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Poetics at the Interface Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 2360 SAMULI BJÖRNINEN Poetics at the Interface Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 2360 SAMULI BJÖRNINEN Poetics at the Interface Patterns of thought and protocols of reading in studies of Thomas Pynchon’s V. AUT 2360 AUT SAMULI BJÖRNINEN Poetics at the Interface Patterns of thought and protocols of reading in studies of Thomas Pynchon’s V. ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty Council of the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the University of Tampere, for public discussion in the auditorium Pinni B 1097, Kanslerinrinne 1, Tampere, on 17 March 2018, at 12 o’clock UNIVERSITY OF TAMPERE SAMULI BJÖRNINEN Poetics at the Interface Patterns of thought and protocols of reading in studies of Thomas Pynchon’s V. Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 2360 Tampere University Press Tampere 2018 ACADEMIC DISSERTATION University of Tampere Faculty of Communication Sciences Finland The originality of this thesis has been checked using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service in accordance with the quality management system of the University of Tampere. Copyright ©2018 Tampere University Press and the author Cover design by Mikko Reinikka Acta Universitatis Tamperensis 2360 Acta Electronica Universitatis Tamperensis 1866 ISBN 978-952-03-0684-7 (print) ISBN 978-952-03-0685-4 (pdf) ISSN-L 1455-1616 ISSN 1456-954X ISSN 1455-1616 http://tampub.uta.fi Suomen Yliopistopaino Oy – Juvenes Print 441 729 Tampere 2018 Painotuote Isälle ja äidille ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on the relations between literary poetics, theories of reading, and the interpretive criticism of an author's work. My approach to this field is through the abundant scholarly writings on the American author Thomas Pynchon, and, in particular, academic readings of his novels. I am trying to study the protocols of reading involved in literary study by mapping out the space between the individual and often idiosyncratic scholarly interpretations and the theories of literary poetics. To this end, poetics is reframed in this work as a theory of reading. In this I am taking my cue from Jonathan Culler, literary phenomenology, and Reader-Response critics. Thus understood, poetics studies those processes of perception, understanding and cognition that underlie textual interpretation and analysis. Within this orientation, the questions of poetics closely resemble those that are today posed in cognitive literary studies, the empirical studies of reading, and postclassical narratology. The present study rereads the theory of poetics and shows that many devices and textual strategies it describes can be usefully understood as procedures of reading. This is done by looking at the analytical choices made in readings of Pynchon and describing them in terms of reader-oriented poetics. This method zones in on the empirical observation made by many Pynchon scholars. While we generally consider the author’s thematic scope as singularly eclectic as his repertoire of literary means, time and time again we seem to reach the same conclusions: the same themes emerge as crucial, the same devices are regarded as significant, and the same passages from the novels are cited because of their capability to encapsulate something of the elusive whole. But what makes certain themes more or less central? How do some of Pynchon’s structural experiments become so decisive in determining what the novels mean or what they are about? Why are certain key passages so crucial to interpreting the novels? In answering these questions, the study toes the line between conventions of reading and the cognitive processing of texts. It is discovered that the procedures of reading identified as structural metaphor, miniature analogy, and thematization straddle the heuristic divide. These procedures are, on one hand, institutional and cultural, in how they appeal to convention and tradition. Yet, on the other hand, they contain a component that can be only described as cognitive or perceptual. The latter part of the study focuses more firmly on Pynchon’s debut novel V. (1963) and its scholarly readings. The theoretical interest in the protocols and procedures of reading is employed as a method for reading the novel and studying how it has been read. As literary scholar Robert Scholes has written, our protocols of reading will yield to methodization only up to a point. This study approaches that point through terrain on which the reading procedures of literary scholarship are entangled with the more general processes of cognition, perception, and interpretation. Keywords: Poetics, Thomas Pynchon, theory of reading, metahermeneutics, reading procedures, narrative theory TIIVISTELMÄ Tutkielma käsittelee poetiikan, lukemisen teorioiden ja yhden kirjailijan tuotantoa tulkitsevan tutkimuksen suhdetta. Lähestyn aihetta yhdysvaltalaisen Thomas Pynchonin ja tämän romaaneita käsittelevän runsaslukuisen tutkimuskirjallisuuden kautta. Tutkin kirjallisuustieteellistä lukemisen protokollaa kartoittamalla kekseliäiden ja omalaatuistenkin yksittäisten tulkintojen ja yleisluontoisen poetiikan teorian välistä aluetta. Työssä määrittelen poetiikan Jonathan Cullerin, kirjallisuusfenomenologien ja reader-response -teoreetikkojen oppien pohjalta lukemisen teoriaksi. Näin ymmärrettynä poetiikka tutkii kirjallisen tekstin tulkinnan ja analyysin taustalla vaikuttavia havainnon, ymmärtämisen ja kognition prosesseja. Tämän näkökulmanvaihdoksen ansiosta huomaamme, että systemaattisen poetiikan kysymykset muistuttavat kognitiivisen kirjallisuudentutkimuksen, lukuprosessin empiirisen tutkimuksen ja jälkiklassisen narratologian tutkimusongelmia. Tutkimukseni kiinnittyy vuoroin poetiikan teorioihin lukemisen proseduureista, vuoroin Pynchon-luentoihin, joiden analyyttisia valintoja voidaan kuvata lukemiseen tarkentavan poetiikan avulla. Tutkijat ovat huomanneet, että vaikka Pynchonin temaattista ja kirjallista repertuaaria pidetään poikkeuksellisen laajana, tutkimuksessa päädytään samanlaisiin tuloksiin hämmästyttävän usein. Samat teemat ja keinot nähdään merkittävinä kokonaisuuden kannalta, ja tutkimuksessa jopa siteerataan samoja kohtia teoksista. Mutta miksi jotkin teemat ovat keskeisempiä kuin toiset? Miksi jotkin Pynchonin rakenteellisista ratkaisuista tuntuvat kertovan meille, mistä teoksissa on lopulta kyse? Miksi jotkin katkelmat voivat vaikuttaa ohittamattomilta teoksen kokonaistulkinnassa? Vastauksia hakiessaan tutkielma etsii jalansijaa lukemisen konventioiden ja tekstin kognitiivisen prosessoinnin väliltä. Työn teoriaosassa eritellään lukuproseduureja ja tulkinallisia malleja ja huomataan, että rakenteelliset metaforat, miniatyyrianalogiat ja tematisoivat lukutavat ylittävät tämän kuilun. Kaikkien näiden lukutapojen teoretisoinnissa vedotaan kirjallisiin konventioihin tai traditioon, mutta samalla niiden nähdään kytkeytyvän erottamattomasti kognition ja havainnon prosesseihin. Työn analyysiosassa tarkastellaan Pynchonin esikoisromaani V.:n (1963) tulkintoja tutkimuskirjallisuudessa. Lukemisprotokollan ja tulkinnallisten proseduurien tarkastelu kääntyy menetelmäksi, jonka avulla voimme lukea ja tulkita sekä V.:tä itseään että tutkijoiden siitä tekemiä tulkintoja. Työn eräänlaisena mottona toimii kirjallisuudentutkija Robert Scholesin ajatus, että lukemisen protokollat voidaan ymmärtää menetelmällisesti vain tiettyyn pisteeseen asti. Työ lähestyy tätä pistettä suunasta, jossa kirjallisuudentutkimuksen lukuproseduurit alkavat sekoittua yleisempiin tulkinnan ja havainnon prosesseihin. Avainsanat: Poetiikka, Thomas Pynchon, lukemisen teoria, metahermeneutiikka, lukutavat, kertomuksen teoria ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The word “community” makes quite a few appearances in my study but they are all found either at the beginning or the end of the book. It somewhat troubles me to think that this could be construed as a metaphor for the process of writing a dissertation, one that plays into the hands of the common conception that the time between – when the actual scholarship happens – is mostly spent working in solitude. It is not so. Throughout the five years spent working on this thesis, I have had the fortune of being surrounded with people, entire communities of them, lending their ear, showing their support, and putting their invaluable experience and skill at my disposal. I have been lucky to have three thesis supervisors, all astute descriptivists and absolute masters of narrative poetics. Without them this work would have neither began nor concluded. I want to thank the now retired professor Pekka Tammi who encouraged me to take on postgraduate research and guided me through my initial struggles with my topic. It was also he who asked Samuli Hägg, a fellow Pynchon- poetician, onboard. More than anyone else, Samuli helped me to figure out how the method of this study should approach the issue of studying Pynchon studies. His experience on the field provided an indispensable sounding board for my ideas about the shared ways of reading and analyzing Pynchon. Maria Mäkelä took up the duties of supervision during the final stages of this work, but she has really been there the entire time. In addition to being a source of inspiration and a faithful and untiring commentator for my work in all its stages, in the final years and months she also turned out to be a virtuoso of prioritization and workflow organization. I have enjoyed the benefits of working in the warmly collegial and supportive research environment provided by the doctoral programme in literary studies. My sincerest thanks to all who have commented my work in the research seminar
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