Magic Realism: A DISTINCTIVE MINGLE OF FANTASY AND REALITY

When speaking of the excellence of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, one wonders how Garcia Marquez came to create such a richly composed imaginary world so similar to our everyday one and yet so different from it. He somehow handles a reality in which the limits of the real and the fantastic fade away naturally. This unique style of story-telling is known as "magic realism", and is defined as a narrative technique in which the author emphasizes the fantastic quality of extraordinary events. In the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez successfully demonstrates the technique of magic realism through a skillful integration of fantasy and reality, and the peculiar description of the events and characters.

This feat requires analysis of his resources, especially the most important one: his narrative tone. The author has intuitively grasped the vital relationship that exists between space and tone when he noticed that tone could serve as the main unifying force in the novel. Tone belongs by all rights to the narrator's voice: someone who would report all the incidents calm and untouched, without comments or moral judgments on what has happened. Garcia Marquez chose to employ this serious tone to make unbelievable ideas seems real, because it allows him to dispense with explanations and justifications. With his authentic presentation of events - the tone, there is no need to justify all the implausible phenomena in the story. His sole duty is to simply recount the tale in the most natural fashion, so that the intangible can be associated with the tangible with the greatest of ease. As Garcia Marquez has once asserted himself, "the key to writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was the idea of saying incredible things with a completely unperturbed face." (McMurray, p. 87) In order to fuse the fantastic or improbable perfectly into realistic occurrences, the only effective way is to deliver them as if they were the implacable truth.

Examples for this remarkable narrative tone are palpable in the novel: "Just a moment, now we shall witness an undeniable proof of the infinite power of God." (Marquez, p. 85) This statement was said by the priest who levitates by means of chocolate. By depicting this absurd occasion as an unquestionable truth, the author has merged the grotesque into his fictional world so naturally that no one suspect their existence. Consequently, his practice of magic realism in an "unperturbed expression" renders a satiric style throughout the novel.

The stabilized and "normalized" atmosphere in the novel assimilates marvelous things with village and household events, and converts them into acceptable phenomena which the reader can easily admit. This atmosphere is originated from the familiar domestic activities of Ursula, which creates a centre where decisive events happen and others slowly germinate. "Ursula's function is to impregnate the fictional space with everyday realities so that the marvelous may enter it smoothly." (Gullon, p. 133) It is through the presence of Ursula that the transition from the imaginary to the real can occur naturally without any remarkable notices or astonishment. Thus, narrative authenticity becomes more readily perceptible when what is related oscillates between impossible and everyday occurrences.

Numerous episodes in the novel also illustrate the author's adroit manipulation of language and narrative focus for the purpose of fusing the real and fantastic elements of his fictional world. A striking case in point is his treatment of the mysterious death of Jose Arcadio: After his hunting trip with his wife, Jose Arcadio goes into the bedroom to change his clothes. Moments later the sound of a pistol shot signals his death and its strange aftermath:

A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendia house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Ursula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread." (Marquez, p. 135)

Jose Arcadio's death and its aftermath is utterly ridiculous, but it is made almost believable by the meticulous stylistic precision, and numerous everyday details surrounding the occurrence. This episode perfectly illustrates the author's method of making the fantastic seem real, thus eliminating the barrier between objective and imaginary realities and creating a total fictional universe.

Garcia Marquez has erased the distinctive boundary between reality and fantasy by immersing proven and fabulous events indiscriminately with the application of his steady, unchanging tone. When the author narrates the story, he "never allows it to become evident, by interjection or amazement, that there may be a substantial difference between the extraordinary and the commonplace." (Gullon, p. 130) For him, there is really no difference between what is probable or what is not. He does not doubt or question incredible happenings or facts throughout the story. As a result, under the operation of his imagination and narrative tone, prodigious events and miracles can naturally coexist with the ordinary.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, this fusion of fantasy and reality is patent in different aspects. As a diverting illustration, "this time, along with many other artifices, they brought a flying carpet. But they did not offer it as a fundamental contribution to the development of transport, rather as an object of recreation." (Marquez, p. 31) For many years, the town of Macondo accepts the fantastic as an integral part of life without showing any signs of disbelief or amazement at such remarkable phenomenon. This is a circumstance that the author purposely invents to achieve his ultimate purpose. Although this existence of a flying carpet is obviously a fictional element of the novel, Garcia Marquez does not make it appear unreal. Rather he places it side by side with the familiar realities as equally true events, so that they are connected with one another inseparably.

The author provides a peculiar, exaggerated description of characters and events in order to give each occurrence a sense of reality. In describing Melquiades, Garcia Marquez says,

He was a fugitive from all the plagues and catastrophes that had ever lashed mankind. He had survived pellagra in Persia, scurvy in the Malayan archipelago, leprosy in Alexandria, beriberi in Japan, bubonic plague in Madagscar, an earthquake in Sicily, and a disastrous shipwreck in the strait of Magellan. (Marquez, p. 6)

Apparently, this statement is inconceivable. However, it is important to point out that this "deadpan" depiction of extraordinary people and extraordinary occurrences is indeed one of the principle stratagems the author employs to achieve a comic effect. Events and personal characteristics are spectacularly exaggerated, made quite absurdly larger than life, yet in a style that takes the hyperbole for granted, as though it were a meticulous fact. Hence, this hyperbole serves as an important device to intermingle the strange and exotic with reality.

Many of the fantasies of the novel are indeed absurd but logical exaggerations of real situations. Throughout One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez exaggerates events to gain fantasy. For example, "it rained for four years, eleven months, and two days." (Marquez, p. 320) This hyperbole is employed to emphasize the severity of the rainstorm that destroyed the town. Although such long period of raining is very unlikely to occur, however, in another perspective, its specific numerical values gives the incident a considerable sense of reality. Once again, the overstated description has converted the fantastic element in the situation into an undeniable fact.

Magic realism as a technique of transforming the fabulous into true existence is represented by Garcia Marquez perfectly. He shows his taste for this narrative device - the blend of fantasy and hyperbole exhibited in a context of reality throughout the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. By telling the story in a serious and natural narrative tone, Garcia Marquez is able to produce a magical realm where everything is possible and believable. This is the main reason why the novel attracts, convinces and seduces the reader. With his manipulation to blur the distinction between the real and surreal, no one would doubt that this masterpiece is a remarkable breakthrough in the literary world of fiction.


Works Cited


Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.

Gullon, Ricardo. "Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Lost Art of Storytelling." Diacritics. 1971:27-32.

McMurray, George R. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1983.

::source: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/9181/info-magic.html

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What is Magical Realism?

A literary mode rather than a distinguishable genre, magical realism aims to seize the paradox of the union of opposites. For instance, it challenges polar opposites like life and death and the pre-colonial past versus the post-industrial present. Magical realism is characterized by two conflicting perspectives, one based on a rational view of reality and the other on the acceptance of the supernatural as prosaic reality. Magical realism differs from pure fantasy primarily because it is set in a normal, modern world with authentic descriptions of humans and society. According to Angel Flores, magical realism involves the fusion of the real and the fantastic, or as he claims, "an amalgamation of realism and fantasy". The presence of the supernatural in magical realism is often connected to the primeval or "magical’ Indian mentality, which exists in conjunction with European rationality. According to Ray Verzasconi, as well as other critics, magical realism is "an expression of the New World reality which at once combines the rational elements of the European super-civilization, and the irrational elements of a primitive America." Gonzalez Echchevarria believes that magical realism offers a world view that is not based on natural or physical laws nor objective reality. However, the fictional world is not separated from reality either.

Background

The term "magical realism" was first introduced by Franz Roh, a German art critic, who considered magical realism an art category. To him, it was a way of representing and responding to reality and pictorially depicting the enigmas of reality. In Latin America in the 1940s, magical realism was a way to express the realistic American mentality and create an autonomous style of literature.

Characteristics of Magical Realism

Hybridity—Magical realists incorporate many techniques that have been linked to post-colonialism, with hybridity being a primary feature. Specifically, magical realism is illustrated in the inharmonious arenas of such opposites as urban and rural, and Western and indigenous. The plots of magical realist works involve issues of borders, mixing, and change. Authors establish these plots to reveal a crucial purpose of magical realism: a more deep and true reality than conventional realist techniques would illustrate.

Irony Regarding Author’s Perspective—The writer must have ironic distance from the magical world view for the realism not to be compromised. Simultaneously, the writer must strongly respect the magic, or else the magic dissolves into simple folk belief or complete fantasy, split from the real instead of synchronized with it. The term "magic" relates to the fact that the point of view that the text depicts explicitly is not adopted according to the implied world view of the author. As Gonzales Echevarria expresses, the act of distancing oneself from the beliefs held by a certain social group makes it impossible to be thought of as a representative of that society.

Authorial Reticence—Authorial reticence refers to the lack of clear opinions about the accuracy of events and the credibility of the world views expressed by the characters in the text. This technique promotes acceptance in magical realism. In magical realism, the simple act of explaining the supernatural would eradicate its position of equality regarding a person’s conventional view of reality. Because it would then be less valid, the supernatural world would be discarded as false testimony.

The Supernatural and Natural—In magical realism, the supernatural is not displayed as questionable. While the reader realizes that the rational and irrational are opposite and conflicting polarities, they are not disconcerted because the supernatural is integrated within the norms of perception of the narrator and characters in the fictional world.

Themes

The idea of terror overwhelms the possibility of rejuvenation in magical realism. Several prominent authoritarian figures, such as soldiers, police, and sadists all have the power to torture and kill. Time is another conspicuous theme, which is frequently displayed as cyclical instead of linear. What happens once is destined to happen again. Characters rarely, if ever, realize the promise of a better life. As a result, irony and paradox stay rooted in recurring social and political aspirations. Another particularly complex theme in magical realism is the carnivalesque. The carnivalesque is carnival’s reflection in literature. The concept of carnival celebrates the body, the senses, and the relations between humans. "Carnival" refers to cultural manifestations that take place in different related forms in North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean, often including particular language and dress, as well as the presence of a madman, fool, or clown. In addition, people organize and participate in dance, music, or theater. Latin American magical realists, for instance, explore the bright life-affirming side of the carnivalesque. The reality of revolution, and continual political upheaval in certain parts of the world, also relates to magical realism. Specifically, South America is characterized by the endless struggle for a political ideal.

Magical Realist Authors

Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ben Okri
Isabel Allende
Syl Cheney-Coker
Kojo Laing
Allejo Carpentier
Toni Morrison
Kwsme Anthony Appiah
Mario Vargas Llosa


Examples of Magical Realism in the works of Marquez and Okri

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez incorporates many supernatural motifs like levitation and flying carpets. Marquez also creates, in the tradition of the grotesque carnival and supernatural realism, the character of Melquiades, who is an overweight gypsy with supernatural powers. His novel contains powerful images of paradoxical bodily disgust and celebration, ambivalent celebration and laughter, and the reconstruction of human shapes, all of which exemplify characteristics of magical realism. In this novel and others, Marquez utilizes ironic distance. Okri’s The Famished Road also incorporates several characteristics of magical realism. Specifically, examples of hybridity occur often. For instance, after the character Azaro wrongly believes a figure by the river to be the ferryman of the dead, he learns that she is in fact a hybrid woman, young in body but ‘with an old woman’s face’. The illustration is also a hybrid of ancient ritual and custom. Also, The Famished Road depicts the theme of political struggle and political corruption. The character Madame Koto is implied in the corruption of modern Nigerian politics. She encapsulates the new power herself, rather than its transgression, foreshadowing the country’s civil war to come. Okri uses ironic distance in this novel as well.



Works Cited

Chanady, Amaryll Beatrice. Magical Realism and the Fantastic. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1985.

Cooper, Brenda. Magical Realism in West African Literature. London: Routledge Publishing, 1998.

Danow, David K. The Spirit of Carnival: Magical Realism and the Grotesque. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995.

::source: http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/MagicalRealism.html

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Deconstructing Jacques Derrida

The Most Reviled Professor in The World Defends His Diabolically Difficult Theory

LENGTH: 4539 words
SUBJECTS: Profile of Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction, literary theory, contemporary philosophy, postmodernism, poststructuralism
BYLINE: By Mitchell Stephens, Mitchell Stephens is a journalism professor at New York University and the author of A History of News (Penguin).

THE WORLD'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL LIVING philosopher, arguably its most controversial living thinker, is sitting at a concrete picnic table at an outdoor snack bar at UC Irvine. Few of the undergraduates who stroll by in jams or jeans seem to notice Jacques Derrida, with his carefully tailored gray suit and purple tie. Few would recognize his name if they were introduced. * But as Derrida sips his coffee from a plastic cup, a crowd of world-class graduate students and star professors from as far away as China is already hustling for the best seats in his classroom. In a few minutes, Derrida will present two immensely difficult hours on the latest applications of his renowned method -- deconstruction -- and that room full of scholars will barely allow itself a cough. * Echoes of Derrida's ideas can now be heard in the most unlikely places. The word deconstruction (albeit shorn of much of its meaning) now appears in newspaper reviews and at dinner parties: "Let's deconstruct this scene." It is becoming, like existentialism before it, a part of the language -- to the point where a State Department official can speak of a plan for the "deconstruction" of part of the American Embassy in Moscow, and Mick Jagger can ask, "Does anyone really know what deconstructivist means?"("Deconstructivist" has been the most controversial variety of architecture in recent years.) But the main impact of Derrida's method has been felt on college campuses. * Deconstruction -- which Derrida gave birth to in Paris in the 1960s -- swept through American universities in the '70s and '80s, presuming to remake nothing less than the way professors and students perform their most basic activity: reading.


Deconstructive readings focus -- intently, obsessively -- on the metaphors writers use to make their points. Their purpose is to demonstrate, through comparisons of a work's arguments and its metaphors, that writers contradict themselves -- not just occasionally, but invariably -- and that these contradictions reflect deep fissures in the very foundations of Western culture. In other words, deconstruction claims to have uncovered serious problems in the way Plato and Hemingway and you and I think about matters ranging from truth and friendship to politics and masturbation. Such suggestions have, to say the least, proved controversial. University departments and scholarly associations have split in two over Derrida's complex, often misunderstood method. Friendships have been ruined. His followers tell tales of enlightenment: "It was a little like the moment when Helen Keller first understands the connection between the signing she is being taught and meaning," recalls Harvard English Department's Barbara Johnson of her first encounter with Derrida and deconstruction while a graduate student at Yale. "Keller wanted to go back and sign everything; I wanted to reread everything," Johnson says. But those academics who remain unconverted call Derrida's movement a "cult" or even a "fraud." * "Deconstruction has rather obvious and manifest intellectual weaknesses," writes Berkeley philosophy professor John Searle. "It should be fairly obvious to the careful reader that the emperor has no clothes." * When Irvine displaced Yale as Derrida's main American base four years ago (paying him more than $30,000 a year for an academic quarter compressed into five weeks), there were, along with the proud press releases, predictable outbursts of hard-headed cynicism and fiscal outrage. The shrieks might have been louder if the residents of Orange County understood just how profound a challenge to their thought this distinguished new visiting professor would bring.

DERRIDA'S DARK MEDITERRANEAN skin contrasts with a wide, still full frame of silver hair. "Striking," one of his female graduate students had commented, twice. The word most of his friends use to describe him is "gracious." "Jacques is the mildest of persons," adds Yale professor Harold Bloom. Nevertheless, Derrida is occasionally unwilling or unable to play the roles expected of him. I had been warned that he would not respond well in particular to personal questions of the sort the subject of a magazine profile must face. "Ah, you want me to tell you things like 'I-was-born-in-a-petit-bourgeois-Jewish-family-which-was-assimilated-but . . .' " is how Derrida parried one such query by a French magazine reporter. "Is this really necessary? I just can't do it," he protested to that reporter.

For a celebrity of sorts, Derrida is unusually private and reserved. "There is a certain distance," concedes the avant-garde architect Peter Eisenman, who collaborated with Derrida on the design for a garden in Paris. (Eisenman teasingly accuses Derrida of believing a garden ought to have some benches and trees, a charge Derrida vehemently denies. The design the two of them came up with -- as yet unbuilt -- includes no such reactionary elements.) "He's not the kind of guy," Eisenman notes, "to whom you say, 'Hey, come on, Jacques, let's go have a beer.' We sniff around each other."

And to Derrida's natural reserve -- his tendency to sniff around -- has been added a professional suspicion of easy answers and simple categories. Note, for example, the hesitations that accompany one brief attempt to define his method: "Deconstruction," Derrida says, "if there is such a thing as deconstruction -- and I wouldn't say there is just one deconstruction -- is something heterogeneous, complex. Deconstructions are ways of accounting for the main assumptions common to the culture, common to what we call Western culture.

"Again, I don't think there is one Western culture," he quickly adds. "It's plural."

It's not easy even to apply a designation as simple as "philosopher" to Derrida, though he was educated in philosophy and is, at the moment, fingering the traditional token of a philosopher: a pipe. "I never thought I had something to say philosophically," he tells me. The word philosopher sometimes gets relegated to quotation marks in his writings.

Derrida is also suspicious of the standard biographical accounts we append to the work of our writers. In fact, deconstruction (singular or plural) is known for the extent to which it turns attention to "texts" -- the actual words on paper -- and away from such distractions as the lives of the authors of those texts. One of Derrida's best known and most controversial pronouncements was, "There is nothing outside the text." And for a time it looked as though Derrida wanted nothing to appear in print about himself outside the actual texts he and his interpreters had written. For 17 years, from 1962 to 1979, he would not even allow himself to be photographed for publication.

Consequently, Derrida wears, along with his stylish suits, a certain air of mystery. While there are a couple dozen books in English that feature Jacques Derrida's name in their titles or subtitles, it is almost impossible to find such basic biographical information as the fact that he is married (Derrida's wife of 33 years, Margaret, is a psychoanalyst), or that he has two sons, now in their 20s (one of whom has embarked on a career in philosophy).

Derrida is aware of his elusiveness. His fascination with words extends to their sound, and in the name "Derrida" (pronounced Dare-ee-DA) he says he hears the sounds "derriere le rideau" -- behind the curtain. Rather than attempt to yank the curtain back, I was prepared to tiptoe around the personal questions, but that proved unnecessary. Derrida is surprisingly forthright.

"Why did you refuse to allow yourself to be photographed?"

"My surface motivation was political," Derrida says, softly. "I thought that the things I was writing were not compatible with this silly image of the writer in his office with his books. If there was a deep motivation, it had to do with my relationship with my face, my body."

"Why then this change in policy?"

"It's a kind of resignation. I gave up this image of the non-image."

JACQUES DERRIDA WAS BORN, in 1930, into-a-petit-bourgeois-Jewish-family-which-was-assimilated-into-French-life-in- Algeria-but. . . . (The word but appears often in his story.) But not entirely assimilated. "There were insults," he recalls, "and all the usual manifestations of anti-Semitism." Jacques was the middle child ("this explains everything in my life," he quips), always fighting with his older brother, never fighting with his younger sister. His father was a salesman; his brother became a pharmacist. Jacques, who would grow up to be the only intellectual in his immediate family, was a "very good pupil" until the age of 12. "Then things got complicated."

In 1942, a less common form of anti-Semitism reached Algeria. On the first day of school, the principal called Jacques into his office and said, "You're going to go back home. Your parents will explain."

While the young Derrida was feeling some small part of the horror of Nazism, Paul de Man, the late Yale literature professor who became Derrida's friend and most influential supporter, was writing literary articles, one of which seems clearly anti-Semitic for a collaborationist newspaper in Nazi-occupied Belgium.

Inspired in part by this terrible news, which was revealed four years after De Man's death, Derrida recently has been questioning (i.e., reading "texts" on) the concept of friendship -- among the larger stones in the foundation of our civilization. Derrida, characteristically, is investigating the concept's cracks, its contradictions: the extent to which friendship is necessary but impossible, loving but not too loving, caring but competitive, a form of union but, as are all our relations with others, also a form of separation.

For Derrida, many of these contradictions are embodied in the statement, "Oh my friends, there is no friend." For years, each of Derrida's lectures has begun with this enigmatic -- Derrida would say "undecidable" -- quotation attributed to Aristotle but not actually found anywhere in Aristotle's writings.

The problem of friendship was an important theme in Derrida's early life, too. His childhood friends at the lycee in Algeria were put to the test after their Jewish playmate was expelled. They failed. "It was a very, very painful situation," he admits, "something which probably left deep scars."

The Jewish community in Algeria reacted by organizing its own school. "But I didn't like it," Derrida says. In his work, Derrida has emphasized the importance of that which does not quite belong: the marginal. He finds many of the ambiguities, loose ends and contradictions for which he is searching buried in the margins of writings -- in the footnotes, parentheses and prefaces other readers overlook. And he sees himself as having lived on the margins -- not quite French, not quite Algerian and also not simply Jewish.

It took four months for the Free French government to repeal the "racial laws" in Algeria, but eventually Derrida was allowed back in the lycee. He returned, he says, as a "very irregular pupil -- very good in some disciplines, not so good in others." Good enough in philosophy and literature, however, to move to Paris at the age of 19 to prepare himself for the Ecole Normale Superieure, France's most prestigious college (where Jean-Paul Sartre met Simone de Beauvoir). And Derrida -- a boy not just from the provinces but from way beyond the provinces -- went on to secure a reputation among Parisian intellectuals that could begin to be compared to Sartre's. But. . . .

But Derrida continued to view himself as something of an outsider: "There is this distance, a distance because I was Jewish" -- a word he pronounces quietly -- "because I wasn't totally French." Although he published widely -- three books in 1967 alone -- and gained notoriety, as a philosopher can only in France, his fame was as a rebel, someone who challenged the dominant culture. (Politically, Derrida inhabits the left margin.) And, although he soon was teaching at the Ecole Normale, Derrida continued to see himself as removed from the academic establishment.

"In the academy there are two images of me," Derrida suggests. "One is of a professor with authority, given honorary degrees, legitimized in so many ways. But the other is of a man who doesn't belong to the university, who is just destroying the norms, who is not an authentic scholar. These images constantly conflict with each other, and I'm in the middle, just traveling between the two. Sometimes I naively ask myself, 'Where am I?' "

JACQUES DERRIDA'S IDEAS first established a beachhead in America in 1966 at a conference on structuralism at Johns Hopkins University. Structuralism is the belief, then all the rage among Parisian intellectuals, that "structures" -- like the rules and relationships that make words into a language -- underlie all forms of "communication," from tribal myths to French fashions. The American literary scholars gathered at that conference had been delighting themselves with their own perspicacity when Derrida, the youngest of the Frenchmen invited to perform for them, took the stage and announced, in effect, that the structuralism the au courant were so proud of having adopted was dead -- hopelessly entangled with the same unsupported beliefs in ultimate meanings and final answers that permeate all of Western thought. That caused some flutters beneath the cardigans.

And the impression that an original and important new thinker had been discovered was furthered when Derrida's writings started drifting across the Atlantic and being translated. They were, to say the least, unconventional: A sentence might begin on page 319 and not end until page 322; a single footnote might run the length of an article; two separate narrations might share the pages of a book.

Still, it was Derrida's reading, not his writing, that won most of the converts. He gave literature professors a special gift: a chance to confront -- not as mere second-rate philosophers, not as mere interpreters of novelists, but as full-fledged explorers in their own right -- the most profound paradoxes of Western thought (which helps explain why he has been accepted in American literature, not philosophy, departments). If they really read, if they stared intently enough at the metaphors, literature professors, from the comfort of their own easy chairs, could reveal the hollowness of the basic assumptions that lie behind all our writings.

Language is an endlessly complex and unwieldy medium, Derrida argued, and writers are never entirely in control of their words. When Plato, the father of Western thought, is trying to explain, for example, why speech is a dramatically more effective way to communicate than writing, he ends up with this justification: Speech "is written in the soul of the listener." The metaphor and the argument conflict. Ernest Hemingway, arguing that bullfighting is "a tragedy, not a sport," continually explains bullfighting with analogies drawn from American sports. Again, the metaphors -- like Freudian slips -- seemingly unconsciously subvert the argument.

Derrida was trying to show that most of the distinctions we attempt to draw can in some ultimate sense be thrown into question: Speech is not closer to our souls than writing; Hemingway's bullfighting is not of a different order than mere sports; sex (to choose another of his examples) is not purer than masturbation. Male/female, human/animal, good/evil -- if we read carefully enough, suspiciously enough, the value-laden comparisons upon which we base our ethical, aesthetic and political behavior can be, to use the lingo, "disturbed."

Derrida's acolytes were convinced that he had presented them with new eyes, new ways of seeing the tangles and dissonances of what was rapidly becoming the postmodern world. His opponents, whose number was becoming legion, saw fog banks, intentional obscurity and a cynicism that threatened to undercut all accepted notions of what is good, beautiful and politically important.

"OH MY FRIENDS, THERE IS NO friend. . . ." Derrida, a short man with a square face, strong nose and thick eyebrows, sits in front of an overcrowded class at UC Irvine.

While they still attract a throng of intellectual heavyweights, Derrida's lectures are no longer so clearly the place to be for academe's trailblazers. Deconstruction has lost a little of its newness and glamour. In fact, some trendsetters in the universities already have a new theory with which to perplex their students: the "new historicism," which reasserts (in an unexpected, provocative kind of way, of course) the importance of historical circumstances -- circumstances outside the "text" -- on works of literature.

The fact that the cognoscenti are losing some of their excitement, however, is often a sign that a fashion is establishing itself with a larger public, and in a sense this is happening with deconstruction. Derrida himself -- with his increasing willingness to step out from behind his texts -- has appeared in a movie, "Ghost Dance," and even inspired a rock song by the English group Scritti Politti: "I'm in love with Jacques Derrida/Read a page and I know what I need ta/Take apart/My baby's heart. . . ." (Derrida had lunch with band leader Green and described him as "a very intelligent young man, really knows his Wittgenstein.")

Deconstructivist architects acknowledge Derrida as an inspiration for their work: uncentered, marginal, committed to mocking expectations -- gardens without benches and trees. And Derrida's name has begun showing up in non-academic publications and broadcasts -- as the scourge of the author, as the epitome of the incomprehensible intellectual, as the postmodern era's "post man" and, most recently, as a patron saint of that controversial "multiculturalism" (though those Derrida favors with his deconstructions are almost exclusively white, male, European authors: Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl, Freud, Mallarme, Genet).

In France, where deconstruction fell in and out of fashion about half a decade earlier than it did here, Derrida remains an important force, a public figure who has involved himself in such political causes as the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and in favor of freedom of expression in pre-1989 Czechoslovakia. (Derrida was jailed in Czechoslovakia in 1982 after meeting with some dissident writers.) He breaks the stereotype of the French leftist intellectual by living not in Paris but in a suburb, Ris-Orangis -- on the margins of Paris. He does not spend his evenings in Left Bank cafes.

In the United States, Derrida first began giving his dense, iconoclastic lectures and seminars as a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins, then at Yale, where in the late '70s and early '80s he played the role of guru to some members of the influential "Yale School" of literary criticism, which included De Man, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman and J. Hillis Miller.

DERRIDA'S SQUARE HANDS are folded in front of him. A pair of clear-framed half-glasses rests on his nose. He is reading, or rather translating, from his French notes, notes that themselves are spotted with citations in German and Greek. Derrida began lecturing in English for the first time at Irvine, but English words still escape from his mouth slowly.

After 30 minutes, we reach what the professor says will be his starting point. After 43 minutes he announces, "That's where we are beginning today." Not that he could be accused of wasting time. Like most of those rare individuals endowed with gravity, Derrida seems to circle but not drift. Fifty minutes into the lecture, Derrida's investigation of some sentence from a great philosopher becomes particularly obtuse, and his audience allows itself a collective fidget -- its first and last.

"One often, if not always, speaks too fast, too early," Derrida is explaining. "One often speaks without seeing, without knowing, without meaning what one says." One often speaks without . . . meaning what one says? You can see why Derrida drives those accustomed to more cautious statements batty. Not only is he arguing that we contradict ourselves, occasionally switching positions in mid-thought -- "Oh my friends, there is no friend" -- but also that it is impossible for us to communicate with friends, or even with ourselves, with perfect clarity, that it is impossible to achieve some sort of ultimate, unambiguous understanding.

The problem, Derrida contends, is that meaning is always dependent on context. " 'There is nothing outside the text,' " he explains in a recent book, "means there is nothing outside context." And since the context in which words might be read or heard can always shift, meanings are impossible to completely pin down -- and the distinctions we base on them ultimately rest on sand.

Remember that one magic moment -- perhaps you were in a garden, on a bench, under a tree -- when the meaning of existence suddenly came into focus? Well, Derrida has bad news, especially for those who have devoted their lives to the truth of such magnificent, all-encompassing visions: The world, he maintains, can be viewed from a limitless number of different perspectives. There is no one true answer. Aha! But doesn't deconstruction itself pretend to be such an answer? No, says Derrida, who presents deconstruction not as a conclusive theory but as a method for uncovering the contradictions at the heart of attempts to formulate such conclusive theories.

For those political or intellectual conservatives who insist on the validity of simple truths, straightforward values and a single cultural tradition, Derrida is indeed the enemy. He sees instead a world that is complex, contradictory and plural. Derrida is no friend to doctrinaire leftists either. His views allow too much room for doubt. Even those of us who are simply trying to hang our beliefs on one or two solid principles will find Derrida's work troubling.

Nevertheless, as he and his friends emphasize and re-emphasize, Derrida is not a nihilist. The fact that, in Derrida's view, there is no one meaning does not mean that there is no meaning at all. We can, of course, determine whether statements are true or false within the specified contexts of, say, science or magazine profiles. And this does not mean, as Derrida notes in this lecture, that we are freed of responsibility to try as hard as we can to say what we think we mean. It does mean that we can never know all there is to know about a sentence attributed to Aristotle, about our existence, about what is good, even about the words we are saying -- all of which will always remain open to interpretation and reinterpretation.

It is no coincidence that deconstruction has arrived as this self-conscious century totters, coughing and wheezing, into its last years. One of the last great attempts to impose a single perspective upon human societies has crumbled before our eyes in Eastern Europe. Our "great war," the Cold War, was fought with interpretations of weapons, not weapons. Our businesses sell by placing their products in finely worked contexts. Our politicians triumph by manipulating the interpretation of the events in which they participate. Our governments are run as much by "spin doctors" as by policy makers. Derrida might be dubbed a "spin scholar."

"What marks Derrida's work," Tom Keenan of Princeton explains, "is this incredibly serious thinking of the idea that communication is not something transparent" -- that meaning does not simply shine through, that messages arrive bearing a variety of spins, that there is no one correct interpretation. This is an idea that has marked the work of other 20th-Century thinkers -- from Marshall McLuhan to Roland Barthes to Republican media-strategist Roger Ailes. It is perhaps the idea of the century, and Derrida -- with his attempts to think the limits of our ability to communicate, even with ourselves, his attempts to think the limits of thought -- may be following it to its most extreme, most disturbing, conclusions.

One often speaks without . . . meaning what one says.

WE ARE DINING AT A RESTAURANT called Hemingway's (his choice) -- a warm and dimly lighted place, since closed, near Newport Beach -- when Derrida says, with unexpected wistfulness, that he dreams of writing something naive, something straightforward, something -- of all things -- simple.

"Derrida is able to surprise you even when you think you know his thoughts," notes Jonathan Culler, whose book "On Deconstruction" provides one of the clearest introductions to Derrida's work.

Derrida write simply? It is pretty to think it possible, but this is the thinker who seems always ready to strike off in a disconcerting new direction. (Derrida's ongoing seminar on friendship, for example, has been metamorphosing of late into an investigation of "the rhetoric of cannibalism" -- the ultimate attempt to become one with a friend.) This is the thinker who seems always eager to substitute a new ramification for a mere restatement, who refuses to settle for the more straightforward forms of prose, who has earned a reputation for being perhaps the most complex writer of our time.

And the density, the complexity of Derrida's writing is no mere accident. It seems central to his thought -- to his circling, suspicious way of responding. (Indeed, Derrida has been attacked recently for his inability to offer a simple condemnation of De Man's wartime writings.) Derrida is the prophet of complexity -- the person who continually takes responsibility for noting the difficulties, the inescapable contradictions; the person who has finally accepted the impossibility of simplicity. "The world is complex," he tells me, "and I'm afraid -- or I hope -- it will remain so."

Nevertheless, this dream -- the simple book (not text) that rests unborn within him -- will come up again and again in our conversations. It would be a novel, perhaps. And in place of the great philosophers whose work he has so often deconstructed, the book's subject would be: a 12-year-old boy in Algeria, French but not French, Jewish but not Jewish, with friends but no friends; a 19-year-old boy in Paris struggling to cross the "psychological/sociological borders" into and out of the world of Parisian intellectuals.

"I have the deep feeling of not having written what I would like to write and what I should have written," Derrida says, adding that in a sense he views all that he has written -- and Derrida has been remarkably prolific -- as a "preliminary exercise" for "the one-and-only project," which he suspects he will never write. "I know it's not possible to write in an absolutely naive fashion, but that's my dream."

Which may be where we stand after deconstruction: Derrida has been demonstrating the extent to which our dreams -- of naivete and simplicity, of perfect friendship, of indisputable meaning, of God, for that matter -- are impossible. But he also knows that we remain incapable of not dreaming.

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The Extrinsic Approach to The Study Of Literature

Introduction

There are some external points are discussed in study of literature. But setting and environment are more often discussed. Sometimes, the extrinsic study only connects the literature to the social context and the previous growth. In most cases, it becomes a ‘causal’ explanation, professing to account for literature, to explain it, and finally to reduce it to its origins (the ‘fallacy of origins’) (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 73).

Yet, it is clear that causal study can never dispose of problems of description, analysis, and evaluation of an object such as work of literary art. Cause and effect are incommensurate: the concrete result of these extrinsic causes –the work of art- is always unpredictable (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 73)


There are some opinions about the extrinsic factors influence the literary works such as the biography, psychology, social life, causal explanation of literature largely in such other collective creations, and some quintessential spirit of the time.

But either how far these factors determine the production process of literary works, or how far the extrinsic method supposed to be able in measuring the external influence, depends on the approach which is used. The scientist who uses the social approach tent to come to determine in straight. Their radicalism is the influence of positivism. This occurs to the proponents of geistegeschichte, which is combined with hegelianism and romanticism. Moreover, they are more radical than the scientists who use the social approach. On the other hand, there are some of scientists who are more modest. They do not depend only on one factor. The other factors may give effects as well.

LITERATURE AND BIOGRAPHY
Biography is only regarded that it is valuable if it gives any contribution to the making of literary works. From a biography, we will not only know the genius, moral, intellectual and emotional development of a man. Furthermore, we may learn the psychology condition and his creative process.

It is necessary to distinguish these three point of views. First, biography tells the student about the making of a literary works. Second, biography shifts the subject matter of the study to the works of an author. Third, biography is supposed to be a science of future science, the psychology of artistic creation.

Biography is a kind of work from a very ancient age. It was a part of historiography. Biography of a man, whatever his capacity, is always interesting if it is said honestly. From a biography writer’s point of view, moral and intellectual developments, external career and emotional life can be reconstructed and evaluated based on the ethical system or certain code of manners. A biography writer must reinterpret some documents, letters, accounts by eyewitness, reminiscences, and autobiographical statement. Beside that, he must decide which the original materials are and trustable eyewitnesses. The problem then may evoke in writing a biography is, first, the selection. Then, how a secret should be hidden.

When a biography has been arranged, two mayor questions address it. First, how far the biography writer uses the literature work for evidence? Then, how far a biography can be used to understand a literary work? These questions are usually answered that poetry can give some explanations about biography of its poet. Of course, this doesn’t work to the other owner of a biography who didn’t write a poem.

Poem may give some explanation about the biography of its poet. But, how does the biography writer write a biography of an author who is difficult to seek his story for his life? Meanwhile, usually only a series of public documents, birth registers, marriage certificates, lawsuits, and the like, and evidence of the works.

For example, to write Shakespeare biography, some scientists had ever applied different method. Caroline Spurgeon, used a scientific spirit. But she came to a long-list of trivial things in Shakespeare life. On the other hand, George Brandes and Frans Haris used the Shakespeare’s works as the material of their research. A biographical romance is as the result.

The biographical method proponents do not agree with such contention. They argue that it is necessary for us understand the different condition at that age compared with nowadays. For example, some authors such as Milton, Pope, Goethe, Wordsworth, and Byron were aware that they were well known. So, it is necessary for them to make a biographical statement, even arranged an autobiography.

In this context, it is important for us to divide the poets into two categories: objective and subjective. Those who, like Keats and T.S. Elliot, stress the poet’s “negative capability”, has openness to the world, the obliteration of his concrete personality, and the opposite type of the poet, who aims at displaying his personality, wants to draw a self-portrait, to confess, to express himself (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 77).

But even with the subjective poet, the distinction between a personal statement of an autobiographical nature and the use of the very same motif in a work of art should not and cannot be withdrawn. A work of art forms a unity on a quite different plane, with a unique different relation to reality, than a book of memoirs, a diary, or a letter (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 78)

The biographical method has some weakness. The biographical approach forgets that a work of art is not only simply the embodiment of experience but always the latest work in a series of such works; it is in drama, a novel, a poem determined, so far as it is determined at all, by literary tradition and conventions. The biographical approach actually obscures a proper comprehension of the literary process, since it breaks up the order of literary tradition to substitute the life-circle of an individual (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 78)

The biographical approach ignores also quite simple psychological facts. A work of art may be the ‘mask’, the ‘anti-self’ behind which his real person is hiding, or it may be a picture of the life from which the author wants to escape (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 78). Simply we can sum up that there is a parallelism between the author and the characters in his works.

LITERATURE AND PSYCHOLOGY
There are four possible definitions about psychology of literature: psychological study of the writer, as type and as individual, or the study of the creative process, or the study of the psychological types and laws present within works of literature, or, finally, the effects of literature upon its readers (audience psychology) (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 81). But the third definition is the only one which is strongly related with the study.

Some theorists had ever theorized about the successful of an author. First, the most decided the successful of an author is his literary genius. Some others said that the successful of an author depended on his physical appearance. The rests argued that emotional disorders and compensatory distinguished the artists, scientists, and other ‘contemplatives’.

Two mayor questions then may evoke. First, if an emotional disorder occurs to an author, does it become the theme of his works, or motivation to create a work? (If it is only a motivation for him to create a work, it occurs to other scientists as well.) Second, if the theme of a literary work is neurotic, how should a reader understand it?

Freud’s view about an author is inconsistent. Freud, Jung, and Frank are civilized people. They were well educated in Austria and respected the classical works of Greeks and German literature. Freud himself found his works were almost same with Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Kamarazov, in Hamlet, in Diderot’s Neveu de Rameau, in Goethe. According to him, the author as an obdurate neurotic who, by his creative work, kept himself a crack-up but also from any real cure. The poet, that is, is a day-dreamer who socially validated (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 82).

Such an account presumably disposes of the philosopher and ‘the pure scientist’ along with the artists, and is, therefore, a kind of positivist, ‘reduction’ of contemplative activity to an observing and naming instead of acting (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 82). This limit, however, merely describes the indirect effect of literary works, that is “alterations in the outer world”.
The theory of art as a neurosis leads to a new problem that is the relation between the imagination and belief. The artists keep felling and seeing his own though. Beside that, it is common for them to combine two kinds of imagery. For example, audition coloree: the trumpet as scarlet.

T.S Elliot had argued his views about a poet since his writing. Over there, he said that a poet is supposed to repeat and keep his relation with his childhood meanwhile he is running to the future. Then, in 1918, he wrote that a poet “is more primitive, as well as more civilized, than his contemporaries …”. In 1932, he repeated this conception, especially about “auditory imagination” but also of the poet’s visual imagery, and especially his recurrent images, which “may have symbolic value, but of what we cannot tell, for they have come to represent the depths felling into which we cannot peer” (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 84). Then he concluded that “the pre-logical mentality persists in civilized man, but becomes available only to or through the poet (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 84).

Jung made a complicated typological psychology. There are two categories: extrovert and introvert. These categories, then, divided into four types based on the strength of thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation. But, surprisingly, Jung did not categorize all of the authors to certain types. He remarks that some writers reveal their type in their creative work, while others reveal their anti-type, their complement (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 84).

Nietzsche, in his The Birth of Tragedy (1872) proposed two polarities of art. They were classical “maker” and romantic “possessed”. Nietzsche theorized this according to Apollo and Dionysos, two gods of arts in Greeks myths.

This influenced Ribot, a French psychologist, much. He divided the artists into “plastic” and “diffluent”. A “plastic” artist can make a very rigid visualization, even if he is stimulated. Meanwhile the “diffluent” artist begins his imagination from his emotion or feeling then reveals it. He is helped by “stimmung” from inside of himself.

Then L. Rusu, a contemporary Rumanian scholar, distinguished three basic types of artists: “type sympatique”, “type demoniaque anarchique” and the “type demoniaque equilibre”. The second type is the anti-thesis of the first type. The rest is claimed to be the greatest type, at the end of the quarrel against the battle, the balance occurs.

The “creative process” should cover the entire sequence from the subconscious origins of a literary work to those last revisions which, with some writers, are the most genuinely creative part of the whole (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 85). The structure of a poet’s mental is different from a form of a poem. Impression is different from expression.

“Inspiration” is a traditional name for the unconscious factor in creation, is classically associated with the Muses, the daughters of memory, and in Christian thought with the Holy Spirit. Creative habits are assuredly are, as well as stimulants and rituals. Alcohol, opium, and other drugs dull the conscious mind, the over-critical ‘censor’, and release the activity of the subconscious (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 86).

Then, do the way and technical of writing influence the style of writing? Hemingway said that the typewriter “solidifies one’s sentence before they are ready to print.” Then, the others in commented that the using of a typewriter leads to a work in journalistic style. Milton himself knew by heart his Paradise Lost and dictated it. Even, Scott, Goethe, and Henry James had prepared their works. They dictated it and other people wrote it.

The discussion about the creative process in creation must have talked about the unconscious world. It is easy for us to compare the romantic and expressionistic periods exaggerate the unconscious world to the classic and realistic proposed the intelligence, communication, and the text revision.

We have to make two kinds of tests if we want to seek literary talents. The first test is proposed to see a poet talent. The second test is to see the narrative writer. A poet is associated with symbols, meanwhile a narrative writer with the creation of character in a story.

Our discussion above is about the psychology of the writers. Their creative process is the scope of psychologists’ investigative curiosity. Then, can we use psychology to interpret and judge a literary work? Psychology, as we have discussed above, can explain about the creative process. A study of revisions, corrections, and the like has more which is literarily profitable, since, well used, it may help us perceive critically relevant fissures, inconsistencies, turnings, distortions, in a work of art (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 91).

The last question is psychology itself in literary work. A character may be right psychologically. But, does it have any artistic value? The knowledge of psychological truth is needed, sometimes. But it is not too necessary for art because psychological truth does not have any artistic value.ar
For some conscious artists, psychology may have tightened their sense of reality, sharpened their powers of observation or allowed them to fall into hithero undiscovered patterns. But, in itself, psychology is only preparatory to the act of creation; and in the work itself, psychological truth is an artistic value only if it enhances coherence and complexity –if, in short, it is an art (Wellek and Warren, 1977: 93).

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This article is writen by Leny Nuzuliyanti, a student of English Literature Department of Diponegoro University, Semarang, Central Java,Indonesia.

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An Introduction to Theory of Literature

A Resume of Theory of Literature by Ren Wellek and Warren

We have to answer some basic questions when we study theory of literature. What is literature? What is literary study? Are they both different? What is the distinction? These questions are followed by the questions about the nature of literature, its functions, etc. Theory of literature, as much as possible, tries to answer these.

Literature and Literary Study
First, it is quiet necessary for us to know the definition of literature. Literature is a creative act. It is an art. On the other hand, literary study is knowledge about literature itself. Since long ago, there are some efforts to differ them. But these efforts only make literature and literary study come to a very complicated relation.

To overcome this, there are some problem-solvings. First, some literary theorist who didn’t agree that literary study is the knowledge about literature said it is wiser to say that literary study is a “second creation”. The second theorist come to the extreme point, that both literature and literary study can’t be studied at all. For the rest, we can only accumulate all kinds of information ‘about’ literature (Wellek & Warren. 1977: 15).

Since first, it is said that literature is an art. Literature had ever been approached scholarly by applying the natural science attitudes such as objectivity, impersonality, and certainty. In practice, then, it concludes that the more general a theory, it is emptier.

Another opinion stated that to conclude the general law in literature, individually is needed. Thus, there are two extreme points: first, the universal-objective; second, the particular-subjective. Both of these concepts are dangerous to apply at once.

The universal-objective leads to the absolutism. It is quite mistaken, of course, because each of literary works is unique. It can’t be simply summed up in universality. The particular-subjective is totally doubted because it must result in personal intuition. Personal intuition, then, may rise an emotional appreciation to complete subjectivity.

The Nature of Literature
At the beginning, it is important to distinguish what literature is and what is not. First, literature ought to be everything in print. Literature was learnt using any other science of culture. But this effort replaced the pure literary criteria. Other criteria came to the literature realm. Literature was supposed to give nothing to the knowledge. This occurred when in the further, the knowledge notably increased.

Second, literature ought to be the great-book namely “notable for literary form or expression”. The criteria, namely the aesthetic, dealt with the “general intellectual distinction”. This has resulted in value judgement, particularly to the non-great-books. Social background, linguistic, ideology, and other conditional circumstances, then, had no means.

Third, the term of ‘literature’ ought to be limited at imaginative literature. It was too difficult to find the exact word in any languages. To overcome this, the speech community had to be divided in detail. It was a must to note that language is a human creation contained cultural heritages of linguistic group.

Here, it can obviously be seen that there are four natures of literature. The first nature of literature is imaginative. Traditional literary works fulfill this nature. The second, everything strongly relates to such “fictionality”, “invention”, or “imagination”. Philosophist, claimed as the third nature of literature. Fourth, literature, sometimes, may exist in ‘boundary’ area.

Literature is commonly identified with imagery. Imagery is used both in prose and poems. As much as possible, the authors indicate the visualization by imagery. Generally, imagery describes what the author wants to visualize. Most of visualizations by imagery can be well wondered by the readers. But, it is not in a little number that imagery even doesn’t help the readers to understand the visualizations. Visualization using imagery normally appears in prose than poems.

The Functions of Literature
The discussion about the function of literature started at the Age of Greeks. Plato wrote how the poets and the philosophers quarreled. At the Renaissance Age in America, Poe criticized the didactic poems. In his opinion, a poem shouldn’t have to be in didactic purpose. Poe, then, argued that a poem must be a didactic heresy.

At the late of 19th century, the doctrine art for art’s sake was issued. This doctrine followed by poesi pure at the early of 20th century. Horace proposed a concept of dulce and utile which means sweet and useful. This concept which contained two words, should be understood at once. Poems supposed as a craft (a work) and a play at time. The view poems as a craft or a work, lost its “purposelessness”, lost its pleasure. Meanwhile told poems as a play, it didn’t regard the care, skill, and planning of the author. Given this, it ought to be dulce and utile.

How much, then, the function of literature? Here are some –especially poems’ function. First, as Aristotle said, he himself tended to prove that the function and the seriousness of a poem represented how deep the knowledge it contained. Secondly, poems as the medium of telling either truth or propaganda. Thirdly, poems have a purification function. But actually, its prime and chief function is fidelity to its own nature (Wellek & Warren. 1977: 37).

The function of literature, some say, is to relieve us –either the writers or readers- from the pressure of emotion (Wellek & Warren. 1977: 36). The validity of this opinion is questioned since literature, actually not only relieve neither the writers nor readers from the pressure; but also evokes the emotion.

Literary Theory, Criticism, and History
Indeed, there’s no proper term to mention literary study. It is usually called scholarship. This term is, sometimes, listened too academic. The other term had ever used is philology. The using of this term is open to misunderstanding. Literary theory itself is the study of the principles of literature, its categories, criteria, and the like, and by differentiating studies of concrete works of art as either “literary criticism” (primarily static in approach) or “literary history” (Wellek & Warren. 1977: 39).

The distinction of literary theory, criticism and history is clear enough. There’s a strong relation among them. Nevertheless, the efforts to separate them have ever been done. These give result in some views.

Historicism is the first view then evoked. This view wanted to separate literary history from literary criticism. Federick A. Pottle had a more extreme view. His argument was each period has its own different critical conceptions and conventions. The rest convinced that Classic and Romantic period can’t be connected: the classical works tends to be “poetry of statement”, meanwhile the romantic tends to be “poetry of implication”.

It is common that the writer’s intention in a literary work becomes the subject matter of literary history. It can’t be done because literary work itself is a system of values (Wellek & Warren. 1977: 42). Value is all about judgement. In practice, however, it is difficult to give a value judgement: the relativism comes to the “anarchy of value”; and absolutism emphasizes on “unchanging human nature” or “universality of art”. Perspectivism is in the boundary or gray area.

There’s no literary history that was written without a selection. A literary historian can’t separate himself from literary critic. Literary works, whenever it is made, is always interesting to learn. The literary historian must be a critic even in order to be a historian (Wellek & Warren. 1977: 44).

The works of 18th century is the main subject matter of conventional literary history. This is due to their gracious, more stable, and more hierarchic world. The works from the late 19th century followed its previous. It was learnt as well. The scholarly attitude, which firstly didn’t want to learn the works of contemporary works, then faded away. The reason not to study these works was due to the writers were still alive. Mostly, the critic chose the “verdict of the ages” namely writing of the other critics or readers. So that, simply we can sum up that literary history is quiet important for the critics.

General, Comparative, and National Literature
In practice, the term “comparative” literature has covered and still covers rather distinct fields of study and groups of problems (Wellek & Warren. 1977: 46).

Secondly, “comparative literature” includes the relation between two or more literatures. But this only came at the surface. “Comparative literature” like this only learns about the facts, sources, and influences.

Thirdly, some terms are used as the synonyms of “comparative literature”, such as “world literature”, “general literature”, and “universal literature”. But it was supposed to be an exaggeration of the comparative literature intention.

Literature, however, has to be seen totally. The debate among the terms “comparative literature”, “general literature”, or “literature” was caused by misunderstanding of the term “national literature”. “National literature” was understood narrowly.

History literature, which is concerned with themes, forms, techniques, genres, and metrics, is spread out internationally. Its different move in each country is as the result of the romantic nationalism followed by modern organized literary history.

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Resumed by Leny Nuzuliyanti, alumni of English Literature Department Student of Diponegoro University, Semarang, Indonesia.

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Some Post-Structural Assumptions

The following are intended to be some suggestions which you should expect to modify, add to, contest, and otherwise work with.

Post-structuralism is not a school, but a group of approaches motivated by some common understandings, not all of which will necessarily be shared by every practitioner. Post-structuralism is not a theory but a set of theoretical positions, which have at their core a self-reflexive discourse which is aware of the tentativeness, the slipperiness, the ambiguity and the complex interrelations of texts and meanings. There may be some sharp differences about what 'post-structuralism' includes; I see a substantial ideological component which others may not, for instance.

Post-structuralism is, as the name suggests, consequent upon Structuralism, with which movement one should have some familiarity in order to understand post-structuralism.

There follow some of assumptions of post-structural thought.

*I* Post-structuralism is marked by a rejection of totalizing, essentialist, foundationalist concepts.

* a totalizing concept puts all phenomena under one explanatory concept (e.g. it's the will of God)
* an essentialist concept suggests that there is a reality which exists independent of, beneath or beyond, language and ideology -- that there is such a thing as 'the feminine', for instance, or 'truth' or 'beauty'
* a foundationalist concept suggests that signifying systems are stable and unproblematic representations of a world of fact which is isomorphic with human thought.

*II* Post-structuralism contests the concept of 'man' as developed by enlightenment thought and idealist philosophy. Rather than holding as in the enlightenment view that 'individuals', are sacred, separate and intact, their minds the only true realm of meaning and value, their rights individual and inalienable, their value and nature rooted in a universal and transhistorical essence -- a metaphysical being, in short -- the post-structural view holds that persons are culturally and discursively structured, created in interaction as situated, symbolic beings. The common term for a person so conceived is a 'subject'.

* Subjects are created, then, through their cultural meanings and practices, and occupy various culturally-based sites of meaning (as family members, as occupationally and economically and regionally defined, as gendered and of sexual orientation, as members of clubs or clients of psychotherapy or presidents of their school parents' organization, and on and on -- every site evoking a different configuration of the self, different language uses, different foci of value and energy, different social practices, and so forth).

* Subjects are material beings, embodied and present in the physical world, entrenched in the material practices and structures of their society -- working, playing, procreating, living as parts of the material systems of society.

* Subjects are social in their very origin: they take their meaning and value and self-image from their identity groups, from their activities in society, from their intimate relations, from the multiple pools of common meanings and symbols and practices which they share variously with their sub-cultural groups and with their society as a larger unit.

Post-structural understandings of persons are sometimes referred to as 'anti-humanist', because they are opposed to the Humanist idea that persons are isolate, unified, largely immaterial beings, and that humanity is transcendent, universal and unchangeable in its essence. To be anti-humanist is not to be anti-humane, however, but to have a different philosophical and ideological understanding of the nature of the person.

*III* Poststructuralism sees 'reality' as being much more fragmented, diverse, tenuous and culture-specific than does structuralism. Some consequences have been,

1. poststructuralism's greater attention to specific histories, to the details and local contextualizations of concrete instances;
2. a greater emphasis on the body, the actual insertion of the human into the texture of time and history;
3. a greater attention to the specifics of cultural working, to the arenas of discourse and cultural practice;
4. a greater attention to the role of language and textuality in our construction of reality and identity.

*IV* Post-structuralism derives in part from a sense that we live in a linguistic universe. This means, in the first instance, rejecting the traditional aesthetic, phenomenalist assumption that language is a 'transparent' medium which hands over experience whole and unproblematically; in a 'linguistic' universe 'reality' is only mediated reality, and what it is mediated by is governed by such things as:

* the way language works, by difference for instance;
* the world of discourse which governs our knowledge and way of speaking about the subject under discussion: we can imagine only what we can symbolize, speak of only what we have language for, speak only in the ways our rules of discourse allow us to;
* the workings of the 'master tropes' (a trope is a way of saying something by saying something else) of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony;
* the structure of ideology, which attempts to 'naturalize' power relations and our sense of how the world is configured;
* the various cultural codes which govern our understandings of our selves, our place, our procedures;
* the idea that any cultural construction of meaning will privilege some meanings or experiences and deprivilege others, but that there will be traces of the deprivileging or suppression of some experiences, and by looking at the cracks, the silences, the discontinuities which ideology attempts to smooth over, we can deconstruct or demystify the cultural meanings;
* the idea that we think in terms of certain tropes, and construct meaning in terms of genres, so that meaning is pre-channeled in certain typified, identifiable ways, which ways reveal more about their construction of meaning than about any 'reality' beyond the rhetorical constructs.

To put this briefly, we live in a world of language, discourse and ideology, none of which are transparent, all of which structure our sense of being and meaning.

*V* All meaning is textual and intertextual: there is no "outside of the text," as Derrida remarked. Everything we can know is constructed through signs, governed by the rules of discourse for that area of knowledge, and related to other texts through filiation, allusion and repetition. Every text exists only in relation to other texts; meaning circulates in economies of discourse. This understanding does not mean that all reality is textual, only that what we can know of it, and how we can know, is textual, constructed through discourse, with all its rules; through symbols, linguistic and otherwise; through grammar(s).

*VI* Discourse is a material practice; the human is rooted in historicity and lives through the body. (Why 'historicity' instead of 'history'? Because the term 'history' suggests an objectively existing, cognitively available reality; 'historicity' implies that what we conceive of as history is tentative, situated, contingent.)

*VII* In Foucault's terms, the production of discourse, the (historical, material) way we know our world, is controlled, selected, organized and distributed by a certain number of procedures. Discourse is regulated by rules of exclusion, by internal systems of control and delineation, by conditions under which discourses can be employed, and by philosophical themes which elide the reality of discourse -- the themes of the founding subject, originating experience, and universal mediation. Discourses are multiple, discontinuous, originating and disappearing through chance; they do not hide the truth but constitute its temporary face. Foucault is post-structuralist in his insistence that there is no great causal flow or plan or evolution of history, that what happens is mainly by chance.

*VIII* The Derridean concept of différance links up with Freudian suppositions and marxist ideas to highlight concepts of repression, displacement, condensation, substitution and so forth, which, often by following metaphoric or metynomic links carefully, can be deconstructed or revealed; what is 'meant' is different from what appears to be meant. Meaning disguises itself. This is essentially structuralist, one of the reasons why 'post-structuralism' cannot be understood without structuralism.

*IX* Texts are marked by a surplus of meaning; the result of this is that differing readings are inevitable, indeed a condition of meaning at all. This surplus is located in the polysemous nature of both language and of rhetoric. It must be kept in mind that language is what is (for us as cognizant beings), that our sense of reality is linguistically constructed. Consequently the 'meaning of it all' is continually differing, overflowing, in flux.

*X* A 'text' exists as read. This 'reading' is formed, conducted, through certain mediating factors:

* the present structures of discourse, hence understanding, including the present conceptions of the discourse structures of the time of the 'writing' of the text.
* the traditions of reading, and the oppositions which those traditions have made possible, of that particular text,
* the expectations dictated by the genre of the text and the tradition of genre of the reading,
* the relations of meaning which are 'in' the text by virtue of its having been written at all, modified by the fact that these relations have a certain historical existence, a local, situated, and corporeal existence whose reality may or may not be imaginatively recoverable;
* the understanding that these 'historical' relations of meaning will to some extent be mystifying and ideologizing relations,
* the understanding that insofar as texts have a surplus of meaning they tend to reveal the flaws which the reigning discourse is attempting to mystify,
* the conceptual distances between the historical discourse / ideology / cultural codes / genre-traditions of the past and the historical discourse / ideology / cultural codes / genre-traditions of the present, which distance opens up 'new' meanings which the work could not have, in a sense, had before. Post-structuralism is deeply aware of such hermeneutic reading and also suspicious of it, certain that meaning is historical, uncertain that it is recoverable as what it may have meant.

*XI* At the expense of repetition, let's go again over the sorts of conflict Culler notes deconstructionist criticism (which is a mode of or modes of post-structuralist criticism) may look for [On Deconstruction pp. 213-215]:

1. the asymetrical opposition or value-laden hierarchy
2. points of condensation, where a single term brings together different lines of argument or sets of values
3. the text's ecarte de soi or difference from itself -- anything in the text that counters an authoritative interpretation, including interpretations that the work appears to encourage (this was touched on earlier re: the cracks, silences, discontinuities, etc.)
4. self-reference, when the text applies to something else a description, image or figure that can be read as self-description, as a representation of its own operations; one can by applying these to the operations of the text read 'against the grain'
5. an interest in the way conflicts or dramas within the text are reproduced as conflicts in and between readings of the text -- Texts thematize, with varying degrees of explicitness, interpretive operations and their consequences and thus represent in advance the dramas that will give life to the tradition of their interpretation
6. attention to the marginal -- hierarchies depend on exclusions; the marginalized is what the text resists, and therefore can be identified by.

*XII* Post-structuralism is consequent on and a reaction to structuralism; it would not exist without structuralism. Macherey's points in his critique of structuralism (1965) lay out some of the groundwork for post-structural thought:

1. structuralism is a-historical; life and thought are historical -- they change, different relations with different elements at different times, and so forth
2. the transfer of knowledge from one area of knowledge (e.g. linguistics) to other areas of knowledge is questionable enterprise
3. structuralism assumes that a work has intrinsic meaning -- that is, it is 'already there' and always there, that the 'meaning' pre-exists its realization (it is already there -- we just identify it).
4. structural analysis is therefore the discovery of the rationality or 'secret coherence' of a text. But this coherence is a coherence that precedes the text, or it could not form the text. For there to be 'intrinsic meaning' there has to be a pattern or order or structure which governs and orders and regulates the production of meaning. The text is therefore in a sense a 'copy' of that order or structure which grounds the coherence of the text; analysis of a text is a copy of a copy, the text is just an intermediary between the reader and the structure of rationality, and so it 'disappears'.
5. structuralism presupposes the traditional and metaphysical notion of harmony and unity; a work is only a work, i.e. only has meaning as an entity, only insofar as it is is a whole. This notion negates the reality of the material conditions of production or reception, it makes the meaning itself unitary, is makes criticism commentary, a pointing out of the essential truth which is embodied not in but through the work.

:: source: http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/poststruct.html

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Jacques Derrida: Structuralism/Poststructuralism

Structuralism is appealing to some critics because it adds a certain objectivity, a SCIENTIFIC objectivity, to the realm of literary studies (which have often been criticized as purely subjective/impressionistic). This scientific objectivity is achieved by subordinating "parole" to "langue;" actual usage is abandoned in favor of studying the structure of a system in the abstract. Thus structuralist readings ignore the specificity of actual texts and treat them as if they were like the patterns produced by iron filings moved by magnetic force--the result of some impersonal force or power, not the result of human effort.

In structuralism, the individuality of the text disappears in favor of looking at patterns, systems, and structures. Some structuralists (and a related school of critics, called the Russian Formalists) propose that ALL narratives can be charted as variations on certain basic universal narrative patterns.

In this way of looking at narratives, the author is canceled out, since the text is a function of a system, not of an individual. The Romantic humanist model holds that the author is the origin of the text, its creator, and hence is the starting point or progenitor of the text. Structuralism argues that any piece of writing, or any signifying system, has no origin, and that authors merely inhabit pre-existing structures (langue) that enable them to make any particular sentence (or story)--any parole. Hence the idea that "language speaks us," rather than that we speak language. We don't originate language; we inhabit a structure that enables us to speak; what we (mis)perceive as our originality is simply our recombination of some of the elements in the pre-existing system. Hence every text, and every sentence we speak or write, is made up of the "already written."

By focusing on the system itself, in a synchronic analysis, structuralists cancel out history. Most insist, as Levi-Strauss does, that structures are universal, therefore timeless. Structuralists can't account for change or development; they are uninterested, for example, in how literary forms may have changed over time. They are not interested in a text's production or reception/consumption, but only in the structures that shape it.

In erasing the author, the individual text, the reader, and history, structuralism represented a major challenge to what we now call the "liberal humanist" tradition in literary criticism.

The HUMANIST model presupposed:

1.) That there is a real world out there that we can understand with our rational minds.

2.) That language is capable of (more or less) accurately depicting that real world..

3.) That language is a product of the individual writer's mind or free will, meaning that we determine what we say, and what we mean when we say it; that language thus expresses the essence of our individual beings (and that there is such a thing as an essential unique individual "self").

4.) the SELF--also known as the "subject," since that's how we represent the idea of a self in language, by saying I, which is the subject of a sentence--or the individual (or the mind or the free will) is the center of all meaning and truth; words mean what I say they mean, and truth is what I perceive as truth. I create my own sentences out of my own individual experiences and need for individual expression.

The STRUCTURALIST model argues

1.) that the structure of language itself produces "reality"--that we can think only through language, and therefore our perceptions of reality are all framed by and determined by the structure of language.

2.) That language speaks us; that the source of meaning is not an individual's experience or being, but the sets of oppositions and operations, the signs and grammars that govern language. Meaning doesn't come from individuals, but from the system that governs what any individual can do within it.

3.) Rather than seeing the individual as the center of meaning, structuralism places THE STRUCTURE at the center--it's the structure that originates or produces meaning, not the individual self. Language in particular is the center of self and meaning; I can only say "I" because I inhabit a system of language in which the position of subject is marked by the first personal pronoun, hence my identity is the product of the linguistic system I occupy.

This is also where deconstruction starts to come in. The leading figure in deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, looks at philosophy (Western metaphysics) to see that any system necessarily posits a CENTER, a point from which everything comes, and to which everything refers or returns. Sometimes it's God, sometimes it's the human self, the mind, sometimes it's the unconscious, depending on what philosophical system (or set of beliefs) one is talking about.

There are two key points to the idea of deconstruction. First is that we're still going to look at systems or structures, rather than at individual concrete practices, and that all systems or structures have a CENTER, the point of origin, the thing that created the system in the first place. Second is that all systems or structures are created of binary pairs or oppositions, of two terms placed in some sort of relation to each.

Derrida says that such systems are always built of the basic units structuralism analyzes--the binary opposition or pair--and that within these systems one part of that binary pair is always more important than the other, that one term is "marked" as positive and the other as negative. Hence in the binary pair good/evil, good is what Western philosophy values, and evil is subordinated to good. Derrida argues that all binary pairs work this way--light/dark, masculine/feminine, right/left; in Western culture, the first term is always valued over the second.

In his most famous work, Of Grammatology, Derrida looks particularly at the opposition speech/writing, saying that speech is always seen as more important than writing. This may not be as self-evident as the example of good/evil, but it's true in terms of linguistic theories, where speech is posited as the first or primary form of language, and writing is just the transcription of speech. Derrida says speech gets privileged because speech is associated with presence--for there to be spoken language, somebody has to be there to be speaking.

No, he doesn't take into account tape recordings and things like that. Remember, a lot of what these guys are talking about has roots in philosophic and linguistic traditions that predate modern technology--so that Derrida is responding to an opposition (speech/writing) that Plato set up, long before there were tape recorders. Just like poor old Levi-Strauss talks about how, in order to map all the dimensions of a myth, he'd have to have "punch cards and an IBM machine," when all he'd need now is a home computer.

Anyway, the idea is that the spoken word guarantees the existence of somebody doing the speaking--thus it reinforces all those great humanist ideas, like that there's a real self that is the origin of what's being said. Derrida calls this idea of the self that has to be there to speak part of the metaphysics of PRESENCE; the idea of being, or presence, is central to all systems of Western philosophy, from Plato through Descartes (up to Derrida himself). Presence is part of a binary opposition presence/absence, in which presence is always favored over absence. Speech gets associated with presence, and both are favored over writing and absence; this privileging of speech and presence is what Derrida calls LOGOCENTRISM.

You might think here about the Biblical phrase "Let there be light" as an example. The statement insures that there is a God (the thing doing the speaking), and that God is present (because speech=presence); the present God is the origin of all things (because God creates the world by speaking), and what God creates is binary oppositions (starting with light/dark). You might also think about other binary oppositions or pairs, including being/nothingness, reason/madness, word/silence, culture/nature, mind/body. Each term has meaning only in reference to the other (light is what is not dark, and vice-versa), just as, in Saussure's view, signifiers only have meaning--or negative value--in relation to other signifiers. These binary pairs are the "structures," or fundamental opposing ideas, that Derrida is concerned with in Western philosophy.

Because of the favoring of presence over absence, speech is favored over writing (and, as we'll see with Freud, masculine is favored over feminine because the penis is defined as a presence, whereas the female genitals are defined as absence).

It's because of this favoring of presence over absence that every system (I'm referring here mostly to philosophical systems, but the idea works for signifying systems as well) posits a CENTER, a place from which the whole system comes, and which guarantees its meaning--this center guarantees being as presence. Think of your entire self as a kind of system--everything you do, think, feel, etc. is part of that system. At the core or center of your mental and physical life is a notion of SELF, of an "I", of an identity that is stable and unified and coherent, the part of you that knows who you mean when you say "I". This core self or "I" is thus the CENTER of the "system", the "langue" of your being, and every other part of you (each individual act) is part of the "parole". The "I" is the origin of all you say and do, and it guarantees the idea of your presence, your being.

Western thought has a whole bunch of terms that serve as centers to systems --being, essence, substance, truth, form, consciousness, man, god, etc. What Derrida tells us is that each of these terms designating the center of a system serves two purposes: it's the thing that created the system, that originated it and guarantees that all the parts of the system interrelate, and it's also something beyond the system, not governed by the rules of the system. This is what he talks about as a "scandal" discovered by Levi-Strauss in Levi-Strauss's thoughts about kinship systems. (This will be covered in detail in the next lecture).

What Derrida does is to look at how a binary opposition--the fundamental unit of the structures or systems we've been looking at, and of the philosophical systems he refers to--functions within a system. He points out that a binary opposition is algebraic (a=~b, a equals not-b), and that two terms can't exist without reference to the other--light (as presence) is defined as the absence of darkness, goodness the absence of evil, etc. He doesn't seek to reverse the hierarchies implied in binary pairs--to make evil favored over good, unconscious over consciousness, feminine over masculine. Rather, deconstruction wants to erase the boundaries (the slash) between oppositions, hence to show that the values and order implied by the opposition are also not rigid.

Here's the basic method of deconstruction: find a binary opposition. Show how each term, rather than being polar opposite of its paired term, is actually part of it. Then the structure or opposition which kept them apart collapses, as we see with the terms nature and culture in Derrida's essay. Ultimately, you can't tell which is which, and the idea of binary opposites loses meaning, or is put into "play" (more on this in the next lecture). This method is called "Deconstruction" because it is a combination of construction/destruction--the idea is that you don't simply construct new system of binaries, with the previously subordinated term on top, nor do you destroy the old system--rather, you deconstruct the old system by showing how its basic units of structuration (binary pairs and the rules for their combination) contradict their own logic. [source: http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/1derrida.html]

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Suggestions for Further Information:

• Derrida for Beginners, Jim Powell

• Poststructuralism

• Poststructuralism as Theory and Practice in the English Classroom

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What is Semiotics?

The self-described science of signs, and of their use. The notion that communication and even thought proceeds by the use of signs, which form a kind of definite code, is a very ancient and firmly entrenched part of the western tradition, taking us back to, at least, Aristotle. Concerns about how signs --- spoken and written words, gestures, and what-not --- are used to convey information, and their use in thought, have certainly been part and parcel of modern philosophy from the beginning. Nobody seems to have tried to spin these concerns off as a separate science, though, until the end of the 19th century, when the notion occured to the American polymath C. S. Peirce (who gave it the name "semiotics") and to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (who called it "semiology"; votaries of the subject have gotten very heated up over which name to use). Neither of these ventures went very far. Peirce had remarkable talents, which he refused not to exercise, both for being obscure and for offending those who might have aided him. Saussure was an Indo-Europeanist by trade, and never even wrote anything on the subject. (The book called Course in General Linguistics, bearing his name, was assembled from his students' lecture-notes, and didn't see the light of day for decades after Saussure's death.) Consequently, the field was invented all over again, by the logical positivists and their ilk.

Like many of the gaudier delusions of our time, it didn't really take off until after the second world war, when, in the words of Hugh Kenner, "academia ran a fever." A detailed explanation of how it came to pass that, c. 1970, large chunks of the western intelligentsia became convinced that the key to the humanities lay in semotics would take us far afield. We would have to discuss ideas of anthropological method, math-envy, the history of linguistics in Eastern Europe and the institutional politics of intellectual life in France and America. Suffice it to say that it did happen, and even wasn't altogether unreasonable, at least as first.

The savants have differed, not to say bickered, with each other over terminology, basic principles, disciplinary scope, disciplinary aims, and (even when these have been agreed upon, more or less) what to accept as results. Methodology, it goes without saying, has been hopelessly disputed. In all this, almost the only point which has been axiomatic is that signs operate on the principle of codes, that communication is a process of encoding and decoding.

(European languages all use roughly phonetic alphabets, which are (imperfect) codes, and perhaps this made the semiotic view more plausible: "dog" is to canines, or an idea of canines, as "d" is to a certain dental sound. To test this speculation, one would need to, say, compare how reasonable the coding idea of communication seems to people as a function of how phonetic their writing systems are. Presumably illiteratres would be the least willing of all to accept it. But one could easily squeeze a paper, if not a book, out of the conjecture, and doubtless somebody has.)

This central assumption, of no communication without coding, is false, as Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson showed in their 1986 book Relevance. This hasn't stopped people from making it, of course.

A word or two should probably be said here about the distinction between signs like words or turn signals, and signs in the sense in which black clouds are a sign of rain, or something large, mean and toothy looking in your direction is a sign of danger.

For the sake of quibblers, however, it should be noted that "sign" can assume two meanings. In one sense it means anything which, when apprehended, makes us know something alse; but it does not make us know something for the first time, as has been shown elsewhere; it only makes us know something actually which we already know habitually. In this manner, a word is a natural sign, and indeed any effect is a sign at least of its cause. And in this way also a barrel-hoop signifies the wine in the inn. Here, however, I am not speaking of "sign" in such a general meaning. In another sense, "sign" means that which makes us know something else, and either is able itself to stand for it, or can be added in a proposition to what is able to stand for something --- such are the syncategorematic words and the verbs and the other parts of a proposition which have no definite signfication --- or is such at to be composed of things of this sort, e.g., a sentence.
---William of Occam, Summa Totius Logicæ, I, i, trans. Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M., Philosophical Writings of Occam, p. 49.

("Syncategorematic" words are, roughly, those which give the sentence its form, or logical constants --- but, if, and, every, some, however, etc.) It has often been assumed that there's some kind of connection between the two kinds of sign, but that's not at all obvious, and I actually rather doubt it. Signs in the first sense essentially belong to inference; a criter can learn to apprehend them through the usual processes of association and conditioning (among other ways), and the evolution of the ability to handle them presents no special conceptual difficulties. On the other hand, signs of the second sort --- ones which necessarily involve communication, and some kind of regularization --- are quite tricky to evolve. Moreover, in the species (us) with the most elaborate version of such communication (language), there's overwhelming evidence that it's handled by specialized, separated neural hardware, specifically adapted to do that and not handle signs in general.

Semiotics, the academic discipline, should on no account be confused with linguistics; with rhetoric; with formal language theory; with cognitive science; with mathematical logic and meta-mathematics; or even with information theory. All of these, whatever their troubles, conduct themselves with at least a modicum of rigor and (where applicable) empirical controls, and have actual results, some of them even of practical utility, to show for themselves. On the other hand, semioticians are quite at home with structuralist, literary critics, psychoanalysts, soi-disant narratologists, and the more dubious sort of philosophers, which speaks for itself. The story of semiotics has been one of "institutional success and intellectual bankruptcy," as Sperber and Wilson (an anthropologist and a linguist, respectively) put it.

See also: Renormalized Semiotics

Recommended:
• Aristotle, De Interpretatione
• Augustine, De Magistra [A far more readable example of ancient thought on semiotics than Aristotle, but typical of the tradition, at least up to the point where he brings in Jesus]
• Stephen Pinker, The Language Instinct
• Dan Sperber, "Understanding Verbal Understanding", in Jean Khalfa (ed.), What Is Intelligence?, pp. 179--198 [Online]
• Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition
• Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber, "Linguistic Form and Relevance", Lingua 90 (1993): 1--25 [Online]

To read:
• Judy S. DeLoache, "Becoming symbol-minded", Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (2004): 66--70
• Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics
• Harnad on the symbol grounding problem
• Hauser, Evolution of Communication
• Giovanni Manetti, Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity
• Ruth Garrett Milikan
  • Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories
  • Varieties of Meaning
• Charles W. Morris, Signs, Language and Behavior
• Horst Ruthorf
  • Pandora and Occam: On the Limits of Language and Literature
  • The new book about the bodily grounding of language

:: source: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/semiotics.html

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