::oh eveline, oh evvy, oh james joyce.
12:11 p.m. - 2005-03-03
please, please, please, if you have any affinity for me at all, read the crap that i am dealing with below and EMAIL ME something--anything!--to cheer me up from this monotonous pointless crap.
literary theory. what the hell was i thinking?
Meaning Born from Opposition and Other Structuralist Elements of “Eveline”
Beginning with the ancients, the concept of mimesis became crucial to understanding and analyzing literature; still, while such theorists as Aristotle placed emphasis on the idea that text mimics reality as a way of observation and interpretation, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure explored the opposing concept. Instead, he built his Structuralist ideas on the a reverse mimesis occurs—the world imitates text, where it finds its structure—thus allotting great emphasis to the examination of how a work is put together and what that construction indicates. Though a thin basis of a broad theory, these ideas are important to consider when launching a Structuralist analysis of any work—in particular, James Joyce’ “Eveline.”
Despite Structuralism’s refusal to consider elements of an author’s life as they would affect his or her output, James Joyce’s blatant step away from his usual, lyrical mastery of language distinguishes “Eveline” even in its first sentences. Specifically, the third and fourth sentences each contain only three words—“She was tired. Few people passed.”—which allows even the least intellectual of readers to understand their meanings. Moreover, this simplified method embodies the Structuralist idea of an “ideal reader”—a reader unrestricted by class, race, religion, et cetera. Such utopian ideas of equality also linked Structuralism with Marxism, as they both indicated that if one can read the world, one can change the world. The Structuralists furthered the idea with their argument that our perceived world is created in text—where we get our information, so one must be able to understand this text in order to use it effectively.
