Robert Scholes

Deconstruction and Communication

The interest that speech-act theory holds for Derrida assuredly lies in its difference from his own thought. By positioning speech together with law and ethics he reaffirms, axiologically, his own position, and the position of writing as he defines it, as that of the outlaw, as what is outside or against the law. The powerful appeal that Derridean thought has had for American literary critics has its emotional roots in a cultural reflex of sympathy for the outlaw. For American students of language and literature, the Derridean theory of writing has seemed to offer a new freedom, an exhilarating escape from stifling rules and responsibilities. This would have meant little, I believe, had not Derridas own practice of writing-even through the medium of translation into Englishexhibited concretely the possibilities of a rigorous playfulness in critical prose. With those who admire Derridas writing I have no quarrel. I admire it myself. But I wish to argue here that those who believe he has produced

An Overview of Pacesetter English.

English Project I can say only that the object of his criticism does not resemble the course that I and many other teachers have been working on for the past two years. What follows is a description of the course as it presently exists, though it will certainly change after field testing during this academic year. This description, I should add, is a working document we have been using. It was not written as a reply to criticism but simply as a short explanation of what we are up to in this course.

The Contributions of Formalism and Structuralism to the Theory of Fiction

What follows here is both a discussion of a topic and a review of currently available books on that topic. The topic itself is important for two reasons: (a) because formalism and structuralism have indeed made significant contributions to the poetics of fiction, and (b) because these contributions have not been sufficiently recognized by American (and British) critics. The achievements of formalism have not been sufficiently appreciated because they have simply been unavailable until recently to readers who, like myself, are ignorant of the Slavic languages. Even now, we do not have in English all the formalist criticism I, for one, would like to see available. We have the excellent little anthology of Lee Lemon and Marion Reis (Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, Bison Books, 1965-hereafter abbreviated to L & R) and a new volume, also well edited, by Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska (Readings in Russian Poetics, M.I.T., 1971-abbreviated to RRP)-and that is all. Beyond these, there are some translations into French, Italian, and German. Thus the formalists have been only recently, and then scantily, available through their own writings. But I believe it is possible now to make a fair estimate of their achievements, even for a reader who, like myself, is confined to English and French. The structuralists pose another problem. Where formalism is in some sense a completed literary movement, which can be treated historically (as it is in Victor Erlichs excellent Russian Formalism: History-Doctrine, Mouton, 1955), structuralism is very much in a state of becoming, with all the subdivisions and internecine struggles that we expect to find in a revolution in progress-especially one that shows signs of being successful. And where formalism was primarily a literary movement strongly influenced by linguistics, structuralism is a whole movement of mind, which no single discipline can claim to dominate. Thus Jean Piaget, in his superb survey of structuralist thinking (Structuralism, Basic Books, 1970), can treat his subject as it appears in mathematics, logic, physical science, biology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy. The study of language and other semiotic systems can make a strong claim to being at the center of all structuralist activity, but the study of literature has only a small piece of this intellectual action. In addition to this, structuralist literary criticism is mainly untranslated from the French at the present time, and some of it appears to be equally impenetrable in either language. To understand it, a considerable investment of time and energy seems to be required-much of it to be expended in studying disciplines which do not appear to be immediately useful in the neatly compartmented world most aca-

Hemingway's Genders: Rereading the Hemingway Text

Ernest Hemingway has long been regarded as a fiercely heterosexual writer who advocated and embodied an exaggerated masculinity. This witty and intelligent book, the first to focus exclusively on gender in Hemingways writing, presents a new view of the author, demonstrating that issues of gender and sexuality are more complex and subtle in his work than has ever been imagined. Nancy R. Comley and Robert Scholes reread the Hemingway Text - his published and unpublished writing and what is known about his life - and show that gender was one of his conscious preoccupations. They explore the anguish and uncertainty beneath the blunt facade of Papa Hemingway; they examine a range of Hemingways fictional women in such works as The Sun Also Rises and For whom the Bell Tolls and suggest that his best representations of women take on attributes of gender commonly viewed as male; they discuss how lesbianism, sex changes, and miscegenation appear in Hemingways early and late writing; and they analyze examples of homosexual desire among boys and men in Hemingways stories of bullfighters and soldiers. Offering new readings of familiar and previously unknown Hemingway texts, this book will change the way this author is read and evaluated.

Protocols of Reading@@@Fraud: Literary Theory and the End of English

An attack on the dominance of radical literary theories such as structuralism, semiotics, Marxist and feminist criticism. The author asserts that we should concentrate on literature itself rather than on theories about literature.