Literary theory, a very short intrudiction

a famous phrase of Derrida’s,
‘Il n’y a pas de hors-texte’ 
– ‘There is no outside-of-text’:

Immanuel Kant 康德 (18世纪)

Summary Shakespeare
Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130
莎士比亞 十四行詩 第 130 首


My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
我情人的眼睛絲毫不似太陽；
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
珊瑚更為紅潤，比起她的紅唇：
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
若雪為白，她的酥胸色澤暗靄；
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
若髮為絲，她的額上縷縷黑絲。
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
曾見玫瑰或紅或白，或泛微紅，
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
但不見此花色於她雙頰暈透；
And in some perfumes is there more delight
香水的芬芳更令人滿心愉悅，
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
比起她的氣息於那唇齒之間。
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
她的言談我深愛傾聽，但我
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
深知音樂有更討喜的樂音：
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
的確，我不曾眼見女神前行，
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
當我情人行走，她落足於地：
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
但老天明鑑，我想我的情人一樣獨特，
As any she belied with false compare.
比起那些受到不實比喻讚美的女人。


(William Shakespeare / 紫蓉 譯)

翻译版本一:

 我爱人的眼光并非阳光灿烂， 珊瑚也远比她的双唇红艳。  她的胸脯也说不上雪白光鲜，  满头乌丝，也无法比拟金线。   

我见过粉、红、雪白的玫瑰，  却没见一朵在她脸上绽放蓓蕾。  有很多馥郁芬芳的香水，  比我情人的呼吸更令人陶醉。   

我虽爱听她娇语呢喃，  却知道，更好听的声音还是丝竹管弦。  我也承认，我情人的举手投足之间，  没一点儿让我想起天仙下凡。   可是老天作证，我觉得我的爱人着实稀罕，  毫不逊色于那些矫饰的红颜。

翻译版本二：

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun  我的爱人的眼睛一点不像太阳  
Coral is far more red than her lips' red  珊瑚比她的嘴唇还要红得多  
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun  雪若算白，她的胸就暗褐无光  
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head  发若是铁丝，她头上铁丝婆娑  
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white  我见过红白的玫瑰，轻纱一般  
but no such roses see I in her cheeks  她颊上却找不到这样的玫瑰  
and in some perfumes is there more delight  有许多芳香非常逗引人喜欢  
than in the breath that from my mistress reeks  我的爱人的呼吸并没有这香味  
I love to hear her speak  yet well I know that music hath   a far more pleasing sound  我爱听她谈话，  可是我很清楚音乐的悦耳远胜于她的嗓子  
I grant i never saw a goddess go  我承认从没有见过女神走路  
my mistress, when she walks  treads on the ground  我的爱人走路时候却脚踏实地  
and yet, by heaven, 可是，我敢指天发誓， 
I think my love as rare  as any she belied with false compare   我的爱侣胜似任何被捧作天仙的美女

赏析：

英国人说：“没有读过莎士比亚，没有背过弥尔顿的人，根本不配用英语写作。”莎士比亚在英语文学中的重要性一言概之。  

《十四行诗》在莎士比亚的全部作品中占有非常重要的地位，诗集收有154首诗。诗集分为两部分，第一部分为前126首，献给一个年轻的贵族（Fair Lord），诗人的诗热烈地歌颂了这位朋友的美貌以及他们的友情；第二部分为第127首至最后，献给一位“黑女士”（Dark Lady），描写爱情。  

莎士比亚在运用十四行诗诗体时，极为得心应手，主要表现为语汇丰富、用词洗练、比喻新颖、结构巧妙、音调铿锵悦耳。而其最擅长的是最后两行诗，往往构思奇诡，语出惊人，既是全诗点睛之作，又自成一联警语格言。在英国乃至世界十四行诗的创作中，莎士比亚十四行诗是一座高峰，当得起空前绝后的美称。

Madame Bovary 包法利夫人 19世纪法国作家福楼拜的代表作长篇小说。展示了法國第二共和國時期的社會風貌。

Saussure 索緒爾 弗迪南·德·索緒爾（法語：Ferdinand de Saussure，1857年11月26日－1913年2月22日），生於日內瓦，瑞士語言學家。索绪尔是現代語言學之父，他把語言學塑造成為一門影響巨大的獨立學科。他認為語言是基於符號及意義的一門科學。他在很大程度上深刻影响了结构主义和解构主义，并且他还创立了符号学。索緒爾劃分出能指與所指（signified, 法語：signifié）、語言和言語等重要概念，對後來的符號學影響深遠。
signifier, the form, 能指, plane of sound
signified, the meaning, 所指, plane of thought

Sapir–Whorf hypothesis 语言界定思想 Edward Sapir 愛德華·薩丕爾, Benjamin Lee Whorf

Analyze the meaning of literature:
intention (of the author), text (itself), context, reader

西方的文学理论更注重表达的技巧,
明喻（Simile）
象征（Symbol）

四种比喻(trope):
隐喻（Metaphor）
转喻（Metonymy) links of means of contiguity, eg. the crown => the queen
synecdoche(借代；提喻), ten hands for ten workers. allow parts to repensent wholes
irony (反讽) juxtapose appearance and reality

Historically, many theorists of genre have divided works among three broad classes according to who speaks: poetic or lyric, where the narrator speaks in the first person, epic or narrative, where the narrator speaks in his own voice but allows characters to speak in theirs, and drama, where the characters do all the talking. 

Another way of making this distinction is to focus on the relation of speaker to audience. 
In epic, there is oral recitation: a poet directly confronting the listening audience. 
In drama, the author is concealed from the audience and the characters on stage talk.
In lyric – the most complicated case – the poet, in singing or chanting, turns his back on his listeners, so to speak, and ‘pretends to be talking to himself or to someone else: a spirit of Nature, a Muse, a personal friend, a lover, a god, a personified abstraction, or a natural object’. 

To these three elementary genres we can add the modern genre of the novel, which addresses the reader through a book – a topic we’ll take up in Chapter 6.

Who speaks? By convention every narrative is said to have a
narrator, who may stand outside the story or be a character
within it. Theorists distinguish ‘first person narration’, where a
narrator says ‘I’, from what is somewhat confusingly called ‘third
person narration’, where there is no ‘I’ – the narrator is not
identified as a character in the story and all the characters are
referred to in the third person, by name or as ‘he’ or ‘she’.
First person narrators may be the main protagonists of the
story they tell; they may be participants, minor characters in
the story; or they may be observers of the story, whose
function is not to act but to describe things to us. First person
observers may be fully developed as individuals with a name,
history, and personality, or they may not be developed at all
and quickly drop from sight as the narration gets under way,
effacing themselves after introducing the story.

Who speaks to whom? The author creates a text which is read
by readers. Readers try to infer from the text a narrator, a
voice which speaks. The narrator addresses listeners who are
sometimes implied or constructed, sometimes explicitly identified
(especially in stories within stories, where one character becomes
the narrator and tells the inner story to other characters). The
narrator’s audience is often called the narratee. Whether or not
narratees are explicitly identified, the narrative implicitly
constructs an audience by what its narration takes for granted
and what it explains. A work from another time and place
usually implies an audience that recognizes certain references
and shares certain assumptions that a modern reader may not
share. Feminist criticism has been especially interested in the
way that European and American narratives frequently posit a
male reader: the reader is implicitly addressed as one who
shares a masculine view.

Who speaks when? Narration may be situated at the time at
which events occur (as in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy, where
narration takes the form, ‘now x is happening, now y is
happening, now z is happening’). Telling may immediately follow
particular events, as in epistolary novels (novels in the form of
letters), such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, where each letter
deals with what had happened up to that point. Or, as is most
common, narration may occur after the final events in the
narrative, as the narrator looks back on the entire sequence.

Who speaks what language? Narrative voices may have their
own distinctive language, in which they recount everything in the
story, or they may adopt and report the language of others. A
narrative that sees things through the consciousness of a child
may either use adult language to report the child’s perceptions
or slip into a child’s language. The Russian theorist Mikhail
Bakhtin describes the novel as fundamentally polyphonic
(multi-voiced) or dialogic rather than monological (single-voiced):
the essence of the novel is its staging of different voices or
discourses and, thus, of the clash of social perspectives and
points of view.

Who speaks with what authority? To tell a story is to claim a
certain authority, which listeners grant. When the narrator of
Jane Austen’s Emma begins, ‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome,
clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy
disposition,…’, we don’t sceptically wonder whether she really
was handsome and clever. We accept this statement until we
are given reason to think otherwise. Narrators are sometimes
termed unreliable when they provide enough information about
situations and clues about their own biases to make us doubt
their interpretations of events, or when we find reasons to
doubt that the narrator shares the same values as the author.
Theorists speak of self-conscious narration when narrators
discuss the fact that they are telling a story, hesitate about how
to tell it, or even flaunt the fact that they can determine how
the story will turn out. Self-conscious narration highlights the
problem of narrative authority.

focalize （使）聚焦 a less common word for focus