The Glaring Fact

Pierre Macherey, “A Theory of Literary Production” (textbook)

The book proposes nothing less than a new way of reading, which, for Macherey, is not about the reproduction of a meaning that already exists and merely lies waiting to be discovered by the critic. Traditional criticism, he notes, has a “tendency to slide into the natural fallacy of empiricism, to treat the work (the object of the enterprise of criticism) as factually given, spontaneously isolated for inspection. The work thus exists only to be received, described, and assimilated through the procedures of criticism” (p.13). In A Theory of Literary Production, however, reading is a form of production; it produces meanings.

Alison Light, “Returning to Manderly”: romance fiction, female sexuality and class” (textbook)

They are seen as coercive and stereotyping narratives which invite the reader to identify with a passive heroine who only finds true happiness in submitting to a masterful male. Romance thus emerges as a form of oppressive ideology, which works to keep women in their socially and sexually subordinate place. I think we need critical discussions that are not afraid of the fact that literature is a source of pleasure, passion, and entertainment. A re-emphasis on the imaginative dimensions of literary discourse may then suggest ways in which romance, as much because of its contradictory effects as despite them, has something positive to offer its audience, as readers and as women readers.

Ken Warpole, “Reading by Numbers: contemporary publishing and popular fiction” (textbook)

The key ingredient in the success of popular literature is quantity, both in numbers of titles and numbers of sales. The market must continually be stimulated and satisfied. The market must continually be stimulated and satisfied. Economic literature is one of economies of scale and as such requires writers of enormous output…Modern popular fiction thus very easily attains sales figures far in excess of earlier record numbers, which suggests that the market is still expanding and that the book by no means exhausted its possbilities as a cultural form.

Leslie Fiedler, “Towards a definition of popular literature” (textbook)

Opens with a dscussion of the basis on which ‘popular’ texts are ‘denied the quasi-immortality bestowed by…critics on the “Classics”’. The distinctions, he argues, are spurious and he goes on, critics have been forced to play ridiculous sorting-out games: distinguishing “serious novelists” from “mere entertainers” and “best sellers” from “art novels”. What follows is Fiedlers historical explanation of the pressures underlying this impulse towards categorization.

Bob Dixon, “Catching them Young 2: political ideas in children’s fiction (textbook)

His analysis locates the text firmly within the framework of dominant ideology—especially in respct of attitudes to race and class, and also to gender. For Dixon, Blyton’s work is “anti-social, if not anti-human and is more likely to stunt and warp young people than help them grow”

Tom Moylan, “Demand the Impossible: science fiction and the utopian imagination” (textbook)

The ‘work’ of utopian discourse by means of its social images, its visiting and guiding characters, and its deep ideological assertion is its response to history by way of neutralizing the historical contradictions that generate the text. Utopia is literally out of this world, a negation of reality.

Roger Bromley, “Natural Boundaries: the Social Function of Popular Fiction (textbook)

Starting from the assumption that popular fiction is one mode of social communication whose re-presentations mar one way in which ideology becomes a material force in society, use has been made of Gramsci’s concept of ‘common sense’ (the ‘substrata of ideologies’?). The purpose of this is to discover theoretical bearings for the ways in which moral values and customs, and modes of perception, of the ruling bloc become the ‘mass-popular’ ways of seeing of those subordinated in the process of production.

Barbara Creed, “The Monstrous-Feminine: film, feminism and psycho- analysis” (textbook)

Creed (cited in Roberts 2000, p. 103) argues that “virtually all aspects of the mise-en-scene are designed to signify the female”, which, she continues, has led to the woman’s body signifying “the unknown, the terrifying, the monstrous”. Although Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is the hero(ine) throughout the series, by the final instalment she becomes the alien, or at least its mother, investing her offspring with the ultimate physiological aspect of femininity – the womb.Creed (2000, p. 133) also codes it as a “toothed vagina”. If it is to be assigned feminine attributes, then it is indeed, as Creed (2000, p. 122) has coined it, the “monstrous-feminine”. According to Creed (2000, p. 133), the alien signifies “the monstrousness of woman’s desire to have the phallus”. There can be no denying this creature certainly has the phallus, and it is monstrous in its ability to use it in the most invasive and horrific manner. But Ripley, as well, has access to the phallus, and it is with this, in the form of a spear-gun, that she is finally able to destroy the alien.

Paul O’Flinn, “Production and Reproduction: the case of Frankenstein” (textbook)

There is no such thing as Frankenstein, there are only Frankensteins , as the text is ceaselessly rewritten, reproduced, refilmed, and redisgned. The fact that many people call the monster Frankenstein and this confuse the pair betrays the extent of that restructuring…Frankenstein is a particularly good example of three of the major ways in which alteration and realignment of this sort happens: first, through the operations of criticism; second, as a function of the shift from one medium to another; and third, as a result of the unfolding of history itself. The operations of criticism on this text are at present more vigorous than usual.

Noel Carroll, “The Philosophy of Horror” (textbook)

Jackson’s statement of the repression hypothesis is something disconcerting. One way of reading her claim is that what she calls the culture’s unseen and unsaid—that which the culture’s categorization renders invisible, hidden, and so on—involves some denial, perhaps for ideological purposes, of reality. I shall take a look at…what might be called the ‘paradox of horror’. This paradox amounts to the question of how people can be attracted by what is repulsive. That is, the imagery of horror fiction seems to be necessarily repulsive and, yet, the genre has no lack of consumers. Moreover, it does not seem plausible to regard these consumers—given to the vast number of them—as abnormal or perverse in any way that does not beg the question. Nevertheless, they appear to seek that which, under certain descriptions, it would seem natural for them to avoid.

Robin Wood, “An Introduction to the Modern American Horror Film” (textbook)

Robin Wood (1997) describes horror as involving “a simple and obvious basic formula … normality is threatened by the Monster” where normality, the monster and the frequently ambivalent relationship between the two, are all variables.

Julia Kristeva, “Powers of Horror” (textbook)

Following Kristeva’s formulation of abjection in Powers of Horror - An Essay on Abjection, abjection can be seen as letting go of something we would still like to keep. In the case of blood, semen, hair and excrement/urine, we recognize these as once being a part of ourselves, thus these forms of the abject are taken out of our system while bits of them remain in our selves. When one encounters blood, excrement, etc. outside of the body, one is forced to confront what was once a part of oneself, but no longer is. Dismemberment compels the same kind of heightened reaction when one confronts the horror of detachment. A dismembered finger or limb is identified as belonging to one’s own body and is ‘missed’ while at the same time repulsive to the viewer for no longer being a part of the whole. Because humans frequently shed skin and blood etc. there is a higher tolerance to it and we are not as horrified as we would be in the case of dismemberment, yet most are not willing to engage with excrement or blood due to its detached nature. In a way, we exist in abjection: the process of creating our self (identity) is never-ending. The act of “selfing” (”identifying”) ourselves is the only common feature of all people.

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” (textbook)

In his essay, Barthes criticizes the reader’s tendency to consider aspects of the author’s identity—his political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes—to distill meaning from his work. In this critical schematic, the experiences and biases of the author serve as its definitive “explanation.” For Barthes, this is a tidy, convenient method of reading and is sloppy and flawed: “To give a text an Author” and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it “is to impose a limit on that text.” Readers must separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate it from interpretive tyranny (a notion similar to Erich Auerbach’s discussion of narrative tyranny in Biblical parables), for each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings. In a famous quotation, Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles, declaring that a “text is a tissue [or fabric] of quotations,” drawn from “innumerable centers of culture,” rather than from one, individual experience. The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the “passions” or “tastes” of the writer; “a text’s unity lies not in its origins,” or its creator, “but in its destination,” or its audience.

Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller” (reading package)

The sweet excess here has often been quoted approvingly: ‘our common pattern’ is taken as the goal of storytelling; the ‘decline’ is therefore seen negatively. Presumably, with the loss of narrative goes the loss of community. More generally, any hint of narrative seduction is hailed as ‘a return to storytelling’; the promise of innocence. Benjamin, however, says that the decline is due not to the excessive knowingness of modern times but that ‘the epic side of truth – wisdom – is dying out’. This wisdom takes the form of ‘counsel’. It is a fact that an ‘orientation toward practical matters is characteristic of many born storytellers’. The current lack of counsel is due, he says, to the increasing incommunicability of experience. The loss of such wisdom rather works against the strain of high fantasy in most of the novels we’re told appeal to older traditions.

Vladimir Propp, “The Morphology of the Folktale” (reading package)

Vladimir Propp extended the Russian Formalist approach to the study of narrative structure. In the Formalist approach, sentence structures were broken down into analyzable elements, or morphemes, and Propp used this method by analogy to analyze Russian fairy tales. By breaking down a large number of Russian folk tales into their smallest narrative units, or narratemes, Propp was able to arrive at a typology of narrative structures. By analyzing character and action types, Propp concluded that there were 31 generic narratemes in the Russian folk tale. While not all were present, he found that all the tales he had analyzed displayed the functions in unvarying sequence.

Raymond Williams, “The Long Revolution” (reading package)

The “long revolution” of the title is a revolution in culture, which Raymond Williams sees as having unfolded alongside the democratic revolution and the industrial revolution. It followed on from Culture and Society, which was his first widely-read work.With this book Williams led the way in recognizing the importance of the growth of the popular press, the growth of standard English, and the growth of the reading public in English-speaking culture and in Western culture as a whole. In addition, Williams’ discussion of how culture is to be defined and analyzed has been of considerable importance in the development of cultural studies as an independent discipline.

Roger B. Rollin, “Against Evaluation: the role of the critic of popular culture” (textbook)

In truth, it is impossible to have no emotive reaction to an aesthetic stimulus..for better or for worse, popular art represents the triumph of a democratic aesthetic. We will enjoy and value those literary works from which we can achieve an exciting balance of fantasy and management of fantasy.

Q.D. Levis, “Fiction and the Reading Public” (textbook)

The best that the novel can do, it may be suggested, is not to offer a refuge from actual life but to help the reader to deal less inadequately with it; the novel can deepen, extend, and refine experience by allowing the reader to live at the expense of an unusually intelligent and sensitive mind, by giving him access to a finer code than his own.

S. Hall and Paddy Whannel, “The Popular Arts” (textbook)

Power is concentrated in a few hands, and methods of maintaining it had been refined by the techniques of manipulation…cultural products are mass produced to a formula that allows no place for creativity…people are not seen as participants in the society but as consumers of what others produce…

John Cawelti, “The Concept of Formula in the Popular Arts” (textbook)

All cultural products contain a mixture of two kinds of elements: convention and invention.

T.W Adorno, “Culture Industry Reconsidered” (textbook)

The culture industry misuses its concern for the masses in order to duplicate, reinforce and strengthen their mentality, which it presumes is given and unchangeable.