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the history of literature
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Faith Green & Josh D-Harris
Deconstructionist Insist that literary works do not yield fixed, single meanings.
No absolute knowledge about a subject; language can never say what we
intend to mean
Any idea or statement that insists on being understood separately can
ultimately be “deconstructed” to reveal its relations and connections to
contradictory and opposite meanings.
In contrast to formalists (New Critics), deconstructionists try to show how a
close examination of the language in a text inevitably reveals conflicting,
contradictory impulses that break down its unity.
Signifier is the written and sound construction that makes up words
Signified is the meaning of the word.
Looks at the ambiguities in signifiers, and states that there can be many
different signified meanings for a single signifier
Deconstructionist focus on gaps and ambiguities that reveal a text’s
instability and indeterminacy
Analyzes competing meanings within the text instead of trying to resolve
them into unified wholes
Focus on how a variety of possible readings are generated by the elements
of a text
Concerned with the use of language such as diction, tone, metaphor, symbol,
and etc, have only provisional meanings and not definite.
Search for ways to question and extend the meanings of a text.
Take away from the text because you are looking for what’s not really there
(something like word play)
Criticism uses Binary Oppositions to look at what is not in a story
The two parts of Binary Opposition is a dominant and non-
dominant(oppressed)
(i.e.)