Literary Criticism Class #1

What Is Theory? “a reasonably systematic reflection on our guiding assumptions” (Terry Eagleton, After Theory, p.2)

Why Study Critical Theory?

To acquire tools for analysis To understand the most dominant “grand- narrative” of our time To enter a “discourse community” (Whose theory are we talking about? Western? French? Continental? American? )

Structuralism

“Linguistics is not simply a stimulus and source of inspiration but a methodological model which unifies the otherwise diverse projects of structuralists.” (Culler, Structuralist Poetics, 4)

Barthes: “I have been engaged in a series of structural analyses which all aim at defining a number of non- linguistic ‘languages’” (Essais critiques, 155; qtd in Culler, Structuralist Poetics, 4).

Food for Thought What are the advantages and disadvantages of using linguistics to study other cultural phenomena?

Ferdinand de Saussure ( )

The Sign Signified (signifié): a concept Signifier (signifiant): a sound-image (or a written mark) “Arbor”

I. "The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary” (Saussure)

I. “The meanings we give to words are purely arbitrary, and... these meanings are maintained by convention only” (Barry 41).

Equus ㄇㄚ ˇ Horse“Mimi”

Against “reference,” essentialism, or mimetic representation, namely, one-to-one correspondence between words and things

woman

Possible exceptions 1. Onomatopoeia: “shatter,” “clash,” “tick-tock,” “drip- drop” 2. Interjections: “ 哎呀 !” “Ouch!” “Damn!” “Gosh!” “Shit!”

II. "In language there are only differences" (Saussure, Course in General Linguistics). “The meanings of words are... relational” (Barry 42).

The definition of any given word “depends for its precise meaning on its position in a ‘paradigmatic chain,’ that is, a chain of words related in function and meaning each of which could be substituted for any of the others in a given sentence” (Barry 42).

syntagmatic chain Paradigmaticchain Horizontal axis Vertical axis

mat bat I bought my hat in an antique store. cat rat

hovel shed hut Ms. Su lives in a house. apartment mansion palace

Saussure’s example: “we feel the 8.25 p.m. Geneva-to-Paris Express to be the same train each day, though the locomotive, coaches, and personnel may be different. This is because the 8.25 train is not a substance but a form, defined by its relations to other trains. It remains the 8.25 even though it leaves twenty minutes late, so long as its difference from the 7.25 and the 9.25 is preserved. Although we may be unable to conceive of the train except in its physical manifestations, its identity as a social and psychological fact is independent of those manifestations” (Culler 11).

Binary Oppositions “Indeed, the relations that are most important in structural analysis are the simplest: binary oppositions” (Culler, 14).

good / evil original / copy primary / secondary inside / outside reality / appearance essence / accident

soul / body pure / corrupted father / son male / female speech / writing

center / margins normal / deviant natural / unnatural straight / gay white / black self / other

truth / fiction philosophy / myth sciences / humanities classical / romantic modern / postmodern poet / critic

sex / gender master / slave high culture / pop culture base / superstructure waking / dreaming latent content / manifest content the library / the web

IBMApple Structure RepetitionNon-repetition Disconnected lines Joined lines Color MonochromaticPolychromatic ColdWarm Form Substance (“bold”) Outline StraightCurved

“ 面子 ” Group work: Identify the binary opposites.

L’Homme Sans Tête (directed by Juan Solanas) Group work: Identify the binary opposites.

the paradigmatic chain “What goes without saying” → ideology What is “conspicuous by its absence” → flout conventional expectations → value (Daniel Chandler, “Semiotics for Beginners,”

III. “Language constitutes our world... Meaning is always attributed to the object or the idea by the human mind, and constructed by and expressed through language: it is not already contained within the things” (Barry 43).

Problems with Descartes’ idea: “I think therefore I am”? World language I mediator

Langue vs. Parole Parole: an individual remark (specific, diachronic) Langue: a wider containing structure (synchronic, ahistorical)

Noam Chomsky Competence → Langue Performance → Parole

武松打店 Group work: (1) Identify binary oppositions (2) Discuss how language constitutes our world.

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)

"Structuralism is the search for unsuspected harmonies..." (Lévi-Strauss, qtd. in strauss_claude.html) strauss_claude.html

Myth = Language Similarities Made of units that are put together based on certain rules Binary opposition as the basis of structure Myth mythemes nature vs. culture ; the raw vs. the cooked; patricide vs. incest Language phonemes, morphemes, sememes “good” //“not good”; “good” //“bad”; “good” //“evil”

Discussion The method in “Incest and Myth”

Lévi-Strauss “[T]he individual tale (the parole) from a cycle of myths did not have a separate and inherent meaning but could only be understood by considering its position in the whole cycle (the langue) and the similarities and difference between the tale ad others in the sequence” (Barry 46).

“A structural anthropologist may examine the customs and rituals of a single group of people in some remote part of the world not simply to understand them in particular but to discover underlying similarities between their society and others” (Dobie, Theory into Practice, 140)

“ 口吐蓮花 ” Group work: (1) Identify binary oppositions. (2) Similarities with “ 面子 ”?

The End