Skeletons enjoying some coffee

Linguistics and Literature Introduction to Theory of Literature Professor Paul Fry

As we mature our understanding of structure we consider whether language is a totality or a system constantly changing. We also consider time as a factor in language being physically spoken or read which does not happen all at once. We notice an emphasis that understanding based on the structure of language is part of meaning but incomplete when considered on its own. As an understanding of what meaning is in its different phases we also notice a pattern where one considers something as it is and mending that system to allow the mind to contemplate it and offer what it think appears to be the case.

Structuralism cased a renewed sense of vigor to criticism but this energy was shortly directed to what we'll probably hear about next with Derrida. But what cased the attention to Structuralism was its capacity to describe parts but also allow meaning to come into being which is projected by the mind that thinks it.

The lecture then focuses on metaphor and how it is something in place of something else. This something is rarely by itself and an untterance about the replacement happens in the rest of the sentence.  And then reveal what the professor thinks is a act of genius: categorizing utterances in 6 useful ways described here Jakobson's 6 functions of language. They are descriptive but one must be wary of thinking of these functions as generative of language in themselves. They still require a mind to speak them and one to understand them as a certain category meaning that these categories are not factually evident in themselves and can be a cause for debate just as meaning is.

This way still seems elementary. In the last lecture when considered the atomistic nature of semiotics and the literature brought up in that lecture was one symbol of a tree and the semiotic study of that symbol. This lecture of Structuralism we contemplate a whole sentence 'It is raining'. Like semiotics the way one categorizes it function as a sentence depends on the context it is in and there is no reason the sentence should favor one function over the other before its context is considered. Considering just these functions will not unlock meaning but could be useful ways as the first steps in learning what someone is trying to tell us. 

The Lotus Eaters Ulysses James Joyce

Leopold Bloom finally makes it to his friends funeral but he is not composed about death. His thoughts still tingle with erotic lust. This chapter is concerned with behaviours that cause lethargy. Bloom's mind constantly is triggered by things around him but also cause him to leave his surroundings to his private thoughts. Then we are surrounded by alcohol by the beer in the numerous pubs or the sacramental wine in the church. Blooms faux-love interest sends him a flower in letter which further takes him away from his marriage that seems to be slipping away from him but the flower will not grow into a meaningful relationship with this other woman either.

The city also takes on themes that Baudelaire wrote poems about. Beauties in the city that seize our minds but ultimately vanish leaving an imprint of humiliated desire. His narration however is not that of Baudelaire and still has a sense of enjoyment that isn't singed by anxiety. He also has a ironic sense of morality in which he flirts with other women but wont actually have an affair. In his way he converts desire and directs it away from being evil towards a cultivated sense of pluck.

Related to a kidney

Semiotics and Structuralism Introduction to Theory of Literature Professor Paul Fry 

As anticipated from the last lecture the focus on form and structures can lead to a study of multiple languages. Semiotics concerns this and also deals with framing language in terms of what is intelligible in language why something is vague and liable to be misunderstood. 

Semiotics shares formalism's focus on structure but has departed in a few notions. Formalists seemed almost dogmatic about the structure of literature being meaning while semiotics separates ideals with the actual word or sign being used. Semiotics also takes into consideration language at a certain time rather than focusing on its continual change.

Semiotics sought to create a systematic study of language but it's methods are far from authoritarian. One of its main tenants is that language does not have an author and by nature compiled communally. If language was a personal matter ideas wouldn't be transferable to one another.

The way language is described is also free of tyranny to a degree. There are a multitude of languages and ways to signify signs. A curious trait of semiotics is its awareness of context and how often a sign becomes intelligible by a sign not being other signs around it. And it becomes clear the study involves a vast amount of information because a sign signifies something but also relates to every other sign in the given lexicon.

To be sure this makes even simple understandings ambitious feats, but to know what a sign is feels innate. The knowledge that semiotics brings forth distances us from what is comfortable and straightforward. In a way it is a turn away from a pastoral sense of the world and towards a scientific one where there is an inherent barrier from our understanding of the world we perceive--another curiosity as art is generally of the first archaic sensibility. While it deals with language, Semiotic in itself is probably far to atomistic of humanity to be useful in discussing works of art. Its interest probably have be modelled by a more specific field concerning art but most likely retained its scepticism and compiling symbols discursively.

p. 57-72 Calypso Ulysses James Joyce

We are introduced to Leopold Bloom and his day starts similarly to Stephen Daedalus. Their two breakfasts start off differently as Leopold seems to afford his but there is still a sense of scarcity. I'm not sure if kindey is short in demand because of hard times or if it's just a novelty and of rare taste. If it is so then we have to question why Leopold is concerned the attractive neighborhood girl will purchase the last one in stock. But this is section is categorized by this carnal desire that is illustrated by the physical nature of the butcher shop.

Curiously in the background of all this desire is Bloom's preparation for his friend's funeral. As he wonders to grab his breakfast meat his thoughts roam and he seems sceptical of his city as it feels unreal. The urbanity of the city contrasts with the pastoral scene Bloom finds in a magazine in the butcher shop and we contemplate the pastoral with the urban and how the pastoral is generative of life while the city is a placed for the flavor of meat you prefer and or funerals. Beauty is either budding or laying in bed but it seems to have an eye in another direction than that of Bloom. He seems keen on this but does not curb is sense of longing or duties he must attend to.

Bloom's attraction to the kidneys gives us pause. They are written unflatteringly and seem as this primordial substance that seduces him outdoors and we learn a little about him as he places himself to the butcher. These discerning hunks of flesh will give him the energy throughout the day that is provided by Bloom's bizarre hedonism that not only fills him with desire but also nourishes him.

Spinning around in old clothes

Russian Formalism Introduction to Theory of Literature Professor Paul Fry 

The Russian Formalist take the desire for a scientific procedure mentioned in the previous lecture further than the psychological interpretations experimented but still courted meaning. The Formalists take an odd strategy of focusing on the mechanisms of a story and treat it as if it were the meaning--or previously the end goal always seemed to be to cultivate a sense of meaning.

There also seems to be an alienation to the subject matter in the sense that they say the structure addresses the 'literariness' of the text. We have to consider whether we can take this seriously. Can the meaning of something really be it's form and even if there were something, is it even palatable to do so? In the last lecture science was brought in to balance the reader's inner needs to what the author has created. But as we see the removal of the human psyche from consideration and put it near the communist revolution in Russia we have a pickle. Even revolutionary Trotsky saw a problem as the focus on form distracts literature from history and ultimately ignores class struggle.

But maybe it is beneficial to pause over how they notice that certain movements favor certain devices. In the heat of a movement it might be easy to assume that one has something unchanging as it describes the moment so well. While it might seem base to say something is just a form--often this is a tactic with polemicists apart from them saying their opponent’s argument doesn't exist--it is responsible to account for one's place in time. Also, in a period of time where there are many separate identities it is helpful in cooperating. In the lecture it is almost describe as ideologies competing in a darwinistic way, I think it is also necessary to consider when multiple ideologies are not expressed in dominate ways.

p. 42-56 end of part I Ulysses James Joyce

While the past sections have been quirkily written, this part in particular gets turbulent. In it we have a glimpse of Stephen as struggling financially to get through medical school. In strange coincidence his ailing mother cuts his studies short and as mentioned before ends with a disappointed dying mother regardless.

But the passage also considers the form of forms and maybe this extends to the form of Stephen's thoughts. As he contemplates this we are taking to a beach in which the ground sinks around your feet. We are in the presence of the before mentioned sea mother and everything seems to be in the change of flux and also anachronistic relics from the past exist but are also in a state of decay. Perhaps as a decoration of humility Stephen notices a dog who has come to the beach to urinate which he does twice--once at a rock he has previously sniffed and one which is unsniffed. This maybe a metaphor very much like the cracked mirror. Symbolizing our bodily necessities that seem disgusting and sometimes we relieve these by a strange process and other times just pick something that is similar to something else we've done.

Before we have heard Irish and English identities collide and here we are entertained by small quotes of French. Also there are themes of people behaving as if they are in a brothel and taking delight in song. The theme of money and people trying to dominate others is suddenly absent and there are cases of misunderstanding and of also taking into consideration other people. But here maybe we are in observing this teaming section that is wanting to be something but still made of primordial stuff.

A bird's nest by a pier

The New Criticism and Other Western Formalisms Introduction to Theory of Literature Professor Paul Fry

The lecture starts off considering what happens when we apply anachronistic understanding of words to a poem. It is an attempt to make the poem contemporary but maybe not the most elegant way to do so. However, his criteria for it to work is that what ever happens in the contemplation of a poem has to fit with the idea trying to be realized rather than an arbitrary trait to fixate on.

The following parts of the lecture deal with this effort to realize meaning but in a way that is palatable as well as intellectual. This comes out of two fashions of literary criticism--one which focuses strictly on what the author wrote the poem about and then a fashion in which one is wildly excited about poetry but has little details to share.   

A systematic approach was developed as physiology was added into consideration and extending the criticism to authorial intention and the psychological needs one has when approaching literature. But as science sticks its head into the humanities we see some predictable things start to happen. First the idea that plato has about poets being liars reoccurs. Science being preoccupied with truth has trouble with the fumes that vent up and are giving shape from the unconscious.

It is strange fascination because they are come to the point where they deny poems exist but then say poems fulfil urges in our psyche that have tensions and these tension can be resolved with poetic thinking and not scientific thinking. But there is also scepticism to this resolution and perhaps art is not this method to moderate the creaks of the soul but just to express them as they are in a way that lets us know they are there.

P. 30-42 Ulysses James Joyce

Stephen is now at work teaching and most of the children are lawless. The subject matter is a general who has victories but with heavy casualties. The discussion digresses into a metaphor about a dock being a disappointed bridge.

This section is still as tense as the last one. The children are just as disrespectful to his viewpoints as he was to his mother's religion. And the only child who takes him seriously as a teacher is a student who is struggling. Stephen feels a likeness to this child as well.

There is also another theme about money which causes conflict just as it did with the milk. This time it is a discussion between a coworker who is anti-semetic.

There is also a sense of swirling themes from looking to pagan connectedness with nature, the pious love of a mother, and people behaving like Nietzsche. The themes swirl but do not resolve into one another and my guess is they exist because they are subjects the author is interested in. 

A thought before one blows their nose

The Idea of the Autonomous Artwork Introduction to Theory of Literature Professor Paul Fry 

Poetry is taken up now and we take up some classic philosophers' take on what poets do. Plato takes a curious realist stance. Maybe he isn't a realist but he suggests that poets are realists who do such a terrible job that he calls them liars. Aristotle however sees a different viewpoint in that poets project an ideal point of view. In this way a poem contains its own world and has nothing that is verifiable and in that light not lying but not saying anything truthful. 

This seems to reflect what was discussed in the last lecture where truth and meaning were in conflict. It also has similarities with learning and how we have preconceptions. The poem seems to embody these preconception in a world where they are not challenged by what obviously does not fit.

The idea of poetry is discussed further. The professor brings to mind these intense modes of thinking such as religious morality and blinding passion. He brings these up to distance them from what poetry is and wraps it in the idea of aesthetics. This is a curious state of existence that can be observed by concentrating on something we consider art.

This aesthetic experience is more or less what we call judgement where something appears to be just right. This judgement seems to be a separate thing from passion or morality the way he speaks of it seems curiously isolated when expressed and latent when things are otherwise.

P. 9-29 Ulysses James Joyce 

The opening of the book starts at the top of a stair case with a mirror. We become acquainted with a dead mother and are invited to a pauper's drinking party. There is a agitation and sparing without the sense of any warlike attitudes between the characters of Stephen Daedalus and Buck Mulligan. Humility perfumes everything the characters have said so far.

The character's introduced are firstly Buck Mulligan who is a doctor in training and maybe a messenger of things that are bodily in a way that treats the body as if it is dead as if he were some messenger from the underworld. Stephen is characterized as an artist whose first aesthetic feat is to compare the Irish people to a cracked mirror. We also have some sort of interloper who more or less is a person who is there and is English.

There is somewhat of an abusive relationships to mothers and it is transformed in a variety of ways. The first is the obvious mother of Stephen Daedalus who he wont give her peace of mind in the final moments of his life. In this there is a sense of something conquered perhaps some sort of antagonizing bond that had to deal with the mother's religion and a hindrance to Stephen's ambition to be the Bard people call him with a sense of irony. The second iteration is the sea which maybe what replaces Stephen's pious mother with one that is ancient and full of unconscious energy. But even this earth mother is disparaged and likened to a snot rag. The third is the humiliated milk lady who in her old age has shrivelled breasts and relies on cows to nurse men past their baby days who stiff her money so they can go drinking.

There also maybe something of a innuendo with Buck Mulligan's shaving knife and the snot rag that he commandeers from Stephen to wipe it clean of foam and hair. This might be a mating between the two characters who will give birth to the stories form. The marriage of a man who cannot tell a mother from a corpse and a man who tries to profit from a cracked mirror.

A parade of flowers and bats

Ways In and Out of the Hermeneutic Circle Introduction to Theory of Literature Professor Paul Fry

Notable people:

• Hans-Georg Gadamer
• E. D. Hirsch
• Martin Heidegger

I suppose this is a literature theory class but we haven't dealt with any literature yet. I don't even think we can say we are considering literature at all yet but dealing with logical problems that concern meaning which is of course important to reading literature and very thorough to begin with. The professor's lecture is woven and things at the beginning are relevant to what is spoken about near the end except the end has accumulated more theory and maybe one has to contemplate more carefully.

The beginning starts with how the study of meaning came to be and it is pointed out that there was a period where there was not suggesting that it's a linear progression of society from naive connectedness to sceptical awareness. There is also a sense that this turn of contemplation cannot be undone and has not wavered and continues to focus into something.

But what really made people consider meaning enough to devote a study to it was the democratization of religious texts in the reformation where people were expected to find meaning by studying religious texts and there were obviously a diversity of interpretations. This too happened when societies became democratic and let more people maintain the laws they lived by.

The last stop on this train of thought is literature which is most relevant to the class. And in literature the reformation came very recently and the reasons the professor gives for this reformation is the people's attack on authorship and awareness of different perspectives from sub-cultures and large cultures that consider other cultures.

The study of meaning is described coming forth from a culture that values meaning but also finds it complicated to attain. This is revealed early in the lecture but about halfway through we hear a thought from Heidegger that regardless of the troubles we have with meaning, we see meaning in symbols innately and we have more trouble seeing a symbol without meaning than we do contemplating complex symbols that scholars struggle with.

Our innate ability to see meaning and the fact that meaning is complicated means our preconceptions flavor our understanding whether we choose to live simply or savor meaning to it's fullest. And our preconceptions make learning a process of first imagining what we are learning is before we know it and then after we receive some information we have to revisit that concept and modify it.

This seems cheerful and guided by eros but the professor leads us down a turbulent path while we contemplate the nature of meaning some more. Not only is this part of his lecture more sinister, it is more dogmatic. When we consider something as objective we focus on its truth but since truth is the universal thing regardless of thought it isn't meaningful in the sense of how we derive meaning. The converse is similar in that when we contemplate a meaning we have to set aside truth and wash ourself with subjectivity. Furthermore, subjectivity can seem distasteful because of it's personal nature which for instance separates a person from another. However, if we wish to commune with someone objectively we have a hollow notion that lacks meaning. The professor suggests we pick one way of viewing over another, but does not suggest we feel disheartened that meaning has a tragic flaw.

The Gift to his Adversary Tales of Hasidim Martin Buber

Here we consider the Hasidic emphasis on radical acceptance, irrationality, and transformation which is taught in its appreciation of friendship. In this story we consider the gift of money to an enemy. While money seems to be a reoccurring theme it always seems to be a barrier between living life either as in a prison bond or keeping two lovers from marrying.

Money being sense of rationality that distances ourself from being close to what otherwise we would simply by following our instincts. And in this story this money has brought an opponent to seek advice for a solution that isn't rational at all.

This story is not about conversion of two enemies to friendship but as gift of money resolves the feud between two enemies it introduces conflict to people considered friends. A family member is upset that the rabbi is more generous to an outsider than he is to his family.

There are also almost unseen qualities to the story. Why does the rabbi have a drawer full of money? Why does the desperate man see in the rabbi a solution to his problems? How does the family member find out about the gift?

Beautiful cheese that is already eaten

The Image of Proust Illuminations Walter Benjamin

II

Approaching things that are hard to understand often starts by focusing on things that are clear but maybe not connected to the meaning of what is to be understood. So here we'll start at the beginning and the end of the passage. At the start Benjamin finds a peculiarity of how we keep things to ourselves even to our closest friends who we cultivate almost for the sole purpose of sharing intimate things. The end consists of Benjamin explaining Proust's relation to his own class and how he satirizes it while being part of it.

His description of Proust is a vaporous being without form. He takes on the guise of the people around him but for the purpose of mocking them in a subtle way by observing their chatter. Apparently his world is one that is cultivated and has Machiavellian kindness and to appropriately mock this class of people one must also learn its rules. Benjamin praises Proust for his satire but also at his skill for being part of the bourgeois culture that he haunts which however horrendous requires intellect.

Proust does not exhibit brevity nor directness of thought. In this way explaining we keep the direct motive of our actions to ourselves and endlessly describe the details that surround it. These details, however, reveal a great deal about who's talking and tend to be sultry and erotic. As we avoid being rational we then become poetic and the details of ordinary things are symbols for what we desire but directly relate to the world around us.

The class the Proust inhabits is characterized by Benjamin as a group of snobs. People who consume other people's labor without producing anything of value. Their culture depends on being particular about the things they consume and being convincing that it is a skill that rewards them with their lifestyle without having to work.

In their material ways Benjamin relates them to plants who are rooted and depend on the sun. But I think he back tracks on this because even though plants might look like laggards, they still are hard at work growing. As we contemplate this severed garden we can bring back a theme Benjamin wrote in an essay past. Previously he discussed a garden which a critic speaks into and hears his own echo. Perhaps this is was Proust is doing to his severed garden and is involved with the lost time he cherishes.

Female Centaurs Imagines Philostratus

We first start thinking about how centaurs are born. The author suggest maybe they just pop out of rocks or maybe just a transformed horse. But we quickly turn away from why centaurs exist to their beauty. Which sounds more and more like the likely answer to begin with. Their beauty does not lie in something material but in being two things at the same time.