Theory 3 Flashcards
What did Fiona Sampson write?
The Meaning of ‘Meaning’
What is a great way to cover your back when a topic is very complex and there are a lot of questions to cover?
“These series of posited questions are fraught with complications, and often where we draw the dividing lines between [these terms] is complicated. [AUTHOR] offers one interpretation…”
How does Fiona Sampson draw the dividing lines when it comes to sense and meaning?
She associates sense with rational, common sense comprehension ie. the rational explanation we grasp from language
Aside from Sampson’s link between sense and rational, common sense comprehension, how else can sense blend with meaning?
sense also blends with the connotative, affective aspects of language that we feel we should grasp too
Sound and music has no meaning - true or false
False: sound and music has meaning but it works primarily through the affective mode rather than through denotation
What conclusion do we draw when we find that music and sound can have meaning?
One can achieve meaning from a work of literature or piece of music and yet may lack sense of it
If you have a piece of work that is weird, doesn’t make much sense, we can’t really build comprehensible images, how might we describe this?
“We struggle to ‘make sense’ of the piece due to her surrealist style association and manipulation of images”
Instead of saying ‘pay attention’, what might we say?
‘attend’
What does Sampson suggest we do in order to let the rhythmic musicality of a piece of writing emerge?
- we have to attend to the ‘tacit’ experiential response that we are having to the work
Though it is usually what we attend to as a secondary impulse, what would push the sound of a poem to come to the fore?
- if the meaning of the work and the connotations of its language/ images are made inaccessible to us
How would you describe the difference between a sound like ‘what’ or ‘mercy’ and ‘ow’ or ‘ouch’?
- some of the sounds have recognisably stronger semantic associations, especially as some are words in their own right
- the latter sounds prompt questions about how we use an underlying layer of sound that has become integrated into language at an indeterminate boundary between sound and language - they have certain direct associations without reaching the direct denotative semantic sense of words
Which scholars might you throw in when discussing something like “the phenomenology of sound” and you want to say ‘…that has been revisited by a number of scholars’/ ‘ ‘…that has been revisited repeatedly by scholars’?
Angela Leighton, Don Ihde, Robert Frost
Who describe an ‘auditory imagination’ and how might we describe what goes on in there?
- we have layers of language and sound in our thought patterns
- sound occupies that ghostly realm of summoning in one’s mind
- sounds proliferate in the imagination
Having discovered that sense and meaning can act independently, what else can/ should we consider?
- how they rely upon one another
What does the proliferation of sounds and the multiplicity of their connotative associations make us do?
- turn back to the language and grapple with the sense of the words themselves
Instead of saying ‘the poet’s aim is [xyz]’ what might we say that does not seem to imply that we know the poet’s aim?
‘this extract has us reflect [think/ reconsider/ interrogate/ reimagine/ ponder/ reanalyse] on our relationship to…’
Give an example of how the musicality/ rhythms of language might actually worth with and support the sense of the work?
(ie. if we are supposed to achieve a clear, complete comprehension of something, the syntax will be slow, explanatory, measured - unlike if we are supposed to be zipping through a landscape and absorbing objects, the syntax will be at pace, potentially jumbled etc.)
What did Edward Said say about Western music and how it creates its own meaning?
it creates its own meaning by giving itself a series of technical terms and engages in a series of high-minded discussions etc.
ie. because the technical requirements imposed by musical analysis are so severe, it becomes a form of social discourse that constructs social meaning
and music exists in a social context, and it elaborates the ideas of authority and social hierarchy that are directly connected to the dominant establishment that it belongs to and that presides over the work
In 1958, who coined the term ‘tacit knowledge’ to designate certain kinds of experiential knowledge?
Michael Polanyi
Define tacit knowledge as it was used by Michael Polanyi in 1958?
- the skills, ideas, and experience that people have, but are not codified and may not be easily expressed (might not necessarily be able to articulate it, or even be aware of all the dimensions)
people are often not aware that they have this knowledge
to transfer it requires extensive person contact, regular interaction, and trust
language is thought to be tacit knowledge in itself
What supporting points do you have for the argument that the meaning of language is not purely semantic?
the meaning of a poem (as with music) can be the feeling or atmosphere it evokes
- OR might be the kind of form/ rhyme it uses - ie. ‘the way it tells it’, the particularity of having these words in this order
Even when music does not evoke a particular emotion, what supporting points does Fiona Sampson make for the argument that it is still something non-arbitrary and thus has meaning?
- it coheres in a recognisable form, creating patterns and pleasurable sensation
- to recognise this restores the kind of agency that music has, and thus we begin to see how the musical form might entail the textual
Give examples of the two types of crime that notables artists/ directors/ authors have been involved in
- targeted attacks (like those of Roman Polanski and Woody Allen)
- diffuse criticism/ hatred ie. Eliot’s anti-semitism/ Heidegger’s foray into Nazism
If a point of theory appears to have an idea/ concept/ mode of speech lying behind it, what might we say?
“[Apostrophe] lies implicitly in the work”
If there is a use of ‘banal repetition’ what might we find it?
we might find it ‘disconcerting’
How do you introduce context?
“the context of these writers may go some way to [glossing the rhythms] that the two poems express”
Define and provide examples of a prepositional phrase?
- phrase with preposition, object, any words that modify the object ie. by, at, for, in, on, under
- ‘after the fight’
- ‘behind the scenes’
- ‘between the girls’
If a poem was suggesting a heaviness of motion, how might the verb be presented?
- a verb might be laboured or separated by the mis en page
If a particular scene reminds you of a certain time/ place etc. how might you describe that?
“the scene is immediately redolent of urban America”
eg. “life-sapping burdens of domesticity”
When thinking about syntax, how might we break up our understanding?
- think about ‘syntactical units’ ie. clauses/ phrases that cohere and track them
If a certain technique dominates a piece ie. syntactic choices, how many examples should you support it with?
- 3/4
- show how different elements of that have accumulated to produce a certain effect
When thinking about the juncture between sound and sense - consider that the sense of a poem can also be literally what it is saying, especially in a poem with an argument. Give an example and what we should then look out for
eg. Pope’s Essay on Man - if the argument is then grounded in a form, consider what effect this has
- if the argument is about man’s weakness and then framed in impressive and unwinding couplets then this is a contradiction
How might we address a contradiction between sound and sense in, for example, the case of Alexander Pope?
“Pope’s total mastery of form, heard most keenly in a perfect management of sound, betray this very sentiment”
How might you describe how the ‘tension’ of a poem
TO BE FILLED IN
Define antistrophe
Antistrophe (Ancient Greek: ἀντιστροφή, “a turning back”) is the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe, which was sung from east to west
Define anadiplosis
the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause. The word is used at the end of a sentence and then used again at the beginning of the next sentence
Define epanalepsis
the repetition of the initial part of a clause or sentence at the end of that same clause or sentence
Define antanaclasis
the literary trope in which a single word or phrase is repeated, but in two different senses.[2] Antanaclasis is a common type of pun, and like other kinds of pun, it is often found in slogans
Define synoeciosis
figure of speech in which contrary terms are use in conjunction
Define systrophe
The device of ‘piling up’ a number of attributes and images of a person or thing, often in a series of figurative or similative phrases, without giving a literal description.
Give a definition and examples of deictic expressions
a word or phrase that points to the time, place, or situation in which a speaker is speaking (such as this, that, these, those, now, then, here)
Define antimetabole
the repetition of words in successive clauses, but in transposed order; for example, “I know what I like, and I like what I know”. It is related to, and sometimes considered a special case of, chiasmus
In a Freudian reading, why would the loss of a lover/ loss of love be considered a potentially traumatic moment?
in some form, it enacts the loss of the mother as rehearsed in the Fort-Da game
When an analyst works with a patient, what are they attempting to recognise?
the resistances in the patient’s mind to their memories/ trauma
What does an analyst attempt to uncover from the patient’s mind?
certain though-connections which have to be uncovered from childhood
In Freud’s work ‘Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through’, what word dominates the piece?
abreaction
Define abreaction
the expression and consequent release of a previously repressed emotion, achieved through reliving the experience that caused it (typically through hypnosis or suggestion)
What is transference?
When the patient begins to act out what is forgotten and repressed in their relationship with the analyst
- it is a form of resistance
What is the impact of transference?
patient yields to the compulsion to repeat, which replaces the impulsion to remember
- repetition replaces remembering
(might affect the other aspects of his life also)
in the transferential model - the session of psychoanalysis is a theatre in which patients re-enacts conflicts of their early history
- feelings are transferred onto the neutral analyst
(if transference becomes too intense, the mental armory defends against progress)
When the psychoanalyst is trying to bring memories into the present, what might be a response from the patient?
- there is a necessity to make temporary aggravations
- resistance might turn this on its head and luxuriate in the symptoms of the illness ie. ‘look! repression was necessary!”
What is the physician aiming towards when the patient is stepping through their processes of transference and resistance?
physician is aiming towards reproduction in the psychical field (remembering)
What is the physician’s main instrument for turning repetition into remembering?
main instrument for turning repetition/ re-enactment into remembering = handling of transference
ie. re-enactment of the traumatic memory as its effects have been transferred onto the analyst and then success comes when converting re-enactment into accepted memory
How can the handling of transference become the main instrument for turning repetition into remembering?
transference is given as a playground for the compulsion to repeat
- gives all symptoms a new transference meaning (replaces ordinary neurosis with ‘transference-neurosis’)
via. repetitive reactions comes the awakening of memories after the resistance is overcome
Ultimately, how is a patient’s resistance overcome?
by identifying it and allowing time for the patient to work through it
In what book by Lionel Trilling does the chapter ‘Freud and Literature’ appear?
The Liberal Imagination
