For Monday: Culler, Literary Theory, Chapter 2

Just like last week, read Chapter 2 of Culler and respond to two of the questions below. Bring these questions to class on Monday so we can discuss them and ultimately, so I can give you credit for them. 

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? (he hints at Jane Austen in the chapter, who we'll be reading before long!).

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 Is that an outdated (or naive) notion, or is it one of the chief qualities of literature?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)?