English Literature 1 appunti

FOCUS ON THE FIGURE OF THE WRITER (chapter 13 TFLW)

The idea of the writer in the Victorian period:

In the Victorian age, the narrator has power over his narration and character, he has unlimited

knowledge. He is like God, he can control everything, he knows everything. He has unlimited

knowledge.

In the act of representation, the author is forced to select areas of knowledge for the reader.

The idea of the writer in the post - modern period:

At the beginning of the chapter, Fawles says “I do not know”, he destroys the omniscient narrator.

The fact that he “doesn’t know” highlights the fact that the author destroys the omniscient

narrator, the narrator of the Victorian fiction.

Now there is a new and opposite definition of the author.

“I do not know”, in this case, means that the author doesn’t have knowledge.

There is no object (complemento oggetto), it expresses the fact that the author doesn’t know but

he imagines. He’s offering only one view of one event, so another view of the event can be

possible.

“This story I am telling is all imagination (…)”, the story is the product of his imagination.

At the beginning of the chapter he destroys the fictional world, he offers the reader not THE

description of THE real world but A POSSIBLE description of A real world.

At the end of the day, what is real in the post - modern conception, is the performance of the

author in the very act of creating.

The only form of realism is the “act of creating something fictional”.



For example “The Truman Show” the reality that is artificial.

For example “Pincher Martin” it is a novel about a naval officer who survives after the sinking of

his ship. He awakes in the darkness and he struggles for living in the desert island. There are some

strange events, which cause him to lose the sense of reality during the development of the novel.

At the end of the novel the reader realizes that all the description of the life of Martin on the

island is a creation of the dying mind of Pincher Martin. This novel tells us that reality is a mental

construction and that we are living in a virtual reality.

Elon Musk suggests that we are living in a virtual world. Everything we see is the fruit of virtual

creation.

Doubt on the border between reality and fictional reality, introduced by scientists.

Even if the “I”, is the “I” of the author, he’s projecting himself into the novel. Even if the author is

Fawles, it is a fictionalised Fawles because he is into the novel.

The autobiographical narration is a fictional creation because the author is describing a sort of

fictional character. The distinction between author and narrator, falls when the “I” of the narrator

is the voice of the author projected in the novel.

(Nel momento in cui faccio autobiografia, descrivo personaggio fittizio come me, perchè non

descrivo tutto di me, ma solo quello che voglio scrivere. Descrivo un io, che non sono io).

th

From chapter 13 TFLW

There are confused levels of reality but also

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there are different ideas of time

 Introduced at “the time of my story” which is the Victorian age

 Also the time of the writing “but now I am living in…” the period when he writes the novel.

 The third time is the time of the reading, which is uncertain because everyone in the time

can read his novel.

We can consider the author a construction of the reading process, in fact it is the reader that has

to look for the similarities between Charles and the author (Charles is a character of the book).

The author suggests the fact that there are similarities between his character and himself, so the

reader has to get them.

The reader in the Victorian period:

The reader is:

 Passive entity because he accepts everything about the text, what it is about and how it is

offered.

 The reader was entertained and he had access to education (the function of the Victorian

novel is “teaching and entertaining”).

 He could have a certain influence on the author (ex. Conan Doyle).

The reader in the post- modern period:

The reader is:

 engaged in creating hypothesis about the meaning of the text

 engaged in filling in gaps in the text (riempire i vuoti)

 engaged in making implicit connections



In chapter 13 the author says “What you will” it involves the reader.

 “Reader Response Criticism” is a school of literary theory of the post structuralism, which

focuses on the readers and on the experiences of the reader of a literary work.

i) According to “RRC” each literature is a performative art, and each reading is a

performance which can be compared to acting drama, or playing music.

So literature exists only when it is read.

The act of reading is a performance.

ii) The literary text has no final or fixed meaning, so there isn’t the correct interpretation

of the text. But literary meanings and values are created by the interaction between

the reader and the text. (Il testo ha una pluralità di significati e valori, quindi cambia il

tempo e cambiano i valori che vengono letti nel testo, lo stesso testo può essere letto

diversamente a seconda del tempo e del luogo, e dei valori con cui viene letto).

iii) Wolfgang Iser (critic from “RRC”) thinks that the text contains gaps the reader fills but

in part the text controls the reader’s response. According to Iser, the reader must

explain the gaps, he connects what the gaps separate.

For example, “Marie Antoinette” by Sofia Coppola:

It is a post-modern film; Sofia Coppola is playing with the spectator because she introduces

a pair of baby blue converse “all-star”; another element connected to post - modern

interpretation is the soundtrack which belongs to the contemporary period. She plays with

her audience; she knows that the audience imagines everything in 1800s style.

 There are other schools that focus on the author, ecc…

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“Game”(chapter 13) linked to Roland Barthes’s “The Pleasure of the Text”, which is an erotic

pleasure. th

Barths is a theoretical critic of the 20 century and Fawles is a novelist.

They move from modernism to post-modernism, and from a structuralist approach to the text to a

post structuralist approach. th

There are two real names of the 20 century “Alain Robbe-Grillet” from modernist to post

modernist approach to the text.

“Roland Barthes” moves from structuralist to post structuralist approach. 14 ottobre 2016

approccio

Il testo è considerato un’entità aperta post strutturalista.

Victorian period reality:

 External reality, it can be seen by the author and by the reader as the same thing.

Modernist period reality:

 Reality is based on perception; everybody can see different things from reality

 Nobody can share the same vision of reality

Post- modern period reality:

 Diversi livelli ontologici che si sovrappongono

 Chaos THE AUTHOR

Roland Barthes in “The pleasure of the text” (1973), is against the idea that author’s identity

(context, background, religion) is very important. He doesn’t believe in the importance of focusing

on the author’s background. He wants to analyse the production of the authors.

 Barthes asserts that “to give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text”.

Attribuire un autore a un testo è imporre un limite a un testo.

 According to Barthes a text has multiple layers of meanings (strati di significato).

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Connected to the idea of the death of the author chapter 13 TFLW

LITERARY THEORY

 Literary theory is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of

literature

 It formulates the relationship between author and work

 It develops the significance of race, class and gender for literary study

 Literary theory offers different approaches for understanding the role of historical context

in interpretation as well as the importance of linguistic and unconscious element of the

text

With “literary theory” we refer to the theories that reveal what literature can mean, we don’t

refer to the meaning of the text.

 Principles derived from internal analysis of literary text or from knowledge external to the

text that can be applied in multiple interpretative situations

 Chinua Achebe is an example, he has analysed “Heart of darkness”, in this case there is a

perspective from a post-colonial critic, which is Achebe.

In this analysis he highlights exploitation and racism. His point of view is the one of a

postcolonial literary theory.

For exemple in “Heart of Darkness” the black woman can’t speak and the white woman

can. History of modern literary theory

 th

It emerged in the 19 century in Europe

 In Germany we find “higher criticism” or “source criticism” which historicise biblical tales. It

compares biblical tales to other similar narrations belonging to other cultures. In so doing,

it broke with the traditional interpretation of the Bible.

Fa vedere come certe narrazioni hanno qualcosa in comune con altre narrazioni diverse,

hanno una struttura comune.

 “Higher criticism” has the aim to find a structure and use it to interpret the text.

 In France there is Charles Augustin Saint Beuve, according to him, the work of literature

can be analysed and explained only in terms of biography. (La biografia dell’autore spiega

l’opera dell’autore).

 Marcel Proust was against the position of Saint Beuve. Proust believed that the details of

the life of the artist are transformed in the work of art. It is impossible to explain the work

of literature.

(Usare la biografia dell’autore per spiegare opera d’arte non serve, perché sarebbe

finzionale).

o Thea “a view” + horan “to see”. It was used in theatres.

LITERARY CRITICISM

A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics

use to view and talk about art, literature.

Literary theory is like a lens; it helps to analyse the text.

The idea of lenses is important, by changing the lenses you can see different points of view of the

text.

Different types of literary theory / criticism:

1. Marxist criticism: this school of thought concerns itself with class differences (economic

and otherwise) as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system.

o “Marxist attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the

ultimate source of our experience” (Thyson 277).

o Marxist theorists are interested in answering the question “Whom does it (the

work) benefit? The elite? The middle class?”.

o The Marxist critics are also inte