EMAIL<\/a> | SYLLABUS<\/a> | POLICIES<\/a> | QUESTIONS<\/a> | PRESENTATIONS<\/a> | JOURNALS<\/a> | PAPER<\/a> | FINAL<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Assigned: Roland Barthes. From Mythologies,<\/em> \u201cPhotography and Electoral Appeal\u201d (1320-21); \u201cThe Death of the Author\u201d (1322-26); \u201cFrom Work to Text\u201d (1326-31 in Leitch, Vincent B. and William E. Cain, eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.<\/em> 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2010. ISBN 978-0-393-93292-8).<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. On 1320-21, according to Barthes, what change in the way voters connect to political candidates comes about thanks to photography? How does photography, in Barthes\u2019 view, constitute not a radical departure from the past but instead a return to a certain aspect of earlier, pre-democratic political tradition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. On 1320-21, what \u201ctypes\u201d of candidate tend to be created or promoted in campaign photography? Moreover, what differences does Barthes suggest between a three-quarter face candidate photograph (in which the subject is turned slightly away from the camera so that you can see only one ear) and a full-face candidate photograph (in which the subject faces the camera directly)? That is, what leadership qualities do these two photographic poses emphasize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. General question: it\u2019s clear that video and photographic media play a big role in our own political campaigns and, more generally, in officeholders\u2019 attempts to govern after an election has been decided. Do you see that role as mostly positive or mostly negative, or somewhere in between? Do you think all the \u201ctech\u201d turns politicians into a Mad Men<\/em>-style commercial product, or is that too cynical a view? Explain your reasoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. On pages 1322-25, Barthes makes some key distinctions that should be explored. Perhaps the most important is the one he makes between an author and a \u201cscriptor.\u201d What is the main difference between these two, and what further inferences does Barthes draw from the broad distinction he initially makes between the older concept (author) and the newer one (scriptor)? For example, what relationship does Barthes posit between the scriptor and the written text?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. On pages 1324-25, how does Barthes address the nature of what he calls a \u201ctext\u201d? What is a text made of? How is that different from older ways in which works of literature were said to be constituted?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. On page 1325, how does what a modern reader does with a text differ from the older model in which an interpreter sets out to explain a given work of literature? How has Barthes redefined the role and significance of readers,<\/em> in this essay? How do you think of this relationship, and why do you configure it as you do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. On pages 1325-26, following upon the previous question\u2019s concern with the nature of the modern text, what does Barthes suggest about the practice and value of \u201ccriticism\u201d in the professional or academic sense, now that the concept of the author seems to be much attenuated? Why is traditional humanistic criticism hypocritical, according to Barthes? How does it — and even formalist criticism — work to enhance the power of the author at the expense of the reader?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. General question: on page 1326, Barthes says sweepingly that \u201cto give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.\u201d This brief essay was published during a momentous year \u2013 1968 — that generated a lot of radical thinking on the political Left both in Europe and here in the United States. It has been well over forty years since Barthes set forth his optimistic ideas about leaving behind the old-fashioned, bourgeois concept of authorship (authors as authority figures, as originators and controllers of meaning, etc.) in favor of a new conception of the reader\u2019s experience with \u201ctexts.\u201d How does Barthes\u2019 piece sound today \u2013 do you think it\u2019s just utopian rhetoric that hasn\u2019t come to fruition, or was he on to something, to some extent, regarding the relationship between modern readers and modern texts, and regarding the devaluation of professional criticism? Explain your rationale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. General question: in what sense do Barthes\u2019 comments about texts and how we might read them today both borrow from and move beyond structuralism as we will have discussed that approach with reference to Ferdinand de Saussure (and perhaps one or two other authors, depending on the scope of the current course)? How does Barthes\u2019 model of language and reading in the current selection run counter to the goals of structuralist analysis?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. On 1326, Barthes prepares the ground for the rest of his essay by explaining why a strongly updated understanding of texts has become necessary. What \u201cbreak\u201d or departure in our understanding of \u201cthe work\u201d occurred in the nineteenth century, and what factors does he specify and discuss as contributing to the currently happening \u201cepistemological slide\u201d in the way his own contemporaries in the early 1970s think about language and literature?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 11. On 1327, Barthes begins enunciating seven \u201cpropositions\u201d about what he calls the Text as opposed to the earlier concept, the Work. What is the first of these propositions, and what changes does it call for in our understanding and experience of, say, a literary work (to use the older word) sitting on a library shelf \u2013 even, to some extent, an older or ancient work of literature?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 12. On 1327-28, what is Barthes\u2019 second proposition about Texts? How is the ancient principle of interpretive and literary hierarchy being strongly challenged and even undermined by the advent of modern ideas about textuality? How is the Text \u201cparadoxical\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 13. On 1328, what is Barthes\u2019 third proposition about Texts? Try to explain some of his reasoning here: what does it mean to suggest that reading a piece of writing as a Text has to do with opening oneself up to \u201cthe infinite deferment of the signified\u201d; that \u201cThe logic regulating the Text is not comprehensive \u2026 but metonymic\u201d; and that \u201cthe Text is radically<\/em> symbolic\u201d? In general, how is Barthes to some extent borrowing a motivated version of Saussurian structural linguistics to drive home his argument about the experience of reading a Text?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 14. On 1328-30, what are Barthes\u2019 fourth and fifth propositions about Texts? With respect to the fourth, how does he delineate the concept of \u201cintertextuality\u201d (the most common term today for describing the phenomenon Barthes here describes), and what does this concept do to traditional ideas about \u201cinterpreting\u201d a literary text as a more or less complete, self-contained linguistic object? With regard to the fifth proposition, what does this new notion do to the traditional concept of authorship \u2013 how should we think of an author with respect to the Text, in Barthes\u2019 view?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 15. On 1330-31, what is Barthes\u2019 sixth proposition about Texts? Explain Barthes\u2019 comments about the traditional relationship between reading and writing at a society-wide level: what was that relationship like in pre-modern \u201chierarchical\u201d societies? Which activity is more important in a modern bourgeois society, and why? Why, according to Barthes, do modern Texts, avant-garde paintings or films, etc. sometimes generate only boredom in the citizens of such a society?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 16. On 1331, what is Barthes\u2019 seventh and final proposition about the Text? In what sense might reading a Text be a more genuinely pleasurable,<\/em> participatory and even utopian experience than \u201cconsuming\u201d a work of literature as traditionally understood? Moreover, in this same section, how does Barthes differentiate between older literary texts written by authors such as Marcel Proust or Gustave Flaubert and more modern productions \u2013 why can\u2019t the former be enjoyed in quite the same way as the latter?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 17. General question: taken broadly, Barthes\u2019 essay comments on what its author sees as a shift from an hierarchical relationship between text, critic and reader to a much more open engagement with what I\u2019ll call \u201cliterature.\u201d Clearly, the essay makes strong claims against the viability of traditional models of cultural transmission and education. Consider your own experience with education at all levels, from grade school to college: what reflections occur to you about the manner in which you\u2019ve been taught to engage with literary texts? Are you happy with the educational approach that has informed your own development, or does Barthes\u2019 analysis seem to you to point out a flaw in its fundamental conception? Explain your rationale for answering as you do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 18. Do you think that Barthes\u2019 claims about the advent of \u201ctextuality\u201d and the going out of fashion of \u201cthe work\u201d have at least partly been realized, or do you think Barthes over-predicts? What\u2019s the basis for your reasoning on this point \u2013 what leads you to believe Barthes was right or wrong, or somewhere in between? For example, do you think the model of open-ended \u201ctextuality\u201d is predominant in certain disciplines in the humanities and not in others? Or that it is or is not current amongst \u201cthe public\u201d? Do most people, in your view, want to read a \u201ctext\u201d or a \u201cliterary work\u201d?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ROLAND BARTHES QUESTIONS FOR E256 LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISMCHAPMAN UNIVERSITY, FALL 2012 Assigned: Roland Barthes. From Mythologies, \u201cPhotography and Electoral Appeal\u201d (1320-21); \u201cThe Death of the Author\u201d (1322-26); \u201cFrom Work to Text\u201d (1326-31 in Leitch, Vincent B. and William E. Cain, eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2010. 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\u201cThe Death of the Author\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrom Work to Text\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n