Preface
Both the undergraduate and graduate English majors in the Mindanao State University—Iligan Institute of Technology are required to submit a collection of the summaries on the literary essays discussed in the classroom with Professor Christine F. Godinez-Ortega during the first semester of 2009-2010.
Over the past five months, I have become increasingly invested in re-visiting and re-configuring diverse approaches in Literary Criticism. To varying degrees, each summary of essays is committed to examining how each distinct approach values and interprets texts throughout the history of literature. Each summary presents an overview of the background principles and theories each approach has.
Interpretation of Texts: A Collection of Summaries on Literary Essays is from my first semester as a graduate student. This paper gives me the opportunity to explore the different school of theories, practices, approaches and thoughts in Literary Criticism. Since I am already in the graduate school, our professor no longer requires my classmates and me to include the classics (from Plato to Henry James). Hence, this paper presents a summary on one essay for each of the following approaches: New Criticism, Reader-Response Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Feminism, Marxism, Cultural Poetics or New Historicism, Cultural Studies, Postcolonialism, Gay and Lesbian Criticism, Queer Theory, Narratology, Phonomenology, Ecocriticism, and Stylistics.
As a neophyte, I must admit that summarizing essays is not easy. To aid me in fulfilling the requirements, my notes on Prof. Christine F. Godinez-Ortega’s classroom discussions, explanations of Charles E. Bressler in Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice (2nd ed.), and summaries and discussions on the internet are used as my bases and therefore, directly or not, are included in this collection of summaries. The internet sources are cited at the end of this paper.
Underlying each essay is a concern with finding the appropriate and best approach to be used in analyzing literature, and the focus (or consideration) of analysis (text, author, reader, language, history, etc.). Although I obviously still struggle with the complex relationships among text, author, reader, language, history, and theory and practice, I feel that this paper evidence my evolving, developing sense of the fruitful relationships between interpretation and text. Because of this paper, I am now bold to face the world of Literary Criticism.
From Work to Text
Roland BarthesRoland Barthes, in his essay From Work to Text, argues that the “Work,” which is traditionally known as the product of an author, is different from the “Text.” The central point of the essay is: In opposition to the traditional notion of the Work, there now arises a need for a new object—the Text. In this light, we can observe Barthes’s propositions of the differences between work and text in terms of method, genres, signs, plurality, filiation, reading, and pleasure.
First of all, Barthes defines the text in clear-cut terms distinguishing it from work. He believes that the text is a “methodological field” rather then a portion of the space of books, that is the work. In other words, the work is displayed (it is concrete which occupies portion of a space, like a library) and the text is a process of demonstration which is held in language. Thus the work can be experienced in several places such as book stores, card catalogues, library, and the like. However, “the text is experienced only in an activity of production.”
Then, he discusses that the text tries to place itself very exactly behind the limit of genres—all literary texts are woven out of other literary texts. It is, then, difficult to describe the text for it defies the classification on the basis of genre. A poet, a novelist, an essayist and even economist all are said to have experience writing texts. With this, he writes: “The Text is that which goes to the limit of the rules of enunciation (rationality, readability, and so on).”
Thirdly, he points out a linguistic approach to the work and the text through the concept of “sign.” A sign consists of a signifier (sound image) and a signified (the concept). If the work and text are studied in this view, the field of the text is that of the signified and the work closes itself on a signifier. Thus, he is able to bring out the difference of the work and the text vis-à-vis language as he asserts: “The work (in the best of cases) is moderately symbolic (its symbolism runs out, comes to a halt), but the text is radically symbolic. A work whose integrally symbolic nature one conceives, perceives, and receives is a text.”
The fourth idea is the plurality of the Text. Barthes, like other structuralists, believes in the multiple meaning or polysemy of interpretation, yet it has potentiality for meaning. The text yields to plurality of meaning and it is for the reader to deduce its value in a given text. In this extent, no sign is ever “pure” or “fully meaningful.” So the text can be itself only in its differences—no single meaning.
Fifthly, here he connects this idea of “intertextuality” to the filiation of the text that it can be read without the inscription of the author (or the father). The biography of the author is merely another text which does not indicate any privilege; it is the language which speaks in the text—not the author himself.
The sixth and last points are on the reader and pleasure. The text is said to act upon the reader and makes him (the reader) reproduce the text in the process. In other words, Barthes tries to state that it is the reader or the critic who executes the work. He affirms that the work gives the reader pleasure but the text gives the reader enjoyment. Meaning: while the reader or the critic reads a work, he derives pleasure out of it but very rarely he creates the work himself. However, while reading the text, the reader or the critic re-creates the text for himself and enjoys it.
By showing the differences between the work and the text through method, genres, signs, plurality, filiation, reading, and pleasure, the movement or shift from the “Work” to the “Text” is therefore justified.
The Death of the Author
Roland Barthes“The author enters into his own death, writing begins.” This is the first line that strikes me as I read Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author. In this essay, Barthes criticizes the method of reading and criticism which solely relies or depends on the background of the author’s identity (his political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes) to get the meaning from a particular text. According to this traditional view, the experiences and biases of the author serve as a definitive “explanation” of the text. Barthes believes that this method of reading (of going back to the author to get meaning) may be organized and convenient but it is actually flawed as he declares: “To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text.”
First, Barthes notes that the traditional approach to literature raises a significant problem: “How can one detect precisely what the writer intended?” The answer is that he cannot. He opens the essay with this notion in the epigraph, taken from Balzac’s story Sarrasine, in which a male protagonist mistakes a castrato for a woman and falls in love with her. When the character dotes over her perceived womanliness, he challenges his own readers to determine who is speaking and what is it about. “Is it Balzac the author professing ‘literary’ ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic psychology? … We can never know.”
Then, to confirm his idea on the author’s death, Barthes cites the poet Mallarmé, who said: “it is language which speaks, not the author.” He also recognized Proust as being “concerned with the task of inexorably blurring…the relation between the writer and his characters.” He also mentions the Surrealist movement for their employment the practice of “automatic writing” to express “what the head itself is unaware of.” Then he includes the field of linguistics as a discipline for “showing that the whole of enunciation is an empty process.” With these, he affirms that “the author is never more than the instance writing, just as I is nothing other than the instance saying I: language knows a ‘subject’, not a ‘person’.”
Also, Barthes points out the author and the “scriptor.” To explain the idea, he draws a timeline: the past is the Author (“he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it…”); and the present is the book (or the text). In other words, the author himself exists only at the point at which he is telling the story. As a result, his history, culture, and values should not be used or even be considered as an influence to the analysis of the text. He insists that the author is merely a “scriptor.” The scriptor exists to produce but not to explain the work. Unlike the author, the scriptor “is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate.” To him, the scriptor is aware that “his hand [is] cut off from any voice, borne by a pure gesture of inscription (and not expression), traces a field without origin,” and that the text “has no other origin than language itself.”
Moreover, Barthes’ articulation of the death of the author is a radical and drastic recognition of the “removal of the Author (…diminishing like a figurine at the far end of the literary stage).” Instead of discovering a “single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God),” a reader of a text discovers that writing constitutes “a multi-dimensional space,” which cannot be “deciphered,” only “disentangled.” “Refusing to assign a ‘secret,’ ultimate meaning” to text “liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law.”
Finally, Barthes reveals that no matter how ambiguous a text may be, there is always “someone who understands the word… and hears the very deafness of the characters speaking.” This someone is the reader. A reader must separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate it from interpretation-from-the-author tyranny. Each text contains multiple layers and meanings “but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not…the author.” The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the “passions” or “tastes” of the author. “A text’s unity lies not in its origins,” or its creator, “but in its destination”—the readers.
Roland Barthes’ entire principle claims that what must be focused or elevated is the status of the reader—not the author—because it is the reader who brings meaning to a text using his own experiences and knowledge to achieve a new and unique understanding of the text. Any text can have an unlimited number of possible interpretations because the reader (without preliminary knowledge of the author) who approaches it has the liberty to generate any meaning from the text. Thus: “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.”
Of Grammatology
Jacques DerridaJacques Derrida on Of Grammatology discusses the relationship between speech and writing. Here, he investigates how speech and writing develop as forms of language. He exposes that writing has often been considered to be derived from speech. This attitude has been reflected in many philosophic and scientific investigations of the origin of language.
First, Derrida presents “Logocentrism.” It is the attitude that logos (the Greek term for speech, thought, law, or reason) is the central principle of language and philosophy. This theory believes that speech—not writing—is central to language. Thus, Derrida used “grammatology” (the science of writing) to liberate people’s ideas on writing from being inferior to speech. According to logocentrist theory, speech is the original signifier of meaning and that the writing is just derived from speech. In that way, writing is only a “signifier of a signifier.” In relation to the signified, Logocentrism asserts that speech has a quality of interiority and writing has a quality of exteriority. However, Derrida argues that the play of difference between speech and writing is the play of difference between interiority and exteriority.
Then, Derrida brings out the topic on “presence and absence.” Logocentrism favors speech because the speaker is simultaneously present for the listener but in writing, the writer is absent for the reader. Logocentrism is described by Derrida as a “metaphysics of presence” which is motivated by a desire for a “transcendental signified” (a signified which transcends all signifiers) because it believes that the heart of self-validation is presence. That is, no fact needs to be validated if it is immediately present for indeed the essence of the signified is presence. To be valid is the “epistemic” and metaphysical sides of presence. To deride the idea: (1) Derrida explains that “differance” (the “hinge” between speech and writing and between inner meaning and outer representation) is the condition for the opposition of presence and absence; and (2) Derrida used the term “arche-writing” to describe a form of language which cannot be conceptualized within the “metaphysics of presence.”
Furthermore, Derrida criticizes Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Lévi-Strass for promoting logocentrism. He criticizes Saussure for saying that the purpose for which writing exists is to represent speech and for promoting “phonocentrism.” Through “grammatology,” Derrida deconstructs the theory of the relation between spoken and explores the true symbolic power of writing. Then, he criticizes Lévi-Strauss for not adequately recognizing that logocentrism may promote ethnocentrism. The structuralist approach to anthropology may encourage ethnocentrism if it concerns merely on different cultures according to their use of writing.
Finally, Derrida provides an extended commentary on Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages in order to investigate Rousseau’s theory on writing as a supplement to speech. According to Rousseau, writing is a “dangerous supplement” if it is used as a substitute for speech. Worse: Rousseau states that writing corrupts the original nature of language. However, Derrida argues that even if writing is viewed as a supplement to speech, writing still adds meaning to speech. Writing still provides a kind of presence because there is also a loss of presence in speech which must be supplemented by writing. So, Derrida asserts that writing cannot properly be viewed merely as absence, just as speech cannot properly be viewed merely as presence.
Jacques Derrida believes that writing may occur either before or after speech. Writing can cause anyone to express a passion or need which exists prior to speech. Like the cry of passion or the cry of need—all these can be articulated by writing. Therefore, Derrida has vividly justified that the development of language occurs through the interplay of both speech and writing. Because of such interplay, neither speech nor writing may properly be described as being more important to the development of language.
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund FreudIn The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud, a pyschoanalysist who was interested with the meaning of dreams, revolutionized the study of dreams and helped to further understand the aspects of personality and behavior. Freud believes that every person has hidden urges, desires, and fears but because of the rules of the society to which everyone has to conform, an individual represses or suppresses these urges which may then reveal themselves in his dreams.
In Chapter V The Material and Sources of Dreams, Freud discusses “The Oedipus Complex.” The Oedipus complex, largely part of the unconscious (dynamically repressed) ideas and feelings, is the term used by Freud to show every child’s desire to possess/like/love the parent of the opposite sex and eliminate/hate/dislike the parent of the same sex. To illustrate this concept, he uses two great dramas Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and Hamlet by Shakespeare. The complex is named after the Greek mythical character Oedipus, who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. Such acts reveal and manifest every boy’s hidden desire (his mother) and hate (his father). As the boy grows, however, he suppresses this desire as he realizes that his mother already has a partner so he departs from her because he is afraid of castration by his father. He then identifies himself with his father and hopes that he can also have a woman in the future to fulfill this desire. If in Oedipus Rex, the desire was eventually expressed, in Hamlet, the desire remained and continued to be suppressed (his father was killed by his uncle and his mother married that uncle). It seemed that he never had the chance to express what he desired toward his mother and father. As a result, Hamlet suffered from neurosis and from not bearing a child. To Freud, the Oedipus complex is a universal phenomenon and it is responsible for much unconscious guilt.
In Chapter VI The Dream-Work, Freud believes that dreams are composed of two parts: (1) the manifest and (2) the latent content. On the one hand, the manifest refers to whatever a person would and could remember as soon as he wakes up—what he would consciously describe to someone else when recalling his dream. Freud suggests that the manifest content possesses no meaning at all because it is just a disguised representation of the true thought of the real dream. On the other hand, the latent content, the actual dream, holds the true meaning of the dream—the forbidden thoughts and the unconscious desires and fears of a person. The latent content appears in the manifest content but will be rather disguised and unrecognizable. The process by which the latent content is transformed into or related to the manifest content by the person who dreams is known as the “dream work.” The dream work can disguise and distort the latent thoughts in at least two ways: (1) condensation and (2) displacement. On the one hand, condensation is a single unconscious idea or object. This single idea or object can express the content of several chains of association. From the term itself, it condenses numerous objects from the latent content into few or single idea in the manifest content. This concept of Freud explains the apparently laconic nature of dreams. Displacement, on the other hand, refers to “the process whereby the emphasis or intensity of an unconscious idea is detached from that idea and transferred to a second and less intense idea to which it is linked by chains of association.” From the term itself, it displaces the association from the real object or idea or person in the latent content to a rather related and significant one in the manifest content.
Freud believes that no action has ever occurred by chance or by accident—every action or feeling is motivated by the unconscious level. Also, dreams reflect and reveal man’s innermost and deepest thoughts and desires. Clearly Freud asserts that both actions and dreams are forms of fulfilling one’s suppressed wishes.
The Rise of English
Terry Eagleton“The rise of English in England ran parallel to the gradual, grudging admission of women to the institutions of higher education; and since English was an untaxing sort of affair, concerned with the finer feelings rather than the more virile topics of bona fide academic ‘disciplines’, it seemed a convenient sort of non-subject to palm off on the ladies, who were in any case excluded from science and the professions.”
-Terry Eagleton-Terry Eagleton in his essay The Rise of English describes how the English literature becomes an important part of the academe and why English is chosen as the new ideology by the Englishmen. The lines above, which are quoted from that essay, show the first step of the rise of English literature.
First, Eagleton shows the downfall of religion which used to be a strong ideology (belief system or worldview) in England. In the late 19th century, during the Victorian period, religion as an ideology was failing simply because “It was no longer winning the hearts and minds of the masses, and under the twin impacts of scientific discovery and social change its previous unquestioned dominance was in danger of evaporating.” The failure became such problem because the Victorian ruling class (the nobles) wanted to still lift up their powers. They realized that religion seemed to be not serving such purpose anymore. So they looked for another ideology to answer their purpose of keeping their power to rule. That new ideology is English literature.
Second, he presents the need for the bourgeois (or the middle class) to stand up and control the working class (the lower class). Eagleton mentions Matthew Arnold (important founder of this shift) who believes in a need to cultivate the middle class and to give them a sense of aristocracy, a “greatness and noble spirit.” During this time, the working class was in conflict with the nobles. The situation seemed to be uncontrollable that even religion could not pacify them. English literature was then seen as something that could “heal the State.” The middle class needed to be able to lead and educate the working class in order to prevent anarchy. They needed to be shown “the best culture of their nation”. Thus, English literature became that means to control the working class.
Third, terry Eagleton discusses the benefits that the working class could get from English literature: (1) literature teaches the working class to see “universal human values” and “eternal truths and beauties,” and they would therefore ignore their actual poor living conditions; (2) literature can replace religion as an ideology because it works by “emotion and experience”; (3) literature makes the working class live vicariously the kind of live they can never afford; (4) literature teaches timeless and universal truths; and (4) literature emphasizes on moral values.
Lastly, Eagleton describes how English literature became formally part of the academe and accepted by the males. English as an academic subject was first taught in the working men’s colleges and to the females. It did not seem serious enough for the noble men at elite schools. World War I, however, changed that. The noble class started to become patriotic and nationalistic to embrace English literature as a serious academic subject. In 1930s, finally, English as subject then became popular, powerful, established, and important (as it is discussed and studied today) to the working class, middle class, the nobles, and to both men and women.
English literature brings all classes together, appeases the working class (prevents them from rebelling), promotes national pride, and brings equality to men and women. Because Terry Eagleton clearly makes great remarks on these factors, indeed English literature definitely deserves to be raised as the new ideology.
Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence
Adrienne RichAdrienne Rich, in her essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, discusses the society’s myth on compulsory heterosexuality and the sufferings of the lesbian women being seemingly forced to adhere to the myth. She argues that heterosexuality is a violent political institution making way for the “male right of physical, economical, and emotional access” to women.
First, Rich urges women to direct their energies towards other women rather than men; with this in view, she portrays lesbianism as an extension of feminism. She challenges the notion that women are dependent on men financially, economically, socially, physically, psychologically, and even sexually. She claims that compulsory heterosexuality produces such myths as that of the vaginal orgasm. The myth serves to imply that only a man can sexually satisfy a woman (by delivering a vaginal orgasm); it serves to prevent women from having relationships with other women. Thus, to respond to this, Rich calls for what she describes as a greater understanding of lesbian experience. She believes that once the society understands and accepts lesbian existence, the boundaries will be widened and women will be able to experience the “erotic” in female terms.
Then, Rich claims that women are called to submit to the society’s demand on heterosexuality. She discusses that women may not have a preference toward heterosexuality but they may find it imposed, managed, organized, propagandized, and maintained by the society. She holds that women receive messages every day that promote heteronormativity (heterosexuality as normal activity) in the form of myths and norms perpetuated by the society. She argues that these myths have been accepted because of the historical lack of exposure that lesbians either do not exist or stigmatized. To make her claim clearer, Rich objects to the term lesbianism, which she believes is a stigmatized term. Instead, she advocates the terms: (1) “lesbian existence” for the historical and contemporary presence of lesbian creation, and (2) “lesbian continuum” to include the entire range of a woman-identified experience. She feels that new understanding and language must be created to counter the limited and biased terms that the society has historically used to describe lesbian existence. Rich claims that once women see lesbian existence as more than mere sexuality (more than just a sexual activity), it is more likely that more forms of “primary intensity” between and among women will be embraced and welcomed.
Finally, Rich argues that lesbian women are suffering and struggling in the midst of compulsory heterosexuality. She believes that the lesbian experience is an act of resistance—rejecting patriarchy and the male right to women. She does not, however, deny the existence of “role-playing, self-hatred, breakdown, suicide, and ‘intrawoman violence’”—all of which have been caused by the realities of rejecting compulsory heterosexuality. In other words, women reject heterosexuality and as a result, they suffer. She asserts that, in a patriarchal and heterosexual society, lesbian women have been denied of a continuity of their personal and political history. Here is worse: when included in history, lesbian women have been simply the female versions of male homosexuals, with no distinctiveness. (At certain points in history, homosexual men and lesbians have shared a social existence, and acknowledged a common fight against society.) In her response, Rich makes it clear that to treat the lesbian experience as a version of male homosexuality is to discard it—it is denying the female experience and the realities it brings and it is falsifying lesbian history.
Throughout the essay, Rich firmly holds that compulsory heterosexuality denies women of their own sexuality and comfort in exploring their bodies and those of other women. Women have suffered enough. It is time to see that everyone is unique in his/her own little ways. There should not be a standard morality for everyone. It is time to open everybody’s eyes to at least recognize lesbian existence. Recognizing may not be a big thing for us but it is great deal to lesbians. Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted.
An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Chinua AchebeJoseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is heralded by many as a classic. Yet over the years, it has presented many problems of interpretation. One of the most notable interpretations is Chinua Achebe’s An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In the essay, Achebe points to various passages in the book that supposedly prove that Conrad and his book are racist, and that the book should be cast out of the canon of classic literature.
Chinua Achebe, a well-known writer, once gave a lecture at the University of Massachusetts about Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, entitled An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Throughout his essay, Achebe notes how Conrad uses Africa as a background only, and how he “sets Africa up as a foil to Europe,” while he also “projects the image of Africa as ‘the other world,’ the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization.” By his own interpretations of the text, Achebe shows that Conrad eliminates “the African as a human factor,” thereby “reducing Africa to the role of props.”
First, Achebe claims that the text is considered to be part of the Postcolonial critical movement, which advocates considering the viewpoints of non-Westernized nations, as well as peoples coping with the effects of colonialism. Thus, he attacks Joseph Conrad’s text as racist. According to him, Conrad refuses to bestow “human expression” on Africans, even depriving them of language. He cited instances in the novel where the narrator describes the Africans. In the descriptions, the Africans are described as objects—or simply “black.” Furthermore, the treatment of the narrator towards the black is biased: favor on the whites (described as civilized and educated) yet the blacks seem to be wild and uncultured. To make it worse, the narrator described the language of the Africans as alien-like. In respond to this, Achebe asserts that Conrad and his novel refuse to give “human expression and language” to the blacks.
Then, Achebe moves beyond the text of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in advancing his argument. Achebe quotes a passage from Conrad, as Conrad recalls his first encounter with an African in his own life:
A certain enormous buck nigger encountered in Haiti fixed my conception of blind, furious, unreasoning rage, as manifested in the human animal to the end of my days. Of the nigger I used to dream for years afterwards.
Achebe then confirms that “...Conrad had a problem with niggers. His inordinate love of that word itself should be of interest to psychoanalysts. Sometimes his fixation on blackness is equally interesting...”
Also, Achebe asserts that while Conrad was not himself responsible for the xenophobic “image of Africa” that appears in Heart of Darkness, the novel continues to perpetuate the damaging stereotypes of the blacks by its inclusion in the literary canon of the modern Western world. His searing critique is sometimes taught side-by-side with Conrad’s work, and is regularly included in critical editions of the text. He then posts this:
The question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot.
Finally, in supporting these accusations against Conrad, Achebe cites specific examples from the text, while also, pointing out that there is a lack of certain characteristics among the characters. Achebe then compares the descriptions of the Intended and the native woman. Explaining that the savage “fulfills a structural requirement of the story: a savage counterpart to the refined European woman,” and also that the biggest “difference is the one implied in the author's bestowal of human expression to the one and the withholding of it from the other.”
In the essay, it is true that Achebe brings out the darkness in the novel through pointing out the biases against the blacks but he is just concern with the value of humanity towards blacks. The biggest insult Achebe finds in Conrad’s novel is not that he is being prejudice and hateful to the black race, but the fact that he questions the humanity of Africans.
Why Write
from What is Literature
Jean-Paul SartreWhat is Literature? by Jean-Paul Sartre remains on of the most significant critical landmark of French literature since World War II. In his essay, Sartre challenges anyone who writes as if literature could be extricated from history or society. But he does more than indict. He offers a definitive statement about the phenomenology of reading, and he goes on to provide a dashing example of how to write a history of literature that takes ideology and institutions into account. One of the essays in this book is entitled Why Write?
First, Sartre answers the question: Why Write? And it is freedom. In the essay, he asserts that an author, just like anyone, has a freedom. Through writing, the author is able to animate and penetrate his freedom. As a writer though, he must be aware that he cannot escape from history. His history includes an implicit recourse to institutions, customs, certain forms of implicit recourse to institutions, customs, certain forms of oppression and conflict, to the wisdom and the folly of the day, to lasting passions and passing stubbornness, to superstitions and recent victories of commonsense, to evidence and ignorance, to particular modes of reasoning which the sciences have made fashionable and which are applied in all domains, to hopes to fears, to habits of sensibility, imagination, and even perception, and finally, to customs and values. All these (history and ideology) are inevitably included in the author’s text. Hence, as he writes, he unconsciously freely expresses these (representing himself).
Then after discussing about the author, Sartre continues to present the side of the reader. In reading, what is the role of the reader? Just like the author, the reader has freedom—freedom to interpret the text according to his history and ideology. For this reason, the interpretation of a text differs from one reader to another. Phenomenology believes that an object exist because it is registered in the mind of the reader. If that appeals to the consciousness of the reader, then it exists—it has a meaning. Because different people have different backgrounds (consciousness), there will also be differences in the interpretation. Still, there is no one correct interpretation. The reading process (or the interaction between the author and text), in Phenomenology, can be summarized through the proceeding sentences. When the reader reads, he brings with him his worldview (or theme identity) to see the text. As he brings his worldview with him, he interacts with the text. While interacting with the text, the author is able to express himself (his purpose, intention, history, ideology, among others) to the reader. This process further implies that there are as many interpretations of the text as there are readers.
Throughout the essay, Sartre discusses the reason for authors in writing, the essential elements to be considered, and the inevitable factors that would influence writing. He also explains the plurality of meaning: that the interpretation of a text varies because readers have different experiences (different consciousness). Because they have different backgrounds, they will come up with different understanding (meaning: the text appeals to them differently). Therefore, Sartre states that the writer must write for a public which has the freedom of changing everything.
On National Culture
from The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz FanonFanon’s last work, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), was called by its publisher “the handbook for the black revolution.” The book was based on Fanon’s experiences in Algeria during the war of independence. Using Marxist framework, he explores the class conflict and questions of cultural hegemony in the creation and maintenance of a new country’s national consciousness. One of the chapters of this book is entitled On National Culture. In this essay, he gives his readers the formula to national identity.
First, Fanon presents the problem of the colonial presence. He states that the colonizing power makes the colonized people think that their culture is inferior. With the presence of colonization, the national culture becomes hidden and eventually, it dies. To put it in simple terms, colonial domination is definitely an enemy to the nation. Culture is the first expression of the nation, yet this culture “falls and dies away” under colonization. Culture brings along nationalism and if these two are gone, the nation will lose its consciousness. If national consciousness is killed, then the nation will eventually lose its national identity. This is how serious colonial domination is to a nation.
Then, to resolve the problem or to bring back national identity, Fanon suggests a basic philosophical, psychological concept. In his concept, nationalism and national culture are important factors in fighting against national domination for national identity. He believes that the emerging tension in the nation’s literature, oral tradition, folklore, handicrafts, ceramics, pottery-making, and traditional rites (singing and dancing) is the beginning step to national consciousness. Those previously stated arts of the nation are considered as the culture of the nation. Such national culture, according to Fanon, will lead to national consciousness. Then, the national consciousness will usher the nation into its existence. Thus, in order for a nation to exist, it has to be liberated from colonization because national culture dies in it.
Furthermore, fanon explains the importance of nationalism in achieving national identity. He elaborates this by discussing “nation.” To him, nation is a necessity because it gives life to culture. A living culture is open and it affects reality. Otherwise, it is dead and therefore cannot influence reality. So to give life to culture, the nation has to be re-established. When the nation is aware of the existence or establishment of the nation, nationalism is already present. This then is the beginning of the rise of conflict and struggles. For Fanon, conflicts and struggles are necessities for the development and aims of the culture—they are normal in achieving national identity; they are indispensable. Nationalism, just like national culture brings in national consciousness. In fact, to Fanon, national consciousness is “an elaborate form of culture.”
Finally, fanon presents the result of national culture, nationalism, and national consciousness:
Far from keeping aloof from other nations, therefore, it is national liberation which leads the nation to play its part on the stage of history. It is at the heart of national consciousness lives and grows. And this two-fold emerging is ultimately only the source of all culture.
In summary: if the colonizers begin with the culture, national identity begins with it, too. It is implied in the essay that the national culture can be restored through encouraging the people to continue expressing themselves through literature and other forms of arts and crafts. These arts will then relive the culture they had and this will inscribe nationalism (a sense of one nation) in them. Once they have the sense of nationalism, they will fight against the colonizers. This struggle is necessary so that their culture won’t be eradicated again. For Fanon, such struggle and fight are normal for the nation to regain its national consciousness. Eventually, this consciousness will lead the nation to its identity, putting it as a part of history and an acknowledge nation in the globe.
The Historical Text as Literary Artifact
Hayden WhiteIn his essay The Historical Text as Literary Artifact, Hayden White refutes the opposition between history and literature and calls for a renewed connection between the two fields. For White, the role of the historian is to make sense out of unfamiliar facts and chronologies through “emplotment,” a process by which he inserts facts into specific plot structures in order to make sense of any given historical event.
White contends that what a historian chooses to leave out of his historical text is just as important as the facts that are included. Thus, history is not concrete or exact but rather an interpretation of events— much closer to literature than to science. In other words, historical events are filtered through the historian. Undoubtedly, this is why there are so many different texts about the same events in history like Hitler, Alexander the great, World Wars, Civilization in the East and West, to name a few. Therefore, the idea that history is closer to literature than to science seems reasonable.
White’s general idea throughout the essay is that historical events are chaotic chronologies of unfamiliar facts in need of a historian to create a model and make sense of them. To elaborate more on this, he includes the following discussions and concepts: (1) He applies theories of fiction to historical writing (that is, historiography); (2) His essay raises questions about the disciplinary boundaries between history and literature (facts and fiction); (3) He coins the term “meta-history” (histories/stories about history) that attempts to blur the disciplinary distinctions between Historiography and Literature (fiction); (4) He argues strongly that historians employ the “ historical imagination ” when depicting the past (In other words, the historian relies on the narrative strategies of a literary writer.); (5) His idea is that history is narrative prose shaped by literary conventions and the historian’s imagination, that is why perhaps historical narrative even employs types of “plots ” or “emplotments ” (tragic, comic, romantic, satiric); (6) He returns to age-old considerations, like Aristotle who in the Poetics questioned the fundamental differences between “history” and ‘poetry’ (that poetry tends to express the universal yet history the particular); and (7) He uses postwar theory which questions the objectivity of the historiography.
Therefore, it is clear that given the many different facets of any one historical event, it is the responsibility of the readers, as citizens of the world, to thoroughly seek out different accounts and interpretations of events, to use evidence intelligently, and to form educated opinions based on all available resources. Even so, creating one’s personal “truth” about an event can be a slippery slope. If taken to extremes, all perspective and truth is lost. With this as a plight, what everybody needs now is a balance—between what is objective (factual) and subjective (personal). Balance is the key to everything.
Myth and Reality
From The Second Sex
Simone de BeauvoirThe Second Sex, published in French, sets out a feminist existentialism which prescribes a moral revolution. As an existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir accepts Sartre’s precept that existence precedes essence. Hence, one is not born a woman, but becomes one. Her analysis focuses on the Hegelian concept of “the Other.” It is the (social) construction of woman as the quintessential Other that she identifies as fundamental to women’s oppression. The capitalized O in other indicates the wholly other.
In the chapter Woman: Myth and Reality of The Second Sex, Beauvoir opens with the biased ideology in that the societies are dominated and ruled by men (patriarchal). She believes that the males in the societies define what it means to be human (also including what it means to be female). Because the female is not a male, according to Beauvoir, she becomes “the Other” (an object whose existence is dependent on, defined and interpreted by the male, who is considered as the dominant being in the society). Being subordinate to the male, the female finds herself a secondary or nonexistent player in the major sectors of the society, like the church, government, and educational systems.
For that reason, Beauvoir argues that men had made women the “Other” in the society by putting a false aura of “mystery” around them. She argues that men use this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems and not to help them. This stereotyping is always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. She writes that this also happens on the basis of other categories of identity, such as race, class, and religion. But she believes that it is nowhere more true than with sex in which men stereotype women and use the act as an excuse to organize society into a patriarchy.
Then, Beauvoir explains that women have historically been considered deviant—abnormal. She says that even Mary Wollstonecraft considers men to be the ideal toward which women should aspire. She believes that this attitude limits women’s success by maintaining the perception that they are a deviation from the normal and are always outsiders attempting to emulate “normality” which favors men. She asserts that in order for feminism to move forward, to progress, this assumption (that men are essential in the society and that women are not) must be set aside.
Moreover, Beauvoir asserts that women are as capable of choice as men, and thus can choose to elevate themselves. Women should move beyond the ‘immanence’ to which they are previously resigned and should reach ‘transcendence’, a position in which one takes responsibility for oneself and the world, where one chooses one’s freedom.
Finally, Beauvoir gives her stand on the issue. According to her, a woman must break the bonds of her patriarchal society and defines herself if she truly wishes to become a significant human being in the society. A woman must defy the male classification of the Other. If a woman aims to define herself, her answer must not be “mankind” for this allows the men to define her. This label must be rejected. Thus, only when a woman defines herself by herself can she exist and become an important and significant individual in her society.
Throughout the essay, Beauvoir insists that a woman must see herself as an autonomous being. A woman should reject societal biased construct that a man is the absolute and a woman simply the Other. With this belief, tagged is the assumption that a man, because he is powerful, is the one responsible to define cultural terms and roles. In response to this, a woman should define herself outside of such definition—she is not the Other for she is who she is.
Oral Memory, the Story Line, and Characterization
Walter OngWalter Ong’s most widely known work, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982), a volume in the New Accents Series, is translated into eleven other languages. In this book, he attempts to identify the distinguishing characteristics of orality: thought and its verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population. He then reviews the transition from an oral culture to a writing culture (that is to the use of the technologies of written words for communication). Chapter 6 of this book Oral Memory, the Story Line, and Characterization presents the shift from orality to literacy and the conventions of oral literature and the print.
First, Ong draws on the work of Eric A. Havelock, who suggests a fundamental shift in the form of thought coinciding with the transition from orality to literacy in Ancient Greece. Of the genres affected by the shift from orality to literacy, narrative is the one which has received the most attention. Ong devotes the sixth chapter to a survey of some of the differences between the structures of narratives produced by these two types of cultures.
Then, Ong asserts that orality is widely functional in primary oral cultures. Since primary oral cultures are unable to manage knowledge in elaborate, more or less scientifically abstract categories and “it can bond a great deal of lore in relatively substantial, lengthy forms that are reasonably durable,” he explains that the structure of oral narratives is such that it facilitates easy storage and retrieval of information. Thus, he believes that “the narrative serves to bond thought more massively and permanently than other genres.” Narratives serve as oral storehouses of history.
Also, Ong presents the different conventions between orality and print literature through “Oral memory and the story line.” For him, both orality and print have story lines. What differentiates oral tradition from print is the plot. Strictly speaking, if one has to follow the structure of Gustav Freytag’s pyramid, orality has no plot, only the print/written. This is because the writer can still have time organizing his work yet the chanter just bases his narration from his memory. The structure then of an oral narration is episodic and flashback. With this, the chanter can go back to what he misses out. By oral memory, Ong means “Song is the remembrance of songs sung.” In other words, the chanter recalls the story not because he memorizes it but because of constant listening to the chanters before him.
Another element which differentiates orality from print literature is the “closure of plot.” In oral narratives, the audience already knows the story line. That is why orality is more on impressionism and imagery. In this case, oral narratives are close. The members in the audience know the beginning, middle, and end of the story line. However, in print literature, since the writer, most of the times, still don not have an idea on how to end the story, it is considered as open (as opposed to close).
Finally, the difference between orality and print literature is the use of “flat and round characters.” Flat characters are those characters who posses the same behavior from the beginning to the end. Another way of saying it is: It has the character which is commonly known to the audience (thus it is somehow stereotyped and predictable). On the other hand, a round character is that which changes and grows in the story. Definitely, there is a change in the end. For oral narratives, because the audience knows the characters even before listening, it uses more flat characters, while the print uses more round characters because the author has all the time putting attributes on the characters (which can not be predicted by the audience).
In the essay, Ong believes that with literate cultures, narratives do not need to be structured mnemonically. It may be oral or print (written, and now, electronics), the importance is to realize the functions and the forms make each genre unique and different from each other. Therefore they still exist.
Ecocriticism and the Novel
Dominic HeadDominic Head in his essay Ecocriticism and the Novel presents a new way of interpreting a text—through looking at how nature is treated in the novel. Ecocriticism analyzes the role that the natural environment plays in the imagination of a cultural community at a specific historical moment, examining how the concept of “nature” is defined, what values are assigned to it or denied it and why, and the way in which the relationship between humans and nature is envisioned.
In the essay, Ong investigates on how nature is used literally or metaphorically in certain literary or aesthetic genres and tropes, and what assumptions about nature underlie genres that may not address this topic directly. This analysis in turn allows ecocriticism to assess how certain historically conditioned concepts of nature and the natural, and particularly literary and artistic constructions of it have come to shape current perceptions of the environment. In addition, some ecocritics understand their intellectual work as a direct intervention in current social, political, and economic debates surrounding environmental pollution and preservation.
Ong has divided his essay into two: the novel and the Waterland. In the novel, Ong suggests that readers and critics should try to focus their attention to the nature or environment in the novel. With the advent of sophisticated and highly philosophical theories and approaches to literature, people tend to neglect and discard the presence of nature. Many critics and readers are concern with the conflict and characters in the novel. Only a few touches the nature. Ong wants to bring people’s attention to the nature and the environment because he believes that these factors contribute, in one way or another, to the development of the plot and the characterization of the characters. Why not focus on the world where these characters dwell and where these characters are shaped? He asserts, just like any other ecocritics, that human beings are one with the nature as the form is one with the content. It is difficult to separate the two. Thus, it is time to reflect on the nature so that man’s understanding about himself and the world would be broadened. There have been approaches emphasizing the biases in terms of race, culture, and gender. It is also, in relation to this, to include “the place” in analyzing literature. After all, literature is the expression of humanity and the nature.
In the novel Waterland, Ong emphasizes the use of understanding the environment and the nature in order for the readers to understand the conflict among the characters and the actions in the novel. In fact, the events in the novel are symbolized by the environment, and the characters are represented by animals (like the eel, “the mystical creature with which Tom Crick has been closely associated”). The following lines are taken from the essay. Here, Ong gives the readers an experience of how is it to analyze the novel Waterland using ecocriticism:
He [Tom Crick] is the product of a multitude of sins by blood or by association: industrial exploitation; imperialism; sexual jealousy; incest; murder and a lost political vision. Here Dick swims symbolically away from the developed West – the setting sum behind him – to return to his mythic origins. Subtly the focus on Tom Crick is displace by this ending, which recentres the sense of tragedy on Dick. The personal guilt of Tom Crick has the same components as the collective guilt projected onto Dick as scapegoat for a society’s sins. By this correspondence the sense of personal time / personal history becomes necessarily linked the collective goals, which implicitly emerge, through the realization that a disastrous banishing of the natural is the product of modern social and industrial history.
Walter Ong then concludes his essay with: “If we permit the use of the term ecocriticism to designate the cultural work of this interim, we can do so only by acknowledging that it is underpinned by the kind of weak anthropocentrism’ that Andrew Dobson sees as essential to the politics of ecology, or ecologism. My worry is that if a transitional dynamic is not cultivated within ecocriticism, together with an acknowledged anthropocentrism, this is a critical practice which will get precisely nowhere, confining itself to an unrealized utopia.” Let me end by quoting Pascal: Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
Aspects of Literary Stylistics
Anne CluysenaarAnne Cluysenaar was born in Belgium but is an Irish citizen. In her essay Aspects of Literary Stylistics, she suggests aspects to be considered in interpreting any literary piece. These are reality, language (and culture), and the individual.
First, Anne believes that reality—that it is hidden, or that it is revealed, by language—make the assumption that reality is not only independent of man’s perception of it (a perception at least partly conditioned by language) but also independently observable, so that man can check the degree of accuracy with which language relates to it, ‘match our pictures with the real thing’. She says: “It seems clear, then, that although language will not get at ‘things in themselves’, as Miller knew, it serves us in our attempt to make contact with ‘what there is.’” Also, she believes that man’s imagination (that of a poet) adheres to reality (that of a linguist), and reality adheres to man’s imagination. With this in view, Anne asserts that the poet and linguist are just even when it comes to reality.
Then, Anne continues to explain the importance of language to the writer. “The writer must use—even where he departs from—the conventions of his language.” This language, every reader should be aware, circumscribes with the reality and culture of the author. However, literature can deviate against the language-system itself, speech-expectations or, indeed, against expectations that have been set up in the work the reader is reading. Although this is the case, the work of verbal art still has a structure which is neither objective nor subjective, but “intersubjective.” The reader who wishes to discuss with others his reaction to a work relies on the fact that his reactions and theirs share certain features. Before she ends this part of the essay, she strongly confirms that in the study of literature, language should always be “a form of active research.”
Finally, Anne presents the problem that faces the creative writer—the individual. This could mean the individuality of the writer or the reader. The author, with his own understanding of reality and unique use of the language, expresses himself though literature. Now, as he presents this to the public, the problem is with the reader. The reader, just like the writer, has his own perception of reality and has his own way of using and interpreting the language. What the writer intends in his writing may not appeal to the reader. Thus, no matter how much the writer labors on his work, still the analysis or interpretation lies on the reader. To come back to the questions with which Anne began the chapter: “there is nothing trivial in the exploration of how language works, much less in the exploration of how it works in literature.” In truly creative language, the individual (or the reader) shares someone else’s “discovery of what Jung called ‘the very edge of the world.’”
Emphasis upon language as a medium of what is shared, by human beings and between human beings and the rest of nature, is at the heart of Cluysenaar’s essay.
References
Bressler, Charles, E. (1994). Literary criticism: An introduction to theory and practice. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Cluysenaar, Anne. (1975). Aspects of Literary Stylistics. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Ong, Walter. (1982). Orality & Literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Routledge.
Internet Sources
www.absoluteastronomy.com
www.academi.org
www.answers.yahoo.com
www.bookrags.com
www.engl.niu.edu
www.hdkpereira.wordpress.com
www.hup.harvard.edu
www.oraltradition.org
www.psychology.about.com
www.shvoong.com
www.wikipedia.org
