English 8000.001: Critical Theory, Fall 2003

Thursday 7.30-9.30, Place [May be changed]

Hugh Ormsby-Lennon   466 St. Augustine Center

Office Hours:    Thursday 5.15-6.00 and, liberally, by appointment

Voicemail: 610-519-4655; Best to call home 215-592-8102

Home fax: 215-238-1187 (make arrangements)E-mail: hugh.ormsby-lennon@villanova.edu

Is Literary Theory an Oxymoron? An Overview.

             What is a student eager to make her way in literary theory and in the academic profession to do? “Follow your nose!” was the advice given by Sir William Empson, a germinal critic, many years ago. It was advice I heard underscored again this summer by Sir Frank Kermode, widely regarded as our greatest living critic. But amidst a multiplicity of schools (or “interpretive,” or “interpretative,” communities) shouldn’t one just sign up as an “-ist” of some kind? Success in the profession (after one’s surviving the hoops and barrels of one’s magistral and, particularly, doctoral degrees) also depends upon demographics and, increasingly, upon university economics. The “real world” and intellectual discipleship “intersect” (as now we say) in all kinds of different ways. The “imbrications” (as we also say) are manifold. But how, finally, does one enter a doctoral program of one’s choice and find a job thereafter? How, then, do teaching and writing intertwine (if at all)? How does performance in the classroom relate to the professional market-place and to gaining tenure? Then what? Identity criticism? Autobiography? Theoretical senescence? And then the only end of age.

             In this seminar students will be introduced to the thrills and spills, the ladders and chutes, of contemporary critical theory. During the 1960s la nouvelle critique wafted across the Channel. I was among the first at Cambridge University to savor the garlicky aroma of such intellectual giants as Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault. From malodorous sinks of iniquity in England la nouvelle critique gradually drifted across the Atlantic to America where its aromatherapy soon had literary critics spinning with delight. Today la nouvelle critique may seem as old hat—that’s vieux jeu, not vieux chapeau or crapaud—as la nouvelle cuisine.* But the culinary revolution reinvents itself. Avanti i popolo!

             In this seminar we shall “interrogate” (as we now say) what’s “new” about this “new criticism.” There was another “new criticism” (much mocked today) that challenged the “old” scholarship and came to dominate American literary studies between 1930 and 1970. Of course, what’s new isn’t true and what’s true isn’t new. “There is no new thing under the sun,” Ecclesiastes reminds us. Most of our readings, however, will come from the second half of the last century. The course is designed, in fact, as a pre/post-millennial garage sale in which students can pick and choose oddments of theory that may seem of immediate use in their other courses and for their theses. Nick-nacks will include semiotics, structuralism, deconstruction, phallogocentrism, reader-response theory, the new historicism, post-colonialism, the linguistic turn, the material turn, the formal return, the professional “star system,” film studies, cultural studies, disability studies (aka freakery to both the politically incorrect and correct), The Simpsons, Sopranos, Springer, Survivor . . . Millionaire . . . Remember that there are whole web-sites and university courses devoted to Homer & Co (genuine subversives or capitalist drones?).

             Say what you will about “theory” (and students, honest but unhip, increasingly complain about its hegemony) it still comprises the medium in which, perforce, we live and move and have our being. Like it or not, everything is “theorized”—even illegitimately. For if everything can be theorized, then perhaps nothing should . . . Like it or not, however, theory must be tackled. My own approach will emerge as droll. I’m not against theory—there were no “good old days” before its tidal wave hit the academy—and, however opinionated I may seem, I remain resolutely agnostic. There are good theorists and bad neanderthals (and vice versa).

             We shall enjoy two “campus novels,” Small World and Nice Work, in which David Lodge gratifyingly dramatizes my own indecisions and revisions. We shall also surf through some comic books. And we may also read (depending upon the class’s proclivities) E. M. Forster’s Howards End as a case study in film-adaptation and criticism (good gay, bad queer, antifeminist, classist—or a decent Edwardian bloke who could write like an angel, whatever his theoretical flubs). I knew the author [1879-1970]. That’s something to tell the grandchildren, but I may have fallen foul of the “biographical fallacy.”

             Students will be invited to demonstrate their critical prowess when they process their final papers upon literary works (or a choice of other cultural phenomena) that interest them. They should learn to “follow their noses.” Despite the cerebral and linguistic pirouettes of the theorists we shall study, the course will remain (I hope) very user-friendly. La nouvelle critique may not be, in the final analysis, “new,” but it “problematizes” or “complicates” (as we now say) questions with which critics since Aristotle have wrestled. We just need to familiarize ourselves with the terms of the debates (or “discursivities” as we now call them). What authors put into a book (or play or movie or TV show) and what audiences get out. Intentional fallacies and goofball misreadings. The play of signifiers. Keys to all the Mythologies. Can we (or should we) say absolutely anything we like? Who’s to be master? as Humpty Dumpty demands. Can you trust your bosses (i.e. professors) to say it like it is? The entrapments and pratfalls of language. Close reading: sanitizing, besmirching. or refreshing? Follow your nose.

             [*Reviewing Rebecca L. Spang’s The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Harvard, 2000), an anonymous writer in The Economist (August 5-11, 2000, p. 81) notes that Spang

illuminates the origins of deliberately incomprehensible menu listings, for example pigeon a la crapaudine (literally, a kind of sheep disease—anyone?), celebrity restaurant reviewers and the awarding of rosettes to particular establishments.

In a letter to The Economist (August 19-25th, 2000, p. 6) Richard Guelff illuminates the semantics of this enigmatic menu listing:

While crapaud can now have a number of meanings (principally toad but also street urchin, flaw, low armchair, baby grand piano and indeed a veterinary malady) and crapaudine can also have a number of meanings (toadstone, iron wort, grating/strainer and socket), a la crapaudine means cut open and grilled—the equivalent of the word spatchcock. This method of preparing and cooking can be found in “Le Grand Dictionnaire de la Cuisine” by Alexandre Dumas pere. As for sheep, it may come as no surprise that Dumas also gives a recipe for hachis de mouton a la mousquetaire.

So there you have it. Food studies are a really hot topic today. Why? Check out the semiotics and the cultural dynamics. Kill all foodies? No, mimic their prattle if the fancy takes you. It’s a burgeoning and legitimate field of study.]

Course Requirements

             Possibly an oral report; certainly a term paper. If we decide upon oral reports, Pick your poison for classroom delivery (I can help) and don’t be afraid to reveal that you feel bewildered or bilious (if that seems an apt response; it probably is; and you have probably tapped into student irritations). Students should hand in a summary or outline of their report. Topics for a term paper will be determined during discussions between the instructor and individual students. Please feel free to pick a subject that you feel may be helpful for you in choosing a thesis topic. (Former students have written on Batman comics, The Simpsons, The Bible, Christian criticism, nineteenth century American women’s magazines, canonical literary texts, Aquinas and teleological criticism, Superbowl and Wingbowl . . . The sky or the sewer is the limit, given the rise of porno studies.) You should not, however, duplicate work that you are submitting for another class.

             Remember that you have only three semesters before you have to plump for a thesis topic so you should cultivate your professors accordingly. Tempus fugit. Really. Find an instructor whose lingo seems sympathique. Oldsters, newsters—there’s a lot of choice.

Reading List (starred items are on the syllabus)

*David Lodge, Small World

*David Lodge, Nice Work

(Also recommended is David Lodge’s series of critical vignettes–readable, succinct, and instructive–in The Art of the Novel.)

*David H. Richter, The Critical Tradition (henceforth Tradition)

*Brian Vickers, Appropriating Shakespeare

*Jeff Collins and Bill Mayblin, Introducing Derrida

*Chris Horrocks and Zoran Jevic, Introducing Foucault

(Note: the Totem series which showcases such topics as Introducing Postfeminism. Introducing Semiotics, and Introducing Cultural Studies is highly recommended.)

*Joe Moran, Interdisciplinarity

*Gerald Graff, Professing Literature

?E. M. Forster, Howards End

(Please note: I have just discovered that the University Bookstore has been unable to obtain copies of I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism with which I had intended to begin the semester. I shall thus be able to discuss this germinal text only in general terms. Worse still, insufficient copies of the books on the syllabus have been ordered. Amazon.com to the rescue, I assume . . . My apologies, although I have nothing to apologize for!)

Alia

             I plan to distribute samples of the latest “discursivities” as long as my stamina and xerox budget hold out.

             I expect students to bring me up to speed with the latest intelligence from the brave new world of eebo, virtual reality, web-searches, hypertext, e-books, et hoc genus omne. In the Library’s Reference Department Judy Olsen (a former MA from our program) is a super source of information and I energetically recommend that you trade on her wonderful expertise.

             Class outings to Philadelphia sites (and sights) including the Penn Rare Book Room, the Mutter Museum, the Franklin Museum and comparable institutions (outings will reflect “the material turn”). As I write, I am planning trips at semester’s beginning and end. In the past, the class has rounded out its days with dinners in town whereafter we have adjourned to my house for cake, coffee, and drinks.

Syllabus

You probably won’t find it possible to cover all the readings with the same degree of attention. Some of them (I warn you) are very dense. Don’t despair. The problems are often with the critics rather than with you. Follow your nose. If there are readings that are particularly popular, we can spend more time on them.

Aug      28        Introduction

Sept      4           Lodge, Small World, Nice Work

                          Sample Arnold, Tradition, 394-416

Frye, "The Archetypes of Literature," Tradition, 541-51

             11         [I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism]

                          Richter, "Formalisms," 699-715

                          Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Tradition, 495-503

                          Empson, "Epilogue to Seven Types," Tradition, 735-747

                          Shklovsky, "Art as Technique," Tradition, 716-726

                          Tynyanov, "On Literary Evolution," 727-734

             18         A (mock-)epic sequence! Vickers gives a dyspeptic (but not injudicious) history and interpretation of linguistic theory since Saussure. Some will find it heavy-going, but hang in there!

Vickers, Appropriating Shakespeare, 3-213

                          Richter, "Structuralism, Semiotics, and Deconstruction," Tradition, 809-831

Saussure, "Nature of the Linguistic Sign," Tradition, 832-4

                          Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," Tradition, 835-843

                          Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play," Tradition, 877-88

                          Foucault, "What is an Author?" Tradition, 889-900

                          Barthes, "From Word to Text," Tradition, 900-904

                          de Man, "Semiology and Rhetoric," 906-916 (yuk!)

                          Handouts.

Introducing Foucault; Introducing Derrida. Perhaps you’ll find the comic-books more intelligible than anything else!

             25         Reader-Response Criticism, Tradition, 917-1013.

Oct       2           Richter, "New Historicism and Cultural Studies," 1204-1221

                           Bakhtin, selections, Tradition, 527-548