Theory 6 Flashcards
How is metalepsis connected with metaphor?
(NB: metalepsis is a figure of ‘missing out the figure in between in order to create a figure that stretches the sense or which fetches things from far off’)
- associated with a deeply metaphoric focus on substitution
What does Brian Cummings define as the ‘sheer thrill of success’ of metalepsis?
- the sense of sharing something secret/ mysterious ie. language pulls together something which in principle exist far apart
What happens to the hearer’s understanding at the point of metalepsis?
- because the reasoning is far-fetched, the hearer’s understanding is ‘entangled’/ momentarily bewildered
- patience of the reader/ auditor is strained
In which text was metalepsis foregrounded as a figure that foregrounds the period of intermission in metaphor between the term transferred and ‘the thing to which it is transferred’?
Erasmus, De Copia
What is deixis and what might we experience if specific deictic details are lacking?
- used to locate the self and the relations of things
- we might not know exactly where the voice is coming from/ one’s physical positioning in relation to something
Why does Plato express his distrust of art in the 10th book of The Republic? Why does he subsequently distrust poetry even more?
- to Plato, all art is a mimesis of nature (copy of objects in the physical world)
- poetry is a copy of a copy - leads away from the truth rather than towards it
(AND: those things themselves - in the world - are only copies of timeless universals (Forms/ Ideas))
How does Kenneth Clark define the difference between nakedness and ‘nude’?
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
- nakedness is to be without clothes, the nude is a form of art
(to be seen as a ‘nude’ is to be objectified - also reduced to surface level understanding/ presentation of the self)
“The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress”
How might a depiction of nakedness resist becoming a ‘nude’?
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
- when the painter acknowledges he is an outsider
ie. acceptance that women have bodily autonomy and has exposed her nakedness of her own accord - equally accepting that men cannot control female sexuality/ bodies
“He cannot deceive himself into believing that she is naked for him. He cannot turn her into a nude”
How do men and women’s presence differ?
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
men’s presence
- depends on the promised power they could inflict on someone
women’s presence
- speaks of the ways in which she can have power inflicted on her
How does John Berger support his point that women are both ‘surveyors’ and the ‘surveyed’?
- has to have control over how she is perceived because the role of the surveyor is there to ensure that behaviours are only shown that would - in turn - only allow permissible behaviours in response from men
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself”
Who said that “patriarchy is discrimination in the name of God”?
feminist and former Latter-day Saint Marilyn Warenski
Why is the male condemnation of women for their vanity hypocritical?
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
- women are painted nude for male pleasure
Which writer, along with John Berger, believes the mirror in actuality was part of the indoctrination of the female into seeing herself as a sight?
Simone de Beauvoir (as influenced by Lacan in The Second Sex)
What does it mean when Mary Devereaux describes that women are also able to internalise the male gaze?
“Both men and women have learned to see the world through male eyes”
ie.
- women are turned against each other and themselves
- women’s self-judgment is based on internalised standards of what is pleasing to men
What consequence for film does Mary Devereaux describe on the basis that women are also able to internalise the male gaze?
- even when films are directed by women the male gaze can be projected
- the male gaze creates new standards of womanhood and femininity that embed themselves which appeal to “male needs, beliefs and desires” and become part of an interior narrative
- when women perform for the camera - feels like it surpasses female viewing
- female audience is also made to feel like the other
Why does Mary Devereaux conclude that female sexuality has to be harnessed in a gendered power play?
- women have no other power
- men exist in networks of other men who also hold the capacity to harm (whether physically or by protecting the man who does)
On the basis of what arguments does Ann Kaplan conclude that the “male gaze involves more than simply looking; it carries with it the threat of action and possession”?
- idea that men have to be kept satisfied otherwise they will potentially look for other ways to gain sexual gratification
- because women have been associated with the domestic sphere they are also in charge of satisfying male sexual drive
- as well as men holding power over the ability of a woman to have children which is perceived as a woman’s greatest desire and fulfilment
What does Mary Devereaux mean when she describes women as the ‘other’?
- women’s identities are shaped in relation to men
How do films function as demonstrative frameworks for women according to Mary Devereaux?
- they show women how to behave and conduct themselves
Mary Ann Doane: Hollywood film functions as a “recuperative strategy” designed to return the wayward woman to the fold
On what basis do feminists argue that art is a medium of political oppression according to Mary Devereaux?
- art reflects conditions of life and helps maintain them and thus…
- in both its high and low forms, feminist theories argue, art inscribes ‘a masculinist discourse’ which we learn to reproduce in our everyday lives
Why is the basis of liberal humanism literary criticism challenged by the premise that art is political or ideologically charged?
Mary Devereaux
- it contradicts the deeply held belief that art speaks to and for all human beings in relation to the essential aspects of them
Why does Mary Devereaux suggest that feminist theories remain marginalised?
- due both to their difficulty and unfamiliarity
- the academy is also male-dominated
- the fundamental necessity of feminism and the benefits for both genders has not been recognised
- paradox of the necessity for men to privilege women with equality in order to actively contribute to equality
What is a possible criticism of Laura Mulvey?
- the female gaze and male gaze cannot be essentialised
- the male gaze cannot simply be identified with the way men see the world and thus we should be referring to it as the patriarchal gaze ie. any way of looking at women that benefits the patriarchy
In Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author, instead of it being the author who speaks out of a work, who/ what is it?
- it is language itself that speaks
- language is able to act and perform alone
- the use of language itself means the work reaches impersonally into various other networks
- the author is a kind of collage maker
Roland Barthes’ The Death of the Author challenges the thought that the Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it - what does he say?
- the author and book come into being simultaneously
ie. the voice of the author and all of the interpretations that we take as the message of the author come into being as a reader engages with the book itself and creates its meaning
What are the consequences that Roland Barthes points out if one believes that the author has authority over the production of one single ‘message’ of a work?
- one imposes a limit on that text, furnishes it with a final signified, closes the writing
- when the Author has been found, the text is “explained’ = victory to the critic
What two famous lines summarises Roland Barthes’ new take on the author?
“the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture”
“the space of the writing is to be ranged over, not pierced”
On what 3 points does Foucault challenge Roland Barthes’ argument?
- the author has not really died but has been transposed into transcendental anonymity
- the concept of hidden meanings and deliberate obscurity has been transferred onto the writing itself
- how do we organise literature without any notion of author?
What does Foucault mean by his comment that “the author has not really died but has been transposed into transcendental anonymity”?
- the way in which we process content is still through the idea of the author
- Barthes is trying to overcome this conceptual framework but instead of just saying the author is dead, we have to investigate the void
What concept manifests the idea that hidden meanings and deliberate obscurity have been transferred onto the writing itself?
Concept of ‘ecriture’
- refocusing on the writing and the origins of writing as opposed to the author
- supplies the religious associations of hidden meanings
ie. reintroduces in transcendental terms the religious principle of hidden meanings and the critical assumption of implicit significations, silent purposes, and obscure contents
Roughly when was the Romantic period?
1780 - 1840
When the phrase ‘the people’ is used in Victorian literature, why is it a less straightforwardly used term than just being a sincere expression of understanding, vigour, or assurance?
Jon Cook
- it has a suspicion around it because it was frequently used by professional politicians
- it was a deceptive use of language - a pretence of democracy which attempted to mask the exercise of domination
(ie. presenting oneself as a ‘man of the people’ at once implies you are intimate with their needs AND yet you are set apart from them by virtue of being their representative)
In the late 18th century there were a number of pushes for reform in the name of ‘the people’ and the idea that they should have more political representation. Who were these ‘free agents’ included as ‘the people’ and who was this group separated from?
Jon Cook
- these free agents were male and property-owning
- the people were still (even by radicals) distinguished from the ‘illiterate rabble’
(underpinning idea was that political engagement was deserved by the educated)
Why might we think of ‘the people’ as the prototype of the silent majority?
Jon Cook
- they had to wait for professional politicians etc. to give them a voice and claim authority for doing so
- in this complex negotiation of equality and hierarchy, the representative can claim to be part of the group but they always have the security of separating themselves
How did attitudes towards ‘the people’ change/ become more hostile after the French Revolution?
Jon Cook
- they were seen as a threat to aristocratic distinction and the destroyers of a culture maintained by gentleman and priests
- Edmund Burke called them the ‘swinish multitude’
HOWEVER: soon (because they were the ‘middle class’) they were ready to be conservative and felt threatened by ideas of revolution from ‘below’ - ie. from the rural/ urban proletariat
Jon Cook believed there was a kind of ‘mystical charge’ around the term ‘the people’ because they were perceived to carry with them the traces of society in its natural state ie. before the corruption of government/ artificial social distinctions. How does this premise then feed into how the people and their role in political discourse are presented in the pastoral genre?
- they were associated with the pastoral ideal of political relations
- ie. balanced between the needs of rich and poor
- establishing co-operation rather than conflict between social groups
- they are presented as bearers of a fundamental truth about what society should be like
- they witness what we have in common/ might be forgetting in our corrupt/ artificial society
William Empson argued that pastoral was a genre that was always likely to carry powerful political messages - especially as a form that presented an ideal version of social life. What quotation sums up his ideas?
Jon Cook
“The essential trick of the old pastoral, which was felt to imply a beautiful relation between rich and poor, was to make simple people express strong feelings (felt as the most universal subject, something fundamentally true about everybody) in learned and fashionable language (so that you wrote about the best subject in the best way)”
How did the pastoral genre negotiate the complicated demand for greater realism in the 18th century?
Jon Cook
- pastoral became nationalised ie. it began to represent English rural settings that people could recognise
(representing labour as well as leisure ie. as a celebration of England’s growing economic power - which took the combined efforts of different social classes)
How did the pastoral genre begin to present the rural poor in order to assuage hostility towards them amidst the growing political and social tensions?
Jon Cook
- they were presented as industrious because this assuaged concerns about their moral degradation
- showing them as domestically settled, ie. confined to home/ village assuaged concerns that they might be developing a consciousness of their own with class interests
Why might Crabbe be called a writer of the ‘anti-pastoral’?
Jon Cook
- some of his key works ie. like The Village - is a refutation of the conventions of the pastoral idyll because he believes it encourages a superficial/ hedonistic attention to the lives of the rural poor
- by providing the ‘real history’ of late 18th century rural labour he does invite compassion to a degree - HOWEVER he does not believe their sufferings derive from the denial of their natural rights and thus he does not argue that they are deserving of political representation
