Answer TWO of the following Q's in a short response, but give a little detail--no one sentence responses, please. I don't want "answers" as much as I want "thoughts," or rather, thinking out loud. Try to "talk out" your responses since these questions are designed as a kind of pre-writing for your later papers and assignments. Sometimes, to figure out what you think, you simply have to start writing. As long as you give an honest effort and aren't trying to BS (or do as little as possible), you'll get full credit for your responses.
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 has 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 Is that an outdated (or naive) notion, or is it one of the chief qualities of literature?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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