Keywords (for us to add to during discussion):
[1] At the end of the hall opposite to the fire-place a door led into the drawing-room, which was of equal size, and lighted with precisely similar windows. [2] But yet the aspect of the room was very different. [3] It was papered, and the ceiling, which in the hall showed the old rafters, was whitened and finished with a modern cornice. [4] Miss Thorne’s drawing room, or, as she always called it, withdrawing-room, was a beautiful apartment. [5] The windows opened to the full extent of the lovely trim garden; immediately before the windows were pots of flowers in stiff, stately, stubborn little beds, each bed surrounded by a stone cropping of its own; beyond, there was a low parapet wall, on which stood urns and images, fawns, nymphs, satyrs, and a whole tribe of Pan’s followers; and then again, beyond that, a beautiful lawn sloped away to a sunk fence which divided the garden from the park. [6] Mr. Thorne’s study was at the end of the drawing-room, and beyond that were the kitchen and the offices. [7] Doors opened into both Miss Thorne’s withdrawing-room and Mr. Thorne’s sanctum from the passage above alluded to; which, as it came to the latter room, widened itself so as to make space for the huge black oak stairs, which led to the upper regions. (172)
Questions:
How is the reader meant to “see” the room through the description? What are the description’s limitations? How do these limitations shape the reader’s understanding of the symbolic meaning (or lack thereof) of the passage?
To paraphrase Alli’s question, does the description relate to antiquity in order to make a statement about its inhabitants or is Trollope humorously manipulating a realist convention? Is he combining these two lines of thought? Is he doing something else altogether?
Springboard discussion from the opening comparison of the two passages opening passages; what is Lukacs’s claim about the difference between description and narration? Between Zola’s Nana and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina?
Some key quotes:
Description, as we have discussed it, becomes the dominant mode in composition in a period in which, for social reasons, the sense of what is primary in epic construction has been lost. Description is the writer's substitute for the epic significance that has been lost. But in the genesis of new ideological forms, an interaction always takes place. The predominance of description is not only a result but also and simultaneously a cause, the cause of a further divorce of literature from epic significance. The domination of capitalist prose over the inner poetry of human experience, the continuous dehumanization of social life, the general debasement of humanity -- all these are objective facts of the development of capitalism. The descriptive method is the inevitable product of this development. Once established this method is taken up by leading writers dedicated in their own way, and then it in turn affects the literary representation of reality. The poetic level of life decays -- and literature intensifies the decay." (237) >Of course, the reader does not know the conclusion in advance. He possesses an abundance of details of which he cannot always and immediately determine the importance. Certain expectations are awakened which the later course of the narrative will confirm or refute. But the reader is involved in a rich web of variegated motivations; the author in his omniscience knows the special significance of each petty detail for the final solution and for the final revelation of character since he introduces only details that contribute to his goals. The reader takes confidence from the author's omniscience and feels at home in the fictional world. If he cannot foretell the events, he feels confident about the direction which the events will take because of their inner logic and the inner necessity in the characters. Perhaps he does not know everything about the future progress of the action and the future evolution of the characters, but in general he knows more than the characters themselves.
Note questions of the author’s omniscience Lukacs raises; compare to Trollope narrator’s representation of the extent and limits of his knowledge throughout Barchester Towers (can we point to some specific passages?).
On suspense (and looking ahead to Deborah’s reading of Trollope’s passage on the same topic):
How then does suspense [in the epic] arise? Indubitably it does not arise out of an aesthetic interest in how the poet goes about arriving at his goal. It arises rather from the natural human curiosity regarding the capacities Odysseus will yet disclose and the obstacles he has still to overcome to achieve his goal. (130)
On the problem of when description stops (compare to what Barthes and Jamesons say on this topics):
Representation declines into genre, and the natural principle of epic selection is lost. One state of mind at any moment and of itself without relation to men's activity is as important or as irrelevant as another. And this equivalence is even more blatant when it comes to objects. In a narrative it is reasonable to mention only those aspects of a thing which are important to function in a specific action. In and of itself everything has innumerable qualities. When a writer attempts as an observer and describer to achieve a comprehensive description, he must either reject any principle of selection, undertake an inexhaustible labor of Sisyphus or simply emphasize the the picturesque and superficial aspects best adapted to description. (130)
What does Lukacs mean by this quote?
Description contemporizes everything. Narration recounts the past. (130)
Return to Alli’s paper and see descriptions: of describing Arabin (p. 167) , of Ullathorne and especially the moss (p.197-202, esp. p. 201)
Description debases characters to the level of inanimate objects; as a result the basic principle of epic composition is abandoned (133)
Note the passage on 119-120 about “the relationship of observation to creation” in comparing Goethe vs in Zola. Especially in research practice for future novelist-researcher discussions.
But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope. And here perhaps it may be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this, is too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are never to be realized? Are not promises all but made of delightful horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species of deceit in this to which the honesty of the present age should lend no countenance? (p. 126-7)
- Deborah notes that it is impossible for the reader and the narrator to process the story at the same pace since “the author and/or narrator may always know more than the reader and the reader has no way of reaching the narrator.” She also states, “[T]he narrator uses the third person despite essentially referring to himself, displacing his agency.” How should we view the relationship between the reader, narrator, and author? To what extent can we see the narrator as the author? How does Trollope cause these two entities to diverge and what is the significance of this?
What does Watt’s history of the novel frame theorize about realism and the development of the novel? What are realists trying to achieve?
What is formal realism?
What is the reality effect according to Barthes?
What is the differences between significant and insignificant detail?
Can you map the semiotics of the reality effect (on the board)?
What is our critique of Barthes?
Outcomes: let’s be clear about Barthes’s core argument.
How is Jameson revising or rewriting Barthes?
Some quotes from Alli’s summary:
Frederic Jameson argues that novelistic realism functioned to retrain readers in a new ideology of everyday life, whereby older hierarchical and sacred modes of understanding are replaced by scientific quantification.
“Real,” as Jameson asserts through reference to Barthes, becomes synonymous with meaning-less; however, unlike Barthes, Jameson argues that descriptions within realism don’t function merely to produce a signal that “this is the real” or “this is realism;” rather, the nature of the descriptions themselves function to retrain the reader within the new referent – which the descriptions in turn produce.
The existence of two distinct readings of the text – symbolic versus programmatic – represents “a historical overlap between two moments of critical theory and practice,” according to Jameson (381), who believes that symbolic readings “correspond to a nostalgia for meaning” which is sacrificed in order to portray what’s real – and what therefore must not have symbolic or iconographic meaning… To read the text symbolically thus only reconfirms the process of transformation into the new capitalistic and scientific world order: subjectivity (as Jameson >argues the musty smell represents) merely haunts the newly quantified environment.”
I think that the close reading he provides of Flaubert’s passage perhaps too well supports a thesis which posits decoding as a forward-moving, albeit slow, transformation; I think Levine’s chapter from The Realistic Imagination offers a more plausible and helpful reading of English Victorian novelists – as engaged in a self-conscious project in which they know, to some extent, they’re doomed to fail, rather than as knowledgeable and confident programmers of a new world order. I think that the older symbolic/epic configuration of meaning can and >probably does exist alongside recoding descriptions, and that this isn’t necessarily indicative of an incomplete transformation, but rather, as part of that struggle that the novelists engage in to represent truth.”
[R]ealism is part of a broader Enlightenment project of secularization and modernization.
- How can we connect this claim to Trollope? Do we agree with Jameson’s claim? + Addressing the conception of realism-as-secularization in novel about warring church factions + Addressing the conception of realism-as-modernization in a novel which, in many ways, is critical about the way we use new technology and thought self-consciousness of the impossibility of the project --- how does this relate to the above two goals?
Outcomes: let’s be clear about Jameson’s core argument. >I think Levine’s chapter from The Realistic Imagination offers a more plausible and helpful reading of English Victorian novelists – as engaged in a self-conscious project in which they know, to some extent, they’re doomed to fail, rather than as knowledgeable and confident programmers of a new world order. I think that the older symbolic/epic configuration of meaning can and probably does exist alongside recoding descriptions, and that this isn’t necessarily indicative of an incomplete transformation, but rather, as part of that struggle that the novelists engage in to represent truth.” Levine states that recoding descriptions and symbolic configurations can coexist. How can these two theories compliment one another? Is there an inherent, intentional friction between these two notions (the novelists’ “struggle”) or can we more smoothly reconcile them?
Look back via Jameson description of uneven surfaces to the Ullathorne description.
Barchester Towers
Loop back to Deborah’s close reading.
Mrs. Proudie has not been portrayed in these pages as an agreeable or an amiable lady. There has been no intention to impress the reader much in her favour. It is ordained that all novels should have a male and a female angel, and a male and a female devil. If it be considered that this rule is obeyed in these pages, the latter character must be supposed to have fallen to the lot of Mrs. Proudie. But she was not all devil. There was a heart inside that stiff-ribbed bodice, though not, perhaps, of large dimensions, and certainly not easily accessible. Mrs. Quiverful, however, did gain access, and Mrs. Proudie proved herself a woman. Whether it was the fourteen children with their probably bare bread and their possible bare backs, or the respectability of the father’s work, or the mingled dust and tears on the mother’s face, we will not pretend to say. But Mrs. Proudie was touched. (p. 237-8) + What expectations does Trollope believe the reader has for his novel? In what way is he manipulating and subverting expectations?
quoting Signora Neroni -
No; all women are not Cressids. The falsehood is not always on the woman’s side. Imogen was true, but how was she rewarded? Her lord believed her to be the paramour of the first he who came near her in her absence. Desdemona was true and was smothered. Ophelia was true and went mad. There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel. But in wealth, money, houses, land, goods and chattels, in the good things of this world, yes, in them there is something tangible, something that can be retained and enjoyed. (p.
- guiding question + Consider the literature that Signora Neroni is referring to. Even if we haven't read the stories she is referencing, what can we say about her use of literature and her beliefs in love and women? + How is Signora Neroni contrasting older works with the more modern "English novel"? What does this say about Trollope's attitude toward love as presented in the novel? What does this say about his attitude towards the conventions of the novel more generally?
Considering Names and Ranks in Sophie’s Seminar Paper >In a sense, titles can be an impressive set of details to show Trollope has mastered the complex world that was Anglican religion and politics in the nineteenth century. This is a viewpoint particular likely to be felt by twentieth and twenty-first century readers. Modern readers probably have a worse understanding of the structure of the Anglican church than did Trollope’s contemporaries. >In a tale about complicated ambitions set in a particular environment, the limits of the possibilities for each person’s actions are constrained by the formal position in which he finds himself. For a nineteenth century reader who was cognizant of the structure of Anglican authority, it was necessary that Trollope’s characters behaved in ways that were appropriate to their positions - which were denoted by their titles.
This is a society of individuals very conscious of their rank vis-à-vis those above and below and one also in which people generally do not seem content in the place in which they find themselves… None of these men are happy with their current positions within the church. That rank and position was critical was highlighted by the constant repetition of titles.
Sermons and narration:
It would not be becoming were I to travesty a sermon, or even to repeat the language of it in the pages of a novel. In endeavouring to depict the characters of whom I write, I am to a certain extent forced to speak of sacred things. (p. 44)
Trollope refers to sermons - and other ecclesiastical matters such as the chairing of the bishop - in a way that might almost be described as the opposite of realist description, noting explicitly that they are realms into which he cannot intrude because of lack of personal experience (the Bishop’s chairing) or expertise or seemliness (the sermon), he shapes them as empty spaces. What, in the context of our readings on realism, do we make of this?
Think about the way Trollope does narrate (rather than describe?) the sermons of Slope (44), Arabin (206), and Grantly (211).
The new and the old: (the Proudies vs Grantlys; Thornes; doctors)
How information transferred and how this is perceived; the purposes and effects of these new modes of processing, submitting, and receiving information
-
newspapers: >The names of many divines were given in the papers as that of the bishop elect. The British Grandmother declared that Dr. Gwynne was the be the man, in compliment to the late ministry. This was a heavy blow to Dr. Grantly, but he was not doomed to see himself superseded by his friend. The Anglican Devotee put forward confidently the claims of a great London preacher of austere doctrines; and The Eastern Hemisphere, an evening paper supposed to possess much official knowledge, declared in favour of an eminent naturalist, a gentleman most completely versed in his knowledge of rocks and minerals, but supposed by many to hold on religious subjects no special doctrines whatever. The Jupiter, that daily paper, which as we all know, is the only source of infallibly correct information on all subjects, for a while was silent, but at last spoke out. The merits of all these candidates were discussed and somewhat irreverently disposed of, and then the Jupiter declared that Dr. Proudie was to be the man. (p. 7-8) >During the past five years, the powers that be had not overlooked Barchester Hospital, and sundry political doctors had taken the matter in hand. Shortly after Mr. Harding’s resignation, the Jupiter had very clearly shown what ought to be done. In about half a column it had distributed the income, rebuilt the buildings, put an end to all bickerings, regenerated kindly feeling, provided for Mr. Harding, and placed the whole thing on a footing which could not but be satisfactory to the city and Bishop of Barchester, and to the nation at large. The wisdom of this scheme was testified by the number of letters which ‘Common Sense’, ‘Veritas’, and ‘One that loves fair play’ sent to the Jupiter, all expressing admiration, and amplifying on the details given. It is singular enough that no adverse letter appeared at all, and, therefore, none of course was written. (p. 11) Arabin speaks to Eleanor as though she is a journalist (185-6); raises the question of what it means to criticize an institution without offering solutions.
-
telegraph: > ‘Never mind,’ said the archdeacon at last; ‘send the message all the same. The news must be sent to someone, and there is at present no one else in a position to receive it… A few minutes’ time is of the greatest importance.’ Mr. Harding went out and sent the message, and it may be as well that we should follow it to its destination. Within thirty minutes of its leaving Barchester it reaches the Earl of --- in his inner library. (p. 6-7)
-
gossip: > Poor Eleanor! I cannot say that with me John Bold was ever a favourite. I never thought him worthy of the wife he had won. But in her estimation he was most worthy. Hers was one of those feminine hearts which cling to a husband, not with idolatry, for worship can admit of no defect in its idol, but with the perfect tenacity of ivy. As the parasite plant will follow even the defects of the trunk which it embraces, so did Eleanor cling to and love the very faults of her husband. (p. 13)
How would the manner in which people would have consumed this novel effect how people at the time? --- i.e. published in a serial format (transfer of information is much slower in actual Victorian life, especially in regards to reading this specific set of novels)
How does information transfer as depicted in Barchester Towers connect to the unique narration style?
Power struggle and “moderate schism” - between the Grantlyites and the Proudites (really, Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope) > [Mr. Arabin] had been a religious lad before he left school. That is, he had addicted himself to a party in religion, and having done so had received that benefit which most men do who become partisans in such a cause. We are much too apt to look at schism in our church as an unmitigated evil. Moderate schism, if there may be such a thing, at any rate calls attention to the subject, draws in supporters who would otherwise have been inattentive to the matter, and teaches men to think upon religion. How great an amount of good of this description has followed that movement in the Church of England which commenced with the publications of Froude’s Remains! (p. 169)
In what ways is this novel self-aware? in what ways is it trying to subvert the genre, if that’s what it’s doing? How is Trollope thinking about epic? - see Lukacs
Authority and position in large (the power struggle and the idea of “moderate schism”); the idea of a church with a head vs the (comparatively) decentralized Anglican church; and in miniature (Eleanor on the box, p 203 and later). See also Mr. Arabin’s diffidence on speaking authoritatively on social matters upon which he does not hold an authoritative position (175).
4 pm
Nabil Kashyap, Digital Initiatives Librarian Extraordinaire
Google Drive, but I wonder if we might want to look at Stack Edit or Typewrite or….
From the syllabus, for reference:
and country; news and newspapers + Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (1857), first half + Georg Lukacs, “Narrate or Describe”* + Ian Watt, from The Rise of the Novel + Roland Barthes, “The Reality Effect”* + Fredric Jameson, “The Realist Floor-plan”* [Alli]
- George Levine, from “The Realistic Imagination” + create a Github account + workshop: further plain-text authoring for outline creation and publication: Markdown, Git, and Github (with some mention of LaTeX and Pandoc) Dennis Tenen and Grant Wythoff’s plain-text authoring tutorial discussion and outline: Emily; close reading: Alli; criticism summary: Alli; seminar paper: Sophie; break: Emily