In aid of assembling/tracing our 'toolkit' of premises/propositions/hypotheses/queries, I shall post the Thesis-Statement sentences here as we go along, and perhaps include additional observations.
T S #1 (Bertens Chs. 1&2): In the move from the emphasis on meaning in literary theory to the emphasis on form, there is the danger of losing sight of one of the most important aspects of any literary work: the emotional impact and meaning it can have for the reader.--Michelle
TS#1:Chapter 1 of Literary Theory: The Basics sets up the 'New Critics'
and the 'Practical Critics' as a bunch of arrogant, elitist snobs who are trying
to foist their readings and their canon upon their critical audience as the
only acceptable ones--and what's wrong with that?
Art and literature are inherently elitist endeavors and there should be an
elect set of critics who can tell people which texts are good or bad because,
first of all, art and literature were never meant for themasses--those of us
who study literature are in a better position to determine the meaning of a
text and to pass judgment on its value rather than someone who is less educated;
secondly, without critics to establish which texts are worthy of study, those
of us in college literature programs would all be taking classes in Janet Evanovich
and Tom Clancy (or worse);
and thirdly, we?re going to try to convince people that our readings and our
canon of texts are worthy of people's attention anyway, so we should just start
there and admit that to begin with and learn to live with it.--George
Observations/points or passages of interest from Bennett and Royle or Bertens [Flores]:
"The beginning"--myth of priority given to first reading, as if one could identify or return to or restore a beginning or an original experience (7)
"Readers and reading"--danger of assuming that reader is autonomous (13); possibility of interpretive communities?; is the act of reading one of faithfulness/subservience or a subversive resistance to or transformation of power?; what is suggested by the statement that "reading survives the command of the text" (15); why can we never finally know if what appears in "this poem is us reading or us being read" (17)--"not only do we read the poem but the poem reads us."
"The author"--question not only of authorial intention but also of authority--who or what (language) is in control? "In this respect, language can be thought of as a kind of system within which any writer must take a designated place: the system and rules of language inevitably dictate the possibilities of what someone can say" (22). Foucault: "The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning" (24).
"The text and the world"--Can literary texts do things to/in the world as well as describe it? Derrida: "There is no outside-text" (31); no reading independent of previous reading conventions, and no access to world without signs.
"The uncanny"--literature as transformative and preoccupied with the interplay of familiarity and strangeness--note how repetition and doubling/doubles undermine the logic of identity; uncanny as ghost-effect that haunts all words: the uncanny is an effect of reading: it is like a foreign body within ourselves.
"Monuments"--to remind and to establish value, though remembering may also disguise and deface; again Bennet and Royle refer to/stress the "haunting singularity of the literary text"--why? how so?
LT 1: Reading for meaning--practical criticism and new criticism--is there a disinterested, timeless way/context from which to determine the best that has been thought and said in the world? Are you familiar with or identify with the notion of the possibility of autnomous, individual subjects, liberal subjects who are reasonable and reasonably free to determine what is what; who should or is capable of rendering judgment and for whom or on behalf of whom? Is the way to determine or discern a poem's meaning to focus on the text itself, on its formal properties or structure? Are the author's supposed intentions or the responses of various readers important? What is the heresy of paraphrase? Is human nature unchanging? Are we relatively free to create ourselves through discerning judgment/interpretation/evaluation (as liberal humanists contend), then what are our moral/ethical/social obligations?
LT 2: Reading for form I--Russian formalists' interest in literature's power to defamiliarize 'ordinary' language, also with effect that the form of literary language is part of what it communicates, part of a self-referential emphasis; fabula (what happened); syuzhet (story as told); Propp: various syuzhets with particular actions/functions for one fabula, but early Formalism "went wrong to assume that literariness was a product of inherent qualities of devices" (40). Defamiliarizing is not an inalienable property: it manifests itself in context: "The only rule that can be formulated is that defamiliarization works by way of contrast, of difference" (40). All a matter of differential functions within a system, both in terms of particular literary works and within literature as a whole.
Prague structuralism: determine dominant orientation or speech-act function (presumed that literature is primarily oriented towards a literary code, its poetic function rather than referential function); Prague group replaced defamiliarization with concept of foregrounding and the dynamism of the relationship between the defamiliarizing element and other elements.
Jakobson: "the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination" (47, grammatical and semantic 'equivalences' selected not only among, for example, possible word choices in a poem but also setting up equivalences between words in a poem).
LT 3: Reading for form II, French Structuralism, 1950-1975
Form inevitable--language as system of signs(Saussure)--structure is what makes meaning possible (55); arbitrary nature of sign(s) witin conventions of meaning/use (parole)--trace form of words to principle of differentiation: "Words, then, function in a system that uses difference to create its components" (57); principle of difference also gives rise to words' meanings; signifier (form or sound-image)/signified (human concept/category of meaning). Meaning produced by the structure of relations among signs.
Structural anthropology--study of culture, including function of binary opposites, the presence or absence of terms; Barthes' semiology, including analyses of fashion, and recognition or assertion of dominance/submission oppositions and evaluations at work in opposed terms.
Narratology, esp. Genette's analyses of relations of narration, such as chronological order of events vs. narrative order of events, and comparisons of time in narrated world to time of narration; point of view; free indirect discourse (character's thought focalized in own idiom via third-person narration).
TS#1:While the structuralist perspective is primarily concerned with the underlying
(possibly universal) structure of a text, if, as Bertens
writes, "the meaning of a particular work is produced by a collaboration
of the reader and the structure" (70), then this seems to leave room for
the reader to interpret the text based at least partly on his or her own experience.--megan
TS#1:In order to understand characters' relationship, a structuralist must look at the desires, subjects, and objects of the characters. It is therefore necessary to assume the author was aware of these "actors" while writing and can be held accountable for their analysis.--Ellen
TS#1: The form and meaning of texts are important to consider, however the political and social history is vital to understanding the ideology behind the text.--Mary
TS#1: Ideology distorts our view of our true conditions of existence, it is waiting for us wherever we go and is involved in everything we do. Writers can never completely escape ideology and their social background, the social reality of the writer will always be a part of the text. --Neil
TS#1:"Painting a lady's 'portrait' reduces her to an object for men to
admire and by which they are entertained, instead of a person with whom to
interact. Ralph's objectification of Isabel is representative of the opinions
of his society, the dominant society in which Isabel exists."
(Key
page references: 54, 69)--Catherine
TS#1:Whether it is absurdity, discomfort, or a feeling of superiority, we laugh when our own reason, as opposed to the capital "R" Reason, lacks the ability to describe the events around us.--Nat
TS#1: Regardless of the time period in which a piece of writing is either set, or has physically been written or published in there is an intrinsic value, a humanistic quality that can be communicated.
TS#1:chapter 11 from B&R "Laughter": "There is a child-like
pleasure involved in laughing at something at once surprising and familiar...everything
comic is bases fundamentally on degradation [or "stepping down"] to
being a child [Freud]" (p. 91).
My statement was that laughter is found to be simplistic, so do we therefore
ever find humor in what is complicated (in reference to texts, movies, etc.).
Furthermore, we only laugh at things that are easy to think about...does this
mean we cannot laugh at what we have to thing through??--Kelli
TS#1:TS#1:Bennett and Royle give a definition of literature as “the space
in which questions of personal identity are most provocatively articulated”
(123).
Henry James presents a subject, Isabel Archer, highly concerned with her
own development, with herself as “I,” yet she will never be able to
fully define herself in this way given the psychoanalytic view of the human
subject as decentered, or, as Bennett and Royle write, “I … can never
be simply or precisely who or what I think” (126).
“She was always planning out her own development, desiring her own
perfection, observing her own progress.” (James 61-62)--Megan
TS#1 (ch.14 Bennett and Royle):If we are subject to language, agents of language, and language governs us, than without knowledge of how to speak, write, and read our language, we cannot define ourselves.--Ellen
TS#2: Being -- having an identity -- is a process that we are unable to completely understand from within as it happens. Therefore we turn to characters in literature (and elsewhere) in an effort to try to contemplate the process of being that they are engaged in so as to better understand the process of being that we are engaged in.--George
TS#1: With respect to literature, the difference between men and women can only be resolved when women can truely find a voice in literature; it will only happen when the male centered historical canon is decentered and placed in competition with some sort of female canon. Eventually these two separate canons will be one and the same.--Nat
TS#2: B&R Chapter 17: God
Don Cuppit has called religion a hatred machine and without stepping on two
many toes I believe this a concept worth looking deeper into. With the
September 11th attacks still in recent memory, George Bush's campaign against
evil-doers still running rampant, and even when looking at the demonstrators
in front of the UI Commons within the last few weeks it is impossible to consider
religion as a purely altruistic endeavor. Anyone ever heard of the crusades
or, what has now become a buzz-word, Jihad? Perhaps John Lennon was right
as he was quoted in the first lines of chapter 17. When considering God
one has to believe that "it" is something that cannot be denied because
"it" permeates our text, our language, perhaps out sense of communication.
Religious entity or farce, we have created "it" at the very least
and preserved it in literature.--Andrew
TS#2:“People have a supernaturally hard time agreeing on an interpretation, of a given piece of literature this is true. This does not mean that literature is some altar to idolize; rather it means we do not know what we are doing.”~ Chris Sanders Oct. 9th, 2003
Thesis Sentence Statement #2 (10/9/2003)
If God is dead, and the concept of God’s authority is inextricably linked
with the authority of the author in a literary text, and, as Barthes proposes,
the author is also dead, then we as readers are reduced to despair by the polysemous
nature of a text without authoritative, authorial, or godlike direction.
Without the godlike author, or the flawed concept of “an essential and
stable meaning and . . . a transcendental signified” (Bennet & Royle
153), why analyze texts at all? Even if stable meaning is impossible or
is a flawed concept, we must entertain this concept at least to an extent in
order to justify our own interpretive impulses, just as we must continue to
entertain the concept of God despite the ways in which God has been “killed
off” by scientific exploration. -- Catherine
TS2:The activity of writing is in itself a search for God; it is only in literature
and art that we can trancend the boundary of reality and explore the human spirit.
--nat
p.479: "But I am changed; a woman has to change a good deal to marry."
This is somewhat of an ironic statement, being that Henrietta was
saying it to Isabel. A woman does have to change when she become marriage,
but not in the literal sense of identity. And how far does one take the
change? Isabel has changed incredible amounts- she has become a part of Osmond's
shadow... His identity is her identity because she has sacrificed her own reality
for his own. --Kelli
TS2:If literature does indeed tend towards the demonic and is about "entrancement, posession, being invaded or taken over"(156), then Isabel is the embodiment of this idea, the personification of the process we go through when we read a work of literature. I was thinking about Isabel and her room in the mansion in America where she went to read (to become entranced by literature), and the similarity between this 'office' and the 'room' she finds herself in within Gilbert's mind. Both dark with little light available and a world outside the walls she will not or cannot see. I'm not sure how far one can take this but I was struck by how similar these two 'rooms' are in the novel.--Michelle
TS2:I was intrigued by the idea that literature could contain both the sacred and the profane (I think I am quoting someone with that phrase, but I’m not sure who), and by Salman Rushdie’s comment that sacred things must be made that way through a specific act/event. So, we take something containing evil, and by recognizing it as literature we make it sacred. But, it still contains the evil, and it is this paradox that makes us recognize it as “great” or “literary.” Upon reading this chapter, I immediately thought of both William Blake and John Donne, in whose poetry we can easily find this evil/sacred paradox. --Megan
Possible TS3 #1: Bennet and Royle quote Lacan as proposing that “the
unconscious is structured like a language” (172), while Bertens asserts
that “for Lacan, there is a direct connection between the repressive character
of language and culture and the coming into being of the unconscious” (162).
Together, these statements seem to suggest that Lacan believes the unconscious
is forced into existence partially by the limiting factor of language, but also
that the unconscious itself does not exist in reaction to language but configures
itself with the same forms that define language; thus, it is organized and defined
by that which it opposes. This is similar to Foucalt’s belief that
we are complicit in our restriction by discursive formations and Derrida’s
recognition that “il n’y a de hors-texte” (qtd. in Bertens 127).--Catherine
Possible TSS3 #2: Hélène Cixous suggests that we can liberate
ourselves from patriarchal power and “philosophico-theoretical domination”
(qtd. in Bertens 167) by exercising a method of marginal writing that she calls
écriture féminine, while Julia Kristeva promotes the concept of
the Semiotic, a series of repressed ideas that can be expressed in marginalized
language like that of children, poetry, or mental illness (see Bertens 167).
However, do these concepts destabilize traditional binary oppositions, or do
they simply reverse the traditional privileging of those oppositions?
Is it possible to write or use language in such a way that no binary opposition,
no process of centering and marginalizing, no process of foregrounding and backgrounding
is brought into effect? Ultimately, does meaning depend upon the “two
term system, related to ‘the’ couple man/woman?” (qtd. in Bertens
164)? Can this system be discarded—not simply reversed—without
eliminating the possibility of sense-making?--Catherine
TS3:One of Derrida’s attacks centers around subverting the notion that
language can give us access to the truth (the subversion of logo centrism).
Language does give us access to the truth though, maybe not complete, and maybe
not perfect truth, but truth nonetheless. Otherwise I would have no knowledge
of things like penguins, witch I have only read about and never experienced.
What is up now Mr. Derrida?!!!--Chris
TS3:from pg. 180, bottom paragraph of Bennett and Royle:
It is about the linking of the uncanny with a queer reading of literature...
Everything we read can be seen or interpreted in part as being of the uncanny,
so can that also imply that the uncanny and the queer interpretation of literature
are somehow one in the same? And furthermore, how does one define queer when
linking it to the uncanny?? What are the necessary conditions or areas
of literature that we see the uncanny and the queer being linked- are their
special circumstances were the two can exist simultaneously, or not??--Kelli
TS3;Chapter 20 of Bennet and Royle ends speaking about performances of gender. Essentially we are all putting on a performance of gender as we live. We are all in drag. Since the 19th century it has become more of a cultural idea as to what our sexual identities entail and mean. To what end do we consider our sex? to what beginning? --Andrew
TS4:
Lily seems to recognize the disparities between men’s and women’s
situations in her society, yet she is not willing to sacrifice comfort in order
to live more freely.--Megan
TS4:When reading 19th Century British or American Literature, one must always be lying in wait for a dramatization of the struggles within the elite social higherarchies. From Archers and Touchetts, to 'Bunburying" in the country outside of London--the 19th Century author was for one reason or another inclined to write about class conflicts of the few, not the many. With this monopoly on literature it is easy to ascertain why Marxism came to fruition. --Neil
TS4:From "The House of Mirth", Book 1: Ch 1-3
It seems as if Lily Bart is blind to the true reality of her life.
It is apparent she is ashamed of her past and that she is trying to cover that
up and keep it from the present. She is a conflicting character--she is
trying so hard to make the world think she is upstanding and pure, but is that
really what she is trying to portray for herself? Lily does not seem to
know what her true identification is, she seems to rely on others to decide
that for her.--Kelli
TS4:~ “Are all good novels written around the turn of the century? The two novels we are reading are all about being an upper class female and getting hitched, and maybe that is the quintessential vague plot outline good literature, but how come Bertens, Bennett and Royle never brought this up? Is this the only type of book advanced enough to be worth the time of the intellectually superior English 495?”--Chris
TS4:Through the eyes of a poststructuralist, how are we to view postcolonialism;
for as soon as we find a culture who has shed the shackles of colonization we
begin to realize that they have merely adopted another structure, another oppressor,
to replace the previous, or hav e let structures that existed before the colonizing
force come back and take hold of the masses.--
nat
TS:4 (Foucault?s panopticonism)
Because nothing happens between Lily and Selden in his apartment, on the surface
Lily?s embarrassment when the char woman and Rosedale see her leaving can be
read as being caused by her fear that they are misinterpreting what may have
happened while she was there. But, based on the way that Lily planted
the suggestion to go to his apartment in Selden?s mind (she who say ?how cool
it looks up there? after complaining about the heat) and that a lot of her conversation
with Selden can be read as flirtatious, her embarrassment also stems from the
fact that the char woman and Rosedale are not misinterpreting her reasons
for being in his apartment in the first place.--George
TS4: In the House of Mirth, we are introduced to Lily Bart, a character who is defined by her 'otherness'. She is contrasted by herself and others in terms of her differences when compared to men, other women, and the very rich.--Michelle
Thesis Sentence Statement #4 (10/30/2003)--Catherine
Selden observes that “in judging Miss Bart, he had always made use of the
‘argument from design’” (27). Selden’s allusion to
the teleological argument, which proposes that God’s existence is proven
through the elaborate order and design of creation, both mocks Lily Bart’s
frivolity in relationship to great theological truths and suggests that even
in such frivolity a deeper sense of purpose and order is to be found.
Selden implies that Lily Bart has a carefully designed plan for the way in which
she manages her environment and that she may view people as subjects for her
orchestrations, putting a darker twist on the concept of teleology—and
also reflecting darkly on the purpose and disposition of God. If Selden
view Lily through the argument from design, and finds her sinister—or at
least manipulative—then how much more is the God of House of Mirth, who
must be the model for Lily’s teleology, sinister or manipulative?
(Update from Professor Flores’ observations in class:
the “argument from design” may also have economic ramifications.)
Thesis Sentence Statement #5 (11/4/2003)
Bennett and Royle quote Derrida as saying, "A title is always a promise"
(219). Edith Wharton's title House of Mirth, in the larger context of
the complete biblical verse from which it is taken, "The heart of the wise
is in the house of mourning; but the heart of the fools is in the house of mirth"
(Ecclesiastes 7:4 KJV), seems to promise to set up a binary opposition of values
in which the foolish inhabitants of the house of mirth are contrasted with their
wise counterparts. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any truly wise
characters who spend their time in the house of sorrow, and Wharton's decision
to portray only one half of the verse will inevitably result in a downward spiral
from which the novel cannot recover. --Catherine
Comments on HM, Bk. I, Ch. 12:
Lily's performance at the party mimics her performance within the upper echelons of society. There is something within Lily Bart that overwhelms the character that she is playing and she continues to feel uncomfortable within her place; this is how "the whole tragedy of her life" is played out (Wharton 139).--nat
Its obvious that the slavery feeling caused by Lily's lack of money is going to be a very large aspect of the book. It just annoys me when, in movies or books, its so obvious for two people to get together but they don't becuase of some stupid belief, fear, or superficial need.—Neil
The end of this chapter, after reading more carefully, is definitely forshadowing. Selden sees the 'tragedy' of Lily Bart's life, being judged by the weak standards of those around her. The crowd's superficiality is clear, as they are happy to take in Lily's beauty as they gossip about her private dealings as Lily suspects (Judy Trenor's party). On the same token, perhaps he also thinks in the back of his mind that it is people like Ned Van Alstyne, shallow but providing the fiscal and social security Lily craves, that she aspires to accompany in life.--Justin
The tableaux vivants allows Lily to become who she truly wants to be-- a woman admired for her beauty as well as someone welcomed into the world of the socially elite. But just like the pretend woman she portrays in the tableaux vivant, Lily is living in an imagined world where she masks her true self. -- Ellen
Book 1 Chapter 12 -
It's sad, really. You see Lily calculating the kind of impression she hopes
to make on society while poor Selden finally gives in to loving
her. He tells her so, but she still cannot allow herself to make a "love
match." Even though she is attracted to him and that special look she
was giving everyone "did indeed deepen as it rested on him," (140-141)
she still comes off as shallow and insensitive to what probably would
give her the best chance of happiness if she could only give up her greed and
pretensions. Selden thinks he has seen the "real Lily," but
what is that? A beautiful shell? I think the end of Book 1 shows that there
is no hope of reforming her. Rather than thinking of how she could reach Selden
or find out what
happened, her first instinct immediately after finding he has gone is to ingratiate
herself with Rosedale, a man she obviously dislikes but who
offers incalculable riches. Wharton seems so cynical in portraying Lily. I think
someone in class wondered how much of Wharton is in Lily. I think there is less
than it
might appear. After learning of her social position and the circumstances of
her marriage, it's tempting to think that she wrote Lily as a mirror of herself,
but really I think her sympathies lie with Selden, especially after seeing the
video where it said that she often wrote from life but liked to reverse the
gender roles, writing herself into her male characters. It's interesting - I
read somewhere that Henry James did the same thing, writing himself into his
female characters. Someone should write a happy book that lets Selden marry
Isabel Archer.
And Lily could marry Lord Warburton I guess. But that would probably be boring
and not give us anything to discuss.--Megan
In this chapter, Lily Bart is a good example of the 'performative' that we
read about in Bennett and Royle. Lily herself is a performance in this
chapter and it is difficult to see where she ends and her performance begins.
The character she plays in the tableaux is described as having a
"predominance of [Lily's] personality"(138), but if this is so, why
are all the spectators so surprised and amazed at her appearance? None of these
people are strangers to her, yet they all (except Gerty and Selden) seem to
be seeing her for the first time. We have to wonder here how much of Lily
is a performance, and what is truly her own. How much of her identity is formed
by the social customs and mores of her time, and how much is
authentic? And does Lily herself know the answer to this question? At the end
of the chapter, are we given a glimpse of the true Lily when she is with
Selden? These two different Lilys are an interesting juxtaposition within the
same chapter.--Michelle
TS: Up until this point, Lily Bart's true relationship with Gus Trenor is kept
a secret from the characters
in the novel, but it is not a secret to the reader. Our desire to know how (or
if, or when) this secret
will be revealed is what keeps us reading, and our knowledge of Lily and Gus's
true relationship is what
makes Lily a sympathetic character.
At the beginning of Book II, Mrs. Fisher says of Lily's behavior: "Sometimes I think it's just flightiness - and sometimes I think it's because, at heart, she despises the things she's trying for. And it's the difficulty of deciding that makes her such an interesting study" (183-4). It is Lily's air of secrecy - her "readability and resistence to being read" (B&R 228) that makes her an interesting study both to other characters like Mrs. Fisher and Selden (who thought he had seen her true or secret self) and to readers who encounter her.--Megan
We are shown an exponential growth in the necessity of financial support of Lily as the book carries on and yet she is still surviving with a detrimental sense of pride in her foolish opulence. At this point she is reevaluating the men in the novel as proper husbands where before she were unsuitable. After being humiliatingly rejected by Rosedale she refused to use Bertha’s letters for blackmail knowing that she could hurt Seldon with them as well. Is Wharton setting up Lily to fail? There haven’t been many indications that she is going to prevail financially, socially, or in love thus far and her pattern of looking for greater than what is presented before her will either be her downfall or the foil to a miraculous turnaround. --Andrew
In chapter eight, page 249, Lily says, "Oh Gertie, I wasen't meant to be good." Perhaps, as Lily alludes to herself, she was not meant to succeed. Wharton uses fatalism to show readers that from the beginning, Lily is destined to fail. She is indecisive and has turned down several marriage proposals hoping to "do better." Lily will never "do better" or marry; she will continue to fall from social prestige and end up lonely because from the beginning, Lily is never expected to be happy.--Ellen
Does the idea of unselfish love truly exist in "The House of Mirth"? Lily carries an amount of self-pity for herself, but it seems as if she has no self-love, or really any love for anything or any other person. Furthermore, is there any unselfish love found in this story? All of the characters seem so involved in gossip, money, and society, but no feeling or idea of love is portrayed in the novel. The story seems almost dry and emotion less- it is lacking in the idea of passion.--Kelli Gabourie
Along time ago Sprite ran this ad campaign about how image is nothing. That was their image, the "no image" image. Ironically I seem to be less than pleased with Selden. From the scene with the paintings it seems that Selden is all about how hot Miss Lilly Bart is, and I do not like it. He should like her for her personality or because she has some good essence or characteristic that is agreeable, but not because she looks hot. I have been told that inner beauty is what matters and that outer beauty is crap. Seldon is going after Lilly because of her superficial beauty, but how is this beauty any less than an alleged inner beauty? I mean what is it about intelligence or justice that it is way better than aesthetics? What is it that makes us feel that image is nothing? I don't know, but I am going to find out.--Chris
When Lily leaves Mrs. Hatch and begins working as a milliner, she has become a broken image of aristocracy. She was participating in aristocracy-ness, but just as Plato’s broken bed is no longer participating in bed-ness--by getting the working class job, Lily is no longer an imitation of an aristocrat.--Neil