If you can get your hands on the book, please read Chapter 2 of Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Once you have, answer TWO of the following questions for Tuesday's class. They are due anytime on Tuesday no later than 5pm, but we will discuss many of the answers in class, so if you're unsure how to respond, or would feel more comfortable hearing our discussion first, you can turn them in later. However, I encourage you to bring them to class so you can use them for our discussion.
If you still can't get the book, you can make these up later.
Answer TWO in a short response (but give a little detail--no one sentence responses, please; I want to see you thinking through them a little).
Q1: Many theorists, according to Culler, believe that all aesthetic objects (such as literature) must have a "purposiveness without purpose" (33). How do you understand this term, and how might it distinguish literature from, say, an instruction manual or a political manifesto?
Q2: Culler writes that "what it implicitly says about making sense relates to the way it itself goes about making sense" (34). How does this relate to intertextuality and the idea of all art being a copy of a copy of a copy?
Q3: Culler suggests that "the more the universality of literature is stressed, the more it may have a national function" (37). Based on this, how might literature have created a sense of Englishness or even Americanness? Has Jane Austen or Harry Potter created a literary sense of 'Englishness' which we expect to find when we go there? Or have American sitcoms done the same for us?
Q4: Do you think literature have the power to ennoble us and make us better human beings? Is that an outdated (or naive) notion, or is it one of the chief qualities of literature? Is literature inherently 'moral'? Or is that a quality of theory (making us see morality in an otherwise valueless text)?
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