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Summary all colleges English: Culture and Literature
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English: Culture and LiteratureCLASS 7th OCTOBER: INTRODUCTION
OUTSIDERSHIP
) Relations of power
vague term with concrete effects
suffer from power
exert power
wonderful to reach certain goals
can be abused: blackmail, torture, …
Power is everywhere: parents-teachers, students-teachers, ….
Philosophical, ethical goal
2) Use and abuse of power in society: outsiders
Every culture creates outsiders
culture can only exist thanks to the construction of outsiders
culture where everyone belongs to = makes no sense
mechanism that distinguishes between the ins and the outs
3) Who decides who is the insider and outsider? Who makes this decision?? = power issue comes in
looking at outsiders form different kinds learn a lot about the way power works in a culture, the powers that govern certain culture
one way of analyzing this: which kind of culture creates which kind of outsiders
- All texts chosen with this idea in mind
- Fiction
4) What makes a person an outsider in a culture?
- disabilities
- gay, lesbian (sexuality)
- religion
- language
- color of skin
- gender
- age
- financial situation
- to be a member of a subculture (can sometimes be outsider ship ‘by choice’)
self-imposed outsidership
- level of education
- political orientation
huge difference: outsiders hermit
hermit: withdrawing into the woods, self-sufficient, self-reliant person, not suffering/dealing with you but entity on your own (not
interesting for power)
outsiders: defined by a negative relationship with society: not one of us because you are gay (eg) failed integration, send away that
defines you = more interesting: defined by a failed relation of integration to a larger group: makes power visible ( hermit)
OVERVIEW OF CLASS CONTENT AND NOVELS:
The Great Gatsby:
word has become an icon after the novel a Gatsby (not related to book) = someone who shows of his wealth cultural reference
outsider? Rich? Sounds like an insider.
the belief that history doesn’t matter you can make anything happen if you dream hard enough, you even can make the past
come back = romantic
Gatsby beliefs he can recreate, relive the past + beliefs he can restore the past by money (buy back your dreams)
“Romantic outsider”
The Catcher in the Rye
Adolescence feels very much like an outsider: too old to be kid and tpo young to be adult = stuck in between
= to grow up: painful process to grows into society
The catcher in the rye: young boy, high school kid, hates the world outside (phony) he feels like an outsider
To be an adolescent = outsider in own culture
subculture often for younger people: growing out of it
,English: Culture and Literature
= to be Jewish in America
Jane Eyre:
what makes JE outsiders
The Picture of Dorian Gray
include author himself as outsider
Irish + gay during England in 19th century
he was proud to be outsider + suffered from it
Things Fall Apart:
first African novel in English literature
Nigerian culture: outsidership
The Scarlet Letter:
young woman who has a child to a unknown father – situated in puritan new England (= nightmare) society wants to know father
outsider: having a child with an unknown father
title refers to punishment: you don’t want to tell the world who the farther is? Scarlet letter: embryoid it to your clothes for rest of your life
walk around with this letter: A
never explained why letter A
book = ongoing discussion of meaning of word A
= punishment + empowerment
about how forceful a culture can punish an individual
very often women
The yellow wallpaper
The awaking
married, white middle class women
nothing outsiderish about them, yet outsider
what does it mean to be an outsider in your own life?
= existential outsidership (not caused by religion, race, … but fundamental profound uneasiness, this is not me and yet this is not me)
Call someone depressed = way to labelling someone an outsider
Outsiders: people who do not fit, being different (not money, religion, …)
The God of Small Things
Arundthati Roy: beautiful young women
next book? No went back to India
One book fantastic
- post-colonial India
- small town years after the English left
- colonizer is kicked out = not colonizer kicked out of mind
- people that are outsiders by people that are gone
- in their head still thinking the way the English forced them to think
outsidership = consecuence of colonial power
is it our Indian belief or influenced by the way the colonizer made us think?
outsider by a power that is no longer there
shadow on the lives of people
Beloved
novel about slavery
mentally and physical power of white slave owning America
choose 4 novels to be read entirely
everything else: know what is said in class
written exams, essay questions
,English: Culture and Literature
allowed to bring books to exam (no notes)
Nobel prize this year: ABDULRAZAK GURNAH: Tanzania
BARTLEBY, OR THE SCRIVENER
-
Herman Melville
-
°1819
-
Different novels: based on his ocean trips
19th century: whaling industry (Americans + Dutch)
- Huge trips all over world, away from home for years
- Part Dutch (mother = Ganzevoort)
- Writes books about his adventures
- 1851: he stuns the literally people in America: publishes novel of 600 pages, all about a white whale Moby Dick:
Shakespeare, literally references
research into whaling industry
crazy captain who lost leg during whale hunt
take revenge on whale; goes after the white whale (Moby Dick)
- Moby dick: book about men word
devilish hunt for white whale
the Ismael: boy who tells everyone about this doomed voyage in search of white whale
about whales and not about whales
about American democracy, capitalism, male friendship, …
Nobody appreciated book
- Commercial success very short
- Family problems, … moves back to NY in 1860s, marriage down the drain, alcohol problem horror story
- Signed up in custom house NY to earn money: customs declare good for incoming ships
worked as a clerc, office job
nobody knew he was big author
life ended in complete anonymity, alcohol abuse, …
Bartleby: 1853 two years after Moby dick
- Published it anonymously in a journal
- Wipe out own image, people had to read text
- Thought name Melville would prevent people from reading novel
- Very significant and painful move
Story:
- Bartleby = enigma
Inscrutable guy
clerq: copies documents
company grows bigger, successful
lawyer who is narrator of story
main person? Not Bartleby
lawyer
- Narrator: boss, lawyer
- Lawyer: describes organization in office
- Third day: Lawyer to Bartleby: could you copy this document
‘I would prefer not to’ phrase that affects whole building
what does that mean exactly?
reconstruction of meaning ‘I prefer not to’
why do you refuse? ‘I would prefer not to’
= refusal? If you say I prefer not to?
semantic quack fire
linguistic evocation of a position of outsidership
doesn’t want to be outsider
position Bartleby? Neither here nor there?
Unacceptable to the lawyer
Lawyer starts out the story not describing Bartbley but describing himself
- We learn a lot about lawyer the way he sees him and other
‘safe man’
‘Unambitious lawyer’
‘prudent’
Middle class American: who makes his money, easy going, no problems, totally average
- Description of other clerks
- Dysfunctional family business
- Bartleby gets accepted + derails the whole situation by refusing the things he must do
Story interpreted by philosophers, teachers, …
, English: Culture and Literature
at one level (many levels of reading this story) biographical layer of meaning:
- Bartleby faith is in a way Melville faith as an author in America
- Bartleby not misunderstood but simply not understood (‘incredible lonely, the loneliest character in the world, solitary man’) =
not the same as being lonely we never hear Bartleby complain he turns down whatever it is this world has to offer him
- ‘I prefer to stay here’
- Lawyer decides to move out himself, can get rid of this guy and Bartleby stays behind in this empty building
- ‘I prefer not to be reasonable’ – it drives you nuts
lawyer hovers between authority (Bartley you got to do this for me) empathy (moments he really understands,
sympathizes with Bartleby)
lawyer tries to get grips on Barleby; why does he say the things he says
effort to identify bartBeby to sheer negation
‘Never spoke, to answer’
many negative: Bartlbey is the sun of negations: all the things he is not, defined by negation alone
Bartleby says to lawyer: I decided to do no more writing
also Melville saying after failure of Moby dick: I am no more writing, I have had it
Melville’s autobiography : marginalized by his society while he thought he wrote the book that would make him immortal
Bartleby = Melville
Other interpretations:
1. Bartleby represents Jesus Christ (also big outsiders: religion, being misunderstood)
2. Analysis of what a depression looks like, anatomy of a depression, a depressed person what they say to their husbands (I would
prefer not) not a flat refusal but an unease, I don’t even know what I rather be doing except I feel uneasy with the life I’m supposed
to live
3. We should read the story as a warning to everybody who considers intellectual rebellion
- Middle 19the century; America moving fast, very aware of the way America was going at the time
- Everybody who rebels without something better to offer
- Disagree with how things are but you are not a politician, you know you disagree without offering an alternative
- It’s a story of a hunger striker in a way; who refuses to eat and dies => e.g. civil rights movement: protest against political
unfairness
- See what happens to you when you disagree with society?? = warning
4. Bartleby is caricature of the narrator: they mirror each other
- Based on one little detail in the story: the good old office, now extinct in the city of NY
- Used to have different job he seemed to like better than job now
- Last page: appendix: rumor: Barleby before I hired himhad been a subordinate clerk in the dead letter office in Washington,
removed to a change in administration
first page: new constitution
- Two fired men
- Bartleby used to work in some government building where they collect letters that never arrive; letters are kept in office and
burnt
= interesting: Bartlbey’s life:= dead letter: what’s the destiny of this life? He prefers not to do what he does, what else could he
do? He doesn’t seem to get anywhere (dead letter)
5. Bartlbey as critique of capitalism: alienated labor = work you do for someone else (e.g. you work in bicycle factory, not supposed to
take bike home no you earn money) you have nothing to do, you don’t express yourself in the products you make, you sell your body
for someone that is not for you
very tempting to read into B decision (decision?) announcement that hence forward not to copy documents
critique: what an insane job is it: not mine
source of criticizing alienating labor
Melvilee ciritcizing American economy? Maybe yes
“Bartlbey conveys the radical insight that the standing social order is morally outrageous and must be rejected”
- Bartleby was already an outsider coming in, performance only gets worse and ends in a cul de sac
Must wise outsidership, cannot be linked by any of the causes
White, black, gay, poor, …. = demonstrative reason but Bartelby not
you cannot accommodate him, explain him away: he just stands there
Lawyer Bartleby
he goes back and forth; calls him brother, they mirror each other authority
he keeps haunting him even after lawyer left
inexplicable kind of outsidersship
+ critique of capitalism
The Great Gatsby
Things Fall Apart
The Catcher in the Rye
The Scarlet Letter
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