Assignment 6

1. “These, then, are some of the main ways in which readers and critics engage with literary texts and begin to put forward accounts of what they mean. So, where does it leave us? The situation is this. We will always need these ten elements of interpretation. Literary criticism can never grow out of them, and they can never be superseded. It's impossible to do English without them. It always was, and it always will be.
And yet, equally, they are never enough. What, then, is missing? Well, they mostly look inwards into the text itself, and we also need to look outwards. This necessary looking outwards from the text is why we have and why we need literary theory. The text principles do not contain much that would focus us on the cultural contexts and co-texts of a literary work. Theory can help us especially in considering four major aspects of the relationship between literature and the world beyond, these being firstly, literature and history, secondly, literature and language, thirdly, literature and gender, and finally, literature and psychoanalysis”.

Paraphrase:
In the article “Tackling Textuality – With Theory” in The Use of English (Vol. 52 Nr. 1 Autumn 2000) the author Peter Barry argues that the ten ways of the conventional exposition of a literary work, which he mentions and evaluates, are very important. When reviewers and ordinary readers engage in literature they will always have to bear these useful tools in mind. Barry writes that nothing can replace them as they are basically the most essential tool in the language of English. However, at the same time he claims that they are not, and will never be, sufficient, because they do not cover everything a reviewer wants to know. The conventional exposition focuses on the text itself, whereas literary theory applies the outside world, meaning how a text is influenced by time and culture. To apply literary theory is of great importance, and there are four ways in which this could be done, namely between literature and history, language, gender and psychoanalysis.

“So far we have made a general case for using literary theory, arguing its compatibility with many elements of our traditional literary training. I'd like to take another example now, and take just one of the four categories in more detail, namely the second, the one about the relationship between literature and language. The reason for taking this one is that it enables us to think about deconstructive reading, which on the one hand has been a powerful tool in literary theory, but on the other has clear affinities with the kind of intensive close reading which we have always practised. . . . The process of deconstructing a text often involves fixing on what looks like an incidental detail - such as a particular word, or a particular metaphor - and then bringing it in from the margin of the text to the centre. In this way the text is 'de-centred' by the reading process, and the overall effect is often perverse, obsessive, manic, or even apparently malevolent towards author and text, reader and literature. If we think of the text as a cat, then old-style close reading involves stroking the cat so that it purrs and curls in upon itself contentedly feeling good. Deconstructive reading is like stroking the cat the wrong way, against the grain of the textual fur, so that the cat bristles and hisses, and the whole situation becomes less predictable. The close-reader aims to show a unity of purpose within the text: the text knows what it wants to do, and having directed all its means towards this end, it is at peace with itself. By contrast, the deconstructor aims to show that the text is at war with itself, and that it is characterised by disunity rather than unity. So the deconstructor looks for such things as, firstly, ‘contradictions’, secondly, ‘linguistic quirks’ and ‘aporia’, thirdly, ‘shifts or breaks’ (in tone, viewpoint, tense, person, attitude, etc.), and finally, ‘absences or omissions’”.

Paraphrase:
Peter Barry argues in favor of literary theory and he explains the overall use of the term and emphasizes the fact that it is easily used along with the conventional course of studying literature. One of these courses, Barry claims, is more important to apply because it involves deconstructive reading, which is an influential appliance in literary theory, but at the same time is clearly related to some of the elements in the conventional interpretation. . . . Barry continues on explaining that the use of deconstructive reading in practice is basically searching for certain words or metaphors that do not seem to fit in, something that appears like a mistake by the author. When finding one of these, one should put full attention to it, and in that way make the text itself less important, less focused. Consequently, the author, text and literature could become contemplated as fractious, fanatical and frenzied, and even evidently vicious. Barry compares this with the stroking of a cat; to use the conventional course when studying literature is to stroke the cat with the fur, whereas deconstructive reading is like stroking the cat against the fur. Stroking the cat with the fur makes it purr by a pleasant feeling, while stroking it against the fur only makes the cat irritated. In turn this will perhaps have unexpected consequences. Barry moves on by further explaining the difference between the original “close-reader” and the “deconstructor”, by emphasizing the fact that the former wants to interpret the text as a whole, searching for the meaning of the context, whereas the latter is searching for the inner battle that goes on within the text, hoping to find words or phrases that do not agree or cooperate. Barry finally argues that these disagreements can be found as “firstly, contradictions, secondly, linguistic quirks and aporia, thirdly, shifts or breaks (in tone, viewpoint, tense, person, attitude, etc.), and finally, absences or omissions”.

2. These words/phrases/passages should perhaps be quoted directly:

The word ”metaphor” in general. There are no exact synonyms.

The terms: “literary theory”, “deconstructive reading”, “deconstructor”, “close reading”, “close-reader” and “the aspects of the relationship between . . . literature and history, literature and language, literature and gender, and literature and psychoanalysis”

”It's the point in the poem where the literal and the metaphorical begin to 'deconstruct' each other”

“Deconstructive reading is a kind of dowsing tool which is designed to pick up that counter-current that runs beneath the linguistic surface”
”so that a text ‘may betray itself’, to use the emotive, hyped-up language which is often found in deconstruction. Other terms which are often used to describe deconstruction are 'textual harassment' and 'oppositional reading'”

“Deconstruction, of course, believes that it is characteristic of all language to fight itself in this way, so that any poem, when subject to deconstructive enquiry, would reveal such symptoms to some degree”

3. In my opinion, Peter Barry’s article is rather interesting. The main argument is clearly presented and has many supporting arguments with interesting aspects on studying literature. I agree with his opinion that a reader who has literary theory in mind when studying a work of literature can come to a more explicit understanding of it than a regular “close-reader” can. Generally, I find this article quite well-structured, beginning with an explanation of what the author is going to present and discuss, followed by a very logical and persuasive argumentation with good examples. The poems he uses as examples are easy to recognize, but at the same time they are not easy to interpret, though his explanations of how to do that are highly understandable. Something I did not fancy was Barry’s small jokes he obstinately put into the text, as they were quite unnecessary and none of them were actually good. Otherwise I really enjoyed reading it.