Literature, Structure, Representation

On my previous writing, the first one, one of the sources of my writing is from Horace and his Art of Poetry which on some of its sections states or imply that usability of a poetry, or maybe even literature in common, is very important and Horace seemingly gives his attention mainly for the readers or the consumers of literature in that matter.

On the second writing, I examined how women have been being represented so bad, to me, that what people see are not the real women, but rather a construction made by male writers through their works of literature. Using Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic I found that problem faced by women.  

Now, in this new piece of writing, I will try to further examine both topic on my previous writings by adding the theme “Structure.”

The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, ²¹ or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. (Horace in Cultural Theory since Plato 2004, 83)

I used the same above quotation on my previous writing to explain that what Horace wanted people to understand is that a work of literature, or in this idea of his is poem, must be informative and delightful.

The structure is a simulacrum; it imitates a natural object in order to transform it. The purpose of this transformation is intelligibility, but in an interested, humanly useful manner. (Rowe  1995 , 35)

When Horace’s idea compared to Rowe’s interpretation on Barthes’ definition of structure, to me it makes sense, especially the “humanly useful manner” part. But, I realize this is not enough and decided to add more line from Rowe’s Structure.

Thus a “structure” is built upon a “foundation”, which is an essential part of the structure and compatible with all other elements, even in the case of a “foundation” that is perfectly natural… (Rowe  1995 ,24)

Horace’s “structure” of a literature must also be built upon a foundation, but what this foundation of his ideas be? Judging by his statement that literature must be delightful and informative, his foundation possibly is the consumer of literature, the readers or the people.

Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality. (Horace in Cultural Theory since Plato 2004, 83)

Back again to the previous examination, Horace’s statement also fit with Rowe’s, quoting Barthes, “it imitates natural object in order to transform it”, especially Horace’s statement I quoted above that seemingly insist that literature must be as close as possible to reality. All of this fitting comparison between Horace’s and Rowe’s, “humanly useful manner” with delightful and informative literature; and imitating a natural object with staying closely to reality, must be completed with the purpose Rowe’s suggest, after quoting Barthes, “intelligibility” which I will continue to examine it later on.

Move on to the next topic, and that is Representation, that I have already written about, in relation with structure.

At this point in our construction of a feminist poetics, then, we really must dissect in order to murder. And we must particularly do this in order to understand literature by women because, as we shall show, the images of “angel” and “monster” have been so ubiquitous throughout literature by men that they have also been pervade women’s writing to such an extent that few women have definitely “killed” either figure. (Gilbert and Gubar 1980, 812)

 “Structure” as a term increasingly referred to an activity of model building, which “dissected” what it imitates and reconstituted it in human terms. (Rowe 1995 , 35)

What interests me and also the similarity between the two quotations from two different writers and from two different ideas is the word “dissect.” In Gilbert and Gubar’s, women need to dissect literature so that they can escape the stereotype of being angelic and monstrous and become themselves.  The literature they must dissect is also not a random one, but literature works made by male writers who picture women as angelic or as monstrous. And, when I compare it to Rowe’s, interesting thing happened; both passages make sense. As Rowe’s quotation stated, this “dissecting” activity is needed to be done for women in Gilbert and Gubar’s context so that they can re-build their falsely-made image with the new, more correct ones.

I’d like to go back to the examination of the purpose of the transformation in Rowe’s “structure” that is “Intelligibility.” If I’m not mistakenly putting it, “Intelligibility” is more or less the same as “understanding”. Putting it that way, the transformation that happens in a structure (or structuring process?) has the purpose of giving or altering the understanding, the “intelligibility.” The example of this giving/altering the intelligibility can be seen in Gilbert and Gubar’s frequent use of example of male writers’ creation of angelic description and monstrous female creatures in their writing, The Madwoman in the Attic. While the intelligibility in Horace’s could be proved by referring to his statement that a poem, a work of literature, must be delightful and informative. “Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality,” “remain close to reality” doesn’t mean it must be exactly the same as in reality. For if it must be the same, there can be a possibility that the reality taken as an object of fiction doesn’t have the quality of delighting and informing, thus it must be altered, it must be transformed.

Works cited:

Horace. Art of Poetry. 2004. in Adams, Hazard and Searle, Leroy. Critical Theory since Plato (3rd edition). United States: Wadsworth Publishing.

Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. 1979. “The Madwoman in the Attic” in Literary Theory: An Anthology ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael (2004, 2nd edition; pg. 812-825). United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.

Rowe, John Carlos. 1995. “Structure” in Critical Terms for Literary Study ed. Lentricchia Frank and McLaughlin Thomas (1995, 2^nd edition; pg 23-37). United States: The University of Chicago Press.

Literature for control

Ari Andika I.P.
180410110051

From my point of view, the majority of the public, especially in our country, see the work of literature as a mere entertainment, a means to kill time, or as an obligation set by an educational institution for a requirement of a study. But, especially after finish reading Plato’s Republic, what literature is to me is that literature is and has something more than that, something powerful and very influential to the public. Such role of influencing the public may be taken by media nowadays and may be that is also why the majority of public do not realize other definition of literature, especially as an influential thing. Influence through literature can be seen in the case of representation of somebody or of something. So far, for me, representation is a way to distort a real image and to show this distorted image to a group, if not all, of public to influence them in terms of the image or the meaning of the real image. Thus, the one that makes the representation control the public’s view about it. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar wrote a writing about this in Madwoman in the Attic, and it’s about how women being represented by male writers. This writing of mine try to discuss the writing while also trying to give different viewpoint on reading this writing.
The writing made by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, explained the representation of women as angels and monsters in society and in literature or what women are or should be on both worlds according to male writers. Women as angels, or having angelic characteristic, from Gilbert and Gubar’s work, means that women must be pleasing to her husband, doing all her act in selfless manner, submissive, and that “her virtue makes her man “great.” As Monsters, or as having monstrous quality, meaning, women are “trespassing” the boundaries that are set for them, and that boundaries, more or less, are the value men want women to have and to obey them. At least, these are all I got after finish reading their writing.
By making these images of women in their works, men try to control women to not surpass them and to stay still under their control. My first confusion raised here, what is the benefit men get by controlling women?
In all these incarnations – from Errour to Dullness, from Goneril and Regan to Chloe and Caelia – the female monster is a striking illustration of Simon de Beauvoir’s thesis that woman has been made to represent all of man’s ambivalent feelings about his own inability to control his own physical existence, his own birth and death.
The above quotation from The Madwoman in the Attic kind of help me out to determine my first confusion. I am quite satisfied when I knew that one of possible reason why men need control or power over women is that of their existence. Before women fight back, for all the oppression they’ve experienced for so long, undetermined for me, men’s position over women is undisturbed, thus kind of giving them assurance or justification that men must be placed over women or more superior than women by nature. But, when their belief is shaken, that women can be or are the same as men, they started to get anxious, they started to get confused and start to question the real meaning of their existence, and their role in life. Another possibility, men suddenly got surprised that what they have believed all this time is wrong and then tried to deny it, one of which by representing women in forms of monster, trying to justify that women is what they believed to be.
The creation of women as angels and monsters can be said as a product of patriarchal culture. My belief of which came from the fact that Gubar and Gilbert used a lot of examples taken from the work of male writers, not only to show that male writers dominated female writers, but also to show that it is male writers who have been for so long representing women in the way that is, perhaps, not to their liking or untrue.
 “Similarly, Milton, despite his undeniable misogyny (which we shall examine later), speaks of having been granted a vision of “my late espoused saint,” who
Came vested in all white, pure as her mind.
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight”
The above quotation taken from Madwoman in the Attic is part of an explanation of Milton’s vision about his late wife and also about angelic woman. In their explanation, Gubar and Gilbert stated “In death, in other words, Milton’s human wife has taken on both the celestial brightness of Mary and (since she has been “washed from spot of childbed taint”) the virginal purity of Beatrice”. In my interpretation the line and the excerpt of Milton’s work show that, mean that by being dead, a woman can attain the seemingly holier form that is angelic, as if death was a way to escape from the less holy state of being human.
“She . . . leads a life of almost pure contemplation. . . .in considerable isolation on a country state. . .a life without external events – a life whose story cannot be told as there is no story. Her existence is not useless. On the contrary . . .she shines like a beacon in a dark world, like a motionless lighthouse by which others, the travelers whose lives do have a story, can set their course. When those involved in feeling and action turn to her in their need, they are never dismissed without advice and consolation. She is an ideal, a model of selflessness and of purity of heart.”
Another example I took from Madwoman in the Attic, which is of Goethe’s, seemingly showing that by becoming such a person described in the excerpt a woman will become a good, an angelic being, but by having “a life of almost pure contemplation”, living “in considerable isolation on a country state. . .a life without external events..” which seems to me a rather passive life, is what women want? By becoming the passive, while men are living more active life.
Besides angels, women also being portrayed as monsters by male writers such as the creation of Errour in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Sidney’s Cecropia, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, Goneril and Regan, alomh with other example mentioned by Gubar and Gilbert in the writing.
So far, perhaps, what I implied is that representation is a political act, because it concerns with gaining power by trying to lose the power of the “opposition” that is if the political means matters concerned with power. Now, what about the act of exposing representation, is that also a political act? I would say yes. That is because, to me, whether representation or the act of exposing it, is not that quite different, for exposing the representation means to help the oppressed, the made-powerless group to gain their power, and I guess this line from Gilbert and Gubar’s writing is in accordance with my argument: “… women were not only writing, they were conceiving fictional worlds in which patriarchal images and conventions were severely, radically revised.”
I believe there are still mistakes and holes I have to fix so that this writing of mine could become better. If I have the chance to update this writing, I would like to examine: the power of the pen (or the importance of literature on representing or influencing), this matter when related to subjectivity, and perhaps other things to come to be added to this writing.

Work cited:
Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. 1979. “The Madwoman in the Attic” in Literary Theory: An Anthology ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael (2004, 2nd edition; pg. 812-825). United Kingdom: Blackwell Publishing.

Interpreter of Literature

It seems inevitable that everything in this world has to have beneficial value inside. Whether the thing takes form of action or static object, benefits seem have to be present in those things, perhaps because we have necessity to be fulfilled. Literature also cannot escape from this obvious, but, at the same time it can be, doubtful ‘law.’ If people do not need to fulfill the need to express his doubt, and other things, then they do not have to write, then there will be no need for literature to exist although, to determine whether literature has to be existing or not cannot solely depend on such assessment. To get the benefits of literature one can depend on himself or one can voluntarily, or if he is in need to, ‘distribute’ the benefit, the usefulness of a literary work. However, the latter should have enough knowledge and understanding of literature since he has the responsibility of distributing the beneficial value in literature to a lot more individuals.

There are two “interpreters” of literature with their own believes and ideas about literature and how it should be beneficial to the public, for the purpose of this essay Horace and Northrop Frye and their writings are used to analyze, more or less, what is literature to them and what benefit or usefulness a literature has to have, also, according to them.

Horace, to me, directly stated everything he believes a literature should be in his Art of Poetry.

“The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life.”

The above quotation clearly saying that, a good poet, and perhaps a good poem, must be informative or delightful “to life.” I believe, whether it’s correct or not, he means “to life” means to the people. It can be said that only humans that can understand literature since we are the being that has brighter and broader mind, compared to other being on earth, and of course because literature is written in human language as a result of the advantage we got of brighter mind among other being.

“In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.”

Even to make sure that the informative and delightful value be presented flawlessly, Horace gave details what a poet, a writer has to do and, perhaps, how a literary work should be. He said that the work, “what you say”, has to be “brief” so that the readers grasp it “quickly and retain it faithfully.” To me, what he meant about this is that a literary work, in its organization, must be efficient in terms of delivering the usefulness the work has or designed to have. Now, why a literature has to be efficient in its organization, especially of words. I can’t think or imagine anything other than that literature is a product that must be useful to the public, and, in terms of Horace’s ideas, it has to give “pleasure and applicability to life.”

“He who combines the useful and the pleasing wins out by both instructing and delighting the reader. That is the sort of book that will make money for the publisher, cross the seas, and extend the fame of the author.”

 On the next quotation Horace’s ideas, again, seemingly suggesting the literature not only be beneficial to the public but also to the creator. A “good poet” delights the public with his works’ usefulness and benefit, then the “good poet” will get something from his works which one of it, according to Horace, “money.” Now, this matter confuses me. It is whether the work that gives benefit to the creator or it is just a take-and-give relation, which means the benefit the creator gets is coming from the public that is delighted by his work. But, nonetheless, if the case was the former, then the lines I quoted can be some kind of persuasion for the people in general to write the “good poetry”, or to writers to prefer the “good poetry”, for no other reason than prosperity and fame.

“At a pleasant banquet, poor music, cheap perfume, and poppy seeds mixed with Sardinian honey, are offensive; the banquet could have done very well without them. And in a similar way, a poem, born and created in order to give the soul delight, if once it falls short of the highest excellence, sinks to the lowest level”

So far, the idea of what poetry is according to Homer, by the interpretation of mine, a product that is made to be useful “to life.” The next idea I got about what literature is in Art of Poetry, is that literature or in this case poem, something that could commonly be considered as beautiful, artistic, and delightful, belongs to certain social class, the upper social class. I see “a pleasant banquet” as an analogy to “a poem”, especially the good one. A banquet is not an ordinary feast, it’s formal and usually luxurious, attended by the upper class individuals. A poem, dare me to say, dictated as and should be delightful so far in the work, when connected by the phrase “in a similar way” the two then became related, and thus “a poem” is like “a pleasant banquet” to an upper class individuals.

My interpretation of Art of Poetry, about what is literature and its benefit in Horace ended by my suggestion of the place of literature in terms of social class. Now, I’d like to move on to the second “interpreter” I have previously mentioned in the beginning, Northrop Frye.

Unlike Horace, the ideas about what is literature and what is its benefit that I got after reading Frye came from a rather indirect way. It is true that it is indirect because Frye discussed the matter of criticism and not about literature, but there are some lines that show Frye’s idea of what literature is and how it should be beneficial.

“On this theory critics are intellectuals who have a taste for art but lack both power to produce it and the money to patronize it, and thus form a class of cultural middlemen, distributing culture to society at a profit to themselves while exploiting the artist and increasing the strain on his public … there is no way of preventing the critic from being, for better or worse, the pioneer of education and the shaper of cultural tradition.”

To me, the direct statement of Horace which I acknowledge as his view on how a literature should be is rather hedonic when it’s compared to Frye’s. On the above quotation, Frye didn’t state a single thing about what a literature is or should be, but about, more or less, what a critic is. I interpret, a critic is a “distributor of culture” and also, there Frye directly said, “the pioneer of education and the shaper of cultural tradition.” From those lines, in my opinion, Frye sees literature as something that can deliver things such as culture and education to the people. Literature can also, according to my interpretation, shape cultural tradition, however this interpretation of mine about literature, seemingly, can only be valid when a critic “distribute” it to the public and not from the literature alone.

“Rhetorical value-judgements usually turn on questions of decorum, and the central conception of decorum is the difference between high, middle, and low styles. These styles are suggested by the class structure of society, and criticism, if it is not to reject half the tacts of literary experience, obviously has to look at art from the standpoint of an ideally classless society.”

If Horace place a literary, a poem, on certain social class, Frye, while examining rhetorical value-judgements, gave hints to me that everything in literature must not be related to certain class. The reason why it must not be done so, literature may be following the conception of decorum which then may make literature easier to be judge in rhetorical value-judgment wise. This is important because, to me, what is a literature if it only gives values to be admired and not ideas about culture, for example.

“The original experience is like the direct vision of color, or the direct sensation of heat or cold, that physics "explains" in what, from the point of view of the experience itself, is a quite irrelevant way. However disciplined by taste and skill, the experience of literature is, like literature itself, unable to speak.”

I agree, if I could, to the idea of direct experience in reading literature. What I interpret about direct experience on Frye’s Polemical Introduction, is the reading of literature without being influenced by anything, even to knowledge, the experience we have, and our subjective judgment. By doing so, there will be only experience and benefits we get purely from reading literature. Though a good idea, like Frye stated, it is hard to get such experience.

To end the examination of Frye about literature, I’d like to argue about the problem in examining literature, i.e. to criticize, and the usefulness of a literature according to the struggle for criticism for becoming on par with exact science. Throughout the Polemical Introduction, especially from the beginning until the middle part of it, Frye constantly compared criticism with exact sciences (such as physics and biology), but for what? What is he trying to display? In my opinion he tried to display, first, the problem in examining literature, or to criticize it. The problem, to me, concerns about the believe of the people about the importance and validity of criticism when it is compared to exact sciences. Like the name suggests, exact science gives exacts results because they got the basis of their knowledge or for Frye is “philosophy of life with its center of gravity in something else”. Without it, criticism, to me, along with its findings, is being denied by the people, or so from what I got from Frye. Then, according to Frye, criticism also in need of “a coordinating principle, a central hypothesis which, like the theory of evolution in biology, will see the phenomena it deals with as parts of a whole.”

I’ll try to explain both factors that exact sciences have, but criticism has not and why criticism in need of it. I guess, it is hard for people to accept something, to embrace something, to get the benefit of something when that something’s existence is being denied, and that is what happening to criticism according to Frye, being denied. Then, how can one get something if he or she can’t observe? Nothing. Criticism needs “a coordinating principle, a central hypothesis” to start its action.

Then, not only the problem, which I firstly mentioned, but Frye, in my opinion, tried to show that literary can be useful and of a more important matters to the society, and that is, as I have mentioned it in the beginning, to educate, to introduce new/different culture (perhaps?), and to shape culture, with the help of the distributor, the critic, and that is why it is worth fighting for.

So, to conclude, both have their own view about literature that had already been shared throughout the world. Horace seems to me saw literature as being useful hedonically, for the public and, perhaps for the creator. Frye, seems to me, saw literature as something that could make the public a better public by introducing (different/better?) culture and education through literature, and for me, Frye has better definition and benefit, about and of, literature. To end this, I’d like to state my view on “interpreters” like them, that they are the ones that can change, influence the public about what literature is and what literature can give them, and therefore change the public whether for better or for worse.

works cited:

Horace. Art of Poetry. 2004. in Adams, Hazard and Searle, Leroy. Critical Theory since Plato (3rd edition). United States: Wadsworth Publishing.

Frye, Northrop. 1957. Polemical Introduction. in Anatomy of Criticism (pp. 3 -29). Woodstock: Princeton University Press.

Response 1: Literature for the People

It is as if no one didn't need to observe whether the media is being used by certain parties to point the public’s opinion and judgment or not during the campaigning period, because the usage of the media seems visible especially concerning the matter mentioned previously. For me, a person currently studying in English department, the effect desired by using the media to drive judgments and opinions about a presidential candidate didn't work since one of the docents told us not to just believe what the news says and we must be critical upon facing it, but different story may come from the ones who do not study or know how to apprehend the news. The media can be used to drive them.

I do not know since when exactly newspapers and electronic media came into use for spreading the words about happenings all over the world or in a certain region, but in Plato’s “Republic” in Book II the works of literature were “being used” to drive or maybe to construct the public to become what the government wanted them to be.

“Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of

the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of

fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire

mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorised ones

only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more

fondly than they mould the body with their hands; but most

of those which are now in use must be discarded.” (Socrates in Adams and Searle, 2004:16)

What I mean by the works of literature is “being used” is that the works of literature were not presented as what they were, but rather as the government want the people to see them. Although such policy was for good intention, that is to condition a desirable people of a state, there are problems shadowing this policy according to my point of view.

By omitting or hiding certain literatures (as a whole or certain parts of the literature) the people wouldn’t know the whole matter inside, the government didn’t show the truth for the people. Then, such action limited the knowledge the people would have, if the government had not censored the literature.

Although to me they are problems, there is still something to consider. When I think about it again, even though the people didn’t get the whole truth the goal of creating a desired people according to Socrates is not a bad one at all. For me his ideas of censoring some works of literature is somewhat an unappreciative action towards literature, however there are things to consider especially in his time.

Somehow, the dialogue between Socrates and Adeimantus reminded me of the matter concerning Avant-garde and Kitsch style of art. It has been a while for me since I studied both style of art and I’m not sure if the dialogue has something to do with one of both, especially Kitsch. However, in the future, I would like to compare this topic lied in “Republic” Book II with Avant-garde and Kitsch (if it’s possible) and the relation of literature and media being used as a means of driving and constructing people.