existentialism - college lit 2013 · pdf filemodernism! (a literary movement) ......

EXISTENTIALISM

A philosophy/way of looking at the world

(applicable to Invisible Man)

EXISTENTIALISM!

– Main tenet: “Existence precedes essence.”

• We exist before we have meaning.

• I am, therefore I think. (The being comes first.)

– Main value: The responsibility and freedom of making personal decisions, making meaning for oneself

You might be an existentialist if…

– You refuse to blame others, circumstance, nature, or anything else for the condition your life is in.

– You feel that there is no natural justice in the world—that is, that bad things happen to good people at least as often as they happen to bad people.

– You believe in chance more than fate.

– You feel that no one (and nothing) but you really knows the “right” way for you to live your life

Concepts that existentialists are intrigued by:

– Human free will

– Human nature is chosen through life choices

– A person is best when struggling against the confines of their existence, fighting for life

– Decisions are not without stress and consequences

– There are things that are not rational

– Personal responsibility and discipline is crucial

– The only worthwhile codes for behavior are the ones we make for ourselves, individually.

NEW CRITICISM

A critical lens/literary theory

(applicable to any of the books we’ve read)

– emphasizes explication, or "close reading," of "the work itself."

– rejects attention to biographical and sociological matters.

– examines the relationships between a text's ideas and its form, between what a text says and the way it says it.

– attempts to be a science of literature, with a technical vocabulary.

– The goal of literature is not the pursuit of sincerity or authenticity, but subtlety, unity, and integrity--and these are properties of the text, not the author.

– The work is not the author's; it was detached at birth. The author's intentions are "neither available nor desirable" (nor even to be taken at face value when supposedly found in direct statements by authors). Meaning exists on the page.

– The text needs to be separated from the author’s intentions and the readers’ impressions.

New Criticism: a Literary theory (Critical lens)

– Ask yourself, "How does this piece work?" – Look for complexities in the text: paradoxes,

ironies, ambiguities. – Find a unifying idea or theme which resolves

these tensions. – Basically, study the piece for its form and ideas,

and the relationship between these two. How does one affect the other?

Credit to http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/new.crit.html and

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/critical.asp?e=8

To “do” New Criticism:

MODERNISM

A literary movement

(Applicable to Invisible Man)

MODERNISM! (a literary movement)

– The Attitude: Everything’s more complex and less certain than we used to think.

– The Context: Coming off of the first World War, some writers started to feel that the world just didn’t make sense in any good way.

– The Result: A re-structuring of literature and the experience

of reality it tries to represent.

The approach

• Perspectivism (a modernist approach to writing): • we hear the story only from the viewpoint of the individual;

• the use of narrators located within the action of the fiction helps us experience the story from a personal, particular (as opposed to an omniscient, 'objective') perspective;

• the use of many voices, contrasts and contestations of perspective enriches the text;

• Consequently, the omniscient narrator disappears (especially as 'spokesperson' for the author)

• Impressionism (a related modernist approach): an emphasis on the process of perception and knowing

Attitudes about form

• Language is seen as “thick,” complex, nuanced, with multiple meanings.

• Language is a tool with which we construct our realities. When we write, we

construct the world for others.

• Experimentation in form helps us present afresh the structure, the connections,

and the experience of life.

• Cohesion, interrelatedness and depth in the structure of the aesthetic object and

of experience is emphasized.

• To create this depth and cohesion, various literary devices such as

– motifs, juxtaposition, parallels, different voices, shifts and overlays in time and place and

perspective are used.

• Writers gave up the sequential, developmental, cause-and-effect presentation of

the 'reality' of realist fiction.

– They wanted, instead, to present experience as layered and discontinuous.

Everything moves inside.

• INTERIOR or symbolic landscape is used: more focus

on the inner world of the characters (and plots in the

“real world” thus become highly metaphorical or

symbolic of what the character is going through in

his/her mind).

• Time becomes psychological time (time as

innerly experienced) or symbolic time (time or

measures of time as symbols, or time as a

symbolic rather than a historical reality), not the

'historical' or railway time of realism.

Endings and themes

• ‘Open' or ambiguous endings were used more often; writers thought they were more representative of 'reality' -- as opposed to 'closed' endings, in which matters are resolved.

• Themes that recur in modernist works – questioning the reality of experience itself

– the search for meaning in a world less inherently meaningful than we originally thought

– the critique of the traditional values of the culture

– the loss of meaning and hope in the modern world and an exploration of how this loss may be faced.

Muchas gracias to http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/2F55/modernism.php for saying it’s

okay for me to adapt this info.

POSTMODERNISM AND POSTMODERNITY

A literary and cultural movement/era

(Applicable to Haroun, Einstein’s Dreams, and your lit circle book)

Inventory of Attitudes about Truth

• Remember this handout? It’s full of Enlightenment ideas you may or may not have agreed with.

These ideas/attitudes reflect…

• MODERNITY.

– A time period spanning Western Civilization from the Age of Enlightenment (18th century) to, arguably, the mid-late 1900s.

– Main ideas: Reason, Truth, Cause and Effect, Order.

– (Modernism as an art movement was already starting to question this…)

And postmodernity is…what, exactly?

• POSTMODERNITY is a period in which there is a greater sociological tendency to REJECT or QUESTION enlightenment ideas about truth and language (the ones you responded to on the opinionnaire)

– Reaction to Modernity

• In a postmodern world, people are more likely to disrupt “master narratives”—stories and explanations of the world that people of a culture take for granted as true

Modernism

• Invisible Man, T.S. Eliot’s poems (“Lovesong,” “Preludes”)

• http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20220

• Informed by disillusion, chaos, existentialism, the feeling that the world has no logic, makes no sense.

Remember modernism?

• Everything is more complex and less certain than we once thought.

• Literature and the experience of reality it re-presents must be restructured to reflect this.

• In general, the fact that we can’t depend on others or others’ ideas to make sense of our life is a bit of a downer. *grimness*

• Literature should be complex, layered, artfully crafted, symbolic, difficult.

• Let’s quick read something modernist to remind ourselves of what it is.

That was before postmodernism.

This! This is, on the other hand, sorta postmodern!

• Poetry a la Colbert

• http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/216596/january-21-2009/elizabeth-alexander

What is postmodernism, then?

• A philosophy and movement in art (literature, architecture, music, etc) in which the fragmentation started by modernism is expanded—exploded, really

– Reaction to modernism

The postmodern attitude

“Modernism… tends to present a fragmented view of history (as in, it’s all random and senseless), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.”

“Everything you know is wrong”: Postmodernism and

Postmodernity

Common characteristics of postmodern literature and art

• Points out the “constructedness” of texts – calls attention to its own status as a production, as

something constructed and consumed in particular ways

– Focus on SURFACE rather than depth, reflecting the process of its own creation rather than some greater truth-purpose

• Dissolves borders—between “high” and “low” culture (pop culture); between genres; between “truth” and “fiction”

• Focuses on PLAY—with language; with “reality”; with the reader/viewer

• Tends toward fragmentation rather than unity—narratives are often disrupted or split in some way (extension of modernism here)

• Hyper-acknowledgement of INTERTEXTUALITY: “Nothing new under the sun”

– The idea is that we can’t possibly say something without ripping somebody off/plagiarizing, so let’s play with that instead—let’s make blatant how OUR work rips off, comments on, or otherwise makes use of other texts.

– Modernists started this with all their allusions…postmodern writers take it to the next level.

NEW HISTORICISM

A critical lens

(Applicable to any of the books we’ve read)

NEW HISTORICISM: Context Matters!

New Historicism Occurred in Response to: • New Criticism’s tendency to treat works of literature

in a historical vacuum, as if a poem or novel had no relation to its historical context whatsoever.

• A desire on the part of literature professors to figure out how understanding literature might help in understanding social problems.

PREMISES (Muchas gracias a Warren Hedges and Southern Oregon

University for the help here)

• Images and narratives do important cultural work. They function as a kind of workshop (or playroom) where cultural problems, hopes, and obsessions are addressed or avoided.

• The best way to interpret literature is to place it in its historical context: what contemporaneous issues, anxieties, and struggles does the work of literature reflect, refract, or try to work through?

PREMISES

• Interpretive problems (such as figuring out why the narrator of Invisible Man can’t seem to understand his own existence or identity) must be related to cultural-historical problems (such as the rampant stereotyping, manipulation, abuse, and oppression that people of color had to endure during Ellison’s time) in order to be understood.

• The cultural/historical context of the READER also plays into the meaning-making process, and must be taken into account.

PREMISES

• New Historicists also tend to stress that authors and poets are not flawless—that even though they may be more contemplative about their societies than the average citizen, they nonetheless participate in it.

• In other words: Writers are a product of their times—or, at least, they are affected by the world in which they lived. (Duh, right?)

Questions to ask of a text from a New Historicism perspective

• What contemporaneous (existing at the time of the text’s production) cultural or social issues does the author appear to be trying to work through in the text?

• What ideas about or practices in contemporaneous culture/society is the text promoting? What ideas or practices is it condemning or challenging?

• What elements of the author’s cultural/historical context are important to understanding the text? How are they important?

• What elements of your OWN cultural/historical context are important to understanding your reaction to the text? How are they important?

DECONSTRUCTION

A critical lens

(Applicable to any of the books we’ve read thus far)

• Constructivism? Social constructionism? • There are lots of related theories that go by some

version of this title. • The basic theory goes like this:

– Things don’t exist, really, as things, until we give them a name.

– We CONSTRUCT our reality by naming it; our language CREATES our world.

– Thus, SIGNIFIERS (words) become much more important than what they signify (meaning), because, well, the SIGNIFIER came first!

CONSTRUCTIONISM

• We define things by what they’re not—by giving them boundaries (this is part of the chair, but that is not)

• We could define those boundaries differently, and then? Well, we’d have a different thing in front of us.

• One thing that makes me buy this theory somewhat: The newly sighted. (I’ll explain this one.)

Think of it this way:

• As part of this idea, some postmodernists (Jacques Derrida, in particular) saw a pattern in western cultures: – We construct our reality by using BINARIES.

• Up vs. down • Hot vs. cold • Man vs. woman • Life vs. death

– Derrida thought that, generally, we set up that binary, and then privilege one of its elements as better than the other. “It’s a key element of our meaning-making process!” says Derrida. • That’s not actually a direct quotation. He didn’t say that. He

mostly spoke in French, in fact!

Anyway…

• That basically looks at those binaries and points out that they are JUST CONSTRUCTIONS…we made them up. They’re not stable, and they’re not fact, and they’re not to be take as Reality with a Capital R.

• By applying deconstruction to texts, we can point out the instability of its meaning…we can show how an argument is weak…we can call an author out on relying upon constructions of reality that Just. Aren’t. Very. Useful.

So deconstruction is a theory…

• "Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air.“ -- J. Hillis Miller

Critical Lens the Third: DECONSTRUCTION!

• Blurs the boundaries (or points out that they’re already blurry) between binaries

• Points out that a binary is faulty: that is, that the two things being juxtaposed AREN’T opposites

• Questions the relationship between elements on one side of the binary (this will make sense after we do our first example, so hang on)

So deconstruction does a few things…

• New Critics assume that a work of literature is a freestanding, self-contained object whose meaning can be found in the complex network of relations between its parts (allusions, images, rhythms, sounds, etc.).

• Deconstructionists, by contrast, see works in terms of their undecidability. They reject the view that a work of literary art is demonstrably unified from beginning to end, in one certain way, or that it is organized around a single center that ultimately can be identified.

• New Critics ultimately MAKE SENSE of the ambiguities they find in a given text, arguing that every ambiguity serves a definite, meaningful, and demonstrable literary function. Undecidability, by contrast, is never reduced, let alone mastered. Though a deconstructive reading can reveal the incompatible possibilities generated by the text, it is impossible for the reader to decide among them.

As a response to New Criticism…

MAGICAL REALISM

A literary approach/school related to postmodernism

Magical Realism (some props to http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_mr.html)

• Related to postmodernism • Generally refers to a storytelling tradition that originates in

some South and Central American cultures • Upsets our expectations of novels through “drastic

experiments with subject matter…form, temporal sequence, and fusions of the everyday, the fantastic, the mythical, and the nightmarish”

• “blur[s] traditional distinctions between what is serious or trivial, horrible or ludicrous, tragic or comic.”

Magical Realism

• Weaves impossible or fantastic elements into everyday stories “with a deadpan sense of presentation.”

• “Differs from pure fantasy primarily because it is set in a normal, modern world.”

The writer’s perspective

• “The writer must have ironic distance from the magical world view for the realism not to be compromised.” That is, he/she can’t completely buy into the magic.

• “Simultaneously, the writer must strongly respect the magic, or else the magic dissolves into simple folk belief or complete fantasy, split from the real instead of synchronized with it.” That is, he/she can’t think of the magic as “other”—it has to be taken seriously by the writer.

Authorial Reticence

• “Lack of clear opinions about the accuracy of events and the credibility of the world views expressed by the characters in the text.”

• Promotes acceptance in magical realism. Things aren’t explained away; the author or narrator doesn’t tell you what to think about the sometimes incredible occurrences in the book.

But why?

• Some people cite postcolonialism and the mixture of Western logic with indigenous beliefs and stories as the inspiration for/cause of magical realism’s evolution as a storytelling genre.

• Of course, pomos love this stuff. Why?

• If you said that pomos like it because it questions the grand narrative of stable logic, DING DING DING! You are correct!

• If you said that pomos like it because it deconstructs the binary between rational/irrational, magic/real, truth/fiction, DING DING DING! You are correct!