Signs and Symbols Topics for essay 2 (keep knowledge learnt last half about language = logic, grammar,

rhetoric) Foundation of learning = Trivium = Logic, Rhetoric, Grammar Quadrivium = Astronomy, Music, Geometry, Arithmetic (all pertain to numbers, idea of universe) Together = seven liberal arts (must master these to be a doctor) Looked at a picture = fig 9 typus grammaticae, gregot reisch, margarita philosophica, bale 1517 Art (OED) Etymology = Latin Art (em); cf Greek techne Meaning = skill in doing something, esp as the result of knowledge or practice 1503 An acquired ability of any kind; a skill at doing a specified thing; 1668 the expression or application of creative skill and imagination, typically a visual form such as painting (long after Shakespeare) Essay 2 Find a secondary souce and disagree wif it E.g. Things fall apart title means = Okonkwo as a tragic hero (?); = subject / thesis (allusive) Reading Things Fall Apart = Primary text through Aristotles Genre Theory = Methodology Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) Russian Born Jewish Linguist Poetic language Structuralism Prague (1920) Copenhagen (when Prague is not safe) Boston Fig or Pig? Alice when cat encountered alice in forest Roman argue it should be Big or Pig = Minimal Pair (phonology) b p Labial + +

Stop + + Voiced (vibration on + neck) That is why they are minimal pair = structuralist phonology = Binarism (negative connotation? Eg strong and weak, good and wrong) Two aspects of language Jakobson Aphasia Discourse = a sum of ideas? = written or spoken communication or debate Literature Fine Arts Magic Metaphorical Romanticism Surrealism Imitative Sympathetic Metonymic Realism Cubism Contagious

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) Russian born Multilingual Berlin (1919) Paris The States (1940) Signs and Symbols (1946) Novelist Lolita (1955) Part 1 Passage The last time he had tried to do it, his method had been, in the doctor's words, a masterpiece of inventiveness; he would have succeeded, had not an envious fellow patient thought he was learning to fly - and stopped him. What he really wanted to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape. No specific names given to the son and parents generalization The system of his delusions had been the subject of an elaborate paper in a scientific monthly, but long before that she and her husband had puzzled it out for themselves. "Referential mania," Herman Brink had called it. Clouds Trees Pebbles, stains Class surfaces, still pools Coats Running waters, storms Totally excludes human expression Reference Mania Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme Subject (I) o Things = Objects (others) = Signs (signifier)

What if the opposite?! Signs (signifier) indirect object (me) = cant control the signs, and so caused insanity

Part 2 Passage the Couple In silence he sat down on the steps and in silence rose when some ten minutes later she came, heavily trudging upstairs, wanly smiling, shaking her head in deprecation of her silliness. They entered their two-room flat Still reading, he ate the pale victuals that needed no teeth. She knew his moods ands was also silent. Photos are representations when after dinner, she look at the pictures Part 3 Pictures Baby: looked more surprised than most At 4: moody, shy, with puckered forehead At 6: drew birds with human hands and feet, insomnia (mid-1930s) At 8: afraid of the wall paper, landscape pictures (late 1930s) At 10: special school, pneumonia; inaccessible (in the states) Caused by history? (they are jewish!) The Wife: (internal thought, she seems to narrating the story) This, and much more, she accepted - for after all living did mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case - mere possibilities of improvement. She thought of the endless waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed, or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have to watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, as the monstrous darkness approaches. Metaphorical Her Husband (part iii) They sat down to their unexpected festive midnight tea. The birthday present stood on the table. He sipped noisily; his face was flushed; every now and then he imparted a circular motion to his raised glass so as to make the sugar dissolve more thoroughly . The vein on the side of his bald head where there was a large birthmark stood out conspicuously and, although he had shaved that morning, a silvery bristle showed on his chin. While she poured him another glass of tea, he put on his spectacles and reexamined with pleasure the luminous yellow, green, red little jars. His clumsy moist lips spelled out their eloquent labels: apricot, grape, beech plum, quince. He had got to crab apple, when the telephone rang again. All of a sudden life comes back to him, and hopefully improvements Last sign = a phone ringing, what is their expectation? Third phone call: 1. that is not the right number. The receiver was gently cradled her hand went to her old tired heart 2. You have the incorrect umber. I will tell you what you are

doing; you are turning the letter o instead of the zero 3. ?