Reading Popular Narrative a Source Book

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Reading Popular Narrative a Source Book Reading Popular Narrative A Source Book Edited by Bob Ashley Leicester University Press London and Washington CONTENTS vn Preface ix Acknowledgements Part 1: Introduction: the reading of popular texts: some initial problems 1 K., Worpole Reading by numbers: contemporary 5 publishing and popular fiction (1984) 2 L. Fiedler 'Towards a definition of popular 9 literature' (1975) 3 R. Rollin 'Against evaluation: the role of the 13 critic of popular culture' (1975) 4 P. O'Flinn 'Production and reproduction: the case 18 of Frankenstein' (1983) Part 2: Mass society theory: British 'literary' and 33 continental 'sociological' approaches 36 Theory and methodology 36 5 Q.D. Leavis Fiction and the reading public (1932) 39 6 R. Williams The long revolution (1961) 43 7 T.W. Adorno 'Culture industry reconsidered' (1967) 8 S. Hall and The popular arts (1964) 49 P. Whannel 52 9 Walter Benjamin 'The storyteller' (n.d.) 56 Applications 10 Q.D. Leavis 'The case of Miss Dorothy Sayers' 56 (1937) 59 11 T.W. Adorno 'On popular music' (1941) Contents Part 3: Formula, genre and the structuralist analysis of narrative 67 Theory and methodology 71 12 John G. Cawelti 'The concept of formula in the study of popular literature' (1969) 71 13 Vladimir Propp Morphology of the folk tale (1928) 75 14 Roland Barthes 'Introduction to the structural analysis of narratives'(1966) 79 15 Will Wright Sixguns and society: a structural study of the Western (1975) 86 16 Stephen Neale Genre (1980) 87 Applications 92 17 John G. Cawelti The six-gun mystique (n.d.) 92 18 Elizabeth 'Thrilling structures? science fiction Kwasniewski from the early Amazing and detective fiction' (1987) 96 19 Umberto Eco 'The narrative structure in Fleming' (1966) 101 Part 4: Ideology, readers, pleasure: post-structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis 111 Theory and methodology 120 20 Louis Althusser 'Ideology and ideological state apparatuses' (1971) 120 21 English Studies 'Recent developments in English Studies Group, CCCS, at the Centre' (1976) University of Birmingham 121 22 Roger Bromley 'Natural boundaries: the social function of popular fiction' (1978) 123 IV Contents 23 Pierre Macherey A theory of literary production (1978) 129 24 Roland Barthes 'The death of the author' (1978) 132 25 Roland Barthes The pleasure of the text (1973) 134 26 Stuart Hall 'A critical survey of the theoretical and practical, achievements of the past ten years' (1976) 137 27 Tony Bennett 'Marxism and popular fiction' (1981) 143 28 Sigmund Freud Classic psychoanalytic texts: 'Anxiety'(1926), 'Totem and taboo' (1912-13), 'The uncanny' (1919), 'Medusa's head' (1922), 'Fetishism' (1927) 152 29 J. Lacan 'The dream of Irma's injection' (1954-55) 162 30 Otto Rank The double: a psychoanalytic study (1914) 164 31 Julia Kristeva The powers of horror (1980) 166 Applications 167 32 Bob Dixon Catching them young 2: political ideas in children's fiction (1977) 167 33 Jerry Palmer 'Thrillers: the deviant behind the consensus' (1973) 170 34 Tom Moylan Demand the impossible: science fiction and the Utopian imagination (1986) 176 35 Joseph Grixti Terrors of uncertainty: the cultural contexts of horror fiction (1989) 180 36 Noel Carroll The philosophy of horror (1990) 182 'An introduction to the modern 37 Robin Wood American horror film' (1984) 189 Men, women and chain saws: gender 38 Carol Clover in the modern horror film (1992) 192 '"I shall be with you on your wedding 39 Mladen Dolar night": Lacan and the uncanny' (1991) 198 'Fetishism in the horror film' (1989) 202 40 Roger Dadoun The monstrous-feminine: film, 41 Barbara Creed feminism and psychoanalysis (1993) 204 42 Kaja Silverman The acoustic mirror (1988) 208 Contents 43 Cora Kaplan 'An unsuitable genre for a feminist?' (1986) 211 44 Angela 'Jackie: an ideology of adolescent McRobbie femininity' (1978) 215 45 Janet Batsleer 'Pulp in the pink'(1981) 217 46 Alison Light '"Returning to Manderley": romance fiction, female sexuality and class' (1984) 222 47 Elizabeth Frazer 'Teenage girls reading Jackie' (1987) 226 48 Catherine Belsey Critical practice (1980) 236 Bibliography 240 Index 245 VI.
Recommended publications
  • Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association
    September 2007 Volume 81, Issue 1 Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association apa THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION Eastern Division Program University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716 www.apaonline.org The American Philosophical Association Eastern Division One Hundred Fourth Annual Meeting Marriott Waterfront Hotel Baltimore, MD December 27 - 30, 2007 Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (ISSN 0065-972X) is published five times each year and is distributed to members of the APA as a benefit of membership and to libraries, departments, and institutions for $75 per year. It is published by The American Philosophical Association, 31 Amstel Ave., University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. Second-Class Postage Paid at Newark, DE and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Proceedings and Addresses, The American Philosophical Association, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. Editor: David E. Schrader Phone: (302) 831-1112 Publications Coordinator: Erin Shepherd Fax: (302) 831-8690 Associate Editor: Richard Bett Web: www.apaonline.org Meeting Coordinator: Linda Smallbrook Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association, the major publication of The American Philosophical Association, is published five times each academic year in the months of September, November, January, February, and May. Each annual volume contains the programs for the meetings of the three Divisions; the membership list; Presidential Addresses; news of the Association, its Divisions and Committees, and announcements of interest to philosophers. Other items of interest to the community of philosophers may be included by decision of the Editor or the APA Board of Officers.
    [Show full text]
  • 9:30 - 11:00 SZB, Room 240
    PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE Department of Philosophy, UT, Austin Phil 332, Spring 2013 Unique Number 42755 T/TH: 9:30 - 11:00 SZB, Room 240 INSTRUCTOR Lawrence Ray Buchanan E-mail: [email protected] Phone: (512) 471-7396 Office: Waggener Hall 4th Floor Room # 416B Office hours: Tuesdays 11:30 – 12:30 COURSE SUMMARY The course focuses on various philosophical issues concerning language. Topics to be discussed include, but are not limited to, the following: speaker-meaning, conversational implicature, sentence/expression-meaning, reference, modality, and propositional attitude ascriptions. COURSE REQUIREMENTS Assignments: • Two 6-7 page papers on topics selected from a list of prompts given by instructor. The first of these papers will be worth 20% of the student’s final grade for the course; the second will be worth 25% of the grade for the course. • One in-class midterm worth 25% of the student’s final grade. • A take-home final exam worth 25% of the grade. • Class participation and attendance (5%). Regarding the *participation* component of your grade: I expect regular attendance and participation in our course. Moreover, I expect you to have read the material for lecture carefully in advance. However, should my expectations on either front fail to be met, I reserve the right to assign (short) in-class written assignments regarding the required reading for the day that will then be counted towards the participation component of your grade. Late work: I do not accept work after the due date without a valid documented excuse. Please Note: One of the principal aims of this course is to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline.
    [Show full text]
  • Representation and Deconstruction of Turkish German Stereotypes Through Gegen Die Wand and Kebab Connections
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Supervised Undergraduate Student Research Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects and Creative Work 5-2011 Representation and Deconstruction of Turkish German Stereotypes through Gegen die Wand and Kebab Connections Charli Celine Kerns [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj Part of the Other German Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Kerns, Charli Celine, "Representation and Deconstruction of Turkish German Stereotypes through Gegen die Wand and Kebab Connections" (2011). Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/1428 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Supervised Undergraduate Student Research and Creative Work at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Representation and Deconstruction of Turkish German Stereotypes through Gegen die Wand and Kebab Connections Charli Kerns Honors Thesis submitted German Section of the Department Of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures College of Art and Sciences Introduction: When we as the audience watch a film, we step into a world overtly comprised of plot, climax, and resolution. However, in every film, cultural nuances covertly exist that repossess
    [Show full text]
  • Stephen Neale, Facing Facts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001, Xv + 254 Pp
    Stephen Neale, Facing Facts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001, xv + 254 pp. Reviewed by Jaroslav Peregrin, Department of Logic, Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic. E-mail: [email protected]. It is now often taken for granted that facts are entia non grata, for there exists a powerful argument (dubbed the slingshot), which is backed by such great names as Frege or Gödel or Davidson (and so could hardly be wrong), that discredits their existence. There indeed is such an argument, and it indeed is not wrong on the straightforward sense of wrong. However, in how far it knocks down any conception of facts is another story, a story which is anything but simple and perspicuous. In his book, Stephen Neale takes pains to excavate the origins of the argument and the presuppositions which it needs to be usable for the purpose of exorcising facts. In the introduction of the book, Neale expresses his conviction that his analysis of the slingshot will not only compromise its usability for the purpose of discrediting facts, but also save representationalist conceptions of language and mind from the attacks of the anti- representationalist philosophers like Davidson and Rorty. „Representational philosophy,“ he claims, „survives the Davidson-Rorty onslaught because non-truth-functional logics and ontologies of facts, states of affairs, situations and propositions survive not only the actual arguments deployed against them, but also the most precise and powerful slingshot arguments that can be constructed.“ However, what he does take his analyses to show is that „the most precise and powerful slingshot arguments demonstrate conclusively that the logical and ontological theories originally targeted must satisfy non-trivial conditions if they are to avoid logical or ontological collapse.“ (P.
    [Show full text]
  • Review of "Bertrand Russell De La Logique À La Politique", Special Issue of Herm
    Reviews 103 A FRENCH PERSPECTIVE ON RUSSELL ALASDAIR URQUHART Philosophy / University ofToronto Toronto, Ont., Canada M5S IAI Bertrand Russell de fa logique a fa politique. Hermes. NO.7 (1990). Paris: Edi­ tions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Pp. ii, 303. 8sE he new journal Hermes, which first appeared in 1988, bears the subtitle T "Cognition, Communication, Politique" and has set itself the admirable goal of introducing French readers to analytic philosophy, theories of ethics, and systems theory, in order to rescue internal French debate from the bog in which it is stuck. The publication of the present volume, containing a varied 104 Reviews Reviaus 105 collection of essays on both the technical and political writings of Russell, opens with an admirable essay by Alan Ryan; this is not a summary of his testifies to increasing French interest in Russell, an interest shown also in the recent book, but a clearly written critical discussion of the philosophical recent publication of a collection of Russell's writings on philosophical logic background of Russell's political writings, his ambivalence towards pacifism, (introduced and translated by J. M.. Roy), and of new translations (by Fran­ and his relationship with his public. Adam Stephenson expresses dissatisfac­ rrois Rivenc) of The Problems ofPhilosophy and Introduction to Mathematical tion that Russell never produced his grand work of Hegelian synthesis; this Philosophy. failure is blamed on Russell's atomism and individualism, which leave man a The first part of the collection is devoted to philosophy and logic. In the "metaphysical orphan". Dominique Colas provides a brief and sympathetic opening section of this part, on logic and ontology, Philippe de Rouilhan note on Russell's trip to the Soviet Union.
    [Show full text]
  • Putnam and Davidson on Coherence, Truth, and Justification
    The Science of Mind (精神科学) 54 (2016), pp. 51-70. Putnam and Davidson on Coherence, Truth, and Justification Lajos L. Brons Nihon University In the early 1980s both Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam defended theories that superficially appear to be coherence theories of truth, but that upon closer inspection turn out to be better understood as coherence theories of justification (or perhaps, not as coherence theories at all). In Reason, Truth and History (1981a), Putnam argued that “truth is an idealization of rational acceptability” (55), and that rational acceptability of statements is their “coherence and fit” (id.). And in the same year Davidson gave a talk that would be published two years later as “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge” (1983) in which he defended “what may as well be called a coherence theory of truth and knowledge” (137). There are more interesting similarities between Putnam’s and Davidson’s theories than their closeness in dates of birth, however, and in later work Putnam’s theory further converged with Davidson’s. Furthermore, the most conspicuous difference – the role and nature of “conceptual schemes” – turns out to be smaller and more subtle than it may seem at a first glance. This paper introduces Putnam’s and Davidson’s coherence theories, and discusses the most important differences and similarities. The following two sections summarize “middle” Putnam’s and Davidson’s coherence theories respectively. The two sections after that look into the apparent disagreement on the possibility of different conceptual schemes, and discuss further developments in Putnam’s view and the consequent convergence of Putnam’s and Davidson’s coherentisms.
    [Show full text]
  • Rafts, Boats, and Cruise Ships Verhaegh, Sander
    University of Groningen Rafts, Boats, and Cruise Ships Verhaegh, Sander IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2015 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Verhaegh, S. (2015). Rafts, Boats, and Cruise Ships: Naturalism and holism in Quine’s philosophy. University of Groningen. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). The publication may also be distributed here under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license. More information can be found on the University of Groningen website: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/self-archiving-pure/taverne- amendment. Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 02-10-2021 RAFTS, BOATS, AND CRUISE SHIPS Naturalism and Holism in Quine’s Philosophy SANDER VERHAEGH RAFTS,BOATS,ANDCRUISESHIPS © Sander Verhaegh, Groningen, 2015 Cover design: Anne Jansen.
    [Show full text]
  • Proceedings Vol. 86, No. 1
    September 2012 Volume 86, Issue 1 Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association apa The AmericAn PhilosoPhicAl AssociATion Eastern Division Program University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716 www.apaonline.org The American Philosophical Association Eastern Division One Hundred Ninth Annual Meeting Marriott Atlanta Marquis Atlanta, GA December 27 - 30, 2012 Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (ISSN 0065-972X) is published five times each year and is distributed to members of the APA as a benefit of membership and to libraries, departments, and institutions for $75 per year. It is published by The American Philosophical Association, 31 Amstel Ave., University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. Periodicals Postage Paid at Newark, DE and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Proceedings and Addresses, The American Philosophical Association, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. Editor: Amy E. Ferrer Phone: (302) 831-1112 Publications Coordinator: Erin Shepherd Fax: (302) 831-8690 Associate Editor: Richard Bett Web: www.apaonline.org Meeting Coordinator: Linda Smallbrook Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association, the major publication of The American Philosophical Association, is published five times each academic year in the months of September, November, January, February, and May. Each annual volume contains the programs for the meetings of the three Divisions; the membership list; Presidential Addresses; news of the Association, its Divisions and Committees, and announcements of interest to philosophers. Other items of interest to the community of philosophers may be included by decision of the editor or the APA Board of Officers.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissertation Deposit Draft
    SPEECH ACT THEORETIC SEMANTICS by DANIEL W. HARRIS A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 ii © 2014 DANIEL WALLACE HARRIS All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Gary Ostertag ______________ ____________________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Iakovos Vasiliou ______________ ____________________________________________________ Date Executive Officer Ernie Lepore Michael Devitt David Rosenthal Stephen Neale ____________________ Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract SPEECH ACT THEORETIC SEMANTICS by Daniel W. Harris Adviser: Professor Stephen Neale Abstract: I defend the view that linguistic meaning is a relation borne by an expression to a type of speech act, and that this relation holds in virtue of our overlapping communicative dispositions, and not in virtue of linguistic conventions. I argue that this theory gives the right account of the seman- tics–pragmatics interface and the best-available semantics for non-declarative clauses, and show that it allows for the construction of a rigorous compositional semantic theory with greater ex- planatory power than both truth-conditional and dynamic semantics. v PREFACE & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Te ideas of Paul Grice have come up ofen during the
    [Show full text]
  • Pragmatism and Binding
    From Z. Szabó (ed.) Semantics versus Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 165-285. (Pagination matched as closely as possible) 5 Pragmatism and Binding Stephen Neale* 1. Introduction Names, descriptions, and demonstratives raise well-known logical, ontological, and epistemological problems. Perhaps less well known, amongst philosophers at least, are the ways in which some of these problems not only recur with pronouns but also cross-cut further problems exposed by the study in generative linguistics of morpho-syntactic constraints on interpretation. These problems will be my primary concern here, but I want to address them within a general picture of interpretation that is required if wires are not to be crossed. That picture will be sketched in sections 3 and 4; subsequent sections will focus on pronouns and binding, drawing heavily on what has preceded. * It will be obvious to linguists that this chapter is written by a philosopher, albeit one very sympathetic to the generative enterprise as articulated over the years by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky’s ideas permeate both the syntactic and philosophical theses pushed here. As I was completing the chapter I was introduced to several works in linguistics I wish I had seen earlier, in particular Bresnan (2001), Elbourne (2001, 2002), Jacobson (1999, 2000), Kayne (2002), Keenan (2002), Reuland (2001a,b), Reuland and Sigurjónsdóttir (1997), Safir (forthcoming), and Szabolcsi (2003). I gesture towards some of these in various footnotes (Very likely I would have gone about certain matters a little differently if I had come across these works earlier; and I am not convinced some of the discussion could not be more usefully formulated within variable-free systems.) I thank the members of the NYU Linguistics Department for inviting me to present this work at their colloquium series— discussion (then and subsequently) with Mark Baltin, Paul Elbourne, Richard Kayne, Paul Postal, Anna Szabolcsi, and Michal Starke was most helpful.
    [Show full text]
  • NOTES on MINDREADING, METAREPRESENTATION, and MIMESIS Stephen Neale
    NOTES ON MINDREADING, METAREPRESENTATION, AND MIMESIS Stephen Neale We want to understand the relations these abilities bear to one another, in current cognition and evolutionarily: (1) our ability to comprehend expressions (word, phrases, sentences) (2) our ability to interpret utterances (3) our ability to interpret communicative behaviour (4) our ability to interpret intentional behaviour (5) our ability to figure things out (all-purpose reasoning; inference to the best explanation) 1 MINDREADING AND MODULARITY The idea: utterance interpretation—whether we are dealing with linguistic or non-linguistic utterances—is a form of mindreading, construed as the capacity to infer the mental states of others (e.g. beliefs, desires, intentions) from their behaviour. Just an instance? Or a special case involving proprietary capacities? It is widely assumed that answering that question requires understanding the extent to which utterance interpretation is modular. Fodor (1983). Our cognitive architecture contains dedicated input systems (e.g. the perceptual systems). On Fodor’s account they are fast, mandatory, domain-specific, informationally encapsulated. And they manifestly include a linguistic comprehension system. But does this yields representations of sentence meanings? Of what is said? Of what is meant? Cosmides and Tooby (1994), and Pinker (1997) have provided an alternative, evolutionary perspective: Modules are “designed” by natural selection to solve some particular adaptive problem faced by hunter-gatherers in the Pleistocene—finding
    [Show full text]
  • Three Views of Language & the Mind
    Three Views of Language & the Mind Jeffrey Speaks Submitted May 16, 2003 A dissertation presented to the faculty of Princeton University in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Recommended for acceptance by the Department of Philosophy November 2003 c by Jeff Speaks, 2003. All rights reserved. Abstract. The essay which follows is about the relationship between mind and language. Most recent thought about intentionality has it that (i) mental states of individuals are largely, or in the most fundamental cases, independent of social facts about public languages, and (ii) these social facts are derived from, or constituted by, the mental states of individuals. The purpose of this essay is to challenge this individualist orthodoxy (as well as the view of the relationship between mind and action which often accompanies it), and suggest in its place a communitarian picture of intentionality which gives public languages a role to play in the constitution of thought. iii Preface This essay is an attempt to give at least a partial answer to a traditional question about the relative priorities of mind and language: Is language prior to thought, or is thought prior to language? I defend the claim that the truth lies closer to the first of these alternatives than is usually supposed. But, as will become clear quickly in what follows, this simple-sounding traditional question breaks down into a number of different questions about the relationship between specific linguistic and mental phenomena. Because the issues involved with some of these may often seem far removed from our initial question, it will be useful to begin with a brief overview of the structure of what follows.
    [Show full text]