Author Topic: Generic discussions about Literature  (Read 6782 times)

fuzzyoctopus

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Generic discussions about Literature
« on: December 11, 2003, 12:22:34 AM »
I realized that I really need to stop creating a new thread every time I want people's opinions on something literary.

This semester I took a class called "Literature of the American West," and we read and analyzed western novels and gumshoe/detective novels.

Ok, so while revising my paper just now, (which is due tomorrow) I realized something and subsequently added it to my paper.  Western novels were started in the early early 1900's, at the very end of the Victorian period. (The FIRST western novel, The Virginian, was written in 1902.  It began all western stereotypes and archetypes that exist today.)  But even though westerns have been written ever since that point, the western as a genre takes a very Victorian view of women.  Oh, sure it's the American Wild West, and women can be strong characters in their own way, but for the most part they're portrayed as wholy good and virtuous creatures.

Gumshoe/detective novels started in the 1920's and seem to all involve a more Modernist view of gender- women are more often than not the criminals.  Brigid in the Maltese Falcon is as crazy as they come.  The unearthly beautiful wife in The Long Goodbye is a murderer, and the other women are nymphomaniacs or just disillusioned with life.  I don't see this as being particularly misogynistic, just more of a backlash against the "Angel in the House" ideas of Victorian thinking.   Men can be evil.  Women can be evil, and they're even better than men at hiding it most of the time.

This has changed somewhat, since detective novels aren't really written gumshoe style anymore, but it's really really interesting to me.

I don't really have a question here, just thought it was interesting and wanted to know what everyone else thought.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2003, 01:41:01 AM by fuzzyoctopus »
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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2003, 12:36:02 AM »
Being married to a family that constantly tries to defend country music (from me), the first thing that leaps to my mind is "westerns portray women as virtuous because cowboy/country culture is itself extremely virtuous." I find several holes in that theory, but the basic tenets are actually pretty sound, especially when compared to the noir movement--one is preoccupied with morality, and the other is preoccupied with the lack of it.
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fuzzyoctopus

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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2003, 12:57:29 AM »
Yes, that's a good point- I'm interested in what Eric has to say with his study of heroes and all.  Esp. considering the difference in heroes between the cowboy and the gumshoe, and the fact that both genres are written towards a more male audience.
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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2003, 07:35:34 AM »
no time right now, I'll get to it tonight.

Mistress of Darkness

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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2003, 02:06:51 PM »
Does anyone have any opinions on Red Badge of Courage? I made it through about half of it, but wasn't inspired to finish it.
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stacer

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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #5 on: December 11, 2003, 05:25:09 PM »
I haven't read it since high school. I really liked the likening of the grove of trees to a cathedral, I remember, and the spiritual experience the protagonist has in it, but don't remember much else except that the "red badge of courage" is basically a bullet wound. I don't remember particularly liking it, though, and probably wouldn't have finished it either if it weren't an assignment.
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stacer

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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #6 on: December 11, 2003, 05:27:21 PM »
I also have a question. Does anyone here besides me NOT get deconstruction? It intrigues me, but it slips through my fingers like sand when actually trying to use it. Plus, I think it can be taken too far. Any thoughts? I'd elaborate on my own thoughts, but I'm at work and don't have any of my notes nearby. And deconstruction just doesn't stay in my head long enough to actually be coherent when talking about it.  :P
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EUOL

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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #7 on: December 11, 2003, 06:19:16 PM »
Something that's always helped me understand deconstructionalism is the little saying 'You're relying on what you're denying.'  In other words, a deconstructionalist view of a text will look for places where it is trying to destroy or undermine the very things that it needs to exist.  

That's only one piece of deconstructionalism, but it's the most interesting part, I think.  It's essentially the search for irony within texts.  (Or so it's been explained to me.)
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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #8 on: December 11, 2003, 06:47:36 PM »
I haven't read that Red Badge of Courage at all, but I have read Killer Angels or something like that. Its based on the Civil War, and is a pretty good book. The Red Badge is based in Civil War times too, no? Killer Angels was a good book though.

And stacer, I have no idea what you mean by deconstruction. I have a clue of what decomposition reactions are, but thats more chemistry oriented than lieterature oriented.
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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #9 on: December 11, 2003, 07:02:05 PM »
Deconstruction is where you try to determine the authors hidden meanings and feelings while reading the text. At least, thats what i think it's about, i'm not 100% sure. Its a pile of wank i feel, but thats mainly because i'm insanely bad at analysising things.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2003, 07:02:48 PM by Charlie82 »
If you're ever in an argument and Entropy winds up looking staid and temperate in comparison, it might be time to cut your losses and start a new thread about something else :)

Fellfrosch

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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #10 on: December 11, 2003, 07:31:01 PM »
Ya, I feel that is going to be my downfall in english courses. Analysising things. I'm so bad at that. I could never do it right, and my answers are always wrong. Go ahead, ask me about something like that.
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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #11 on: December 11, 2003, 07:32:23 PM »
Quote
Deconstruction is not synonymous with 'destruction', however. It is in fact much closer to the original meaing of the word 'analysis; itself; why etymologically means 'to undo' - a virtual synonym for 'to de-construct'. The deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text itself. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself.
Barbara Johnson The Critical Difference

Basically, a text can say soemthing other than it appears to be saying, often fundamentally opposed to. It takes careful examination of elements within the text itself for this.

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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #12 on: December 11, 2003, 07:50:37 PM »
So it sounds like you should look for two opposite meanings that the text might have and play them against each other.

I always liked Deconstruction best because I felt like it was a free license to take a stupid conclusion from some other kind of analysis (Femminist being my favorite choice for this purpose) and rip it to shreds using the facts from the book.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2003, 07:51:33 PM by Treyva »
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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #13 on: December 11, 2003, 08:47:47 PM »
Entropy's description is the basic standard of literary criticism, often called structuralism--you assume that the author's thoughts and feelings are important to the text, and try to determine through the text what those thoughts and feelings are. In other words, you assume that the book has a message or theme and try to figure out what it is. All other forms of literary criticism tend to use Structuralism as a base, but they don't have to; in general, the more popular forms of modern criticism ignore the author's intent and look instead at what the book itself is saying, whether the author intended it or not.

Deconstruction is a little different because it is most commonly used in two very weird ways. The first is just what MoD described: college students who use it as an excuse to disagree with other people and accepted literary conventions. The second is almost completely backwards of traditional criticism: instead of using a form of analysis to say something about a book, people use a given book to say something about their preferred form of analysis. I used both methods pretty often in college (I was a deconstructionist almost exclusively), but I've grown tired of them, to be honest, because they smack of people trying to look smart by showing off.

Every now and then, however, you can find a piece of criticism that actually takes deconstructionist ideas and does something interesting with them. The "relying on what your denying" aspect is one of these, because it challenges the world of literary analysis in (ironically) constructive ways, forcing you to consider ideas and patterns that previous schools of thought have ignored.

In my opinion, however, most deconstructionists are too enamored with their own esoteric-ness to be of much use. The ideas need to become more common and, subsequently, more approachable, before we'll be able to learn much from them. They're still loads of fun to play with, though.
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Re: Generic discussions about Literature
« Reply #14 on: December 11, 2003, 09:51:42 PM »
Entropy's idea sounds more like New Criticism than Structuralism to me. Similar, but not the same. New Criticism is the base, the school of thought most high school teachers teach from (at least mine did). Structuralism is more to do with the structure of language, from words on up through sentences and paragraphs--how that language works to weave meanings in a text.

Saint, that "careful teasing out of warring forces of signification" is one of the quotes the girls who presented on deconstruction used in my class. I can understand it in discussion, but it's been really hard to write my paper. I think I've finally figured it out, though. I'm deconstructing Joan Abelove's Go and Come Back, which is an annoying book, so there ought to be something to deconstruct. It seems to me that despite its seeming promotion of multiculturalism, valuing native cultures, etc., it also privileges middle-class white culture. So that's what I'm going with, playing those two against each other and seeing what I'll get.

What were you thinking about Red Badge of Courage, fuzzy?
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