Susan Sontag, in "Against Interpretation," takes a very interesting critical standpoint on the idea of literary interpretation. Unlike most literary critics, Sontag believes that literary criticism is growing increasingly destructive towards the very works of art that they, supposedly, so greatly "appreciate" and "respect." Her standpoint could not be more accurate. Reading her work generates numerous questions, the most important of which is quite possibly, "How are we to take her final statement, ‘In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.’" In the light of her previous statements, made throughout the work, one could only see this particular statement as an attempt to reach through the fog that blinds the majority of modern critics. According to Sontag, no work of art, especially literature, can escape the surgical eye of the modern critic; therefore, what is to stop her own work from coming under this blade of criticism?
Sontag’s preparation for this criticism shows in the inclusion of her final statement. She has, in effect, laid a trap for the modern critic (who just happens to be you, me, and practically every other reader) with her final statement as the bait. Once the critic picks apart that last sentence, he will see, with greater clarity, the veracity of her work. Throughout this work, Sontag makes many statements that invite interpretation. Critics may analyze her repeated references to Greek literature or possibly her use of sexual imagery, but none could ignore the simplicity, brevity, and word choice that characterize the concluding sentence.
The brevity of the final section is what catches the critical eye and the lurid choice of words is what pulls the critic in. The first question that the interpreter finds him/herself asking is, "Why ‘hermeneutics’ and why ‘erotics’? There must be some significance to these terms." Analysis of these terms reveals the two extremes which Sontag has been comparing throughout her piece; "hermeneutics" being an ideal term to describe the type of over-intellectualization that takes place with modern interpreters, and "erotics" being ideal for describing to just what extreme Sontag thinks art should be experienced. When the critics finally "excavates" this statement and, "...digs ‘behind’ the text, to find a sub-text, which is the true one," he finds, low, and behold, the reinforcement of the very statement that Sontag has been inculcating throughout this piece. It does not take long for the critic to realize that he/she has been duped.
Susan Smith could have been a normal woman. If you passed her on the streets you wouldn’t know that she would turn out to be a killer. Susan had a secret though, a deadly secret. Susan Smith was a cold, calculating killer, capable of murder in cold blood. I believe Susan had many factors contributing to the state of mind she had before the murder of her two sons, like her traumatizing childhood and the many dysfunctional relationships she had.
ABSTRACT: British Avant-Garde art, poses a challenge to traditional aesthetic analysis. This paper will argue that such art is best understood in terms of Wittgenstein¡¦s concept of "seeing-as," and will point out that the artists often use this concept in describing their work. This is significant in that if we are to understand art in terms of cultural practice, then we must actually look at the practice. We will discuss initiatives such as the work of Damien Hirst, most famous for his animals in formaldehyde series, and that of Simon Patterson, who warps diagrams, e.g., replacing the names of stops on London Underground maps with those of philosophers. Cornelia Parker¡¦s idea that visual appeal is not the most important thing, but rather that the questions that are set up in an attempt to create an "almost invisible" art are what are central, will also be discussed. Also, if we concur with Danto¡¦s claims that "contemporary art no longer allows itself to be represented by master narratives," that Nothing is ruled out.", then it is indeed fruitful to understand art in terms of seeing-as. For application of this concept to art explains what occurs conceptually when the viewer shifts from identifying a work, as an art object, and then as not an art object, and explains why nothing is ruled out.
...simov. Ed. Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg. N.p.: Taplinger, 1977. 32-58. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean C. Stine. Vol. 26. Detroit: Gale, 1983. 41-45. Print.
It is interesting to see how the different Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism are altered by the text they are describing. For example, I have one volume on Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and another for Great Expectations, both of which demonstrate the extent to which the object of critique affects the critique itself, such that “deconstruction criticism” in an intellectual vacuum is something different than when a scholar tries to apply it to a particular text, altering both the text as well as the principles of deconstruction. The Awakening gender criticism takes on a different feel from Great Expectation gender criticism even though they are informed by the same principles, because gender in the early Victorian Dickens is different than in the turn of the century American Chopin. In this way the criticism co-constructs with the primary document something different than both the criticism and the original text. Such a syntheses have produced exciting and innovative ideas, refreshing and reviving works from the tombs of academia. Unfor...
Mora, Pat. “Sonrisas” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013.1050-1051. Print.
Deep-seated in these practices is added universal investigative and enquiring of acquainted conflicts between philosophy and the art of speaking and/or effective writing. Most often we see the figurative and rhetorical elements of a text as purely complementary and marginal to the basic reasoning of its debate, closer exploration often exposes that metaphor and rhetoric play an important role in the readers understanding of a piece of literary art. Usually the figural and metaphorical foundations strongly back or it can destabilize the reasoning of the texts. Deconstruction however does not indicate that all works are meaningless, but rather that they are spilling over with numerous and sometimes contradictory meanings. Derrida, having his roots in philosophy brings up the question, “what is the meaning of the meaning?”
This paper will illustrate a brief summary of two chapters and give a critical analysis of the readings. In addition I would conclude the paper by briefly discussing my opinion on the readings.
In many ways, feminist criticism has grown out of a creative synthesis of Marxist and Freudian approaches, liberated further by the insights of structuralist and post-structuralist readings of literature which have probed ever deeper into the hidden depths of texts. Feminist criticism has emerged as a school in its own right only during the last quarter of the 20th century; as recently as 1986 Mario Praz (in his introductory essay to three Gothic novels) was able to pose the question ‘why in the most polite and effeminate of centuries… should people have begun to feel the horrible fascination of dark forests and dismal caverns, and cemeteries and thunderstorms?’ and come up with the rather patronising answer: ‘just because of its feminine character.’
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print.
Eroticism insinuates, provokes and produces multiple sensations such as in the poetic experience because to deal with the eroticism of the good poets’ verses, it is necessary to enter a world full of images that stimulate our imagination. As a result; it makes us establish contact with eroticism presented in a poetic and invite to experience the delight and enjoyment produced by the reading.
Questioning Marxist aesthetics is essential to an understanding of the enlightenment movements. Art, in its nearly infinite forms, is the vehicle for knowledge of a subjective kind. Through visual, linguistic, audio, or dance any number of messages and ideas may be conveyed, and these ideas may then be interoperated. The aesthetic form is what constitutes good or great art. It puts forth a structure by which one can judge a piece beyond the mere technical skill that is presented in it, though that is an important issue. The aesthetic form puts forth the notion that art sublimates reality, creating another reality that brings into question this one. Creating this fictional reality is the responsibility of art. According to Marcuse “renunciation of the aesthetic form is abdication
Throughout his life... was a man self-haunted, unable to escape from his own drama, unable to find any window that would not give him back the image of himself. Even the mistress of his most passionate love-verses, who must (one supposes) have been a real person, remains for him a mere abstraction of sex: a thing given. He does not see her --does not apparently want to see her; for it is not of her that he writes, but of his relation to her; not of love, but of himself loving.
The contrasts between depth and surface, figure and landscape, promiscuity and modesty, beauty and vulgarity all present themselves in de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle. Although the figure is a seemingly normal woman out for an afternoon with her bike, she becomes so much more through the artist’s use of color, contrast, and composition. The exotic nature of woman presents itself in her direct stare and slick buxom breasts in spite of a nearly indiscernible figure. It is understood that, on the whole, de Kooning did not paint with a purpose in mind, but rather as an opportunity to create an experience, however, that does not go to say that there isn’t some meaning that can come of this work. Even Willem de Kooning once said that art is not everything that is in it, but what you can take out of it (Hess p.144).
The concept of ‘the Death of the Author’ was proposed by, French philosopher and literary theorist, Roland Barthes in his essay with the same title. He proposed a paradigm shift in the way that authorship should be viewed by the ‘Critic’. In opposition to the classical model of critique, Barthes proposed that the focus should be on the readers experience and interpretation; he proposed the idea of ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts. Rather than focusing on the author’s intent, his or her past building up to the text and the singularity of his or her intent, he suggested that once a text has been committed to written words it transcends into a ‘tissue of signs’ and ‘immense dictionary from which he [the writer] draws a writing that can know no halt’ [Barthes 1977, 147] and the only thing of importance to the critique of the work would be the experience of the reader. He proposed that ‘the work’ itself is merely a string of words that, without a reader, would be void of meaning. He also suggests that these two polar opposites were mutually exclusive of one another and that ‘the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author’ [Barthes 1977, 148]. The discussion that follows will be based on Stephen Heath’s French-to-English translation of Barthes work from the compilation of essays, ‘Image – Music – Text’, translated and compiled in 1977 (three years before Roland Barthes’ death).
The New Critics, just like Wimsatt and Beardsley put forward in their essay, also believed in the ‘organicity’ of the text. In the essay, they write, “A poem should not mean but be.” And, since the meaning of the poem or the text is the medium through which it can exist, and words, in turn, is the medium through which the meaning is expressed, the poem or the text b...