Literary Criticism

Class #1

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).

Ferdinand de Saussure

(1857-1913)

Publications

• 1916

Course in General Linguistics

• “the father of modern linguistics”

• Led to “the linguistic turn” in the 20th- century history of ideas

The Sign 符號The Sign Signified 符旨

(signifié): a concept

Signifier 符徵(signifiant): a sound-image (or a written mark)

“Arbor”

I.• “The bond between the signi

fier and the signified is arbitrary,” not “motivated” (by natural resemblance).

(Saussure)

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

Equusㄇㄚˇ Horse “Mimi”

bracketing the referent• =leaving out the third dimension of

the sign, that to which it refers• Argued that language should be

studied apart from the world to which it refers.

• Language = chess?

(Norton 959)

bracketing the referent

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

woman woman woman 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 diff

erences 差異 " (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

Paradigm

atic chain

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 / eviloriginal / copy

primary / secondaryinside / outside

reality / appearanceessence / accident

• http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html

• soul / bodypure / corrupted

father / sonmale / female

speech / writing

• http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html

• center / marginsnormal / deviant

natural / unnaturalstraight / gaywhite / blackself / other

• http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html

• truth / fictionphilosophy / myth

sciences / humanitiesclassical / romantic

modern / postmodernpoet / critic

http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html

• sex / gendermaster / slave

high culture / pop culture

base / superstructurewaking / dreaming

latent content / manifest contentthe library / the web

• http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/english/courses/60A/handouts/binaries.html

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem05.html

IBM AppleStructure Repetition Non-repetition

Disconnected lines

Joined lines

Color Monochromatic Polychromatic

Cold Warm

Form Substance (“bold”)

Outline

Straight Curved

L’Homme Sans Tête

• (directed by Juan Solanas)

• Discussion: 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,” http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem05.html)

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 Imediator

武松打店• Discussion:

(1) Identify binary oppositions

(2) Discuss how language constitutes our world.

Langue vs. Parole• Parole 話語 : an individual utt

erance (specific, diachronic)

• Langue 語系 : a larger system or structure (synchronic, ahistorical)

(Barry 44)

•“Any actual ‘speech’ (parole) presupposes a system (langue) which is being used.”

(Selden 55)

Noam Chomsky

• Competence 能力→ Langue

• Performance 表現→ Parole

semiology vs. semiotics• Semiology:

• Semiotics:

Food for Thought

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using linguistics to study other cultural phenomena?

Claude Lévi-Strauss

(1908-)

Publications• 1962 The Savage Mind

• 1962 Totemism

• 1964-71 Mythologiques (4 vols)

• 1978 Myth and Meaning

• 1984 Anthropology and Myth

• "Structuralism is the search for unsuspected harmonies..."

• (Lévi-Strauss, qtd. in http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/levi-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”

The Oedipus Myth

• (1) the overvaluation of kinship ties (Oedipus marries his mother; Antigone buries her brother unlawfully)

• (2) the undervaluation of kinship (Oedipus kills his father; Eteocles kills his brother)

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)

•The End