1

Because European and Western literature and cultures were

produced as a recreation, a revival of the classical cultures of

Greece and Rome.

2

Because European and Western cultures have always valued poetry, literature and

art, Plato‟s decision has always been difficult to explain.

3

Aristotle defines plot as “the arrangement of the incidents.” He is not talking about

the story itself but the way the incidents are presented to the audience, the

structure of the play

Plot is the order and the arrangement of these incidents in a cause-effect sequence

of events.

According to Aristotle, tragedies where the outcome depends on a tightly

constructed cause-and-effect chain of actions are superior to those that depend

primarily on the character and personality of the hero/protagonist.

4

Greek culture was a “living culture” that sprang from

people’s everyday life.

All the Greeks – old and young, aristocrats and commoners,

literate and illiterate – participated in producing and in

consuming this culture

In Ancient Rome, Greek culture became books that had no

connection to everyday life and to average people.

Greek books were written in a language (Greek) that most

of the Romans didn’t speak and belonged to an era in the

past that Romans had no knowledge of.

Only a small, educated minority had the ability to interact

with these books.

It was a dead culture, past, remote, and with no connections

to the daily existence of the majority of the population.

In Rome, Greek culture was not a living culture anymore

It was a “museum” culture. Some aristocrats used it to

show off, but it did not inspire the present.

5

Horace’s hatred of the popular culture of his day was widespread among Latin authors

Poetry for Horace and his contemporaries meant written monuments that would land the lucky poet’s name on a library shelf next to the great Greek names.It would grant the poet fame, a nationalistic sense of glory and a presence in the pedagogical curriculum

Horace’s poetic practice was not rooted in everyday life, as Greek poetry was.He read and reread the Iliad in search of, as he put it, what was bad, what was good, what was useful, and what was not

In the scorn he felt towards the popular culture of his day, the symptom s -were already clear of the rift between “official” and “popular” culture that would divide future European societies

6

The new conceptions of language led in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century to the undermining of Latin as the privileged language of learning. The central tactic in the attack on the monopoly of Latin was the production of grammar books for the vernacular. These demonstrated that vernaculars could be reduced to the same kind of rules as Latin.

7

It literature “makes strange” ordinary perception and ordinary language and

invites the reader to explore new forms of perceptions and sensations,

and new ways of relating to language

8

Gennette calls all irregularities in the time of narration: Anachrobies

Anachronies happen whenever a narrative stops the chronological order in

order to bring events or information from the past (of the time zero) or

from the future (of the time zero).

Analepsis: The narrator recounts after the fact an event that took

place earlier than the moment in which the narrative is stopped.

Example (fictitious): I woke up in a good mood this morning. In my

mind were memories of my childhood, when I was running in the

fields with my friends after school

Prolepsis: The narrator anticipates events that will occur after the

point in time in which the story has stops.

Example (fictitious): How will my travel to Europe affect me? My

relationship with my family and friends will never be the same

again. This is what will make me later difficult to live with

9

An actin say greimas is extrapolation syntactic structure of a narrative an act ant is identified with what assumes syntactic structure function

10

Roland Barthes questioned the traditional idea that the meaning

of the literary text and the production of the literary text should

be traced solely to a single author

Structuralism and Post structuralism proved that meaning is not

fixed by or located in the author’s ‘intention.’

Barthes rejected the idea that literature and criticism should rely

on “a single self-determining author, in control of his meanings,

who fulfills his intentions and only his intentions” (Terry Eagleton)

11

According to Foucault, Barthes had urged critics to realize that

they could "do without [the author] and study the work itself

This urging, Foucault implies, is not realistic

Foucault suggests that critics like Barthes and Derrida never really

get rid of the author, but instead merely reassigns the author's

powers and privileges to "writing" or to "language itself."

12

Post-structuralism displaces the writer/author and make the

reader the primary subject of inquiry (instead of author / writer)

They call such displacement: the "destabilizing" or "decentering"

of the author

Disregarding essentially reading of the content that look for

superficial readings or story lines

Other sources are examined for meaning (e.g. readers, cultural

norms, other literature, etc

Such alternative sources promise no consistency, but might

provide valuable clues and shed light on unusual corners of the

text

13

For Derrida, language is unreliable There is no pre-discursive reality. Every reality is shaped and accessed by a discourse. “there is nothing outside of the text” (Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology) Texts always refer to other texts (cf. Fredric Jameson’s The Prison House of Language) Language constructs/shapes the world Note: Derrida has a very broad notion of ‘text’ that includes all types of sign systems

14

This is one of the most important ideas of karl Marx

The idea that history is made of two main forces:

The Base: The material conditions of life, economic relations,

labor, capital, etc

The Superstructure: This is what today is called ideology or

consciousness and includes, ideas, religion, politics, history,

education, etc

Marx said that it is people’s material condition that

determines their consciousness

In other words, it is people’s economic conditions that

determine the ideas and ideologies that they hold

Note: Ibn Khaldoun says the same thing in the Muqaddimah