“disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, and the author enters into his own death.” Textual dynamics employs the ideas of Roland Barthes to convey messages to the audience that the words are not able to. The audiences view of texts have not been moulded by what the author would like to be seen but rather what context enables them to see. These properties are observed in all texts but can be seen largely in Sally Potter’s 1992 film “Orlando” which is able to deconstruct reality and common perceptions. Texts such as Orlando are able to blur distinctions that have been embedded in our minds from an early age to prove to us that nothing is certain. Although a text may be able to deconstruct parts of it’s self, it is we as the reader who need to make these links in order for them to be valid.
Barthes is able to distinguish the difference between the programmer and the speaker,“ it is language which speaks, not the author;”. This differentiation is key to understanding textual dynamics as it enables the audience to start deconstructing the text through their own contexts, rather...
...’ (21). These rhetoric questions force readers to stand on her side and to ponder in her direction. She compares the contents of the twentieth-century chapters in current books to ‘a modern-art museum’ (22), which ironically and humorously criticizes the fancy design of the current books. She also directly quotes the original texts to show the changes of current books such as a paragraph from Sellers’ book ‘As It Happened’.
While reading through any piece of literature, understanding why the author chose the words they use is very important. Through different techniques the author will choose words that have an underlying meaning to them. While it is imperative that you read and understand the words straight from the page, it is equally as important to analyze and understand exactly what they mean. Using external sources to understand the setting and culture in which the author lived, as well as contextual clues in the reading is necessary to get a full understanding of any piece of literature. Specifically, this paper will be looking at Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein through different interpretations. Themes and symbolism are two of the most important aspects that authors use to convey deeper meaning, and is vital to the reader’s full understanding of the literature.
Only through words and literature can people truly build their thoughts, emotions, and perspectives on things they can’t control. Mary Shelley manipulates diction and syntax in a way that allows readers to develop their own unique perspective of the characters in her books. The monster in her book, be it Frankenstein or the reanimated corpse, is built on her words. It’s very important to pay attention to the smaller details for the authors ideas truly become a story that others can spectate vividly. Sculpting others’ perspective relies on wording and well-formed sentences to capture the attention and emotions of readers all
As the era of literature slowly declines, the expert critiques and praise for literature are lost. Previously, novels were bursting at the seams with metaphors, symbolism, and themes. In current times, “novels” are simply short stories that have been elaborated on with basic plot elements that attempt to make the story more interesting. Instead of having expert critical analysis written about them, they will, most likely, never see that, as recent novels have nothing to analyze. Even books are beginning to collect dust, hidden away and forgotten, attributing to the rise of companies such as Spark Notes. An author deserves to have his work praised, no matter how meager and the masses should have the right to embrace it or to reject it. As much of this has already been considered, concerning Les Misérables, the purpose of this paper is to compare, contrast, and evaluate Victor Hugo’s use of themes and characterization in his novel, Les Misérables.
It is safe to say that the box next to the “boring, monotone, never-ending lecture” has been checked off more than once. Without the use of rhetorical strategies, the world would be left with nothing but boring, uniform literature. This would leave readers feeling the same way one does after a bad lecture. Rhetorical devices not only open one’s imagination but also allows a reader to dig deep into a piece and come out with a better understanding of the author’s intentions. Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Wife’s Story” is about a family that is going through a tough spot. However, though diction, imagery, pathos, and foreshadowing Guin reveals a deep truth about this family that the reader does not see coming.
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?”
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print.
Skillfully mixing criticism and biography, Klinkowitz demonstrates how Barthelmeís life influenced his work; how his time in the army as a service newspaper writer, and later as a publicity writer and editor prepared him to handle ìwords and images as blocks of material rather than as purveyors of conceptions ...î[3]But the use of autobiographical material makes a point beyond that relevant to critical biography.Klinkowitz argues that a consistent thematic in Barthelmeís writing was life as text--and therefore text as some sort of incarnation of life.As Klinkowitz writes of his meeting with Barthelme in the village, Barthelme ìwas firmly inside his text.
L’Engle, L'Engle. “Focus On The Story, Not Readers…” Writer Apr 2010: p. 24-25. MAS Ultra-School Edition. EBSCOhost. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
In his essay dated 1968, Roland Barthes sought to convince the individual reader that the author is obsolete; writers only have the capacity to draw upon existing themes (or structures) and reassemble them in a different order. This typically structuralist view completely defies a writer's ability to express himself through unique, individual stories leading many to term the approach as 'anti-humanistic'. Barthes clearly drew influence from Northrop Frye, author of 'Anatomy of Criticism', who outlined these repeated narratives as the comic, romantic, tragic and ironic. In turn these corresponded respectively to the four seasons, compiling what Terry Eagleton refers to as 'a cyclical theory of literary history'. It would seem through this that Frye achieved his ultimate aim, by creating a critical theory that was objective and systematic. To summarise, Frye and most structuralists soug...
Through vivid yet subtle symbols, the author weaves a complex web with which to showcase the narrator's oppressive upbringing. Two literary critics whose methods/theories allow us to better comprehend Viramontes. message are Jonathan Culler and Stephen Greenblatt. Culler points out that we read literature differently than we read anything else. According to the intertextual theory of how people read literature, readers make assumptions (based on details) that they would not make in real life.
Kirszner, Laurie G., and Stephen R. Mandell. Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010. Print.
Divakaruni, C. B. (1995). "The Disapperance." Compact literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (pp. 584-589). Boston, MA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
Roald Barthes’s 1967 critical essay “The Death of the Author” addresses the influence of the author in reading and in analyzing his or her writing, the power of the reader, and the option to ignore the work’s background and focus solely on the work. When critically looking at writing, the author is forced to take sole responsibility for the work. Whether the audience loves or hates, whether critics think it is genius or failure. With this idea the creator’s work has a direct correlation to the creator himself or herself, which according to Barthes seems to take away from the text. In other words, the information not stated within the work defines the work. The historical and biographical elements culminate into a limitation of interpreting the text. Barthes goes on to discuss the text itself appearing as derivative, saying that all texts from a certain era will be read the same due to the cultivation of a culture. The direct intent of the author may be muddled due to the translation from author to text to reader, with the text becoming more of a dictionary than anything else. This point ultimately leads to Barthes’s main point: the reader holds more responsibility to the text than does the author. The complexity of different experiences that come from the author into the text is flattened when it is read. The reader comes blindly and has no personal connection to the text. So much information is condensed and made inaccessible to the viewer. Barthes makes the point that a work may begin with the author, but its last stop is with the reader.
"Indeed, the fragmentation of story line and of time line in modern fiction and in some absurdist drama is a major formalistic device used not only to generate within the reader the sense of the immediacy and even the chaos of experience but also to present the philosophical notion of non-meaning and nihilism.