Value and the Canon Flashcards
Frank Kermode - what is essential to canonicity?
‘Pleasure’ and ‘change’
Canonical literature does not become so by ;collusion with the discourses of power’, but by its ‘trasnaction’ with a reader (and later, many readers)
How does Frank Kermode insist that we are able to evaluate art?
We are ‘deified’ by ‘our own spirits’ to evaluate art - based on the experience of pleasure from it
According to Frank Kermode, what is the status of the canon?
It is a benign ‘good cause’ because ‘pleasure’ underlies it
What is the reader’s job according to Kermode?
to ‘create newness’ in a text - because change is central to teh canon to prevent texts becoming ‘rubbish’
What does Frank Kermode say cahnges in the cnaon reflect?
‘changes in the canon obviously reflect changes in oruselves and in our culture. It is a register of how our histoircal self-understandings are formed and modified’
;Individuals, sharing with other certain powers, chagne the canon to match their modernity’
What does Steven Heah say Roland Barthes theory shows?
Pleasure arises from a link with “cultural enjoyment and identity”; jouissance shatters this identitiy, thus is not linked with pleasure/enjoyment
What does George Achiele say about the Biblical canon?
a canon is a ‘symptom of desire for an unambigious message’; a canon ‘identifies a range of accpetable interpretations’ and thus ‘the desire for canon is a desire for a text which interprets itself’
‘canonical intertext’ limits interpretative freeodm adn authority of readers
‘the canon requires extratexual reinforcement because it fails to explain itself sufficiently’
What does Jan Mukarovksy say that aesthetic pleasure comes from?
Aesthetic pleasure comes from incongruities or polysemic elements, not harmoniousness between the parts and whole
‘identity-sustaining internal inertia’ of art allows it to ‘resist the ecnourachments from without’ that would cause it to collapse
What does Jan Mukarovsky say that the aesthetic function does in society?
‘the aesthetic fucntion occupies an important place in the life of individuals and of society as a whole’
Howeer ltierature is not ‘isolated form the phenomena which surround it’ - there is no ‘solid borderline’ between the aesthetic and non-aesthetic. anything cna become ‘a vehicle of the aesthetic fucntion’ - it is only ‘social context’ which determines what is aesthetically percieved, not ‘inherent’ aesthetic potenital in an object
What does Jan Mukarovsky say about the different judgements of aesthetic in society?
‘each stratum of society, but also many environments, have their own aesthetic canon…criteria of one’s origianl social background’
The canon is NOT ‘accepted passviely by the lower soical order’ but rather ‘actively reshaped’
According to Jan Mukarovsky, what is aesthetic value?
aesthetic value is a ‘process not a state’
the only ‘independent aesthetic value’ is from the art’s tension ‘internal inertia’ - internal structural ‘congruities and incongruities’
What does Harold Bloom say is essential to canonicity?
'strangeness, a mode of originality' - poetic ;misteading' of predecessors, hereditary 'anxiety of influence' and struggle However this is NOT a class struggle - the 'aesthetic is an idnivdual rahter than a social concern' 'all strong literary originality becomes canonical'
According to Harold Bloom, what is canonicity stuggle NOT?
NOT a class struggle - 'the aesthetic is an individual rather than a social concern' we have individual 'freeodm to perceive' texts
What does Harold Bloom say criticism is?
An ‘art’ in itself - of tracing influence
What does Harold Bloom say of writers and values?
‘all great writers are subversive of all values, both thiers and our own’
However, rejects idea that literature promotes didactic values - we do not live by the ethics of the Iliad etc
Capital is essential to the cultivation of aesthetic values, but not direct cause
