Dealing with the Ever Expanding Cannon

After our discussions on curriculum and cannon, I cannot help but to think about (as well as critique) the formation of curricula in any school. Should high schools better prepare students to encounter diverse literature? It seems like many, and I do not have an amazing knowledge to base this on, read the "classics" and not much else, i.e. you read a new Shakespeare play each of the four years you are in high school. I know one of my best English classes in high school included Plato, Thucydides, Johnathan Swift, and Thomas DeQuincey. While we did encounter Shakespeare, we read a text which would not seem to be the appropriate play to use--Titus Andronicus. Other English teachers were taken aback by what we read--and I am aware that this may just be the experience of my high school. All this to say, that I actually enjoyed a kind of opening up of the cannon in my very "safe" high school curriculum. Although, I know that at least one of the four mentioned has to be in that acceptable cannon, at the time it was amazing to read them.
All this to say, how can we make the cannon inclusive? What is "enough" to satisfy that inclusion? For the most part, we seemed willing to throw everything into the cannon, I just don't know how can ever cover everything or even do it justice. I can't help but to think including works earlier in the educational system would help greatly. Still, we would get nowhere near to reading everything, but I think it helps to bring in "challenging" works that might be "better-suited" in a college setting into high schools. Enough rambling. What do you think?

Speaking of 'Greatness'

Here is another literary critic who has defined greatness in literature: Harold Bloom made a list of the "Western Canon of Literature." I found this list online, I hope it's accurate.

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

As I was perusing it, I saw that Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was included but not Slaughterhouse Five. Why would that be? Also, Stoppard's Travesties made the list but not Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I just thought this site/list was interesting and went along with what we had discussed in class about what should be included in the canon. Well, here it is, a *genuine?* canon.

I haven't counted the number of women writers in it, however, the list was just too long.

Standards and Greatness

Looking through the blog topics, I have noticed that no one has yet started a thread about our current question: “What should we read?” In discussing Arnold and Leavis, the two big topics in class were “can there be standards?” as well as “is there such a thing as greatness?” What we didn’t talk about and what I have been thinking about lately is the ramifications of taking the opposites of these questions. What I wonder is, how can there NOT be standards for literature? and, also, is there such a thing as “poorness” in literature? My guess is that, when you just read these questions, you immediately agree that there is no way that literature has NO standards and also, most people would probably agree that there is definitely such a thing as poor writing. If this is correct, then I don’t understand how people can argue that there is no way to discern standards for great writing. Anyone who was sitting in the middle group: can you explain? I believe that there MUST be at least some base set of standards! And, also, there seemed to be a lot of confusion on exactly what “great” means. If we can easily define “poor,” then why can we not do the same for “great?” If everyone could volunteer their thoughts on this, I think that it would be a very helpful discussion for everyone!

~ Kristen

In case you were wonding what Fish is doing these days

This was passed on to me by a former Theories student:

> Hi Dr. Chapman!
>
> I saw this on the New York Times today. I thought it was amusing that a staunch
> reader-response critic would critique the truth produced by an interpretive community.
> http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/

I have to say, it really does seem like he's trying to say that Clinton is saying something very particular, quite apart from what everyone else thinks she said...can anyone see any way that he is being consistent with his reader-response self?

Wes

Accuracy of mind-reading

Marcus wrote:
"My question is this: Zunshine notes that Woolf assumes that we will automatically read a character's body language as indicative of his thoughts and feelings because of our collective past history as readers. How do we know which readings are correct?"

A good question. The short answer is that we don't: Zunshine says explicitly that the fact that we have the ability to mind-read only means that we have the ability to attribute mental states to other people, not that we're right about our attributions.

The long answer is more complicated. These abilities are highly evolved, so they're more than just generalized learning and indeed more than just our "collective past history as readers." For example, look at this:



Which face is happier? According to M. Derec Bownds in _The Biology of Mind_, most people say that the face on the right is happier, despite the fact that they are mirror images. The reason for this, he says, is that the left hemisphere, which controls the right side of the face, is more active during happy emotions, while the right hemisphere, which controls the left side of the face, is more active during negative emotions. A smile on the right side of the face is more likely to be the product of genuine happiness. (This may be the reason for the mysteriousness of the Mona Lisa's smile; she is smiling with the left side of her face.)

If he's right about this, then it suggests that our intuitive feeling about which face is happier is in fact "right," at least for most people. We are hardwired with the equipment to pick up on a clue of this subtlety, process it, and presumably act upon it, without ever being conscious of what exactly we've picked up on or how. It's an impressive feat, I think. If, as seem likely, the ability to mind-read consists of lots and lots of different modules interpreting all kinds of subtle clues like this with this degree of accuracy, then humans have surprisingly good information about what other humans think.

Wes

gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori

Today in class you probably thought I rambled on and on with no direction. In all of that mush and misunderstanding and cut-off phrasing was actually "something" inside of my head. Maybe I would've been better drawing a picture or writing you guys a poem. How do you know if what you heard was what I meant? You don't. How do you know that I knew what I wanted to say? I don't. How do you know what I wanted to say was REALLY what I wanted to say? You don't, and I really don't. All of what I (and I hope people, in general, otherwise I'm heading towards a dizzying future) say is just riding on a hope that we stay in some sort of horizon of hoped understanding. Thats what I think horizon is. Am I wrong? Are all the sounds we produce just a hoped possibility that the paroles will turn into a formed langue? Look up "Hugo Ball" on google and you'll quickly find out that "elephant turnip paperclip" must have some sort of meaning! It comes from a brain (or a brian?) and all of those neurons, they work together, well, if not in some sort of order! Nothing is random! I guess then I would say that there is one (very complicated) original meaning for a text that we can never really comprehend nor ever figure out, but it is there! It is the intent of all of those cells working and processing together, in a moment, for the work of writing, and once it's out there, there go all the other brains of the world into which it dissolves to be processed, moved around, and spit back out--for a brand new work that emerges in all that processing!

Evolution

Alright Marcus, I'm going to take a stab at answering your initial question. Before that, I'd like to say Kim- I love the fact that you brought up getting stuck on "right" or "wrong" interpretations, it's probably the single issue that bothers me the most. The jury's still out for me, but I'd say your post, and marcus and sylvi's comments land on about the same page as mine.. or at least on pages close together... definitely in the same book though!

Marcus, your question is a really interesting one, and for an answer, based on Zunshine's article I'm going to have to revert to what Prof. Chapman has mentioned in class a few times. This is the idea that our interpretation is an evolutionary, biological phenomenon. Basically, we developed the ability to "read minds" in order to better our chances of survival. I think Zunshine supports this by saying "our cognitive evolutionary heritage structures the ways in which we make sense of fictional narrative..." (1102). This might lead us to think that as a biological factor common to the human race (with exceptions such as autism aside) there might be one common "right" interpretation. However, at the same time, Zunshine acknowledges Richardson and Steen's point: "the history of cognitive structures 'is neither identical to nor separate from the culture they make possible'" (1100).

This leaves me somewhat stumped. If the point is that our interpretation is evolutionary my first instinct is to say then there must be one concrete interpretation, a right answer if you will. However, when you acknowledge differences in the evolutionary process, the various influences of time, place, society and culture, etc on an individual's particular cognitive structures that opens a whole new can of worms and leads back to the last question about a "right" interpretation. What does everyone else think? If there is room for more than one interpretation according to Zunshine, how much room is there? Is there a line and if so where?

What is important?

This is in response to the post just below mine about Zunshine, specifically Marcus’ response to Emily’s question. Marcus said, “My question is this: Zunshine notes that Woolf assumes that we will automatically read a character's body language as indicative of his thoughts and feelings because of our collective past history as readers. How do we know which readings are correct?”

This got me wondering why does a reading even have to be correct, especially a reading within the reader response theory? An interpretive meaning is derived based on those interpretive strategies and interpretive communities that the reader is a part of. There are many different communities; therefore many different readings can come from one specific text. What's wrong with that? As long as the reader is gaining something intellectually, or emotionally from that text, does it matter if it disagrees with another's interpretation?

I sometimes feel like we get too stuck on right and wrong, as well as determining which interpretive strategy is better, that we forget the main theories and ideas actually at hand. Isn’t that what is really important, or is determining the best interpretive strategy more important?

Zunshine

Finally! A reason why certain texts (anyone else have trouble with
Hemingway in high school?) escaped all attempts at my comprehension:
“The personal aesthetics of individual readers thus could be
grounded...in the nuances of their mind-reading capacity” (Zunshine
1098). This article fascinated me because not only do you realize that
when you read you are looking at a world from the author’s
perspective—meaning the author wrote the black marks you are
perusing—but you are also looking at the world through your own eyes, a
character’s eyes (or more than one) and their respective perspectives
of the world. Involved, yes?

In this muddled fashion the reader deal with more than one mindset at
a time (if you will allow characters to have a mindset) and sets of
intentions—at the same time, often in the same scene such as when
Zunshine presented the Mrs. Dalloway example with Richard Dalloway,
Hugh Whitbread and Lady Bruton in the drawing room which leads into the
confusing mesh of fifth and sixth levels of intentionality that the
reader supposedly draws from the text.

Now I have a question.

Could these speculated intentions of author and character be
considered “gaps” according Iser? The reader creatively (if mistakenly)
“fills in” the intentions of characters as exhibited by their physical
actions in the novel? This could particularly be so if the writer is
someone like Hemingway or Woolf who only give us smatterings of
physical action, leaving us to dig frantically for emotional responses.
Zunshine is a reader-response critic so supposedly attributing Iser to
her argument can do no harm and only spur more speculation and debate.

Emily Franzen

Plato's emotions

I’d like to try to discuss Plato’s views in a way that might appeal to more people, in a way that allows some leeway for emotion while still honoring the importance of logic and reason in society. Plato does allow that emotions exist but that we should take emotions them and instead of acting out based on only our emotion, we should use logic and reason to channel our emotions to create something constructive that leads to truth. He argues that art will often write the emotion and create an emotional response in a reader, but this is not healthy because it doesn’t lead to logic and reason. “It feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue.” *Controlled* not repressed, as we talked about in class today.

This perhaps can make more sense if put into an example. Let’s say a person is very angry and he writes a poem about how angry he is. Other people read this poem and respond such that they are angry as well about this situation though they perhaps weren’t angry before. Or, maybe you're angry and you listen to an angry song, does it make you feel better? Sometimes, yes, but oftentimes don't you just end up wallowing in the emotion? This is not constructive. Anger will only perpetuate more anger if reason and logic are not called upon – the emotions will build up too much and we will not be able to understand why we have these emotions. The angrier we get, the less rational our thought becomes. However, if we have the emotion of anger and then use our logic and reason to understand why we are angry, then the anger can often dissipate through the understanding of how we came to that emotion – perhaps not at first but eventually. We change our view to something that is constructive. Thus, emotions (even those destructive ones) can be constructive if logic and reason are employed to lead one to a deeper understanding and truth.

ars poetica, Freud style

We have clearly moved away from deconstruction in class, even though some of those questions still persist, especially in our current readings. Freud, in his essay about creative writers, states that "a creative writer presents his plays to us or tells us what we are inclined to take to be his personal daydreams" where we are left to feel "a great pleasure" from the "confluence of many sources." Is "ars poetica" here really a secret? If we all opened up our egos to the world, we'd be the next Hemingways, Prousts, Tolstoys? Or is "creative writing" just one in an infinate number of outlets of sickened daydreamers? Maybe we are all creative "writers" in this way, in our own little centers of supposed human experience, each individual dream its own center in the "terrifying form of monstrosity"!

Post-Structuralism Destructs

According to Derrida as I understand him (which admittedly may be little) and our conclusions in class on Monday, fairy tales do not exist except as something that people (writers, readers, critics etc…) created. I asked Professor Chapman” what then do those critics and writers who study / write fairy tales do if their subject matter doesn’t exist? He answered, “I think Derrida would say they are doing the best they can with metaphysical concepts.” If I may take that previous question a little farther if fairy tales don’t exist because “the center is not the center”—who’s to say that “romance” exists? Or “drama?” Or any other genre / aspect of literature? Post-structuralism seems a little disconcerting in my view. How can deconstructionism hold itself up if it is arguing that everything unravels itself?

Emily F.

Decisions, decisions

A subject that keeps coming up, but we never really discuss is how sometimes literary theories come into conflict with each other. Individually, the theories all make sense, but when viewed together, some things just don't work. How do we reconcile these differences? Should we make some sort of hierarchy of theory? Should we view each theory in a vacuum?

History and literature

I'm not sure how many people came to the keynote speaker at the Muse conference this weekend, but I think I saw a few people from our class there. To briefly summarize the talk, the speaker read a paper on domesticity as it was related to the Merry Wives of Windsor. She studied this topic by researching recipe books of the era. Toward the end of her speech she began to talk about her work as New Historicism writing. She talked about the differences of opinion throughout history and said that there were just as many debates and differences of opinion as there are today. After events or eras pass by, people try to consolidate and make sense of what happened. They try to find answers and come to coherent ideas because they have the benefit of hindsight. In this way, can we understand history better than present day? Or since we are living today, in the now, do we understand better what is going on because we are living it? History, in these ways, seems related to literature. All literature is creating some sort of history of its own, a fictional history. To add to the complexity, many texts are influenced by actual history as related to the events of that time and the personal history of the author. Does that make literature more complex than just 'history'?

Undecidability

Friday in class we discussed the idea of "undecidability" in post-structuralism, particularly referring to Requelme's article. I wanted to know what everyone thought about this. Before discussing post-structuralism, on multiple occasions people have expressed the opinion that there is not a right answer or interpretation, that there can be multiple interpretations. Do you think this is the same idea expressed in post-structuralism? Our class seemed to end on the decision that "undecidability" implies that one interpretation can't be picked over another, that the reader reaches a point at which a decision can't be made. Does everyone agree? Is it possible to see ambiguity and yet still choose one interpretation over another?

Authorial Intent

I have lately been struggling a lot with what my exact views are pertaining to authorial intent. In viewing the other discussions on this blog so far, I was surprised that no one has yet talked about authorial intent seeing as it comes up in class quite often. Today, we were discussing the Joyce article and New Historicism and whether we thought that what author writes is intended or not. Many difficult questions came up in class in a very short time. For example, are selves entirely unified? If not (the conclusion that we seemed to come to in class), does this mean that what an author writes is also not unified? How much of what an author writes is intended and, leading from this, how much does authorial intent matter?

Before this class, I used to place a very high importance on authorial intent when analyzing literature. But now I am not so sure. For one thing, how do we know that information compiled about an author is true? What if we are given false information given by, say a neighbor of the author, and the neighbor just told false things about the author just to be in the news? Unless we were there while the author was writing a piece of literature, how can we truly know that the context that we are told that the literature was written in is really true? Ought we then to rely solely on the text and only what we think that the author is trying to say in it? On the other hand, everything that an author writes about is from their own personal experience and, if we know about, say the death of a family member of the author, this might have a huge impact on that person’s writing and I firmly believe that this is very central in understanding the author’s work.

Is anyone else confused or does anyone else have any “words of wisdom” as to how they determine how much value to attach to authorial intent? Sorry for the long post!

~ Kristen

Readers Make Meanings

Fish argues that “readers make meanings…and meanings make readers [because of socially constructed communities]” I am willing to agree that part of how we interpret a text emerges from the environment and social forces that continually change and evolve around and through us. If we are all part of various interpretive communities, it stands to reason large numbers can agree to certain interpretations of a text like James Joyce’s short stories tend to reflect the socio-political situation in Ireland.

However, no two people are part of exactly the same communities to the same involvement and extent. Because of this difference, there will always be part of us that is original and unlike any others. Fish is partially mistaken when he says “the self…is a social construct.” We are all social constructs to a certain extent but not completely. I refuse to believe that the only reason humans think the way they do is because of society’s standards—that seems like conceding too much control to something far larger and more capricious than the individual.

Opinions? Arguments?

Emily Franzen

Fish and "the self"

Fish's explanation of "self" in terms of interpreting texts just really rubbed me the wrong way. I want to know, what did everyone else think?

Fish basically argues that there is no independent self, because the self is a social construct that "does not exist apart from the communal or conventional categories of thought that enable its operations..." (Fish, 1029). He goes on to say that consequently, any meaning that an individual derives from a text is really just a result of the community, not the individual.

Now, I can't fault Fish for saying that people are greatly influenced by the society and/or communities that they are a part of. I think it would be hard to argue that everyone is completely independent. However, there is just something about his claims that really bugs me. Does that imply that there is no real self? That there is no individuality and everyone within a larger community will extract the same meaning from a particular text? How does he account for the differences in interpretations between fairly similar people- to the point that sometimes its hard to keep in mind that everyone even read the same thing?

I could keep going with questions, but I want to hear what everyone thinks, and if someone has a way to explain Fish in a way that doesn't bother me so much!

Reader-Response Theory

I have two questions that pertain to the Richter reading about Reader-Response Theory. In the section entitled "The Psychology and Sociology of the Audience," Richter explains the position of Louise Rosenblatt by saying, in the most basic of terms, that each reader brings something different to the text. Rosenblatt touches on something we talked about in class the other day: each reading of a text will be different because we are slightly different every time we read a text. This is a good point, just as his advice not to project anything onto the text. What I wonder, though, is if it is possible to have an "undistorted" view of a text? Is it possible to recognize our biases and curb them to get a totally unbias reading?

Secondly, I just want to hear the opinions of others on David Bleich's theory. He claims that our social setting plays a part in our interpretation, or our vocalized interpretation, of a text. Bleich says that readers will keep quiet those things that are irrelevant to others and the aim of the class. I do not know if this is necessarily true because I think most people would agree that they have used the "But that is what I get from the text" excuse at one point in time, especially in the case that others do not agree. What are your thoughts?

Analyzing Characters

Today in class we talked about how there are different things psychoanalytic critics can attempt to analyze, one of these being the characters. There was some discussion about whether or not characters can be analyzed, and whether or not when we do analyze them, we're really analyzing the author.
i have mixed feelings about this. i do definitely think characters can and should be analyzed; that not everything has to come back to the author. but at the same time, i don't know that authors always intend for their characters to be analyzed in the ways we do, especially authors who don't subscribe to psychoanalysis. To me though, this doesn't necessarily mean that analysis of characters is "wrong." If a critic believes that their school of thought actually can be used to understand and interpret the actions of people in the real world, then i feel that they can interpret characters' actions in the same way, without having to consider the author.
any thoughts?

-Amy