Literature, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Meaning
Michael Leong, Rutgers University, Fall 2005
Assignment 1
Robert R. Harris’ book review (from The New York Times, March 11, 1990) of The Things They Carried begins with the following sentences: “Only a handful of novels and short stories have managed to clarify, in any lasting way, the meaning of the war in Vietnam for America and for the soldiers who served there. With ‘The Things They Carried,’ Tim O’Brien adds his second title to the short list of essential fiction about Vietnam.” What is the “meaning” of “How to Tell a True War Story” and how does that meaning relate to the meaning of the Vietnam War? In O’Brien’s fiction, is the meaning of the war “clarified,” as Harris claims, or is it made more complicated? How is the truth status and moral of the story related to the story’s meaning? How is the story’s style related to its meaning? Is there one meaning or are there several meanings? Be sure to formulate an original argument that you clearly state in your introduction and be sure to support your argument with textual evidence.
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Assignment 2
Please write an essay that shows how Postrel’s ideas about aesthetics complicate, elucidate, or better explain O’Brien’s short story. Be sure to give Postrel and O’Brien equal treatment in your paper.
Questions to consider:
Postrel states, “The challenge is to learn to accept that aesthetic pleasure is an autonomous good, not the highest or the best but one of many plural, sometimes conflicting, and frequently unconnected sources of value.” What are the various “sources of value” in “How to Tell a True War Story”? How do they relate to aesthetic pleasure as it is portrayed by O’Brien? What would Postrel think about this relation?
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Assignment 3
Drawing on the work of O’Brien, Postrel, and Nafisi, discuss the role of art, aesthetics, and literature in a democratic society. Be sure to formulate an original argument that you clearly state in your introduction and be sure to support your argument with textual evidence.
Questions to consider:
-The narrator in O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story” resists stories with easy morals and generalizations. In contrast, he wishes to constantly retell and change his story, adding and subtracting details “to get at the real truth” (O’Brien 396). How is this desire related to Postrel’s “‘dynamist’ model in which the direction of progress is understood always to be unpredictable, open-ended, and contingent” (Miller and Spellmeyer 420)? How is it related to Nafisi’s support for a forum for thought and discussion where ideas “are not determined in advance” (Miller and Spellmeyer 334)?
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Assignment 4
Kurt Miller and Richard Spellmeyer end their introduction of James C. Scott’s “Behind the Official Story” with the following statement: “By exploring questions about power…Scott invites his readers to consider the possibility that reading itself might be a form of resistance” (Miller and Spellmeyer 521). Drawing on the work of Scott and Nafisi, write an essay that explores the ways in which reading and other everyday practices can be an effective form of resistance. Be sure to formulate an original argument that you clearly state in your introduction and be sure to support your argument with textual evidence.
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Assignment 5
Write an essay that examines the importance of “critical thinking, articulation, [and] self-reflection” (Loffreda 324) in “a still-myopic national culture” (Loffreda 328). The media’s ostensible job is to present “the facts.” What gets left out if we don’t make a concerted and responsible effort to make “sense” of them? How is Scott’s project of articulating “a social science that uncovers contradictions and possibilities” (Scott 533) related to Loffreda’s concerns? What do we gain by interrogating “the existing distribution of power, wealth, and status” of Laramie? Before starting your paper, you may want to consider the following question (from page 333): “In exploring the responses to Matt Shepard’s murder, has Loffreda gained access to what James C. Scott terms ‘the hidden transcript,’ or are homophobia and its violent consequences better considered part of the nation’s public transcript?”
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Assignment 6
In “The Wreck of Time,” Dillard writes, “We who are here now make up about 6.8 percent of all people who have appeared to date. This is not a meaningful figure” (122). She later writes that 115 men who eat at the St. Mary’s soup kitchen at a given night “surely…achieve statistical insignificance” (128). Please use the work of Scott, Loffreda, and Dillard, to discuss how we determine meaning and significance.
Issues to think about:
Who has the power to confer meaning? All three texts refer to certain people who are deemed significant or meaningful—celebrities like Barbra Streisand (Loffreda) or powerful rulers like Chinese emperor Long Qing (Scott) or Joseph Stalin (Dillard). Who or what gets left out if only certain people or ideas are deemed significant? What institutions shape the way we perceive significance? In developing your position, consider the following questions: What does your response add to the discussion? What consequences follow from your response? Are the solutions you propose practical?
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