Lecture 1-11: Introduction to English Literature and Culture

Bernadette Unger Introduction to the study of Lit. & Culture WS 2022 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Lecture 1 STUDY= reading professionally, looking at theories, structure, contexts, ways that make meaning, applying models and terminology LITERATURE = during this course we view it in terms of fictional texts (not referential texts), references to real life and science, however, obviously still occur in fictional texts  we need it in order to understand it CULTURE = Cultural Studies… not just an art gallery, or a radio channel, made of practices! It regulates the way we behave. In the way we act we follow specific rules, those rules aren’t formulated, they are copied. cultural studies borrow a lot from other subjects such as history, linguistics, sociology… What does English mean? English doesn’t necessarily have to refer to one nation like England or the US only. Terminology here is a little complicated and might even be global as many people all over the world publish English literature. Why is it important to learn English? English has a lot to do with the history of colonization, which gave the language a lot of power and dominance, but we must also remember that it’s the language of slavery, imperialism, and oppression. It all started with imperialism of the English monarchs. The British back then claimed places, the first permanent colony was Jamestown in Virginia 1607. Second part of 19th century the empire reaches its largest extent. Later, a decolonization process started. The language comes with a package of historical context. This is especially important to know for English teachers – English is not an “innocent” language. Nowadays the language itself still holds a huge influence, for different reasons, though, especially through media English dominance is being promoted. As this is a course that has something to do with Literature you will be required to read! There are some different ways of reading! You do not always have to study everything detailed by heart! Bernadette Unger Introduction to the study of Lit. & Culture WS 2022 READING STRATEGIES - Quick readthrough for general comprehension Read slowly texts that focus on language, style, narrative situation, linguistic detail Reading poetry out loud to understand sounds, patterns, rhythm Read and take notes for retention Read carefully for specific detail SCIENCE OF READING: HOW DO WE READ AND UNDERSTAND Our brains work in a way that we get a memory of how words look over time. Even if parts of the words are covered or invisible our brain is able to reproduce the entire word in a way that we can read it. We can even form words out of the context (social, cultural) this can be seen in clozes. This has a lot to do with our brain’s ability for pattern recognition! INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Lecture 2 New Poetry and Disambiguation Sometimes poems do not make sense at the first Disambiguation = coming clear glance. Brian Bilston is a contemporary poet that what a certain text might mean, often uses Twitter as a “publishing platform”. On slide finding sense in what has been 3 of the PowerPoint you can find one of his newer written. poems. Without knowing the title, however, the poem does not necessarily have an obvious meaning. In this case the words do not really matter – the title gives away the meaning. Bilston just uses useless words in this context. Another example on the PowerPoint is a poem by Keith Frankish which is a limerick → they have a special rhyme. To understand this poem, you have to have an understanding on contemporary political happenings. Sometimes we do not only need semantic meaning to understand something → at times it is important to know the context and the situation which the poem wants to refer to or comment. The next poem by Brian Bilston is a mix of food terms and negative Fudge = hazy political terms. For example, most people in the UK with probably understand it – here, we need to do research first on the political situation such as the food items. How Is Meaning Made In Literary And Cultural Studies? Meaning and Meaning-Making History of a term like “meaning” can be traced back etymologically. Maenan (Old English from the Middle Ages) = to think Simple communication Model Speaker sender addresser → → → says something to message message → → → listener receiver addressee 1 Meaning seems straightforward and it seems unproblematic. In reality, it tends not to be – misunderstandings occur etc. Ambiguities = (an example of) the Roman Jakobsen said that this model is a lot more fact of something having more complicated than it seems, because at each side of the than one possible meaning and process there are interpretation processes → this is therefore possibly causing due to ambiguities arising, as language is basically confusion “instable” → one word can have a variety of meanings. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ In Literature studies we can say a “Writer writes a text dictionary/english/ambiguity for the reader(s)”. This as well, however, involves interpretation processes. In Literature studies it is difficult to talk about “a one true meaning”, usually, it is talked about “meanings” as these processes always play a role. Wimsatt and Beardsley talked about the 1. The Intentional Fallacy (you’re wrong to think that the true meaning lies in the writers intention → texts can mean more than what the author intended) 2. The Affective Fallacy (the affect that a text has on the reader is the one and only true meaning) But they said that neither of the two poles can define a one true meaning, instead they’re saying the meaning lies in the way the words lie on the meaning. The University of Freiburg offers a new model that shows many different ways how meaning can be created and viewed. Context (historical/present reality) Medium/Channel AUTHOR Literary Text (Message) READER Code Aesthetically mediated reference to reality All of this together is a place where meaning is located! In Literature Studies usually when analyzing we choose a lens to decide which approach to take. Usually in all kind of books, even fantasy and dystopia, use any kind of reference, even just symbolic, to reality. 2 Literary meanings - Have a variety of sources Are contingent on the reader’s or critic’s theoretical lens or perspective They are co-constructed between the sender, message and receiver They are not natural or universal (=normative identity position) They are negotiable and need to be open to debate What Is Culture? → Articles sent should have been read at this point But what is especially important is - Culture with a big C (still important nowadays and not 100% outdated) vs Culture with a small c Culture as artistic vs culture as a particular way of life Cultural norms vs. cultural practices (normative vs descriptive) Nearly everything is grounded in culture. We can see that in the strong connection of cultural studies with many other disciplines such as linguistics, media studies, sociology… What is important to know is that culture does not necessarily mean national culture. Even families have culture… Culture and meaning From Raymond Williams POV it was a social definition 1. Culture as a way of living 2. Culture as a way of expression 3. Culture as making circulating meanings "I would then define the theory of culture as the study of relationships between elements in a whole way of life. The analysis of culture is the attempt to discover the nature of the organization which is the complex of these relationships." Abb. 1 As culture is so vast particular aspects of culture have been https://cs.wikipedia.org/ conceptualized, one way to do that as, for example the circuit of culture. wiki/Raymond_Williams 3 The example stated here is the Sony Walkman. Nowadays they just exist in museums as “curiosities”, for example. They started by looking into the production of the Sony Walkman (where are those factories etc.?). They looked at the several subpoints and noticed that the Walkman was especially important for the Identity of Youth Culture, and that was linked with consumption, of course etc., with regulation they noticed for example on busses where there could be found signs saying, “keep your stereo personal”, Abb. 2 https://medium.com/artifact-analysis-harry-potter-andfor example. Representation mostly the-chamber-of/1-circuit-of-culture-775baa20c675 focuses on stories and advertising of the Walkman. Cultural meanings - - - Help us understand the world (codes of Anti-Essentialism = The antibehavior in different settings) essentialist model presents nature Define rules, norms and conventions which as differently experienced structure our social reality (for example a according to one’s social position timetable for classes and your daily life) and is differently produced by Can be shared and/or be in conflict (if we might different groups across different not share the same idea of behavior for time periods. example, this might have to do with https://tmspoon.wordpress.ncsu. generations, different national backgrounds, edu/political-ideology/antisocio economic position, individual bases for essentialism/ example) Can be dominant or dominated (for example national tv against other tv stations) Are not natural or universal (=anti-essentialism) but constructed (in cultural studies we are not allowed to do generalizations) Are contingent on time, place, and other factors Are context-specific Can be studied through examples of representation What is important for both literary and cultural studies 1. Denaturalize when it seems natural (try and allow the text or item to denaturalize it) 2. Question what seems certain (when seeing an image question, it – be critical of absolute truths!) 4 3. Be sceptical of what appears normal 4. Always ask (with Stuart Hall): “What does it have to do with everything else” (look further!) Models Of Culture Iceberg Model of Culture from Edward T. Hall A smaller part is visible and a bigger part is invisible to the eye and submerged → might be similar to a psychological approach This is one iceberg that is in the water, it seems a bit inflexible. Onion Model of Culture by Gert Hofstede Often used in Abb. 3 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Iceberg-Modelcorporate culture. of-Culture_fig2_347909410 The core of the onion here is a set of shared value. Hofstede says that the cultural practices go through all layers. In these we can see what the values of cultural groups are, as they are all somehow sort of connected. Abb. 4 https://www.researchgate.ne t/figure/Hofstedes-OnionModel-of-Culture-CulturalValues-are-located-at-thecore-andare_fig3_254921413 Culture as a box or a container Many people have talked about this, so it’s not easy to credit. Culture is monolithic in this sense. The box is closed and seems unchangeable. This box belongs to certain people or a nation → there is a kind of ownership here. Is used by many national politicians. Culture as a network of practices Cultures and people are strongly connected with each other (not a box and a box next to each other – they interact). This sees culture as more complex and dynamic. It also is a bit more open, for example one can participate with or in a culture he/she wasn’t born in. In this network model culture does not belong to anyone. This model does not give you any way of visualizing power relations. Cultural practices don’t always have the same status in a society. (=transculturation) Example Starbucks Starbucks competing with local “Viennese” Coffeeshop. There was a strong fear that a cultural practice could have gone lost through the “big economic shop”. But economically speaking, those two are not actually “competitive”. 5 When Cultures Meet When cultures of different powers meet there is a phenomenon that has been seen a lot lately: Cultural Appropriation The term only started to change in recent years, the term appropriation actually means something like ‘learning/or taking over’. It used to be used in colonization studies meaning that somebody took over dominant cultural features to have more power. Nowadays, it means something very different. Cultures have always adopted from one another, there was a lot of merging in the past. Sensibility is a very important term here. Cultural appropriation = “The newly added [2018] entry for cultural appropriation defines it as ‘the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the practices, customs, or aesthetics of one social or ethnic group by members of another (typically dominant) community or society.’ The term began to enter widespread usage in the 1980s, but it is more than 70 years old. The OED’s first citation comes from a 1945 essay by Arthur E. Christy, discussing ‘European cultural appropriation from the Orient’.” For example, Japanese people at the Oktoberfest adopt in a “touristy/fun” way. https://public.oed.com/blog/march-2018Here it is important to focus on power new-words-notes/ relations. The inappropriateness comes with unequal power relations between certain groups (for example Western Societies using some cultures practices or aesthetics, this is especially critical when these cultures are being suppressed or have been in the past especially by Western Societies → Power Imbalance). Inappropriateness is also very subjective and individual. An example is Native American culture being used by models/musicians; this is especially critical when money is made with this. Participatory Culture And Fanwork = concept within the cultural/media studies Henry Jenkins = Grandfather of fan studies/geek culture He was looking for a way of describing how media fandom works (fanfiction, fanart.). To help us understand this phenomenon he created the framework of participatory culture. 5 Characteristics 1. Relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement (relatively easily accessible) 2. Strong support for creating and sharing creations (a lot of feedback and a strong belief of community) 3. Some type of informal mentorship whereby experienced participants passes along knowledge to novices (helping other people etc.) 4. Members believe their contributions matter 6 5. Members feel some degree of social connection with one another (caring about what others think and make) Forms of Participatory Culture Affiliations Memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around various forms of media […] [social media], message boards, game clans…. Expressions Producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, fanfiction, cosplays, fan videos, fan fiction, zines, or mashups… Collaborative Problem Solving Working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge, such as through Wikipedia (or Fanwiki), alternative reality gaming, or spoiling. Circulations Shaping the flow of media, such as podcasting or blogging → Sites of informal learning, and it invites us to think about how cultural medium gets around and is produced Fandom 1. An interpretive community consisting of dedicated followers of any cultural phenomenon, such as a television series, book, game, film, or celebrity. 2. An interconnected social network of such subcultural communities. 3. A form of consumer activity in which ardent enthusiasts, referred to by Jenkins as ‘textual poachers’, subversively appropriate their favourite mass media texts for their own purposes, sometimes actively rewriting them. See also participatory culture; textual poaching. 4. The process of becoming a fan. 5. Any or all of these as a field of academic study. (since about the 90s) https://www-oxfordreferencecom.uaccess.univie.ac.at/view/10.1093/acref/9780198841838.001.0001/acref9780198841838-e-956 7 Transmedia Storytelling “Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” A text arrives first in printed form and a year later there is a film, and a video game… a fandom is created by the community. Each media makes its own contribution to this evolution. (http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html ) Examples Lord of the Rings → books, movies, series, tales, video games from all different time periods… Content World “A content world is the network of characters, settings, situations, and values that forms the basis for the generation of a range of stories, in the hands of either a commercial producer or a grassroots community.” “So, the content world around Harry Potter includes characters such as Snape and Dumbledore, settings such as Hogwarts, situations such as sorting of students into houses by the Sorting Hat, and values such as friendship and maternal love, any or all of which can be used to generate new narratives or to tap into the meanings associated with the original stories.” (https://doaj.org/article/ddfea7e6fbbc433494920c92f147d5e7 ) Transformative Work “A transformative work takes something extant and turns it into something with a new purpose, sensibility, or mode of expression. Transformative works include but are not limited to fanfiction, real person fiction, fan vids, and fan art.” (https://www.transformativeworks.org/faq/what-do-you-mean-by-a-transformative-work/ ) Organization for Transformative Works Concerned with preserving the history and culture of fan cultures, they provide help for fans, and have a journal etc. Examples of transforming a work - Genderswapping/Genderbending (to deconstruct the ideal of gender) Racebending (reclaim stories from whitewashing – now it means usually just redesigning) Cosplay (plus sized characters, other ethnicities etc.) 8 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Lecture 3 When women were dragons – Kelly Barnhill, Doubleday 2022 From that first sentence one could expect fantasy, a fairytale etc., however, it turns out to be (apart from the dragons) a very realistic novel (→ magical realism). We are interested in how the story is told (→ narrative analysis). What should be noticed: - First person narrative situation (Stanzel was important for the development of the terms) - Homodiegetic & Autodiegetic narrator (Genette was important for the development of these terms). We can assume that the character experiencing this and the narrator telling the story aren’t at the same time level → distance between the narrating eye and the experiencing eye (a 4-yearold would not think in a that mature way. The narrator also looks back and forms new opinions → retrospective narration (Narrator starting in their childhood and telling till to the age they have right now – just a popular example we can find in many books) “I as the protagonist” – somebody who tells their own story – another way of saying that the story has an autodiegetic narrator. The narrator has a limited perspective, this is supported by the first-person narrative, however, we also get many inputs from the narrating eye. This gives readers the change to get into the emotions more easily – “we experience the meeting of the dragon with her”. Whenever we have a limited perspective, we need to check for reliability. Do we have a trustworthy narrator? Believing on the level of the story (so this also applies to fantasy etc.!). We can find some clues in the narrative that make a narrator less or more reliable. In this case we have to question the reliability due to the fact that the experiencing eye is just 4 years old. Sometimes we get more important by the narrative eye – sometimes not (information management strategy – sometimes information is being withhold from the reader in order to for example, keep up the suspense.) We have an overt/explicit narrator (there is also a covered narrator). 1 Narrator = Character ≠ Author! (Never confuse positions of author and narrator, not even known) For narrative analysis we leave the Author all out! “I was 4-years-old when I first met a dragon” → this sentence later on reoccurs in the novel, with slightly changed words or add-ons. This was made to emphasize its importance for the rest of the novel. We can also focus on the last sentence in the phase. This is called a simile (will come up later when the lecture focuses on poetry). Short input on the reader You can find graphic novels in there, as analysis is also possible in graphic novels! POEM SECTION The poem on page 54, is supposed to give us an example of Old English texts and literature from the Middel Ages. There even have different dialects and even different letters. We do not have to translate this first text – it should just give us an impression on writing at that time, for us to be able to compare it to modern day times. Page 55 is Middle English – most looks like we could understand and read it. Biggest difference is in pronunciation. Probably around 1500, the language changed to something that seems quite similar to the English we know → Early Modern English (also Shakespeare). Be careful about labels for languages! Then there are sonnets on the reader, for example a sonnet by Shakespeare contrasted with one from Emily Duffy. Then in the reader – we go closer to our time. The focus lies on poems from the 20th Century! DRAMA SECTION Texts usually from more contemporary plays. We have a specific section for William Shakespeare. “No fear Shakespeare” a series that “translates” Shakespeare. Categorization of Literature Sorting books like color is an aesthetic way often seen on social media. This is a way that rather focuses on aesthetics than a professional way of categorization. There is many different ways to proffesionally categorize literature: a. Alphabetically by author’s surname b. Alphabetically by title 2 Abb. 1 c. Geographically by country of origin https://www.pinterest.at/pin/85371367 d. Within these categories – publishing year, by 3112939286/ centure/literary period e. Within these again – genre f. Within these again – alphabetically g. One could also try organizing your bookshelf: “serious literature” vs. “trash” h. Canonical authors vs. popular writers i. Dead vs. living authors j. Primary (literay) and secundary reading (theory, analysis) k. By hardcover or paperback l. By the author’s age, gender, class, ethnicity (sections like ‘women’s writing’, childrens literature → for example ‘Black British Writing’ can be viewed in different perspectives, on one hand it might unify the experience of Black people and their writings, on the other hand it might help readers discover similar, not so well-known authors) m. By the intended audience’s age or gender n. By contents (for example. Ukraine – War, Eco – Crisis) The library of English and American studies at the university is divided into different sections, for example British Literature, American Literature, Australian Literature. Three Broad Genres Narrative prose – Poetry – Drama (Erzählprosa – Lyrik – Drama) - The word genre here is a little difficult to use, as we call things like ‘fantasy’ a genre etc., there is also many different subgenres. On the PowerPoint slide we see different formats and layout of text – this makes it easy for us to distinguish between these broad genres at the first glance. Genre is not a closed box! Genre is more like a family relationship (family of poems etc., drama has a certain way of behaving → it’s there for performance, but they do not have everything in common) As mentioned, there is many different subgenres, examples can be Narrative Prose Adventure Stories Paranormal Romances Young Adult Fiction Victorian Novels Detective Fiction Fantasy Series … Poetry Limericks Sonnets Ballads Haikus Love Poetry Epic Poems … Drama Comedy Tragedy History Play One-acter Theatre of the absurd In-Your-Face-Drama … There even can be sub subgenres etc., even those are not closed boxes, that’s because usually books refer to more than one genre. Even Crime Novels, who tend to be quite structured, there 3 are always different elements, as there might be elements from romance, social novels, maybe even thriller or horror. For example: - Harry Potter is mainly fantasy, but also a school story, a friendship story, a coming-ofage story … The Time Machine is mainly science fiction, but we can also find elements of adventure, dystopia, social aspects … Genres interact with one another and mix up! Narrative Prose as the first big genre Important Distinction - Story vs Discourse discourse can have many different meanings; this makes it very hard to understand as we have to view the context first → right now HISTOIRE & DISCOURSE and distinguishes between what is happening in a text and how it is told... Example: from the dragon story, we are looking at what happened when she met the dragon etc. (character, action, setting), when we look at discourse, we are looking at how it is told (narrative analysis)) STORY DISCOURSE (Chatman) HISTOIRE DISCOURS (Genette) WHAT HOW EVENTS WAY OF PRESENTING THESE EVENTS If you connect these, you find out even more of the story, it gives you a fuller picture. How something is told interlocks with what is told. For example, with the dragon text we looked at before, the point of view of a 4-year-old is different to the one of an adult. Narrative analysis gives you an insight in the text that nothing else can give you. What happens in the text can easily be seen or read, how it is done needs more careful reading and background information. It gives you an insight on how a text works and how it might influence you and other people reading it. Narrative transmission – narrative analysis → it is all about the perspective! Each character (cartoon on the PowerPoint) can see different things, they also experience things differently and also tell their stories differently. 4 - - - - - - - Story vs Plot Plot refers to the causal connections between events, story refers to the basic chronology of events Example: STORY: Boy meets girl – they fall in love – their families forbid their love – both kill themselves PLOT: Boy and girl are desperate because their families have hated each other for long and are opposed to their relationship. They meet secretly. At some points their families discover their deception and lock them up, which causes each of the lovers to kill themself. → Includes causal connections and motivations Author vs. Narrator Narrator vs. Narrative situation/function (Not all narrative situations have an actual narrator – strictly speaking a narrator can be called a narrator if we can perceive him/her in some way or another, if there’s a distant narration in the third person, you do not really read somebody telling you something but rather something is told, we refer to this as a narrative situation.) Narrator vs. Focalizer (after Genette) and reflector in the figural narrative situation (after Stanzel) a way of characterizing a narrative, through whose perspective we view something (no first-person narrative, however) → limited perspective Intradiegetic vs. extradiegetic narrator Extradiegetic: tells the frame Intradiegetic: within the frame, narrating character Heterodiegetic vs. homodiegetic narrator Diegesis is another word for narrative level! Homodiegetic: on the same level as the characters (for example one of them) Heterodiegetic: outside of the level (somebody telling the story of strange people) Example Page 30 in the reader We have a first person narrator who still is heterodiegetic, as it is not on the same level, also is it also omniscient, additionally it is also overt, as we can hear a lot of sarcasm and comments throughout the story Overt vs. covert narrator Do they come across as a person? Bringing their opinion in → overt narrator, someone rather in the background → covert narrator Limited perspective – omniscient perspective Omniscient narrators can jump in time and places and know things some characters might not know. Example. Page 41 in the Reader Historical context: this text was written when the English learned about dinosaurs, therefore the reference does make sense and is interesting to see, however, we do not actually get a sense of character from the narrative figure, we also notice, that this person must be omniscient as in a later part the narrative talks about other cities outside of London, however, we can also view this in the small details added … 5 Example Page 46 in the Reader LEFT SIDE OF THE PAGE The narrator fictionalizes the story of Shakespeare’s son, who’s name was Hamnet. As the narrator knows what the boys everyday, we know the narrator must have some special information, the narrator also describes some internal reactions and feelings the boy has (internal focalization) → omniscience RIGHT SIDE OF THE PAGE However, the narrator, also knows something internal about other characters, for example, knowing a guy didn’t hear something Page 47 We’re completely in his mind, he faces a lot of struggles, again internal focalization Then we have a change of narrative → suddenly it becomes abstract and philosophically, it fills us in on how important this moment is Examples from the reader are either stated in a fitting subcategory or here: Page 28 in the Reader Second box: Narratives and Perspectives can even change within a book, for example, here we can see the first-person narrative, however, in a chapter before we had a omniscient narrator. Here, we can also learn a lot about women in the century as well First box: Narrator is male, and seems very confident, and seems well informed (should make us question his reliability) Right side: Autobiographical narrative by a Black Scottish Woman, who went to the war, despite these facts, she quite confidently starts out, she is quite confident in her energy Page 41 right side in the Reader Virginia Woolf uses a technique where she uses a variety of focalizers and reflectors throughout the narrative, the reader is internal, and in the second paragraph the perspective is changing → allows us to get a variety of perspectives Page 42 in the Reader Yasmin has a limited perspective and an internal focalization (when she thinks about her parents meeting her fiancés parents – we are in her mind), she is also unreliable (she is contradictory) 6 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Lecture 4 Kate Hendry, „My Husband Wants to Talk to Me Again “ We will start with the story (more descriptive rather than how it is represented) level of analysis: The narrative Constituents The short story can be found in the reader from page 1 - 3 • characters: husband, wife, children • setting time: weekday morning, spring/summer, late 20th /early 21st century (material objects like the washing machine, cultural references, like the language being used etc.) • place: kitchen, garden (only by looks) • action: a woman doing the laundry while trying to avoid talking to her husband, who irons a shirt (short stories usually are set in the moment – slide of life) • moment: in the final stages of separation, after the decision has been made to split up Now we will look at the discourse level (how is the story presented) • narrative situation: the wife speaks and sees; first person narrator, autodiegetic narrator (she tells the story of herself  also homodiegetic), internal focalisation (we get her views, emotions, attitudes – for example “my husband” – we just get this term not a name, this gives that character no real depth), immediacy (present tense – gives us a sense of almost being there – very intimate narrative situation), unreliability (because she is emotionally involved and we only get her perspective, also we do not get a backstory) • modes of writing: realistic (no fantastic elements, domestic and realistic setting) • style/language: interior monologue (mostly in the mind of the woman), dialogue • narrative strategies: emotional distance (term “my husband”, we do not get more specifications, not many details and backstories, reflects the distance she wants with her partner), many repetitions (first sentence and title: focus on him wanting to do something, also the “again” maybe a repetitive situation), semanticised space (the space adds meaning – kitchen and housework), gendered space (she wants him out of the kitchen ‘kitchen as a gendered space for women only), no backstory (we are thrown instantly in the narrative – genre of the short story) Interpreting the ending: 1 She thinks outside first not thinking of chores, some sort of feeling of freedom. She thinks of the garden a lot, but this is the first time she looks beyond her chores. The husband is gone – she fills the room; she doesn’t have to make way for anybody. From a gender studies perspective: Not only one gendered perspective of the relationship. Do we feel pity for the wife because she is the housewife? Victimizing housewives is not the appropriate way to do so. We can be manipulated into thinking so, but we do not know what the reason for the split up is. From a gender studies perspective, however, we can see traditional roles. Idea for teaching: changing the perspective and rewriting a story Jeanette Winterson, 12 Bytes – gender and history The story falls in the genre of creative nonfiction (combines creativity with the idea of something factional). The story can be found in the reader from page 12 - 27 She uses literary strategies of storytelling. She brings 2 women together (Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley, two young women that tore their way into history in the early years of Industrial revolution – the start of machine age. This results in a book that takes us from these two women to a modern computing and takes us into questions like gender, history, representation … Ada Lovelace is still a very relevant person. On the slide we can view examples of books about her for children. The author shows the representation of gender roles when it comes to jobs, studies, and encouragement. She explains that this has been constructed by society, or rather, societies. In the beginning she sets the narrative in Abb. 1 Ada Lovelace the beginning of the ‘modern age’, the beginning of the future. Also, the title, is https:// www.historyanswers.co.uk/ a kind of pun to the film “Love, actually” people-politics/ada-lovelace-thefirst-computer-programmer/ (which tends to enforce gender Abb.had 2 Jeanette Winterson stereotypes). At that time something to change in order for these women to be heard – gender stereotypes and roles https://librariacultura.altervista.org/untempo-ero-il-bellissimo-passo-dellahad to be abolished and changes. In the text we can also find scrittrice-jeanette-winterson/ an alliteration and metaphors. The writing establishes connections between gender, computing, history, literature in an aesthetically interesting language. Winterson further explains that these two women were smart and far ahead of their future and this against the odds. Ada had no actual place in Mathematics at that time, as she was a woman. The Author also explains a phenomenon she calls “the Bronty Zone” – and she stresses how woman’s stories are often told by men and therefore often changed and underestimated. We have a case of omniscience of the narrator here – the narrator can jump between times and places. The author here is connected to the author, as this is 2 creative fiction, and the author uses the words ‘I’ and ‘we’. Also, the author selects the material and guides us in this narrative. It is a retrospective narrative, that also draws connections to modern times. However, it is not a neutral narrative voice – we can see that through humour and sarcasm, and comments, that sound like the person throwing them in lives in the 21st Century. If we look at gender in this context, we can say that gender at that time was a barrier – Ada gave up computing when she got married and became a mother of three. Here we can see a graphic novel. Padua goes beyond the known biography – this imagines a world where Ada did not give up computing and what would have happened if she kept working on the computer. Always with a feminist approach giving Ada her place in society at that time. Especially the last picture gives Ada a new alternative identity. How Identity can be conceptualized 3 Moments of Popular Culture Song: “I am what I am” from a Broadway musical by Jerry Herman – Identity as an own creation Abb. 3 https://www.medimo ps.de/mira-lobe-daskleine-ich-bin-ichgebundene-ausgabe3 M0370264850X.html Children’s Book: “Das kleine Ich bin Ich“ by Mira Lobe and Susi Weigel – a creature that does not fit in – “I am me” – uniqueness is important, it is liberating BBC Family Cooking Showdown: One chef referred to 3 Indian sisters that they have ‘spice in their blood’ as their cooking was so fantastic, rather than acknowledging the learning, he basically says it is in their blood. Identity is a concept that is different for different people and even science groups, for example identity is different for psychologists, forensic science, sociology Identity from a Cultural Studies perspective To define a term we will start, as always with the etymology and therefore different definitions: Etymology: Latin idem = same; identitas = quality of being identical Sometimes we for example, do not wake up, feeling like who we are, for example the Prof. mentioned that when she wakes up, she usually doesn’t feel like a University Professor – but, she is, indeed. Sometimes we also do not always notice some aspects of our identity, the Prof. mentioned that she does not always feel ‘white’, however she would notice this aspect more often, when she is in a group of mostly ‘non-white’ people (which hardly ever happens – but still.) Sometimes aspects of our identity change in their importance. However, when we speak, we often use identity is a stable concept: - finding your true identity losing your identity a split identity a stable identity identity fraud identity theft identity crisis (identity as a thing that can be taken from you) Cultural theory has a different sense : identity as a project that is constantly changes, it is also constructed and performed. However, there are also some dichotomies - internal vs. external (feeling and being identified by the outside) nature vs. nurture (is identity something that you have naturally in you? Or is it something you are being socialised in?) Dichotomy = a difference between two completely opposite ideas or things (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ dictionary/english/dichotomy ) 4 - - genes vs. generation roots vs. routes (roots – something rooted in your past or family’s heritage, routes refer to the journey people, especially from a different background, have gone through) stable core vs. performativity (is it changeable, or is it constructed and performed) Those are not yes, or no questions, it just depends on which aspect we look at. An (incomplete) list of identity factors 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. gender class race nationality religion sexuality ability age … Abb. 4 https://cliparting.com /free-grandmaclipart-41872/ They are also called subject positions. Some of them can be controlled – some not. For example, age is something purely biological – “act your age”, however this is also connected to behaviour. Other things can also include into your identity, such as political views, diet, medical conditions. The way a person behaves, is in some views, determined by these factors. For example, when women complain about men not listening. Also, what has to be addressed is internalizing and generalisation, we judge people based on these factors. Identity as performance A few important key facts if we view identity as performative: - - Identities are produced in relationships (our behaviour is influenced by that – if we think of us in relation to our parents, or us as a European for example) Identity is partly controllable (we can identify differently, we act differently around different people and in different settings, however, identity is only partly controllable, because often it depends on things out of our control, like our body, health, hairstyle – Michelle Obama’s hair once opened a debate on heritage and hairstyles – was she adapting to the white taste by straightening her hair?) Identity is constructed through behaviour and props = performativity (there is a parallel to playing and acting on stage by the word props) Identity is also shaped by people and places (we act different in different places) Identity dies not determine what people do but is a product of what people do! Identity is mostly made in action and performance. 5 Gender (Judith Butler) Where does all this come from theoretically? There are many ways in which identity can be understood. Erving Goffmann says every action should be viewed as a play; he applied a dramaturgical analysis to face-to-face conversation. Now his book is one of the most important books in sociology. Are these roles we play fake or authentic? Judith Butler is a philosophist with a quite radical view on gender and identity. She said that lesbians model their behaviour on men and that all gender is a social performance rather than gender identity. Her most important book is “Gender Trouble” (1990), in this book she criticizes the views of Foucault, and discusses many other theories to gender, for example the one from Sigmund Freud. What is most important, however, is that she sees gender as performed. "a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body, and, hence must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of Abb. 5 Judith Butler various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered https://www.revistadearte.com/ 2020/10/05/judith-butlerself." (Butler, 1990: 140-1) impartira-una-conferenciaonline-desde-el-museo-reinasofia/ There is no natural division between men and women. These are effects of disciplining of a multiplicity of bodies which are much more diverse than men and women. She views it as a binary division based on performances. Through your behavior you and other people can classify you or in connection with your sexuality. This has everything to do with how people position themselves in a world of discourse and power. Foucault said that, for example a criminal is placed in that category through the power of the state, for example. And Butler says that at a woman you are slot into the category of “woman”. Interpellation (Althusser) "individuals are interpellated into subject positions by a process of identification" (Giles and Middleton, 43) 6 Foucault and Butler both see an important role in society showing you your place. Sometimes this can happen, as you see, fairly quickly and without reflection on the basis of somebody’s looks etc. This process of being put into a subject position was referred to by the Althusser as Interpellation. For example, in the cartoon, the black girl is put into the position of the poor single mother, whereas the white girl is thought to be part of the “norm”. Abb. 6 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/56435801557 The individual is being put into a box without any evidence. For example, the black woman here is judged by prejudices that make her socially inferior in society – she is not understood equal. These external judgments can have negative effects on people and can be internalized and therefore change the way a person views themselves. This can also have an effect of, for example, the power relations, for example, in an educational setting. Representation and Meaning to represent = to stand for, to symbolise "Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent the world meaningfully, to other people." (Hall, Stuart. Representation. 1997, p.15) language = a system of representation but it is not the only one, we also use images, gestures, emojis etc. Language can be used to encode and decode meaning. 2 Processes to assigning meaning - Denotation: primary meaning of a sign, dictionary meaning Connotation: values and associations, and sometimes emotions invoked by a sign Those are two separate meanings. Mostly there is also both, sometimes they are shared, sometimes they are less obvious. For instance, if we look at the example from earlier today, the short story “My husband wants to talk to me again”, we can analyze this also about the representational aspects. For example, is the reason behind the breakup encoded, and we are not actually able to decode it for sure. Also, we can say that this story is a way of representing housewives or traditional US-American women in a marriage. Especially, if we do not know a lot about a place or society, we tend to believe what we hear or see and therefore generalize. This is dangerous! For example, traffic lights: 7 We do not only ask, what something means but how this means. In themselves, these lights do not mean anything at all. Denotation: stop / go (they signal a certain action/rule  the difference carries the meaning, their meaning is relational, we have to learn their meaning – symbolic meaning is defined by convention and cultural practices) Connotation: diversity, open-mindedness (this has nothing to do with the denotational meaning, but connected to the ideology of representing a certain group) Oppositional form of representation  Dominant representation Practical Example and Theories: mimetic approach: language reflects the world, it imitates life (very old ideal in literary studies, for example in film reviews, when characters seem unrealistic) intentional approach: an utterance means whatever the author intends it to mean ( example of Humpty-Dumpty; mostly we do not know what the author means, therefore this view is very restricted; and not helpful in cultural studies at all) constructionist approach: things don't mean; we construct meaning by using representational systems – the material world does not convey meaning, but our signifying practices do (the theory that cultural studies use most) (see Hall, 25) Meaning is something more dynamic and flexible, it is a way into the text and a variety. A text only does not mean, it always needs to be connected by for example our discourses, theories, and models etc. This is also how gender, and even fashion works. We learn how to look and understand are highly influenced by ideology that we carry and learned. Gender and Representation We are not worried women are not represented, we are mostly worried about the lack of diversity (this can be seen for example in films) and how especially people from the LGBTQ+ Community is portrayed or even silenced. This can also be seen in novels for example books by Coleen Hoover, Twilight, or even 50 Shades of Grey – where women are defined by their relationship. 8 The Bechdel Test For a film to pass the Bechdel test, the movie must simply have the following: 1. It must have at least two female characters 2. They must both have names 3. They must talk to each other about something other than a man Alison Bechdel is a cartoon artist and graphic novelist. This is all about the issue of representation. We can also look into tests with different criteria, depending on what we want to find out, for example how many love songs revolve around non heterosexual love, or an old woman represented in a tv series accordingly, without reinforcing stereotypes and agism. Hollie McNish “Embarrassed” It is a multimedia poem/film. This is about the representation of female breasts, motherhood, breastfeeding in public. Before watching we should reflect on our own views and thoughts on this, and where we have seen if before in our lives, and how other people reacted and how that mother seemed to feel for example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2z-Cd3luqA 9 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Lecture 5 Ads and Posters Example of H&M, pullover with the writing “coolest monkey in the jungle”, and an ad of a cute, black child. They received a shitstorm for that ad and were blamed on racial insensitivity. For white children or people this would not have any issue, as they did not have to fight against the notion connected to the word “monkey”. Historical discourse makes this very powerful and rings through when we participate in these discourses (even when it is not attended to do any harm). The next example shows a poster of a Black man and the write font “Scared?”, in a text below it says “You should be. He’s a dentist”. This was made by the commission for racial equality in the UK and is supposed to twist stereotypes. Afterwards there was a reaction by the society of dentists as this reinforces the fear and notion of dentists being scary, however, that backfired as we have to look at the context: dentists are not, and have never been, a really oppressed group. Black lives Matter Founded by 3 women called Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, as a response to the murder of a teenage boy by a white policeman in Florida. The policeman pleaded selfdefence, even though the teenager was unarmed and did not go to jail. As we, unfortunately, know this is not an isolated case. This network has developed in a worldwide context as well. However, again there were some voices against this movement claiming that “all lives matter” (because it sort of sounded like Black Lives Matter more, to them..). It would probably too easy to state that all people saying that are racist, we have to look at a broader context and why this movement developed in the first place. The ‘slogan’ developed from the feeling that the lives of Black people are worth less, they were disregarded with such low esteem. This showed in more or less random killings of Black people by policemen. Hegemony - hegemonial Term was formed by Antonio Gramsci and makes the difference clear between saying All Lives Matter in this context and Black Lives Matter. Hegemony describes the phenomenon of one 1 social group dominating over the rest of society. Basically, the concept of white lives being the norm, they are the hegemony. In the context of All Lives Matter it would basically mean the Live fitting into the norm matter – in this case White lives. However, why do they need reminding, as they are the norm already? This statement is basically underestimating the struggles suppressed groups like Black people had and have to go through. And yes, there are some exceptions, for example Black sportsmen are not really that much underprivileged as they usually enjoy having much money and publicity, however this is not an argument that can be made in cultural studies as it is not the norm for most people. Clearly the structure of the US society, shows that any non-white people tend to be underprivileged. However, of course we can include Hispanic Lives into the slogan, however, as All Lives Matter was mostly introduced by White Americans, this is very critical, and a term mostly connected to this dominant ideology. Connotations here matter a lot. Connected to the definition and term of hegemony, is the term of white privilege. "Neutral is white. The default is white. Because we are born into an already written script that tells us what to expect from strangers due to their skin colour, accents and social status, the whole of humanity is coded as white. Blackness, however, is considered "the other" and therefore to be suspected. Those who are coded as a threat in our collective representation of humanity are not white." (Reni Eddo-Lodge. Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race. 2017. p.85) When we talk about skin colour, we do not really talk about biology, we are talking about the social group and the social experience of certain groups. As future teachers we should not only look at this from a view that is far away and only happens in English-speaking countries but also as something happening as well in a much closer context. In a university context: 90,000 students, many international students, this also makes is hope that the University is not a place of huge white privilege, however that is not quite true. Even in this context people from different backgrounds usually face discrimination and racism in all kinds of contexts and relationships. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJvUzshKy4E (podium discussion on the topic) If you face issues like racism and inequality, the ÖH Referat für antirassistische Arbeit (also if you want to help with these issues) are able to help you, but also the Gleichbehandlungstelle of the University of Vienna. However, the prof would advise you to talk to for example, the prof, directly, however if you do not feel comfortable you do not need to do that and can go to the places stated. Old Cartoon on slide 9 on the PowerPoint If we think of ethnic identity, we usually do not thing of white identity, this is really interesting. We can also play with levels of ethnic identity (like nation, state, or a region). Ethnic food and music have sometimes on an oral level been replaced with “exotic” food and music. 2 Ethnicity in a cultural studies perspective however, of course, focuses more on a sense of cultural belonging. In this cartoon it’s about a family being the norm, and therefore not feeling like they have a real ethnic identity. Black British History Stuart Hall Stuart Hall came to England from a Caribbean Englishspeaking country. He tackles a number of things here. He tackles stereotypes of being English and the History of Imperialism and Colonialism and bringing goods to England on the back of slavery. “People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries; symbolically, we have been there for centuries. I was coming home. I am the sugar at the bottom of the English cup of tea. I am the sweet tooth, the sugar plantations that rotted generations of English children’s teeth. There are thousands of others beside me that are ... the cup of tea itself. Because they don’t grow it in Lancashire you know. Not a single plantation exists within the United Kingdom. This is the symbolisation of English identity - I mean what does anybody know about an English person except that they can’t get through the day without a cup of tea. Where does it come from? Ceylon-Sri Lanka, India. That is the outside history that is the inside history of the English. There is no English history without that history.” Due to the long colonial history, to many people from Caribbean countries it Stuart Hall (1991) “Old and New Identities, Old and New seemed like coming home. Ethnicities,” in Arthur King (ed.), Culture, Globalisation, and Also, through education they the World System had learned a lot about England and the way of living there. That made people from those places connect very strongly to England, however during the 1950s it wasn’t the most welcoming place. History of Black (& Asian) People in Britain & Europe Over the last 20 years the interest about Black Presence in Britain grew. Nowadays, more one more books and literature on this topic is being published. There has also been a controversy of Black History Month, where people have debated whether it is helpful to dedicate (only) one specific month on awareness of that topic, as history should generally, at all times include Black People. “History is always told in the perspective of Winners, or in this case White People.” Note for Teachers: BBC often offers a variety on materials that can be used for teaching purposes about that topic. Afropean offers a new perspective, as the term represents, for example people of African Heritage in France and all over Europe. Due to colonization most countries in Europe have a 3 Black History. In Germany for example there is evidence of Black people in the 19th Century (due to colonies), in Austria (Vienna: 16th/17th Century. There is an interesting yet cruel story of Angelo Soliman (18th Century) in the Wien Museum (in case you are interested in his story https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Soliman ) At some time between the 18th and 19th Century Black people usually also included Asian people and people from Caribbean states – any group of people that was not White basically. Overview o The Roman Empire stretched as far as Britain, and as the Roman Army had slaves they took them with them, and this is how many of them stayed there as well. This was 43 AD, and of course those weren’t big crowds, however, some of them stayed. o Through the Centuries we have evidence of Black people in the British Court, so the English Kings were known to have Black people there and she also traded with Black slaves. There were lots of Black people who were slaves, on the other hand there were some Black people that who established themselves as esteemed members of the court as they had some special talents for example. (For example Mary Seacole in case you are interested in her story https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/history/generalhistory/mary-seacole/ ) o This was also the time of Shakespeare, and as there is so little known about his person, there is a lot of speculation, if he knew Black people personally at the time of Elisabeth the 1st. And some people go back to the text and state that he indeed wrote about Black people (Othello – a lot of racist discourses in the play: more information about the play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othello ). However, some researchers say that indicate that he was not only aware of Black people but also that they had more humanity than they were credited for, this is probably evidence that he might have had contact with Black people. o 17th and 18th Century: triangular slave trade between Africa, UK, North America and Caribbean regions. The English, however, weren’t the only imperialists trading with slaves, this is important to keep in mind (also South America, Spain, France…). Still, it was the “best at it economically”. As they used slaves and resources to a big extent to build their cities. This started out in the 17th Century when the Abb. 1 Royal African Company was established by https://teachrock.org/resources/image/triangleslave-trade-map-16th-19th-century/ the Brits, turning that into the biggest “company for slavery” in Europe, we are talking about 3 million people only at that time. 4 In the 19th Century 12 million slaves had been “transported” from Africa the Americas. More than 10% did not survive the journey. Once they got there, they had to work on the plantation (in the US: cotton, Caribbean: sugar). The whole process off industrialisation, more or less, depended on the income from this trading processes. (Also, India and the East Indian Company that also made a lot of money). o Albert used to be the husband of Queen Victoria; he died very young. When he died, she had this monument built. Around him there are four statues, the ones closer to him show the trades that brought the glory of the Empire at that time: agriculture, commerce, engineering, and manufacture. Then we have outer points of the square, those represent the continents Africa, America, Asia, Europe (animals, and representation of stereotypical native people). This memorial says a lot about how Britain became so wealthy to have Abb. 2 Albert Memorial, Hyde Park, London this Golden statue. This shows that dealing https://www.londonxlondon.com/albertmemorial/ with a colonial past common British Society engaged with (however, in an academic sense, yes). Hardly any awareness within politicians or society. The idea that colonialism wasn’t that bad is a common discourse around specifically British Politics that are really hard to come past as many people died and were taken hostage. It’s not a benevolent history. o Terra Nullius: notion that you can go somewhere, because no one is there. For example, colonizing and living in Australia. There actually were some people there, but they did not look properly, and they pretended there were no people in order to “put it under their flag”. o 19th Century Queen Victoria: The British Empire was at its largest extent: “The Empire on which the sun never sets” 1834: slavery was abolished the British Empire. o WWI and WWII: In WWI soldiers came from all parts of the Empire to fight on the side of the British, as they saw Britain as the ‘mother country’. During WWII this was even more so the case. Servicemen joined to fight against Germany. Some also stayed afterwards. o 1947: Indian Subcontinent was partitioned into India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in the attempt to have a Muslim and a Hindu country. However, these conflicts are still not solved, especially as India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons. This is a result of British Politics in the Indian Subcontinent. The structures that the British left lead to large movements of fleeing and to many deaths in process or through wars. As a consequence, a lot of people from that are came to the UK. 5 o In the 1960s – 1980s anglophone Caribbean and African Countries became independent. This meant that a lot of people took the opportunity to come to the UK, also as the Caribbean there was a lot of hurricanes and shortage of work. o British Nationality Act of 1948 was a piece of legislation meant that 800 million subjects of the British Empire could live and work in the UK without a visa. Quite a number of people also decided to do that. This was the moment where migration was covered by the media in Great Britain. The Empire Windrush was a ship that carried 500 people Abb. 3 https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspiremost of them from Jamaica to me/the-story-of-windrush/ Tilbury Docks, where they could take the train to London. This has gone down at the moment where migration started, however, this is obviously not true. This ship entered British Media History as there were many famous people involved, there even was a song made about it. People also began to be worried. Also, just sometime later a ship called The Orego landed with more than 1,000 people on board, however due to the lack of journalists it isn’t as famous. Encouraged by the easy job opportunities after WWII (rebuilding, transportation) many people came to the UK. Between 1948 and 1954 more than 10,000 Caribbean people came to Britain. o In the 1950s and 1960s some companies, for example the transportation company, also advertised jobs for tube drivers and bus drivers, in India for example. However also jobs in public health service were advertised. o In the 1960s and 1970s Indians came from Uganda, Kenya, and Zanzibar. o 2011 UK census: 80% White British in England and Wales, and we can imagine that the non-white minorities might have grown. However, this also depends on regions and areas in the cities. In some parts of bigger cities Black people cannot be called minority in number anymore. However, now regulations for coming to the UK and migrating there are stricter and a big discussion. Funnily two women with migration background recently just strengthened these laws. 6 Literary Example By the author of Robinson Crusoe. This is an example for the term of race being used completely different than we do nowadays. He uses race to talk about English people: Race = Nation “Making a race uncertain and uneven, Derived from all the nations under Heaven. The Romans first with Julius Cæsar came, Including all the nations of that name, Gauls, Greeks, and Lombards, and, by computation, Auxiliaries or slaves of every nation. With Hengist, Saxons; Danes with Sueno came, In search of plunder, not in search of fame. Scots, Picts, and Irish from the Hibernian shore, and conquering William brought the Normans o'er. All these their barbarous offspring left behind, The dregs of armies, they of all mankind; Blended with Britons, who before were here, Of whom the Welsh ha' blessed the character. From this amphibious ill-born mob began That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman. The customs, surnames, languages, and manners Of all these nations are their own explainers: Whose relics are so lasting and so strong, They ha' left a shibboleth upon our tongue, By which with easy search you may distinguish Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English.” Then he lists the history of migration to the UK, proofing that the UK is indeed a country of migration, there is no native English in that sense, so the English are a mixture of many ethnicities such as Roman, Keltic, Danish, French and Anglo-Saxon, more recently also from countries outside of Daniel Defoe. The True-Born Englishman. 1703. Europe. He apparently does not have the best attitude about his own nation. The last sentence only introduces the notion of hyphenated identity, which only came up a lot later. There is a long connection between race being nation “British People are White People”. Phrenology: Race in the 19th Century In the 19th Century Phrenology was a branch of scientists used the biomedical knowledge the distinguish between “human races”. Nation did not meant race anymore, but race meant different biological background. This, however, was not a very objective way of science. They measured things like skulls, the eyes and proportions and they said women have a smaller brain and therefore are not that smart. This was also the time of Darwin, however, he never said that men came from monkeys, however we have a common ancestry. They concluded and categorized the races in primitiveness, intelligence, talent and questions of humanity and civilization. They concluded that African people are closer to apes and therefore are not as smart and worthy as Europeans. And of course, this is very comfortable if you run an empire based on oppressing these groups. In this system hegemony came in again, it was not only the authorities, but it was also believed by the society of naturality. Today we know, of course, that this is not true. Today we have genetics, which show that there are no differences and that there does not exist any proof of human races. 7 Definition from a German Lexicon This definition, luckily, is not around anymore and not being used anymore in that context. This term was also important in Austria during holocaust as having a superior race was often used as a justification. After that time, however, the term was clarified, as it assumed as natural that we can distinguish people in races and connect that to their abilities, or the worth of their life. “Menschenrasse: Gruppe von Menschen bei denen die normale äußere Erscheinung durch gemeinsame erbliche Körpermerkmale bedingt ist. [...] Am stärksten prägen sich die Rassenunterschiede am Kopf aus. Besonders zwei Einflüsse wirken hier formbestimmend: Hirnwachstum und Wirkung des Kauapparats. Im Laufe der Stammesgeschichte tritt die Wirkung des Kauapparats morphologisch immer mehr gegen das Hirnwachstum zurück. ... Mächtiger Kauapparat und Prognathie (Vorschnauzigkeit) gelten als primitive Merkmale; jener (mächtiger Kauapparat) findet sich z. B. bei Eskimo, diese (Vorschnauzigkeit) bei Negriden und Australiern.“ Meyers Lexikon, 1928 The term race today This was taken from Britannica. It suggests that the idea of race is a construct. Here you can also find a bunch of other definition from our times. "Who has seen a black or red person, a white, yellow or brown? These terms are arbitrary constructs, not reports of reality." (H.L. Gates, 1986) "Race, as a meaningful criterion within the biological sciences, has long been recognized to be a fiction. When we speak of "the white race" or "the black race", "the Jewish race" or "the Aryan race", we speak in biological misnomers and, more generally, in metaphors..." Henry Louis Gates. Race, Writing and Difference. 1986. “race, the idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical and behavioral differences. Genetic studies in the late 20th century refuted the existence of biogenetically distinct races, and scholars now argue that “races” are cultural inventions reflecting specific attitudes and beliefs that were imposed on different populations in the wake of western European conquests beginning in the 15th century. “ https://www.britannica.com/topic/race-human "'race' is not a biological given but a linguistic construct that functions to mark symbolically difference and 'otherness'" (Giles and Middleton, p. 36, with reference to H.L.Gates) 8 History of Racism and Race It is important to note that there are no human races, only one, however this term gains importance when we look at the context of racism. Cultural theories say that racism even came before race. "Human biology does not divide people into difference 'races': it is racism [...] that insists on this division." (Storey 2009, p.167) Orientalism “the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience” (Edward Said, Orientalism 1985, p.1-2) This is described as the institutionalized way that the west has dealt with statements or representations of the east. For example, Europe would define itself as civilized and maybe even romantic in contrast to the Orient which was seen as wild and uncivilized. However, the West was also portrayed as rational again in contrast to the fiery East. And Edward Said uses examples from the 18th and 19th Century and explains how this discourse functioned and was used in society. Stuart Hall: race as a floating signifier Hall uses linguistics to explain the term of race, race, according to him is a floating signifier, this means that it does not have a signified. It’s not a thing, it’s a context. o o o o Races do not exist outside of representation Races are discursive constructions (there are only there in language and media, they are no things) Races are forms of signification (they signify but they do not have a signified) Races depend on time/place/people Biology and “Races” – 21st Century Human beings belong to one race → race is an obsolete classification which is biologically meaningless (as they share 99,9% of their DNA, the minimal differences can be attributed to environment, and other external factors, but never to biological races). We need to acknowledge race is still existing as a construct and is expressed through racism and as a base for discrimination. Differences, however, exist (men, women, skin colour, size of nose, whatever), but we mostly share a DNA. Markers of difference invite identification into individual and collective identities. This is not a problem, only if it is combined with power. How the differences are categorised and made to signify is always a result of politics and power, not a question of Biology. Race only has a meaning because of Racism. 9 Race & Identity in Literature We skipped through that part due to time issues, however I, personally, think it would be smart to read through the text provided here and originally on the slides of the Prof. Nation and race Headline of the Daily Mail, quoting Robin Cook who said, “There is no such race as the British”. There was a questionnaire about the nations most favourite convenience food. For years and years, it used to be Fish & Chips, in 2001, though that changed, and it was Chicken Tikka Masala. Urban Myth: In the 1970s in Spitalfields (area of London with many immigrants from South Asia) a white customer goes into one of the Indian restaurants there and asks for Chicken Tikka (=Chicken Pieces) so he gets that and thinks they are a bit dry, so he asks for a sauce, and serves it as a sauce meaning Masala (=mixture of spices). Meaning this is not the most authentic meal, but a combination of both cultures. This can be a symbol of modern Britain as a mixture of cultures creating something new. Symbolic meaning is also very important with food. Imagined Communities = a nation has to be imagined, as we cannot know everybody else in that nation A nation "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion" It has an effect that creates a sense of Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities. community, identification, and Reflections on the Origin and Spread of communion. Anderson uses it to Nationalism. 1983. explain Nationalism, he described it rather as psychological than biological. It can be ‘neutrality’ or ‘food’ or ‘music’, therefore, a lot of rests on symbolism. The bigger a nation is the more often this symbolism is needed (big flags on special events, or sport events). Intersectionality 10 Kimberlé Crenshaw tried to analyse how different forms of discrimination (racism, sexism, classism) intersect. The idea is that people are discriminated in this network of multiple roots of discriminations. It was developed in the 1980s in the field of legal studies but was widespread now in cultural studies. It can also be seen in connection to the term of interpellation. Interpellation after Louis Althusser: "Individuals are interpellated into subject positions by a process of identification" (Giles and Middleton, 43) We can also look back at the cartoon from the lesson on Gender, it clearly shows that many different things can be the root to discrimination. If we look back at the advertisement of the Black boy with the hoodie, we can see that race and age are being intersectioned, as the child is being used to promote. As a teacher we are part of a hierarchical structures, we will have to deal with intersectional injustices, it is important to recognize this. The ethical imperative of cultural studies The work that cultural studies has to do is to mobilize everything that it can find in terms of intellectual resources in order to understand what keeps making the lives we live, and the societies we live in, profoundly and deeply antihuman in their capacity to live with difference. Stuart Hall 1996 Cultural studies are mostly concerned with differences on different levels! 11 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Susanne Reichl, Privatdoz. LECTURE 6: DRAMA AND SHAKESPEARE Start of the Lecture We watched a video on YouTube: the prologue of the Romeo & Juliet movie. Shakespeare is known to be the best dramatist of all time, however, we cannot really know that, as a lot of dramas and texts have been lost over time, especially from the 16th and 17th Century. Genre features Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601) Shaw, Pygmalion (1912) ACT I Covent Garden at 11.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles blowing frantically in all directions. Pedestrians running for shelter into the market and under the portico of St. Paul's Church, where there are already several people, among them a lady and her daughter in evening dress. [...] THE DAUGHTER [in the space between the central pillars, close to the one on her left] I'm getting chilled to the bone. What can Freddy be doing all this time? He's been gone twenty minutes. ACT I SCENE I. Elsinore. A platform before the castle. BERNARDO FRANCISCO ERNARDO FRANCISCO BERNARDO Who's there? Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself. B Long live the king! Bernardo? He. We have 2 examples of dramatic texts, both centuries are connected a lot with drama. What can we learn from beginnings of dramatic texts? We can find stage directions and the dialogue. With Shakespeare this a quite limited and minimalistic instruction. Also, one could mean that the beginning of a drama is, well, dramatic. However, with Hamlet, this is not the case, however, this is done to set the stage. As this play happens at night-time, but was performed during daytime, this was needed, in order for the audience to know it’s night. With Shaw we have a very long prose text at the beginning. This has very detailed instructions. This is an important difference! Shakespeare also was part of the production, so he could always actually direct and guide the play. Shaw gives instructions as this play might have a different director. This also depends on how much control the writer wants to have. 1 Some characteristics and important aspects of the genre are • • • • • • • • Usually written for performance however, there are some plays that are not necessarily written for that, and example can be found in the reader on page 81, 82, those would not be plays we expect to be played, they can be only meant to be read reading a play can sometimes feel artificial, as we might rather want to watch it we usually distinguish between literary studies (words on pages) and theatre studies (performance of a text) Romeo & Juliet is an example in which we can turn an old, well-known text into a very exciting “contemporary” film adaptation verbal, visual, auditive channels (multimedial/multimodal) for example, in a movie, or stage design in a play Theatre semiotics As a discipline that has looked at theatre as signifying in a variety of modes Text as a script Something to work with, if we buy a book, we look at it like a finished product, however a play is not a finished product yet, we can look at it as a beginning of a performance Stage Carries meaning when we analyse meaning, even if this section is minimalist, the writer gives you an idea of who is on stage, and talks to who, one of Shakespeare’s famous quotes is “exit pursued by bear”. This is important for example, for monologues, Hamlet talks kind of to himself, but in the corner of the stage there is somebody watching, and this is very important for the meaning. Whoever is on stage and is aware of other people, is very important for how we construct meaning. Actors and Actresses There is a long tradition with Shakespearean acting, we can compare them, this is very interesting to see. Everyone who is anyone and male, at some point has done a production of Hamlet (a very difficult part to understand to do – 3 different actors can create 3 different variants and plays). Audience In older plays they are not participating too much, that has changed in recent plays. It can also make a difference in meaning where the actors speak to (to another person, to the audience, do they turn away) Page 75 of the reader A play of the 20th Century, which premiered in 1957 and has always been played since then. It’s a play were many people often said “Can we stop playing it” – as it has no relevance, as for example, the character constellation is very much “post 2nd Word War”, dealing with the demons of that time (and a lot of gender stereotypes from that time). This led to some creativity, some people changed aspects of the play to make it more modern: like changing genders etc. 2 This should give us an idea of the amount of stage directions Osborne gives, they are also very precisely. Can we even show the top of a large Victorian house? Not really, this should probably only give the director an idea of the setting and the vibe it has. After the stage introduction there follows an introduction of the characters. This is even slightly comic representation wise, and easily imaginable. We can also read a lot about direct characterization such as the choice of clothes. The description, which can be found in the following page is interesting, as it is contradictory, the man is described as both tender and cruel. It is obviously a contradictory character, but why is this represented in the description and not via dialogue. Osborne tries to do it both. He is doing it explicitly and implicitly. The director should get an idea from the beginning about the character. Alison, the woman in the scene is ironing, and they have a conversation, while she is Figure 1 page 75 in the reader Osborne, John. Look Back In doing that. This is interesting, also when Anger, London: Faber and Faber 1957, the rest can be found on looking at the great detail everything on page 76 in the reader the stage is described. We can ask ourselves whether these things have a reason? Those decisions all carry meaning. Another example: Here we can see that the stage directions are also inserted sometimes. Later on, we can see a long prose passage, we can so it on page 74 in the reader, where suddenly in a drama text we have a narrator. The writer provides information that the director not really can perform. You can bring these passages on stage differently, for example by having a voiceover, 3 or by letting the person, who this is about, have a monologue, or you can just leave it out. There is no other option than these, also this again makes it clear that a play is only instructions, or a prototype. Some other important aspects about drama • Text types in a play: → Stage directions → Dialogues/Polylogues → Monologues → Prose pieces Dramatic texts usually do not have a narrator, however, there are some exceptions. • • • Mediation in drama How is information mediated then? Drama is more showing than telling. Sometimes a voice is needed, to tell you about people’s inner life, for example, Hamlet’s monologue, we can say that this is his inner life. There are some other options, though: → Greek chorus we can also find that in plays from Shakespeare, it started out as a group of actors standing together on stage, usually wearing masks, and saying something together, but over time it was felt that it was disturbing, till it was reduced to one actor usually telling background stories etc., for example, a prologue, but also saying something about what is going to happen in the play → Epic theatre This is term from the history of drama and is connected to Berthold Brecht, his plays often use a narrator or a similar function. Brecht wanted to wake people up from the cosy theatre atmosphere, as he was also very political, in this sense he used narrators very often in combination with Alienation Effects (watching something on stage, then the lights turn a different colour or there would be strange sound → then a narrator would step up and address the audience). These effects should make you aware that you are watching something constructed, this often has political reasons and effects. Caryl Churchill, A Number, 2002 Page 79, 80 of the reader The author is known for experimenting with language a lot and using themes of feminism and questions of power come into her plays a lot. The way she uses language is especially interesting, as she uses very realistic vocabulary and writing, even though, the topic might not be. In the conversation the people keep interrupting each other. ➔ Here we watched a video adaption of that, which makes the conversation much clearer. We see that dialogues are often fragmented and therefore is very natural in reallife speech. This realistic impression came up even more in recent time. Harold Pinter, Birthday Party, 1976 Page 77, 78 in the reader 4 Pinter was a Nobel prize winner for literature and was famous for his sometimes absurd dialogues in his plays. He was inspired by Samuel Beckett, who was the master of the theatre of the absurd – nothing ever makes sense. The conversations aren’t going anywhere. At some point you can construct meaning if you try hard. Pinter picked up on that, his plays are sometimes referred to as the comedy of menace, especially, if a director chose to do so. This comes from situations like friends gathering and a stranger coming in, and upsets everyone by saying something, and we discover that the friend safe space never was a safe space at all. Pinters plays show us this fragility. ➔ We watched a TV adaption We could see a lot of repetition in dialogue here. There are also lots of silences in Pinter, this should convey a special meaning. Also, nothing much happens, this is not about action, too much. Unlike in a written text, we can’t read how these people are with each other, we have to see. As this is film, we can see a closeup of the facial expressions of the characters, which makes some topics more important. Stanley is an important character this can also be seen here. There is no security with Pinter. In the text we are told we have Petey and Mac, but this is all we know, we only have implicit categorization. Speech in Drama • • • • Dialogue / Polylogue Often clarifying relationships, this has to be shown to the audience Monologue Can be used to show how people are like in the inside, in films often used with voiceovers or closeups, on stage there is a monologue saying something to other characters Soliloquy When the characters are alone on stage (or think they are), this gives an inner monologue being said → We watched David Tennant: Hamlet’s Soliloquy We can see he is alone on stage, but it is interesting we have a very close up in the film, on stage this has to work differently. Often in stage production, they work with light. Why is it important that being alone is important – in Hamlet these topics are taboo in the society and therefore require nobody to hear him, also in a religious context: doubting what’s happening after death could be said to be blasphemous, if somebody had heard him Can be found in the back of our reader Aside Has a lot to do with information management and the audience. Hamlet was talking to himself, and as we are part of the audience, we could witness that. An aside is something being said only to the audience (which other people on the stage are not supposed to hear) “A little more than kin, and less than kind”, Hamlet saying to the audience not to his new “uncle/stepdad”. 5 • • Discrepant awareness Which is a situation in which the audience knows different things than the characters on stage. This can have very interesting effects and outcomes. In Hamlet we know that the cup is poisoned but the characters do not know that. Dramatic Irony Which is a subclass of discrepant awareness, where we as an audience know that the opposite is true. The Shakespearian play McBeth is all about Scottish noble people killing each other. There is a scene in which the audience knows the McBeths want to kill the king, and when the king comes to the castle and says “Oh, isn’t it great to be amongst friends”. Characterisation in drama This is a little bit like story vs. discourse, authorial vs. figural (= through things happening in the play) Implicit would be in a played-out way, like characterizing names etc. Explicit, figural characterization is unreliable, as a character explicitly tells us something about another through speech or action. Figural implicit is costumes, voice, register etc,… Figure 2 http://www2.anglistik.unifreiburg.de/intranet/englishbasics%20/DramaCharacter03.htm Choosing actors, for instance is a way of doing characterization implicitly. Hamlet is interesting as he is hard to grasp, as his character is very difficult. When reading Hamlet, it might be difficult to tell, when the character seems sane and when he seems insane. Also, with Hamlet we do not know how old he is, sometimes we think from the text that he must be in his 20s, then again there are passages where we think that he must be much older than that. Shakespeare, the invisible man Not a lot is known about Shakespeare. However, we do know that he existed. We can also be fairly sure that ‘his’ plays are actually written by him, or at least most of them. We know that there was a historical figure called William Shakespeare. The name might have been a bit different, as spelling was loose at this time. We also do not have his clear handwriting, as all of this was destroyed, as Theatres burned down all the Figure 3 time. Dangerous were candles or blowing a canon during a play, this https://www.nairaland.com/6179 burned down a play, as well as the little dialogues burned as well. The 361/see-authentic-photo-williamshakespeare 6 portrait seen is the only portrait of Shakespeare that has a good claim to have been painted from life, maybe by a painter called John Taylor, and is known as the “Chandos Portrait”. There is some evidence that might be Shakespeare, but we do not know for sure. However, this established, and was used. We can also see that in a Dr. Who Episode. Joseph Fiennes also does not really look much like Shakespeare, even though he played him in Shakespeare in Love, however some small details are the same, like the earring. Kenneth Branagh in a biopic about Shakespeare is very much created on the basis of this portrait. We can say that this is Shakespeare as Pop Culture made it. Generally, there is little known about that time, which makes it very hard to understand and get a grasp of. We know some dates about Shakespeare however, official ones that needed to be done, however, we do not when he was born, we can only estimate by knowing the date when he was christened. There is 10 years of his life which are ‘lost’, as we know nothing about him during that time. This was when he moved to London, we know one document from the city he lived in before, and then 10 years later there is a document about him from London. We know when some plays have been first performed, but basically that’s it. Also, from those records we know that Shakespeare partly acted in these plays or directed. But the life is full of ‘gaps’. A lot of historians have tried to reconstruct his life from his texts. There are certain grieving characters which was correlated from Shakespeare’s son dying, by the name of Hamnet, who died of the Plague. There is a lot of biofantasy about his life. How would somebody be like writing these plays? Shakespeare’s ‘originals’ There are not any real originals, as there is nothing left in his handwriting. What happened in the Elizabethan theatre was that every actor got the lines he was supposed to speak on small slips of paper, which burned when the theatres burn down. How do we then know this was really by Shakespeare? The first people to decide to write something up were colleagues of Shakespeare, named John Heminges and Henry Condell, they published the first folio edition 1623 after Shakespeare’s death. Some sonnets he wrote were published, but none of his plays during his lifetime (they collected all quarto editions and published a folio edition of all). They compared the versions they had and filled the gaps, with what they remembered and what other people could remember. Even during Shakespeare’s lifetime Hamlet was played in the Globe, and people in the audience wrote the play down as much as they could (slow process due to ink etc.) and went to another theatre and put that play on somewhere else. Quarto Edition (a large sheet of paper which was folded into 4 pieces, so you had 8 pages to print on). The first Quarto of Hamlet was published 1603, in very small writing and on cheap paper. 7 The theatres at the time closed and opened again every now and then, due to religious reasons and the plague. The situation was very chaotic. Heminges and Condell did a very interesting thing not knowing that this will survive so long and being delivered till now. Some versions nowadays use the folio, some even the quarto editions. Sometimes these versions differ. FOLIO QUARTO “To be or not to be, that is the question…” “To be or not to be, I there’s the point, to die…” These comparisons are very interesting. Today we are more likely to see the folio version. This offers a lot of possibilities. If we want to know more about Shakespeare, Bill Bryson has written a good book about Shakespeare. Another good reference is Shakespeare in Love, which is pretty much pop culture but very interesting. Shakespeare and language • • • • • • Although it is English and old is not Old English, it’s Early Modern English (late 15th – 17th Century). Sound quality is very important, words are chosen because of their sound and therefore their performance. He is said to have introduced a lot of new words, however, this is a little tricky, he used a vast number of words for the first time in writing, however, as we do not know much about Shakespeare, we know even less about other plays at that time. For example: lovesick, however some words he used do not exist anymore, like haply, which meant perhaps, or have changed their meaning, like marry meaning indeed and fond meaning foolish. He used language for figural characterization, class is often indicated by language and register, or their relationship thee/thou often used informal, while you are used formal Lot of Hyperbole, puns, irony, vs. the literal meaning Distribution of verse and prose: → Rhymes → Unrhymed blank verse: iambic pentameter → Prose He mixes all and distinguished in relation of what he wants to tell us about a character: Lower class characters often speak in prose and are often funny, whenever somebody speaks in rhymes which is meant to draw attention to a particular moment. Then we saw pictures of Shakespeare being used in Pop Culture, as well as media using quotes by Shakespeare (if you are curious, you can check the examples out on the slides) 8 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Susanne Reichl, Privatdoz. LECTURE 7: TIME & PLACE IN LITERATURE & CULTURE Start of the Lecture We watched the House of Cards intro from 2013. With flashing pictures and timelines from Washington. Which should set expectations of the viewers. The place is connected to certain topics like, in this case, politics, power, the president and the White House etc. This is what this lesson is going to be about place and meaning making. Place: England, Great Britain, and the UK: maps and flags America ≠ USA → problems with terminology happens in other places, too. The “American” way of life isn’t often associated with the South American Way of life but rather with the one in the USA. The British Isles: All isles (6,300 islands, however we are rather thinking of 4 nations, counties, countries…) Politically we are talking about “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Norther Ireland”. • • • • England: most densely populated part. England + Wales have had the longest Union. Great Britain = England, Scotland, Wales United Kingdom = England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland Political conflict between the Unionists and the Irish Nationalists in Norther Ireland, that went on for a long time during the 2nd Half of the 20th Century and had roots in religious debates, however now that’s not the case and root of conflict now. “The Good Friday Agreement / Belfast Agreement” … is said to have ended most of the violence and conflict, however, due to BREXIT there are new difficulties happening on the border. BRITAIN: The Centre (England) + the (Celtic) Frange/Periphery • • Connected to Earth history Geological common heritage The idea that there was a centre, and the fringes were where people “do things differently” This is partly true: as there are often different languages spoken, for example • • Breton Welsh (30% of people from Wales speak the “Welsh” version of Gaelic) 1 • • Cornish (2.000 speakers, however not as a first language) Scottish Gaelic (1% speak the “Scottish” version of Gaelic) , Irish Gaelic (less than 1%, 4 000 people speak Irish Gaelic in Northern Ireland, in the Republic it’s 40%) however, many places also share traditions. What we have to keep in mind, though, is that we know nothing about the language level these people have (first language, second language at which level etc.). The term is difficult, though, as periphery or fringe could imply that some parts are less important than others History of the Union • • • • • • • • • • • 1st Union of 2 Kingdoms: Middle of the 16th Century: Union between England (Henry the 8th) and Wales 1603 after the death of Elizabeth the 1st: Union of the Crowns (Scottish & English Crown came to King James (the 6st of Scotland/1st of Scotland and England) 17th Century begins with them being closer together but not united 1707 Acts of Unions: Kingdom of Great Britain (before that two parliament, one act in each of the parliament) 1801 Acts of Union: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (biggest time of imperialism, all these areas under one crown) = one country, one united parliament responsible for all isles 1922 Irish Free State (rising nationalism, however, Northern Island remained part of the Crown) → United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island 1973 UK member of the EU 1997 devolution referendum for Scotland and Wales, for certain types of legislation they have their own elections and parliament, however, they still have state law etc., a year later that also happened for Northern Island Whether all parts get their own parliaments is a tricky question, and a question of history and identity (many English people feel British) 2014 Scottish Independence Poll (rejected) 2016 Brexit Poll 2020 UK leaves EU (Scotland thriving for independence) History and place show that place is not stable but has history, which can be described in names and symbols: FLAG: Union Flag/Jack Commonalities and symbols needed for imagined communities, which can be used and abused for political reasons, statements, and ideologies. JACK = Flag associated with ships/marines, there-fore the Union Jack is a term used rather in informal language. 1990s: Trend of the flag in fashion 2 The Union Flag is made of different other flags, which are combined to show “Union”. • • • St. George’s Cross = England St. Andrew’s Cross = Scotland St. Patrick’s Cross = Ireland The Welsh flag is tricky, as it has a dragon. But also, some other flags are missing, such as the Cornish flag, Northern Ireland. This is a big deal about representation, and about who is given space. A historical reason for not including Wales could be that they were part of the Union for such a long time, they are seen to be Figure 2 https://3.bp.blogspot.com/jr5KhRPnCeQ/VBi7_fL8jcI/AAAAAAAAAK8/WGWrepresented already within the English BPZMyeE/s1600/components_of_the_uk_flag_scotland_england_irelan d.png flag. Figure 4 Flag of Wales https://www.publicdomainpicture s.net/en/viewimage.php?image=104525&pictu re=welsh-flag Figure 3 Flag of Northern Ireland https://libertyflagandbanner.com /product/northern-ireland-flag/ Figure 1 Flag of Cornwall http://www.cornwallcalling.co.uk/cornishhistory/cornish-flag.htm We need maps for orientation but also have an element of representation, which also means power and power discourses. The map on the right includes all areas belonging to the British Isles. Geographically speaking, this might not seem like the entire world, however, representation here, again, matters a lot. The Roman Goddess sits on the Globe. Atlas is down there, lifting the whole world. There are stereotypical representations of people from other parts of the world, who are all under the influence and power coming from the Figure 5 British Isles. Also, it should represent https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=imperial%20federation%20 freedom etc. (at least for British people). british%20empire%20in%201886#id=508919602EC178BFC53 7EC268228507628DF7654 3 Place and Space in Videogames Videogames are multimodal (texts, images, music...). When we study them, we are looking at many factors, like their cultural surroundings. Games are a cultural object, literature is also influencing that process, as scripts and stories for some games have to be written. Game Spaces Board Games that were basically the inspiration for later videogames can be seen in the upper left corner on slide 11. Game Spaces In most games figures are moving in some area, this can also be seen in sports games, such as football, basketball, baseball... Game spaces can also be digital, such as Pong (which was inspired by Ping Pong) and Super Mario Bros (Nintendo Figure 6 https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/37 1985). At that time game space was very restricted, due to 09758/history-of-pong hardware restrictions, later on this could have been expanded. For example, Super Mario Bros uses sidescrolling, the game world becomes bigger than the actual screen. Henry Jenkins Spatiality: “Game designers don’t simply tell stories: they design worlds and sculpt spaces.” Figure He looked at different game spaces and literature, the hero’s journey from Lord of The Rings is also a spatial story. 7 https://medium.com/metagame/cr%C3%A Dtica-super-mario-bros-36ceee8a2a16 This can also be seen in Theme Parks and Worlds, such as Don Carson, a show designer for Disneyland: “Environmental storytelling” = storytelling infused in physical spaces and places Jenkins: “environmental storytelling creates the preconditions for an immersive narrative experience in at least one of 4 ways.” These forms can overlap and stand by themselves! We will focus on 2 of them now: 1. Evoked Narratives Example: The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (also called licensed games) Taking the narratives from a book, series, the world already preexists in literature and movies, and games can tell a new story in this different media setting (Transmedia Storytelling) 4 2. Emergent Narratives Example: The Sims, Minecraft (‘sandbox’ games) One can play in a created world, one can build something. Sims is special as you do not have a story yet, you can make your own one engaging with the possible tool Not all games fit into one of those 2 or even 4 categories, such as Real Time Strategy Video Games Example: The Settlers, Age of Empires ➔ Narrative emerges through gameplay Getting resources, build town, create a strong Figure 8 https://www.instant-gaming.com/en/3123military, expand… buy-the-settlers-pc-game-ubisoft-connect-europe/ Also called 4X Games (after Emrich), encapsulates the core strategic conquest games - Explore Expand Exploit Exterminate You have to play it well and it’s made clear that one has to seek power and these games reproduce and retell Figure 9 Civilization VI stories of colonialism and https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=civilization%206#id=D45BFB105 imperialism. The basic engagement 6DA482575648E8000B9EF86B68DFB3A of these games are usually similar and reinforce a very western-centered notion and reproduction of history and how history is being told. Place in the Civilization Series Civilization games are usually modelled after board games (for example by hexagonal spaces and movement options. There is usually fog in areas that have not been explored yet, when moving the fog is being reduced = “FOG OF WAR”. The landscape is homogenized and categorized by a type of terrain, there is different tiles (wood, mountains, fields..), not a lot of character and usually homogenized. In unmapped places we can encounter barbarians, which are usually nationless: Figure 10 https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=barbarians% 20civ%206#id=9424F035325BEDE45062CD633 6DBECDC6AE48C19 5 “The ethnicity of the barbarians does not matter because they do not matter; the game’s interface presents them as a mindless hindrance to the business of empire-building, rather than as a native people with their own history, culture and values” (Ford 2016) Place in Minecraft It is an empty place; this can also be found in other games. The games code generates unique worlds for the player to explore and are incredibly specific. Players can explore and extract materials from: Terra nullius myth - Figure 11 “a territory which still has no https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=minecraft%20world#id=F master”, “unowned land” 46F0884628A44526F36357ED5085F53D6FAD04F partly constructed by accounts of government officials, explorers, and missionaries serving the interests of the British crown (López 2019) This term was also often used by colonialists and imperialism (British Empire and Australia as terra nullius). Terra nullius myth in Minecraft Even in Minecraft you are not alone, there is also other characters (night-time enemies), friendly villagers (humanoid but visually distinct from players) and remnants of bygone civilizations (empty temples etc.) Environmentalist Perspective - - “almost everything in the game world can be harvested by the player and conceivably put to use, each block can be seen as a potential resource” When the area is depleted one can start fresh in another area of the world. “Conquest is thus central to Minecraft’s mechanics. It enables the extraction of resources, which justifies further conquest.” (Dooghan 2019) Parallels from games and the real world → more and more resources are taken “Environmentally Friendly Minecraft” • • Proteus (you can walk around, experience the game without actually being able to interact … Minecraft – interaction) Eco (Minecraft focusing on environmental issues, if you exploit nature too much it has an impact on the world there, for example climate change etc. ) Figure 12 https://moodle.univie.ac.at/pluginfile.php/2631 6208/mod_resource/content/0/STEOP%20week %207%20place%20ws2223%20%283%29%20 %281%29.pdf 6 Place in Picturebooks Picturebooks are not always children literature. There are plenty for adults, however, they are often called literature for all ages. This book was published 1998. On the cover we can see the rabbits in question, and they come from a ship and arrive at a place. This is an allegory for the British invasion of Australia. The rabbits were actually an invasive species in Australia brought by British colonists. One of the first images in the book Figure 14 can be seen on the https://www.hachette.com.a left. In the top area u/john-marsden-shaunwe can see the tan/the-rabbits rabbits arriving with some machines and meeting indigenous population. What we can see here is that large parts of Australia were called terra nullius (this can be also seen on the page as most of the space is denoted the land rather than to the action or characters). Figure 13 source in the picture However, we can see that there are creatures and diversity in the land that is called “terra nullius”, therefore it is not “empty space”. We can also see the wheel tracks, which are the first sign that this is not going to end well for the land, as it already has been hurt. Cover can also be interpretated: ship as sharp as a knife about to hurt the land, and the shadows of the arriving rabbits seem bad and threatening. The book from here on shifts in its colour coding, from colourful → browns and grays. On the right the last picture of the book can be seen = total distruction, dystopia, a wall being built up. The main focus on the sky, which is empty. In the ground we can see what Figure 15 source from the picture before used to be diversity, but all unified in the same colour (dead shade of brown). “The native” is on the right side, and sideline, not in the focus. In any kind of artifact space is very crucial, not only as a setting but also to signify meanings and ideologies that go beyond what is happening. How much space we denote to something or not denotes meaning. 7 Place in film: Exposition Star Wars Opening Crawl 1977: It is interesting in the sense that it sets a certain tone (the music is about heroic deeds and something spectacular), and background information that is helpful for the audience to understand, this is especially common in Science Fiction, as we need to know where it is set and which context there is we might need. Some information is unnecessary, such as names of galaxies etc. Place in Drama In Shakespeare we had examples of minimalist or absence of stage directions, compared to Pygmalion, which were very detailed. However, there is more to that. By stage directions we can create a sense of place and space to the audience. We have a space that is mostly fixed and defines our space of action. We can do all sorts of things, such as changing sceneries, video projection etc., but it is still restricted, compared to narratives and film. If we don’t have the chance to suddenly introduce a change of scenery, what do we do? • • We can use speech types as a way of constructing space. (for example: “Oh my god, I am scared in this dark forest” “Oh help, there is a dragon behind me”) We do not need stage design for that. Often space is constructed through exposition (“in fair Verona..”) Even if Shakespeare might have never entered the spaces he wrote about, he partly describes them. For example, A Winters Tale Shakespeare sets part in Bohemia (which has both a desert and a seacoast) → no geographical accuracy, the place is symbolic and not realistic, it carries meaning. Adventures differ from different places; space enables specific activities. Why would we have a desert in the middle of Europe, like in the play? The reason is symbolic: what happens is that the characters go dry emotionally. Place often reflects relationship and meaning. In film we have more options to use multimodality etc., in drama we only have 2 types of exposition: 1. Isolated Exposition At the beginning, introduced by one person (chorus, narrator) “Taken out of the actual place” Example: Reader page 83 Shakespeare: The Life of King Henry the 5th This has become a myth for the British people, his encouraging speech later in the play has been 8 used by many politicians of all sorts of nations In this exposition we have a narrator, a chorus who prepares the audience for what they are about to see and experience, and this should be an appeal for the audience to use their imagination, it is an invocation that is a pretty much a standard beginning that was often used at that time. In this opening he implies that the scene is too big for the space that they have. Then he talks about this unworthy scaffold cannot bring out these objects → can we do this here? Will people believe that two countries are fighting each other on a small stage? He apologizes for not being able to show this: They basically have to cram two countries on the stage. Basically, he gives the audience the work of imagination, this does not only concern place but also time. 2. Integrated Exposition = scenic exposition, in which characters talk about what happened before (example: Hamlet: soldiers talking about Hamlet’s father again and again, and we learn about his death, we get background information and indication of place) “Part of the discourse of the play” Place in narrative For example: Narrative fiction: towards the beginning a character is new to the world, and somebody else explains the world to them, and also to the readers. “Info dump” can be annoying in Sci-Fi books, as people might have the impression, that after 3 pages of information it is boring. Generally, in narrative, we have many opportunities to describe space and place. Around the 19th Century, most books started with a long description. To set the scene some sort of description has to be made to describe the setting. Is place merely decorative? Place is never just place, and has different functions: • • • • Orientation (maps in fantasy) Context for action (some actions require special spaces, for example in dystopia, which restrict the place you can go to= Characterisation (can characterize people) Mood and Atmosphere (dark forests = scary) 9 When a change of place can occur (for example James Bond movie scene “the world is not enough”). A clear manipulation can be seen (time has been condensed, places have been switched to see the skyline areas of London and an empty Themes). Changes in place make us realize that he is the typical hero, just with a gadget he can pass through it. The change of place and dynamics characterize Bond. Typical features like: suit and tie and when he comes out of the water he rearranges it. Time is also manipulated when he shoots out of the boat, when he comes through the window, for a long time, so we can follow the decision-making process. Also, the music speeds up and slows down such as the video. 10 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Susanne Reichl, Privatdoz. LECTURE 8: Sounds & Forms in Poetry Poetry as a genre • • • • • • Genre can sometimes be visual; we are also likely to make out a poem when we see it: specific signals through its form. With poems we have a focus in form and words. With poems we have to not only deal with the language itself but also with the form the language is presented. In a context of teaching, we can also look at song texts, as both lyrics and poems have rhythm and rhyme. With both we can apply the same analyzing methods. Very often there is also a performance aspect in poetry. During earlier times, as for example, paper was expensive or restricted, poem was often limited to performance even. Poetry is often a subjective concentration, there is usually a subjective speaker who shares their view with the audience. This subjectivity is often also the reason why poetry tends to be hard to understand. Sometimes poems tell stories, however usually they are ideas or thoughts that subjective voice tries to express. While we have a narrator in epic texts, in poems we usually have a speaker (lyrical – I, lyrical self), which should not be confused with the author! Poems often have a more liberal language concerning syntax and grammar (no punctuations, no verbs…). As poems are usually concentrated, we have to find out its meanings, this might not be clear. We sometimes expect a poem to hide meaning from us, however we can create not only one meaning but more meanings, the interpretation can be creative! For example: Context: Emily Dickinson, "A word is dead" (1924) With poems from that time often the first line was the title of the poem, as it is the case in this poem by Emily Dickinson, an A word is dead American writer, who usually wrote rather for herself than for When it is said, publication. She wrote this probably between the 1850s and Some say. the 1880s, all her poems were released by her nieces in the I say it just 1920s. Because she did not mean them to be published, she Begins to live had no titles, therefore, here, the first line was used. The poem That day. is quite straightforward vocabulary wise. And also, as we see, this poem is very dense and concentrated (19 words). Just these few words are meant to express a rather philosophical idea than an actual story. It is an abstract piece (no time, no characters). However, we have a subjectivity as “I” is used. Now we need to find out the subjective idea: 1 A word can contain many meanings, and some say that once it is said it has had to decide on one meaning. Once it is said it’s gone and cannot be replaced (no way of recording sounds at the time this was written). The first few lines are about the transiens of language, the other 3 lines express a different idea: the “I” reverses this idea. This could be because it creates meanings, expresses ideas and starts processes. However, we do not know exactly! Analyses We can also analyze the formal aspects of the poem. If we look at the speaker, we notice it only in line 4. At the end of each line, we can find a rhyme scheme (a-a-b-c-d-b) which is a regular rhyme scheme. The convention is to point out end lines with letters of the alphabet to make the scheme visible. What in this case is interesting is that “say” and “day” are connected over a number of lines, by having endlines here the two parts are being brought together again. Lines 3 and 4 are interesting, too, the lyrical-I assumes some authority, who has the last word in this case. There are many meanings we can draw from this. The word also is being personified; poems often use these kinds of mental images. Poetic language The first think to say is that we usually think of sounds and their effects rather than the form of the words themselves. The patterns and structures these sounds produce and the effect they have can be studied in Prosody. We will start with the individual sounds: consonant sounds/ vowel sounds The first examples do not come from poetry, but from advertisements, which also gives us an idea how creative language can be used in our daily lives. Alliteration = repetition of certain sounds, we are not looking at morphemes but phonemes English in general, uses a lot of alliteration, as it gives a comforting effect! Tough Stuff = - Rhyme (= usually consists of two end syllables that rhyme) An assonance (=repetition of a vowel sounds) and A consonance (=repetition of consonants) ➔ Together this forms an endrhyme Because boys will be boys = - Alliteration Repetition (boys – boys, which is used to emphasize this) Also, this saying had a long history, and for example, has often been used to justify certain actions. 2 This is an add for throat pastilles, when repeating we find a musical sound structure and alliteration and a rhyme (the stressed syllables rhyme). These are examples that do not come from poetry, so poetic language is not only restricted to poetry. Language of Literature This is not a poetic text, however this text plays with sound affects that should convey pace and speed. • • • J.K. Rowling Harry Pottere and the Deathly Hallows (chapter 14) "Panic pulsed in the pit of his stomach. As he passed gleaming wooden door after gleaming wooden door, [...] the might of the ministry, its complexity, its impenetrability seemed to force themselves upon him." Alliteration, such as in the first sentence. Repetition, such as “gleaming wooden door […]” (long vowel sounds which cannot be said quickly, the sounds have to be stretched and, therefore, it takes longer, in this situation the protagonists are running away from something, to stretch this long passage these extended sounds are used, and they should echo the duration – in contrast to “panic pulsed in the pit…” (shortly pronounced) Personification, “might of the ministry” This can only be seen, when reading out loud or listening to audiobooks. Versification https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD6Of-pwKP4 (also page 66 of our reader) So, for we only looked at simple smaller elements of sounds, however there are more connected and bigger ones which are called suprasegmental sound patterns. We are looking at the connection between these sound patterns. Sonnet 18 is probably the best known and starts with a question of comparison: we are talking about versification here (rhythm (relates to the structure of sounds), meter, rhyme). In order to analyze rhythm, we can apply a procedure scanning or scansion (we look at the metrical structure), there is a few ways we can do this in: - - Exaggeration (reading in a very exaggerated way, often this is tricky as this often does not seem natural, what we notice here is that we have few words that have more than one syllable) Word Stress (a word is pronounced in the way most convincing to me, then we try to match the words around it to make sense of a regular structure – compare = unstressed and stressed syllable = iambic foot, summer is the opposite and is called trochaic) 3 - Now we can start on the stresses and make it fit into a regular pattern, once we have established that you count the metrical feet, and you can tell that there are 5 units that contain this pattern = iambic pentameter The iambic pentameter refers to the metaphorical sound of a heartbeat, this is often said about Shakespeare. Pentameter (metrical structure of the sonnet) However, most poems do not 100% fit into that scheme!! For example Reader Page 61 → first two stances here! If we have a first line like this, with numbers, it is not clear what to do, as numbers can mess up any sense of regularity. In these cases, starting with the second stance. Sophie Hannah The Hero and the Girl next door (1995) An Aerial View Flight 608. The woman to my right Has hardly touched the meal Air France provided. She prods it with her fork as though she might, Probably won‘t, but hasn‘t quite decided. We can now start counting syllables → She eyes my empty tray with vague distaste – 10 syllables here (unstressed – stress I ate it all, and we were given loads. pattern) → iambic parameter. The first She‘s proud of her restraint, her slender waist. to lines are regular, we can conclude Neither will help her if the plane explodes. the rhythmic pattern here to the other lines. However, “Neither” falls completely out of the pattern. “This” would be more regular. This focuses attention on the line. Irregularities should express something. Here, the change in the metrical structure points to a change in the tone. We always need to look for a tendency, it does not always have to be 100% regular. For example: Page 71 on the reader This is a performance poem. It lies in the performance whether it is seen as ironic etc. It is a good example of how form and sound go together. Women have this very useless way of talking and men talk. In terms of metrical structure, it underlines this contrast. One can analyse stressed and unstressed syllables in parts we find important. In the first stance we find that they are all stressed – unstressed → TROCHEE Liz Lochhead Men talk (Rap) Women Rabbit rabbit rabbit women Tattle and titter Women prattle Women waffle and witter Men Talk. Men Talk. Women into Girl Talk About Women‘s Trouble Trivia ‘n‘ Small Talk They yap and they babble Men Talk. Men Talk. 4 Women are trochees such the word ‘women’ as well → consistence A line about men we have two verbs consisting of a stressed syllable → two stressed syllables → SPONDEE (much weightier, implies importance, meaningfulness) Is this poem serious? And how are we to decide and to guess? 2 Indications: 1) Tone of voice (ironic) 2) Exaggeration & Repetition Imagery: figurative and metaphorical language use Language that is not used in a literal way and appeals to our creativity! "You are a treasure" – "You are a silly cow" → metaphor (carrying over of sense) →some are conventionalized, we immediately know their meaning and they have gotten another meaning even, if the metaphor is not, we need to look for hints in the context or the following sentences. A Metaphor also is an indirect comparison. "They invaded the house like a herd of animals" → simile (more explicit comparison (like/as) →more direct "His story grabbed me by the throat" → personification (human attributes to non-human things) These examples came from everyday life: EXAMPLES FROM THE READER Page 68: Trees are leaning like drinkers in a bar → personification, double comparison Page 64: Pessimistic attitude towards technology, the streets are personified → we are different as we use our phones → the landmarks language → personification → none of the places know what to do with themselves Page 63: personification of body parts and books Page 62: “legs are a pit stop for men” → metaphor (semantic field of motorsports “traditionally very male sport”) On the left side: → metaphor → the women is made to fit in within the body of the men The sonnet: form and contents A number of forms have emerged, one of the oldest is the Sonnet: ▪ ▪ Origins in Italy 14 lines, variable rhyme scheme 5 ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ Italian / Petrarchan sonnet → Page 56 ➔ octave and sestet (8+6 lines of verse) English/ Shakespearean sonnet ➔ three quatrains and a concluding couplet Iambic pentametre rhyme scheme: ababcdcd efefgg The form is productive as it is flexible (Sophie Hannah also seems close). Page 56: dilates more from the norm → she takes the modern problems and shows human history, and this is highly ironical, as this poem is obviously not for kids. She shows how atrocious these things are if not even the oldest form of poems can come up with it. She stresses inhumanity is timeless. EXAMPLES The rhyme scheme can be seen in Shakes-peare → perfect Sonnet rhyme scheme Same goes for Sophie Anna, however, the words do not really fit into a typical “sonnet” → however also a perfect iambic pentameter → in this case it has an ironic subtone This inappropriacy can be seen as humorous and loaded with a lot of meaning! William Shakespeare Sophie Hannah 18 The Philander’s ansaphone message Shall I compare thee to a summer‘s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer‘s lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance, or nature‘s changing course, untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow‘st, Nor shall Death brag thou wand‘rest in his shade When in eternal lines to time thou grow‘st. I‘m not at home to take your call. Bad luck, But leave your number and I‘ll be in touch. You‘ll hear from me next time I want a fuck, (My love, my darling). Thank you very much. Please leave your name – I‘ll add it to my list, That way I won‘t forget. One does lose track… But I can guarantee that when I‘m pissed I shall be keen to get you in the sack. I knew this ansaphone would come in handy – Voice after female voice I‘ve got recorded. I play the tape back when I‘m feeling randy And one by one my ladies are rewarded. My system works supremely well, I‘ve found. Wait by the phone until your turn comes round So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 6 Sound patterns / phonological structures Page 69 in the reader o o o o o o o o alliteration consonance assonance onomatopoeia rhyme (last 2 lines – a bit like in a sonnet, however, otherwise not) metrical structure (mostly trochees however not consistently → rhythmical but no clear meter) enjambment / run-on-line / caesura (creates coherence, no pause between the lines necessarily) semicolon (so glide, gilded... → break in the meter) We immediately notice a lot of zhh-sound resembling the buzzing of bees. We here, try to figure out how those sounds help to create meaning and how they give us a whole number of meanings by supporting the contents that we find in the poem. Carol Ann Duffy When she compares bees and paper, she compares the production of honey to the production of poetry both as a process and as art created by love. o o o o o o o o o o o o o “Hour” on page 69 in the reader Love’s time’s beggar → ambiguous syntax “love is the beggar of time” Metaphor/conceptual metaphor (conventionalized metaphor): time = money Comparison: natural things that cost nothing and greatest riches The last 2 lines: idea that love is always pure but makes a something small, bigger → giving it a value (conventional look to love) Structured like a sonnet (no pure rhymes → loose variation of a sonnet) Enjambment “Britannia” on page 70 in the reader Grenfell fire: 72 people were killed, malfunctioning fridge and poor isolation lead to a big spread Many people were living there were immigrants, also there were many complaints before, it was basically “a tragedy bound to happen” Compares this with another disaster: waste material from a coal mine collapsed and slide downhill and buried a school etc. In both cases people were abandoned by the government, or powerful institution and the media “the Queen standing for the failings” Reference “Britannia” → the country did not learn from it →political poetry 7 Brian Bilston: 57 Varieties of Brexit Different formatting in the reader! It was published 2017. 57 Varieties is something the Ketchup company of Heinz has used for their merchandise. This is not usually associated with poetry and also has a rather bad image, no matter if you like it or not → metaphor “things being mashed”. Here, we have clear sound patterns and repetition, which becomes more and more annoying over time → regularity can become boring and annoying. Here, it is used to make fun of Brexit, as we hear about it all the time and that everybody talks about it. Metrical Structure: Unstressed syllables, the stress is always on the adjective: - Hard Brexit → Dactylus (sound patterns and meaning both create meaning: what does it even mean?) Free verse o o o o o o o Poetry without rhyme scheme, rhythm, or metre (without any orderable structure) Meaning making by semantic means rather than phonological means and simple phonological units Predominantly 20th and 21st Century (contemporary) Origins possibly in French Poetry (vers libre) Negative definition Closer to speech [not to be confused with blank verse (Shakespeare in his plays), which does not have a rhyme scheme but a metrical structure (iambic pentameter)] → free vers doesn’t have either of those Rupi Kaur Rupi Kaur started publishing her poetry on Tumblr and then ‘moved’ to Instagram, then she also published books, and her books has sold a lot. Many bestselling poets these days started on social media (Brian Bilston → Twitter Poet). This led to a discussion whether they can be counted among canonical poets. 8 Their poetry is often critical, funny etc. Rupi Kaur uses free verse a lot. Her main topics are sexuality, sexual harassment, abuse, gender relations, romantic attachment but predominantly pain. The fact that she published it online before gives it a confessional idea → she tried to share her pain and conviction. Page 63 → multimodal poems → an illustration of a seat being pushed in the corner. Typography differs too: -the idea of shrinking is hereditary, which can also generate meaning, hereditary is not biological but social but she applies that for her but for her it feels like it is natural and such a big part of herself Page 62 → the first boy that kissed me → no capital letters which reminds of language in messages and on social media, also syntactically speaking there is a lot going on. No punctuation, which repetitiveness of history → comparison of generation No uplifting poetry! Emphasis to typography and punctuation → characteristic of self-published fear Carol Ann Duffy → craftiness Brian Bilson → Form and Politics 9 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Susanne Reichl, Privatdoz. LECTURE 9: Literary and Cultural Theories I We started the lesson with exam information and mock questions, I will not include that here, if you are still interested, I recommend you to rewatch the first part of the lecture! Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory Part one in this lecture, and the second part next week! This is important in the sense that these theories are an important foundation for the rest of our studies, as they help us work with different aspects. Theories often have a bad reputation → they help you think things through, they help us organize our thinking. They help us engage in a discourse about literature and culture studies. Example: Choc Stars Identifying a certain celebrity: for example: semiotic signs have been added and suggest that association with the Queen in that case. → semiotic identification process So far, we just looked at the design of the chocolates, however we can take a step further and question the product, chocolate. Is it a cultural thing? It is a product that is connected with the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and also today, we can look at working conditions, etc.? This is all 1 something you can ask and research in Cultural Figure https://www.pinterest.com.mx/pin/105834659967381010/ Studies → it is an interdisciplinary endeavour (Geography, Economy…) → we can also look into art historical aspects (picture composition, visual composition – would move you in a different discipline) → We could also let people judge and guess the celebrities and measure the times in order to check which get the fastest responses etc. → We can show two images and use eye-tracking googles etc. → If we look at the selected celebrities (who choses them (race, gender..)? (Western) ideology → celebrity studies, which recently found much productivity and appeal) It depends on our interests what bases we adopt! We also must look at a more global aspect. 1 Sophie Lesson" Hannah, "Cooking The pasta's in the cupboard, dear. You'll find a saucepan on the shelf. Get your pathetic arse in gear And make the bloody tea yourself. From Early Bird Blues (1993), reprinted in Marrying the Ugly Millionaire. New and Collected Poems. Carcanet, 2015. A rather cheeky poem, many of us might be familiar with. We take our world interpretations with us while reading that poem. We immediately want do identify the gender → “a woman not wanting to cook anymore”. We tend to fall into the trap. Also, those 2 people are not necessarily in a relationship, even if we might think so at first. Who are the roles of these poems? Who is the lyrical I? What does the title mean? What structure does the poem have? Rhyme? Rhythm? Regularity? Historical aspects and models? We can also do reception studies and see what people think and associate with it. Theory as a lens There are a few metaphors of how theory works. Theory can be used as a lens; we imagine literary theory as a lens through which we can look at a text. This means decide how we look at a text (which point of view, perspective) Another metaphor can be as a spotlight which we direct at a piece of texts. A smaller part being lit by the spotlight, we draw attention to specific parts of a text. This also means we might not see the rest of the texts. Only a small circle is illuminated. This is a consequence of using a particular set of question/ theories on a text. However, we can still combine, for example two spotlights or two lenses. Another metaphor is the “toolbox metaphor”. Also used by Rob Pope. “We are doing something to the text”. The idea is that we have a toolbox and each tool is a theory and we apply it to transform the text into something useful and understandable. Pope calls this “playing around with serious toys”. These are various ways that can help us understand the role of theories better. Figure 2 https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/510854wooden-tool-box-vector-illustration 2 Terminology Theory – in the OED to look for possible meanings of the noun: it relates to contemplation, the theoretical approach vs. the practical approach, methodical, used to explain phenomena, purely abstract knowledge... This gives us an idea that theory is opposed very often to practices, even though the Prof. would rather see it as a dialogic thing: practices come out of the theory and gives us a “tool”. We need to combine the two. (As a teacher we can work by instinct, however, that can lead us to making mistakes, we can follow research, theoretical knowledge can help us in teaching practice.) Literary theory tries to work dialogical: we need to find concepts in a text in order to find something out of the text → practice of Literary Theory Some more Terminology Approach sometimes used synonymously with theory, the prof. would say that the approach, however, is broader than theory, in everyday language (a way of dealing with something), in literature theory: broader aspect, theories are formalized and given a name, approaches can be more intuitive and less formalized Practice Theory/Practice as complementary, in order to move from one to the other we need the following terms Method also Methodology = set of concepts, theories, methods that explain what we are going to do with our material – what are we going to do when we approach something, a method is one of those activities within methodology The theory of theories What all theories have in common is that they are all grounded in a certain principle about how the world/knowledge works or how we see it. A number of literary theories concern themselves with how we think of knowledge and its status in the world → epistemology/epistemological (theory of understanding) We also have to take “truth” into account; however, it is not easy to say for people in cultural studies → truth in a way that we question things → no absolute truth 2 Main Directions in Epistemology (How can we understand the world?) 1) Empirical (the knowledge gained through observation, experienced with our senses → in other Sciences: connected to data, however here it simply means something we can know by experience and observation) 2) Hermeneutic (knowing and understanding through interpretation, it’s nothing that can be objectified, however it is not totally subjective, it has to be communicable, 3 individual interpretation has to be agreed up on some extend → individual thoughts become a social process, it does not exist in a vacuum) Natural Sciences vs. Humanities → however that’s not the case Another such theory is constructivism - Based on the idea that people construct the world around them based on their experiences and knowledge structures Every knowledge and every claim to stable truth is a myth Language is a way of constructing reality (basis of every creative process) For example: social media bubbles, covid discourses, various truths are constructed in different groups in different dominant discourses, gender constructs Another, rather philosophical, theoretical concept is Mimesis/ Mimetic: - - Plato, Aristotle Imitation True representation of the world/reality Literary studies: Mimetic text as the best form As close to reality as you can make it Now it seems rather outdated (TV Series: Medical Dramas that often rely on expert knowledge as they want it to seem realistic, or media projects about minority groups, the danger is that not only one story can represent everything → there is a variety of stories and experiences) Even in Science-Fiction texts (natural science teacher explaining science to sciencefiction writers in order for them to make sense in a particular fictive world) Didacticism/ Didactic - Denotation same as Didaktik Connotation: In English a rather negative connotation (in a sense of teaching and talking down) → if you want to express positive feelings = educational The idea that we should learn while reading has been around for a long time, however, we should also enjoy it Didactic is the idea that we should learn from something (for example moral tales from the 19th Century, nowadays this is out of the window) Nowadays: there should be something children and teenagers indirectly should take from a book (a specific moral, for example, friendship, growth, development, good vs. evil), today not as prominent as it used to be Literary Communication Very basic model of communication. This can be extended by approaches and theories. The graphic didn’t fit on this page; therefore, you can find it on page 5 of this script. However, the graphic is not entirely truthful, feminism has been used in a context sense, but they might as well be with the author (early studies were just finding female authors) → might fight into more than one category → different approaches for some theories, such as feminism 4 Also, the beginning of queer studies were pretty much author based → searching for queer authors and queer writings, now it is a social setting on a world level rather than an individual level. However, there are also trends that stress particular approaches. We can also see that the author is pretty much alone → typical of this Figure 3 from the slides of the prof. particular time → “The author is dead” it has no function in the meaning-making process → nowadays there is more theories clustered around context This is a model, therefore also a simplification! It should help us categorize. The ones clustered next to the text are exclusively focusing on the text, however the other ones obviously also look at the texts. Questions about Literary Theories What do we need literary theory for? They help us focus on certain aspects and relate them to the outside world → mostly with contextual theories. It also gives us insight of the ideological position if the text. They force us to categorize our thinking into concepts that other people have thought up → they give us structure and terminology. Structuralist approach, for example, can help us articulating our thoughts which enables us to talk about a particular discourse (= social activity). We need theories to find out where authors, texts and we stand and to formulate these. Where do they come from? They come from many different areas: a lot come from linguistics (Saussure, word meaning), but also psychology, philosophy, history, economics (Marxism), psychoanalysis… Many have their origins in other disciplines and were passed on and applied to literary studies. How can literary theory be defined? Thinking about reading, but thinking in a structured, formalized, and disciplined way → giving our thinking an explicit foundation which helps us explain our actions. Can I analyse a text without literary theory? On one hand yes, but also no. The thing is about making it explicit – if we observe that we find certain interests and that we don’t approach a text without a particular bias and perspective, we usually do not everything, we notice something → this helps us find where we stand (doesn’t have to be a particular formulated position, however we can categorize ourselves by noticing our interest). We can analyse without knowing literary theory, but it is very hard not to have a particular perspective, and out of that the next step would be finding a specific bases for a structured theory. 5 Do I have to choose a literary theory and stick with it whatever I do? No, but we CAN have a main focus connected to a theory, however, most people combine theories and practices, and this combination has been called eclecticism. Some go very well together (intersectionality = combination for example of racism and feminism) Are modern approaches better than old ones? Not necessarily, some of them are interesting and they are new, and people are curious, however they are not (always) better. FOR EXAMPLE: New Criticism is a text-based approach of the post second WW looking at the text itself not the context, but the practice of closed reading is still with us. Nowadays we read rather contextually, however the term closed reading is still around, for detailed reading. Psychoanalysis is quite old and nowadays have moved on greatly beyond Freud and a lot of things from him aren’t up to debate anymore. Sometimes are still used like “super ego” etc. Individual concepts from old theories sometimes are used in newer ones. Are literary theories subject to fashion? Yes, however, we should not jump on any trends, trying out is a good idea but we should not forget about all other approaches → paradigm (a commonly accepted model or standard in a discipline, something everybody agrees on: Culture Studies → constructivism). This also shifts and is a continuum. What is the role of ideology in theory? Very often theories are connected with ideologies, for example, critical race theory and right wing do not work well together. However, using an ideology does not necessarily mean supporting them. Can I use any theory on any text? We will try that out next week, and one can try, however, it does not always work perfectly. Ecocritical approaches do not work in a small poem where no words from the semantic field of nature can be found. 6 Choc Stars revisited The difference to the questions raised at the beginning as that now they have categories and labels which point to theories people have communicated in terms of a community of literary theorists. This is where we want to go. Rather than using your intuition the idea is to have a backing and being able to locate what we think in this framework. Figure 4 from the slides of the prof 7 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Susanne Reichl, Privatdoz. LECTURE 10: Literary and Cultural Theories II Introduction We started the lecture by watching a YouTube Video to William Wordsworth, „Composed upon Westminster Bridge “. We again revised the general overview of Literary Theories and the graphic connected to it! We have to add that sometimes different theories work better than others, due to the different topics and themes (and maybe the intentions). Sometimes we do not only discuss what is in a text, but what is not in the text and shed a light in it by using a specific theory. Analysis & Theories: Composed upon Westminster Bridge Reader Page 58 Different approaches, what we ask and need to do and what it helps us with. This poem in particular a lot of actors and actresses have recited. Biographical Approach: This occurs very often in school: starting with the authors life (however not the best approach as it remains like a shadow over the text as it gets too dominant and influences our understanding of the text, however, it is a valid approach in a sense of literary research) Composed upon Westminster Bridge, SEPT. 3, 1802 – W. Wordsworth EARTH has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still! We ask: o How does the writer’s life inform his text? We need o o Close reading of the text Research about the author Figure 1 free domain … based on historical and biographical research (maybe even connected to the time, and epoque, but we more or less stick with the author’s life, we can do that through diaries etc.) 1 In the case of “our poem”: If we look at the title (reference of time and place – was he really there? Yes, but not on that day, he was there 2 weeks earlier, we know that from the diaries of his sister, when he was on his way to meet his illegitimate daughter – however does that help us understand the poem? It is interesting, but does it really help our understanding in any way different from without the information?) o o What is interesting is his sister’s diary (we can see that what she wrote is not so different content wise from her brother’s poem → city appears as a phenomenon) We can link that up with a gender approach (Dorothy wasn’t a poet, he took care of her brother when it came to household chores, cooking) → a lot of feminist approach revolved around her figure as she was a part of the creative process, as she took notes during their trip, which her brother, for his poems got back to We get: o A focus of authorial intention and a historical and individual background (as a meaning power) Structuralism We ask for o o Structure in the text Structure connecting this and other texts (larger structure this is part of: genres, traditions..) We need o o Closed reading Knowledge about genres, other examples of the time, traditions, literary history We get o o A systematicity of parallels and contrasts An impression of certain tension in the text (binary oppositions – things that don’t work out?) Poststructuralism: would go a step further: “I don’t believe this tension in the texts, there is something going on they are not telling us, why so?” In the case of “our poem”: When we talked about poetry: sound structure rhymes, rhythm, semantic (culture, natura contrast, animate, inanimate thing → city is personified, the city is a major structure, which is 2 inanimate, presented as a living being (mighty heart, garment) → but we also have a binary opposition of movement and stillness (river flow-somebody observing) Larger Structure: sonnet (combining reading with formats of poetry making it easy to see, and enabling us to compare Poststructuralism / Deconstruction Poststructuralism is often used for the theoretical approaches; deconstruction is the action connected → taking things apart rather than accepting these contrasts (looking into this in more depth?) We ask o o Which structures, beliefs, or grand narratives does the text use which need to be critically assessed? (skeptical) 2 What is missing here? (looking for things not working out, what is Figure https://www.istockphoto. not there?) com/de/vektor/dekonstr We need o o uktion-gm1131358497299542346 Critical distrust Reading ‘against the grain’ of the text (swimming against the general direction, trying to find out something what is beyond most readers want to or should believe, also questioning represent, criticizing the lack of something, often this is necessary because certain people in power are trying to naturalize something making a certain thing appear natural that is just a dominant discourse) We get o o o Going beyond, digging deeper A counter-discourse, an uncovering of text Finding hidden meanings Sometimes it is said that this takes out the aesthetic enjoyment. We can generate more than one meaning, by looking at a text like that we get more out of the poem. Psychoanalytical Criticism We ask o How is the unconscious of the text/writer, and how does it manifest and come across to us We need o o Close reading of the text Combined with research into psychoanalysis (Freund, Jung..) Figure 3 https://www.history.co m/tag/sigmund-freud 3 We get o o Focus on the psyche of the writer or the text (there is something going on underneath) Focus on the psyche of the characters (Freud did that himself) We can look at the text and see whether we can see something. Freud believed that everybody represses their sexuality and this unfolds in the unconscious of the texts (here biographical approach can be combined) In the case of “our poem” However, we can also look for symbols of female and male sexuality in the landscape in this case (nakedness in connection to the word: garment) Reader Reception/ Phenomenology/ Cognitive Studies Orientation towards the reader and how the text communicates meaning (focus on understanding processes) We ask: o How is an understanding of the story possible? We need: o o Detailed reading of the text Basic knowledge of cognitive processes Figure 4 https://webstockreview.net /explore/psychologyclipart-femalepsychologist/ We get o An idea of how the implied reader and his/her comprehension processes, and indeed our own comprehension and perception processes play a part for our understanding In the case of “our poem”: Poem is about seeing, receiving something (semantic field) → poem as such is about understanding and perception (lyrical I is trying to make us understand something), but also we have a lot of adjectives and nouns that evaluate the situation positively (beauty, mighty), they are clustered in order to make us aware of the lyrical I’s view. Strong sense of an implied river (would he be.. = imaginary passer-by) → gives us a feel of the exaggeration → a way of communication → sense of sharing the sight → authority on those observation (conversation between lyrical I and implied reader about explaining the beauty of the sight) Not an author centered approach: speaker of the poem, lyrical I (function rather than a person) Gender Studies / feminism We ask o How are gender roles represented in the text? 4 o How is male/female constructed? (also, beyond the binary) We need o o Critical/deconstructive reading Research on concepts for gender behavior and language We get o A critical reading of gender construction in the text In the case of “our poem”: attention to pronouns (he-imaginary male figure), God presumably male (especially at that time), we also have to thing beyond that again. The first pronoun is interesting in a sense that the passive person is a he (gendered space at that time was females inside the house, men in public) → therefore we could say the lyrical I is realistic, however, we could also question it and say: yes women were outside at that time as well (patriarchal position: didn’t acknowledge the presence of women), we can also connect this with the sonnet form (Shakespeare sonnet: often said to be directed to women and men, and some we do not know, but if we take those addressed to women: often the beauty is addressed in women-poem → critics: a way of objectifying) If we look at the city as women (due to the garments – describes with beauty etc.) then we can say that the Lyrical I he is doing the same thing → reducing femininity to beauty Marxist Approach … has nothing to do with favoring communism and its history We ask o How are the material circumstances of the story represented? (such as class system, economy, material wealth) We need o o Critical reading of the text (also with historical background) Look for signs of material conditions and production processes (often through gaps and absences) Figure 5 https://www.clipartkey.com/view/iJh Rbo_clipart-free-library-social-classsystems-upper-middle/ We get o A focus on socio-economic conditions (balanced or in contrast) In the example of “our poem”: We have a lot of material things (ships, temples..) → all those are man-made and perform a contrast to the nature-like description (poet was a nature poet) → we do not say engaging in the work there (ships need a harbor where a lot of work is going on especially at that time, same goes for the city streets → we see instead signs of power (we say high towers used to 5 dominate people through religion, government, the theatres (mostly for upper class people and nobility) and ships were we do not see the work done there) → specific class implied in the description (owning class) Postcolonial theory We ask: o Are there patterns or representation of colonization and imperialism in the text? In the case of “our poem”: Why do we need a harbor at that time? → connection to the slave triangle, colonial history, imperialism → we get the façade of a rich place that was built on the wealth of imperialism → consequence of ruthless exploitation (deconstructive reading: no acknowledgement comes at the cost of a lot of lives also from people outside of London) Here we can also combine the Marxist approach and the postcolonial theory (where the wealth was built) We need: o o Contextual reading of the text Research about colonization and imperialism It was all in place all the time (Canada, India, South Africa → still actuality at the time of the poem → meaning of the ships?). What we can also so more southern there we can see poorer conditions outside of the city. We get: o A focus of power relation and hegemonies (London was the most powerful place..) New Historicism / Cultural Materialism We ask: o How can we understand history through literature and literature through history? We need: o o Read the text within the historical context Research about the historical era We get: o A richer understanding of a particular era Also accepts literary as sources! If we do that, we can find out how this is an idealized view of London and how it was presented, and how it was presented by other literary sources 6 Ecocriticism We ask: o How is the ecosystem represented in a text? We need: o o Close reading of the text Focus on nature/culture, animals/human We get : o A focus on ecological relations, and an idea of the nature/culture divide Figure 6 https://www.ecosia.org/im ages?q=ecosystem%20clip art#id=DB7A5D4FCCAEAA 1D65E7969066149002728 0034C In the case of “our poem” In this example: city is a natural construct, city empty of humans and animals (rats) → sticking with the beauty (city is not really an ecosystem, even if it was described as one → representation of a time where it was noisy, smelly and crowded → poem impression is like a tourist advertisement → tension (he was glossing over the less palatable aspects of the city) Intertextuality / Intermediality We ask o How is it related to other text/media We need: o o Intertextual reading of text Wide knowledge of related texrs We get: o An idea of interconnectedness of texts and other media products (images, paintings, diary) In the case of “our poem” Looking in the diary of the sister, we can also look forward in time and how the poem has been used in contemporary media (Westminster Bridge Attack → people died → many people shared the poem (picture – chaos and then the natural beautiful poem). Figure 7 photo from "the telegraph" 7 H.G. Wells “The Time Machine” We watched the official trailer of the 1960 movie of the Time Machine. Book studies = focus on the materiality of the book, history of the book (not so much about the text) On the first version cover, for example we can see the Sphinx, and in the insight we can see a graphic (even a misprint: H.S.Wells) → there also are different editions (such as a slightly shorter) Also, the book is a novella and is called “The Time Machine: An Invention” 2 Ways of understanding: 1. The Time Machine as the Invention of the Time Traveler Story is an 2. This invention by H.G. Wells as it also says on the frontier Book studies approach would also look at different varieties of the cover → we can take a cultural studies approach to these covers (signs that signal what genre we will read, such as signs signifying Science Fiction, maybe also fantasy, some also focus on the romance, and some give us different images of time machines (mechanical signifiers) Biographical Approach Herbert George Wells (1866-1944) His education wasn’t easy → not enough money, however as he was smart, he got many scholarships He later got into what was later called “The Imperial College of Science and Technology” and studied with T.H. Huxley (grandfather of the author of Brave New World) → had a great influence as he was a natural science Figure 8 https://www.babelio.co m/auteur/HGWells/26217/photos 8 teacher (scientific procedure in the story including references to different scientific field → towards the beginning: “'You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.' 'Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?' said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair. 'I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it.'“ ) This also becomes clear when he talks about his experiences during time travel → like a scientific observer he explains and repeats everything and he often says: “Of course I was completely wrong” → laying open his scientific procedure and wronggoings with his audience in the text His audience might not believe him → later → flowers as evidence “Experimental Verification” → we do not find that in many novels (generally a lot of scientific knowledge → he keeps hypothesizing about Darwin etc.) He later also became a teacher for the field (the time traveler teaches too!) While he is a natural scientist, but he also speculates a lot about social structure and he says: “The too-perfect security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence. That I could see clearly enough already.“ T.H. Huxley describes this to in “The Struggle for Existence in Human Society” → retrogressive metamorphosis Also connected with an intertextual approach! Structuralism Many contrasts: Light vs. Dark, the idea of below ground and upper world, day vs. night More abstract level: present vs future, progress vs. regression, knowing vs. not knowing Contrast: civilization “brutes” (violent) (nobel) vs. It is also interesting to compare text passages: Both are the first encounters of the time traveller with the Eloi and the Morlocks. On one hand the sections look parallel (getting to know the unknown). One contact is described with no reason why there should be this irritation, however there is. 9 Structure = Parallel scene and then a contrast differencing the two groups We also have to look at the narrative structure: 2 more passages: The I, here being the unnamed narrator of the frame story (tells it all). This whole long narrative is a first-person narrative told by the time traveller himself → the unnamed narrator just sits there and listens and transfers. Why is there this unnamed narrator? → 1895: Time Travel was not a thing, not even Science-Fiction a lot (H.G. Wells as foundational for creating that time traveller → some people claim him as the first founder of Science-Fiction) → H.G. Wells was taking quite a risk at that time for telling that story → he had to frame this with an audience that is kind of against it – none of his listeners really believe him – he was writing it as if we were his audience Then he has the trustworthy unnamed narrator who then reports that somebody else told the story – we might not trust the first-person narrator → audience in the ban of the time traveller makes the narrative self-critical (the Time Traveller: he keeps being wrong, but this is the own way he can tell us → he never pretends to know everything) → this all sets expectations and reliability H.G. Wells had to convince people that as a narrative this was even possible! Intradiegetic Narrator! (he tells a story to other characters within the frame narrative) The people collected at the time travellers house are interesting: o o o o o o Mayor Journalist Psychologists Philby Doctor The Very Young Man (stereotype) ➔ Usually fairly respectable jobs Genres o o Earlier: scientific romance → 1950: science fiction Darko Suvin 1979: “novum” and “cognitive estrangement” (= we experience something new that needs to be explained to us) 10 o o o o o The Time Machine. An invention. (also a fictional invention)) Speculative fiction (for all genres set in a world that does not match with our own worlds – often asking the “what if” question) Dystopia (looking into a negative future) Adventure stories (at the time it came directly from a tradition of adventure stories, for especially young boys: 19th Century: boys were made to read many adventure stories to be brave and fight – time traveller also travels in “dark corners”) Novella (longer and more complex) vs. short story 11 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF LITERATURE AND CULTURE Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Susanne Reichl, Privatdoz. LECTURE 11: Literary Theories III & Metareferentiality, Intertextuality The Time Machine & Literary Theories … continuation of the last 2 lectures! We revised the literary theories again. The model which can also be found on lecture 9,10. This is a reminder to think about thinking metaphorically at the concepts we are looking at. Literary theories can be thought of as lenses, spotlights or a toolbox – this image is made to illustrate for destructive reading it is like ‘reading against the grain’ → consciously going against Figure 1 from istockphotos and from the slides of something imposed to us! the prof. To be reminded of the theories we will now apply, I advise you to look through my more recent lecture scripts, namely 9 & 10! Poststructuralism/Deconstruction Our goal here is to get a counter-discourse, in Foucault’s terms, and an uncovering of the text. Here, we can also start by identifying structures, like we do from a Structuralist lens. We are here picking out specific approaches. As the Time Machine is longer than a poem, we have to focus on examples: 2 Binaries: Past vs. Future (What happens when he comes to the future – the only interesting things for the Time Traveller is how the Future can be led back to the past, he asks himself “how has it come so far? What happened in the meantime” → he also finds many artifacts of the past which explain more than the future itself → reduced/different version (future as an explanation of the past) Progress vs. Regression (Time Traveller believes of the future as an improvement, he has to find out to opposite is the case, he deconstructs his belief himself, the reader does this process with the Time Traveller, who constantly is proved wrong again → Deconstruction of the ongoing progress) 1 Example: This is a bit like the poem we analysed before. The question here is: “How does the Time Traveller know the rest of the world?” → he cannot see the real word → so far as I could see … all the world → generalization which are contradictory. He applies grand narratives and generalizes. He is blind to the possibility of other places existing. It covers the Time Traveller as an Imperialists (he translates one space into the rest of the world) Psychoanalytical Criticism We can take different approaches here: one of them is searching for symbols also we can focus on the Time Traveller’s Experience of the underground world: can be compared to the unconscious (underground representing the unconscious, as Freud said the unconscious is much more violent than we think, and maybe even know) We can also look at the symbolic act of entering the underground: can be compared reentering the womb. Example: Both passages can be interpreted from this perspective. Even if he uses terms like impenetrated in the first passage, which are not explicitly sexually connotated → he is considering his manliness, pondering on how alone he is (he isn’t quite the typical adventurous hero) → he is conscious of his feelings and fears Function of laughter in the second passage: Freud has worked intensely on that: laughter as there cover regression or to cover sexual tension, or to release it. It’s imaginable that he feels regression towards the world, himself or in this case the Morlocks. Reader reception/cognitive criticism Here again, we merge theories to a reader-oriented approach. If we start generally: Time Machine is a text about mental processes (understanding, deductions, conclusions, scientific beliefs and procedures → cognitive functions) 2 Vocabulary alone is conclusive: mind 47 times, know/knew 63 times, thought/thing 58 times, see/saw 252 times (seeing as understanding) → distant reading (with text analysis programmes, semantic analysis) Time Machine is all perceiving a new world! about Example: He is saying that his satisfaction of what he thought was correct is not long. Why is the narrator so unreliable? Most his hypothesises are not true and not proven. He behaves like a scientist this builds up trust in the narrator rather than distrust (as reader’s we have no reason to doubt him as he himself seems so unsure about his cognition and perception). He questions his perception in the second passage again which again strengthens our belief (constantly reminded of scientific procedures). Gender studies / Feminism The most obvious thing we can criticize the female representation and the dominantly male approach of higher educated people. What is interesting too is, that the Morlocks seem to not really have an assigned gender. As soon as he gets closer to the Eloi he gives the ‘little ones’ ‘creatures’ a gender → Weena becomes a woman It is interesting, as a late 19th Century this was a very modern view on family. The differentiation between the genders (men working, women looking for children) → not as a natural state but a necessity due to factors like war, work, negative aspects Traditional gender roles are not found in the future world of the time machine. Can also be linked to a biographical approach again, as he was later part of a political programme introducing extra payments for mothers. 3 Marxist Approach If we look at social circumstances and how they are represented, first of all he is puzzled at the fact there are no workers → then he thinks that the Eloi and the Morlocks are in a master – slave – relationship → not the case It relates to the class system in Britain at the time. Again, if we look at it autobiographical, we can see that he was a Socialist who engaged in politics (also ideology of Reform through Graduation) We can relate it to politics like many dystopian fictions nowadays. He had this wrong as well → a society cannot exist without people working (society as a paradise) → we can connect this to his political works New Historicism/Cultural Materialism In both cases the question is about the relationship and history. It is interesting how the British perspective never leaves. He always compares to British class discourses. (Francis Galton and his view of positive eugenics → intermarriage in the nobility, to maintain → Wells clearly has a different opinion on that.) In New Historicism: no distinction of discourse in different fictions, sociology etc. Galton and Wells can be read side by side and compared. Cultural Materialism: which things are available to the time traveller (light bulbs, chairs, camera) but also the scientific discourses (often in the frame story). The most important is the Darwinian thought → Darwin never used “survival of the fittest” and that it would only always be “positive evolution” → this is often said and shown by Wells (if we don’t end the class system we might end up with 2 completely different classes) 4 The passage locates the Time Traveller fairly well of rich inventor who is up with the art as the. He is describing as a Time Traveller (rather a thing, however he is still described → gray eyes) Afterwards the “camera” is moved to the room, there is a level of materialism that is described here. And then it goes on to talk about the chairs → which create an atmosphere (connecting it to a gender perspective → male space = luxurious space → upper middle-class house) We could also look to other texts maybe describing similar households. Postcolonial Theory Does not have directly linked to colonial descriptions. However, we can still find patterns of, for example, domination or perception. We look for similarities to colonialist processes → as they are not straightforward, we might overread them. Example: To the Time Traveller the Eloi look all the same (a perception often made by Europeans when talking about East-Asian). → “Negro fresh from Africa” → “someone who has not seen anything modern” He displays othering over the Eloi, as soon as he finds out they do not have technology. Besides Weena the Eloi do not have individuality. Against the Morlocks he also feels a lot of disgust. The Time Traveller reflects on the image he has of the Morlocks. He feels disgust on the Morlocks (while racism is directed at skin-color → here the paleness of their body is found disgusting → and he says he has been influenced by the Eloi) Perception: good vs. bad → here the Morlocks are a subject of racism Ecocriticism How is the ecosystem represented? How do values feature in the text? 5 We look for nature as more artificial systems → Time Traveller first believes in the perfect conquest of nature (could be criticized → nature shouldn’t be conquered, also he shouldn’t judge Eloi and Morlocks as both animals) Example: This is interesting from an ethical perspective. To look at the Eloi being constructed and them being weak is interesting. He doesn’t acknowledge that the Eloi are adult human beings of the same humans as he is. Nature is artificial and perfect; ecocriticism would deconstruct the positive aspect of artificial nature. It is also interesting to see how he views the two kinds of humans on Earth. He wrote off all the humanity in the Morlocks. He both compares them to insects. In terms of ethical criticism, you could look at the next two quotations. We have to be critical of the passage → he wants to kill the Morlocks (also from a colonial point of view, we can see the term ‘brute’ being used which was often used in a imperial context as well!) Intertextuality/Intermediality By that approach you can create an interconnectedness of genres, themes, concerns etc. For example, we can connect it to scientific work such as Darwin and Huxley, such as political discourses and any other Time Travel Texts. Also, Time Machines in different media, and films, and how the Time Machine is a discourse in modern times. 6 Here are 2 examples of Graphic Novel versions of the time Machine in which the aesthetics are very different! 2007 – version was pretty much inspired by the movie. On the right side below, we can see an insight of the 2010 version. The text her is very much taken from the novel (of course shortened, but not a lot). On the left side everything is neat and structured before he enters the time machine. On the other side everything seems rather hectical after he had entered the time machine. The Graphic Novel gives us more modes to communicate this (for example we can see a difference in panel structure). Also, on the left side we have a classic example of progress from the left to the right (the case in cultures writing in that ‘direction’). Also, we see the past on the left side and the future on the right → this can also be connected to this cultural concept, also by the movement the time machine is facing (facing into the direction in progress). On the other side this seems different. The direction is changing → seems like he is going back to the past (idea of future as progress is already questioned) The Graphic novel has coherent images → whenever necessary artists break this standard We can also look at the different colour palettes and interpret these. 7 Representation of Time Machines Most of these examples come from children’s books. However, also the 1960s version of the movie. We can also here see parallels between the movie adaption and the graphic novel we have seen earlier. Generally, the Time Machines are usually combined with vehicles or things like a closet. Back to The Future In popular culture, the most famous Time Traveller is the man from back to the Future I. This is also a Time Travel Story that is referenced a lot in popular culture nowadays. On the next slide we see how famous and popular it really is → it was even made into a picture book for children. The fact that the movie was aimed at young adults and teenagers was made as a picture book for children is quite amazing. As the concept of time travel is a rather big and confusing one even for adults. We can see the endpaper before the actual story starts, it is interesting is that the sign of time, and therefore also time travel: clocks are omnipresent on the picture. No matter how scientifically advanced a story about time travel is we will always be able to find a sign of that symbolism (maybe also only by the mechanics that might remind us of clocks). 8 Fun with Literary Theories This is an example in which the children’s sing The Itsy-Bitsy Spider is analysed in a Marxist Approach. Other examples have been done, for example analysis of Winnie The Pooh (example of theory work but also as popular culture “fun”) what is clear, though, is that literary theories point us to different aspects of texts which can be very fascinating. Textual referentiality Referentiality as opposed to factuality, referntiality, as the name proposes, refers to something. Referential texts refer to something outside the book. Literary texts usually have some connection to the outside world also making them referential texts. There are texts and genres they are set in fantastic worlds → there is some references, however, to the world we know, such as social classes, corruption, dictatorships etc. But of course, also human beings work: emotions, feelings, love relationships If they weren’t referential, we would probably not understand what is going on! Self-referntiality / Metareferntiality = they can refer to themselves, or to literature “A statement or text which is self-referential (or reflexive) refers to itself, drawing attention to its own techniques and artifice” (J.A. Cuddon, Dictionary of Literary Terms. 5th ed. 2012) This definition has 2 Elements: it explains the term and explains the effects and why it does so It states and points out that it is not a scientific texts and that it’s qualities shouldn’t be seen as such. There are different variants: 1. Texts referring to themselves Reader page 56 Sonnet by Shakespeare “and this gives life to thee..” Shakespeare writes about admiration for a person, however, also about the craft and art of poetry, as he refers to the lines of the poem, “this” also refers to the sonnet, also he talks about the power of poetry stating that one could never die out 2. Texts referring to writing literature Reader page 56 by Robert Burns, it clearly is a remark about the difficulty or the easy of writing a sonnet 9 3. Texts referring to books or reading Reader page 67 by Joseph Coelho, which refers to the activity of reading and books, a lot of references to books and words that can be found in books However, even if those were examples of poetry, this can be applied to narrative fiction (widespread that a term spread: metafictionality), but also to other media such as films or series. Metafiction: Most definitions refer to Linda Hutcheon. Metafiction is all about drawing attention to the craftedness of fiction itself. It openly declares it is constructed rather than imitating something going on in the world (this can be done seriously, but also playfully) Examples from the reader p. 30 Lemony Snicket: A serious of unfortunate events Lemony Snicket from the beginning knows from the beginning that there will not be a happy ending. He does not hesitate to openly say he knows much more than the readers do. p. 29 Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children The narrator also starts in a powerful position, by revising the tradition of storytelling, this move from starting as a fairytale is as if he is trying to use the phrase ‘once upon a time’ but then finds it not useful and then decides to rather continue differently. The narrator becomes more and more specific and even points out the title of the book, slowly leading the story to the main event (division of India into India and Pakistan) → historical setting and playful ties between history and fiction → magical realism (ties of magic elements in an otherwise realistic setting, unlike fantasy the setting is more or less realistic, however, creatures or things with fantastic origins appear) → the whole novel plays with that difference (fairytale opening doesn’t seem to work, due to the rather realistic background and setting) → however, the magical elements are helpful to make the realistic part of the story make more sense for the reader Conscious narrator letting the reader know he is in full control of the narrative p. 49 Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends It revolves around Covid Lockdowns and a group of friends who travel to a house to escape the pandemic. The omniscient narrator links the general observation to the actual characters in a novel → metafiction to help some humor Intertextuality / Intermediality = they can refer to other texts or forms of media, intertextuality is directed outside the texts → Move from an individual, independent text towards a "networks of thematic and formal references between texts" (Nünning 189) → we are no longer interested in the individuality of the text and the independence (the most recent interferential texts in 10 popular culture are the Bible and also many old Greek or Roman Mythology, European fairytales, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Romantic Poems, Alice in Wonderland, Shakespeare, in the US: Moby Dick, Edgar Ellen Poe, Emily Dickenson → obviously depending on the genre (H.G. Wells for science fiction, Agatha Christie for crime)) → Allusions to canonical works of art (if someone goes whale watching and someone mentions a white whale → reference to Moby Dick → texts referring to or rewriting other texts (or media) page 57 in the reader Shakespeare Sonnet 116 → form: sonnet of 14 lines, regular iambic pentameter → regular rhyme scheme → “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / admit impediments” Impediments = obstacle, marriage of true mind = soulmates (if true soulmates meet there cannot be any obstacles → the sonnet is about the consistency of love, even when things around it change → love doesn’t doubt, it is fixed) → Absolute certainty (last 2 lines) → Canonical Status “CXVI” by Carol Ann Duffy → 14 lines but fragmented, not quite iambic pentameter but often 5 feet (counting syllables = 10 syllables) → rhythm and rhyme not as regular (fragmented and not perfect sonnet → more modern version of a sonnet) → “Let me admit” [impediments, line 2, marriage, minds] → The certainty has gone out of the poem → she uses the first line of Shakespeare fragmented in the poem → Postmodern playfulness and doubts → Acknowledging poem’s status by questioning its certainties → Quite an extreme simile in the first line → personification of impediments → “like someone smashes Shakespeare’s poem and the certainty within it” → After the rats: contrast expressing doubt about the relationship → Can the sonnet prove that their love is consistent and not a dying life? → “Love is not Love.” → punctuation is significant → Whole poem seems to be a continuation of a dying relationship, maybe even more mature than Shakespeare’s version (describing the beginning of love → Duffy rather focus on the ending) Now the question comes up, why Carol Ann Duffy decides to rewrite that? → It is effective → most reader will know the reference → She takes the poem down and questions the certainty in the content of the poem → She deconstructs the poem in a creative sense and visually 11