The Formalist Approach To Analyzing Literature

The Formalist Approach To Analyzing Literature If meaning depends on the historical situation of the interpreter as Gadamer claims, formalists readings cannot totally eliminate subjectivity. Discuss the extent to which you agree with this statement. The Formalist approach to analyzing literature, even though obviously restrained in its critical ambitions has been opposed to subjectivist theories, formalism holds great influence in many academic fields/areas, one such area being the literatures. The formalists arent interested in the individual responses of readers of the feelings of poets and representations of reality, but are instead, its interest lies in artistic structure and form. They (formalists) want to turn literary critics into a science. One key or main factor in formalist theories is their object stance in criticizing works of literary art and their avid opposition to subjectivity viewing subjectivist theories as relativistic. Hans-Georg Gadamer in his book entitled EPZ Truth and Method, posited that meaning depended on the historical situation of the interpreter, using that statement as idk a guide is objectivity possible? Can one individual or individuals truly be objective in their interpretation on any work of ar t? Can formalist Readings totally eliminate subjectivity? (Sort this foolishness out!!!) Formalist critics such as Roman Jacobson and Boris Eichenbaum view literature as a form of verbal art , rather than as a reflection or reality or an expression of emotions (put that MLA stuff here) and add sumn too. This essay will seek to answer all the questions asked above (find a diff word) to decide if formalists readings can totally eliminate subjectivity and to discuss on the extent of which I agree with the statement as it relates to Gadamers claim, that formalist readings cannot totally eliminate subjectivity. To answer this question I will compare and contrast two completely opposed theoretical perspectives; Reader Response/Reception Theory and Formalist Criticism (in an attempt to show that the former is lacking). I agree with Gadamer in his claim that The Reader Response Theorist, focus on the reader or the audience instead of the text or form of work. Reader response Theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation (change up dat) and add stuffs. (moving on) . they (Reader Response Theorist) believe in the reader brings meaning to a text, and that meaning lies in the author nor in the text, but in the readers mind, it is the ideal reader who is the true interpreter of a text to bring across its meaning. (sort out that). It is the reader who is able to get into the text and deciferits meaning, through re-reading and other strategies which as stated in Introduction To Theory and Critism, determine the shape of meaning, which thus is neither prior to nor independent of the act of interpretation. Now, with that said, our next step would be to figure out what interpretation is? (add or move) the Formalist Crit ics belive approach the concept of meaning in a compketely different manner , believing that to para-pharse a texts content inorder to achieve meaning is wrong. It is by the use of the affective fallacy and intentional fallacy, that the formalist critics/theorist forbid the reader from responding emotionally or responding to the intentions of the author, respectively. Interpretation is personal response, appreciation, critique, historical reception, exegesis, evaluation, and explication. Personal response and appreciation emphasize the intimate, casual, and subjective aspects. The New Critics approach meaning quite differently. Thcy warn against the heresy of paraphrase, emphasizjng that it is a mistake for a reader toparaphrase a works content in order to distill its propositional meaning. Textual paraphrases usually end up being moral or utilitarian statements, putting literature on a level and in competition with other disciplines such as philosophy, religion, or politicS. By invoking the affective fallacy and (sort this out..not your work)Æ’Â   Upon reading Roland Barthes The Death of the Author, it seems like Barthes is sort of a bridge between Formalism and reader-response theory. He describes writing as the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin (1322). He is wary of the author, on which criticism centers: To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing (1325). Barthes argues that the language speaks for itself; it has no origin. This seems very closely related to The Intentional Fallacy as delineated by Wimsatt and Beardsley, who argue that critics should not debate about or try to find the authors intention and should instead look at the form of a work for meaning. With the death of the author that Barthes proposes, the reader is born: The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a texts unity lies not in its origin but in its destination (1326). The prominence of the reader, however, is not part of Formalism, but rather, reader-response theory. Thus, Barthes theory seems to form a bridge between the two approaches to a text. Like Wolfgang Iser in Interaction between Text and Reader, Barthes acknowledges the role of the reader while still focusing on the structure of a work. Indeed, the headnote to Barthes essays describes him as being in between structuralism and post-structuralism, and this is due to the great diversity of his works. His later works in some ways contradict or reconstruct the ideas posited by his earlier works. For instance, he later writes that the author exists, but not as an extra textual identity determining meaning; instead, the author is a text that can be read (1318). In addition, in another work Camera Lucida, Barthes contradicts his arguments about photography that he presented in Mythologies. In the earlier work, he described how photographs reveal a reality that is contrived, whereas in the later work, he writes that a photograph can tell us This has been (1319). I bring these two ideas up because they show the contradictions inherent in Barthes work and also because these are two subjects that I find interesting, having studied the body as text and the role of photographs in the poetry of Natasha Trethewey. With regard to Frankenstein, I guess I would then ask, what is the structure from which it is created? Barthes writes that The text is a tissue of quoataion drawn from the innumerable centres of culture (1324), and that the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred (1325). What are the cultural signifiers that make up Frankenstein? What does the language (especially since we have three narrators) tell the reader?

The Direct And Indirect Impact Of Rhetoric Essay -- essays research pa

The Direct and Indirect Impact of Rhetoric   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the world that we live in, rhetoric always affects and is a part of everything that happens. Rhetoric, in its broadest sense, is communication, and how people relate to each other. The movie The Color Purple is about relationships. Therefore rhetoric plays a very important role in this movie. Throughout The Color Purple the impact of rhetoric can be seen in two groups of people, the communicator, or rhetor, and the audience. Celie, the main character of the movie, shows the impact of rhetoric in almost every aspect of her life. The effects of rhetoric in Celie's life are apparent through her relationships with Mr. Johnson, Shug Avery, and Sofia.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The relationship that Celie has with Mr. Johnson is unbalanced from the first time they meet. Celie's complacent and gentle nature leave her at the mercy of Albert Johnson's more dominant attitude. The rhetoric that she expresses to him, of innocence and always complying to his orders, forces her to live a large portion of her life sheltered and overshadowed by Albert, who continuously beats her into submission. Celie also passes on what she learned from â€Å"Mister† to his son Harpo, the rhetoric of â€Å"the importance of a man giving his wife a good beating.† Albert Johnson does not even realize how important Celie is to him until she is gone. At that poi... The Direct And Indirect Impact Of Rhetoric Essay -- essays research pa The Direct and Indirect Impact of Rhetoric   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the world that we live in, rhetoric always affects and is a part of everything that happens. Rhetoric, in its broadest sense, is communication, and how people relate to each other. The movie The Color Purple is about relationships. Therefore rhetoric plays a very important role in this movie. Throughout The Color Purple the impact of rhetoric can be seen in two groups of people, the communicator, or rhetor, and the audience. Celie, the main character of the movie, shows the impact of rhetoric in almost every aspect of her life. The effects of rhetoric in Celie's life are apparent through her relationships with Mr. Johnson, Shug Avery, and Sofia.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The relationship that Celie has with Mr. Johnson is unbalanced from the first time they meet. Celie's complacent and gentle nature leave her at the mercy of Albert Johnson's more dominant attitude. The rhetoric that she expresses to him, of innocence and always complying to his orders, forces her to live a large portion of her life sheltered and overshadowed by Albert, who continuously beats her into submission. Celie also passes on what she learned from â€Å"Mister† to his son Harpo, the rhetoric of â€Å"the importance of a man giving his wife a good beating.† Albert Johnson does not even realize how important Celie is to him until she is gone. At that poi...

Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri in 1889. His family had a notable political history: his father being a congressman. Benton’s family had a political career planed for him from the beginning. To this he always rebelled, as he had a natural inclination towards art. In 1907 the artist began his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. However two years later he decided to travel to Paris to continue his studies in the capital of the classic academic art. He learned many European styles and tried them all by turns, but neither of them would connect with his personal vision.It was the beginning of the 20th century and the esthetic perception of people was confused by the successive parading of many different movements that lived shortly and were replaced by new ideas. The world of art was then unsteady and in constant motion. Benton eventually eliminated all the modern influence and turned to his own style, a mixture of other European visions, that blended together to create an exclusive, very personal approach to the realistic idea. He decided to look for his own style as he returned to the States four years later.He worked as a draftsman for the United States Navy in 1919 and this period changed his technique dramatically. During this stage he created many sketches portraying ship life, which gave him a new perspective and subject for his future work: the use of simple life scenes as theme for his pictures. The artist adopted the new style of Scene Painting and began to create works of art in a more realistic and traditional perspective, joining the style known as Regionalism, that was taking over the American interest of the era.Between the 1920 and 1940 there was an artistic phenomenon in America known as Scene Painting. It was a style of naturalist tendency that evolved from the instability that World War I caused into the mentality of people. Many American artists began to reject the modern esthetic ideas that migrated from Europe to New York and they started to pursue a return to the academic vision. The search for realistic representation drew their attention towards urban and rural scenes.Most of those works bring together the balance between the romanticism of the American everyday life, combined with the nationalist vision of the period. Some pieces portray typical scenes from small towns, in a kind of social art style that displays the realism of the typical living. Some concentrated on country scenes while others preferred to illustrate the urban ambiance. The style known as Regionalism is mostly concentrated on small-town scenes. This movement grew in America in the first half of the 20th century as artists rejected the city life and turned their attention towards the rural side of society.In a country where everything was focused on progress, modernization and fast-growing technology, the charms of rural life attracted the interest of the artists almost in the same way that Far East appeal had stimulated t he creative imagination of Romanticist painters. During the Great Depression this style was greatly appreciated because it brought the spirit of the American quiet life of the heartland, at a time when people were concerned, panicked and threatened by the very modern world they had worshipped so far, that seemed to be collapsing.The peaceful images of the country life were reassuring in the middle of the chaos. The fall of Wall Street, the Great Depression and the growing fascism in Europe brought a period of auto-reflection in America and a rising isolation towards Europe, in the artistic scene as well as the political stage. In the eyes of many Americans the abstractionism of modern European art symbolized an emergent decadence of European culture, a lack of imagination that demonstrated a poor state of spirit in the old world.This provoked the return to the realistic art of images and the pursuit for something truly and purely American to adopt as subjects for future works. Toget her with social realism, the Regionalists produced images about the United States that covered subjects going from the sinister loneliness of the country fields to the arrogance and splendor of a new rural paradise. Scenes portraying country houses and farms by Charles Burchfield and the desolated images of the urban America of Edward Hopper create an intense sensation of loneliness and despair.The expressionistic and fantastic style used in those pieces offer the paintings a desolated aspect that reminds the viewer of the boring quotidian existence of a provincial community. This is a quality that might pass as poetic, fantastic, romantic and deeply psychological. With the many changes going on in the country, the American public and artists gradually detached from the European style they had formerly admired. The vogue was no longer to accept the Parisian taste, or pursue French artists established in New York.A new generation was searching for a pure American vision, a form of ar t that would illustrate the typical American scenes, from their local points of view. Regionalism was â€Å"a reaction against the European domination of American art† (Brady M. Roberts, (1995) p. 1) Between the effects of the war, the Great Depression and the fast paced modernization chase, the United States seemed like a very hard place, cold, rough and threatening.Scene Paintings suggest the transitory lives of people that come and go, but also suggest the steady situation of characters trapped in the eternal routine of rural existence, creating a very psychological atmosphere, that contrasts with the image of the cold stone-made civilizations Americans lived in. Rural was at the same time exotic and common, and offered a great subject for artists since it combined open nature, landscape and everyday scenes. Regionalist style had its main period around the 1930 to 1935.

Death Of Death By Emily Dickinson - 932 Words

Emily Dickinson like many poets of her lifetime was misunderstood and isolated. Her poetry was reflection her frustrations and her obsession with the unexplainable. She was rejected by society as well as her mentors due to her ideas and dark poetry. As time went by she became withdrawn, devoting her life to perfectionalize her writing. It was during this period of isolation that Dickinson wrote some of her greatest work, for instance â€Å" Because I Could Not Stop For Death† published in 1890 after her death. Personification, symbols, and the setting are use to illustrate and maintain the strong theme of death through the poem. Death is given human characteristics. Dickinson personifies death as a suitor who is kind and polite. He goes out of his way to take the poet on a carriage ride. She is seduced by his charm and the poet gladly gives up her life to join him. Death drives without haste or force he is mindful of the condition of the poet. She is slowly dying but she is relief and competent with the painless death. Once again death is personified as a dedicated lover who is willing to do anything to take care of his beloved. â€Å"Death comes as a gentleman, motivated by humble intentions, and concerned only with carrying the lady her bridal room in heaven...death-as-lover† (Griffith 56). As a the poem continues a drastic is changed is made and the poet is betrayed by death and her chaperon â€Å"immortality†. Death is now arrogant and malicious; when the poet becomesShow MoreRelatedDeath Of Death By Emily Dickinson1167 Words   |  5 PagesPerspective of death There are many different ways to describe death and the emotional feelings that come with death. Poems are one of the best ways to convey the process of death, the feelings that come with death, and impact of death. Emily Dickinson describes her own death in the poem, â€Å"Because I could not stop for Death† and the general idea that life is mortal. However, the poem provides Dickinson immorality through the power of her words. This poem describes death in a positive way by puttingRead MoreDeath Versus Death By Emily Dickinson2970 Words   |  12 PagesMaheen Chranya English HP-E Ratliff April 21, 2015 Term Paper Rough Draft HP: _____________________ Death versus Death—but the Points go to Dickinson Emily Dickinson was born in a time when not many women involved themselves in poetry or any form of intellectual capability. Despite this, she was such a wonderful poet that her poetry rivaled Whitman’s. Of course, she was never able to rival him because she chose not to publish her poetry in her lifetime. Once the world saw her poetry, however, itRead MoreDeath Versus Death By Emily Dickinson2596 Words   |  11 PagesMaheen Chranya English HP-E Ratliff Term Paper Rough Draft HP: _____________________ Death versus Death—but the Points go to Dickinson Emily Dickinson was born in a time when not many women involved themselves in poetry or any form of intellectual capability. Nonetheless, she did, and she was such a wonderful poet that her poetry rivaled Whitman’s. Of course, no one ever saw her poetry at the same time as Whitman because she chose not to publish her poetry in her lifetime. Once she did, howeverRead MoreDeath Is Not Stop For Death By Emily Dickinson1195 Words   |  5 PagesDeath in Rebirth In this poetic exploration Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson; the assumption of accepting death has been the ultimate interpretation of this poem. Clarification/evidence has given readers an idea that death is unavoidable and that eternal darkness is what awaits after death. Some might say death is a sinister man who only takes your life out of spite, but others would object and lure other pears to be optimistic to the true meaning of death. In a different perspectiveRead MoreEmily Dickinson : Death And Afterlife996 Words   |  4 PagesEmily Dickinson: Death and Afterlife Emily Dickinson lived a life of seclusion and grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. She almost always stayed at home and wore basic clothing, only dressing in white gowns (Puchner 1054). Dickinson also never married. She was born in 1830 and died in 1886. Dickinson never intended for her works to be published or even made public for that matter. She asked her sister to destroy all of her works, but instead, her sister decided to have her works published afterRead MoreNot Stop For Death By Emily Dickinson1381 Words   |  6 Pages The first poem that I would like to examine is Because I could not stop for death by Emily Dickinson. This poem is about someone being dead, but no one knows that until the very end of this poem. The poem in the beginning states that a gentleman has come for the speaker, and the speaker states that she can not stop for death, she does not want to die but realizes that is naturally happens to all human beings. So the gentleman wants to take her on a ride o n his horse carriage. The speaker does goRead MoreDeath And Love : Emily Dickinson1679 Words   |  7 PagesEmily Dickinson, born in a puritan and religious family in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, is known to be one of the greatest poets of all time. However, she is characterized because she seldom left her home and had few visitors. By 1860, Dickinson lived in almost complete isolation, and yet the few people to ever have contact with her were a huge influence on her poetry. Grief, was Dickinson’s primary companion, especially during her writing period, which some scholars attribute as the timeRead MoreEmily Dickinson : A Comparison Of Death791 Words   |  4 PagesEmily Dickinson is one of Americas greatest and most original poets of all time. Over the span of her lifetime she came to compose many poems that pertained to the topic of death, which made it seem as if she had an almost morbid fascination with the subject. Her poems I heard a Fly buzz –when I die d, and Because I could not stop for death— are some of the many poems that she wrote on this ghastly topic. Even though the poems are somewhat similar with the main focus being death from differentRead MoreAn Analysis Of Death, By Emily Dickinson1056 Words   |  5 Pages In the course of Emily Dickinson’s poems, she has shed some light on how she views death. Like the jumbled feelings before death. The departing soul’s path to ever after, hysteria, or ending up in a void. Some of her poems may seem contradictory or rather different from the other. However, they are all set in place to showcase Emily’s viewpoint that there are many different types of possible outcomes after death. Through these three poems, she has been able to personify death in vastly differentRead MoreEmily Dickinson s Death Of Life873 Words   |  4 Pagesfrom self reliance to the turmoils of war, Emily Dickinson remains a pillar of talent and inspiration to this day. While most, if not all, poets reveal elements of themselves within their works Dickinson seems to lay herself bare before her readers; leaving very little left to the imagination. Dickinson achieves this by combining symbolism, allegory and often nimble punctuation within her stanzas. One of the poets most discussed themes seems to be death. From stylized descriptions of the various