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Indeterminacy (literature)
Indeterminacy in literature is a situation in which components of a text require the reader to make their own decisions about the text's meaning. (Baldick 2008) This can occur if the text's ending does not provide full closure and there are still questions to be answered, or when "the language is such that the author’s original intention is not known". Baldick further describes the concept as "a principle of uncertainty invoked to deny the existence of any final or determinate meaning that could bring to an end the play of meaning between the elements of a text". Therefore, indeterminacy is the belief that it is not possible to decide entirely what a word means when used in a certain circumstance, so the meaning of the whole text must remain open to interpretation. Indeterminacy is not ambiguity In literature, indeterminacy is sometimes confused with the idea of ambiguity, as the two are very alike. However, as opposed to ambiguity, indeterminacy is "applied by its practitioners ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles (; 31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others. After leaving Oxford University, Fowles taught English at a school on the Greek island of Spetses, a sojourn that inspired '' The Magus'' (1965), an instant best-seller that was directly in tune with 1960s "hippy" anarchism and experimental philosophy. This was followed by '' The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1969), a Victorian-era romance with a postmodern twist that was set in Lyme Regis, Dorset, where Fowles lived for much of his life. Later fictional works include '' The Ebony Tower'' (1974), '' Daniel Martin'' (1977), '' Mantissa'' (1982), and '' A Maggot'' (1985). Fowles's books have been translated into many languages, and several have been adapted as films. Early life Birth and family Fowles was born in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, England, the only son a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deconstruction
In philosophy, deconstruction is a loosely-defined set of approaches to understand the relationship between text and meaning. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who described it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences which are valued above appearances. Since the 1980s, these proposals of language's fluidity instead of being ideally static and discernible have inspired a range of studies in the humanities, including the disciplines of law, anthropology, historiography, linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, LGBT studies, and feminism. Deconstruction also inspired deconstructivism in architecture and remains important within art, music, and literary criticism. Overview Jacques Derrida's 1967 book '' Of Grammatology'' introduced the majority of ideas influential within deconstruction. Derrida published a number of other works directly relevant to the concept of deconstruction, such as '' Diff ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-structuralist
Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and political), power. Although different post-structuralists present different critiques of structuralism, common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media (or the world) within pre-established, socially constructed structures.José Guilherme Merquior, Merquior, José G. 1987. ''Foucault'', (Fontana Modern Masters series). University of California Press. . ''Structuralism'' proposes that human culture can be understood by means of a Structural linguistics, structure that is modeled on language. As a result, there is concrete reality on the one hand, abstract idea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophyVincent B. Leitch ''Postmodernism: Local Effects, Global Flows'', SUNY Series in Postmodern Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 27. although he distanced himself from post-structuralism and disavowed the word "postmodernity". During his career, Derrida published over 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He has had a significant influence on the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, literature, law, anthropology, historiography, applie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relativism
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to absolute objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them. ''Moral relativism'' encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures. '' Epistemic relativism'' holds that there are no absolute principles regarding normative belief, justification, or rationality, and that there are only relative ones. '' Alethic relativism'' (also factual relativism) is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism), while linguistic relativism asserts that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions. Some forms of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chris Baldick
Professor Chris Baldick (born 1954) is a British academic who teaches at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He has worked in the fields of literary criticism, literary theory, literary history and literary terminology. He was previously Senior Lecturer in English at Edge Hill College of Higher Education in Ormskirk Ormskirk is a market town in the West Lancashire district of Lancashire, England. It is located north of Liverpool, northwest of St Helens, Merseyside, St Helens, southeast of Southport and southwest of Preston, Lancashire, Preston. Ormski ....''British Book News'' (1987), p. 771. He is the son of Robert Baldick, a scholar of French literature and translator. Selected publications * ''The Decadence Reader'', ed. with Jane Desmarais. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. * * ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms'' * ''The Oxford English Literary History'', volume 10 (1910–1940): The Modern Movement * ''Criticism and Literary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brian McHale
Brian G. McHale is a US academic and literary theorist who writes on a range of fiction and poetics, mainly relating to postmodernism and narrative theory. He is currently Distinguished Humanities Professor of English at Ohio State University. His area of expertise is Twentieth-Century British and American Literature. Education McHale was born in 1952 and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. from Brown University in 1974 and his D.Phil. from Merton College, Oxford in 1979. He is a Rhodes Scholar. Career Brian G. McHale is the editor of the journal '' Poetics Today: International Journal for Theory and Analysis of Literature and Communication''. He has taught at Tel Aviv University and West Virginia University; he was visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Freiburg (Germany), and the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). McHale was an honorary professor, from 2009 to 2011, at Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai Jiao Tong ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Karl Stanzel
Franz Karl Stanzel (4 August 1923 – 17 October 2023) was an Austrian literary theorist who specialised in English literature. Academia Born in Molln, Austria, Stanzel finished his degree with Herbert Koziol in Graz. After his habilitation in 1955, he was professor in Göttingen. In 1959, he was offered a position as professor (Ordinariat) in Erlangen. In 1962, he succeeded Koziol in Graz. He was a professor emeritus of English literature at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Scholarship From the 1950s, Stanzel worked on an analytical topology for the description of the narrative mode, also often called "narrative situation" or "point of view" of narrative texts. Despite much criticism, his typological circle of three narrative situations is still taught in introductions to German literary studies at German universities (e. g. the introductions of the famous literary scholar Ansgar Nünning). From the late 1990s, there was a stronger competition by the narrative model of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
