For next week:Culler, Ch.2 & Short Paper #1 Assignment

NOTE: For M &W, read Chapter 2 of Culler's Literary Theory; we will discuss this chapter in class.  On Friday we will discuss your SP#1 below...

Short Paper #1: Literature as Theory/Theory as Literature

In Chapter 2 of Literary Theory, Culler writes that “Literature is the noise of culture as well as its information.  It is an entropic force as well as cultural capital.  It is a writing that calls for a reading and engages readers in problems of meaning” (40). 

For this short, introductory paper, I want you to choose a work of 'literature' you've already read—perhaps the favorite book you mentioned on the first day of class.  But it doesn't necessarily have to be a book: it could also be a show, a film, or comic book/graphic novel, or something else you feel qualifies as literature (read Ch.2 for examples).  Then I want you to write a short 2-3 page paper examining how this work functions as a work of theory: that is, as something that (1) questions 'common sense' ideas about culture and society; (2) is interdisciplinary (that is, it can relate to other fields and ideas outside of the book); (3) is analytical and speculative—it attempts to work out ideas of identity, etc. and (4) is complex and reflexive—making us 'think about thinking' without giving easy answers.

In doing this, also think about what makes literature literature according to Chapter 2.  As Culler suggests, literature is not only a product of culture but it shapes culture as well.  So any book written in 2011 is shaped by the ideas, biases, and aesthetics of 2011...but a truly significant work can also change how people in 2011 think about the world around them.  The work you choose (and almost anything can fit if you think about it) should help us “see” the world we live in and question, in some way, how we see it, and how the characters (and thus, ourselves) engage in 'common sense' every-day ideas. 

FOR EXAMPLE: I might choose Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which is about a traveler who has the bad luck to keep getting shipwrecked on strange lands—either a land of giants, or ant-sized people, or extremely wise horses who use humans for 'cattle.'  What initially seems like a crazy adventure yearn becomes quite theoretical when you consider when it was written: 1726.  Gulliver's Travels is a way of examining Swift's society by making it satirical; through this lens, we realize that the humor is based on real absurdities and conditions that were seen as normal and even ideal.  By “blowing up” his society on a gigantic scale (the Brobdignagians) or shrinking them to absurd size (the Liliputians) the book shifts our perspective on 'common sense' notions and critiques them through the seemingly naïve perspective of an outsider—the traveler/author himself. 

DUE IN-CLASS NEXT FRIDAY: we will discuss your papers and books in class as the “reading” for that day, so be sure to come!