Categories
Saussure

Formalisms

ImageWhen doing this week’s reading what stood out to me the most is how different the two branches of Formalist are even though both look at what makes literature language different from ordinary language.

 The Russian formalists concentrate more in the scientific and rational approach to study literature.

And the American New criticisms where interested in the non-scientific and non-rational dimension of art, in order to find truth.

One idea proposed by the formalist is that literature evolves on its own, by defamiliarizing the familiar, and that this is done autonomously from social history and world history. One example given to prove this is Don Quixote, formalist claim that this work makes fun of romantic novels, without having any changes in the real world only in literature. I would argue that this is not the case; you have to keep in mind that when this book was written the romantic novels Don Quixote makes fun of no longer were as popular and people in order to understand the humour needed to have historical information like be familiar with “El Mio Cid”. Only with this social and historical background could this book me made so popular up until our day. So in general I don’t agree that literature is separate from the real world but instead that both influence each other. One of the examples proposed to show how literature defamiliarizes the familiar was Tolstoy idea of property from the view of a horse, again I think in order to be talking about property even if it’s from a view of a horse you still need the social and historical history, you need the context to understand it.

The second aspect that caught my attention was the reading by Saussure on general linguistics, where he talks about semiology and how this relates a lot with cognitive psychology. When talking about sign, signified and signifier, he criticizes that “some people regard language , when reduced to its elements, as a naming-process only-a list of words each corresponding to the thing that it names”(60-61), because if you believe this you would also need to assume that readymade ideas existed before words/ language.  This reminded me of a case I saw in memory psych class, about a 27 year old man who was born death and was never been thought sign language so he had no language, a grad student met this man and took on the challenge of teaching him her name was Susan Schaller, this took many years until he was able to comprehend language (a book was written about it called “a man without word by Susan Schaller). What is interesting about this case is that psychologist looked at how having no language impeded this man from forming complex memories, and how he had very little recollection and memories of his life before he learned a language. So I agree with Saussure when he questions the ability to have ideas without language. I think they are both interconnected you need to have both in order for the language and ideas to function properly. And this is really what you see when you look at signified and signifier its ideas and sound image(language) put together to make linguistic signs. 


An Application of Structuralist Principles in Poetry

As I (slowly) progressed through the readings for the week, I began to search for patterns in the articles, watching as the articles slowly built on one other, particularly through the ideas of “semiology” or the creation of ‘signs’ in language.  This idea of interpreting signs through language, particularly through the lens of the basic lingustics as outlined in Culler’s “The Linguistic Foundation” and Saussure’s “Course in General Linguistics” (both of which I found extraordinarily helpful and fascinating, as I have no linguistics background whatsoever) ultimately became a terminology game for me.  As I wrestled with the elusive “sign, signified, signifier” concept, coupled with the nuances between ideas like “value” and “signification,” I decided to attempt to apply some of the Structuralist principles to one of my favorite poems, in an attempt to better understand what Saussure and Culler were getting at.

To Be Alive
by Gregory Orr:
“To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That’s crudely put, but…
If we’re not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?” [1]

This has been one of my favorite poems for awhile, and taking another look at the way the language in this poem operates has brought many new questions to the surface.

I’ll begin with the use of two specific words in this poem, the words ‘carcass’ and ‘spark,’ and try to apply what Saussure writes in his claim that “the lingusitic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image” (Rivkin and Ryan, 61) [2]. In both of these cases, the first thing that comes to my mind (the ‘signifieds,’ as I’ll call them) when I read each of these words were the literal meanings of these words – ‘carcass’ as the dead body of an animal, and ‘spark’ as the burst of light that appears from the generation of electricity.  These words, acting only as signifieds, don’t bring about the meaning in the poem that the author is attempting to convey.  As such, it is necessary to bring the ideas of ‘signification’ and ‘value’ into play. 

Value, which, as Saussure writes, is “accordingly determined by its environment” (Ibid 67) remains dependent upon the linguistic rules that govern it, but this also means these words can be nuanced with additional meanings within these rules, provided one has the context to derive those meanings.  Saussure also writes that it is “impossible to fix even the word signifying ‘sun’ without first considering its surroundings” (Ibid.)  In examining the ‘surroundings’ detailed within the poem – the ‘surroundings’ here, for example, adhere to the idea of ‘living’ – the value of these words changes.  I see ‘carcass,’ in this instance, referring to something empty, needing to be filled – not necessarily lifeless, but lacking in vitality.  ‘Spark,’ conversely, takes on the meaning of this vitality, the ‘filler’ of the void.  It is only within the established context or ‘surroundings’ that these words take on their intended meaning.  In this particular example, it is the value that is the ultimate catalyst for the eventual ‘signification’ of these words.  As Saussure indicates, these terms often build on each other.  They continue to evolve until the word’s concrete meaning is revealed.

I also saw another, smaller application that deals with Culler’s “The Lingustic Foundation” in the last line of the poem. ‘If we’re not supposed to dance/ Why all this music?’ Orr writes.  If we take into account Culler’s conjecture that “actions are meaningful with respect to a set of institutional conventions,” (Ibid 56) this last line takes on a special meaning because of our culture’s perception of music.  Dancing and music are considered to be beautiful, artful gestures, but that is only the case because long ago, someone decided that it should be so.  For me, the line is incredibly haunting, but if, in another world, dancing and music were considered to be evil or forbidden (as featured in the musical Footloose, for example), this last, potent line of the poem would have drastically altered the poem’s entire meaning.

The Structuralists were professionals at dissecting and naming what precisely makes language language, and the ‘science of the art’ mentality that they adapt is fascinating.  On the whole, however, I found myself more drawn and more inclined to agree with the Formalists: that while it is interesting to examine poetry in the Structuralist vein, the artistry of poetry lies “not in the elements that make up the work, but in the special way they are used” (Ibid 9).  For me, it is the overall aesthetic and identifiable nature of the poem that make it beautiful, not simply a collection of words and their significations.

Works Cited
1. Orr, Gregory.  “To Be Alive.”  Concerning the Book That Is the Body Of the Beloved. Copper Canyon Press, 2005.
2. Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan, eds.  Literary Theory: An Anthology, second edition (Blackwell, 2004).

Categories
Shklovsky

Twentieth Century, Formalists and Tolstoy

First, I find quite interesting that most of the readings for this week were written at the beginning of the 20th century. I know during those days many different events took place in the world, but I just reckon that the development of technology, politics, and the construction of new ways of thinking were occurring at the very same time in many places of the world. The environment of those days made that sciences like Linguistics and these theoretical approaches were developed by a intellectuals that were trying not only define their field of study but also they were trying to define what exactly they were. Therefore, for me it is not so clear that Russian Formalists, at least the way how Eichenbaum proposes, do not recognized what the historians of literature had made for them: they gave them a starter point. I remember someone in our last class said that literary movements arise like an answer for the recent literary movement, they disagree with their colleagues ideas and someone, thinking about how to answer to that movement proposes an aesthetic that attacks, contradicts or sometimes continue the past literary aesthetics. In the specific case of literary theory, I think it is pretty much the same.

Second, I see that the big importance of the Russian Formalists, is that they maybe created the first referent of the study of literature as a science, separating it from the artistic field of writing, and the “sentimental” reading. Formalist propose “a distance” (actually, this idea reminds me the “distant effect”, the Verfremdungseffekt, that Brecht will propose forty years later) and analyzed literature as an object “specific and concrete”, and in this way the study of literature converse in something more profound, perhaps more philosophical, that is the “literariness” that Jakobson well defined.

Nevertheless, in Viktor Shklovsky’s “Art as technique” (1916), I found the intention of not forgetting that literature could be analyzed an object, but it is still an art. It is fascinating that he points that:

Habitualization devours work, clothes furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. ‘If the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are if they had never been’. And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. (16)

The search of the reader/theorist should be to recognize “the sensation on things as they are perceived and not as they are known” (16). The technique of art, according to Shklovsky, is make the objects “unfamiliar”, so they can be truly perceived. Then he quotes how Tolstoy art “defamiliarizes” the objects in some of his works and explain how the descriptions of the places or the objects, trough the Russian writer’s perspective, transforms the perception of the reader.  I agree with him. Few months ago I finished Anna Karenina and there are some episodes that are memorable because the objects localized in Anna’s room, or how her husband combs his mustache, or how Levin observes the common country life, or Kitty smiles, described with a simple language by Tolstoi, takes a relevant perception. Sometimes I felt that some grammatical structures, some images were taking a new dimension only because the poetic speech was created for move, touch the reader’s perception.

This concept, also, reminds me how Orhan Pamuk in The naive and the sentimental novelist  (2011) mentions that Tolstoy elaborates his writing landscape as a painting: every single detail, every color and movement suddenly approach to the reader, in a kind of “zoom in” that always surprised him as a writer.* Of course, Pamuk it is also a painter and his perspectives always are bond to painting, so could be arguable if this comparative relation it is possible to make. However, I think that both critics/readers, Pamuk and Shklovsky, are recognizing the defamiliarization☝ proposed by Tolstoy. The difference is that Pamuk is thinking about images that defamiliarize the habitual world, while Shklovsky particular interest is how the poetic speech create a Tolstoy’s artistic trademark.

Shklovsky’s approach could be useful when analyze literature. The concept of defamiliarization is helpful to define the poetic speech of a writer and, most important, to recover the sensation of life.

Coda: I noticed that theories read for this week were written by western intellectuals. I wonder if at the beginning of the Twentieth Century some other intellectuals from East, Middle East, Oceania… were trying to developed literary theories. Does anybody knows?

*I could not find the book for quoting Pamuk’s words, sorry.

☝Actually, the Verfremdungseffekt is also known as a “defamiliarization effect”. In this perspective, Brecht probably was looking on the stage what the Formalist first developed on literary studies.

Simida Sumandea 2013-09-10 09:50:00

Probably a pertinent question at the beginning of this class would be why utilize a method when reading a text, why know various technical approaches when a text should require simply a free style reading that trigers what Barthes calls “le plaisir du texte”. The answer to this question seems natural in Trubetkoi work (Phonology Today), which states that we do not deal only with conscious linguistic processes, but also with the unconscious ones. Or these unconscious linguistic phenomenas predetermines author and lecturer in the same time. For a long time, literature has been considered a message without a code. Gerard Genette, points out that the structuralist method defines the moment where its message is found in the code, which is visible in the analysis of the textual structures. This represents already an opposition. The text is not analyzed through exterior constraints, but through its immanent structures. If the historical method uses social paradigms, genetical forms and a certain sense in the evolution of thinking, the structural method focuses exclusively on form. The origin of structuralism is in general the linguistic model proposed by Saussure. He makes a distinction between language and speech. Language is a system of signs where what matters is sound and sense differences; in language there are only differences, says Saussure. Also, for him, the link between sign and sense is arbitrary in the same way the unconscious is an arbitrary construction. This is an idea that forced Lacan later to say that the unconscious itself is structured as language. Troubetkoi influenced Levi-Strauss through this authentic existence established at the unconscious level of the spirit. But this approach is rather helpful when we deal with language itself. Although the structuralist method remains the most valid, there are also limits linked to it. These limits are considered by Paul Ricoeur in his book, The Conflict of interpretations. Ricoeur analyses the work of Levi-Strauss (La pensee sauvage) and sees a problem when structuralism shifts from its status of structuralist science to the status of structuralist philosophy. The structuralism is pertinent when the analysis deal with a fix object, which is the written text. When it extrapolates to cultural phenomenas or discursive structures such as for example the oral tradition (a system taken into consideration by Gadamer), the structural method can not be productive anymore, simply because, says Ricoeur, it is not able to play out all its meanings.

Simida Sumandea 2013-09-10 09:50:00

Probably a pertinent question at the beginning of this class would be why utilize a method when reading a text, why know various technical approaches when a text should require simply a free style reading that trigers what Barthes calls “le plaisir du texte”. The answer to this question seems natural in Trubetkoi work (Phonology Today), which states that we do not deal only with conscious linguistic processes, but also with the unconscious ones. Or these unconscious linguistic phenomenas predetermines author and lecturer in the same time. For a long time, literature has been considered a message without a code. Gerard Genette, points out that the structuralist method defines the moment where its message is found in the code, which is visible in the analysis of the textual structures. This represents already an opposition. The text is not analyzed through exterior constraints, but through its immanent structures. If the historical method uses social paradigms, genetical forms and a certain sense in the evolution of thinking, the structural method focuses exclusively on form. The origin of structuralism is in general the linguistic model proposed by Saussure. He makes a distinction between language and speech. Language is a system of signs where what matters is sound and sense differences; in language there are only differences, says Saussure. Also, for him, the link between sign and sense is arbitrary in the same way the unconscious is an arbitrary construction. This is an idea that forced Lacan later to say that the unconscious itself is structured as language. Troubetkoi influenced Levi-Strauss through this authentic existence established at the unconscious level of the spirit. But this approach is rather helpful when we deal with language itself. Although the structuralist method remains the most valid, there are also limits linked to it. These limits are considered by Paul Ricoeur in his book, The Conflict of interpretations. Ricoeur analyses the work of Levi-Strauss (La pensee sauvage) and sees a problem when structuralism shifts from its status of structuralist science to the status of structuralist philosophy. The structuralism is pertinent when the analysis deal with a fix object, which is the written text. When it extrapolates to cultural phenomenas or discursive structures such as for example the oral tradition (a system taken into consideration by Gadamer), the structural method can not be productive anymore, simply because, says Ricoeur, it is not able to play out all its meanings.
Categories
Culler

First reflections

It has been very interesting to read about the Formalist approach to literature as ‘art’. The idea that literature is an art in its own right and merits its very own study I find appealing. I read about the defamiliarizing nature of literature I was reminded of the Dadaist approach to art which I have always found fascinating. In Dadaism reason and logic are evacuated from the scene and the viewer is left to choose whether to interpret the piece in whichever way appeals to them, or to flounder and guard this sense of defamiliarization and remain on the outside of the work.

I actually agree that “literature changes when the world changes” (4), whereas the Formalist approach does not bow to this idea. Literature for the Formalists is independent and free from the influences of the evolving world, it seems to me. According to the Formalist approach, “for literature to be literature, it must constantly defamiliarize the familiar” (5), yet the ‘familiar’ is the world which is evolving and changing around us. It is the stimulus which provokes the reaction, therefore with no provocation to action what is there for literature to ‘defamiliarize’? Again, I refer back to the Dadaist movement which came as a reaction to the horror and needlessness of World War I, yet had there never been a war who is to say whether the movement would have ever been instigated or even endured? I feel that it is the same with literature. For one to react against something there must be a basis from which to start. Similarly the writer must have some concept of what a certain culture’s readers consider familiar in order to defamiliarize them. It seems there is a similarity here with Structuralism, which asserts that “if human actions or productions have a meaning, there must be an underlying system of distinctions and conventions which makes this meaning possible” (56).

I definitely agree with Culler’s notion that language and culture are intricately linked. The meaning that one assigns to actions or words comes about because of the culture that one has grown up in. Sometimes I even experience differences between the North American culture and my own English one, in that some things that are said or done do not have the same significance and therefore the meaning is not reciprocated in one or other of the cultures, and consequently actions or words are inferred differently. I find it fascinating nonetheless.

The science of literary/linguistic studies

It surprised me how frequently we talk about science or scientific approaches when dealing with literary and linguistic studies in the pages we read this week. From Russian Formalists who were initially inspired by philosophers of science like Edmund Husserl (3), to the French Structuralists who were greatly influenced by the studies of Ferdinand de Saussure and his “science of semiology” (60), it seems that these studies of literature and of language have sought to develop a systematic knowledge of the subject. I think we can even recognize an evolution of such effort.
First, the Formalists pointed out that literature should no longer be considered a device that carries out sociological or historical ideas, but it ought to be studied separately and independently, through “the investigation of the specific properties of literary material, of the properties that distinguish such material from material of any other kind” (Eichenbaum, 7). The Formalists intended to, through rigorous examination, determine the nature of “literariness” (Jakobson) that distinguish literature from other subjects. This attempt resembles a lot to a scientific research, whose object of studies is literature and during which the Formalists examined the specificity of poetic language, questioned the traditionally neglected notion of “form” and scrutinized the concept of “defamiliarization” which Shklovsky found to be an important technique and procedure in literary works.
The legacy of these studies later influenced the French Structuralism in that the Structuralists also sought to understand “the internal system or order of linguistic, cultural and literary phenomena” (54). But the greatest inspiration for Structuralist studies was the linguistic work of Ferdinand de Saussure, whose approach was an even more scientific one: he considered language as a homogeneous system of signs (he even compared it to algebra(71)) and tried to develop “a science that studies the life of signs within society”(60), semiology. (Much like what the Formalists did with literature: studying the subject as an independent system but Saussure took it further.) Upon establishing a set of terminology and notions in his studies: sign, signifier, signified and semiology, Saussure had created a scientific module which Structuralists later borrowed to analyze cultural and literary phenomena, for example Roland Barthes. And it’s very interesting to read Barthes’ analysis of various social signs and it seems that he has begun to apply the rules established by Saussure in concrete examples.
Here I stop at The Archaeology of Knowledge, that I’m re-reading for the fourth time and still fail to understand fully or see a connection with previous texts. So I hope our discussions in class will help me with that.

Categories
Barthes Eichenbaum Shklovsky

The science of literary/linguistic studies

It surprised me how frequently we talk about science or scientific approaches when dealing with literary and linguistic studies in the pages we read this week. From Russian Formalists who were initially inspired by philosophers of science like Edmund Husserl (3), to the French Structuralists who were greatly influenced by the studies of Ferdinand de […]

Introduction

Hola, everyone,

I’m Danyi Cheng from China. About three years ago I finished my B.A. in China, the focus of my university study was just the language, Spanish. After the university I worked for one year as translator and business-girl in a vehicle company. I think one of the key words of dominating a language is “empathy”. Great grammar and pronunciation may produce a good simulation of one unfamiliar language, but to understand those concept or ideas underneath the letters and sounds, and to create at the same the images, the investigate of the culture should be very necessary.  Literature may be a good way to access this interlaced cultural system.

I was thinking about why the Formalism got its name as Formalism. Possible it’s because that its supporters pay more attention, or only want to pay attention, to the modes of the operation of language rather than the content and its psychological, sociological or historical reflection. Its’s rational and scientific in order to be literary and to create impact. Trying to defamiliarize the ordinary and habitual, some formalist authors write long passages to describe some common things or conventional scene without naming it. This prolonged process of description wake up our sensory receptor allowing us to re-discovery every detail from the frequent objects.

Here the defamiliarization of Formalism remind me of the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. In the many works of Haruki Murakami, the double structures of alternating the reality and the fantasm, the detailed descriptions of objects like the name and the singer of a piece of jazz music, the brand of the cigarette, the slogan of the advertisement on TV, etc..Frequently in a novel when there is a pistol that has been mentioned, the sooner or later it will shoot. However, those objects in the works of Haruki Murakami appear like nonsense, but actually catch the readers and bring them into a “like-new” emotional return. Also, the Japanese writer often use first person as the narrator. In most of his novels, the “I” is a character neutral without much personal feeling, the I observe all the events, relationships and other characters’ emotion with almost indifferent attitude, this distance I think is similar to that of the horse of Tolstoy.

The narrative method of Haruki Murakami is quite fresh to some readers and therefore have won their preference (his success certainly attributes to many other reasons). At one moment, there has sprang up many similar works taking example of the style of Murakami. However, just like Don Quijote who was not an usual hero in his age, typical heroes tend to fatigue and be the habitual, there begins again the formalists’ idea of evolution.

At last, I think the Formalist version is possibly a little narrow as it’s not very much interested at the historical or psycological context and reflection of the work….

Categories
Shklovsky

Shklovsky’s “Art as Technique”

Shklovsky’s “Art as Technique” presents two very important ideas; the ideas of habituation and defamiliarization.

According to Shklovsky, habituation is the idea of doing something unconsciously all the time. It is a concept that I can relate to as I experience it in my daily life. Indeed, routines become so repetitive that I do things almost subconsciously and forget sometimes whether I completed or did not (not remembering if I locked the door or not when leaving my apartment for example). As Shklovsky says, “the object is in front of us and we know about it, but we do not see it – hence we cannot say anything significant about it”.

Then Shklovsky introduces the concept of defamiliarization, the process which provides one to view things in a new way by presenting a common thing in the most uncommon and unfamiliar way, thus challenging our usual perception. According to Shklovsky, it is the job of good art to make the viewer feel defamiliar with a common object and to release one from a sort of blindness, as the length of perception is increased.

A perfect example of defamiliarization would be Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”, since it presents an ordinary article of life, a urinal, at the art exhibit, associating it with a fountain and thus, producing new thought for that object. Indeed, we go by urinals so often; it is such a common object you never really think about. However, that familiar object becomes unfamiliar and takes one out of one’s own usual consciousness once the object is placed on a museum pedestal, named “Fountain”. We all know a fountain as being a well-designed structure that spouts water into the center and this image does not come to mind when seeing a urinal. Therefore, the viewer has to erase all conceptions of what it really is by defamiliarizing it and it forces one to take a consciousness by critically analyzing the object taken out of one’s own element and the intention of the artist at making it.

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