Assignments

English 3900 Critical Approaches to Literature, Spring 2012

Section 01 (CRN 20220): TR 2:00-3:15PM, Arts & Sciences 243

Interpretation Survey

Spend a few moments writing all the questions you ask of every work of literature you read. We'll post your questions here, and throughout the semester we'll compare them to the questions the theorists we're reading would ask.

• Why does this work exist? What is its purpose, its point, its theme?
• What is the work's symbolism?
• Who's the author, and what's her biography?
• Do I want to read this?
• Is it relatable?
• What is the setting (time, place, culture, tone)?
• What is the genre? How do I classify this work of literature?
• Who is the main character and what is her core conflict?
• What is the work's point of view?

Now, let's develop questions the theorists would ask of any work of literature.

• New Criticism and Russian Formalism
  • Overview: What single interpretation of the text best establishes its organic unity from? In other words, how do the text's formal elements, and the multiple meanings those elements produce, all work together to support the theme, or overall meaning, of the work? Remember, a great work will have a theme of universal human significance. (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 150)
  • T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent": Describe the meaning of the work of literature in relation to its literary tradition. What new emotions does the work of literature create from the raw material of personality that the writer seeks to escape?
    • "The Metaphysical Poets": How does the work of literature amalgamate fragmentary and irregular experience?
  • John Crowe Ransom, "Criticism, Inc.": Without considering external factors like Marxist and New Humanist morality or reader emotion, what does the scientific, systematic business of criticism reveal about the work of literature?
  • Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase": Without paraphrasing the work, what is the essential and meaningful poetic/artistic structure of the literary text?
  • William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy": Disregarding external, private evidence, what internal structure and public evidence points to the meaning of the work?
  • "The Affective Fallacy": Without considering the author's intention or the emotional effect of the work on the reader, what does the work say (as opposed to do)?
  • Boris Eichenbaum, from The Theory of the "Formal Method": How is the literary language distinguished from practical language? What literary meaning does the poetic sound and/or narrative plot create?
• Structuralism and Semiotics
  • Overview: . . . how should the text be classified in terms of its genre?
    • ’Analyze the text's narrative operations. Can you speculate about the relationship between the text’s "grammar" and that of similar texts?
    • ’What rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized in order to "make sense" of the text?
    • What are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or “texts,” such as high school football games, television and/or magazine ads for a particular brand of perfume (or any other consumer product), or even media coverage of a historical event, such as Operation Desert Storm, an important legal case, or a presidential election campaign? In other words, analyze the nonverbal messages sent by the “texts” in question. . . . What is being communicated, and how exactly is it being communicated? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 233)
  • Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics: Describe the ways in which the literary work's differential, arbitrary language or sign systems (its signifiers) constructs its characters' and readers' reality (their and our signified concepts).
  • Roman Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics": Describe how the structure of the work depends on its predominant poetic function, and analyze how the other five functions (referential, emotive, conative, phatic, metalingual) form the text.
    • from "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances": What literary devices (such as metaphor and metonymy) does the literary work or literary genre tend to foreground and how so?
  • Northrop Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature": How should the literary work be categorized in terms of season and genre (spring romance, summer comedy, autumn tragedy, winter satire)?
  • Tzvetan Todorov, "Structural Analysis of Narrative": What repeated narrative patterns undergird the literary text?
  • Roland Barthes, from Mythologies: Describe the sign system of a large group of texts, like campaign photos or soap ads.
    • "The Death of the Author": Describe the codes and conventions of literary discourse that work through the writer and express themselves in the current literary text.
• Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction
  • Overview: How can we use the various conflicting interpretations a text produces (the "play of meanings") or find the various ways in which the text doesn't answer the questions it seems to answer, to demonstrate the instability of language and the undecidability of meaning?
    • What ideology does the text seem to promote—what is its main theme—and how does conflicting evidence in the text show the limitations of that ideology? We can usually discover a text's overt ideological project by finding the binary opposition(s) that structure the text's main theme(s). (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 265)
  • Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text": Describe how the literary text is not just a finished product wrought from codes and conventions of literary discourse but also in process and in play.
  • Michel Foucault, "What Is an Author?": What is the meaning of the author and her work, and how are those meanings tied to the literary discourse surrounding the author?
    • from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison: What is the main character's subject position with regard to various institutions and discourses? How is the identity of the main character created by the institution(s) that discipline her?
    • from The History of Sexuality: How is the main character's interiority (her subjectivity, her sexuality) regulated by her discourse communities?
  • Jacques Derrida, from Of Grammatology: How does the literary text produce excessive or exorbitant meaning? In what ways is the meaning of the literary text undecidable?
  • Paul de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric": What valid yet mutually exclusive readings of the text make interpretation undecidable? How does the reading of the text end up in indetermination (suspended uncertainty) or negative certainty? How does the literary text simultaneously assert and deny the authority of its own rhetorical mode?
  • J. L. Austin, "Performative Utterances": Rather than the true/false dichotomy of literary reference, describe the ambiguity, meaning, and force of the literary statement.
  • Judith Butler, from Gender Trouble: How is a character's body (and therefore interiority) culturally inscribed? How does the character performatively fabricate and construct her (gender) identity?
  • Jean Baudrillard, from "The Precession of Simulacra": In what ways does the cultural setting within and of the literary text simulate reality without original reference; in other words, how does the text substitute signs of the real for the real itself and thereby create a hyperreal play of illusions, phantasms, and imaginary?
  • Hélène Cixous, "The Laugh of the Medusa": How does the text challenge the phallogocentric stereotype of the woman as Dark Continent; deconstruct both the masculine/feminine, mind/body, whole/lack, self/other dichotomies; and write possibilities of self?
• Psychoanalysis
  • Overview: How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work? That is, what unconscious motives are operating in the main character(s); what core issues are thereby illustrated; and how do these core issues structure or inform the piece?
    • Are there any oedipal dynamics—or any other family dynamics—at work here? That is, is it possible to relate a character's patterns of adult behaviour to early experiences in the family as represented in the story? How do these patterns of behavior and family dynamics operate and what do they reveal?
    • How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, regression, crisis, projection, fear of or fascination with death, sexuality—which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior—as a primary indicator of psychological identity, or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
    • In what ways can we view a literary work as analogous to a dream? That is, how might recurrent or striking dream symbols reveal the ways in which the narrator or speaker is projecting his or her unconscious desires, fears, wounds, or unresolved conflicts onto other characters, onto the setting, or onto the events portrayed?
    • What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author? Psychoanalyzing an author in this [psychobiographical] manner is a difficult undertaking, and our analysis must be carefully derived by examining the author's entire corpus as well as letters, diaries, and any other biographical material available. Certainly, a single literary work can provide but a very incomplete picture.
    • What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader? Or what might a critical trend suggest about the psychological motives of a group of readers?
    • In what ways does the text seem to reveal characters' emotion investments in the Symbolic Order, the Imaginary Order, the Mirror Stage, or what Lacan calls objet petit a? Does any part of the text seem to represent Lacan's notion of the Real? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 38-9)
  • Sigmund Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams: What unconscious Oedipal guilt and castration anxiety might a character (like Hamlet) have? What unconscious fears and desires do the character's dreams symbolize?
    • from "The Uncanny": Does the work have an object that seems familiar yet alien? From that object, what repressed knowledge returns despite and because of the character's anxiety regarding unconscious fears or desires?
    • "Fetishism": Does a character disavow the reality of loss and the symbolics of castration by imbuing an object or idea with sexual potency?
  • Harold Bloom, from The Anxiety of Influence: How does the author unconsciously misread her literary rivals, i.e., predecessors in order to create her own original work?
  • Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage": What mirror or image establishes and provides a character her sense of self? With whom or what does she identify?
    • "The Signification of the Phallus": How do characters feign possession of phallic power?
  • Julia Kristeva, from Revolution in Poetic Language: How do the underlying drives of the text and character break through and transform the conventional symbolic order of the work?
  • Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Does the book shatter linear unity? Does the work deterritorialize (unbind and unbound) traditional Freudian circuits of desire?
  • Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (Leitch 2081-95): Describe which character the audience is supposed to identify with. When looking through the eyes of this character, do women function as femme fatales, in other words, as desirable yet castrating sex objects?
  • Slavoj Žižek, "Courtly Love, or, Woman as Thing": Describe the psychological structure of the romantic relationship (the nature of love and/or desire) in the literary work. Who holds the position of power? why? how? Who is the subject and who the object? why? how?
• Marxism
  • Overview: Does the work reinforce (intentionally or not) capitalist, imperialist, or classist values?
    • How might the work be seen as a critique of capitalism, imperialism, or classism?
    • Does the work in some ways support a Marxist agenda but in other ways (perhaps unintentionally) support a capitalist, imperialist, or classist agenda? In other words, is the work ideologically conflicted?
    • How does the literary work reflect (intentionally or not) the socioeconomic conditions of the time in which it was written and/or the time in which it is set, and what do those condtions reveal about the history of class struggle?
    • How might the work be seen as a critique of organized religion? That is, how does religion function in the text to keep a character or characters from realizing and resisting socioeconomic oppression? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 68)
  • Leon Trotsky, from Literature and Revolution: In what ways is the literary text's imagination economical; in other words, how is the text imagined, influenced, and derived from social and economic conditions?
  • György (Georg) Lukács, from The Historical Novel (Leitch 905-21): What is the essence or totality of the work in terms of the dialectic between immediate subjective experience and objective reality of historical, economic living conditions?
  • Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility": Does the literary work have an authenticity or aura, a ritualistic or cultic quality surrounding its experience? Is the work exhibited to the masses (the cineplex of mass reproducibility and mass consumption) or the individual (museum of the sacred experience of art)?
  • Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, from "The Culture Industry": What does the literary work suggest, either intrinsically in terms of ideological theme, or extrinsically in terms of the relationship between the work and reality, about the relationship between pleasure and labor (or, more classically, from Marlowe, profit and delight)? What does the literary work do to the thinking individual, the viewer or reader (or, more classically, from Socrates, the contemplative life)?
  • Louis Althusser, from "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses": What ideological state apparatuses (religious, educational, family, legal, political, trade-union, media, cultural) in or of the literary work cause an imaginary relationship of the characters or readers to their real conditions of existence?
  • Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society": Does the work include pastiche over against parody, terminate the bourgeois individual subject, function as nostalgia to the detriment of history, dissociate mind and body through the creation of hyperspace, and/or commodify artistic experimentation?
  • Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies": What are the politics of the work's representation of culture? How does the work "theorize power" in terms of "politics, race, class, and gender, subjugation, domination, exclusion, marginality, Otherness, etc."?
  • Dick Hebdige, from Subculture: How does the subculture challenge the authorized codes of the symbolic order? How does the main culture coopt the subculture?
• Queer Theory
  • Overview: What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed in, for example, the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters?
    • What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer work? What does the work contribute to the ongoing attempt to define a uniquely lesbian, gay, or queer poetics, literary tradition, or canon?
    • What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history?
    • How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are apparently heterosexual?
    • How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to reveal an unspoken or unconscious lesbian, gay, or queer presence? That is, does the work have an unconscious lesbian, gay, or queer desire or conflict that it submerges (or that heterosexual readers have submerged)?
    • What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically, psychologically) of heterosexism? Is the work (consciously or unconsciously) homophobic? Does the work critique, celebrate, or blindly accept heterosexist values?
    • How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual "identity," that is, the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 341-2)
  • Adrienne Rich, from "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence": How do the cultural institutions portrayed in the work, like patriarchy and heterosexism, seek to control characters' sexuality? How does the work portray women-centered activities and sexual identities?
• Feminism and Gender Studies
• Overview:What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy? How are women portrayed? How do these portrayals relate to the gender issues of the period in which the novel was written or is set? In other words, does the work reinforce or undermine patriarchal ideology?
  • What does the work suggest about the ways in which race, class, and/or other cultural factors intersect with gender in producing women's experience?
• How is the work "gendered"? That is, how does it seem to define femininity and masculinity? Does the characters' behavior always conform to their assigned genders? Does the work suggest that there are genders other than feminine and masculine? What seems to be the work's attitude toward the gender(s) it portrays? For example, does the work seem to accept, question, or reject the traditional view of gender?
• What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy and/or about the ways in which women's situations in the world—economic, political, social, or psychological—might be improved?
• What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operations of patriarchy? Has the literary work been ignored or neglected in the past? Why? Or, if recognized in the past, is the work ignored or neglected now? Why?
• What does the work suggest about women's creativity? In order to answer this question, biographical data about the author and historical data about the culture in which she lived will be required.
• What might an examination of the author's style contribute to the ongoing effort to delineate a specifically feminine form of writing (for example, écriture féminine)?
• What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 119-20)
• Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, from The Madwoman in the Attic: How does the female authored work rebel against masculine literary tradition and engage in its own literary self-creation over against a history of women as angels in the house and monster-women?
• Simone de Beauvoir, from The Second Sex: Does the work portray woman absolutely and essentially, as an Eternal Feminine in terms of mythic stereotypes like the saintly mother or the cruel stepmother, the angelic young girl or the perverse virgin? Or does it portray woman's experience concretely and existentially?
• Postcolonial Criticism
  • Overview: How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial oppression? Special attention is often given to those areas where political and cultural oppression overlap, as it does, for example, in the colonizers' control of language, communication, and knowledge in colonized countries.
    • What does the text reveal about the problematics of postcolonial identity, including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?
  • What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anticolonialist resistance? For example, what does the text suggest about the ideological, political, social, economic, or psychological forces that promote or inhibit resistance? How does the text suggest that resistance can be achieved and sustained by an individual or a group?
  • What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference—the ways in which race, religion, class, gender, exual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form individual identity—in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world in which we live? Othering might be one area of analysis here.
  • How does the text respond to or comment on the characters, topics, or assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
  • Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different postcolonial populations?
  • How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist ideology through its representation of colonization and/or its inappropriate silence about colonized peoples? Does the text teach us anything about colonialist or anticolonialist ideology through its illustration of any of the postcolonial concepts we've discussed? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 431-2)
  • Franz Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth: Depending on the stage of colonial domination or liberation, do the colonizers make the colonized feel their culture inferior or do the colonizers defend the native style against the colonized whose consciousness, art, and culture are striving for freedom?
• Reader-Response Criticism
  • Overview: How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning? How, exactly, does the text's indeterminacy function as a stimulus to interpretation? (For example, what events are omitted or unexplained? What descriptions are omitted or incomplete? What images might have multiple associations?) And how exactly does the text lead us to correct our interpretation as we read?
    • What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary text, or of key portions of a longer text, tell us about the reading experience prestructured by (built into) that text? How does this analysis of what the text does to the reader different from what the text "says" or "means"? In other words, how might the omission of the temporal experience of reading this text result in an incomplete idea of the text's meaning?
  • How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's response is, or is analogous to, the topic of the story? In other words, how is the text really about readers reading, and what exactly does it tell us about this topic?
  • Drawing on a broad specturm of thoroughly documented biographical data, what seems to be a given author's identity theme, and how does that theme express itself in the sum of his or her literary output?
  • What does the body of criticism published about a literary text suggest about the critics who interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience produced by that text? You might contrast critical camps writing during the same period, writing during different periods, or both. What does your analysis suggest about the ways in which the text is created by readers' interpretive strategies or by their psychological or ideological projections?
  • If you have the resources to do it, what can you learn about the role of readers' interpretive strategies or expectations, about the reading experience produced by a particular text, or about any other reading activity by conducting your own study using a group of real readers (for example, your students, classmeates, or fellow book-club members)? For example, can you devise a study to test Bleich's belief that students' personal responses to literary texts are the source of their formal interpretations? (Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today 188)
  • Wolfgang Iser, "Interaction between Text and Reader": What gaps in the text drive the reader to fill in the blanks and create meaning?
  • Stanley Fish, "Interpreting the Varorium": How does the reading experience, with its perpetual revisions, create meaning? How do the interpretive strategies of the reader's interpretive community shape the meaning of the work?

In Class Activities

1. New Criticism and Russian Formalism

In order to help us learn each others' names, cover the remaining objective critics, and practice a miniature close reading, today we're going to divide into groups of three or four and explain two key passages from a theoretical work and interpret two sections from Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric." How does the theorist say we should critically approach any work of literature? What images, symbols, connations, tensions, ambiguities, ironies, paradoxes, and tensions are evident in the primary text itself, and what is the unified, universal theme of the work?

1. Group 1
• Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase" (Leitch 1213-29)
• The structure meant is a structure of meanings, evaluations, and interpretation; and the principle of unity which informs it seems to be one of balancing and harmonizing connotations, attitudes, and meanings. . . . It united the like with the unlike. . . . It is a positive unity, not a negative; it represents not a residue but an achieve harmony. (1218-9)
• The truth of the matter is that all such formulations lead away from the center of the poem─not toward it; that the "prose-sense" of the poem is not a rack on which the stuff of the poem is hung; that it does not represent the "inner" structure or the essential" structure or the "real" structure of the poem. We may use─and in many connections must use─such formulations as more or less convenient ways of referring to parts of the poem. But such formulations are scaffoldings which we may properly for certain purposes throw about the building: we must not mistake them for the internal and essential structure of the building itself. (1221)
• Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric" (online)
• Parts 1-2
2. Group 2
• William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy" (Leitch 1230-46)
• There is a difference between internal and external evidence for the meaning of a poem. And the paradox is only verbal and superficial that what is (1) internal is also public: it is discovered through the semantics and syntax of a poem, . . . while what is (2) external is private or idiosyncratic; not a part of the work as a linguistic fact. . . . There is (3) an intermediate kind of evidence about the character of the author or about private or semi-private meanings attached to words or topics by an author by a coterie of which he is a member. (1239)
• Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle. (1246)
• Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric" (online)
  • Parts 3-4
3. Group 3
• William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Affective Fallacy" (Leitch 1246-61)
• The Intentional Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its origins, a special case of what is known to philosophers as the Genetic Fallacy. It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism. The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does), a special case of epistemological skepticism, though usually advanced as if it had far stronger claims than the overall forms of skepticism. It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism. The outcome of either Fallacy, the Intentional or the Affective, is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to disappear. (1246)
• In short, though cultures have changed and will change, poems remain and explain; and there is no legitimate reason why criticism, losing sight of its durable and peculiar objects, poems themselves, should become a dependent of social history or of anthropology. (1261)
• Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric" (online)
• Parts 5-6
4. Group 4
• Boris Eichenbaum, from The Theory of the "Formal Method" (Leitch 921-51)
• Before the appearance of the Formalists, academic re-search, quite ignorant of theoretical problems, made use of antiquated aesthetic, psychological, and historical "axioms" and had so lost sight of its proper subject that its very existence as a science had become illusory. (927)

• I shall indicate briefly the evolution of the formal method during these ten years:
      1. From the original outline of the conflict of poetic language with practical we proceeded to differentiate the idea of practical language by its various functions (Jakubinsky) and to delimit the methods of poetic and emotional languages (Jakobson). Along with this we became interested in studying oratorical speech because it was close to practical speech but distinguished from it by function, and we spoke about the necessity of a revival of the poetic of rhetoric.
      2. From the general idea of form, in its new sense, we proceeded to the idea of technique, and from here, to the idea of function.
      3. From the idea of poetic rhythm as opposed to meter we proceeded to the idea of rhythm as a constructive element in the total poem and thus to an understanding of verse as a special form of speech having special linguistic (syntactical, lexical, and semantic) features.
      4. From the idea of plot as structure we proceeded to an understanding of material in terms of its motivation, and from here to an understanding of material as an element participating in the construction but subordinate to the character of the dominant formal idea.
      5. From the ascertainment of a single device applicable to various materials we proceeded to differentiate techniques according to function and from here to the question of the evolution of form—that is, to the problem of historical-literary study. (950)

• Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric" (online)
• Parts 7-8

2. The Questions New Critics and Russian Formalists Pose

Divide into five groups and extrapolate from each article the one question that the theorist would pose to a work of literature. After groups have defined the questions, as a class we will pose them (along with Tyson's overall New Criticism question) to Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.

1. T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent"
• "The Metaphysical Poets"
2. John Crowe Ransom, "Criticism, Inc."
3. Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase"
4. William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy"
• "The Affective Fallacy"
5. Boris Eichenbaum, from The Theory of the "Formal Method"

3. Formalist and Structuralist Readings of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

Today we're going to briefly break up into groups to compare and contrast how a New Critic would interpret Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights with how a structuralist (genre critic or narratologist) would.

Article Summary and Critical Reading

GeorgiaVIEW Post

During the semester you will write two informal papers, an article summary and a critical reading, and post them to our course discussion board at GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Article Summaries and Critical Readings.

 

The article summary, which will summarize a particular theorist's essay, should

• be 700-1000 words long,
• summarize the article's argument for approaching literature,
• quote and explain at least two significant passage(s),
• define key terms,
• and include questions that the theorist would ask of the work of literature

The critical reading, which will interpret a work of literature, should

• be 700-1000 words long,
• explicitly pose questions that the theorist would ask a work of literature
• respond to those questions for the selected work of literature (Brontë, Mann, or Whitman)

Informal Presentation

You will also be responsible for a brief, informal presentation. The article summary presentation should introduce the essay by defining key points and terms (without simply reading your written summary) and broaching issues for class discussion. The critical reading presentation should poses the theorist's questions and interpret the work in response to those questions (without simply reading your written response).

Due Dates

1. Your written assignment will be due in GeorgiaVIEW > Discussions > Article Summaries and Critical Readings three days before we are scheduled to discuss an article. If you do not submit your written summary to GeorgiaVIEW before the article is discussed in class, you will fail the assignment.
2. Your brief, informal presentation will be due on the day we discuss the essay in class. This date is approximate for we will sometimes fall a day behind.
3. I will return your graded assignment to you in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Article Summary or Critical Reading approximately one week after we discuss the article in class.
4. For example, we are scheduled to discuss Frye on Tuesday, 1-31. Therefore, someone's summary will be due in GeorgiaVIEW by Saturday, 1-28. In class on Tuesday, 1-31, that student will informally present the main ideas of Frye's essay. I will return the graded article summary to her the following week in GeorgiaVIEW >Assignments > Article Summary.

Note: As I wrote on the syllabus course schedule, we may have to slow down for certain theorists and theories. We will not be able to discuss each and every article in class. Thus, some articles may only be summarized on GeorgiaVIEW's Article Summaries discussion board and presented to the class by the person assigned to the article. Therefore, it is extremely important for each person to turn in the summaries on time and attend class for the presentation component. Summaries will be penalized one letter grade for each day, not class period, that they are turned in late. Failing to present the article to the class without providing a valid absence excuse will result in a one letter grade penalty.

 

AS stands for Article Summary and CR stands for Critical Reading

 

GAV Due Date	Presentation Due Date	Reading	Student
S, 1-28	T, 1-31	Jakobson, "Linguistics and Poetics" and/or from "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances"	1/AS 1/CR
		Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature"	2/AS Hannah Malte 2/CR Stephen Hundley
M, 1-30	R, 2-2	Todorov, "Structural Analysis of Narrative"	3/AS 3/CR
		Barthes, "The Death of the Author"	4/AS Emily Mixon 4/CR Lexi Kraft
S, 2-11	T, 2-14	Foucault, "What Is an Author?"	5/AS Charles Morris III 5/CR Hannah Malte
M, 2-13	R, 2-16	Derrida, from Of Grammatology or from Dissemination	6/AS 6/CR Chelsea Werner
S, 2-18	T, 2-21	de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric"	7/AS Katie Nix 7/CR Charles Morris III
S, 2-25	T, 2-28	Butler, from Gender Trouble	8/AS Lucy Bartholomew 8/CR Logan Herren
M, 2-27	R, 3-1	Baudrillard, from "The Precession of Simulacra"	9/AS Kaitlin Alvin 9/CR Katie Nix
M, 3-5	R, 3-8	Lacan, "The Mirror Stage" or "The Signification of the Phallus"	10/AS Stephen Hundley 10/CR
S, 3-10	T, 3-13	Kristeva, from Revolution in Poetic Language	11/AS Logan Herren 11/CR Emily Mixon
		Deleuze and Guattari, from A Thousand Plateaus	12/AS Grace Allen 12/CR Kaitlin Alvin
M, 3-12	R, 3-15	Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"	13/AS Savannah Clark 13/CR Garrett Korn
M, 3-19	R, 3-22	Trotsky, from Literature and Revolution	14/AS Garrett Korn 14/CR Savannah Clark
		Lukács, from The Historical Novel	15/AS Rachel Foss 15/CR Grace Allen
S, 3-31	T, 4-3	Horkheimer and Adorno, from "The Culture Industry"	16/AS 16/CR Rachel Foss
M, 4-2	R, 4-5	Althusser, from "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"	17/AS Chelsea Werner 17/CR Lucy Bartholomew
S, 4-7	T, 4-10	Hall, "Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies"	18/AS Lexi Kraft 18/CR

Group Presentation

In the formal presentation, four groups of three-four students will collaborate to teach four of the following eight critical approaches to the class:

 

cognitive criticism

existentialism and phenomenology

reader-response criticism

feminism and gender studies

queer theory

African American criticism

postcolonial criticism

ecocriticism

 

One week before the presentation, the group should inform the class of what 1 overview article (if not in Robert Dale Parker's How to Interpret Literature) and 1-2 theoretical articles it will teach as well as provide the professor with clean copies of the articles (if not in Leitch's Norton Anthology).

 

During the 30-40 minute presentation followed by 10 minute question and answer session, the group should

• provide an overview of the method (based on an overview article like Parker's or Murfin's) [see the professor if Parker and Murfin don't provide overviews of your method]
• that compares and contrasts the method with at least 2-3 critical approaches previously studied, and also
• that defines both the theory of the method and describes the practice of the method
• teach one or two theoretical articles by specific theorists (one if the group has three members, two if the group has four members) [articles can be found in The Norton Anthology; see the professor if your method is not represented in the Norton]
• demonstrate the method with an interpretation of Wuthering Heights, Death in Venice, or "I Sing the Body Electric."

I expect each group member to respect the group, communicate with the group, attend group meetings, and do her fair share of the work. If there is a major problem that the group cannot manage, let me know (anonymously if warranted).

 

Sign Up

 

Date	Theory	Students
T, 4-17	Queer Theory	Grace Allen
		Rachel Foss
		Hannah Malte
R, 4-19	Feminism and Gender Studies	Savannah Clark
		Logan Herren
		Charles Morris III
		Katie Nix
T, 4-24	Postcolonial Criticism	Lucy Bartholomew
		Stephen Hundley
		Emily Mixon
R, 4-26	Reader-Response Criticism	Kaitlin Alvin
		Garrett Korn
		Lexi Kraft
		Chelsea Werner

Exam 1

Exam 1 will cover New Criticism and structuralism and will be taken in class on Tuesday, February 7. There will be two essay questions. In the first essay, you will be asked to compare and contrast the New Criticism and structuralist methodologies. The second essay question will ask you to demonstrate and practice the New Criticism and structuralist critical approaches to literature on your choice of one text from the following, available in GeorgiaVIEW: Ai's "Fairy Tale," Anne Sexton's "Red Riding Hood," or Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves." You may bring printouts of the literature to the exam; but you may not use your textbooks.

 

Your theory essay will be graded on 1) your ability to balance a broad understanding of the general theory with a healthy amount of specific terms from particular theorists as well as on 2) your ability to assess similarities and differences between the two general theories.

 

Your application essay grade will be based on how you interpret the text; in other words, illustrate your understanding of the critical methodologies by making apparent the questions a New Critic and structuralist ask of a text.

 

If I were to study for this exam, I would 1) create an outline of key terms and compose their definitions, 2) write practice essays comparing and contrasting New Criticism and structuralism using those keys terms, and 3) write practice essays interpreting the one literary work from New Critic and structuralist perspectives using those key terms.

 

Note: It is impossible to illustrate your knowledge of all of these terms in a 75 minute exam. Prioritize the ones that are fundamental for an understanding of the general theory and distinguish particular theorists within that theory.

• New Criticism and Russian Formalism
• Robert Dale Parker, "New Criticism" (general overview)
• historical criticism
• impressionistic criticism
• biographical criticism
• extrinsic criticism
• intrinsic/objective/formalist criticism
• intentional fallacy
• affective fallacy
• close reading
• "the text itself"
• heresy of paraphrase
• literary language
• organic unity/whole
• paradox
• irony
• ambiguity
• tension
• patterns
• symbols
• figurative language
• symbol
• T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and "The Metaphysical Poets" (particular theorist)
• tradition
• depersonalization/impersonality
• dissociation of sensibility
• John Crowe Ransom, "Criticism, Inc." (particular theorist)
• the artist, philosopher, and English professor
• the six things to exclude from criticism
• aesthetic distance
• Cleanth Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase" (particular theorist)
• the heresy of paraphrase
• irony and paradox
• unity and harmony
• William K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy" (particular theorist)
• the intentional fallacy
• internal evidence, external evidence, intermediate evidence
• the affective fallacy
• objective emotions
• Boris Eichenbaum, from The Theory of the "Formal Method" (particular theorist)
• poetic vs practical language
• form and function
• sound and sense
• plot vs story
• evolution of literary form
• Structuralism and Semiotics
• Robert Dale Parker, "Structuralist Criticism" and Alex E. Blazer, lecture (general overview)
• structure
  • surface phenomenom vs underlying structure
  • wholeness, transformation, self-regulation
• structural linguistics
  • diachrony/synchrony
  • langue/parole
  • difference
  • arbitrary
  • binary opposition
  • signifier/signified/sign
• structural anthropology
  • myth
  • surface structure, deep structure
• semiology and semiotics
• three practices of structuralist literary analysis
• literary genre
• narratology/narrative theory
• literary interpretation
• Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics (particular theorist)
• signifier, signified, and sign
• arbitrary/conventional, linear, and differential
• synchronic and diachronic
• langue and parole

syntagmatic and associative

• Roman Jakobson, from "Linguistics and Poetics" and from "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances" (particular theorist)
• the poetic function
• metaphor and metonymy
• Northrop Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature" (particular theorist)
• archetype
• representational fallacy
• seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter) and genres (romance, comedy, tragedy, satire)
• tragedy and comedy and the world (human, animal, vegetable, mineral, unformed)
• Tzvetan Todorov, "Structural Analysis of Narrative" (particular theorist)
• structure and grammar
• internal criticism, external criticism, structural criticism
• narrative analysis
• Roland Barth, from Mythologies, "The Death of the Author," "From Work to Text" (particular theorist)
• the death of the author and the birth of the scriptor and the reader
• from work to text

Exam 2

• Essay 1: Theory
• Compare and contrast 1) how two generic theorists (a generic poststructuralist theorist and a generic psychoanalytic theorist) approach art and literature in terms of meaning and 2) how two specific theorists (a specific poststructuralist theorist such as Foucault, Derrida, de Man, Austin, Butler, Baudrillard, or Cixous and a specific psychoanalytic theorist such as Freud, Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, Mulvey, or Žižek) approach art and literature in terms of meaning. What is meaningful and what constitutes meaning inside or outside of a text? Use and define key terms that have significance and meaning for the general theory and key terms particular to a specific theorist.
• Your essay should cover
  1. a general overview of poststructuralist theory
  2. a specific understanding of a particular poststructuralist theorist (Foucault, Derrida, de Man, Austin, Butler, Baudrillard, or Cixous)
  3. a general understanding of psychoanalytic theory
  4. a specific understanding of a particular psychoanalytic theorist (Freud, Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, Mulvey, or Žižek)
  5. a comparison and contrast of the two theories
• Essay 2: Interpretation
  • Choose either 1) a poem or poems by H. D., 2) John Barth's story "Lost in the Funhouse," or 3) the Alfred Hitchcock film Notorious, all available in GeorgiaView Course Documents, and then write an essay that compares and contrasts a poststructuralist reading with a psychoanalytic reading. 1) Discuss a specific poststructuralist theorist's method for analyzing literature and then interpret your selected work based on that approach. 2) Discuss a specific psychoanalytic theorist's method for analyzing literature and then interpret your selected work based on that approach. 3) Compare and contrast your two readings of the work of literature. How would the particular theorists (both of your choosing, but not repeating an author used in the first essay) interpret the work with their particular versions of the general method, and how might the readings be similar and different? Unlike a traditional literature essay exam which would only require you to elucidate the meaning of the work of literature, your answer in this exam should explicitly exemplify the methods that guide interpretation of meaning. In other words, your essay should illustrate the differing interpretive theories that underlie the practice of criticism.
  • Note: Do not discuss a particular theorist more than once on your exam. For example, if you analyze Cixous in Essay 1, you cannot apply her theory in Essay 2 and vice versa.
  • Your essay should cover
    1. a specific reading of the work of literature by defining and applying a particular poststructuralist theorist's methodology (Foucault, Derrida, de Man, Austin, Butler, Baudrillard, or Cixous)
    2. a specific reading of the work of literature by defining and applying a particular psychoanalytic theorist's methodology (Freud, Bloom, Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, Mulvey, or Žižek)
    3. a comparison and contrast of the two readings
• Due: Thursday, March 22 by 2:00PM via TurnItIn.com > Exam 2
  • TurnItIn.com Basics
• Length: Each essay should be 5-7 pages long, for a total of 10-14 pages. Exams not meeting the length requirement will be penalized per syllabus policy.
• Format: MLA style in Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, or Rich-Text Format.
• The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers contains complete information on MLA style.
• Per syllabus policy, conform your take-home exam to MLA style, or one-third of a letter grade will be penalized for improprieties in each of the following categories: 1) heading, running header, and margins, 2) font and line-spacing, and 3) in-text quoting and block quoting.
• Grade: You will be assessed on your understanding of 1) the two methodologies, 2) the four specific theorists, 3) connections and distinctions among the methods and theorists, and 4) how to apply the methods and theorists. Your graded assignment will be returned to GeorgiaView > Assignments > Exam 2 approximately two weeks after you submit it.

Exam 3

• Essay 1: Theory
• Compare and contrast Marxism and your choice of either Reader-Response Criticism, Feminism and Gender Studies, Queer Criticism, or Postcolonial Criticism. Be sure to address both the critical theory and the interpretive practice. Your essay should cover
1. a general overview of Marxism
2. a specific understanding of a particular Marxist theorist
3. a general understanding of the second theory
4. a specific understanding of a particular theorist from the second theory
5. a comparison and contrast of the two theories
• Essay 2: Interpretation
• Select any work of literature (play, poetry, fiction, graphic novel, film, or television; approved by your professor by Thursday, April 19) and read it through the lens of any two theorists in the course. While previous interpretive essays required you to "show your work" by demonstrating your knowledge of the theorists, use the Bedford edition criticisms on Wuthering Heights and Death in Venice as model essays that seamlessly apply and integrate the critical theory into their interpretive arguments.
• Your essay should provide
1. a focused thesis that makes an overarching interpretive claim, controls your argument, and structures your paper
2. textual evidence from the literary work
3. literary analysis of textual evidence adhering to the critical approach of two particular theorists that we've read (not Dale and not the critics in the Bedford books)
4. sufficient explanation of the particular theorists so that the reader understands how and why you're applying them
• Due: Wednesday, May 2 by 2:00PM via TurnItIn.com > Exam 3
• If I do not receive or cannot open your paper, I will email you the day after your paper is due. If I do not receive or cannot open your paper within two days of its due date, you will fail the paper and the class.
• Length: Each essay should be 5-7 pages long, for a total of 10-14 pages, not including the Works Cited page. Exams not meeting the length requirement will be penalized per syllabus policy.
• Format: MLA style in Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, or Rich-Text Format.
• Per syllabus policy, conform your take-home exam to MLA style, or one-third of a letter grade will be penalized for improprieties in each of the following categories: 1) heading, running header, and margins, 2) font and line-spacing, and 3) in-text quoting and block quoting.
• Grades, Comments, and Paper Return:
• You will be assessed on your understanding of 1) the two methodologies, 2) the four specific theorists, 3) connections and distinctions among the methods and theorists, and 4) how to apply the methods and theorists in a thesis-driven interpretive essay.
• You can access your final grade in the course via MyCats after May 9.
• In order to read and assess all the exams and papers in my four classes by the final grade deadline, I will not be giving feedback on final project this semester. I am glad to put your exam grade in GeorgiaVIEW > Assignments > Exam 3 if you ask me to do so on your paper. I am happy to provide exam feedback at the beginning of fall semester if you email me to set up a conference.

Student	Work of Literature	Theorists
Grace Allen	My Little Pony	Foucault, Butler
Kaitlin Alvin	Dance Moms (2011-present)	Lacan, Gilbert & Gubar, Kristeva (?)
Lucy Bartholomew	Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	Butler, Marx
Savannah Clark	Hemingway, "Hills like White Elephants"	Marx, Brooks, Ransom
Rachel Foss	Sherlock (2010-present)	Rich, Lacan
Logan Herren	Collins, The Hunger Games	Kristeva, Gilbert & Gubar
Stephen Hundley	Wolfe, The Colored Museum
Garrett Korn	Mad Men (2007-present)	Baudrillard
Lexi Kraft	O'Connor, "Artificial Nigger"	Fish, Hall
Hannah Malte	Mishima, Confessions of a Mask	Butler, Rich
Emily Mixon	Atwood, I'm Starved for You	Baudrillard, Beauvoir
Charles Morris	Goodkind, The Sword of Truth	Freud, Iser
Katie Nix	Dexter (2006-present)	Freud, Lacan
Chelsea Werner	Palahniuk, Fight Club