Some Fun with Killingsworth's Tropes

While reading Killingsworth's Appeal Through Tropes, I found myself often mixing up how a metaphor and a metonym work. According to Killingsworth, the metaphor function is identification, while the metonym works to establish association. I would like to utilize the blog to sort through how the author distinguishes between these appeals, or tropes, and how they function differently in language. In order for us to examine how tropes are rhetorical, I feel the distinction between these figures of speeches and their functions are of importance.

First, Killingsworth defines a trope as a figure of speech that works to capture rhetorical appeal (hence why he lables them "appeals" throughout the essay). The function of tropes that the authors discusses, however, work quite differently, often engaging the reader in different ways. He begins by discussing the metaphor, something that most of us are familiar with from our early days as English majors. Killingsworth requests that his readers approach metaphors a bit differently than we may have in the past, "Instead of thinking of metaphor as a comparison that leaves something out, try thinking of it as an identification, a way of bringing together seemingly unlike things" (Pg. 123). When an author utilizes a metaphor, he is urging the readers to identify the relationship between two words (or phrases). I think back to my time spent reading Donne's poem "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning " in E302, in which the poet compares a compass to his and his wife's love. The poet utilizes the metaphor in a manner that allows the reader to identify the relationship between a moving compass and the long distance love that Donne is describing in his poem. Killingsworth, along with other prominent theoriests, contain that while the metaphor is not always direct, it works to "connect the world to the body" and in Donne's case, the world to his human experience.

To many readers, the function and appeal of the metynomy works the same way as a metaphor. That is, it works as a comparative device. However, as we can see from Killingsworth's explanation of the metaphor and from Donne's poetry that metonyms function in a different manner, often utilizing different comparisons. "If metaphor works by identifying similar things, metonymy works by subsituting a thing for a closely associated thing." The main difference that we must identify is the role of subsitution in metonyms and how they work in persuading readers to associate words or phrases. I feel that this is where most readers confuse metaphors and metonyms, because it seems that both appeals work to compare two things. But the metonym as a figure of speech subsitutes a word or a concept for something else, while a metaphor asks the reader to make a conceptual connection and identify the relationship of words and phrases. The use of symbols in metonyms is an important aspect of this appeal, as the symbol is meant to stand-in for a connected and implied idea.

In assessing the function of tropes in language, we are also forced to ask ourselves many other questions that we have ecountered this semester, such as authorial intention and agency. For metaphors and metonyms to work as rhetorical devices, the author seems to need to have the intented effect and its meaning in mind for it to function. However, it seems as if the author also leads agency to the reader to identify and associate words and phrases in order to understand the authors intention. Thus, the trope manages to forge a complex relationship between writer and reader.

Ubiquitous Rhetorical Language Illuminated Through German Verb Construction

A lot of what Killingsworth said of modern rhetorical theorists I found interesting. It is easy to think of figurative langauge as deceitful, therefor posing questions such as "Why can't we communicate without deceit?" or "Why can't we just say what we say what we mean?" or, as quoted from Killingsworth, "How could all this technical fuss improve our understanding of language and the world?" (122). But, as is more modernly accepted, figurative language is "pervasive", an integral, unavoidable part of our language, and thus would be erroneous to dismiss it. Figurative language, as a technique of rhetoric, was born, as it seems, simultaneously with language itself, and our entire language consists of "dead" and "dying metaphors" (122).

This concept of hidden "dead" metaphors became very apparent to me as I began to learn German. Germans have a very similar way of using verbs with prefixes (by this I mean "wake up/ reise auf" or "come back/ kommen zuruck"), but the way German's construct these verbs with prefixes within sentences is very different than the English language, and thus revealed to me how figurative this use was. The German verb for to rise is "reisen", while Germans use "aufresien" when saying wake up. This of course makes sense, because "auf" more or less means up. But when constructing a sentence the "auf" splits from the"reisen" and is sent to the end of the sentence. For example, when saying "I wake up every morning.", the translation would be "Morgens reise ich auf." (notice the "auf" at the end). Although this is a grammatical practice Mark Twain found to be "awful" (he writes a whole piece called "The Awful German Language"), the point is that "dead" figurative phrases, such as "wake up" or "feel low", are ubiquitous throughout language, even when unrecognized. German (as I'm sure it would be with attempting to learn any new language through grammatical rules as opposed to the deep woven memorization of our first language) helped me realized just how frequent figurative language was, especially through verb/prefix constructions.

The reason why figurative language is in fact so ubiquitous is how they so well represent human thought. Killingsworth says tropes are "not merely embellishments of language but ways of thinking" (122). Figurative language represent the "way we think" (a good example of this is the metaphor, which is, because of its comparison to the body, "the foundation of human thought" (126)). And why should we try to imagine language as not conforming to the way we think? If the goal of language is to relay our thoughts, then shouldn't language follow the same patterns of human thought? Isn't this most effective? Sorry "old Greek and Roman masters", but figurative language is just too ubiquitous, too necessary to understanding and thought to be unconsidered (or considered as simply "eloquence").

Self-Conscious Narration and Persepolis

The idea of self-conscious narrators in Booth's article seems particularly interesting to me as it applies to Satrapi's Persepolis. Booth states that self-conscious narrators are "aware of themselves as writers" as opposed to those narrators "who seem unaware that they are writing, thinking, speaking, or 'reflecting' a literary work" (155). It seems to me that Marji is a generally self-conscious narrator. There are several instances in the text when she turns directly to the audience and speaks not to somebody within the frame, but (presumably) to her readers outside of the frame.

This self-conscious narration is an effective tool because it makes Satrapi's protagonist seem all the more real. While Marji's simplified appearance allows the reader to better place himself into the story according to McCloud, having this character speak directly to the audience makes her appear not like a passive element in a story the reader is watching unfold, but like an active and very much living person in a story that the reader is invited to interact with as well. This narration style is particularly useful in a story like Persepolis because it forces the reader to identify with the protagonist even if she is not someone whose life characteristics are similar to that of the reader.

Enchanted: a FAKE Postmodern Fairy Tale

I really enjoyed our discussion on Friday about postmodern fairy tales, broken narratorial frames and manipulation of tropes like we saw in the Three Little Pigs re-telling. When it came time to blog I trolled around on the internet looking for other examples of postmodern fairy tales, and came across this very interesting article about the Disney movie Enchanted.

I like Amy Adams. She's super cute and has a great voice. But as a feminist, this movie kind of infuriated me. As Megan Griffith-Greene writes in her article "Puzzled by Enchanted," Disney presents the film as "a kind of post-modern fairy tale, inverting the stereotypes that Disney has helped construct about femininity," when in reality it's anything but.

As Griffith-Greene points out, Adams' character Giselle's waist is "the size of her neck, her eyes are wide and doe-like, and she's pluck and perky as she trills about dreams and true love and her perfect prince." This is just another case of bajillions in which the message to women seems to be, 'You're allowed to be different, even smart (gasp!), as long as you're still pretty and skinny and focus the majority of your attention on gettin' a man.' Giselle is also "hyper-domestic." And yes, she does save her (male) love interest from a dragon at the film's conclusion, but the movie still ends in traditional Disney-style heterosexual romance. And, Giselle replaces Patrick Dempsey's smart, working-woman girlfriend! AND Dempsey's daughter prefers Giselle to the women he tries to present to her as role models, from Rosa Parks to Marie Curie.

What all this made me realize is perhaps how difficult it is to escape the tropes of a narrative form you're trying to invert. The tropes of a princess story (true love, cleaning houses with animals, singing sweetly, and all that jazz) are rampant in a film whose stated goal (Disney is culpable of intentional fallacy, of course) is specifically to trump them!

Secondary Character Job, the Revealers

I found Booth's narrator "reliability" to be a very interesting concept, and something that, indeed, has become much more prevalent in modern literature. It's realistic, because certainly not all storytellers are truthful (one could make an easy case that, in fact, none are), so why should the protagonists we read about be truthful? This kind of narrator psychological examination is very difficult to relay in words though. How are we as readers supposed to recognize the protagonists (especially if the narration runs close to the protagonist's consciousness) unreliability through the text? This is the job of the secondary character (though not entirely).

Where primary characters can be very unreliable, secondary characters generally are not. They act, much like the implied author, as foils to aid in examining the protagonist's flaws in character and judgement. Booth writes, "both reliable and unreliable narrators can be unsupported or uncorrected by other narrators [in this sense secondary characters as well] or supported or corrected. When an author wants to relay that a character is correct in his judgements or morals, he simply surrounds him with those that agree. When the main character is incorrect, he must then be surrounded by those who oppose, including the "implied author" himself, which can act in this way as somewhat of a secondary character (as long as he doesn't insert himself too much).

Think "Catcher in the Rye"; it is often the other characters (the prostitute, the sister) that, in their actions, reveal to us the flawed character of Holden, although we are closest to Holden throughout the novel. Another example would be "The Sound and the Fury", where only through Quentin, Cady, and Jason's later narrations are we able to make sense of Benji's tangle of unreliable and knotted prose.

Thus the job of a secondary character is very important, crucial to the text (especially if your desire is to prove protagonist unreliability). This can be somewhat related to Killingsworth's description of irony, that you need a shift of party identification, in a sense. The secondary characters make this shift possible, allowing the reader to understand them and thus distance themselves from the protagonist and his opinions. The reader, in coherent understanding with the secondary character revealers, can become the "We" with them, the "We" that is then able to view the primary characters as the "Them", seeing their flaws from a distance.

I've heard in many English classes that whenever you find a story moving slowly just add another character. Now I see why. Secondary characters can reveal more truth about your primary character than often he can (especially if unreliable), that is their job.

Superiority of Synecdoche

M. Jimmie Killingsworth works in Appeal Through Tropes to make the claim that tropes function beyond the typical "figure of speech" sense. He writes, "They always involve swerves, indirections, substitutions, twists, and turns of meaning"(121). This fluid and poetic view of a typically concrete subject emphasizes the function of the text and its relationship to the reader. Killingsworth makes the connection between tropes and the connections they make back to individuals. Reader response is much more accurate and emotive with the use of tropes because they relate on a more personal level and demand a closer look at the text.

In terms of effectiveness, synecdoche stood out to me as the best trope. Its function is very similar to the icon that McCloud writes about in his text concerning comics. By reducing a concept down to its core symbol, the message becomes amplified. Killingsworth refers to a poem by Emily Dickinson that utilizes synecdoche of the symbolized eye. He writes, "By referring to people as "eyes," using a part to stand for the whole, she focuses on the part of the body that we look into to determine how others feel. The poet's wordplay hints at the old saying that the eyes are the windows of the soul"(130). The eye takes on then a very loaded meaning with cultural values that readers can cling on to. The narrowing of words packs a big punch, especially in poetry, as the icon does in comics. Because it connects most with the characteristic of mutability that Killingsworth states as the main quality of tropes, I found it to be superior to the metaphor that merely restates, metonymy that pulls an external example to stand for a whole, or irony that often complicates more than it solves.

The Death of the Author 2: The Author Dies Again

(Sorry, I couldn't resist playing with the cheesy sequel intro.)

Roland Barthes argued for the exclusion of the identity and intention of the author in literary criticism in "The Death of the Author," published in 1967. Twenty-one years earlier, W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley touched upon the same argument in their 1946 essay, "The Intentional Fallacy."

Wimsatt and Beardsley view a literary work ("poem") as independent from its creator, who, after bringing the work into being, loses all authority over how it is received, interpreted, or criticized: "The poem is not the critic's own and nor the author's (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public (Wimsatt and Beardsley 812).

"Once the Author is removed," writes Barthes, "the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile. To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish with a final signified, to close the writing" (Barthes 877). Here is where the critic may find a shining moment, in the discovery of the Author.

These arguments overlap into a seeming call for literary individualism. Wimsatt, Beardsley and Barthes oppose the imposition of meaning onto readers. If every nuance is provided for them, what is left for readers to conclude on their own? Since the 40's and 60's, however, their wishes have not, it seems to me, come true. Consumers and books, plays, and film are popularly content with being told about art, as is evident from the high demand for author interviews, printed scripts, and DVD commentaries. We live in such a time when the author's intention is readily available, always, and absorbing the intention of the author is the easy way to think about art.

Generic Sublimity

While reading Bakhtin’s Problem of Speech Genres I began thinking about Longinus’ thoughts on sublime language. I highlight a point in the introduction of Longinus’ essay, “The ideal orator is acutely alive to the subtleties of verbal effects, but sees these effects as dependent on the moral qualities of the artist and audience as much as on the their taste in stylistic embellishments” which is what was claimed as a “necessary source” for experiencing sublimity (Longinus 345). My thoughts began to whirl because I began to wonder where sublime fit in the genre of languages, or why the sublime and concept of genre seem so similar in properties of defining themselves. It is stated that “sublimity will be achieved if we consistently select the most important of….features and learn to organize them as a unity by coming one with another” (Longinus 353). Bakhtin also approaches the organization of language in a similar way, however Bakhtin also says that “In essence, language, or functional, styles are nothing other than generic styles for certain spheres of human activity and communication” (Bakhtin 64), so does this mean that sublime language is a genre, but one of that is seemingly, as a whole, generic because it is still nonetheless a style of language used for a certain level of communication? Or is it even communication because communication relies on the response of the listener or reader? I ask these questions because sublime is created by the speaker, yet reliant on the audience, but the with sublime language the audience does not hold the responsibility of responding in the same genre (or style) as the orator, so how exactly is sublime language classified? I honestly have no answers, but simply curiosities.

I Object

I highlighted a quote that I wanted to blog about from class on Friday in the reading from Bakhtin.

"Language arises from man's need to express himself, to objectify himself" (45). I find this idea just fascinating. It kind of reminds me of Platonism. Plato and Socrates I suppose kind of denied at least to a certain extent, the reality of the "real world". To them, what was real was what was in our minds. Thinking about ideas and language in this way is kind of exciting, interesting. It's to say that there are very real icons or images in our mind, and our language is the only way that we can describe those images. It would certainly be much cooler to project these images onto a screen and show them to people, but as we all know that is impossible. So, we are left with language as our means for the transmission of ideas.

I think this is a very different concept from what we have previously seen in this class. Before this, I generally understood ideas as needs that arose from our need to communicate. Language therefore needed to be effective for the sake of making a person comprehensible. We saw this primarily with Locke and how words are signs for the words that they signify. Now I can kind of think language as something that arose because we have the ideas that need to be expressed and shared, and only effective language will do this ideas justice. Might this idea also reflect ideas that Austin presents as far as language being peformative? Maybe in this case, not so much that language describing the images in our mind's eye perform an action as much as they serve a function in our mental well being, but I am really not too sure.

Attaining the Sublime

When Longinus describes the sublime as an "excellence of discourse," I couldn't help but be reminded about Bahktin's section on the purity of prose and poetry. He writes in his concluding paragraph, "if the art of poetry, as a utopian philosophy of genres, gives rise to the conception of a purely poetic, extrahistorical language, a language of the gods - then it must be said that the art of prose is close to a conception of languages as historically concrete and living things" (331).

The goal of attaining the sublime for Bahktin is a revelation of understanding, like a new world something he describes as "edenic." The "art of prose" is the act of embodying the sublime, communicating something beyond just the text. While reading Longinus, I had difficulty separating the idea of sublime from typical writing. Bahktin, discussing prose art, says, "prose art presumes a deliberate feeling for the historical and social concreteness of living discourse, a feeling for its participation in historical becoming and in social struggle, it deals with discourse that is still warm from that struggle and hostility" (331).

To me this passage directly correlates to Longinus' sublime "excellence in discourse." I have not committed to a solid definition of what is sublime, but through the lens of Bahktin I can gather that it is a dimension of writing with a trajectory for becoming and consciousness. Could this be exactly what Bahktin references when he predicts the art of poetry to someday become "the language of the gods?"

The False Intention

I understand what Wimsatt and Beardsley are saying, and I agree with them on the most part. An author shouldn't be judged based on their intention in writing the poem and whether or not the achieved that goal. This actually compliments Longinus' idea of "Sublimity" really well because they both say that looking at the literature as a work of art is more about its effect on the audience and less about the intention of the author. Longinus tends to deal more with the authorial control of the piece of literature while Wimsatt and Beardsley seem to minimize the authors importance in poetry. They even go so far as to say that poets "plan too much" (361). This seems to tell me that poets should just be a conduit through which the audience can view the world, but that seems to do a disservice to the poet. The conduit metaphor seems to work quite well actually, now that I have described it as such. This can even relate back to McCloud's idea of "identity vacuum" (as I like to call it), as we are forced into the mind of the poet when reading his work and we often times have no idea what this person looks like (they could just be a blank smiley face for all we know) so we are forced into viewing the world as they view it. And the author's magnitude of sublimity drastically affects this conduit. I just don't think that the poets skill with words should be totally relegated, that a poet does not have the ability to manipulate his work in order to manipulate his audience. If we think all the way back to Socrates, he definitely argues that writing is a skill, and skills can be developed and controlled according to the author's intentions. I think that, in this regardes anyway, Socrates is at odds with Wimsatt and Beardsley and that Socrates wins this round.

I was reading through Longinus again this weekend, and I decided to try to get a better understanding of his qualifications of the sublime. After looking at some of them, I've come up with some problems that I had with a few of them. First, I have issues with Longinus' first "source of sublimity" he writes, "The first and most important is the power to conceive great thoughts..."(255). To exemplify this, he points us back to Xenophon's description of eyes. While I think this observation sounds like it makes a lot of sense, I am left wondering just exactly what a great thought is? Is it just the fact that Longinus found this particular idea clever or is there some other basis for making this great? He goes on to point out how personifying eyes is used in other places, both by Achilles and Agathocles. Is this what makes this a "great thought", the fact that it is shared by other people? This seems to make little sense, it would seem that this makes this idea less great as it is quite common. So at this point, I'm not sure if I can define what exactly Longinus' "great thought" is exactly.

I feel like I can talk about my problems with sources 4 and 5 almost a the same time because they are very similar to me. Source 4 is "noble diction" and 5 is "elevated word arrangement"

These are sources of the sublime which Longinus says "contains much food for reflection" (255) and "makes a strong and ineffaceable impression on memory" (255). As a sort of anti-example, I thought almost immediately of George Orwell, one of my favorite authors, and also Ben Jonson a great poet of the Renaissance. Both of these guys, or at least its how I've always understood their work, preferred a simpler style that is pretty easy to read and understand. For their time, (for me especially Jonson) they really don't seem to use "noble diction" and "elevated word arrangement" but rather aim to simply be understood. Here is a passage from Jonson's poem "inviting a friend to supper"

TO-NIGHT, grave sir, both my poore house, and I
Doe equally desire your companie :
Not that we thinke us worthy such a guest,
But that your worth will dignifie our feast,
With those that come ; whose grace may make that seeme
Something, which, else, could hope for no esteeme.
It is the faire acceptance, Sir, creates
The entertaynment perfect : not the cates (food)

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/jonson/supper.htm

While the diction does seem a bit different to us, in his time it would have been much more commonplace. Even now, see this as a pretty simple poem to understand, basically it is an invitation to a dinnerparty. One might ask how does leave an "ineffaceable impression"? Well, if you read the whole poem we see Jonson place a huge importance on the power of friendship and fellowship and on that level this poem can certainly be food for thought.

These are my two problems with Longinus' sources. I'd love someone to just say I don't understand his full argument though because that would probably help me on a SCD or something lol

Bakhtin and Longinus Tango

Ok, so there will be no dancing on this post, but I do think that it is important to pinpoint where Longinus and Bakhtin seem to overlap when it comes to an audience's role and responsibility in regard to text and utterances. In 'The Problem of Speech Genres," Bakhtin says "that when the listener perceives and understands the meaning (the language meaning) of speech, he simultaneously takes an active, responsive attitude toward it" (Bakhtin 68). Here, Bakhtin is saying that there is more to speech than just a speaker and that a big component of it is the listener because of the interaction that occurs between speaker and listener. The speech expresses something but it is the listener that takes the language and interprets it, either agreeing or disagreeing with it, drawing from personal experience or reflection to augment the words the speaker uses. The interactions between speaker and listener would be immensely different if, say President Obama was speaking at a Tea Party convention as opposed to speaking to congress (though I'm sure some would say there is little difference at all).
This is where Longinus enters the fray with his excerpt form On the Sublime, indicating that it is the audiences (and in all actuality, human) "nature to be elevated and exalted by true sublimity" (Longinus 350). I'm not saying that President Obama delivers speeches that are sublime (though some do take the improvement over the predecessors speeches as a step, or ten, in the right direction), but I do think that, when applying Longinus's idea of our nature in regard to sublimity, it is our job to interpret and discover if his speeches satisfy that need for sublimity. That President Obama would face polarizing reaction depending on the venue underscores the lack of sublimity in his speech, since it is not all encompassing and effective in the same way even with different audiences. At least this is what I think Longinus means when he says "When people of different trainings, ways of life, tastes, ages, and manners all agree about something, the judgement and assent of so many voices lends strength and irrefutability to the conviction that their admiration is rightly directed" (Longinus 350).

What really is sublime?

Like many of you, I also feel that I will never truly understand what Longinus considers to be examples of the sublime. To me, it seems that he often references sublimity as an ideal that is almost impossible to achieve, and once achieved, the meaning is oftentimes debated. However, in regards to achieving sublimity through text, it seems that Longinus is arguing that the manipulation of language, and manner in which thoughts are constructed and revealed can greatly affect the understanding of the audience. For example, we can see this when he says, “persuasion is on the whole something we can control” (347). Because of this, it is obvious that he sees awareness of the many forms language, as well as the various ways in which it can be utilized, demonstrates the flexible and unstable restrictions associated with this system of the communication. What's more, the theories of noble diction and visualization that he mentions additionally promote multiple uses of words to appeal to an audience, even if it hinders the expression of truth. In order to create “real sublimity,” which is compared to “those things which people everybody all the time as genuinely and finely sublime,” it appears that one must perfect his or her argument by appealing to the pleasure of the audience (350). This can be done by carefully incorporating “words and the use of metaphorical and artificial language” (350). So, one is then able to conclude that the individual utterance of a word holds little meaning if it is not associated with fancy literary elements that present the thought in a more appealing manner; however, “when [visualization] is closely involved with factual argument…it enslaves the hearer as well as persuading him” (357). Therefore, according to Longinus, in order to achieve control of a given situation, the speaker must persuade the audience into believing the exact idea in which he is preaching; most likely, this occurs by manifesting an overarching feeling of sublimity through the use of specific techniques designed to essentially trick the listener into attaining the intended comprehension.

The Sublime Reader

I don't think I will ever completely understand what Longinus has to say about sublimity, but hopefully through my confusion I can shed some light on some key ideas. My freshman year of college, I took ENG-W 170, which is the 131 alternative for those of you who did the overachieving thing and took 131 in high school. We talked a lot about the sublime in nature (the class focused on wilderness in literature). My understanding of the sublime back then was just something that a human could not completely comprehend. An endless valley, a gigantic mountain, the ocean floor. No matter how much you stare, you can't quite form a coherent thought. You can only feel awe. That might be why Longinus confuses me to no end. He seems so sure of his notion of the sublime, when up until now I thought that the sublime was, by definition, undefinable.

I'll try to provide an example. I keep using mountains as examples of the sublime, and I'll keep doing it here. Before I do, I'll quote Longinus: "Though nature is on the whole a law unto herself in matters of emotion and elevation, she is not a random force and does not work altogether without method" (347). Nature is not a "random force," and yet it can be sublime? If you look at Mt. Everest, for example (don't get too caught up on the specifics--I've never seen Mt. Everest) what do you experience? Quite possibly, that mountain is sublime to you. However, what if there was (and there could have been for all I know) a tribe of mountain people who lived on mountain tops for generations? They ate there (yes, they ate rocks), slept there, and raised their children to do the same. They stared at the same stupid mountain for their entire lives. So then, would that mountain be sublime? To me, yes. To the mountain people? I would guess not.

Longinus is talking about writing, of course, but it seems to apply both ways. I'm still clueless as to what exactly makes a text sublime, even with Longinus's examples and steps to achieve sublimity, because I keep coming to the conclusion that sublimity is completely dependent on the reader. So then, if I pretended that Longinus would agree with me in saying that the reader determines sublimity, I wonder how he would say a reader would go about doing that. Longinus says, "Sublimity is a kind of eminence or excellence of discourse" (347). This is preceded by him telling his friend, "Your education dispenses me from any long preliminary definition" (347), so I assume this isn't the only thing Longinus thought about sublimity, but it makes me ask, Is a written work sublime if the reader thinks it excellent? Then I would have to define excellent, and, honestly, I can't. It's relative as well. I am forced one again to go back to my original definition of the sublime by saying that a reader must experience some sort of awe in order for there to be sublimity. That is, the reader must be unable to fully comprehend the "excellence" of the discourse.

Longinus helps me to elaborate that point later in his essay. He says, "It is our nature to be elevated and exalted by true sublimity. Filled with joy and pride, we come to believe we have created what we have only heard" (255). Words like "elevated" and "exalted" make me believe that there is a change in the reader when the reader experiences the sublime. Perhaps that is the point of sublimity. Sublimity furthers understanding by pushing the boundaries of one's previous understanding. And, since everyone's original (before the sublime experience) will be different, the possibility of sublimity must vary from person to person.

Some Criticism of New Criticism

In reading some of my fellow classmates thoughts regarding New Criticism and the Wimsatt and Beardsley piece The Intentional Fallacy, I know that I am not the only one that objects to some of the basic assumptions carried by the scholars and the movement of New Criticism. For a refresher, I would like to quickly revisit the underlying goal of this movement. According to the Bedford Glossary, The New Criticism movement of that began in the 1940's treats texts "as self-contained and self referential and thus based their interpretations on elements within the text rather than on external factors such as the effects of the work or biographical and historical materials." (Bedford Glossary 335). From our previous studies, I understand and fully contend that the language used in texts is interpretive and largely dependent upon the reader, I simply have trouble buying the claim that texts can be "self referential" and free from analysis of biographical and historical influences. While it is hard to take a stand against notable Yale professors and critics such as Wimatt and Beardsley, I just dont buy their claims and assumptions. First off, I would like to call into question the authors comparison between poetry, pudding and a machine. Wimsatt and Beardsley state in The Intentional Fallacy that "Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. It is only because an artifact works that we infer the intention of an artifact. A poem should not mean, but be" (Wimsatt & Beardsley 811). I don't mean to come off as argumentative, but the comparision between poetry and a pudding or a machine seems to be a bit (well, a lot) of a stretch. I agree that poetry must "work" but pudding and a machine are not created or conceived in the manner that literature is. Poetry works as a form of expression, a intellectual and emotion creation genre that bares the marking of its creator. How can you analyze poetry, or any type of literature, without at least considering the emotions and intentions of the author, as well as the influence of the authors experiences in a historical framework. Without these considerations, literature as expression and its social implications are lost, negating the authorial purpose of the work.

I would also like to call into question the claim within The Intentional Fallacy that poetry, and literature, is public. "The poem belongs to the public. It is embodied in language, the peculiar possession of the public, and it is about the human being, an object of public knowledge" (812). Poetry, however, is not always public, and is not always intended for public eyes. So if a poem or a poet's works are unknown, does that take away from the fact that it is a work of literature? Take the case of Emily Dickinson, without a doubt one of the most beloved American poets to this day. None of her poetry was found or published until after her death. It could be argued that she never intended for any individual to read her work. Of course, the interpretation of her work is now "public knowledge" but her poetry is private. It details her emotions and experiences as a woman in a patriarchal society. Not only should her poetry be read as such, but it should be treated as if it was never meant to meet the eye of anyone but herself. Further, reading Dickinson without biographical and historical considerations takes away from the "meaning" and "being" of her work.

Side Notes

I'd like to expound upon the notion that Wimsatt and Beardsley brought up in the end of "The Intentional Fallacy" about the effectiveness/necessity/disadvantages of side notes within a written work. In their text, they discuss notes to support specific literary allusions, notes that "function as guidelines to send us where we may be educated" (817). In my experience (as was, too, the opinions of many of my English teachers through the years) these side notes, although often helpful, can create an outside intrusion on the text. And so I wonder does the use of side notes create more disadvantages to understanding the true truth, "vraie verite", of the text than it does advantages (813)?

Wimsatt and Beardsley talk a lot about authorial side notes, ones placed by the author himself. To me, these don't seem like a big of an intrusion, because the author should have the ability to discuss the intentions of his own work, though why he wouldn't opt to relay these intentions better within the work itself makes little sense. What's worse (in terms of bogging down the work0 is when the notes-as-guidelines are placed not by the author, not in the present in which the work was written, but rather by some outsider critic, explaining with his own intentional concepts post-work. This concept of work intrusion is muddled with "intentional fallacy", as an outside critic can't post guide lines to understanding allusions without imposing his owns ideas of intention.

Back in high-school, my English teacher forbid (or tried to) us from using Sparknotes, and at the time I couldn't understand why. How could it hurt to better understand a book? The problem is that "summary sites" like Sparknotes tell you the story not as the author intended for it to be told, in words the author didn't choose to use. Often, when one reads a book, they aren't doing so just to see what happens (this is a major difference between literary works and history textbooks), but also to see how the author relays what happens, how the story is told. Simplified summary guide lines can only tell you what happens in a story. And the more subjective they are, the further your understanding runs from the authors.

Wimsatt and Beardsley claimed that notes within and about a text could become "muffling" to a text, and this is true (817). When reading a literary work and constantly having to switch from the narrative to the guiding side notes, one doesn't read the work with the flow the author intended. The flow is chopped, stuttered. And although they may help one understand specific things like allusion, how can they begin to relay authorial intention? If meaning is relayed through side notes, whose meaning is it? The author's or the critic's, who just imposes his subjective intentional opinions, forcing the reader to interrupt the text with a "muffling" affect (as I often found was the case in Shakespeare handbooks and poetry). Let the reader interpret free from other's subjective impositions, even if they are often correct.

Yet sometimes side notes can be very helpful (I attempted to read Ulysses this summer and would have been completely lost without the guide to every excessive allusion). But they must be objective, or as objective as possible. The more subjective notes become the more they inhabit Wimsatt's and Beardsley's idea of "Intentional Fallacy".

Intimidated by Charles Dickens

Wimsatt and Beardsely have a fascinating point about the relationship of the author to the text: "The poem is not the critic's own and not the author's (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend or control it). The poem belongs to the public. It is embodied language, the peculiar possession of the public, and it is about the human being, and object of public knowledge" (812). Copyright law aside, this statement is quite radical: works of literature belong to – me? You? People who’ve never read them and may not care?

I am not sure that texts can be so detached from their authors as Wimsatt and Beardsley would have it. The reputation of the authors of certain works certainly shapes out analyses and interpretations. Wimsatt and Beardsley write, "The evaluation of a work remains public; the work is measured against something outside the author" (814). Consider Shakespearean plays. Today, people who see these plays expect greatness, because culturally we revere Shakespeare’s writing. This is not merely an issue for the casual reader/watcher of the plays, but also for the critic. Often, English classes (both high school and college) take the “You should read great literature! Here is some great literature to read! Do not challenge its greatness!” approach to teaching literature. (I have serious pedagogical issues with this approach, however, that will have to wait for another post...) Thus, our analysis as students begins with the idea that “great” literature is tied to certain writers, and thus we have trouble evaluating or measuring the work outside of the author. Perhaps, we have trouble evaluating or measuring the work at all: what high school student really feels as though they are a powerful agent or critic when, after an enthusiastic and well-meaning English teacher has waxed poetic about Dickens’ genius, he/she is faced with writing an essay on David Copperfield? Being told over and over that certain authors are “great” and seeing this reinforced through culture seriously shapes our interactions with their texts. As we grow as students, and as thinkers and critics, we can become less intimidated and ready to take on the literature, but it is still difficult – if not impossible – to completely separate literature and authorship.

It seems to me that this becomes an issue of agency: to be a critic is to have power in a discourse situation. To view texts apart from their authors, as separate and as open to analysis, interpretation, and criticism, cannot simply be decreed. To interpret using the “intentional fallacy” might seem safe. In that way, a person isn’t necessarily adding new stuff to the discourse, rather, a person is appealing to a “higher” authority: the author. To be able to separate the author and the work for productive analysis – to accept and practice that idea that literature is publicly owned – requires significant maturity and confidence as a writer.

Intentional Fallacy- Refuting the Need for Author as 'Good Man'

In Winsatt and Beardsley's article "The Intentional Fallacy", the authors seem to negate Longinus' idea of the author as a 'good man', a moral character. They argue that "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art" (354). This goes against Longinus' claim that only a 'good man' can produce sublime art, or the trend in literary criticism to think that "'In order to judge the poet's performance, we must know what he intended'" (354). If the author's intent has no bearing on the sublimity of the work, then the author's morality really doesn't matter in literary criticism at all.

I definitely side with Winsatt and Beardsley on this; like I said in an earlier post, there are a lot of writers who are completely immoral (cough, Bukowski, cough) but are excellent at what they do. In my opinion, literary criticism should focus on the success of a piece of writing in terms of its artfulness, not in terms of the author's inherent morality (or lack thereof).

Revisting Longinus and His Conception of the Sublime

In groups during Although the real author of the text of On the Sublime is unknown, his theories regarding literature became highly influential shortly before and during the Enlightenment. According to Longinus, the authorial voice in the text, the goal of an author is to produce a work that conjures up the "sublime" in the reader. While Longinus never explicitly defines exactly what the "sublime" is per se, he does explain that "Sublimity is a kind of eminence or excellence of discourse...grandeur produces ecstasy rather than persuasion in the hearer; and the combination of wonder and excitement proves superior to the merely persuasive and the pleasant" (Longinus 347). While many others in antiquity favored the rhetorical power of persuasion in written works, Longinus emphasizes the sublime as a force that has more pull than any other rhetorical device in literature. He goes on to say that "persuasion is on the whole something we can control, whereas amazement and wonder exert invincible power and force and get the better of every hearer" (pg. 347). I have one problem/question regarding this statement, however: Throughout much of the text, Longinus assigns agency to the writer, who is the one responsible for producing sublimity within literature. In the above quotation however, he also states that persuasion is something "we can control." Is sublimity something that cannot be controlled then? From the text, it seems that Longinus is pretty explicit in asserting that the sublimity is produced (and thus under the control) of the author.

We need not look further to affirm this claim that look into Longinus discussion of the sources of sublimity. He states that these five sources dictate whether or not a text can achieve sublimity. All five have to do with the author and his technique in writing. In writing a text, the author must have the power to conceive great thoughts, inspired emotion, utilize certain kinds of figures, "noble diction" and careful word arrangement. He even goes as far to state that "Nothing is possible without it" (pg. 350). Contrary to his statements regarding persuasion (as something that "we can control"), it seems that sublimity is also something that is, and can be, controlled by the writer. That is not to say that there is not a role for the reader and the hearer according to Longinus, but he seems to solely focus on the writer as the deciding factor in producing and controlling sublimity in literature.