Course Blog

Jonathan Culler’s book Literary Theory discuses meaning in chapter 4. When he discusses meaning Culler claims that meaning is based on differences. He says, “We have different kinds of meaning, but one thing we can say in general is that meaning is based on difference” (Culler, 56). By reading a specific work a person creates their own interpretation of the text and what they perceive the authors writing as being. Now one key word that we have read and also watched a movie on in class is related to the term Communism and specifically its Marxism. Marxism was founded and created by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as an economic system that would create equality within a country. Marxism is based on the idea that there is equality amongst everyone in society and regardless of how much work a person works or does they will always make the same amount of money and receive the same amount of supplies as everyone else. Communism sounds like a good idea but it demotes the idea of working hard for a better life and thus destroys the idea of working hard to achieve a goal or dream. In particular, Marxism matters because it was the creation of an economic system that failed to work and almost caused a nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Relating Marxism back to Culler’s point, Marxism worked well on paper but when it came to individual’s needs it failed as people are not willing to work hard if their hard work is not going to get them anywhere in life. Marxism is an important keyword because without Marxism the Berlin wall would not have come down in 1989. Additionally, there would also be no Red Scare or McCarythism in America and even the Cold War would have possibly never happened without the term Marxism. My interpretation of Marxism is that it is responsible for almost causing a nuclear war, it separated East and West Berlin, and lastly it helped promote how important achieving the American Dream was.

Another keyword that Jonathan Culler discusses is interpretation. In particular, interpretation is what gives meaning to writing and to a text. Interpretation specifically comes from the reader and through these interpretations the reader creates their own opinions and perspectives based on the text that they just read. Interpretation brings about individuality and meaning to every word. As an example, in the Intentional Fallacy the text discusses how the reader, the author, and the text are all separate from one another in the way that they are meant to be viewed. As an example of this in my poetry class, Professor Perabo asked our class to think about the word “love” and then describe what we perceived love as being within our own heads. It was amazing to see and listen to the different perspectives based on just one word. I perceived love as being a big red heart while one of my classmates saw love as two people getting married and someone else saw love as being a mother’s love for their child. Now one thing about interpretation is that it can change over time. In Benjamin Walter’s text, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction he discusses that over time artwork changes, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element; its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (Walter, 714). My interpretation of this quote is that as time passes one individual might have a different interpretation of a text over time. Their perception of a text or work of art might be very different from age 18 in comparison to age 35. The individual may notice more cracks in the art or see the artwork as being smaller than what it used to look like. Not only does interpretation create meaning in the text but it creates individuality and expressing one’s own thoughts and ideas.

This year, I am focusing my writing and research on the Vikings and the Nordic mythology and sagas. The pantheon was pretty much limited to the small Scandinavian countries, especially Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and started to die off when Iceland was Christianized, in around 1000 C.E. Oral tales and storytelling are important (or at least present) in almost all the world’s cultures, especially before people could read and write. All of the Norse tales were told orally for many generations, and were mostly written down after making contact with Christianity. This turn is something I wish to focus on in my research, especially in relation to two primary texts, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, and the famous Beowulf. I see multiple similarities in these two texts, and one key difference. I argue that these two tales are actually the same story, except Hrolf Kraki is very pagan, and the Beowulf author attempts to make it a Christian tale. I argue that Beowulf is a Christianized version of Hrolf Kraki.

The biggest recurring motif in both Beowulf and Hrolf Kraki is the symbol of the bear. Both heroes (Beowulf, in Beowulf, and Bodvar-Bjarki in Hrolf Kraki) channel bears in their respective tales. The main similarities between the two heroes are their bravery and unmatchable, ferocious strength. Bodvar’s father is named Bjorn, which literally translates to “Bear” in Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish. Not only that, he is transformed into an actual bear by his evil step-mother when he rejects her advances. He roams around as a bear by day, killing the king’s livestock, and is a man at night. The name of his lover, Bodvar’s mother, is Bera, meaning “she-bear”. When Bjorn is killed and his bear-meat served at a feast in the castle, the evil queen makes Bera eat small pieces of it, even though Bera is warned against doing so. The result of this is that their children, born after the feast, have beast-like features. Bodvar-Bjarki’s two older brothers have the marks of an elk and a hound, but Bodvar has no physical blemish. However, he has the strength and ferocity of a bear, and even gets the nickname “Bjarki”, meaning “little-bear”. Beowulf also has unmatchable strength and prowess in battle, and his name, translated, means “Bee-Wolf”, which is a kenning (a phrase which describes a well-known noun in a creative way) for bear. Bodvar grows up, and becomes a great warrior in the hall of King Hrolf Kraki (who, I will argue, is the same character as Beowulf’s King Hrothgar), and even shape-shifts into a bear in his final battle. In the coming research and writing, I will discuss why the storytellers chose the bear to be the symbol of the warrior instead of another animal.

So, if they are the same tale, why doesn’t Beowulf shape-shift into a bear form? I will consider more answers to this question after further research, but as of right now, I think that when the Beowulf tale was written down by a Christian writer, the writer sanitized the story, and possibly removed references to inhuman, witchcraft-like pagan magic. However, the writer left enough of the original tale intact that we can draw the connection to a pagan saga.

In Laura Mulvey’s argument titled Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, I focused mainly on her second section, which was titled Pleasure in Looking/ Fascination with the Human Form. In this section Mulvey addressed the voyeuristic nature of the cinematic experience and how it is intended mainly for male audiences. She mentions the fact that the female body becomes more of an object that a human being that is set in front of the audience simply for erotic pleasure. I noticed two repetitions of words in this section that I believe pertain highly to this argument, which aims to promote feminism and the wrongs of cinema toward the female figure. These two words are “scopophilia” and “ego,” which both pertain to the act of looking.

Mulvey describes scopophilia as the act and pleasure in looking. This word is mentioned a total of five times in the first paragraph alone. Although she mentions it in other parts of the second section, I believe her uses of it in the first paragraph are most pertinent. This word, in the case of Mulvey’s argument, is relevant specifically to the cinema and to that pleasure of male viewers and how they perceive the female body in the cinematic experience. In addition she states, “looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at,” (p. 1446). In this sentence, looking is paralleled with pleasure, which begs the question, looking at what? It is then that we read further and we realize that the reverse of this pleasure is equally enjoyable when one is being looked at. The reader can assume that the sentence is referring to humans looking at humans presumably through cinema as that is the main premises for the argument. However, it is not the female that enjoys being looked at, but the male viewer that enjoys looking at the objectified female, and it is he in return who enjoys being looked at by the same female “object.” This gaze is not one for admiration, but rather a controlling gaze on the male’s part, and thus is an instinctual link to sexual pleasure and eroticism.

This idea leads me to my next point in which the word “ego” comes into play. “It continues to exist as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixated into perversion,” (p.1447). The word ego is repeated a total of four times in the end of the first paragraph and continuing into the second paragraph. As “scopophilia” can be conveyed into sexual pleasure, the word “ego” takes this a step further and explains that this is a basis for which sexual pleasure is oriented. A male viewer needs to feel in control and important while looking in order to be attracted to the cinematic female object. The pleasure of looking at another person in this controlling gaze is the beginnings of narcissism in which the male viewer can become hopelessly engrossed in his object of interest. Mulvey goes as far as to say that this fixation can turn into perversion. The words fixated and perversion are even used close to each other in the sentence, separated only by the word “into.” The word fixated demonstrates the intensity and the need for this visual pleasure, and perversion explains the extent to which this pleasure can contort a male viewer.

The importance of the words “scopophilia” and “ego” help the reader to understand the significance and the extent to which the cinema has become voyeuristic and intended for a male audience. It is a societal problem that we face in which the female is constantly viewed as an object and subdued into an insignificant existence. This is then extended from the cinema into our daily lives.

A keyword that has become relevant, and we have considered regarding a few different points of discussion in class, is literary canon, first presented to us by John Guillory in his piece “The Problem of Literary Canon Formation”. Guillory discusses the ways in which “the school is the vehicle of transmission for something like national culture” (1589), and how that transmission of culture is largely determined by “reference to the High Culture artifacts to which access is provided in schools” (1589-1590). I plan to lean into that sentiment and argue with it, reasoning that cultural artifacts come in different forms than, say, the great American novel, and extend to primary texts written by less glorified authors, who have just as much clout and cultural knowledge as the authors that tend to be studied most heavily in schools.

My initial background research, which originally revolved around WWII, led me down a path that focused less on writing that came from more prominent writers of the time, and instead honed in more on writing that came directly out of the people who experienced this wartime firsthand – and in an unconventional way. I’ve become extremely interested, most specifically, in the writing that came from prisoners of war and detainees of war and torture camps that were published either after their release, or while they were still imprisoned in a prison or a camp.

Based upon some secondary sources I encountered during my research, I’ve come up with two main keywords – or key phrases, in my case – that are used throughout, and really get down to the nitty-gritty of what my interests revolve around. Those words are inmate poetry and prisoner of war literature. These two key phrases are used throughout the texts I have engaged with and target the differences between the type of work that came out of wartime from bystanders or people indirectly involved with war, as opposed to those – like inmates and POWs – who have experienced the traumatic repercussions of war firsthand.

As opposed to other literature composed during times of war, poetry and other works written by inmates and POWs offers an outlet of expression for these solitary people – it is their sole connection to the outside world and the way they express their thoughts, feelings and experiences throughout their confinement, regardless of if their work will be read by others or not. Their experiences and unfortunate circumstances are sometimes expanded upon, but more often than not, they are creative ways of expressing their feelings of their journey from free person to incarcerated person. Repeated often is language that represents thoughtful reflection of their own self, along with a reflection on the hardships of war even more generally. This type of literature differs greatly because the authors are so directly immersed in the effects of war, rather than viewing the effects from an outside perspective.

In looking at my keywords, I came up with a question I wanted to propose to myself as I went forth with my research to further target the reasoning behind why literature from inmates and POWs at wartime is important and interesting to me. I asked “how does literature written by inmates/prisoners both aid in the healing process and act as an alternative, yet still historically accurate, representation of wartime during a specific period in history?” From that, I considered some binaries that were present, like aid/hinder, healing/neglecting, inmates/free persons, historically accurate/historically inaccurate, and wartime/peace. All of these binaries pose certain questions that I wish to explore more, such as “do inmates, who have limited access to resources, write in the same manner or about the same sorts of things as free people?” And, “are these piece of literature from incarcerated people considered historical documents that contribute to the overall discussion about this period of time, or are they of their own separate category?” And lastly, “does literature composed and circulated during the pressures of wartime have different effects on society than literature composed and circulated during a peaceful time?” All of these questions, created from the binaries I discovered in my initial research about my interests, are worth considering as I delve further into this area of work.

By using these keywords, I expect my research to be narrowed enough that I can refine all wartime writing down to pieces that have been composed by unconventional authors, but also still broad enough that I’m not eliminating works that could have been published, edited or produced by secondary authors who report on the stories of inmates, prisoners, etc. I plan to continue to use these key phrases to direct my research as I look to find sources, both primary and secondary, which help to answer some of the questions I proposed above.

A keyword that continues to crop up in our class readings and especially in Culler is “culture.” This focus on “culture” signifies current literature studies’s self-consciousness in realizing that everything critics assert about a literary work is subjective, determined by the culture in which it was written and then read, and thus not a certain, all-encompassing answer. This point derives from many of the readings we have already discussed in class (Althusser, Culler, Mulvey who dwells on the symbiotic relationship between actor/screen and viewer) and it currently pervades the study of any discipline in which culture has an impact on the resulting creation – math and science are probably free of these effects, but the humanities cannot escape it. I think “culture” as a term deserves scrutiny because it is frequently used throughout serious academic writing and casual conversation, especially on the internet where a statement about culture can reach a substantial portion of the world’s population without any consideration for reliability. In this way, the definition of “culture” becomes muddled and requires distinguishing.

I have selected “culture” as a major keyword for my thesis research on food. In identifying “food culture” as my focus — rather than “food literature,” “food writing,” “food instructions/recipes” — I have pinpointed a preference to focus on the sociological, relationship-oriented dynamics that food engenders in our, or a, culture. I am intrigued by recipes, technique, ingredients, and national dishes, but not just because the process of making food compels me. For the purposes of my thesis, I consider these elements of food important because, for example, a culture’s popular recipes may act as medicine for an illness common to that region; a technique may have become popular because the tools needed were easily accessed or constructed, or because ancient populations perfected the technique and its modern use acts as ancestral remembrance and celebration; ingredients viewed as “indigenous” to a nation or “typical” of its food actually represent living records of colonization or, for instance, famine (in my Writing About Food class we have learned that Columbus brought chilies to India and tomatoes to Italy, which offers a revised perspective on deeming an ingredient “original” to a land). “Food culture,” for me — I haven’t conducted enough research to ensure this meaning is constant throughout academic writing — refers to human interactions with and because of food.

Culler’s statements in Chapter Three identify the dynamic I find so compelling about the interaction between a culture and its food, or food and the culture it spawns. “[C]ultural studies is drawn to the idea of a direct relationship, in which cultural products are the symptom of an underlying socio-political configuration” (Culler 51). More sparsely phrased, the field is about “how cultural productions work and how cultural identities are constructed and organized…” (44). This broad summary of cultural studies helps me understand why the term “food culture” felt relevant and apt for my thesis, even before I had considered what the phrase really meant: it focuses on the “thing’s” (i.e. food, literature, music, films in Mulvey’s case) relationship with its culture, or with cultures it has contact with. Culler employs literature to illustrate cultural studies, and I choose food. My interest in “food culture,” however, seeks not to express cultural studies through the lens of food, but to examine food through the lens of cultural studies. For me, food is not the tool; cultural studies is.

Javier Zamora’s “Let Me Try Again,” is concerned not only with the politics involved in the process of migrating but also with the politics of relaying a narrative about migrating. The poem begins with the speaker’s direct address to the audience: “I could bore you with the sunset, the way water tasted / after so many days without it,/ the trees, the breed of dogs…” (61). This introduction relays the speaker’s belief that the sensory details he lists will risk boring the reader—yet, the speaker’s consciousness of this ‘risk’ does not impede the speaker from listing them. What this reveals is that though the speaker is aware of his audience and of his storytelling, he is not necessarily invested in ‘convincing’ or swaying an audience; rather, the poem’s progression demonstrates the speaker’s own relationship to the very story he tells—both in what he tells and how he tells it. The poem’s structure is divided by addressing these two distinct aspects. While the formal structure reflects the speaker’s multiple attempts to tell the story, the poem’s narrative content is more invested in pointing to the multiple attempts migrants make to cross the U.S./Mexico border.

In connection with the poem’s title, the speaker’s awareness of audience in the first line indicates that this poem is not the speaker’s first attempt to tell this story i.e. this is a poem that is just as much about the speaker’s attempt to “try again” to tell the story, as it is about the speaker’s attempts to migrate. The poem’s final stanza illuminates further significance of the poem’s title, as the speaker reflects on the officer’s reasoning for advising the group: “He knew we would try again / and again, / like everyone does,” (62). The narrative within the poem leads us through the speaker’s journey and moves us from the specificity of his experience and consciousness of relaying it, all the way through to the collective experience he shared with other migrants. In the poem’s title, it is the “me” who will “try again” and the actual action here is left open to interpretation, while in the poem’s final stanza, it is the “we” who will “try again” and the action here unambiguously refers to crossing the border.

The poem’s first three stanzas reflect the speaker’s attempts to recall detail or otherwise to decide upon how he will relay this story. These three stanzas are marked by the speaker’s hesitation and confusion, as indicated by language like “I can’t say,” “I couldn’t remember / there were only five,/ or seven people—,” and “The rest…I don’t know.” The speaker’s flustered tone is reflected not only through this language but also formally through frequent enjambment and scattered spacing on the page. The stanzas are structured in such a way as to reflect the speaker’s own uncertainty about how he relays the story of what occurred during this moment in his migration journey. For example, “The rest…/ I don’t know. / They weren’t there,” progressively move in a downward diagonal pattern away from the page; the distance created physically on the page reflects the speaker’s distance from the thirty-six people from which he was separated, and perhaps also his distance from the full knowledge of what happened to them. It is not until the poem’s fourth stanza that the poem settles into a more direct, grounded storytelling pattern and adopts a more stable form. Although frequent enjambment and dispersed lines continue through the end of the poem, the stanzas are consistently two to three lines, which eases the narrative flow. As the poem stabilizes formally, the speaker’s tone shifts to encompass a wider political awareness as he analyzes the officer’s identity and how he defies the expectations of his occupational role in order to warn the migrants. The poem slows to enable further emphasis on instances of enjambment, as in: “He must’ve remembered his family / over the border,” which functions to give a double meaning to ‘over the border’ as it indicates both the family’s physical location as well as the officer’s prioritization of his family over his prioritization of his duty to the Border Patrol.

Works Cited:
Zamora, Javier. Unaccompanied. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2017. Print.

In Goodbye Lenin!, the Kerners’ crisis symbolizes the people of Germany’s struggle to balance remembering and retaining parts of their past with embracing their country’s present after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In particular, the scene in the film in which Laura and Alex are fighting while Alex’s mother, Christiane, is celebrating her birthday in the adjoining room is valuable to one’s understanding of this theme of past vs. present because it underscores the power of walls as both physical and psychological barriers to change and reality. Like the Berlin Wall that separated East Germany from the progress and influence of the outside world and enabled the government to have complete control, the four walls of Christiane’s bedroom also create an isolated reality because Christiane’s world is constituted solely by the actions and decisions made by her son. It is the ways in which these sets of walls, despite their differing scales and political purposes, are portrayed as having the ability to shift power, limit agency, and distort reality that connects the Kerner family to the history of Germany.

The staging and production of this argument scene highlights Laura and Alex’s differing views regarding the incorporation of the past and how reality can and should be constructed. As a whole, almost all of the visual focus is placed on Laura. Laura’s facial expressions are directly captured on screen and are portrayed through both her direct eye contact with the camera and her reflection in a mirror. This staging choice not only captures the severity of Laura’s disgust at the situation by illuminating her emotions and reactions, but also touches on her individual viewpoints regarding the past. In the same way that Laura looks at the Kerner’s unchanged house through the mirror, Laura is willing to reflect on her past and her existence as a former member of a communist nation, but is unwilling to accept the recreation of the past that has been created by Alex within his mother’s mind and bedroom. Laura is shown aggressively leaving Christiane’s room and shedding her old, eastern German clothes as if she is attempting to rid herself of her past identity and the discomfort that she feels on account of her and Christiane having their existences be altered and restricted in the Kerner’s house as if they are still members of a communist East Germany.

Conversely, the way in which Alex is portrayed in this scene highlights his dedication to the containment of the false reality within his home. Even though Alex is a central figure within this scene and dialogue, his face is almost always turned away from the camera. This staging suggests that Alex is not ready to confront the present time period within his country and actively decides to turn his back on the events taking place outside of his mother’s room. This decision to portray Laura directly and Alex indirectly is also significant because it reveals the psychological wall that has come between the couple on account of both the physical Berlin Wall ceasing to exist and the four walls that contain Christiane’s reality. Because Alex is committed to his created reality, he is constantly lying and creating deceptions, ultimately causing him to be slowly and mentally severed from the outside world, Laura, and his past self that was committed to the fall of the communist party. It is this disconnect between the couple that is embodied in their unparalleled portrayals within this scene.

One of the other dominating features in this scene is the way in which Laura and Alex’s fight is shown alongside the celebration contained within Christiane’s bedroom. Relegated to her room, Christiane is depicted as being a separate entity from that of her party guests and the argument between her son and Laura. Unlike her friends who are singing and celebrating, Christiane is only shown on screen as being quiet and alone, as if her bed serves as a wall between herself and other people. It is this decision to show Christiane as being disconnected from those in her room and from Alex and Laura that embodies her separation from the reality beyond her walls, as well as her isolation and loss of personal agency even in her own home. Like the people of East Germany who were trapped within the Berlin Wall and, consequently, lacked the power or the ability to explore life beyond their enclosure, Christiane is also mentally and physically trapped, leaving her alone in a past that no longer exists.

Judith Fetterley’s Introduction to The Resisting Reader is a strident statement of discontent with the way Fetterley feels the canon of American literature has been constructed. Fetterley begins by claiming that literature is political and sees it as necessary to inform her audience that this is “painful to admit” (991). This is confusing because she seems to be entirely motivated and fascinated rather than pained by political interests and self-interest. She includes a quote from John Keats supporting her assertion, and the time between the quote and her writing suggests that her assertion about political intents is not shocking or painful at all. Fetterley uses similar language throughout the essay and the first section of it, throwing terms such as “universal truths” and “confusion of consciousness” to make her statements seem more groundbreaking and revolutionary.

Fetterley relies more on the tone of her article than her actual argument to create that impression because her assertions are not revolutionary, and her demands are really just as exclusionary as the status quo she critiques. She creates a binary distinction between male and female, leaving out a plethora of excluded groups. She seems not to care about true inclusivity, but rather the inclusion of her narrative. Her seeming ignorance, based on its absence from her text, of people of color, gender queer, and non-binary individuals suggests a lack of reflection on self in preparation for writing this piece.

What “male” means to Fetterley is not expressly defined in this introduction, but that is almost as revealing as a definition would be. Because she chooses not to tell her audience what she means by the two identifiers her entire argument hinges, her writing exposes the ways she does exactly what she rebels against throughout the introduction. She assumes that her understanding of male and female is obvious, or as she likes to say, “universal” (991). That is not only ironic but suggests the lack of self-examination that becomes clearer and clearer as she continues her argument.

A moment that stuck out as relevant to my impressions was when Fetterley states, “To read the canon of what is currently considered classic American literature is perforce to identify as male” (991). This sentence reveals assumptions she has made about the nature of reading based on her individual experience. Fetterley believes that to read something and gain from the experience, the audience member has to identify with the subject or author’s sexual identity.

She says in her “Rip Van Winkle” example that, “universal desire is made specifically male. Work, authority, and decision-making, are symbolized by Dame Van Winkle, and the longing for flight is defined against her” (991). These, I would argue, are not the typical attributes stereotypically given to women and men. The stark contrasts she chooses to make support a reading of her as a binary and exclusionary thinker. She seems to see the term as a designated sex at birth rather than a spectrum. Much of this is a result of the time at which she was writing, but she also leaves out all racial identities aside from white, and that was not the only critical approach to literature in 1978.

Her focus on “female” inclusion in literary canon assemblage is not a fault, but her refusal to acknowledge any other group or identification that is left out of foundational literature (991). She also relies entirely on texts from long before she wrote this piece such as “Rip Van Winkle”, which forces her to pursue a negative argument in her opening that continues throughout the piece. She chooses not to argue for the merits of works including the female voice forces her to pursue an entirely negative argument. Rather than currying emphatic support, her rhetorical strategy and general diction choice led me and likely other audience members to have an echo reaction to her work, rejecting her narrow goals for the canon.