Applying visual material to literary critique: An Example
Monday, 5 Sep 2016, 19:43
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Edited by Steve Bamlett, Tuesday, 6 Sep 2016, 09:14
This blog picks a great example of the use of visual material to discuss literature (Ruffell (2011) on Aristophanes) and then offers a visual as a critique of Aristophanes' Acharnaians.
Ruffell, I. (2011) Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old
Comedy: The Art the Impossible Oxford, Oxford University Press.
It
is difficult to overestimate the importance of this book as a genuine
step forward from the classic themes of postmodern criticism (such as playfulness or the carnivalesque) and postmodern precursor-theorists such as Bahktin. The theory is
applied much more meaningfully here than elsewhere (Platter 2007, for instance)
because the book illustrates, at length but ever so clearly, a thesis: that
classical Greek comic art proposes the 'impossible' (a realm of absurdist anti-reality) as a means of re-interpreting social reality and opening it up to the possibility of change.
It is, in
short, about how a particular audience was asked to engage with theatrical representation as a means of understanding the
worlds they themselves 'improbably' represented (the world of Athenian participatory or direct
democracy).
It is the first text I know to use connectionist networks to
describe the function and operation of a play’s structural themes (see p 187
for an example on the polis and oikos connections in Knights). These networks
are used in psychology to describe the patterns of 'association' that explain human belief in the meaningfulness of cognitive representation without invoking the 'folk psychology' of belief, thinking, perception or memory themselves. Comedy, he
concludes, ‘may not be able to change the world, but it can certainly shape our
perception of it and with that comes the potential for change (429).’
Acharnians is studied throughout and its importance seen. However, much that is
said about other plays (such as Knights) is transferable (even the network
diagrams and I have therefore attempted such an adaptation of his visual method here).
Applying visual material to literary critique: An Example
This blog picks a great example of the use of visual material to discuss literature (Ruffell (2011) on Aristophanes) and then offers a visual as a critique of Aristophanes' Acharnaians.
Ruffell, I. (2011) Politics and Anti-Realism in Athenian Old Comedy: The Art the Impossible Oxford, Oxford University Press.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this book as a genuine step forward from the classic themes of postmodern criticism (such as playfulness or the carnivalesque) and postmodern precursor-theorists such as Bahktin. The theory is applied much more meaningfully here than elsewhere (Platter 2007, for instance) because the book illustrates, at length but ever so clearly, a thesis: that classical Greek comic art proposes the 'impossible' (a realm of absurdist anti-reality) as a means of re-interpreting social reality and opening it up to the possibility of change.
It is, in short, about how a particular audience was asked to engage with theatrical representation as a means of understanding the worlds they themselves 'improbably' represented (the world of Athenian participatory or direct democracy).
It is the first text I know to use connectionist networks to describe the function and operation of a play’s structural themes (see p 187 for an example on the polis and oikos connections in Knights). These networks are used in psychology to describe the patterns of 'association' that explain human belief in the meaningfulness of cognitive representation without invoking the 'folk psychology' of belief, thinking, perception or memory themselves. Comedy, he concludes, ‘may not be able to change the world, but it can certainly shape our perception of it and with that comes the potential for change (429).’
Acharnians is studied throughout and its importance seen. However, much that is said about other plays (such as Knights) is transferable (even the network diagrams and I have therefore attempted such an adaptation of his visual method here).
All the bestSteve