Principles of Literary Study: Prose
principles-s15.blogs.rutgers.edu
Prof. Andrew Goldstone ([email protected])
Miranda McLeod ([email protected])
William Welty ([email protected])
Tuesday, March 31, 2015. Woolf (2).
principles for secondary sources (1)
Principle 2.6 Literary studies pays attention to the way scholars analyze
their material (”the way they read”).
principles for secondary sources (1)
Principle 2.6 Literary studies pays attention to the way scholars analyze
their material (”the way they read”).
“Never did anybody look so sad.”…Who is speaking in this paragraph?
(Auerbach, 531)
In our passage this goes so far that there actually seems to be no viewpoint
at all outside the novel from which the people and events within it are
observed. (534)
Principle 2.7 Secondary sources often serve to point out cruxes in primary
sources: problematic moments in or aspects of texts for interpretation.
stream of consciousness: review
Principle 3.8 Fiction’s linguistic resources for representing thought are,
for the most part, the same as those for representing discourse.
Principle 3.8.1 Fiction cannot transcribe thought; it can only adopt conventions for representing or imitating it. The interpreter must then ask
how those conventions work.
Principle 3.8.2 Stream of consciousness is free indirect discourse on
steroids.
The Rayleys, thought Lily Briscoe, squeezing her tube of green paint. She
collected her impressions of the Rayleys. Their lives appeared to her in a
series of scenes; one, on the staircase at dawn. Paul had come in and gone
to bed early; Minta was late. There was Minta, wreathed, tinted, garish
on the stairs about three o’clock in the morning. Paul came out in his
pyjamas carrying a poker in case of burglars. Minta was eating a sandwich,
standing half-way up by a window, in the cadaverous early morning light,
and the carpet had a hole in it. But what did they say? Lily asked herself,
as if by looking she could hear them. (176/172, 3.4; qtd. by “221B”)
principles for secondary sources (2)
[Woolf] holds to minor, unimpressive, random events….Great changes,
exterior turning points, let alone catastrophes, do not occur; and though
elsewhere in To the Lighthouse such things are mentioned, it is hastily, without preparation or context….This shift of emphasis expresses something
that we might we call a transfer of confidence: the great exterior turning
points and blows of fate are granted less importance; they are credited
with less power of yielding decisive information concering the subject; on
the other hand there is confidence that in any random fragment plucked
from the course of a life at any time the totality of its fate is contained
and can be portrayed. (Auerbach, 546–47)
Principle 2.8 Secondary sources are most often directly discussed in terms
of the generalizing arguments they make.
“a transfer of confidence”
[Mr. Ramsay, stumbling along a passage one dark morning, stretched his
arms out, but Mrs. Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before,
his arms, though stretched out, remained empty.] (132/128; 2.3; qtd. by
“nz92”)
Discussion
How does this death scene work? Use every detail of the language. And
why is it in brackets?
“inner events”?
The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on
a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long
night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths,
fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the
mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying
shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the
larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-room; the floor was strewn
with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls; rafters were laid bare; rats carried
off this and that to gnaw behind the wainscots. (141/137; 2.9)
“inner events”?
The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on
a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long
night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths,
fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the
mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying
shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the
larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-room; the floor was strewn
with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls; rafters were laid bare; rats carried
off this and that to gnaw behind the wainscots. (141/137; 2.9)
time passing in fiction
time passing in fiction
Principle 6.1 Fiction’s relationship to time, and hence to history, is mediated through the three layers of narrative.
Principle 6.1.1 Fiction redistributes readers’ experience of time. One
important device for redistribution is the manipulation of rhythm, the relation between story-time and fabula-time.
time passing in fiction
Principle 6.1 Fiction’s relationship to time, and hence to history, is mediated through the three layers of narrative.
Principle 6.1.1 Fiction redistributes readers’ experience of time. One
important device for redistribution is the manipulation of rhythm, the relation between story-time and fabula-time.
Principle 6.1.2 Fabula events may be narrated more than once. The frequency results from the configuration of the sjužet.
what happens as time passes?
1914 opens the age of massacre….The British lost a generation—half a
million men under the age of thirty.
(Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991
[New York: Vintage, 1994], 24, 26)
What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?
—only the monstrous anger of the guns.
(Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” 1917)
what happens as time passes?
1914 opens the age of massacre….The British lost a generation—half a
million men under the age of thirty.
(Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991
[New York: Vintage, 1994], 24, 26)
What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?
—only the monstrous anger of the guns.
(Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” 1917)
[A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in
France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was
instantaneous.] (137/133; 2.6)
(He had been killed by the splinter of a shell instantly, she bethought her.)
(159/155; 3.2; qtd. by Anthony G.)
fiction and History
Principle 6.2 Fiction participates in the construction of history—with its
own conventions.
Principle 6.2.1 Whether and how fictions can be said to tell historical
truths is a matter for investigation into every component, and every convention, of each fiction.
fiction and the history of the arts
There it was—her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines
runnning up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the
attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she
asked herself, taking up her brush again. (211/208; 3.13)
But the picture was not of them, she said. Or, not in his sense. (56/52;
1.9)
Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. (163/159; 3.3)
Vanessa Bell. Virginia Woolf. Oil on board, 1912. National Portrait Gallery.
another history
Principle 6.3 Narrative fiction has a distinctive history of its own, part of
the history of literature, of the arts, or of culture.
Principle 6.3.1 The history of artistic forms and styles is part (not all) of
this history.
literary history as a problem
Principle 6.3.2 Literary history is in the shadow of social and political
history.
literary history as a problem
Principle 6.3.2 Literary history is in the shadow of social and political
history.
Principle 6.3.2.1 The late nineteenth and early twentieth century set the
terms of these problems for us, because the idea of art’s autonomy became
a central preoccupation of writers and artists seeking to make a mark.
next
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Morrison, Beloved, through 195
paper topics forthcoming