On Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Some Tower of Song With Lofty Parapet": H.W. Longfellow and the Creation of a National Literary Culture"




Although there were dozens of American writing poetry in the mid-nineteenth century, it was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) who came to be known as the nation's first public poet. By achieving national popularity, Longfellow became one of the first individuals who was able to make a living as a poet, a sign which in itself indicates the cultural progress of the young nation. As we will see in this essay, the work of Longfellow was a key contribution to the development of a national literary culture. This task was not an easy one, it demanded a poet of great vision. It is not surprising, then, that this task fell to Longfellow, an ambitious poet whose desire to create some great poetic work can be traced back to the early stages of his career. Reading an early sonnet like "Mezzo Cammin" one can see how, even before he had started to write the poems that would accomplish this task, Longfellow could not avoid being overcome by the enormous implications such developments would have for him as a poet.

In "Mezzo Cammin" Longfellow self-pityingly decries his lack of poetic achievement and then defines his ultimate poetic goal to be the creation of "Some tower of song with lofty parapet." This lofty tower would eventually become a concept he would return to again and again, a sign of his unwavering ambition to fully realize his poetic potential, without regard for "pleasure, nor the fret of restless passions," as these distractions would keep him "from what I may accomplish yet." In the poem Longfellow, at the mid-point of his life, pauses "halfway up a hill" to reflect on the years which are behind him, at which point he spies the city of memory receding into the distance. Entranced by this mystical city in the twilight, Longfellow falls into a reverie which is broker up by the encroaching spectre of Death, whose hovering visage reminds him of the duties which he has yet to complete, the poetic promise he has yet to fulfill. One can imagine that Longfellow was haunted by this task which as yet lay unfulfilled: the development of a national historical consciousness through the development of the poetic arts in the new America.

One can understand Longfellow's hesitancy to actualize his full poetic potential for, as Lawrence Buell tells us, in the mid-nineteenth century the manner in which the American people should preserve their history was a subject of great debate. In 1857 George E. Ellis proclaimed that the history of the Union ought not to be told through organized, ceremonious spectacles but instead, our national history should take on a form that resembled the spontaneous expressions of pride that solidified the nation as a whole at the time of the Revolution. This paradox of mid-nineteenth century America, the desire to possess an authentic history and, simultaneously, wanting to acquire this history without recourse to any specific religious ceremony finds its analogue in the literary culture of the country and specifically in the double-bind of the American poet. Concerned that the preservation of history through any overt ritual would ruin the secular national culture envisioned by the founding fathers, people such as Ellis were possessed by a cultural fear that kept the historical consciousness of the American people in its earliest stage of development.

The American poet was in a similarly constricted state. One the one hand, the idea of writing poetry was disparaged as useless, especially in a country which prided itself on its pragmatic, utilitarian standards and, on the other hand, the radical notion of a truly American poet was idealized as a symbol of cultural authenticity and a key component in demonstrating to those back on the Continent that we Americans had an independent culture.

These historical facts indicate the arduous task that posed itself before the would-be American poet, shackling him with the responsibility of founding a discursive national poetics in a still-developing culture. To make matters worse, this culture was not one that usually found significance in projects of this sort, so we can imagine the intensely oppressive social role which greeted the American poet of this era. Longfellow faced this challenge and successfully contributed to the development of the historical consciousness of the less-than-a-century old American republic. This was accomplished through the composition of poems which mythologized America's past, both before and after the age of European colonization.

The poem which most obviously turns colonial history into a mythology is "Paul Revere's Ride" (1863), a composition that re-works the story of Paul Revere, the brave patriot whose signal told of the immanent arrival of British troops, into a tale which resembles a mythological narrative. Literary critics characterize this poem as a ballad, although technically it does not satisfy the requirements of the genre, as it is not written in ballad meter and does not incorporate superstition or dialogue. Just as "Paul Revere's Ride" contributes to the making of American history through re-historicizing or mythologizing the events and circumstances of the Revolution, the success of an earlier poem, "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), demonstrates the American people's appetite for works that mythologized the origins of the New World.

"Hiawatha" begun in Longfellow's mind as a plan for a work which would we the historical consciousness of the old world with the experiences of the new world. Taking as his model poets who wrote in the epic tradition - Dante, Cervantes, Goethe and especially Milton - he contemplated writing a religious epic for the new country, a work which would blend the country's past with the European cultural values that the colonist brought with them to this new land - an Edenic paradise regained. At some point Longfellow changed his plans and re-focused the poem onto a type of subject matter that is unique to the American experience, the history of the native Americans. When it was complete, "Hiawatha" was indeed an epic narrative, although the story it tells in eight syllable trochaic meter said much more about the early American tendency to romanticize Native American culture than it did about religion.

A third poem that mythologized the American way of life is contain in the poem "The Village Blacksmith." Like "Paul Revere's Ride" this poem does not observe the traditional ballad meter; however, it may grouped as such based on the strength of its six-line stanza, a variant on the ballad quatrain. In this poem Longfellow describes the daily life of a blacksmith, who is meant to be taken as the representative embodiment of the American worker:

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellow blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

As a model of the American worker, the village blacksmith stands as a Herculean ideal of the laborer who is religiously devoted to his job and his work, whose body itself stands as an emblem of the rigorous alliance between his physical power and the importance of his labors. It is a source of great pride for the blacksmith that here in America, one can work freely without becoming indebted to anyone. The religiosity implied in the blacksmith's devotion to his job is carried over into the third stanza. The dedication with which the blacksmith swings his hammer is compared to a sexton who rings a church bell, as both actions may be interpreted as ways of preserving the divine order of the world. Longfellow shows us how, for the American laborer, religion exists as a sublimated presence in the work-ethic, for here labor is a form of religious activity, realizing itself in a work-day of piety. In Longfellow's mythological world of pre-Marxist labor, there are no bosses, nor is there a proletariat; indeed, there are no class distinctions whatsoever. There is only a man and his tools, the strength of his back and the hours of the day. In the third stanza, the reader comes to feel a sense of comfort about the description of the laborer and his labors, for this picture of the working man is something which we rely on in order to insure the continual prosperity of our nation. In addition, it confers an air of certainty, this image of a man engaged in his solitary labors, in that it recalls a mythical time when there was an explicable and definable horizon to one's activity, "Week in, week out, from morn till night."

When his children race home from school, which is another institution of socially prescribed labor, they look into the workplace and glimpse at their father engaged in a performance which knows no other goals other than the goals of production. When the children "catch the burning sparks that fly like chaff from a threshing-door" they are excited and thrilled by the spectacle of labor. They obtain a vicarious thrill, peering in on the historical moment when labor is in transition from a system where men worked for their own livelihoods to a centralized system in which the machinery of production was collected into the hands of a few. The children are enraptured watching the man operate as an automaton, mechanically straining in an intense effort to the point that he comes to resemble a machine, estranged from the human world and alienated from himself and his family. The only other activity we see him engaged in is on Sunday, when he takes his sons to Church and "sits among the boys." After the preaching of the parson, which he sits through with a stoic disposition, the choir begins to sing; this gets his full attention, for he can see his daughter among the singers. Longfellow tells us that "It sounds to him like his mother's voice, / Singing in Paradise !" Indeed, he slips into a fantasy of his mother who, even though she is lying in her grave, commands his thoughts and brings tears to his eyes, which he wipes away with a rough hand, blackened from his long hours in the smithy.

The new day finds him returning to his work and so on his life proceed, "Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing," through the week's labors to a day of worship wherein he succumbs to a fantasy. As Longfellow defines it, there is any true pleasure in the life of the laborer, only the ascetic work-life of "Each morning sees some task begin, / Each evening sees it close." In this fantastic poetic sketch of the truly self-employed man, there is a equal balance between labor-cost and economic reward; there is no such thing as surplus-value and there are no capital expenses or hierarchies that allow one person an unfair advantage over the masses. For this idealized American worker, a promise made equals a promise fulfilled, a contract formed equals a job performed and a job completed, of course, equals a job performed with integrity, honesty and physical if not intellectual stamina. The society of "The Village Blacksmith" is a society that educates and trains the self, a society governed by a political and commercial framework that ensures the maintenance and preservation of the work-life, in the body of the Union and for the bodies of American citizens. These hypotheses are made even more plausible when one considers that Longfellow does not refer even one to the blacksmith enjoying the fruits of his labors; it seems as though his work has no other goal other than to see the dimming of the day, till one has "earned a night's repose."

This circular system that Longfellow has poeticized depicts a cycle that passes from the exertion of the will in the activity of labor to a stoic catharsis in religious indoctrination. When the blacksmith attends the church ceremonies he regresses from the man who is confident in his work to an earlier psychic stage where he is a child whose being is contingent on his feelings toward his mother. As we see him weeping in the pews, preparing for the week ahead, we can see that the American people of the mid-nineteenth century had constructed around them a mythological framework whose purpose was to reinforce the male desire to continually re-experience the mother-child relationship ad infinitum. When Longfellow brings this poem before the American public, he has already conceptualized the framework in which the institution of the American labor system will be codified. As seen here, the codification of American social norms incorporates the development of a dual history, constituting the institutions of both labor and freedom from labor, both leisure and pleasure expressed only in the form of religious worship. All of this is accomplished through Longfellow's mythologizing of the social structure which promoted such activities: working, eating and resting, all organized by a machine-like desire that governed the social world, setting limits to the range and forms of social expression and interaction available to the populace.

Each of these poems -- "Paul Revere's Ride," "The Song of Hiawatha," and "The Village Blacksmith" -- take up the question of the relationship between the American people and the history of the country. Regardless of the fact that these projected histories are given in mythological forms, it is the process of posing these questions before the public that gives definition to the American historical identity. Clearly, in "The Village Blacksmith," we can see the archetypal American constitution under construction, coalescing under the forces of Longfellow's poetics. While fundamentally of a historically fictitious nature, these poems allow the Puritan community to become imbued with a sense of its own self-worth, a developing which in the long run allows America to take its first tiny steps onto the world stage of history. The uncertainty of the community is also reflected in the poet himself, most acutely in "Mezzo Cammin," a poem which reveals Longfellow's inability to avoid feelings of self-doubt, as well as the feelings he faced when he considered the profundity of the poetic tasks which lay ahead of him.

If Longfellow eventually succeeded in constructing a historical literary consciousness by mythologizing American society - and it is my thesis that he did, in fact, succeed in doing so - then "Mezzo Cammin" must be seen as the poem in which Longfellow came to set his poetic horizons and the goals of his art. It was his despair that he would ever realize his goals that allowed him to make the first movements towards allowing them to be realized; it is in this poem that we see Longfellow directly confronting the poetic tasks that lay ahead for him. In the history of American poetry, Longfellow's work was a key contribution in the creation of a national literary culture. This was accomplished by creating a fundamentally mythological set of poetic narratives, such as "Paul Revere's Ride" and "The Song of Hiawatha," which established the historical-consciousness of America by re-making history into a poetic narrative. Others, like "The Village Blacksmith," worked by standing for a set of sociological, psychological and cultural values and thereby establishing the formative structure of American life. Only from the vantage point of history can we see that, upon the completion of these poems, the intangible goals which had so tormented him in "Mezzo Cammin" had solidified into realities. One sees that, finally, Longfellow succeeded in building a 'tower of song' for the new American nation.

On Gulliver's Travels

The Search for a Communicative Utopia: Epistemology, Linguistics and Semiotics in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels



Since its publication in 1726, the critical response to Gulliver's Travels has gone through a series of shifts. Literary critics of the eighteenth century read this tale to find out what Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) had to say about the essence of human nature and human behavior. This critical approach continued into the nineteenth century, as critics continued to emphasize the intentions of the author. By the twentieth century, Swiftian critics were divided into a soft school and a hard school. The critics in the soft school read the book as being more comical than satirical, while the critics in the hard school saw it as being more satirical than comic. These two schools have been at odds with one another since the 1950s and consequently the last several decades have seen few new interpretations of the text. Today most if not all critics are agreed that the meaning of Travels rests on the sign-content of Swift's writings.

What is the sign ? Although the concept dates back to the time of the ancient Greeks, who conceived of Hermes as the bearer if signs, the concept was revitalized in the modern period by John Locke who outlined a theory of signs, or semiotics, in his writings. In this essay we will make a series of analyses of Travels, centering on three different ways of conceptualizing the sign -- epistemology, linguistics and semiotics. The work if three different thinkers will be called upon to help illustrate each of these readings: the epistemology of John Locke, the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the non-linguistic semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce. Each of these theorists have their own conception of the sign. The first section of this essay, incorporating Locke's epistemology, will concentrate on the first two books of Travels; the second section, focusing on Saussure's linguistics, will look at the third book of Travels; and the third section will adopt Peirce's semiotics to analyze the final book of Swift's tale. The conclusions derived from these three sections will be used to test our thesis, that Gulliver's voyages are a journey through a number of communicative systems and, for this reason, Swift's text is open to each of these readings. We will also attempt to answer the question of to what degree can this book be read as the search for a communicative utopia ?





Gulliver's Travels, Books One and Two: Lilliput, Brobdingnag and the Epistemology of John Locke



As stated in the introduction, the concept of the sign resurfaces in the work of John Locke (1632-1704), whose Essay on Human Understanding (1690) was among the most influential works of the Enlightenment period. For critics like J.B. Schneewind, the central principle of Locke's philosophy is his epistemology, which he outlined in statements such as: "[Our knowledge of the world is based on the degree to which we can define] the connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnance, of any of our ideas. ... Where this perception is, there is knowledge; and where it is not, there, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet we always come short of this knowledge."

The statement may be interpreted as reflecting Locke's nominalism, meaning his disbelief in the Platonic theory of essences. Here Locke says that individuals, being unable to gain access to the world of essences, must therefore obtain a knowledge of reality by viewing by viewing the many ways in which their ideas and reality agree of disagree with one another. Ultimately, Locke says, individuals come to possess a true understanding of the world by perceiving the way these ideas connect to one another. This process of definition must be carrier out by comparing one picture of reality with another. In this section I will demonstrate how the theories of John Locke help to illuminate Swift's text, particularly the first two books of Travels.

According to the critic W.B. Carnochan, Jonathan Swift's Travels bears comparison with Locke's Essay, for both works contain a similar method for defining human nature. In Locke's view, we are born into the world with a mind like a blank slate (tabula rasa), that is, a mind without any innate ideas. This blank mind is then immersed into the linguistic and philosophical culture of the world through a stream of sense-perceptions. This concept if the foundation of Locke's epistemology, or, his view of how the human mind comes to know things, for he considered the true essence of any living organism to be beyond the scope of reason, saying that "It is evident that we sort and name substances by their normal, and not by their real, essences." In a similar vein Swift, too, viewed the possibility of defining man according to his essential nature skeptically; he abandoned the traditional view of man as a rational animal in preference for a definition of man as an animal capable of rationality.

While on the surface the Travels are not concerned with questions of epistemology, Swift's titular character, Lemuel Gulliver, may be seen as an example of the Lockeian man. Book One of the Travels contains a great deal of evidence that Swift was influenced by Locke's epistemology, as there are several points in the narrative where Gulliver consciously reflects on his sense-perceptions. For instance, Gulliver's first moments of conscious thought are accompanied by an awareness of the confused state of his sense-perceptions. His arms and legs fastened, his hair tied, Gulliver wakes to find himself directly exposed to the heat of the sun, a burning light that offends his eyes. The activity of the Lilliputians is a confused noise as they assault his body, pricking his skin with arrows that, to Gulliver, seem to be tiny needles. Carnochan finds this image of Gulliver as the prisoner of the Lilliputians to resonate with Locke's epistemology, for here Swift presents an image of the man of sense-perceptions gone mad. In Swift's dramatization of Locke's epistemology, Gulliver regresses to the period of early infancy, an early developmental stage where one has no control over one's body. This is the time when, Locke says, "One spends the greater part of their time in sleep, and are seldom awake, but when either hunger calls for the teat, or pain...forces the mind to perceive, and attend to it." Like a newborn child, Gulliver awakens in Lilliput to a world dominated by a variety of sense-perceptions including vision and hearing, hunger and pain. Gulliver's condition in Book One may be considered as a symbol of the Lockeian man in the early stages of cognitive development , the period in which the mind is hardly more than a blank slate.

In the second book of Travels, Gulliver journeys to Brobdingnag, where he continues to experience the world through his senses. Compared to the Brobdingnagian giants, he is as small in this land as the Lilliputians were to him in his first voyage. Swift shows that Gulliver's ability to perceive reality has changed, as his senses are now super-acute. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver's ability to see and smell the world around him is refined to the ultimate degree: he notes his awareness of the offensive smell coming from the maids of honor and records the revulsion he felt when he beheld their naked bodies; he sees the physical imperfections of the people of Brobdingnag easily, the blemishes on their skin as well as the hairs on their bodies; this is a world where all the senses are sharpened in proportion to his littleness. Throughout his stay in Brobdingnag, Gulliver's super-acute sense-perceptions continually place him in danger, as the music of the court strikes him as being so loud that he feels that even the full force of the Royal Army could not equal it. In addition, Gulliver is continually surrounded by potentially painful sensations, as his life is threatened in simple occurrences like a shower of hail.

As a consequence of his stay in this country where his perceptions are augmented so radically, his progressive alienation from the world of the English people is furthered. This phenomenon, too, was predicted by Locke, who said: "Were our sense altered and made much quicker and acuter, the appearance and outward scheme of things would have quite another face to us and, I am apt to think, would be inconsistent with our being." This statement corresponds well with the image of Gulliver in Brobdingnag, for he is precisely in the predicament as that which Locke predicted. Having fallen out of the world he normally habitats, in journeys through a world in which he can no longer function, other than be gawked at because his sense-perceptions do not correspond with the world in which he lives. Eventually, Gulliver learns to adjust to the country, but as a result of his adjustment his return from Brobdingnag is much more difficult than his return from Lilliput. Finding his countrymen to be more contemptible than humanized, Gulliver's experience resonates with Locke's belief that there is no knowledge that is natural or innate in humanity. Gulliver is unable to readjust to the proportions of the English world after his voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag. He is unable to grasp that he has been restored to his original country and reacts to his wife and daughter as if they, too, were sixty feet tall like the Brobdingnagian giants. At the same time, he looks at the English countryside and is reminded of the dimensions of Lilliput.

In many ways Travels can be read as a rebuttal to the philosophy Locke promotes in his Essay. This side of Swift's work can be seen best in the final book of the Travels, where Swift presents Locke's epistemology in a satirical form, depicting the ultimate consequence of the understanding of human nature through sense-perception. After his return from the land of the Houyhnhnm horse-people, Gulliver, having been repulsed for so long by the humanlike countenance of the Yahoos, comes to look upon his own features with disgust: "[I await the day when I will be able to] behold my own figure often in a glass, and thus if possible habituate myself...to tolerate the sight of a human creature." With his return home after this final voyage, Swift reveals that Gulliver's approach to self-understanding on the basis of Locke's epistemology has led to his succumbing to a misanthropic and morally deluded image of human nature, placing him in a world in which he can find no satisfaction. To illustrate the potential dangers that underlie the acceptance of Locke's epistemology, Swift uses this literary narrative to reveal the problems inherent in Locke's theory of sense-perceptions. In the end, these portions of Travels may be read as a Swiftian parody of Locke's belief that his epistemological framework can be offered as the foundation of human existence.





Gulliver's Travels Book Three: A Voyage to Laputa and the Linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure



Before we begin our reading of the third section of Swift's narrative, a digression into the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) will be necessary. In his Course in General Linguistics (1906-1911), Saussure posited a conception of the sign that contained a curious paradox. According to Saussure, the sign is made up of two components, the signifier and the signified. In linguistic terms, the signifier is a word that indicates either a material object or a concept, while the signified is the material object that is indicated by these words. In this way the complete sign is a binary construction, forges from the combination of signifier and signified. It is impossible for the value of a signifying term to be permanently fixed since, Saussure says, the relationship between signifier and signified is an arbitrary one. As a result there is no possibility of reaching an exact correspondence of value between sign and signifier, or between objects and words.

In addition, whenever words are said to correspond to concepts it can be shown, in all cases, that these relationships are purely differential; that is, they are defined negatively, in relation to other linguistic terms. This means that the context of a word is derived by comparison to those meanings that exist outside of it. As a result, the most precise characteristic of a word is in being what other words are not. In Saussure's linguistic universe, then, the most dominant values are those of opposition and difference, although some oppositions are more significant than others. Language, Saussure cautions us, is a form and not a substance; this edict is not to be overlooked, for at the root of all mistaken linguistic theories is the assumption that the linguistic phenomenon must already possess a substance. As seen in Book Three of Gulliver's Travels, the people of Laputa make exactly this mistake.

Many of the experiments in the Lagado Academy are performed by reversing the order of things: sunlight is derived from cucumbers; human waste becomes food that is ready to eat; a house is constructed from the top down; doctors cure sickness by replacing the internal with the external. In addition, many of the techniques developed in Lagado are experiements with language. Gulliver witnesses the workings of a machine that can produce a book automatically, realizing the desire of what Richard Rodino calls "perfect reader gratification through the creation of a text utterly free of authorial control." Taking a visit to the school of language, Gulliver describes the kind of experimentation in this field, where a perfect language is being developed. The scheme of a perfect language is presented in Laputa, as various members of the Lagado Academy conceptualize language is ways that attempt to eliminate lengthy discourses and other such problems inherent in communication.

Here Swift proposes a language in which speakers must have all the objects they wish to signify in the course of a conversation, literally, at hand. The plan for a language is created in imitation of Adamic language, where a perfect correspondence betweem sign and signifier allowed words to express the essence of the objects they designated. In Saussureian term this is a language where difference, which plays such a crucial role in Saussure's structural linguistics, has been eliminated. Curiously, this language theory may be seen as another example of Swift satirizing the work of Locke, in this case his theory of language. Under Locke's theory of signification, words and ideas were seen as signifiers and signifieds, and these two categories mirror one another. Swift alludes to Locke's philosophy of language directly when he says that all things imaginable are but nouns. Here Swift does what Saussure would do over one hundred years later, breaking with Locke's language theory by differentiating between sign and sign-content, between material concepts and material objects, and this allowed him to posit a differential system whereby meaning could be derived according to an individual's encounter with the world. While Saussure sets up a linguistic world differentiation and opposition, where the meanings of words are circumscribed by their differences to one another, the language Swift presents in Travels humorously described what language would be like if Locke's language theory was correct.

According to William Bowman Piper, the most prevalent elements in Travels are the disparities between language and experience. If this concept of language were actually realized, communication between people would not be more precise but would be absolutely impossible. This, says Pipe, may be seen as the effect of the communicative chasm that separates the people of the Lagado Academy from the experience of life, a distance that represents the differences between the accumulated ideas of Lagadio and those experiences which Gulliver brings with him from Europe, a set of ideas that marks him as a foreigner. Cowards and Ellis interpret Swift's comical presentation of this perfect language as a satirical attack on the Royal Society, whose members felt they could attain a true understanding of the world through an appropriately scientific philosophical discourse. In keeping with this point, Swift's text can be shown to work in terms of the communicative paradigm later advocated by Saussure, a paradigm shift that involved a radical break with the great champion of the Royal Society, John Locke.

Returning to our discussion of Locke, we finds that he saw language as having three main purposes: "To make known one man's thoughts to another, to do it with as much ease and quickness as possible and to thereby convey the knowledge of things." In keeping with Locke's definition, Swift portrays a language whose prime purpose is one of conveying thought from one person to another, which he satirically presents through a literalized metaphor, as the people who use this language become pack-horses who carry giant sacks containing all the objects they wish to indicate. While the above statement carries the weight of Locke's firm conviction and even self-assurance, Piper says that Locke grew ambivalent about the communicative process he outlined so confidently and, in the same essay, he came to alter his tone significantly. Eventually, Locke's skepticism of the link between words and ideas came to be reflected in his belief that, when people speak with one another, their speech usually refers to the things in their own imaginations, not to things as they really are. This is in direct contrast to Saussure, who proposes a theory of language where signs are both arbitrary and differential. Like the language theorists of Lagado, philosophers like Locke attempt to inhibit the production of difference by creating a language in which signifieds dominate to the exclusion of signifiers. In this way a universal language is created when the human mind if prevented from legitimizing any conceptual differences. This language, Swift ironically proposes, is the realization of a language that can be easily comprehended by all.

In simplifying Locke's picture of the communicative chain, Saussure formulated a viable alternative to Locke's theory of communication by altering it slightly. Conceptualizing language as a system that is both arbitrary and differential, Saussure allowed Locke's category of things to be replaced with the category of words, thereby forming a link between ideas and words and, simultaneously, situating both speaker and hearer in a non-subjective communicative space where the link between words and things is not subjected to various perspectives, as is Locke's link between ideas and things. In this way the structural linguistics of Saussure decreases the intricacies of Locke's philosophy of language, a system that passes through two sets of external elements, ideas and words, and back to what was originally posited, the original things themselves. Saussure altered Locke's definition by positing a relationship between speaker and hearer where the speaker, who encodes his ideas into words, is decoded by the hearer, who trasnlates his words into ideas. In Swift's parody of the Lockian communicative process, individuals who wish to speak to one another are unable to acts as interpreters, effectively excluding them as members of the communicative process.

The Academics of Lagado dream of a world that would inhibit the use of language in two ways. Not only would this language prevent people from facing the challenge of developing their ideas as clearly as language will allow, they are prevented from interpreting and judging the ideas that are set before them. While Carnochan in uncertain of Swift's motivating in composing his satirical attack on Locke's philosophy, he notes that Swift saw the work of his contemporaries, such as the anthropologist Edwards Tyson and the philosopher John Kirby as putting the notion of truth into doubt. Perhaps Swift had similar feelings about the man he called the 'judicious' Mr. Locke. Swift critiques the implicit nominalist or anti-essentialist outlook contained in Locke's philosophy through his description of the Academy in Laputa, where intellectuals plan to eliminate those words that do not designate material things. We shall explore Swift's critique of Locke's nominalist approach to language in greater detail in the next section of this essay.





Gulliver's Travels, Book Four: The Houyhnhnms and the Semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce



Unlike Locke or Saussure, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) conceived of the sign as something that is detahced from both linguistic experience and the communicative chain that stretches producer and receiver; he warns the interpreter against constructing an analysis of the sign limited to any one language. Both Lock's nominalism and Saussure's structuralism are simply insufficient compared to Peirce's method of semiotic analysis for Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In Peirce's semiotics, the interpretation of the sign is derived, not from its immediate linguistic reference, but from the relation between the sign itself and the object that is signified. In addition, Peirce's semiotic system includes the proposition that any additional thing that refers to an object is also a sign. In this way, Peirce's semiotics differs from that of Locks and Saussure in that the theory of communication advocated by Peirce erases the linguistic privilege held by the interpreter.

Although the linguitic components of human communication have been removed, Peirce's semiotics is stilll relevant to the communicative process. According to Jurgen Habermas, what remains are chains of "depersonalized sign sequences in which every sign refers as interpreted to the foregoing sign." Perice calls this kind of sign that refers to another sign in the communicative chain as an index. By indicating signs that exist independently of linguistic reference and can be used to stand in place of linguistic expressions, Peirce expands the borders of semiotic analysis to incorporate nonlinguistic features and meaningful actions such as gestures. Like actions performed through speech, gestures can be interpreted on the pre-existing model of the linguistic sign. By opening the sign up to exytraverbal forms of experience, Peirce allows one to see that even nonlinguistic structures of communication are open to interpretation and, potentially, are agents of communication in their own right.

John Sena finds that Travels abounds with such non-verbals forms of communication. His essay, "The Language of Gestures in Gulliver's Travels" shows how Swift makes nonlinguistic gestures into an important textual component. He says that Swift uses gestures as a means of communication between Gulliver and the individuals he meets in his voyages. By employing various gestures when he meets the inhabitants of Lilliput, Brobdingnag and Houyhnhnmland, Gulliver is able to speak their language to the extent that he is able to make himself intelligble. Sena claims that Travels exceeds all other fictional works in its ability to demonstrate the efficiency of gestures as a performative speech-act. In fact, Sena goes as far as to claim that Gulliver's use of these non-linguistic gesture are a form of communication that is "superior to either the written or spoken forms of language."

As evidence for his thesis, Sena offers the fact that from the many creatures Gulliver encounters, from six-inch high people to intelligent horses, all are able to interpret his gestures correctly. In all the countries Gulliver travels to, this same language of gestures transcends geographical distinctions. There are no instances in which a single gesture is found to possess two meaning that contradict one another. Book One features a communication gap between Gulliver and the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput. No matter what language Gulliver uses, he is unable to speak to the Lilliputians. He tries a number of European languages including French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch but, Swift says, "All to no purpose." While Gulliver and the Lilliputians have different languages, the gestural language they do share is able to supplement the communicative process, for Gulliver finally makes himself clear through these non-linguistic signs. During Gulliver's first weeks in Lilliput he is only able to participate in their non-verbal communicative universe, a time when the use of gestures assumes an all-important status.

At the beginning of the book, when Gulliver regains consciousness, he finds himself tied to the ground and begins to panic. Letting out a great road, Gulliver causes the Lilliputians to flee fvrom the giant man-mountain, until one member of this diminutive group returns and communicates with Gulliver by lifting up his hands and eyes by way of admiration. When the Lilliputian leader desires to communicate with Gulliver he has his soldiers cut the tiny ropes that constrict Gulliver's movements, enabling the Englishman to turn his head to observe his gestures as he speaks. Gulliver repeatedly informs the reader that he is unable to comprehend the language that his captors are using. However, the Lilliputians can infer Gulliver's meanings from his expressions of promises, pity and kindness. From Gulliver's observations, we see that gestures are able to convey more than the basic desires, but are able to connote the complex emotional attitudes of pity and kindness.

With this gesture Gulliver convinces the Lilliputians of his peaceful nature. He then makes known his hunger by putting his finger to his mouth and represented his thirst by making a sign that he wants a drink. Soon, Gulliver sees that his gestures have successfully conveyed the words he was unable to communicate. Before the arrival of the Imperial Majesty of Lilliput, the Lilliputians give Gulliver a sign that he should cease his eating and drinking. Gulliver then attempts to convey his desire for freedom by "making a sign with the hand that was loose, putting it to the other...and then to my own head and body, to signify that I desired my liberty." Interpreting this gesture correctly, the Imperial Majesty expresses his reply negatively, posing his body "in a posture to show that I should have meat and drink enough, and very good treatment."

This conversation in gestures contains the basic structure of the process Gulliver goes through in each one of his voyages. Through a variety of mimic gestures Gulliver is not only able to represent actions like eating and drinking but is able to communicate the distress he feel at being tied down like a prisoner. Sena defines mimic gestures as physical movements that imitate an action so clearly that it is easily recognizable to anyone who observes it. However, Gulliver does not communicate through mimic gestures exclusively, he also uses what Sena calls symbolic gestures. These are gestures that are specific to a group of people within a certain historical period and, as a result of their specificity, the significance of these gestures is confined to a limited number of individuals. Unlike linguistic words, whose meanings may be learned without having had direct experience of the object, symbolic gestures are difficult to interpret without having experienced the cultural context from which these gestures are derived. The use of symbolic gestures occurs when Gulliver, in trying to assure the Lilliputians of his placid temperment, presents a submissive manner, lifting up his left hand and both eyes to the sun, as if calling on God to witness his (non-verbal) declaration of truthfulness.

This gesture is unlike the actions mimicked by Gulliver in the earlier examples, and its effectiveness as a communicative sign rests on the assumption that the Lilliputians view similarly to the view Gulliver himself holds. This is a gesture that does not carry the same essential significance from culture to culture as does the gesture of pointing to one's mouth an imitating the consumption of food. In allowing this symbolic gesture to be effective as a communicative action, Swift reveals that when Gulliver raises his hand he indicates something that transcends the culture to which he belongs. Swift also betrays an assumption he makes of the Lilliputians; he assumed that they place a high value on human life. That Swift freely mixes his use of mimic gestures with symbolic gestures shows that he did not consider these two gestures to be in separate categories; rather, he allowed both type of gestures to be contained within a single communicative category. Sena attributes this quality in Swift's work to the fact that specific human gestures were not classified and analyzed untuil later in the eighteenth century. According to Sena, the people of Swift's time assumed that gestures were understood regardless of the social, cultural or anthropological spheres one inhabited. In his portrayal of a man who communicates easily through both mimic and symbolic gestures, Swift composed a text that simultaneously displayed a learned ability to discriminate between a number of languages and betrayed his ignorance of the fine distinctions between different cultures.

In the final book of Travels, where Gulliver enters the society of the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses, Swift employs an even greater range of communicative gestures than in the first three books. In each of the books, Gulliver's basic problem was one of using gestures to communicate with creatures that do not speak his language, but when Gulliver learns that the Houyhnhnms have their own language, he decides to gain competence in their language in order to communicate with them. When Gulliver encounters an Houyhnhnm for the first time, Swift takes this opportunity to write a lengthy account of communication through gestural language. While in the first three books of Travels the relaying of gestures enables Gulliver to communicate with other human creatures, the final books uses gestures to emphasize the anthropomorphic quality of the actions taken by non-human creatures. While the reader always conceives of a Houyhnhnm based on the image of a horse, Gulliver's description of their conduct humanizes them by drawing a correspondence between the movement of their equine bodies and the apparent rationality of their mannerisms. Swift does this by characterizing the horse's expression as one of wonder, by showing how the two horses walked together like person deliberating upon some affair of weight and by describing the sounds they made as the gestures of a philosopher.

When Gulliver eventually learns enough of the Houyhnhnm language to be able to converse, the leader of the Houyhnhnms requests to learn the culture and history of England. Gulliver willingly complies, but find that he has a difficult time translating this narrative of English history into the Houyhnhnm's language because they do not have words to convey many of the concepts Gulliver wishes to express. As Gulliver says, "Power, government, war, law, punishment and a thousand other things had no terms...which made the difficulty almost insuperable to give my Master any conception of what I meant." This presentation of the obstacles in communicating between Gulliver and the Houyhnhnms reveals another assumption Swift makes regarding language, that the structure of the language one uses is shaped by the moral attitudes of the speaker. The fact that the Houyhnhnms are a truly noble race is signaled by the fact that their language does not contain any distinctions between class and morality. The Houyhnhnms' freedom from the hierarchical system of power is symbolized b y their language, which is free from such words. Gulliver has such difficulty in translating his knowledge of English society into the Houyhnhnm's language that, finally, he is compelled to resort to circumlocutions. Only by making the most verbally effusive statements is the Houyhnhnm able to comprehend the meaning of his description of English life, although the entire process takes several days of intense conversation in order to transmit these ideas.

As this section has shown, the nonverbal language of gestures is of crucial importance in allowing Gulliver to communicate with the creatures he encounters in his voyages. Ultimately, the knowledge obtained from a comprehensive examination of how these non-linguistic signs function within the text is indispensible for the scholar who wishes to evaluate this text properly.





Conclusions: Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels as the Search for a Communicative Utopia



Through his voyages in four different lands Gulliver is exposed to a variety of semiotic systems. However, at the end of the book Gulliver is where he began, still a commoner in England, but now in a poor state of psychological health. Is this a man who has found a communicative utopia ? Only under certain conditions, then, can Gulliver's Travels be read as the search for a communicative utopia. In Deborah Wyrick's view, a reading of Gulliver's journey as the search for a communicative utopia must be viewed ironically since Swift's writings on language have been shown to contain his most conservative values. In corroboration with this statement, we have seen how Swift parodies those philosophies that propose to guarantee the effectiveness of communication, which is a conservative tactic, not a revolutionary or idealistic one.

In particular, our understanding of Swift's correction of Locke's doctrine of communication is beneficial in that it helps us to understand Travels as a masterpiece of satire. As we have seen, in his revision of Locke's theory of language, Swift unknowingly prefigures Saussure's theory of structural linguistics. Now that we know that Peirce's semiotics transcends the field of linguistics, might we suppose that Peirce is superior to both Locke and Saussure ? Rather than doing this, we should be wary of privileging one order of signification over another. If history has shown anything, says Wyrick, it has shown that all semiotic systems are destined to an inevitable devaluation. Perhaps this is what Jonathan Swift meant when he wrote, in a letter to Alexander Pope, that he heard of an Irish bishop who, having read Travels, declared that he "hardly believed a word of it."

On The Taming of the Shrew

"To kill a wife with kindness": The Assignment of Verbal Identity in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew



Unlike the two other plays I have analyzed previously, The Taming of the Shrew does not have to do with the erosion of the power of a monarch; rather this play comically represents the process through which male authority is imposed on women in a marital relationship. Whereas a play like Richard II portrays a king who falls into decline after the breakdown of the structure of authority, Shrew focuses on the development of an authoritarian structure between husband and wife and shows how the woman is confined in the institutuion of marriage. Through the comedic presentation of a marriage made between a greedy husband and a protesting wife, Shakespeare shows his audience how a law-wielding husband transforms a shrewish woman into the model of a compliant wife. The essay examines the methods Petruchio uses to install his authority over a woman who resists all such attempts. Specifically, we willl examine the linguistic strategies Petruchio employs to assign Kate the stable identity of the tame wife. However, before we proceed with a reading of Shakespare's play, we will look at an important supplementary document from the sixteenth century, "An Homily on the State of Matrimony." Our examination of this document will open up the question that concern the notion of gender-identities and why the assignation of these identities, as conceptualized in the Elizabethan consciousness of Shakespare's day, led to the creation of martial relationships based on the power relations of dominance and subjugation.

The official doctrine of the Church of England, "An Homily on the State of Matrimony," reveals the organization of the ideological consciousness of Shakespare's time. It proscribes the woman's place in marriage in the following terms:

The husband ought to be the leader and author of love. For

the woman is a weak creature, not endued with the strength and constancy

of mind; therefore they be the sooner disquieted, and they be all the more

prone to all weak affections and dispositions of mind, more than men be;

and lighter they be, and more vain in their fantasies and opinions. She is

the weaker vessel, of a frail heart, inconstant, and with a word soon

stirred to wrath.

In this passage the writer declares that women are inferior to men - physically, emotionally and intellectually. As a direct result of their secondary status, it is the husband who must take the lead in governing the marriage, the success of which may be taken as a qualitative measure of the love the husband has for his wife. Taking Biblical scripture as direct evidence of this inferiority, the writer cites St. Paul, who declared that women "should be subject to their husbands, as to the Lord: for the husband is the head of women, as Christ is the head of the Church." In this way Paul draws an analogy between husband and wife and the characteristics of authority and submissiveness. The use of this analogy is a particularly effective parallelism for a writer who, as a government representative, wants to advocate the maintenance and preservation of the governing system. With the acceptance of the ideology promoted in this homily, the subjugation of the wife to the dominant husband becomes the model for the loyalty the ideal citizen is expected to show to the ruling authority.

Later on in this same essay, arguing that women ought to remain eternally conscious of their secondary status, the writer advocates the idea that women should dress themselves to display their "subjugation, shamefacedness and sobriety." The writer of this tract represents the position of women in English society as, essentially, one of subjugation to the authority of the male. In prescribing a relationship between husbands and wives based on these unequal positions, this document advocates the development of a code of legality that could serve as the adjudicatory basis for the marital relationship -- in reality, a code used by the husband to govern his wife. The idea that women are 'weaker vessels', fragile both in terms of physiognomy and psychology, will be a source of great humor in The Taming of the Shrew, as Petruchio uses his authority to reshape the very reality that Kate perceives.

Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona who is looking for a woman rich enough to be his wife, comes to the town of Padua to visit his friend Hortensio. Eager to help his friend, Hortensio tells Petruchio that Baptista Minola has an eligible daughter, Katherina, a woman who is "shrewd and froward...beyond all measure" [I.ii.87]. Motivated by his avarice, Petruchio is undeterred by this warning and resolves to marry her to ensure his financial security. Coming upon Baptista and his daughters, Petruchio declares his intentions to Katerina's father, who is at first skeptical that Petruchio can accomplish this feat. When the would-be couple first meet, Petruchio immediately displays the main tactic he will employ for this seduction, his facility with language. When Baptista's daughter first introduces herself as 'Katerina', Petruchio responds:

You lie, in faith, for you are called plain Kate,
And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst.
But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,
Kate of Kate-Hall, my super-dainty Kate,
For dainties are all cates, and therefore, Kate,
Take this of me, Kate of my consolation:
Hearing thy mildness praised in every town,
Thy virtues spoken of, and thy beauty sounded,
Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,
Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife
[II.i.185-194].

Reducing Katerine to her nick-name, Petruchio refuses to grant her the dignity of her full name and her full status as a person; he repeats this truncated version of her name over and over and even makes a play on the name 'Kate' and its homonym, 'cates'. This is the first strategy Petruchio employs in taming this shrewish woman. By repeating her name several times, he attempts to project on her a series of fantasy-identities, illuminating a different dimension of her personality with each usage. With these novel reconfigurations of her name, Petruchio designates Kate as incorporating a multiplicity of characteristics, some of which are in striking opposition to one another. Paradoxically, Kate is at one plain and pretty, dainty and voluptuous, saintly and accursed. By showing off his penchant for linguistic play, Petruchio proposes a series of verbal identities, thereby creating a linguistic world where Kate's name passes through a series of repetitions in a process of continual transformation. This critic interprets Petruchio's speech as an attempt to cast a haze over Kate's perception of herself, clouding over her sense of linguistic equilibrium and undermining her faith in a stable self-identity. Returning to the "Homily on Marriage," one recalls that at this time it was a legitimate cultural practice to marginalize the woman's position in the world, restricting her knowledge of herself to such an extent that she was unable to do anything independently, even to dress as she liked. Knowing how the Elizabethan culture worked to repress women's sense of their own individuality, one can see how this speech, which calls for the expansion of female being to incorporate a great range of identities, is meant to appeal to Kate.

This attempt proves unsuccessful, as Kate refuses to be succumb to Petruchio's attempt to dominate her by poeticizing her name. As proof of the strength of her own linguistic faculties, Kate begins a war of words and engages in a verbal dialogue with Petruchio, a converstion in which their mutual verbal sparring leads to ribal puns that border on obscenity. This conversation ends with Kate striking Petruchio, something that would be, under the official doctrine of the Church of England, an act of treachery that would threaten to detabilize the structured system of gender-relations. After this verbal battle, Kate petitions her father not to carry through with her marriage to Petruchio, whom she believes to be "half lunatic, / A madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack" [II.i.289-90]. Not listening to his daughter's pleas, Baptista sets the wedding for the coming Sunday. Yet on the day of the wedding, to the distress of Katherine, Petruchio is nowhere to be found. As we learn from Biondello's description, when Petruichio finally arrives, he has dressed himself in the costume of a fool, and rode a dilapidated old horse [III.ii.42-67].

When Baptista questions whether he is going to marry Kate in such an ill-suited outfit, Petruchio responds, "To me she's married, not unto my clothes. / Could I repair what she will wear in me / As I can change these poor accouterments, / 'Twere well for Kate and better for myself" [III.ii.113-116]. Gremio relates how Petruchio continued to disturb the wedding ceremony with his unconventional behavior: when the priest asks him if he will accept Katherina as his wife, Petruchio responds with a blasphemous oath and when the shocked priest drops the Bible from his hands, he steps forward and knocks the priest down with his fist. Petruchio's irrational behavior continues into the wedding feast and Gremio sums up the whole scene, saying, "Such a mad marriage never was before" [III.ii.178]. The unpredictable Pretruchio announces his plans to depart immediately after the wedding and, when Katherina says, "...if you love me, stay," Petruchio responds, "Gremio, my horse !" [III.ii.199-200]. Not only has Petruchio forced Kate to marry him, he has also gained the upper hand, placing her at his beck and call by absenting himself from her presence. While making his departure, Petruchio claims Katherina to be his unequivocal possession: "She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house / My household stuff, my field, my barn, / My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything" [III.ii.226-229].

When the newlyweds begin their wedded life, Petruchio exaggerates this unpredictable, irrational behavior even further: he beats his servants, rejects the meals prepared for him and makes demands of everyone around him. Meanwhile, as the result of her husband's illogical actions, Kate has been reduced to an automaton, uncertain what to make of the realities of her own existence: "...she, poor soul, / Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak, / And sits as one new-risen from a dream" [IV.1.171-173]. At the end of this scene, Petruchio appears before the audience and announces that his actions and the intractable persona he has displayed have all been tactical measures of his part. By taking on these characteristics, he will be able to position his own authority over Kate's independently-minded female self: "This is the way to kill a wife with kindness, / And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humor. / He that knows better how to tame a shrow, / Now let him speak: 'tis charity to show" [IV.i.195-198].

All of the incidents related above are only preparations for the next scene, wherein Petruchio forces Kate's will to bend, affirming her acceptance of his authority in a moment of transformation that redefines the relationship between husband and wife. This redefinition is symbolically represented in the scene where Petruchio irrationally proclaims the sun to be the moon: "Come on, a God's name, once more toward our father's. / Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon !" [IV.v.1-2]. Finding fault with Petruchio's logic once again, Kate disagrees with his perception of the world, saying that the sun is not the moon just because he says it is. When Hortensio encourages Kate to agree with her husband, she decides to change her strategy. From now on, she decides that whatever Petruchio declares to be true, shall be true for her as well. However, a later incident illustrates the problems that Kate will encounter as a result of her agreement to this bargain where her intellectual abilities are subjugated to the reasoning powers of her husband.

These problems are reveals in the same scene when, eager to corroborate her husband's perception of the world, Kate agrees with Petruchio when he declares an aged man to be a young maiden. Upon meeting Vincentio, Lucentio's father, Petruchio says, "Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, / Hast thou ever beheld a fresher gentlewoman ?" [IV.v.28-29]. But the moment Kate affirms this false picture of reality and agrees to these obvious untruths, Petruchio corrects her and explains that this person is actually an old man. Kate replies, "Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes / That hath been so bedazzled with the sun / That everything I look on seemeth green" [IV.v.44-46]. Although she had originally agreed with her husband's illogical propositions for the sake of propriety, this passage reveals Kate's entrapment in a system where she subjects her will to the dominance of her husband's wishes. What was a bargain made to ensure expediency has now become a constant that legislates her fundamental lack of power in the marriage, her disenfranchisement in the heirarchy of authority in gender-relations. In his linguistic revisions of the world, Petruchio attempts to promote his own authority over his wife, showing her that she can no longer rely on her own independent ability to perceive the world.

It is a question of some debate whether Shakespare intends us to see Kate's situation as indicative of an authrntic transformation where Kate has been 'bedazzled' by Petruchio's manipulation of the world or whether her individuality is still intact, preserved behind a screen of irony. Regardless of this distinction, it must be seen that her complicity with Petruchio's linguistic system indicates that she has been affected by her experience in a language-game played out under his rules; Kate comes to be confined in a linguistic reality dominated by a masculine-centered consciousness. This difference between these two linguistic systems, male and female, is created by Petruchio who, as a connoissuer of linguistic play, makes a series of irrational declarations with the intent to alter Kate's view of authority by subverting her sense of linguistic reality and replacing it with his own. According to Stephen W. Littlejohn, the complete sentence, a basic unit of human communication, contains illocutionary force "designed to fulfill an intention vis-a-vis another person." These are normative speech-acts which are designed to perform a function, such as giving information, making a promise, issuing an order, and giving advice. He also defines a second group of speech-acts, perloctionary acts, which are "speech-acts that involve an effect or a consequence the hearer." With these definitions in mind, one can see that Petruchio's use of language in his dialogue with Kate possesses perlocutionary force. In his declaration that the sun is the moon, or that an old man is a young virgin, he intends Kate to move into a different plan of existence altogether.

When Petruchio makes any of the statements described above, he forces Kate to subsume her being into a reality organized by the masculine consciousness; for this reason the speeched he makes are assigned the quality of perlocutionary communicative force. The deployment of these speech-acts has the effect that Petruchio's covetousness is rewarded, as Late turns out to be the most obedient wife, rather than the one who is most 'shrewish'. Through a series of perlocutionary speech-acts, he is able to invoke the male's legislative power of linguistic formation over Kate, subverting her rational experience of the world in order to inaugurate a new law, the male law that held dominance in Elizabethan society and throughout bourgeois Western civilization. Eager to possess Kate and become the possessor of her wealth, Petruchio radically re-defines her sense of equivalence between sign and object, delimiting her experience of the real through an inversion of oppositional structures of significance such as sun and moon, young and old, and virgin and patriarch.

In the larger cultural content, one can see here that the unequal balance of power between husband and wife, as codified in documents such as the 16th century homily on marriage, had significant effects on the status of womanhood. In the specific literary content of Shakespeare's drama, Petruchio's influence on the marital relationship determines the lignuistic and psychical formation of Kate, permitting the establishment of a mad logic where she is denied her fair rights and an equal ability to perceive through her own subjectivity. It is through his manipulation of the semiotic order of the world that Petruchio establishes his complete dominance over the linguistic realm, arranging the terms that represent the world according to his own private language-system. Here Shakespeare shows how the dominance of the male law transformed life into a chain of linguistic signs that could be manipulated by men, above and beyond the reach of women, who were then institutionalized within the constricting domain of a marriage between unequal partners. As we have seen, Petruchio assigns Kate a verbal identity by reinscribing her within language and reconfiguring the language-game that stabilizes her picture of the world. Although this play is a comedic presentation of the process where women are forced to abandon their individuality, Shakespares uses this dramatic action to criticize the unfair system of practices that were legitimized in English culture by documents such as the aforementioned Homily. It is important to keep in mind that this is a humorous portrayal of the process whereby a husband imposes on his wife a governing system where he stands at the center of her consciousness, her own authority having been displaced in deference to his greater 'stability' -- logically, linguistically and ideologically. These three features draw upon a common source of authority that keeps the woman sufficiently 'tame', the authority the male, which, in this case, is Petruchio himself.

On Deconstruction

Deconstruction: Putting the Truth Up For Grabs

What is deconstruction ? To what extent does deconstruction imply, as the subtitle of today's lesson has it, putting the truth up for grabs ? These are the questions I will be addressing in this essay. In 1966, at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Jacques Derrida delivered a lecture that, in many ways, announced the closure of modernism. In this lecture he declared, "This is a moment when language invades the universal problematic, where, in the absence of a center, everything becomes discourse--that is to say, a system in which the central signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences."

Today's readings demonstrate the link between the abstract thinking of communication theorists with the concrete notions of pedagogical and political practice. This development in thought blossomed into the movement known as poststructuralism. While this intellectual trend was first noticed by only a small group of people, it eventually became the dominant line of social thought, changing teaching methods in colleges and universities in the United States and around the world.

As we have seen from our readings in this course, the idea that the culture of modernism had limits, and the belief that these limitations needed to be transcended, are ideas that have been around since the earliest theoretical writings on modernism itself. Having begun our study of the history of modernism with the writings of Matthew Arnold and Friedrich Nietzsche, I feel it will be profitable to our discussion of deconstruction by returning to our conclusions regarding these individuals. As we remember, the distinction between Arnold and Nietzsche is one of extreme critical difference.

In Arnold's view, "The critic's task is to see the object as it really is and so promote an order of truth"; while Nietzsche asserts that, historically, truth has been nothing more than "A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms--a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory." As these passages illustrate, while Arnold continues to privilege the the idea of a central textual meaning, Nietzsche disagrees vehemently with such 'privileged' thinking, and takes the radical view that we are not entitled to this notion of the centrality of truth, for 'truth' is nothing more than an interpretation made from a particular perspective.

Nearly one hundred years later, emerging from this clash of critical wills, we find Jacques Derrida, who makes the Nietzschean statement that the project of modernity is itself unstable, for it lacks access to a privileged center of truth. According to Derrida:

"It has always been thought that the center, which is by definition

unique, constituted the very thing which while governing the structure,

escapes structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure

could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and

outside it. The center is at the center of the totality, and yet, since the

center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the

totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center. The

concept of centered structure...is contradictorily coherent."

While it appears that Derrida's critique of modernity is a Nietzschean devaluation of modernist culture and thinking, our readings for today show that Derrida's intended goals exceed even those of Nietzsche. Along with Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition (1979), which we will be reading later in this course, Derrida's lecture is considered to be among the earliest formulations of postmodernism, as it indicates a fundamental change in the individual's belief in the project of modernity.

Contrary to the somewhat inflamed rhetoric Derrida uses to construct the foundation of his philosophy, his plan for deconstruction is within the purview of modernist critics. Derrida's deconstruction does not entail, as popular myth would have it, the destruction of literary texts. Deconstruction is, in fact, markedly similar to the traditional modernist view of textual analysis. In various interviews, Derrida has explained that deconstruction is neither a technique or a system at all, nor is it an ism in an ideological sense (as in 'deconstructionism'); deconstruction is simply a close reading of a text, so close that the "shaping influences of the author's ideology are found within the workings of the literary text." This view of deconstruction stands somewhat opposed to that of another important critic, Paul de Man, who, viewing deconstruction somewhat more programmatically than Derrida, believes that literary critics are needed to deconstruct the "naive metaphysical mystifications" of literary texts. As we can see from today's readings, Derrida views deconstruction as having a multiplicity of philosophical motivations and historical concerns.

Today's readings supply us with additional ways of thinking about deconstruction, some of which are related to the progressive development of pedagogical institutions In Barbara Johnson's opinion, deconstruction can be used profitably in the teaching of literature. This is because, as a critical practice, it bears resemblance to the neo-Aristotelian school of criticism and, in key areas, it even exceeds the formal standards of this school. In this respect it resembles the critical practice envisioned by Edwin Black who, in Rhetorical Criticism (1964), suggested the need for a new critical approach that retained the critical methodology of neo-Aristotelianism while simultaneously allowing a critic to move beyond these standards and extend the temporal dimensions of textual dialogue. Johnson defends deconstruction against its detractors, who libel Derrida's concept by suggesting that it legitimizes a textual relativism, displacing the concept of meaning in favor of a free-ranging hermeneutical nihilism. Contrary to what some may think, Johnson argues, deconstruction is a principled and meaningful critical process whereby textual signification is carefully elucidated, showing precisely how meaning emerges out of a conflict of forces within the text.

Far from being eliminated, the deconstructive reading makes meaning multiple, and in so doing ends the tyranny of modernism that prescribes the existence of a central and univocal meaning behind the literary text. Through deconstruction, the literary text is able to promote a multiple range of meanings and significations. "A deconstructive reading," Johnson says, "makes evident the ways in which a text works out its complex disagreements with itself." As stated above, deconstruction is a way to read a text very closely; so close, Johnson says, that the critic can determine how the text arrives at its meanings, not simply what it means. The student who has assimilated deconstructive thinking into his or her critical methodology displays an exceptional critical acumen, for deconstruction teaches the student how to read the literary text as it is written, and not as it is reflected in canonical critical discourse. The student is enabled to be an active interpreter of a living text, rather than a passive recipient of a consensually agreed-upon meaning.

There are a number of facets of the deconstructive reading that allow possibilities of signification prohibited by the hermeneutics of modernism. These include elements of textual ambiguity, undecidability or incompatibility that a modernist reading, if confronted with these same elements, would marginalize or else totally ignore. Deconstruction, too, possesses a greater measure of critical self-reflection than the traditional modernist reading, enabling the interpretive process itself to become a suitable subject for contemporary fiction. Finally, Johnson adds, the deconstructive reading demonstrates that, regardless of how faithfully a critic might articulate the meaning of the text, the text always demonstrate how this interpretation TresistsU an authoritative judgment. Here the deconstructive critic experiences a direct confrontation with their own humanism. This humanism, Johnson says, is not a totalitarian demolition of meaning, but is the aporia of a critical "self-projection." Like Johnson, Leitch, too, believes a number of pedagogical benefits can be derived through training a student to read deconstructively. He cites Derrida's work with the Group for Research on Philosophic Teaching (GREPH) as an instance where Derrida gave his support to pedagogical institutions by re-affirming the importance of the study of philosophy in modern education. Derrida explicitly relates deconstruction and pedagogy when, in an essay written in 1975, he says, "Deconstruction has always had a bearing in principle on the apparatus and the function of teaching in general."

This, Leitch says, is Derrida's admission of the intrinsic link between deconstruction and teaching. Furthermore, unlike the shifting of power relations within the French universities, to which Derrida remains largely indifferent, when it comes to the critical affairs of pedagogy, he holds strong views on the need for direct action and insists that the individual exercise his or her political voice. As such, GREPH attempted to initiate a re-evaluation of the way teaching was done in schools.

Leitch believes that deconstruction may be considered Derrida's treatise on the need for educational institutions to undergo an epistemological revision. Leitch observes four fundamental theses in Derrida's plan to re-institutionalize the pedagogical order of things, beginning with the human sciences, philosophy and literature. These include the following propositions: (1) each field constitutes itself through the play of a number of forces; (2) each field reflects an inherently hierarchical system of values and differences; (3) each field, being a self-enclosed and self-contained discursive site, lack a privileged position from which we may view from 'outside' and; (4) radical change in the institution rarely produces favorable results. These theses, in addition to Derrida's speech to the Sorbonne in 1979, as well as his address at Columbia University in 1980, all serve to document Derrida's swing from a deconstruction of the metaphysics of literature to a deconstruction of the social-political assumptions associated with pedagogical inquiry.

By permitting deconstruction to address these pedagogical concerns, Derrida extends deconstruction's potential as a means of cultural critique. While Derrida surveys the development of cultural institutions on a macro level, intellectuals such as Roland Barthes work at the micro level of pedagogy, focusing on effective teaching strategies in the classroom. Barthes' critical project, one of "exploding and depropriating" the literary text, invites comparison with Derrida's deconstruction. Leitch says that Barthes attempts to put deconstructive readings to work in the classroom. According to Leitch, Barthes' depropriation of pedagogical discourse causes the student to recognize that "text is everywhere, but that all is no longer text." If Barthes' project for a deconstructive pedagogy contrasts with Derrida's critique of institutional structures, it is because Barthes takes a position as a lone radical, while Derrida attempts to alter existing hierarchies and pedagogical institutions through committed activism. Leitch feels that there are two features that Barthes and Derrida hold in common. One is the common desire to "break down the prevailing cycle of educational production and reproduction." The other is a belief that pedagogical institutions can be distinguished by their ability to criticize, a practice that is grounded in writing. "It is the power of writing," Leitch says, "which produces the grounds for critique and transformation."

Even though Derrida himself has spoken of his belief in deconstruction's potential benefits to pedagogy, what Johnson and Leitch say about the place of deconstruction in the educational institutions runs directly counter to statements made by Derrida himself. From such statements it would appear that Derrida would strongly disagree when a critic like Johnson and Leitch attempt to import deconstructive teaching into pedagogical institutions. Or would he? Perhaps Derrida made such these statements because he had misgivings about the implementation and institutionalization of a theory, any theory, into the abyss of modern culture. What many critics fail to perceive when they write on deconstruction is the rigorous ethical foundation behind its critical principles. The next section of this prec While Derrida's early commentaries on the practice of deconstruction often address the epistemological concerns of deconstruction, his later writings demonstrate his interest in the development of an ethics of postmodernity.

According to Richard Kearney, after 1972 Derrida's writing was supplemented by a concern for ethics, something that was largely absent from his earlier ontological-epistemological writings. In this respect Derrida contributes to the subject we have been studying in this course, a topic that also involves Heidegger and Levinas [see Bauman, Postmodern Ethics]. Kearney asserts that Derrida, like Levinas, places a central emphasis on the being of the other. In a lecture at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1986, Derrida remarked: "The thinking of the alterity of Being opens the space where being and time give themselves and give rise to thinking." In making this statement, Derrida recognizes the uncertain status of the other as the crux of the postmodern ethical dilemma. Kearney formulates this question succinctly, saying, "Is it the other-who-gives who invents me or is it I who invent the other-who-gives ?"

One of the original goals of deconstruction included the task of finishing the Heideggerian project of the destruction of metaphysics. As mentioned, around 1972 Derrida expanded on deconstruction's original goals, announcing the need to re-evaluate the deconstructive project in light of this ethical turn. This is accomplished, Kearney says, through Derrida's "rereading of Heidegger, the deconstructive turn, in the light of Levinas, an ethical re-turn." To substantiate his argument, Kearney will turn to Christopher Norris who, in his critical examination of Derrida's work, writes that "By pressing the aporias of metaphysics to the limits of conceptual explanation philosophy begins to perceive what lies beyond." This critical investigation and destruction of metaphysics, claims Norris, is what caused Derrida's work to pass from matters of ontology and epistemology into the realm of ethics. Like Levinas, Derrida believes that critical debate with ethical texts constitutes the highest ends of philosophical inquiry.

Why is deconstruction considered a morally nihilistic institution whose practitioners subscribe to a relativistic hermeneutics ? Perhaps it is perceived as such by people who have become wary of recent movements in literary criticism such as the 'reader-response' school of criticism which, on a surface level, appear to advocate the abolition of the idea of meaning itself. Indeed, in its incipient stages, Derrida promoted a view of deconstruction as a critical practice that regarded the very idea of meaning as a terrorist act. How could deconstruction not be mis-interpreted, when Derrida's peers failed to recognize the significance of deconstruction ? Michel Foucault is often remembered for having called Derrida's writings "an exercise in the terrorism of obscurity." Such an appreciation fails to observe the full extent of Derrida's remarks, including the revealing statement that "deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness but an openness towards the other." Any interpretation of deconstruction which fails to include this statement becomes, by necessity, a misinterpretation of Derrida's intentions.

Kearney pairs Derrida and Levinas as two Jewish writers who view ethical questions as being integrally bound up with questions of ontology. Derrida makes the claims that the thinking of Being can be used as a direct route to the ethical dimension of postmodern thought. Knowing that Heidegger viewed the ontological composition of human consciousness as composed of language, Derrida uses Heidegger to breach Levinas' ethical Weltanschauung, making the Levinasian statement that "The other precedes philosophy and necessarily invokes and provokes the subject before any genuine questioning can begin." The inauguration of ethics takes place only with this intermingling of the consciousness of self with that of the other. Believing that deconstruction is deeply concerned with the other of language, suddenly, what had appeared to be a number of projects in Derrida now shows itself to be a unified project of the cleansing of philosophical discourse through the elimination of unclear and prejudicial thought and, in particular, the logocentrism that is endemic to the Western philosophical tradition. In Of Grammatology (1967) Derrida reads Plato's Phaedrus as an early expression of the phonocentrism that rationalized that priority of spoken words over written language. As Derrida says in "Deconstruction and the Other," when words are used to communicate, both speaker and listener are assumed to be present to each other; this is a natural, living language that is opposed to the inert artificiality of lifeless words whose impure presence needs to be mediated by a reader in order to exist. The ideal of perfect self-presence with the immediate possession of meaning is expressed in the myth of phono-logocentric necessity. "The critique of logocentrism," says Derrida, "is above all else the search for the other." Kearney concurs, saying that if we are not awarew of this central feature in Derrida's thinking then we cannot but misunderstand deconstruction, which sees writing as ethical because literary texts are always already structurally open to the other.

How is this reflected in contemporary works of art ? In their article "Public Memorializing in Postmodernity: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial As Prototype," Blair, Jeppeson and Pucci write about the creation of a public memorial that reflected the postmodern condition that was discerned by thinkers like Derrida, Barthes and others. Discussing the use of memorials in recent cultural history, the authors suggest that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., displays a form of rhetorical power unlike memorials that followed more traditional principles of commemoration. By making the black, V-shaped wall the dominant feature of the Vietnam Memorial, Maya Lin was able to create a public memorial that was able to tap into and "appropriate the rhetoric of postmodern architecture." This was an unprecedented act of memorializing. The enthusiastic acceptance of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a distinctly non-traditional kind of memorial, speaks to the "significance of the emergent postmodern discourse."

Even though the monolithic dominance of the featureless wall is essentially a modernist gesture, the Vietnam Memorial take a radical departure from generic conventions; and, as a result, generates an aura of "postmodern monumentality." This is because, the authors say, the Vietnam Memorial avoids the seductive appeal of modernist narratives in favor of a postmodern view of narrative. In this way the Vietnam Memorial allows a multiplicity of voices to develop whenever a group of people, or even a single person, go to the wall. By entering into the work's space, the silence of the wall invites the individual to talk back in response. Like the Derridean ethics of deconstruction, the Vietnam memorial is a work of art that is structurally open to, and calls for a response from, the other. There is no central meaning behind the wall; the meaning of the memorial is an open question. In this sense, then, the truth, too, is an open question. The postmodernist version of truth is 'up for grabs' because postmodernity abandons the idea that meaning can be instituted without acknowledging the existence of ambiguity and uncertainty. Without commenting on modernity directly, postmodernism, like the Vietnam Memorial, questions by being and by differing.