Theory Flashcards
1
Q
What are the two ways that we can understand the term ‘rhetoric’?
A
- rhetoric might be understood in terms of ‘rhetoricity’ - property of a type of language allied to/ identical with the literary
- rhetoric might also be considered as the art of persuasive speech (practical art)
2
Q
How did Aristotle define ‘a really distinguished style’ in the Poetics?
A
“a really distinguished style varies ordinary diction through the employment of unusual words”
3
Q
What did Aristotle mean by the term ‘unusual’ in the Poetics when he identified that the use of unusual words is a component of ‘a really distinguished style’?
A
“strange words and metaphor and lengthened words and everything that goes beyond ordinary diction”
4
Q
If, says Aristotle, someone was to write only in unusual words ie. “strange words and metaphor and lengthened words and everything that goes beyond ordinary diction” - what would be the result?
A
“a riddle or a barbarism”
5
Q
What origin does the word ‘barbarism’ have and what significance does this hold?
A
the word ‘barbarism’ comes from ‘babbler’ or ‘barbarous’ - links an experience of strangeness to not understanding
6
Q
What is the implication of limiting barbarism?
A
only so much foreignness is acceptable
7
Q
What kind of language is connected to barbarism?
A
rude or unpolished language
8
Q
Which two theorists and their texts can be put in discussion on the topic of rhetoric?
A
Erasmus, Copia vs. Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory
9
Q
What did rhetoric mean to Erasmus?
A
Erasmus himself - world of courtly politics, rhetoric was a social performance and was in social/ political contexts - supposed to have impressive variety, intention was not to make a successful act of communication
10
Q
What was copia?
A
Copia - a style of abundance in rhetoric
11
Q
What function did copia have?
A
means of avoiding tautologia (repetition of a word or phrase)
12
Q
What is the relationship of form and content in copia?
A
whatever aspects of the form shift - the meaning of the content is maintained (even though he introduces ‘possible figures, tropes and schemes of rhetoric’)
13
Q
What are the three aspects of the trivium as De Man sees it?
A
Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic
14
Q
What does grammar serve in De Man’s trivium?
A
logic
15
Q
How is logic defined in De Man’s theory?
A
Logic = the rigour of linguistic discourse - it allows access to the phenomenal world (ie. the world and its objective reality)
16
Q
Where does the ‘literary’ sit in De Man’s trivium?
A
the ‘literary’ foregrounds the rhetoric aspect of the trivium over grammar/ logic
17
Q
Where do speech and tropes fit in the trivium?
A
they straddle the borderlines between grammar and rhetoric
18
Q
True or false - in De Man’s view literature works by logic
A
False - “literature is not a transparent message”, “the grammatical decoding of a text leaves a reside of indetermination”
19
Q
What are the two purposes of literature as defined by Sir Philip Sidney in An Apologie for poetrie?
A
‘to teach and delight’
20
Q
What kinds of images did Philip Sidney use in order to convey people ‘at their best and worst’?
A
through ‘notable images of virtues, vices’
21
Q
Did Philip Sidney aim for novelistic realism?
A
No, even though his ‘Arcadia’ was an inspiration for the modern novel
22
Q
In what writing, by what author in what year, is apostrophe described as a ‘turning’?
A
Abraham Fraunce, The Arcadian Rhetoric (1588)
23
Q
In Abraham Fraunce’s The Arcadian Rhetoric (1588) - list the types of turning that a character can do
A
- to men
- sometimes from men to gods
- poetic invocations
- sometimes to a dumb and senseless creature
- sometimes brute beasts
24
Q
We might say that In Abraham Fraunce’s view of Apostrophe as ‘turning’ in The Arcadian Rhetoric (1588) might not account for when an apostrophe is used at the beginning of a text. Why would this not hold up?
A
To Fraunce, an apostrophe used at the beginning of a poem is still a turn because the poem has turned away from what is expected of the beginning of a poem
25
Does George Puttenham see apostrophe as more of an exterior or interior focused feature in The arte of English poesie (1589)?
He defines it as very much an ‘addressee focused’ form of speech
26
Who has a different view about apostrophe than the one expressed by George Puttenham in The arte of English poesie (1589)?
Jonathan Culler - who believed that apostrophe can be basically something interior and introspective
27
What line in Puttenham's The arte of English poesie (1589) evidences his view that apostrophe is primarily an addressee focused form of speech?
“we do suddenly fly out and either speak or exclaim at some other person or thing”
28
What kind of motion does chiasmus create? and why?
- creates a rocking motion, there is a movement and then stasis as the structure wraps back around
29
How could chiasmus/ antimetabole be done solely for decorative or ornamental purposes in Greek/ Latin?
Because word order did not matter for sense
30
In English, why might chiasmus be used?
used as a psychological or philosophical turn
31
Why can chiasmus sound contrite?
intellectual form but can actually lack substance
32
Who describes aposiopesis as 'the figure of silence'?
George Puttenham, in The arte of English poesie (1589)
33
What are the four reasons that Puttenham gives for the use of aposiopesis?
"we were ashamed, or afraide to speake it out. It is also sometimes done by way of threatning,
and to shew a moderation of anger"
34
What did Henry Peacham write in 1593?
The Garden of Eloquence
35
What are the four feelings that Peacham believes aposiopesis can convey?
feare, anger, sorrow, bashfulnesse
36
In which year did Francis Bacon write Francis Bacon, Of Regiment of Health?
1595
37
What attitude towards pleasure does Francis Bacon exhibit in Of Regiment of Health?
pleasure in balance and not letting it tip into vice/ over-indulgence
38
What does Bacon believe that please can do for the mind?
encourages pleasure as a means of raising the mind, encouraging contemplation and thoughtfulness
39
Who wrote the Spectator magazine (1712)?
Joseph Addison
40
How does Joseph Addison speak of the imagination in the Spectator 1712?
"the Imagination can fancy to it self Things more Great, Strange, or Beautiful, than the Eye ever saw”
41
Which kind of audience did Joseph Addison target the Spectator towards?
aimed at readers in public spaces, to take advantage of the leisure time in order to be mindful of their thought processes etc.
42
Why does Joseph Addison suggest that sight is the “most perfect and most delightful” of the senses in "The Pleasures of the Imagination" in the Spectator edition of 1719?
it allows us to absorb the pictures that manifest in the imagination - the imagination can then hold onto and manipulate these images
43
How does Joseph Addison believe we experience something beautiful?
Beauty is not experienced as something rational, but something we are struck by
44
What type of pleasure does Addison encourage his readers to engage in?
the pleasures that are made possible through poetry etc.
45
What kind of balance of pleasure does Addison want readers to understand and abide by?
encourages looking to pleasure as a means of gently exercising the mental faculties, without over-indulging in sensual delights that might descend into vice or folly
46
Which other essay did Addison mention in "The Pleasures of the Imagination"? what does he draw from it?
Bacon’s essay on Health, and draws from him to suggest the benefits of pleasures
47
What famous article did Samuel Johnson write in The Rambler (1750-1752)?
On Fiction
48
Samuel Johnson's 'On Fiction' praised realism for two things, what were they?
1. praises realism against previous literature that merely employed repeated imagery that had the safety of the status as literary trope
2. emphasises that realism has the benefit of a much more relevant and therefore more effective didacticism
49
Who wrote Loacoon and when?
Lessing in 1766
50
What is the name for the moment that Lessing discusses occurring in the visual arts when they try to depict tragedy?
the ‘pregnant moment’
51
What is the 'pregnant moment' according to Lessing?
when depicting tragedy, the visual arts need to depict the moment just before, in order to get a sense of that narrative
52
Why does Lessing support the paragone regarding ekphrasis?
argues that because painting is a spatial art, and literature is a temporal or narrative art, they are philosophically separate
53
What argument does Krieger pose that would counter Lessing's support of the paragone?
poetry is actually able to recreate spatial stasis and the illusion of organised simultaneity
54
What argument does Fowler pose that would counter Lessing's support of the paragone?
one traces their eyes around visual art and accumulates allusions in much the way that reading works
55
In Giorgio Agamben's (2000) work Notes on Gesture, how does he discuss art, gesture, and meaning?
“Even the Mona Lisa, even Las Meninas could be seen not as immovable and eternal forms, but as fragments of a gesture or as stills of a lost film wherein only they would regain their true meaning.”
(ie. images can only achieve their true meaning when they are liberated back into movement through gestures etc.)
56
In Classical and Renaissance treatises, what figures were encouraged when writing ekphrasis and why? Note how this reflects a different understanding of ekphrasis than how we typically think of it
enargeia and hypotyposis to produce highly vivid descriptions - ekphrasis was about trying to recreate a moving scene, as if it were really occurring
57
What effect was ekphrasis supposed to have for readers in Classical and Renaissance periods?
readers were supposed to be able to ‘see’ the thing/ scene described, and the energia would let them feel emotions too
58
What admission did Shakespeare make in regards to ekphrasis?
while neither visual/ verbal description can represent the thing itself - both have the capacity to conjure images in ‘the eye of mind’
59
How would you define visuality as it is used in Steven Ungar's 2003 work?
politics of seeing and sight, how are our lines of sight controlled
60
How does Foucault think about visuality?
thinks about the power behind surveillance and perception
61
What kind of thinking has been done in In anthropological/ ethnographic circles about the integration of visual formats? What challenge has this had?
visual forms allow for more empathy/ identification (ie. documentaries/ film)
Challenge: films etc. are research mediums, but are not for the communication of knowledge
62
How does Grimshaw respond to the challenge against the integration of visual mediums into anthropological/ ethnographic work?
He argues against the challenge made that films are just research mediums but not used for the communication of knowledge by saying that language actually does not have to be the central means of communicating knowledge - is a place for visual artefacts
63
What movement in Art History was significant in the 1970s/ 1980s?
the ‘New’ Art History
64
Who said that visuality is socially constructed as part of the 'New' art history movement?
Bryson
65
Why does Bryson say that visuality is socially constructed?
He argues that the unmediated visual experience has been undermined by overloading the experience with ‘codes of recognition’ and ‘understanding imposed from the outside’
66
Part of the commentary that visuality is socially constructed is the idea that there is a screen built between viewer and the world - what is this screen? Give an example
Language (and semiology)
| - ie. description of a painting itself can intrude upon the unmediated experience
67
How can semiology/ language cause lights of sight to be politicised?
these lines of sight, the details, the interpretations that are then handed to viewers can be biased/ politicised along various lines
68
What did JS. Mill write in 1833?
Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties
69
Why would JS. Mill consider that (as argued in his 1833 work Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties) that if you use apostrophe you have stopped conducting poetry?
believes it is a fundamental of poetry that they have no addressee, if you engage in apostrophe (which inherently assumes an addressee), you have stopped conducing poetry, and you are reduced to eloquence
70
What did Gilles de la Tourette study?
He made detailed examinations of the body and its movements - he also observed tics and spasms
71
How did Tourette describe tics and spasms?
‘a generalised catastrophe of the sphere of gesture’
72
In which work did William James coin the term 'stream of consciousness'?
Principles of Psychology (1890)
73
What does William James emphasise in Principles of Psychology (1890)?
the immateriality of the stream of consciousness and how there is not physical evidence for it
74
How does William James describe what occurs when language/ words are spoken?
Words express "shading or other of relation which we at some moment actually feel to exist between the larger objects of our thought"
75
How does William James draw the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity?
"There is not a conjunction or a preposition, and hardly an adverbial phrase, syntactic form, or inflection of voice, in human speech, that does not express some shading or other of relation which we at some moment actually feel to exist between the larger objects of our thought"
"If we speak objectively, it is the real relations that appear revealed; if we speak subjectively, it is the stream of consciousness that matches each of them by an inward coloring of its own"
76
What does Ezra Pound's 1918 work ‘A Retrospect’ reveal about his writing style?
Use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something.
…At least for myself, I want it so, austere, direct, free from emotional slither.
77
What does Virginia Woolf say about atoms in her 1919 work Modern Novels? What does this reflect about her attitude towards the experience of everyday life?
"Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall..."
- Woolf wanted to capture the phenomenology of what it meant to exist in everyday life (chimes with Husserlian concept of the epoche)
78
What kind of feeling of relief does ‘Street-haunting’ 1930 by Virginia Woolf write about?
this essay outlines the relief that accompanies the shedding of a world of domestic objects that are imbued with memories etc. - the eye must become the ‘oyster of perceptiveness’
79
Who wrote 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism’ (1933)
TS Eliot
80
In TS Eliot's 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism’ (1933), he describes where the poem exists. Where does the poem exist for Eliot?
- somewhere between the writer and the reader
- it has a reality which is not simply the reality of what the writer is trying to ‘express’, or of his experience of writing it
- or of the experience of the reader
- or of the writer as reader
81
Give a definition of 'the auditory imagination' as given by Eliot in 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism’ (1933)
‘auditory imagination’ is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling
82
Fiona Sampson draws a distinction between feeling and emotion - where does the draw the line?
Emotions are definable whereas feelings are not necessarily linked to a specific emotion - we can be left in a grey area of feeling ‘creeped out’, ‘disquieted’ etc.
83
Why does Eliot's concept of the auditory imagination suggest that we have an implicit, tacit knowledge?
The auditory imagination links to primitive and forgotten meanings - our reactions are experience-based and impulsive
84
What might 'returning to the origin' mean in the context of the auditory imagination?
“returning to the origin” ie. might refer to how we used sound as indicators of danger/ food source etc., and therefore how those instinctual traits can be brought back to the surface in the intensity of a poem’s aural life
85
What question does Eliot ask in 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism’ that might make think about the distinction between emotion and feeling?
Why, for all of us, out of all that we have heard, seen, felt, in a lifetime, do certain images recur, charged with emotion, rather than others?
86
How does Eliot answer the question of "Why, for all of us, out of all that we have heard, seen, felt, in a lifetime, do certain images recur, charged with emotion, rather than others?" that he asks in 'The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism’?
...such memories may have symbolic value, but of what we cannot tell, for they come to represent the depths of feeling into which we cannot peer.
87
Who introduced the ideas of ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’ to describe the component of metaphor?
I.A. Richards in Philosophy of Rhetoric
88
What do tenor and vehicle mean?
the ‘tenor’ is the subject of the metaphor, and the ‘vehicle’ is the metaphoric word itself
89
When did Wimsatt and Beardsley write ‘The Intentional Fallacy’?
1946
90
What does ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ basically say?
“the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a literary work”
91
What did Wimsatt and Beardsley write in 1949?
The Affective Fallacy
92
What does The Affective Fallacy say?
the meaning of a literary work is not equivalent to its effects (especially its emotional impact on the reader)
what a poem is is one thing, what it does is another
93
When was the New Journalism movement?
1950s/ 1960s
94
What is the effect of [t]he new journalism being powered by feeling as well as intellect?
can help break the glass between the reader and the world he lives in
- stimulates the active involvement of citizens because they need to be more than informed
- they have to act if they are going to have some say about what happens to them
95
Why does John Cage conclude in his 1961 work 'Silence' that "try as we may to make a silence, we cannot"?
“There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear."
96
When did Roland Barthes write The Death of the Author?
(1967)
97
What does the Death of the Author principally say?
there is not an author-God who has invested his writing with a decipherable meaning
98
What is the famous quotation from Barthes' Death of the Author?
"the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture”
[to use in theory]… “what he delivers is, in Barthes’ poststructuralist terms, a ‘tissue of quotations’ drawn from the ‘centres of culture’”
99
Why does Barthes consider that literature/ writing liberates an activity we could call "counter-theological, properly revolutionary"?
"to refuse to arrest meaning is finally to refuse God and his hypostases, reason, science, the law”
100
What work of Roland Barthes focused on pleasure?
‘The Pleasure of the Text’ (1973)
101
What distinction is made between the readerly text and the writerly text?
the readerly text is one that engages with comfortable pleasure, and the writerly text is one that discomforts/ challenges ones preconceived ideas, to push into an expenditure of energy that is blissful pleasure
102
True or false: the readerly text (according to Roland Barthes) evokes pleasure
False - the readerly text is one that engages with comfortable pleasure, and the writerly text is one that discomforts/ challenges ones preconceived ideas, to push into an expenditure of energy that is blissful pleasure
103
What is the difference in expressibility of pleasure and bliss according to Roland Barthes?
Pleasure is able to be articulated, whereas bliss is inexpressible
104
What happens at the moment of bliss?
Bliss is when, at a moment of extreme pleasure, the self collapses and there is a momentary dissolution of identity (ie. uncontrollable fit of laughter, or an orgasm)
105
Why is the moment of bliss entirely non-gender specific for Barthes?
when this self collapses, it is unclear what the subject is, and so it makes no sense for it to be gendered (ie. while he might discuss ideas of pleasurable hysteria, he certainly does not suggest this is just a female issue)
106
Why does Roland Barthes describe reading a great work of literature as an experience of ‘le petite mort’, the little death?
ie. it is a spiritual release that comes with a period of melancholy or transcendence accompanying an expenditure of ‘the life force’ ie. ones ‘energy’
107
How does Barthes make use of Freud's idea of disavowal?
means of describing how readers can seduced into literary worlds
108
How does Barthes link the Freudian idea of disavowal to the reader's experience of a text?
‘the reader disavows, in other words he or she keeps thinking, “I know these are only words, but all the same…”’
109
Which piece did Barthes write about love and lovers in 1977?
‘A Lover’s Discourse’
110
What did Barthes' ‘A Lover’s Discourse’ include?
taxonomy of the tropes and cultural idioms through which love is constructed and experienced, not just expressed
111
What kind of impact did Barthes' 'A Lover's Discourse' have on perceptions of love?
makes love a game, a script played out but not necessarily owned by its players
112
What is a famous quotation from Bakhtin's The Dialogic Imagination, (1975)?
"Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life"
113
How does Bataille characterise laughter?
‘[When I laugh], I am in fact nothing other than the laughter which takes hold of me’
- laughter evokes a sense of being nothing, perhaps of being pointless etc.
- also something potentially dangerous ie. there is a sense of being out of control
114
In what piece of writing does Culler discuss apostrophe?
The Pursuit of Signs (1981)
115
How did Culler re-characterise apostrophe?
“…[what] seems to establish relations between the self and the other can in fact be read as an act of radical interiorisation and solipsism”
116
Does Culler believe that we simply overhear the speech of the voices in poems?
No - we ourselves try out and try on the speech
| - ie. readers are not just listening, but actually are the proxy speakers of lyric poetry specifically
117
In what section of The Dialogic Imagination, (1981) does Bakhtin discuss the novel?
‘Discourse in the Novel’
118
Why is Bakhtin the 'father of dialogism'?
He argues that all dialogue becomes part of a lexis of dialogue, others can comment and respond
119
What is Bakhtin's name for the kind of network of discourse and dialogue?
Heteroglossia
120
How does Bakhtin define ‘Unitary language’?
singular, centralised, and has a centripetal force that guarantees a maximum of mutual understanding
121
What kind of language does Bakhtin include in ‘Unitary language’?
conversational language and literary language
122
How do heteroglossia and unitary language interact according to Bakhtin?
Unitary language overcomes heteroglossia
123
Why does unitary language overcome heteroglossia?
it is ideologically saturated, a world view (aligned with sociopolitical and cultural centralisation)
124
What does Ross Chamber believe is the essential 'power' of the text?
argues that the essential ‘power’ of a text is its power of seduction
125
Who coined the term defamiliarisation?
Viktor Shlovksy
126
Why does Viktor Shlovksy believe writers should to increase the difficulty and length of perception?
"because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged"
127
How does Spearing define a narrator?
"functioning less as a pronoun referring to an individual who can be defined as either autobiographical or fictional than as a deictic serving to evoke proximality and experentiality as free-floating textual effects”
ie. a textual effect/ tool to provide means of shifting proximity and perspective on the story
128
What distinction does Fiona Sampson draw between sense and meaning?
- associates sense with a kind of rational, common sense comprehension - the rational explanation that we gain from language
- meaning = the connotative, affective aspects of language that we feel we should also grasp
129
In language, according to Sampson, what happens to the relationship of sense and meaning?
in language sense blends with meaning
130
How does our experience of the rhythm of language indicate that sense and meaning blends in language? (as it does according to Sampson)
rhythm of language (semantic meaning, language has a 'musical rhythm’) can have something to do with making sense of a work ie. if the pace of the syntax changes, we know what kind of scene we’re in etc.
131
Why is meaning not only semantic according to Sampson?
meaning can be the atmosphere evoked, might be the form or rhyme it uses (music is still meaningful, it is non-arbitrary - creates patterns and pleasurable sensations)
132
Can sound have denotative associations? Give an example
music CAN also have denotative associations ie. the sound of an ambulance
133
What is the third of the three aspects of meaning that Sampson speaks about? (ie. semantic meaning, musical meaning and...) - give a definition
Affective meaning
| - affective meaning - the meaning that creates affect ie. emotion
134
How does sound itself have meaning?
it does not work in the traditional sense but works primarily through affect, and not denotation
135
Who coined the term ‘tacit knowledge’ and what does it mean?
Polanyi - it designates certain kinds of experiential knowledge (experience that is inexpressible)
136
What does Barthes comment about symphonies of a particular space?
certain familiar noises mark out a spatial/ temporal situation - there can be a symphony of a particular space ie. a ‘household symphony’
137
What role does audio pollution play in how we relate to our auditory environment?
- means we can’t make our spaces intelligible to ourselves
138
How is sound related to territory according to Barthes?
sound is connected to marking territory/ protecting oneself
139
According to Hegel - why did ancient Greeks listen to Nature?
in order to decode her meaning ie. the oaks of Dodona would utter prophecies
140
What piece did Angela Leighton write about hearing?
‘Hearing Things’
141
When there is a sound made inside a poem according to Angela Leighton, what has to happen?
when there is a sound made inside a poem, there has to be an ‘imaginative extension of hearing’
142
When we read, what does the ear do for us according to Angela Leighton?
we do not hear anything when we read, but the ear works hard for us - it collects, records, recalls, and imagines sound
143
In the 1950s and 1960s, where might be called the 'hubs' of the counterculture’s boldest ideas?
University campuses ie. the 1968 riots
- young activists mobilized to fight segregation and the Vietnam War, taking classes in political theory and Eastern philosophy
