UCSB English 10 Final

Literariness

Term used by russian formalists to refer to what distinguishes a literary work from other discourse. Requires foregrounding of language (through the use of literary devices) to separate or estrange the reader from everyday speech.

Literary Criticism

Reflective, attentive consideration and analysis of a literary work. Merits and faults discussed for balanced analysis. Many schools of criticism.

Genre

The classification of literary works based on their content, form, or technique.

Form

The general type or unique structure of a literary work. Refers to categories under which literary works are classified (ballads, novellas, sonnets) and may imply set of conventions related to genre.

Novella

A fictional prose narrative tightly structured and focusing on a single issue/event that ranges from 50-100 pages, falling between short story and novel. Traditionally understood as realistic Italian and French tales written between 14-16th centuries. Often involve frame story.

Narrative

A story or retelling of a story, or an account of a situation or event.

Prose

Ordinary written or spoken expression. Nonpoetic expression, so exhibits purposeful grammatical design without rhythmic/metrical patterns.

Poetry

Literary expression characterized by particular attention to rhythm, sound, and the concentrated, concrete use of language. Emphasizes the line and organized in stanzas.

Prose Poem

A brief, rhythmic composition blending prose and verse ranging from several lines to several pages. Written in sentences (without line breaks) but heavily marked by poetic devices such as figurative language, imagery, repetition, and rhyme. Arose in France in the 19th century.

Theory

Generally accepted model or framework that has so far withstood the test of time and experimentation. In literary criticism, refers to a set of general principles applicable to the classification, analysis, and evaluation of literary works.

Close reading (explication)

The nuanced and thorough analysis of a literary text. Place emphasis on the interrelationships among textual elements and provides means of interpreting text.

Explication de texte

French for "explanation of text," a method of literary analysis from 19th century France involving close reading of the text. Detailed examination as a means of elucidating the work. Only elements that bear directly on the interpretation of the text (diction, imagery, style, etc.) are considered. Popularized by New Critics/formalists.

The New Criticism

A type of formalist literary criticism characterized by close textual analysis that peaked in US in 1940's and 50's. Based interpretations of literary works on elements within the text rather than external factors. Performed close readings and objective.

Sexuality

A term referencing the perceived identities heterosexual, homosexual, transgendered, etc. Queer theorists/gender critics view sexuality from a constructionist view, saying its the product of social and cultural discourses and institutions. Essentialist view maintains that sexuality is innate (genetically determined), like feminist critics believe men and women are inherently different.

Unreliable narrator

A narrator who intentionally or unintentionally fails to provide an accurate report of events and whose credibility is compromised. May result from immaturity/innocence, lack of info, mental disability, bias/prejudice, or lying.

Postmodernism

Radically experimental works of literature and art produced after WW2. Goal of breaking away from traditions through experimentation with new literary devices, forms, and styles. Effort to appeal to pop culture. View that literary language is its own reality, not means of representing reality.

Antinovel

Type of experimental novel that tries to present the reader with experience itself, unfiltered by metaphor or other types of authorial interpretation. Depict reality without moral frame of reference, avoiding subjective narrative evaluation. Characterized by avoidance of standard narrative elements and creation of ambiguity/confusion through dislocations of time/space and inconsistent point of view.

Metafiction

Self reflexive fiction that examines the nature and status of fiction itself and seeks to test it as a form. Associated with postmodernism.

Modernism

A revolutionary movement after WW1, in which a variety of new experimental techniques arose. Experimented with literary forms, devices, and styles, incorporated psychoanalytic theory, and paid attention to language. Works reflect sense of loss & disillusionment, emphasizing historical discontinuity and the alienation of humanity. Patterns of allusion, symbol and myth used to inject order as remedy to uncertainty of world.

Avante-garde

Radically experimental works, often applied to modernist and postmodernist works.

Modern Period

Period in English and American literary history beginning with WW1 and ending after WW2. Noted for works characterized by transnational focus, stylistic unconventionality, or interest in repressed subconscious material. Works about anxiety/alienation in 20th century.

Postmodern Period

Period beginning after WW2. Works were similar in topic to but tended to be darker than modern works, suggesting meaninglessness of the human condition through radically experimental works that defy conventions of literary cohesion/coherence (ex: antinovels).

Short Story

A brief fictional prose narrative (1000-10,000 words) that often centers on a particular event/focus and produces a dramatic effect.

Euphony

Pleasing, harmonious sounds due to image evoked or musicality in sounds.

Epiphany

A sudden revelatory experience or work in which such experience occurs. Retains a mystical connotation due to emphasis on the intuitive connections made during the moment.

Feminist Criticism

Type of literary criticism dominant in Western literary studies in 70s. French- language as a tool of male domination; feminine language as semiotic. US- analyzed texts of male writers and portrayal of female characters, exposing patriarchal ideology. Gynocriticism looked at female works and found same. British- engagement with historical process to promote social change. All take essentialist view equating gender and sex as innate.

Gender Criticism

Approach to literary criticism influenced by feminist criticism that focuses on gender's insufficiency as a category. Focus on men and women and take constructionist position that gender is a social artifact and product of language & culture (not innate).

New Historicism

Historically oriented literary criticism from 1980s developed as a reaction to the text-only formalist approach. Analyze text with an eye to history. Less fact oriented than historicism, questioning whether the truth about what happened can be objectively known. Less linear and era view of history, defining discipline broadly. Discuss theory of historical change.

Historicism

Form of literary criticism from early 20th century focusing on work's historical content and basing interpretations on interplay between text and historical contexts (ex: authors life, intentions in writing the work). May assess impact of work on readers in later eras.

Intertextuality

Interconnectedness among texts - Points of reference with other texts - all works are part of this connectedness

Any text is an amalgam of other texts

Created by Julia Kristeva - French - everything is large fabric of literary discourse

Psychoanalytic Criticsm

Emerged in early 20th cent. - it analyzes the relationships between authors and readers and literary works - emphasizes unconscious minds, its repressed wishes and fears and the sublimated manifestations in the text - has lot to do with Freund

The Dead Summary

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-dead/summary

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/d/dubliners/summary-and-analysis/the-dead

- At a time where Ireland has been politically merged

The Dead Characters

Gabriel - story's protagonist - works for Daily Express

Gretta - Gabriels wife (still loves a man named Michael Furey)

Lily - caretaker's daughter

Kate/Julia - home owners - Gabriel's Aunts

Mary Jane - advanced piano teacher to classy clients and church organist

Molly Ivors - Gabriels colleague - nationalist- calls Gabriel a West Briton

James Joyce (year?) (what book?)

1914 - The Dead - it is a novella

Book was edited by Daniel R. Schwarz

The Dead publishers

Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press

The Film - The Dead

Original structure is radically charged by the insertion of epiphanies

- Differences between Film/Movie:

Flowers brought in movie

Molly Ivors leaves for political meeting

-D'arcy sings beautifully - in book it is faltering

House of Leaves Summary/Characters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski author of

House of Leaves

HOL published in ___ by __

Pantheon Books - 2000

Who writes the long introductory essay?

Johnny Truant

Primary Film Critic

Zampano

Chapter 1: What is theory?

Foucault on sex and power/knowledge in discourse

- Foucault suggests, 'sex' is a complex idea produced by a range of social practices,

investigations, talk, and writing - 'discourses' or 'discursive practices' for short - that come together in the nineteenth century. All the sorts of

talk - by doctors, clergy, novelists, psychologists, moralists, social workers, politicians - that we link with the idea of the repression of sexuality were in fact ways of bringing into being the thing we call 'sex'

- Foucault's analysis is an example of an argument from the field of history that has become 'theory' because it has inspired and been taken up by people in other fields.

Derrida on writing in Rousseau's Confessions

- Derrida's interpretation shows the extent to which literary works themselves, such as Rousseau's Confessions, are theoretical: they

offer explicit speculative arguments about writing, desire, and substitution or supplementation, and they guide thinking about these topics in ways that they leave implicit

So what is theory? Four main points have emerged.

1. Theory is interdisciplinary - discourse with effects outside an original discipline.

2. Theory is analytical and speculative - an attempt to work out what is involved in what we call sex or language or writing or meaning or the subject.

3. Theory is a critique of common sense, of concepts taken as natural.

4. Theory is reflexive, thinking about thinking, enquiry into the categories we use in making sense of things, in literature and in

other discursive practices.

Chapter 2: What is literature and does it matter?

- Foregrounding

"'Literariness' is often said to lie above all in the organization of language

that makes literature distinguishable from language used for other

purposes. Literature is language that 'foregrounds' language itself:

makes it strange, thrusts it at you - 'Look! I'm language!"

- Integration

"Literature is language in which the various elements and components

of the text are brought into a complex relation. E.G. I like IKE"

- Fictional Status

"The literary work is a linguistic event which projects a fictional world that includes speaker, actors, events, and an implied audience (an audience that takes shape through the work's decisions about what must be explained and what the audience is presumed to know)."

- Aesthetic object

"A literary

work is an aesthetic object because, with other communicative

functions initially bracketed or suspended, it engages readers to

consider the interrelation between form and content."

- Intertextuality / Self-reflexivity

"Recent theorists have argued that works are made out of other works:

made possible by prior works which they take up, repeat, challenge,

transform. This notion sometimes goes by the fancy name of

'intertextuality'. Like Sonnet"

Chapter 3: Literature and Cultural Studies

"The practice of theory"

- 1960s French structuralism (e.g. Barthes on wrestling)

- British Marxism - recover pop culture / critique mass culture

- Culture changes us (Althusser on "interpellation")

Chapter 4: Language meaning and interpretation

"Word," "Utterance," "Text"

- Saussure defines the sign: links form + meaning,

- "Signifier" + "Signified"

- ...connection is arbitrary

-...the planes of sound/thought divide differently

Poetics and Hermeneutics:

- How does it mean (poetics) vs. What does it mean (hermeneutics)

Invisible Cities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities

Italo Calvino author

Invisible Cities in 1974

Invisible Cities Translated by

William Wiever

Invisible Cities Summary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities

https://www.enotes.com/topics/invisible-cities

Characters of Invisible Cities

Marco Polo and Kublai Khan

Invisible Cities

55 - name of many cities

discusses his Mongolian realm -

Cities & Memory

Cities & Desire

Cities & Signs

Thin Cities

Trading Cities

Cities & Eyes

Cities & Names

Cities & the Dead

Cities & the Sky

Continuous Cities

Hidden Cities