Status Updates From Literary Theory: An Antholo...

This is for class 🫥

This feels like I’m bludgeoning my head with a large rock

I want to drop kick this book for the number of times I reread a passage and went “wHaT doEs ThIs eVeN MeAN.”

Starting structuralism and linguistics!!!

We are fine with part 1 of 10! Let’s go!

Skipping the language as paradox chapter because it’s about poetry, and I don’t have time for that

“Formalist critiques” was an interesting chapter. Basically, from what I’m understanding, the formalist theory basically says look at technique and the way the prose is preteen for analysts, and detach it from the author and the audience. Basically, look at as its own thing without touching on the people interacting with it.

The critique is that author and audience matter.

I’m also mostly skipping “Rabelais and his work”

I am not reading “discourse of a novel” because everything in this section is so ~airy~ and intangible and I just don’t care enough. Maybe I’ll go back to it. We’ll see

Slightly disappointed in “morphology of folktales.” Basically boils down to folk/fairytalks have the same structures

The “Thematics” chapter was pretty basic—think about “why is this story” along with “what is the story,” your narrator matters for the themes, and plot and story are different and your story structure kinda changes things.

“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects
"unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged” (page 18)

Yes, it’s very pretentious, but it is one of the few things that made sense