ENGL 283: WOMEN IN LITERATURE

The Feminist Avant-Garde

COURSE OBJECTIVES

(1) to learn to read literature in relation to the social and historical context in which the literature was produced, especially in terms of contemporaneous notions of gender

(2) to learn to analyze literature in terms of its narrative techniques (e.g., its use of point of view, its representations of gender, its temporality, its use of imagery, metaphor, and rhetorical forms)

CORE-SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:

(1) “gaining a broader understanding and appreciation of intellectual/cultural activity (including literature),” and

(2) “developing skill in expressing oneself orally and/or in writing.”

WHY STUDY LITERATURE? “we make sense of the world and everything in it through images, metaphors, and stories”

(Steven Venturino, The Idiot’s Guide to Literary Criticism and Theory)

Studying literature expands our perspectives, challenging our personal or cultural biases.

It imparts knowledge about human interactions in specific historical and cultural contexts.

It teaches us how to make inferences, attend to details, draw conclusions, support arguments, and analyze language.

It refines our rhetorical skills, our power to use language to persuade others.

It makes visible the often hidden workings of cultural and political power.

Reading literature enlists our “capacities for imagination, for making connections, for negotiating complexity” (Madelyn Detloff, The Value of Woolf )

DISCOURSE

Our ways of reading and interpreting literature—and even how we chose what to teach in literature classes—have been shaped by certain cultural values and certain assumptions about literature that are specific to a particular culture and time.

Literary works are produced and understood in relation to various discourses of the time—that is, those symbolic systems that enable us to conceptualize ourselves as subjects and establish the possibilities of meaning in a culture at a certain historical moment.

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Magritte, “The Subjugated Reader” (1928)

What is the avant-garde?

WHY STUDY THE AVANT-GARDE?

This literature doesn’t provide a linear plot, stable characters, or positive images of women, as one might expect in this class.

So we need to pay attention to the effects such literature has on our notions of ourselves as gendered subjects.

And we’ll consider the political implications of such aesthetically radical texts.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AVANT-GARDE

Idealization of individuality and originality

Rejection of, or rupture with, the past

Denial of eternal truths or universal values

Anti-conventionality, anti-institutions

Aesthetic experimentation

Politically radical ideas

Sexually explicit material

Obscenities

Cover of André Breton’s What is Surrealism? (1936)

Image: Magritte, “The Rape” (1936)

SURREALISM Surrealism sought to let the unconscious desires and subconscious imagination reign freely, producing irrational and erotic images.

Some key surrealists are the German Max Ernst (1891–1976), the Spaniards Joan Miró (1893–1983) and Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), the American Man Ray (1890–1976), and the Belgian René Magritte (1898–1967).

Salvador Dali, "Persistence of Memory," 1931

Salvador Dali, "Persistence of Memory," 1931

DADAISM Dadaism was not a movement, for it followed no rules.

Dadaists were not artists, for they thumbed their noses at art.

Dadaist art is nonsensical, whimsical, obscene, funny, sarcastic, bizarre.

Dadaists sought to shock and to provoke an emotional reaction.

Dadaists were anti-institutions, such as museums.

Marcel Duchamp, "The Fountain," 1917

MARCEL DUCHAMP, LHOOQ (1919)

The letters pronounced in French sound like "Elle a chaud au cul."

CUBISM

Pablo Picasso, “Woman in a Black Hat,”

1909

Picasso, “Gertrude Stein,” 1906

Gertrude Stein,1874-1946

HOW TO READ, AND NOT TO READ, THIS LITERATURE

How not to read How to read

Read for language—how something is conveyed; pay close attention to word choice and details

Mark characters and how they are represented to us

Let go of your desire for meaning

Henri Matisse, “The Inattentive Reader” (1919)

FOR THURSDAY: LUCY DELAP’S INTRODUCTION TO THE FEMINIST AVANT-GARDE.

Terms:

Edwardian

Modernist

Postmodernist

Questions:

How does Delap define the feminist avant-garde?

How do avant-garde feminists differ from other feminists?