Barthes (1977) takes the same track by asserting that the original meaning of the word ‘text’ is “a tissue, a woven fabric.” Such an etymology implies the “stereographic plurality” of the text. A set of relationships with other texts, the text encompasses within it unaccountable references and echoes which may even be mutually incompatible. Therefore, what the reader perceives in the text is “multiple, irreducible, coming from a disconnected, heterogeneous variety of substances and perspectives” (Barthes, 1977: 159). In Leitch's (1983) words, the text, “explodes beyond stable meaning and truth toward the radical and ceaseless play of infinite meanings spread across textual surfaces dissemination” (1983: 105).
Derrida’s deconstructive interpretation
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On each page of Glas, there are two columns of prose, set in different sizes of type (Derrida, 1986). The left column is concerned with Hegel, whereas the right column dwells upon Genet. Let into these columns at the side are boldfaced interruptions, some of which are short and some are long. These interruptions resemble footnotes insofar as they relate to the subject matter discussed on the page. However, they are different from regular footnotes at the same time, because they do not essentially refer to any specific word or …show more content…
In Glas, there are numerous quotations, some of which are with quotation marks while the others are not. From the very beginning therefore, the reader of Glas is confronted with the difficulty of distinguishing quotations from non-quotations. Since there are so many “stolen things” in Glas, Derrida (1986) thus announces that Glas is “in effect a book on theft,” because “it revolves round property, appropriation, and usurpation” (1986: 18). The unmediated presence is impossible; presence always mediates. Neither the signifier nor the text is an autonomous
Like every text worth reading, it is not crystalline. The phrasing is broad, and the limitations of its provisions are not clearly marked. Its majestic generalities and ennobling pronouncements are both luminous and obscure. This ambiguity calls forth interpretation, the interaction of reader and text.” Brennan’s argument embodies the notion of the living document, that people need to associate both the texts and the current time into achieving a relevant
Quotation 1: “...and yet there it was- a black book with silver words written against the ceiling...) (Zusak 29) So far, this quotation marks the first book Liesel has stolen. The significance of this quote is that it represents the beginning of “an illustrious career” (29) which she will continue to carry out throughout this novel. It signifies Liesel’s everlasting love for her brother because she wanted to remember him someway, and that someway ended up being the book she “stole” when he was buried.
As much as the physical text matters, Bone’s use of maps, pictures, and tables was able to aid in the overall understanding of the topic and allowed for the reader to have a concrete image of what was being spoken about. Warkentin’s text although very useful, and content rich did not happen to have as much of a visual aspect to aid the compartmentalisation of the topics discussed. Overall in looking at the texts as a
Ben Price Mrs. Mary Smith AP Literature 20 September 2017 How To Read Literature Like a Professor Essay In the story, How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster uses many examples to show how deferent types of ligatures can be connected by a common theme, purpose, or other books. In the book he uses examples such as Greek and Roman Mythology, Shakespeare, Fairy tales, and the Bible to show how common their themes are in literature. Foster uses symbols to point out the similarities and connect these books to others. “He’s everywhere, in every literary form you can think of” (page 34) says Foster about the man himself, Mr. William Shakespeare.
What he meant was that literature is emotions and experiences that tell what it means to be human, and as people evolve over time so does literature. In both there is a history to keep drawing from that impacts what happens from there on out. It now has more substance after he explained how he sees it. I also found it interesting how much interpretations can vary. Obviously a person’s beliefs, opinions, experiences, and just about everything else can influence how they understand what they read, but seeing it in action is different.
The power of words in “The Book Thief” and the endless strength they carry is a prime topic throughout the book. “The Book Thief”, a novel narrated by Death about Liesel, a young German girl who is given up for adoption to live with the Hubermann’s shortly before World War II. Liesel discovers the power that words, written or spoken, have to transform people, relationships, and lives. In the novel, Mark Zusak uses the relationship between characters to signify the power of words. Within “The Book Thief” the author suggests that words hold much power and have a major role in crafting the relationships between the characters.
The footnoted structure of the essay is very deliberate and very
He instills imagery that elicits feelings that may not have already resided in the reader. Quite disturbing by 1840’s standards, his vivid and descriptive language could be from 20th century modernism: “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies…they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones” By subjecting the audience to the forms of discomfort associated with dehumanization, they may feel like an outside observer of their own thoughts or body, and will realize what is really in control over their thoughts and actions. Readers become be more open to recognize that perhaps not all their decisions are freely willed, especially those related to civil responsibility. The author uses this as an opportunity to delve deeper into the possibilities of free will under nationalism. Thoreau makes the claim that virtuous actions are only made through free choice.
Major Works Data Sheet In this column, choose five quotations from the text, one focusing on each of the following literary elements: In this column, analyze the significance of your quotations. Allow the following questions to guide your responses: Why is this important? What does this reveal? Why does the author say it this way?
The key to deconstructing Thoreau's argument is to understand his hierarchy of government and the individual. Thoreau's ideal communion between the individual and the state is manifest by the individual as a "higher and independent power". This relationship is entertained in Civil Disobedience in the analysis of Thoreau's 1846 imprisonment, in which Thoreau demonstrated freedom as an internal and subjective
The Book Thief. MZ, 2005, p. 301. ). The author of The Book Thief , Markus Zusak demonstrates the idea that a person's survival or life may strongly depend on the power of words. In The Book Thief we learn that words have a lot of power, not only do we but throughout the story unfold Liesel also learns that also.
Rather, its is our own familiar routine manner of perceiving things that we assume a connection between the text and the image. Magritte has argued that in relation to a different set of images, neither the painted image nor the words are, in actuality, a pipe. He presents this contradiction in its simplest form, ‘a calligram that Magritte has secretly constructed, then carefully unraveled’ (ibid, pg20) highlighting the difference between the ‘separation of linguistic signs and plastic elements’. Magritte combines verbal signs and plastic elements together but without ‘referring them to prior isotopism’. This is Magritte’s attempt to expose us of our own immediate automaticity that is so deeply
Besides the author and the reader, there is the ‘I’ of the lyrical hero or of the fictitious storyteller and the ‘you’ or ‘thou’ of the alleged addressee of dramatic monologues, supplications and epistles. Empson said that: „The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry”(Surdulescu, Stefanescu, 30). The ambiguous intellectual attitude deconstructs both the heroic commitement to a cause in tragedy and the didactic confinement to a class in comedy; its unstable allegiance permits Keats’s exemplary poet (the „camelion poet”, more of an ideal projection than a description of Keats actual practice) to derive equal delight conceiving a lago or an Imogen. This perplexing situation is achieved through a histrionic strategy of „showing how”, rather than „telling about it” (Stefanescu, 173 ).
regarded as the fundamental attitude of the human sciences and as that which could alone preserve the fundamental difference between these sciences and the sciences of nature” (Ricoeur, 2018, p. 269). Ricœur, on the other hand, believes that Dilthey 's concept of interpretation has since "undergone profound transformations which distance it from the psychological notion of understanding" (Ricoeur, 2018, p. 275). This new position is one of the main things he looks at in his essay, "What is a text? Explanation and Understanding". It is important to understand the binary that is seen between explanation and interpretation.
For example, Ong uses additive structure, or hypotaxis, in his argument by comparing two translations of the bible: the Douay-Rheims Bible from 1610, which was produced by a culture that still showed heavy traces of oral culture traits, and a twentieth century translation. The major difference was the variation in conjunctions that the twentieth century Bible uses (37). Later Ong adds that “peoples in oral cultures or cultures with high oral residue, including the culture that produced the Bible, do not savor this sort of expression as so archaic or quaint [compared to how people would view it now]” (38). This argument shows merit by using a book that is still widely renowned in the Bible, but it is easily refutable because Ong neglects to show the Bible’s reoccurring relevance in the present.. A better example that shows how communication transcends in its simplicity would be journalistic writings.