The Concept of Literary and Cultural Studies

  1. What is Literature?
  1. Literature is a vague term which usually denotes works which belong to the major genres: epic, drama, lyrics, novel, short story, ode. If we describe something as “literature,” as opposed to anything else, the term carries with it qualitative connotations which imply that the work in question has superior qualities; that it is well above the ordinary run of written works. For example: George Orwell’s novels are literature, whereas J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is unquestionably not.
  2. Everything that is written down counts as literature: odes, novels, detective stories, popular novels, magazines, doctoral dissertations, history books, and so on. Furthermore, writing is not even a criterion, since there is oral literature as well: folksongs, folktales, folk ballads. Literature is such a vague and general term that it makes sense only if combined with various attributes: high literature, popular literature, scholarly literature, folk literature, and so on.
  1. What is Culture?
  1. Culture is something that we learn. The uneducated do not have culture. One is cultured through education, learning good manners and reading the classics.
  2. Everything is culture around us. Culture is what creates and shapes the world for us. The way we eat, dress, work, feel, walk and talk, the way a human being is imagined: all these are shaped by and belong to culture.
  3. Culture is not so much a set of things – novels and paintings or TV programmes and comics – as a process, a set of practices. Primarily, culture is concerned with the production and the exchange of meanings between the members of a society or group.

Look at the following statements and note what you think is meant by “culture” in each:

  1. There are enormous cultural differences between Europe and Asia.
  2. She is such a cultured person
  3. Pop music is often used by sub-cultures to assert their identity
  4. There is a danger that mass culture may destroy the values of our society
  5. This course will examine Victorian society and culture
  6. Culture is the network of shared meanings in any society
  7. McDonalds fosters a distinctive culture

3. What is Cultural Studies?

“Cultural studies and critical theory combine sociology, literary theory, film/video studies, and cultural anthropology to study cultural phenomena in industrial societies. Cultural studies researchers often concentrate on how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, race, social class, and/or gender.Cultural studies concerns itself with the meaning and practices of everyday life. Cultural practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television, or eating out) in a given culture. Particular meanings attach to the ways people in particular cultures do things.”

“Cultural studies now means everything and nothing; it has effectively been conflated with “cultural criticism” in general, and associated with a cheery “Pop culture is fun!” approach. Anybody writing about The Bachelor or American Idol is generally understood to be “doing” cultural studies, especially by his or her colleagues elsewhere in the university. In a recent interview, Stuart Hall, a former director of the Birmingham Centre and still the most influential figure in cultural studies, gave a weary response to this development, one that speaks for itself: “I really cannot read another cultural-studies analysis of Madonna or The Sopranos.”

4. What is Representation?

“Representation is one of the key practices by which meanings are produced. Sounds, words, notes, gestures, expressions, clothes are part of our natural and material world, but their importance lies not in what they are but what they do, how they function. They construct meaning and transmit it. They signify. They don’t have any meaning in themselves. Rather, they are vehicles that carry meaningbecause they operate as symbols, which stand for or represent the meanings we wish to communicate. To use another metaphor, they function as signs. Signs stand for or represent our concepts, ideas and feelings in such a way as to enable others to “read,” decode or interpret their meaning in roughly the same way that we do.”

  1. How do sounds, words, gestures, and clothes produce meaning? Think about an example for each category! Can you name other things that produce meaning?
  2. Why is the function of these more important than what they are? What does it mean that they don’t have any clear meaning in themselves but they carry meaning?
  3. Who produces this meaning?
  4. Is there any freedom involved in “decoding” these signs and images?

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