Literary Theory

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Literary Theory

• Dichotomizing Ordinary Language and Literary
  Language

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Ordinary Language Literary Language
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Meaning determinate ever-changing
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Ambiguity problem goal
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Surface form means to end end
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Domain universals particulars
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Analysis necessary
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try to complete interference
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never exhaust
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Purpose communication expression
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Rationality rational irrational
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Truth correspondence coherence
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Disciplines linguistics cognitive psychology
artificial intelligence sociology
anthropology literary criticism poetics'
rhetoric stylistics literary history
aesthetics
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Anti-Realism

• Graff literature defamiliarizes reality
  criticism defamiliarizes literature

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• Poirier Literature has only one
  responsibility--to be compelled and compelling
  about its own inventions

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• Bloom A theory of poetry must belong to poetry,
  must be poetry, before it can be of any use in
  interpreting poems.

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• Scholes Once we knew that fiction was about
  life and criticism was about fiction--and
  everything was simple. Now we know that fiction
  is about other fiction, is criticism in fact, or
  metafiction. And we know that criticism is about
  the impossibility of anything being about life,
  really, or even about fiction, or, finally, about
  anything. Criticism has taken the very idea of
  "aboutness" away from us. It has taught us that
  language is tautological, if it is not nonsense,
  and to the extent that it is about anything it is
  about itself. Mathematics is about mathematics,
  poetry is about poetry and criticism is about the
  impossibility of its own existence

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Tallis degrees of realism

• Meyer L. Abrams (The Mirror the Lamp)

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• Freund, 1987, p. 2 subversion of triangle by
  focusing on audience
• Reader Response History

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• return to reader
• resee language as power
• I. A. Richards (1929)

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We are often compelled, for example, to say
things about the poem, or the words in it, which
are only true of the effects of the poem on the
minds of its readers... We speak of the poems
beauty instead of entering upon elaborate and
speculative analyses of its effect upon us... we
come temporarily to think that the virtues of a
poem lie not in its power over us, but in its own
structure and conformation as an assemblage of
verbal sounds
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technical v. critical remarks

• Jonathan Culler structure gt theory of reading
  (Freund, p. 79)
• Stanley Fish interpretive community

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but cf. Mary Louise Pratt linguistics of contact

• Norman Holland psychoanalytic criticism
• Roman Ingarden phenomenological intentional
  creation of text
• Wolfgang Iser reception theory
• Implied Reader (Tompkins) Act of Reading
  (Suleiman C)
• art as defamiliarizing
• situated evaluation figures
• hermeneutic circle
• illusion-making
• dialectical structure of reading
• Gestalt psychology the shifting blank
• Social Interaction Model
• "Freckle Juice" my entry point

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stories as recountings of events
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summaries as desired end points
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the main idea

• Impoverished view of author-reader relationship

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presence of author/reader
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dynamic relationship
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multiple roles
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interactions of author/reader

• Rip Van Winkle intro
• Sokolov multiple embedding
• McPhee (Pine Barrens)
• Homer (Odyssey)
• Balzac (S/Z) "as though"
• Potter "am sorry"
• McPhee (Bark Canoe) roles
• Kundera I understood
• purposes

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• Romantic (focus on author author's meaning)

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Mid-1700s

• breakdown of patronage system
• commercial printing
• large reading public
• mass education/standardization

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unknown reader gt shift to author

• direct to psychic life of individuals indirect
  good
• Shelly Eternal poets scorn to affect a moral
  aim
• deification of poetry

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gt ordinary language v literary language

• New Criticism (focus on text formal properties)
• competition from science
• Brooks Warren Study poetry as poetry
• A poem should not mean but be

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Anti-realism Self-sufficient world not mere
representation
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Wellek Warren The statements in a novel, in a
poem, in a drama are not literally true gt not
logical propositions
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Coleridge That willing suspension of disbelief
that constitutes poetic faith
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Wimsatt Beardsley intentional fallacy
affective fallacy
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Rhetoric of inquiry

• appeal to objective authority denunciation of
  rhetoric gt one of most effective rhetorical
  strategies available
• unity all fields are rhetorical
• Donald McCloskey economics
• Clifford Geertz, James Clifford, George Marcus,
  Mary Louise Pratt, Renato Rosaldo anthropology
• Charles Bazerman, Bruno Latour, Stephen Woolgar,
  Michael Lynch science
• Gerd Gigerenzer, David Murray statistics in
  social sciences

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Susan Peck McDonald, Robert Scholes, Terry
Eagleton literary theory
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Hayden White, Allan Megill history
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David Klemm theology
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Mark Kelman, Catherine McKinnon law
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diversity special devices linked to key
questions in each field
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• Ethnography (M L Pratt)

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cover (Stephen Tyler in India)
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ethnography as science
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Malinowski quote, p. 27
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(Clifford impossible attempt to fuse objective
subjective practices)
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travel writing narration/description
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ethnography description/narration
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popular/scientific book pairs, p. 31
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encounter narrative (1st person, etc)
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Bushmen/!Kung writing
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Shostak quote, p. 48
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recognize that tropes are neither natural, nor in
many cases unique to discipline

• Laboratory Science (Latour Woolgar)

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philosopher, not know TRF(H) Salk Institute,
1975-7
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Sections A B (p. 46)
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papers as products, not reports
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strange tribe (p. 49)
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photos (pp. 93-103)
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inscription devices (p. 51)
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Latours experience as technician, p. 245
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obsession with inscription (pp. 245-6)
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methods
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citation networks (mobilize allies)
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construction of a fact/statement types
conjecture/claim/qualified assertion/assertion/uns
tated
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black boxes

• American Essayist Prose
• sentence-sentence (decontextualized)
• text over experience
• fictionalization of audience author