Lecture #1
Proseminarium
What is a university? University studies as opposed to the secondary school. The credit
system: obligations, choices, responsibilities. What is the English major?
What is a university?
The structure of studies:
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pre-school
z
elementary/primary studies
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secondary level (US: highschool)
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post-secondary studies (US: community college)
z
higher education/tertiary education
University: the highest level of studies, but not homogenous
The structure of university studies
z Lower level [undergraduate studies] – the first three years – type of diploma: BA/BSc
z Upper level [graduate studies] – years 4 and 5 – type of diploma: MA/MSc/MBA/MEd
z Doctoral [post-graduate] level
– type of diploma: PhD/DLA
The institutional structure of the university
Main structural functions of the university:
Teaching – Research – Service
Teaching: organizational structure
Faculty (Arts, Law, Natural Sciences, etc.)
Institute (Hungarian, German Philology, English and American studies, etc.)
Department (Classical Hungarian Literature, German Linguistics, Philosophy, English,
American Studies etc.)
Inter-Departmental Programs (European Studies, Hungarian Studies, School of Interpreting
and Translation)
Teaching: subject areas
Major Degree Programs
Minors and specializations
Teacher Training
The structure of our institute:
The Institute of English and American Studies
Director of the Institute:
Dr . Anna Fenyvesi
Departments:
• English Department; Chair: Dr. Attila Kiss
• Department of American Studies; Chair: Dr. Zoltán Vajda
•
ELTEAL Dept. (English Language Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics); Chair: Dr.
Miklós Kontra
University studies vs. secondary school studies
z
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z
z
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Prescribed syllabus ↔ open syllabus
Many classroom hours ↔ fewer classroom hours
Fewer obligatory readings ↔ a lot of obligatory readings
Less concentrated reading ↔ more concentrated reading
Centralized learning process ↔ much higher independence in learning
Few individual presentations ↔ more individual presentations (ideally)
The credit system
Obligations, choices, responsibilities
What is the English Major?
Structured studies with much freedom in creating one’s individual way of reaching the goal:
Fulfilling the requirements through optional choices by observing prerequisites.
Two programs: English and American Studies
Two specializations: Business English, Foundations of Translation and Interpreting
Lecture #2
Proseminarium II
Types of classes, assignments, libraries, study skills and tools, specialization
Types of classes: lectures – concluding with (mid-term and/or final) exams
seminars (concluding with term assessment: tests, quizzes, papers, essays, takehome worksheets, oral exams)
The libraries
●The University Library
(Inter-library loan service!)
● Somogyi Library, Szeged
(music and art collection!)
● Szabó Ervin library, Budapest
● Akadémiai library, Budapest
● CEU library, Budapest
(C.f. Application procedure for External membership)
Online databases
(e.g. JStor, Project Muse – the latter is temporarily available in TIK, ask the reference librarian
for help)
Finding information in Libraries
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General reference works: encyclopedias and dictionaries, such as the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and the Dictionary of National Biography
General Bibliographical guides
e.g. Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Literature of the USA
Card or computerized catalogues, including computerized bibliographies and databases
Specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries such as the Encyclopedia of Philosophy and The
Reader's encyclopedia of Shakespeare
Specialized bibliographies, abstracts of articles, books, and dissertations; reviews of the year’s
work in a particular field.
Research Guides. Guides that summarize the resources available for research in a field, where
to find them, and how to use them. Shakespeare - A Study and Research Guide
Reference librarians. Ask a librarian to show you how to use whatever electronic
databases are available.
Study Skills:
reading → processing → condensing →
performing (speaking and writing)
An example of earlier scholarship
Aldrovandi:
A history of serpents and dragons
Chapters in his book include the following:
z Anatomy
z Methods of capturing it
z Allegorical uses
z Mode of generation
z Habitat
z Legendary mansions
z Food
z The best way of cooking its flesh
The criteria for acceptable scholarship were different (e.g. distinction between observation,
document, fable – did not exist)
BUT the skill required is similar: gathering, analysing, grouping and presenting
information – including information gathered/analysed by others
Relationship of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources
z Primary sources: materials you are directly writing about, the ‘raw materials’ of your research.
z Secondary sources: books and articles in which other researchers report the results of their
research based on primary data or sources. You quote or cite them in order to support your
own research.
z Tertiary sources: books and articles based on secondary sources, on the research of others.
Syntesize and explain research in a field for a popular audience. Helpful in the early stages of
research.
You plagiarise when…
intentionally, or not, you use someone else’s words or ideas but fail to credit that person
when you do credit the author but use his exact words without so indicating with quotation marks
or block indentation/block quotation.
when you use words so close to those in your source, that if you place your work next to the
source, you would see that you could not have written what you did without the source at your
elbow.
Types of plagiarism: straightforward plagiarism of words; straightforward plagiarism of ideas;
indirect plagiarism of words
For a helpful guide to using secondary sources and avoiding plagiarism see the institute website:
http://www.ieas-szeged.hu/documents
and check the following documents:
A BTK plágiumszabályzata
IEAS kiegészítés a BTK plágiumszabályzatához
Quotation vs. citation
When you borrow an idea, there are two paths to follow:
z
Express it in a language that is thoroughly your own and then acknowledge the borrowing
with a note or reference. This is called citation.
z
Indicate your indebtedness to the actual words of your source – a single word, a phrase, or a
passage – by enclosing it in quotation marks, and acknowledge your debt with a
note/reference. This is quotation proper. Block quotation is used for quotations running
longer than three lines.
Block quotation (running longer than 3 lines, included in a separate, “block” paragraph, no
use of quotation marks)
vs.
in-line quote (running for less than 3 lines, continuous with the main body of the text, use of
quotation marks needed)
For BAT Regulations see:
http://primus.arts.u-szeged.hu/ieas/BAT-080313-regulations.doc
Grading policy for BA Theses
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z
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A) Concept and research design: clearly legitimated objective; feasibility in relation to the
given scope of limitation; relevance to current trends of research – max. 3 points
B) Argumentation: structure and coherence of argument; argued introduction (incl. review of
sources) and conclusion; relevance of internal divisions and that of secondary research
questions; systematic use of theoretical concepts – max. 6 points
C) Use of referred materials: clearly established relation between the candidate and the
employed literature; proportion of quoted material to main text; research background
(adequacy of references, size of reading list, differentiation of primary and secondary
z
z
literature). If fraud is indicated, the paper fails, and the BAT Committee chair will be the third
reader. – max. 6 points
D) Format, apparatus, length (as modelled on the Institute Style Sheet): consistency of
citation/bibliography; notation; bibliography (see point 5.2.); illustrations; appendices; proofreading; spelling; second title page; number of characters, length of the abstract. If the paper
receives 0 point, it fails. If in addition fraud is indicated, the BAT Committee chair will be the
third reader. – max. 2 points
E) Language: clarity of expression; style and rhetorics; syntax/grammar. If the paper receives
0 point, it fails. – max. 3 points
Fraction points are not allowed.
Introduction to research: TDK (Tudományos Diákkör)
http://www.ieas-szeged.hu/tdk
Lecture #3
What is English Studies?
Difficulties and problems of definition
Paradigms and paradigm shifts
Shifting fields of investigation:
examples in Shakespeare scholarship
z Is text or performance in the focus of studies?
z What questions do we ask regarding a given corpus?
Different trends of investigation may
1. coexist
e.g. performance oriented research of present day productions and research focusing on
specific historical references within the plays
2. succeed each other
e.g. research focusing on character criticism succeeded by research focusing on structural
issues of plays
Changes in science
-- changes in perceiving and representing the world
Aldrovandi:
A history of serpents and dragons
Conclusions:
1. The representation of the world through science both reflects and shapes our perception of
the world
2. The way people think about the world changes
3. The criteria and the procedures of science change
Relationship between continuity and discontinuity in academia: Scientific change
Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, 2nd edition: 1970)
Pre-Kuhnian explanation: progress, accumulation, approximation to truth, eventually correction
of past errors
Kuhn:
‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ phases
The ‘Kuhn –loss’: not all former achievements are preserved
Shared theoretical beliefs, values, techniques: disciplinary matrix, PARADIGMS
Troublesome, inadequate results: ANOMALIES
There is an essential TENSION between innovation and necessary institutional
conservativeness
An example:
The Copernican revolution
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Ptolemaic, geocentric model
Center of physical universe: Earth
Shattered by Copernicus (1473-1543) in his work entitled On the Revolution of the Celestial
Spheres:
•
Copernican, heliocentric model
Center of the universe: Sun
Epistemological implications
Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and
scope of knowledge. Primary questions: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?",
"What do people know?", "How do we know what we know?"
An early 17th century poetic reaction to the changing epistemes:
“Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone,
All just supply, all in relation.
Prince, subject, father, son are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he has got
To be a phoenix, and that then can be
None of that kind of which he is but he.”
-- John Donne First Anniversary (1616)
A reaction on Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus by Reimarus Ursus
and Johannes Kepler’s reply to Ursus
z
According to Ursus, Copernicus “transposed and converted the places of the sun and the
earth…By an act of imagination he, so to speak, transferred and relocated the earth, together
with the air surrounding it and the moon that rides upon the air, to the place of the sun.”
Nicolaus Reimarus Ursus (1551-1600)
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“For in architecture the builder is content to lay down foundations below the ground for the
future mass of the house, and he does not worry that the ground below might shift or cave in.
Just so in the business of geometry the first founders were not, like the Pyrrhonians who
followed later, so obtuse as to want to doubt everything and to lay hold on nothing upon
which, as a foundation, sure and acknowledged by all, they would wish to build the rest. Those
things that were certain and acknowledged by all they used, therefore, to call by the special
name ‘axioms,’ that is to say, opinions which had authority with all.”
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
Lecture #4
What is English Studies? II
Introduction to English Studies= Introduction to a shifting combination of many subjects
◙ English Studies. Defining “English”
A funny example:
21 accents
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UgpfSp2t6k
Pronunciation – RP: Received pronunciation (Royal English, ‘the Queen’s English’, ‘BBC
English’)
http://www.howjsay.com/
A free online Talking Dictionary of English Pronunciation
Accent (a form of pronunciation)
vs. a dialect (a form of vocabulary and grammar)
RP Royal/Received pronunciation: – an accent, not a dialect
The diversities of English:
historical
geographical
social
Historical diversity of the language
English – the language changes over time, it changes into other Englishes.
Britain historically has been and continues to be home to many languages and cultures, not only
English, and all have contributed to the constitution of what we call the English language, which
is still changing.
z The fundamental substratum: Germanic base influenced by successive waves of Norse
invaders
z Celtic influence survived – the celts were there by the time the Anglo-Saxon tribes
arrived.
z Elements of Latin survived as well because of Roman invasion of Britain between 50 BC
-450 AD
z After 1066 with the Norman invasion English became partly French.
The borrowed words reflect cultural status as well:
famous example
Anglo-Saxon words for Pig, sheep, calf – used to refer to the live or raw animals
Anglo-Norman counterparts refer to the dead, prepared or cooked meats: pork, mutton and veal.
Social hierarchy became intrinsic to the language: the low status of the Anglo-Saxon of the
colonised who tend the animals is distinct from the high status Anglo-Norman of the colonisers
who eat the animals
Anglo-Saxon, French and Latin provide the main multicultural foundation of the English
Language. Anglo-Saxon words tend to be more basic and direct and are often monosyllabic,
French-derived words tend to be a little more refined, polite and formal, while Latin-derived
words are more learned and technical, and often polysyllabic
The main multicultural foundation of the English Language: historical diversity
Three levels of English Style:
AngloSaxon
(basic)
Holy
From Latin
From
French (learned)
(refined)
Sacred
Consecrated
Ask
Question Interrogate
Rise
Mount
Ascend
Fire
Flame
Conflagration
Kingly Royal
Regal
Words coming from different moments of colonization:
from Spanish and Portuguese: banana, cocoa, guitar, potato
Italian: balcony, opera, sonnet, violin
Dutch: cruise, landscape, yacht
Arabic, Persian and Turkish: caravan, coffee, harem, yoghurt
North American: Kansas (Sioux for “land of the south wind people”)
Geographical diversity of the language
z national varieties of English; competing standards: British and American, Caribbean,
Indian, African, Australian and Singaporean
z regional varieties
accents: affecting pronunciation
dialects: affecting vocabulary and grammar, not only pronunciation
z pidgins (secondary, supporting language, no native speakers)
and creoles (developed all major features and functions of a language and have native
speakers)
Beyoncé speaks Haitian Creole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0JBBQ6R1b8&NR=1
◙ English Studies: Defining “Studies”. How is it studied?
z At our university classes divided into
linguistics, literature, history/culture
Not only as a university degree subject:
z As a language course subject
ESL (English as a Second Language); EFL (English as a Foreign Language),
ESP (English for Special Purposes – e.g. business)
z As a school subject
Middle Ages and Renaissance: Latin was the dominant medium of instruction
English began to take over in the 16th century
Emphasis on handwriting and grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Aim: composing business letters, drafting routine agreements etc.
Mass education in English began in the 18th and 19th centuries in religious schools and
colleges
In the British Empire teaching English was a colonizing tool, assumed to be Christian
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the state began to take responsibility for school
education, including schooling in English
Æ The state takes control
Teaching English and teaching literature took over some functions that were earlier fulfilled by
religion.
Three tasks:
z Heightening personal perception and refining sensibility
z Inculcating social propriety and enhancing public morality
z Promoting social solidarity and national identity
Matthew Arnold (1822 –1888; inspector, poet and cultural critic)
Culture and Anarchy (1869)
z "Culture [...] is a study of perfection".
"[Culture] seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and
known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and
light [...]".
Preface to Culture and Anarchy: "[culture is] the best which has been thought and said"
“The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our
present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on
all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world,
and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions
and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a
virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them
mechanically.”
Influence: FR Leavis in the UK and many New Critics in the USA.
There is a special function of English in Education as a whole, and it has a specific role in the
context of deciding on a national curriculum and proposed standardisation.
Often this is embedded in a context on moral standards and national identity, or even the fear of
declining moral standards and the loss of national identity.
A simplification of the two poles: traditionalists versus progressives
Traditionalist
• English for employment
• Vocational training in specialism
• Promotion of single standard language
• Emphasis on writing
• Formal written examinations
• Dictionary definitions and grammatical rules
• Canon of great works, national curriculum
• Single dominant cultural identity
Progressive
• English for life
• Education of whole person
• Recognition of varieties
• Attention to speech
• Mixed-mode assessment
• Flexibility of usage
• Open or no canon
• Local syllabuses
Lord Macaulay’s (19th c) explanation of why there is a need to educate English for Indians at the
colonies
“To form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class
of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in
intellect.”
C.f. The discourse of postcolonialism
Exploring the cultural identity in colonised societies:
• the dilemmas of developing a national identity after colonial rule;
• the ways in which writers articulate and celebrate the postcolonial identity
• the ways in which the knowledge of the colonised has been used to serve the coloniser's
interests
• the ways in which the coloniser's literature has justified colonialism (depicting the
colonised as socially and culturally inferior
A postcolonial reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Caliban is possible based on the play:
You taught me language, and my profit on 't / Is I know how to curse./ The red plague rid you /
For learning me your language!” (1.2.366-368).
Contemporary worries about English linguistic imperialism, ’Global English”
Lecture #5
What is English Studies?
English as a university subject 1.
English as a university subject is not even 200 years old.
In Britain: the first chair of English Literature: was created at University College, London, 1828
The first chairs in English at Oxford and Cambridge were in Anglo-Saxon, established in 1849
and 1878.
The first chair of English Literature at Oxford was in 1904
In the USA: first chair in English: Indiana, 1860,
Harvard in 1876.
Originally at the universities English displaced Classics (Roman and Greek) and Rhetoric. The
function of other subjects merged into English. Nowdays the opposite is happening: English as a
subject is being transformed into or challenged by new subjects, such as cultural studies,
communications studies or media studies
What is considered as the proper subject of studies?
popular culture – high culture
literature – visual art
These binaries no longer hold!
The dissolution of binaries is illustrated by the example of the graphic novel.
It shown a changing focus of studies.
Graphic novel — a novel in which content is displayed in both images and text
Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1980-1991)
Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis
Raymond Briggs’s 1998 word-and-image biography of his parents: Ethel and Earnest
“On the Continent graphic novels have been as accepted as films or books for many years, but
England has had a snobby attitude towards them. They’ve always been seen as something just for
children.” Raymond Briggs in a 2005 interview with the newspaper The Observer
“I don’t think that it is a coincidence that graphic novels are coming into their own in an era
where people are becoming acclimatized to taking in words and images together.”
Paul Gravett, the author of “Great British Comics”
English and Classics
English displaced the Classics at the centre of the liberal arts curriculum, but many elements
were kept:
Study of genres, formal characteristics of poetry, classical mythology, models of classical epics
etc.
Important models in classical literature: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
“Shakespeare’s small Latin and less Greek” – testifies the assumption that Shakespeare had no
direct access to classical sources, but their influence is still significant in his dramas, and thus
remain influential as parts of the cultural heritage
Metamorphoses:
Shakespeare
public
Ovid
Golding (Ovid’s 16th c. translator)
z
Influence of Aristotle’s Poetics – regarded crucial in literary criticism even if the work
interpreted disregards its rules.
E.g. Shakespeare’s Hamlet illustrates the opposite of Aristotle’s ideas about tragedy (stress on
deed and action, while a central motive in Hamlet is the lack of action), but is still interpreted
as in relation to Aristotle: Shakespeare did not follow the norm
of re-interpreting the cultural heritage
Different meanings of the term “classic”
1. related to ancient Greek and Roman Culture
2. an artistic work that is lasting long, or serves as a model of its kind – “contemporary
classics” (e.g. Marylin Monroe, The Beatles)
“Classics” of popular culture frequently draw on or can be related to Greek and Roman tradition.
E.g. the cultural value of Marylin Monroe in the popular imagination is comparable to
Aphrodite’s (grace and beauty infused with eroticism)
We should not forget that from a global perspective there is not just one classic tradition, but
more. Detectable in English culture and literature too, which has drawn on other cultures, such as
Germanic or contemporary Afro-Caribbean, Indian or Australian – all of which have their distinct
mythologies as well as legends and classic stories and genres.
Examples for the merger of different influences.
The Rudston Venus (Roman influence, work by native Britons)
The Gosforth Cross (German and Christian influence)
Lecture #6
What is English Studies?
English as a university subject 2.
English and theology
The power to decide what was worth reading gradually passed from clerics and theologians to
teachers, especially teachers of English (‘secular priests’).
Canon – an important term inherited by literature from theology
•
a collection of books accepted as holy scripture; especially the books of the Bible
•
a group of writing that has been established as authentic, those works that are accepted as the
great ones, those that are worthy of study
Canonic works vs. Apocripha
Hermeneutics, the theory and practice of interpreting sacred and literary texts had a great
influence on the development of literary criticism.
Changes of the canon:
“My grandparents came to America in the late nineteenth century from Vilnius, and most of my
students were either born in or descended from people born in places like Tokyo, Seoul and
Guadalajara. What has happened in effect is that the boundary lines have faded, the frontier
guards have all gone home, and the landscape somehow looks different. In some of my
colleagues this change has produced disorientation and melancholy, but in others – and I include
myself – it feels more like liberation.” (Stephen Greenblatt: ‘The Interart Moment’)
English and Rhetoric, Composition and Writing
Rhetoric: arts of persuasive and effective public speaking.
Negative connotations – later development
TRIVIUM (the basics of the Renaissance academic curriculum): Rhetoric, Grammar and Logic
Modern counterparts of rhetorical training: written and spoken composition, communication
skills, academic writing
English and History
• Literary history: A historical dimension to the study of English
Focus: historical development of writing and literary technique
Literary history at the end of the 19th c.: biographies of great writers.
Definitions form the 19th c:
history=lives of important people in history
literary history=lives of important people in literature
e.g. Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets by Samuel Johnson (Doctor Johnson)
Present definitions:
history OF literature ≠ literature IN history
history OF literature: examines the inner logic of literature, as if it existed in its own time and
space
literature examined IN history: literature is bound up with the processes of social-historical
change
• History of the Language
1. ●Old English (Anglo-Saxon), e.g. Beowulf
2. ● Middle English (Medieval) e.g. Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales:
"Gladly," quod she, "sith it may yow like. But yet I praye to al this compaignye,If that I speke
after my fantasye, As taketh not agrief of that I seye, For myn entente nis but for to pleye
"Gladly," said she, "since it may please, not pique.But yet I pray of all this company That if I
speak from my own phantasy, They will not take amiss the things I say;For my intention's
only but to play.
The Wife of Bath's Prologue
lines 194-: About the Wife of Bath's five husbands
3. ● Modern English (16th c. onwards)
Now my charms are all o'erthrown, And what strength I have's mine own, Which is most faint.
Now, 'tis true, I must be here confined by you, Or sent to Naples…
(Now my spells are all broken, And the only power I have is my own, Which is very weak. Now
you all Have got the power to keep me prisoner here, Or send me off to Naples…)
Shakespeare: The Tempest. Epilogue (spoken by Prospero)
• History in literary criticism – some examples
Historical Criticism: author's biography, social background, ideas circulating at the time, cultural
milieu – all needed to understand a literary piece
New Criticism (from the 1920s): concentrate on the formal characteristics of a LWA, regard it as
an enclosed world, and examine it isolated from other influences, which are difficult to
systematize.
New Historicism (from the 1980s): find meaning in a text by in the context of the prevailing
ideas and assumptions of its historical era, revealing the historically specific model of truth
and authority reflected in a given work.
Periodization: divide and categorize time into periods
From literary appreciation to professional criticism
Literary appreciation
z at best: a good journalistic review
z at worst: belletrist or dilettantish approach
Important change brought by New Criticism: find formal criteria of analysis, e.g.
ambiguity, plot, imagery
a key term: intentional fallacy
critic – criticism – critique
z
z
z
Critic: a person who is professionally engaged in the analysis and interpretation of works of art
Critique: review: an essay or article that gives a critical evaluation (as of a book or play)
Literary criticism: the practice of describing, interpreting, and evaluating literature (criticism -not the meaning: finding faults with in a negative sense, rather interpreting with the aim to
understand the work and establish its meaning)
Lecture #7
Fields of English Studies I:
Language, literature, culture
LANGUAGE
Does the material examined define which field should be assigned to its investigation?
YES and NO
The same text can be analyzed both as
• a series of words (language)
• a form of verbal play (literature)
• a representation of things going on in the rest of the human world (culture)
Connecting language, literature and culture: the Text
TEXT
Shared by many areas of literary, linguistic and cultural Studies
Two basic senses of text: narrow and broad.
z Narrow definition: any record of a verbal message, written, printed or otherwise (e.g.
electronically or audio-visually)recorded
e.g. handwritten letter, printed newspaper, magazine, book of any kind, a printed poem or
play, a recording or transcript of a conversation.
Texts thus are distinguished from
1. unrecorded language, in the form of spontaneous speech and conversation
2. messages in non-verbal codes, such as painting, photography, music, and architecture
=Texts as a verbal record.
z Broad definition: any instance of the organization of human sign, in any code or medium.
e.g. poems, but also adverts, films, paintings, photos, shopping malls
=Text as a cultural object produced by people rather than a natural object
untouched by human hand or mind.
Related terms: contex and intertextuality.
CONTEXT
The word ‘text’ derives from the Latin verb texere, meaning to weave, and the noun textus,
meaning tissue, weaving, web – cf. textile, texture.
=>Texts are best understood as structures formed by weaving together of strands
Contexts – Latin for ‘with-text’
Physical and cultural conditions where a text comes into being
Four kinds of interrelated contexts:
• context meaning immediate situation – e.g. wherever and whenever you are reading the
textbook for this course
• context meaning larger cultural frame of reference , e.g. the society, language community
and general historical moment in which that reading is taking place
• contexts of re/production e.g. when, where and by whom this book was sketched, drafted,
read, redrafted, edited, published
• contexts of reception, e.g. who uses it when, where, how and why
INTERTEXTAULITY
Intertextuality – Latin for ‘between-texts’ is the general term for the relation between one text
and another
Three kinds of intertextual relations
.
• Explicit – clearly stated; comprises all the other texts that are overtly referred to and all
the specific sources that the writer has demonstrably drawn upon
• Implied –suggested, or indicated intertexuality; more subtle and indirect.
• Inferred intertextuality – refers to all those texts which actual readers draw on to help their
understanding of the text in hand. These need not have been in the writer’s mind.
What is a text?
What is done with it
Levels, ‘facets’ of understanding:
• Language – Rhetoric
• Literature – Intertextuality
• Culture – Discourse
Rhetoric: art of persuasion, in speaking or in writing
Intertextuality: no text is original and unique in itself, it is rather a tissue of references to and
quotations from other texts; the meaning of a text is defined by other texts within the system
Discourse: an institutionalised way of thinking, opinions that are commonly accepted as truth;
opinions that are considered as acceptable by a given community (closely linked to theories of
power and ideology) – e.g. what is a person involved in guerilla warfare called: “terrorist” or
“freedom fighter”? Defined by discourse, involves implied values
LANGUAGE
Language can refer to the following
1. spoken, written, printed and otherwise recorded words – a single system constituted in
many materials and media
2. the notional totality of all languages, as well as what is common to them ‘Language’
3. specific languages, the English, the Hungarian or Russian
4. a distinctive variety, a style or genre (e.g. advertising language, journalese, the language
of Anglo-Saxon or Caribbean poetry)
5. modes of non-verbal communication and other sign-systems in general
Example of a distinctive variety or style: journalese
’Few readers realize how much effort is devoted to meshing the disparate tongues of journalese
and English. In journalese, for example, the word chilling is an omnibus adjective modifying
"scenario" in nuclear-weapons stories, "evidence" and "reminder" in crime stories and "effect" in
any story on threats to the First Amendment. In English it is merely something one does with
white wine.’ Time, Sep. 01, 1986
The study of the system of signs
How is meaning understood?
How is it constructed?
The study of the system of signs: Semiotics, semiotic studies, semiology
• Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
dualistic notion of signs: signifier + signified
The sign is completely arbitrary!
• Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)
Typology of signs: icon, index, symbol
"... I had observed that the most frequently useful division of signs is by trichotomy into firstly
Likenesses, or, as I prefer to say, Icons, which serve to represent their objects only in so far as
they resemble them in themselves; secondly, Indices, which represent their objects independently
of any resemblance to them, only by virtue of real connections with them, and thirdly Symbols,
which represent their objects, independently alike of any resemblance or any real connection,
because dispositions or factitious habits of their interpreters insure their being so understood.“ ('A
Sketch of Logical Critics', EP 2:460-461, 1909)
Other scholars made important developments in semiotics in other fields:
Claude Lévi Strauss on the kinship systems
Jacques Lacan on the subconscious
Language is a model of a system where the elements within the system gain their meaning in
relation to other elements within the system
Relations within systems (Saussure)
• Between a signifier and a signified
•
•
Between a sign and all of the other elements of its system
Between a sign and the elements which surround it
Meaning arises from the differences between signifiers. These differences are of two kinds:
syntagmatic (concerning positioning) and paradigmatic (concerning substitution)
Denotative (literal) meaning – connotative (hidden, implied) meaning
What does language do?
What do we use language for?
•
•
•
•
to interact in a wide range of social situations and material contexts
to share and shape information collaboratively, through dialogue, as well as to transmit
information form one person or group to another, through monologue (many-way and
one-way communication)
to converse with the rest of the world about others, ourselves, and language itself (in the
sense that the topic of our conversation is the world, us, or language)
o referential /ideational function
o inter-personal function
o the metalinguistic or metatextual function
to perform a range of functions
o declarative: making statements
o Interrogative: asking questions
o directive/interpretative: giving directives or orders
o expressive/exclamatory: expressing emotions
o performative utterances: to say something may be to do something, or in saying
something we do something
(J.L Austin, 20th century British language philosopher. Speech Act Theory )
Lecture #8
Fields of English Studies:
Literature, language, culture II
Connecting language, literature and culture: Communication
Processes of communication:
communication – communicare (latin = to share)
Main components of the act of communication:
addresser – address – addressee
•
•
one-way process, unidirectional, linear or transference model of communication;
monologue
two or many-way process, multidirectional, recursive or interactive model of
communication; dialogue
•
•
communication as a process of change and exchange; neither the vehicles which carry the
message (the media) nor the materials themselves, nor the participants are left unchanged
by the process; values transformed never simply transferred
communication varies markedly according to medium, context and participants (face-to
face; mediated; ‘live’; recorded; verbal; non-verbal)
LITERATURE
the history of the term
the usefulness of alternative terms
z Literature – latin: littera ‘letter of the alphabet’. Used from the 14th century on, originally it
meant acquaintance with books, or book learning in general.
z Its meaning narrowed and elevated from the late 18th and early 19th century
narrowed: literature began to mean imaginative and creative, fictional (as opposed to factual)
writing, stories and not histories
elevated: literary texts were considered to be the product of especially gifted or talented
writers called authors.
z Recent development: the definition of literature more and more resembles the idea of literature
before the Romantic era
LWA Æ TEXT
A functionalist approach. Social, historical and power dimensions of various kinds of writing
are examined; writing is considered as a part of a larger DISCOURSE
Examples of literary texts as parts of larger discourses
Example 1:
John Donne’s poetry rooting in the early modern discourse of the epistemological
instability/crisis
Example 2: Shakespeare’s drama Richard II and the Essex rebellion in 1601
Reading the Shakespearean drama for the beauty of the poetic language and/or reading it in the
context of the Essex rebellion as a political tool in a given political situation
Art as an aesthetic object OR art as a potentially revolutionary political tool?
English with Theatre and Film Studies
• Text vs. Performance debate in studying drama
• Adaptations
The strictly literal interpretation of the ‘Mousetrap’ (the play-within-the play) scene in Hamlet
vs. a broader analysis going beyond the literary context of the scene, seeing it as embedded in a
larger discourse
Film adaptation of Hamlet by M. Almereyda (2000) uses film-within-the film, stressing the
similarity between the function of the two media (theatre and film) in a contemporary context
CULTURE
Six definitions of culture
1. the nurturing of nature, cultivation;
Culture = Nature and Humanity
2. human civilization set against nature;
3.
4.
5.
6.
Culture = Humanity without Nature
artistic and aesthetic activity
high culture as distinct from popular culture
specific national cultures (generalised qualities, the source of stereotypes and jokes)
universal or global culture
English into Cultural, Communication
and Media Studies
Questions that are equally applicable to the examination of a Shakespearean play and an
advertisement:
How does it negotiate its own social, cultural, political context? How does it strengthen or
undermine the ruling ideology and power?
Not only new genres and topics, but new questions, new types of approach
Discourse: a system of ideas or knowledge, a system in which certain knowledge is possible
Example:
I wandered lonely as a cloud (William Wordsworth; 1807)
As a canonical poem of English literature, as a limerick and as a beer commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lUEWFQGb8s
Lecture #9
Ideology, criticism, history
z Individuals, communities, products all exist in time and are preserved and remembered
throughout history
z English people, English speaking nations, the language, works written English are all
bound to history, exist in history, and can be observed in specific historical contexts
A crucial factor defining this context:
Ideology: a set of beliefs and goals
(social or political) that explain or justify the decisions and behavior of a group; a belief system
or world-view
Critical Schools and approaches analyzing texts and their function in their social and historical
context: New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Feminism, Postcolonialism, Poststructuralism
(not clear-cut categories!)
A political approach to culture: Culture is recognized as an arena of conflict, as well as a
space where differences of interest manifest themselves.
A political approach to culture: the example of theatre
z
Culture (inc. cultural products) can be regarded as a space where differences of interest
manifest themselves, where different ideologies compete with each other.
Theatre is a cultural product
– Marlowe’s Dr Faustus
– Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Through both protagonists these dramas are capable of presenting the contemporary
questions or debates in the intellectual arena of their time.
Ideology, history and the subject
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) French theorist
power technologies --control the circulation of possible meanings
E.g. the school system. Who influences the curricula?
History for Foucault: disconnected range of discursive practices (sets of rules and
procedures governing writing and thinking)
Louis Althusser (1918-1990) a political theorist working within the Marxist tradition.
He distinguished
Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs): law religion, politics and education
from the
Repressive state Apparatuses: police and the military
Individual for Althusser: Each member of society is assigned a variety of roles depending
of the contexts in which she or he operates. Each of us is addressed by various institutions and
thereby takes up a variety of subject positions.
Key term: interpellation
A reconstruction of the past is possible only through the perspective of our own subject position.
“Speaking subject” indicates that our opinion, our thinking is always filtered through a given
persona/role
Shakespeare’s use of the play metaphor: an example of subject positions
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." — Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)
History and change
Raymond Williams: a dynamic model of ideology
Every text (or other cultural practice) is a site in which three phases of ideological development
can be traced.
z The dominant -- express the socially privileged and central ways of seeing and saying of its
age: the dominant discourses in the present.
z The residual -- ways of saying and seeing which were once central but have now been
superseded. Often the dominant discourses of the past.
z The emergent -- embryonic growth points which exist only as half-formed potential but which
may be perceived as the dominant discourses of the future.
Example: paradigm shifts, the scientific revolution
The dynamics of subversion and containment
Subversion: brings change within a tradition
Containment: neutralises, controls subversion
The dynamics of subversion and containment
Controlled subversion: e.g. carnival
‘safety valve’ theory: if social tension is released, control is easier to keep
“..moral values – justice, order, civility – are secure paradoxically through the apparent
generation of their subversive contraries” (Greenblatt)
Is subversion possible? A third option: compromise, negotiation, exchange.
Containment = counter-subversion
Our sources of information: data, text, fiction
Every fact is transmitted in a textualised and contextualized form (annals, chronicles,
archeological findings)
=> all data are to a certain extent fictionalized
z
“Something of the historicity of the historian’s own understanding is already at work in his
choice of objects and in the rubric under which he places the object as a historical problem.”
Hans Georg Gadamer, “On the Problem of Self-Understanding” (1962)
z
Categories that indicate the uncertainties about the once fixed relationship of fact and fiction:
Faction (fact and fiction -- reality is socially constructed; c.f. terrorist or freedom fighter)
Hi/story -- difficult to distinguish history (reality) and story (invented narratives) from each
other
‘A Day in the Life’ (The Beatles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiFYOn1AFms
The lyrics illustrate several related issues:
- the difficulty between distinguishing real life experience from mediated experience
- the ideological embeddedness of a subject, the subject position as related to a discourse
Reflected by the music as well. A central metaphor in both: the multiplicity of media and
languages (c.f. the different musical styles employed by the song)
Lecture #10
Registers of Culture; Alternative reading practices
Meaning and signification
The debate over the meaning of an art work:
z The intentional/reconstructionist view
z The post-structuralist view: “what is sought is no longer an intention hidden behind the text,
but a world unfolded in front of it” (Ricoeur) -- A contextual approach
Meaning vs. signification
‘A terrified 19 stone husband was forced to lie next to his wife as two men raped her
yesterday”(The Sun – a UK tabloid)
What does it say and what does it think it says?
Registers of Culture
z Literature: not an ontological but a functional category. (Cf. culture meaning ‘aesthetic
activity’ and ‘high culture’)
z “Register” refers to different layers of community and user groups in a given culture.
z The most important registers:
high (originally aristocratic) and low (popular)
taste and fashion are:
--a function of ideology
--visible cultural products of ideologies
Taste, fashion and style related to canon and canon formation
Canon and canon formation
z canon in the simplest sense: standard of judgment, a criterion. (greek. Kanon: a standard, rule
or measuring rod)
z The relationship between canon and value-judgments:
”The very idea of literature involves valuing highly the experience of reading certain books, and
thus implicitly rating others lower. It involves, that is, the idea of a canon. A canon is a set of
sacred books, and the meaning has become secularized to refer to those works chosen by
consensus as embodying what is truly valuable in a subject, so there will be a canon or works
of literature, of great paintings, or works of philosophy (Laurence Lerner, The Frontiers of
Literature 7-8)
Canon formation:
A canon is not simply a body of texts, but rather a set of reading practices
Alternative reading practices: critical schools that consciously challenge what they see as the
dominant discourse.
Alternative reading practices. Two examples:
Post-colonial readings.
z
literary history: a political enterprise, constructed to serve as evident of the rightness of
established power
z
canon based on Eurocentric value-system subverted by changing the perspective of
evaluation, creating a counter-discourse
two ways of subversion:
1. revising it (include cross-cultural authors)
2. Incorporating non-white, non-western literature (Indian, Caribbean, African- American)
Feminism
z
a difference between gender and sex
Sex: our physiological make-up, biological differences which determine us as female or male
(differences of chromosomes, genitals, hormones)
z
Gender: our social make-up; culturally constructed differences which distinguish us as
feminine or masculine (differences of dress, social role, expectations etc.)
A feminist understanding points out that the category of gender itself is not only socially
determined, but regulative as well. It serves as an identity forming discourse.
Canon reflecting the white bourgeois European cultural tradition from a MALE perspective.
z
Subverting the situation by questioning gender roles that maintain women in roles that offer
men a privileged position, and subverting the canon by stressing themes that reveal and
question the ideological assumptions of the situation.
Themes foregrounded
representations of women analysed (typical representations of women, e.g. in Film Noir the
femme fatale and the dutiful, reliable woman)
works of women writes included in the canon
representation of certain female experiences – childbirth, rape, aspects of female sexuality
that were regarded as taboos since they undermine the patriarchal set of values
–
–
–
Foreground, Background, and Point of View
Foreground: what appears closest and most prominent
Background: what appears remotest and most inconspicuous
Point of view: the vantage point from which a particular event is seen or otherwise perceived.
a ‘way of seeing’ = ‘way of saying’
there is no point of view which is “neutral”: all points of view are defined culturally and
contextually, although we might not always be aware of it.
C.f. Marshall McLuhan: Why non-literate societies cannot see films or photos without much
training (1962)
The point of view can be identified with a variety of positions within and outside the test. E.g.
• Actual author’s attitudes and values (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
• Narrator’s point of view (Dr. Watson)
• Character’s point of view (Sherlock Holmes)
• Implied reader’s point of view (‘dear reader’)
• Actual reader’s responses
Values/ Conclusion
z Guideline: pluralism.
z English Studies is not a homogenous field, and value itself is not static Æ a continuing
process of re- and evaluation
z The teaching of different mentalities is as important as the teaching of historical, literary or
linguistic “facts”