It's about time I actually read something by Derrida. This book seemed the logical starting place, and one of my professors has been telling me to tryIt's about time I actually read something by Derrida. This book seemed the logical starting place, and one of my professors has been telling me to trying bringing Derrida into my dissertation, so here goes! It's going slow, since I need to devote most of my time to more straightforward medieval studies, especially the primary sources which I came here to study in the first place, so I've only gotten through a bit of the (substantial) introduction-- which is incredibly helpful, and has also served as my most thorough intro to Nietzche so far as well (another person I've yet to read).
Update: Finally finished the foreword!!! Ponderous, as another goodreads friend has put it, but since I'm still a bit slow when it comes to untangling the many threads that go into contemporary philosophy and criticism, I appreciated the chance to be taken through Derrida's engagement with the rest of that world. ...more
I've had a couple of chapters from this and Mitchell's -Picture Theory- as some of the primary theoretical texts for my dissertation for a while now, I've had a couple of chapters from this and Mitchell's -Picture Theory- as some of the primary theoretical texts for my dissertation for a while now, but I've been totally lame and haven't read through any significant amount of his work since then-- until lately, now that I've picked up this book and Pic Theory and have been working my way through every bit. I may have to leave some parts of Pic Theory out, b/c I really need to get to writing rather than reading, and Mitchell doesn't do anything with medieval texts like I'm working with-- but Mitchell has definitely gotten me on track with some productive angles on the skaldic ekphrases.
Mitchell engages primarily in ideology-critique of interart discourse from Romanticism on through contemporary criticism and philosophy (with some brief glances back at the Greeks, since they started everything anyway). Through close readings of texts on the relationships of the arts he demonstrates that the authors in question are often less concerned with understanding the nature and relationship of the various arts than with policing the boundaries between the arts and, by extension, the other oppositions with which the "visual vs verbal" is conflated (male vs female, voiced vs silent, see-er vs seen, even England vs France!!). The way in which he exposes and deconstructs the oppositions set up in Lessing's Laocoon in this book, and in works like Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn in -Picture Theory-, are what initially got me interested in applying this approach to the Norse mythological poems I'm working on, since binary oppositions are a staple of myth-criticism. Of course, we have no theoretical discourse from the time on the relationships between the arts (though I'm keeping my eye open for medieval theory on that sort of thing which might have been available in medieval Iceland! Let me know if you have anything), so I'm having to be cautious so I don't go overboard (it can be easy to see a concern for Interart discourse which isn't really there)-- but I think it's worked out very well into an investigation of the cultural semantics of the ekphrastic performance. But that's just the first half of the dissertation.
In one of the first chapters Mitchell discusses Nelson Goodman's work on the difference between verbal signs and visual icons. Although Mitchell does put Goodman through some of the ideological critique that he will subject the others to, he seems very optimistic about Goodman's distinction between verbal signs as articulate and differentiated (what we expect since Saussere) and visual "signs" as undifferentiated and "dense"-- of course, this was written in 1985, and Mitchell has written on Goodman since then, so I'm interested to hear whether he still likes this division. It's the best I've run across, and leaves room for "leakage" across the ideological boundary between the two. I tend to lump verbal and visual together as all part of a Lacanian Symbolic Order, though I'm still enough of a baby in lacanian thought that I might have it totally wrong. In my field paper, where I develop the ekphrastic performance idea which I mentioned above, I tried describing the line itself (ie, the sort of line you draw with) as a manifestation of the Real, or of the Gap which is the "difference", the boundary between semiotic units. The Symbolic order is the intersubjective order (ie, the world of other individuals who have competing desires) where we have language (b/c without intersubjectivity there is no need for language)-- and I tend to think that part of the symbolic order, and part of having a (ie, belonging to a) language, is having the world divided up into significant, meaningful semiotic units. Though I think at some point I need to fall back and admit that embodied experience does some of the work as well... need to get back to my roots in existential/hermeneutic phenomenology. I've ignored that a bit lately as I've tried to get a grasp on the linguistic turn, but now that we seem to be going through a "pictorial turn" (as Mitchell suggests in Pic Theory), I should probably get back to Merleu-Ponty and Heidegger and Dreyfus. ...more
I only have one chapter from this which was photocopied for a class on Interart/Intermedial Theory, but I've enjoyed that one chapter quite a bit. I nI only have one chapter from this which was photocopied for a class on Interart/Intermedial Theory, but I've enjoyed that one chapter quite a bit. I need to buy the whole book and get through it. I don't remember if there was an explicit connection, but for some reason I associate this book with a guest lecture by Regina Bendix for the Dundes memorial series where Bendix got into the "sensorium" and the problematic nature of an intersubjective world, bridging the gap between individual experiences. Anyway, good book, sometimes a bit hard to follow, but I've no real complaints.
Update-- now have a copy of the book, and am very very slowly getting through the first chapter. Like it, but don't have much time to read these days. ...more
Have read portions of this collection of essays. I primarily recommend the article (whose name I can't remember) on orality, literacy, and "getting inHave read portions of this collection of essays. I primarily recommend the article (whose name I can't remember) on orality, literacy, and "getting in synch"-- not quite academic caliber, but a very good job of introducing the "lay" reader to some cool thoughts and observations relating to my own field. I usually have my reading and composition students read that essay at the beginning of the semester to get them thinking about the original milieu for the texts we read, during a time of "transitional literacy" (something Walter Ong originally denied but later admitted there was evidence for-- a lot of LeGuin's material in this essay comes from Ong). ...more
Another book about Lewis' work I've bought and yet to read. This one a critical study of the space trilogy, which sounds really interesting-- I took aAnother book about Lewis' work I've bought and yet to read. This one a critical study of the space trilogy, which sounds really interesting-- I took a course in sci-fi in college and would like to get back into critical perspectives on that genre. ...more
Bought this a few years back and have been too busy with school to read it. I do enjoy some of Lewis' poetry, but not as consistently as, say, RichardBought this a few years back and have been too busy with school to read it. I do enjoy some of Lewis' poetry, but not as consistently as, say, Richard Wilbur's....more
I love Ricoeur and enjoyed his take on metaphor in his slim volume "Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning", and I'm interested iI love Ricoeur and enjoyed his take on metaphor in his slim volume "Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning", and I'm interested in the Cognitive Linguistic take on metaphor, so I hope to read this as well. Actually, Gary Holland recently did an analysis of skaldic kennings using Cog Ling metaphor theory, and my dissertation is all about skaldic poetics, so it could be that this whole area is a chapter waiting to be concieved. I'd better read fast.
Nov 2008 update-- have read the first chapter and part of the next and am enjoying it so far! He spends a lot of time on Aristotle, as with his Time and Narrative volume 1. I think those two works, plus the short Interpretation Theory, share many of the same concerns, and they were all written roughly in the same period of his career (well, over the course of maybe 15 years, but all coming in the period after he took the linguistic turn himself and started bringing structuralism and post-structuralism into his hermeneutics). Rule of Metaphor also has a good review of his career up to that point in the appendix. ...more
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