl, A Cinderella
  Story still needs magicthe mans help or
  fairy godmother.

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LAcacia ??? la neige ? lOrage storm la
Lune moon Plafond ceiling Desert desert
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Semiotic Reading The False Mirror

• seeing framing and reconstructing reality
• 1) means of perceiving reality eye
• 2) hollowed out and replaced with artificial
  signs of blue sky pupil.
• 3) Photographic sign drawing sign frame each
  other

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Influences of Structuralism some examples

• Sign signifier signified? referent
• Language is not mimetic (a mirror, or a
  transparent container of reality) it constructs
  reality it speaks us.
• Binary thinking. ? open to deconstruction

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Examples of binarism in traditional literary
theories

• Politics/Truth vs.
• Plato the realm of appearance vs. the realm of
  Form ? poetry twice removed

• Poetics
• Aristotle Three unity, etc.

• Sir Philip Sidney to teach and delight
• The Mirror and the Lamp

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Examples of binarism in traditional literary
theories (2)

• Reason
• Plato poetry tells lies and excites emotions.
• Pope -- golden rules restraint, good taste,
  Dryden "wit" propriety of thoughts and words

• Emotion/Energy
• Romantic poets imagination
• New Criticism Setting up Literature as a
  discipline (autonomy, organicism, etc.)
• ? An objective approach, just as Structuralism
  is scientific

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After Structuralism More Fluid Binaries in
contemporary theories

• Politics vs. Poetics
• Art vs. popular culture
• Culture vs. Economic Relations
• Father vs. Mother Lack vs. imaginary plenitude
• fixity of meaning vs. fluidity of language,
  identity and culture, etc.
• The lines are no longer clear-cut. Autonomy and
  Absolute truth are out.

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References

• Storey, John, ed. .   What is Cultural Studies A
  Reader.  London Arnold, 1996.
• Sadoff, Dianne F and William E. Cain, eds.
  Teaching Contemporary Theory to Undergraduates.
  NY MLA 1994.