Literariness

This paper attempts a comparative study of the late 19th century Russian scholar Viktor Shklovsky’s theory of 'ostranenie' ('остранение'), and the late 10th century Sanskrit scholar Rājānaka Kuntaka’s theory of 'vakrokti' ('वक्रोक्ति'), both of which are broadly concerned with literariness viz. what differentiates literature from everyday expressions. Much of Viktor Shklovsky’s discussions on 'ostranenie' appear in his 1925 text "Theory of Prose" ("О теории прозы"), which proposes defamiliarization as the marker of literariness. The Sanskrit scholar Rājānaka Kuntaka’s theory of 'vakrokti' ('वक्रोक्ति'), on the other hand, appears in his eleventh century text "Vakrokti-jīvita" ("वक्रोक्तिजीवितम्"). His theory insists on linguistic deviation as the marker of literariness and offers a systematic framework for identifying / achieving literariness in a text.
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The paper utilizes Variation approach of Comparative Literature developed recently by Chinese comparatists, which insists on exploring similarities as well as emphasizing differences. As opposed to the previous approaches in Comparative Literature (CL), this new approach is particularly useful for this study as it (a) facilitates cross-cultural comparative studies, (b) resists the homogenizing tendency of former dominant approaches in Comparative Literature, and (c) cautions against implicit hierarchies in comparative studies.
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The study discerns that such critical explorations of non-Western theoretical paradigms is crucial to (a) offset the hegemonic domination of any single tradition (e.g. Western critical theories), (b) foreground the relatively unexplored non-Western critical theories, and (c) explore their potential and adaptability for the contemporary readers.


Keywords: Comparative poetics, Viktor Shklovsky, Rājānaka Kuntaka, 'Ostranenie,' 'Vakrokti,' Literariness.

Meaning has a significant role in content formation and literariness of a poem, just as Form does. However, meaning and innovation get greater importance and broader field in modern poetry. Present paper is to analyze the role of meaning in putting distinction between the content of poetic text and other non-literary works. In this regard, a comparative analysis has been conducted on descriptive meaning (poetic themes) and meaning production (by the poet). Considering the general assumption that lack of meaning production by the poet may lead to simplicity in form and lessens the boundary between poetry and prose, the results obtained are as follows: the old descriptive texts and the contemporary narratives have no complexity and are clear in form. The lingual distinction in such works is less than standard language; therefore the poet pays more attention to form innovation. But, the modern realistic texts and the introspective texts benefit more potential of meaning production and the poet innovation finds broader possibilities in meaning, in addition to form.

The Russian formalism is an approach was introduced at the beginning of 20th century and those who offered such a theory wanted to find a scientific method in literary criticism. They believed that the literary work itself should be criticized instead of its author and the literary nature of the work should be considered as the main subject.    Adopting such a method, they propelled the study of literary works to the issues of Form and Technique.  Besides formalistic reading of Mahmood Dowlatabadi’s “Journey”, in present paper, we are going to make Formalism and its related special concepts clear and to show how critics use these formalistic concepts to analyze this story.

The area of study is the use of devotional narrative in the genre of the short story, with focus on Mathilda Roos (1852–1908), partly in comparison with Dante, John Bunyan and Charles Dickens. As an illustrative example Roos’ story ”Tom Vinklers nyårsnatt” (Tom Vinkler’s New Years Eve) is analysed with the aim of clarifying how didactic aims and literary strategies interact, so as to deepen the reception of the text.

In the past, several studies have found empirical support for the psychological notion of foregrounding. In this article we will present the results of a series of reading experiments investigating descriptive and evaluative reader reactions to poems, both in their original form (containing rather heavy foregrounding, both deviation and parallelism) and versions from which all foregrounding has been removed. In this sense the research presents a replication of earlier experiments as well as a comparison with some more recent ones that failed to find empirical evidence for the notion of foregrounding. It will also cast light on Bortolussi and Dixon's (2003) 'rereading paradigm'.

The results will be combined with a reconsideration of the concept of literariness, which will be confronted with the variety within a reader population, as well as with the diversity within a text corpus. The latter will be confronted with Van Peer's (1991) effort to develop a descriptive definition of literature, incorporating the heterogeneous nature of the corpus of texts that are regarded as literary. Revisiting these aspects of texts and their reception may illuminate persistent problems in the theory of literariness.

Literary scholars have long searched for an unambiguous concept of working-class literature. This article tries a new approach: not based on a new classificatory concept but on a wider scope for new types of texts. Thus, conceiving of working-class literature as a phenomenon of family resemblance in Wittgenstein’s sense seems useful. Further, the concept of working-class literature might be supplemented by a concept of working-class literariness. Working-class literariness appears in texts expressing class-perspectives with the potential to desautomatize the process of perception and to provoke shifts of aspect. Especially instructive would be narratives where competing perspectives collide.
Devotional narratives of the late 1800s and the early 1900s depicting working-class motifs exemplify such collisions. A philantropic Christian outlook normally dominates, but is often blended with utopian socialism and confronted with strong counter-arguments delivered by militant workers. The alternative approach of this article is tested on such narratives to clarify what working-class literariness might look like.

The prestigious Taiwan Indigenous Voice Bimonthly launched two literary prizes Taiwan Indigenous Voice Prize and China Motor Corporation Indigenous Literature Prize in 1995 and 2000. Through an analysis on both prizes, this article explores the ethnic struggle of indigenous literature over aesthetic value. First, in challenging the forms of literary and aesthetic hierarchy that exist between majority and minority writers, although the prizes aimed to emphasize special aspects of ‘history of tribe’ in order to break down the category of major literature, the judges did little to question their own aesthetic assumption that was strongly influenced by the majority. Second, in the effort to grant indigenous literature, paradoxically, the imagination of the indigenous as the ‘Other’ was embodied for the effort given by a large portion of Han ethnic judges. Through the investigation of the indigenous literary prizes, it is clear to see how the prizes presented as an ongoing negotiation between the major and the minor literature, and at the same time the prizes also produced a dialectic in which the ‘indigeneity’ developed between disappearance and emerging.

I believe literary criticisms that engage with language, form, and theme are too simplified to resolve power relation, aesthetic standards, canon debate, particular literary and cultural phenomena, etc. In addition, neither de-colonizing nor post-colonial discourse could theorize the issues of Taiwan indigenous literature, because actually both of them fix minor literature. Hence, I emphasize that the process of “negotiation” plays a very important role in the space of minor literature when it encounters the judgment of major literature by Tuobasi Tamapima's The Last Hunter.

On était dans une avide disposition vis-à-vis de cette publication résultant d'un séminaire conjoint de deux centres de recherche rémois, en raison, d'une part, de son titre, et, d'autre part, de l'interdisciplinarité annoncée. C'est souvent en effet à partir des tâtonnements et de l'élaboration de ce que j'appelle un « paraconcept », comme l'hospitalité, le singulier, le rhizome ou la constellation, qui nous force à penser dans les entre-deux de la littéralité et de la métaphoricité, du concret et de l'abstrait, du dénoté et du connoté, qu'une heuristique peut s'exercer le mieux et que, parfois, une émergence advient. Dans son avant-propos, Alain Trouvé souligne qu'on peut « envisager [la résonance] au sens propre de l'effet acoustique », mais qu'elle « s'entend […] aussi, par métaphore, comme l'interprétation au sens large du terme ou au sens plus précis de l'écoute analytique. » (7) Mais, dès cette première et sans doute trop rapide étape de déblayage sémantique, il est apparent que la frontière entre littéralité et métaphoricité de la résonance est pour le moins poreuse outre qu'elle est difficile à tracer, dès lors que l'on emploie le mot « effet », lui-même remarquablement ambigu, entre matérialité et subjectivité : l'effet d'un médicament sur un corps vivant, ou de l'exposition au soleil sur un corps chimique instable, n'a guère qu'une relation analogique avec l'effet d'une déclaration d'amour sur son destinataire, avec l'effet-fiction ou le mauvais effet d'une tenue vestimentaire socialement inappropriée. Peut-être aurait-on dû se demander, justement, si toute « résonance » lectorale ne tient pas dans un tel jeu et dans l'impossibilité pour le lecteur de l'arbitrer définitivement et sans reste, comme il en va aussi de la polysémie active constitutive de la

The text consists of brief responses to the two discussion notes: “A Cognitive-Stylistic Response to Contradictions” by Lizzie Stewart-Shaw and “Using contradictions: When multiple wrongs make right” by Marla Perkins and some comments on the author’s original publication “Contradictions in Fiction...”. The text concerns contradictions in art (especially postmodern fiction) and touches upon such issues as the communicative potential of artistic contradictions, their literary and aesthetic aspects, or the possibility of using them to manipulate the reader. Attached at the end is a brief synopsis of Contradictions in Art: The Case of Postmodern Fiction—a book recently published by the author, which addresses the issue of artistic contradictions in greater detail.

AXIOLOGICAL STATUS OF TRAVELOGUE:
BETWEEN SUB-LITERARY AND PARA-SCIENTIFIC PHENOMENON

Summary: The paper discusses traditional assumptions of approaching the travelogue genre in the literary studies, but also the standpoints of other humanities (ethnology, geography, sociology). Special attention has been paid to conventional concepts of „literariness“, i.e. of aesthetic function and value of the travel writings.

Key words: travelogue, travel textuality, aesthetic value, aesthetic function

The Rhetorics of Paul de Man

This paper aims to define the extension of Rhetoric as conceived by Paul de Man, particularly in his well-known masterpiece Allegories of Reading, but also in in his last essays (posthumously collected in Aesthetic Ideology).
According to de Man, the figurative structure of language must be identified not only with literature, but with language as such. Figure dis-figure language by means of metaphor, and – at a second degree – allegory undoes figural language.
Perhaps the most important theme introduced by de Man’s late reflection about aesthetics, and especially about the link between rhetoric and ideology, concerns the critique of ideology. The unmasking of ideology should be the result of a rhetorical analysis conducted with the tool of «the linguistics of literariness». At the end of my paper, I try to interpret what is the meaning of this apparently structuralist expression, and why it should be related to a reading of Marx’s German Ideology.

Ambiguity is now widely seen by Western scholars as a defining
feature of literature. Keats’s notion of negative capability, the creative potential of “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (Milnes 71), anticipates the cognitive concept of ambiguity tolerance that has been recently found to correlate with creativity. It can be argued that the fantastic is thus an extreme example of literariness. But what exactly does ambiguity mean in the context of the fantastic? The article explores it in the context of two contemporary novels based on fairy tales: The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham and The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

The aim of the paper is to shed light on the changing function of the metaphor of life in multiple redefinitions of literature. The analysis focuses on particular examples of its use, regarded as being representative of wider cultural formations. It identifies two classical ways in which the concept of literature was inscribed into the opposition of life and death. The paper is next devoted to the modern adaptations of these models, especially in the phenomenon of German Lebensphilosophie. Finally, it offers a prospect of their new revision in the project of literature as “restitution.”

L’objectif de l’article est la mise en valeur des différents aspects de l’emploi de la métaphore de la vie dans de nombreuses redéfinitions de la littérature. L'analyse se concentre sur des archétypes particuliers de son utilisation, étant considérés comme représentatifs de formations culturelles des plus larges. Il identifie deux procédés classiques dans lesquels le concept de la littérature se positionne sur le thème de l'opposition de vie et de la mort. Le texte est consacré ensuite aux adaptations modernes de ces modèles, et en particulier dans le courant de pensée allemand, « Lebensphilosophie ». Pour conclure, il offre une perspective de leur nouvelle révision dans le projet de littérature en tant que « restitution ».

Roman Jakobson invented the notion of literariness to name the subject of the future literary science Russian formalists hoped to develop. Then in the late 1920-ties the formalists scattered, Jakobson moved to Prague, to United States and to structuralism, and the notion of literariness migrated with him.
In the 1950-ties Jakobson proposed a very powerful project of linguistic poetics, and since that project referred to the notion of literariness, the notion became massively popular and in effect synonymous to his version of structuralism.
Linguistic poetics was both controversial and inspiring project, and the notion was taken over both by critics who tried to disparage it and by structuralists or semioticians who found it congenial. So the notion played a crucial part in shaping the agendas of French, German or North American structuralism and semiotics as well as the agendas of its major rivals (poststructuralism, reader-response criticism, new pragmatism, analytic aesthetics, critical theory, cultural studies).
The attempts at defining literariness however turned out to be futile, and in the early 1970-ties the notion was abandoned as the structuralist controversy itself. It was not erased however since being abandoned in the case of literariness meant being relegated to the realm of the notions of the past and the others (i.e. the notions of the other theories from the past that no one would currently advocate).
So the notion of literariness retained its meaning and even its functions despite being ‘sous rature’, dashed out by the development of literary theory; e.g. it could still support arguments which denial justified the arguments of the current theory, arguments that were not yet past (as any promise not to break a promise once again implies the denial of the past failures to keep it).
The current book tells the story of the notion of literariness. The first 9 chapters trace the transpositions and transformations of the notion in the contexts of Russian Formalism, the Prague School, New Criticism, glossematics, French, German and American structuralism, semiotics, phenomenology and analytic philosophy of literature. The text offers a detailed discussion of the significant theories of literariness as well as a critical assessment of their misunderstandings and misconceptions.
Chapters 10-15 describe the various strategies for abandoning the notion of literariness invented by poststructuralism, analytic philosophy, new pragmatism, reader response criticism, cultural studies and critical theory. The relevant theories claiming to offer a better insight in the nature of literature are carefully explained and analyzed so as to explain the constitutive function the notion of literariness still retains despite its being abandoned.
Drawing on Wittgenstein, Foucault and Lacan, the last chapter attempts a non-metaphysical reading of the problem of literariness aimed at showing that the stake of Jakobson’s invention was the problem of referentiality of literature, i.e. the problem of how the name literature was used to refer to objects, or how one was able to refer to literature as an object. The main thesis is that literariness designates the conditions of possibility of successful reference to literature, and that the theories of literariness fulfill those conditions inadequately, so the reference of the name literature in their context is always unstable or questionable. Yet the further development of literary theory demonstrated that theorists were generally unable to meet the conditions of possibility of referring to literature in a more adequate manner. And if we take seriously that predicament, then theories of literariness will provide a rather unexpected insight – that the reference of literature is always unstable and questionable, produced by practical methods in particular practical, cultural and disciplinary circumstances.
Having demonstrated that, the study sets off to describe the practical methods used by the theorists of literariness, and tries to explain those methods by means of a particular discursive technique called formalization.
Since any formalization hinges on promises, deferrals, bricolage, it can be only provisionally successful, since the future development of theory tends to overturn the promises, to render the deferrals unjustifiable, and to expose the inadequacy of academic bricolage.
One major contribution of the study, in addition to being the first detailed history of the theories of literariness, is that it resists the temptation to deconstruct their provisional nature or their vulnerability to future developments, and instead makes an attempt at explaining the practical methods they managed to get by, i.e. the practical methods that enabled the theorists to repair and maintain the reference of literature despite the vulnerability of their theories and notwithstanding the tragic end of their attempts to answer the question what is literature.