A Study Of Jonathan Culler's Poetics

This dissertation is meant to make a systematic inquiry into Jonathan Culler's poetic thoughts. A well-known American literary theorist and comparative scholar, Culler contributes much to the development of American literary theory and the advancement of the worldwide literary study as well. Retrospectively speaking, Culler's poetic pursuit and his academic career can be classified into the following three stages: his study of Structuralist Poetics makes up the first, during which he introduces Structuralist literary theory from European Continent, especially from France, to America, and the introduction is marked by his creative promotion of the localization of European theory in the country. For example, his absorption of American resources, his combination of the foreign theory with the local practicality, give rise to a string of poetic assertions, many of which are reflected in his representative work The Structuralist Poetics. Culler's fame proceeds to increase when he turns to the study of deconstruction as the Structuralism shifts into its reversed side, the post-structuralism. This is the second stage of his academic career, with On Deconstruction as the most outstanding achievement. In this book, Culler provides a clear-cut description of Derrida's and American Yale School's ideas of Deconstruction, and the variations arising from Deconstruction's move into America, and the influences it exerts on literary interpretation and criticism are also well dealt with in this monograph. The third stage of Culler's academic pursuit is intermingled with his attention to the Cultural Studies, and his active involvement into varioustheoretical discourses helps him to ascertain the literary in them, and is conducive to the reflections upon the fundamentals of literature. The reflections are coagulated into Culler's Literary Theory, which can be found rich in illuminating insights.The classification of the three stages in Culler's academic career is somewhat simplifled In fact, Culler pays his attention to linguistic problems throughout all his career life, which is shown from his educational backgrounds including modern language, his mastery of Ferdinand de Saussure, and his study of Norm Chomsky and A. J. Austin. All these provides him with penetrating insights into language, and this is of great significance to fulfilling Culler's determined promise of literary study: combining linguistics with literature. The mastery of modern linguistics is made full use of in Culler's systematic work on Structuralism and Deconstruction, and therefore his attention is consistently paid to the signification of literary signs and the disciplinary construction of Semiotics. This threshold leads him even to his poetic reflections in the milieu of Cultural Studies. Generally, Jonathan Culler is a systematic literary theorist, and his poetic thoughts are always centered around his attention to the signification of literary signs and texts, and his pursuit of the production and reception mechanics of literary meaning, even though his literary study covers various fields. Starting from Structuralist Linguistics, Culler firstly takes a close watch over the sign-character of literary texts, and then he attempts to analyze the literary meaning production mechanics from the angle of reader's reading in the sense of Structuralism. This meaning production mechanics is overthrown when Structuralism shifts into Deconstruction, and this is also dealt with in Culler's following study. Finally, Culler makes his thought-provoking poetic reflections upon the literariness, literary meaning, and paradigms of literary study in the milieu of Cultural Studies. Following such a logical line, Jonathan Culler launches a deep research on the development and transformation of western literary theory since 1960s, and his study is thoroughly combined with the American practicality, thus forming a peculiar poetic thought.I will follow the same line in this dissertation to make a study of JonathanCuller's poetics. In the introduction part, I start with the background information of Jonathan Culler's life and his academic contributions, and then, following the time sequence, I try to draw an outline of Culler's major works on poetic study, which reveals the main line of his academic career and the systematic feature of his poetics. In the last part of the introduction, I analyze the significance, methodology as well as problems in the study of Culler's poetics. The first chapter, "The Pursuit of Signs", is a study of the initial point of Culler's poetics, deliberating on the basic idea of Saussure's linguistics, the self-reflexity of literary signs, and the innate paradox of the construction of semiotics. Culler begins with linguistics, revealing the modernity of Saussure's ideas in the Structuralist linguistics, and then he goes beyond the limit of pure linguistics to explore the peculiarity of literary language and the academic build-up of semiotics. On the one hand, semiotics aims at revealing the norms of semiotic signification, but on the other hand, this purpose is contradicted with and finally dispelled from the peculiarity of literary signs. This paradox paves the way for the logical line for the next two chapters to inquire into Culler's poetics in relation with Structuralism and Deconstruction. The gist of chapter two is to go beyond textual interpretation to poetic construction. Instead of the analysis mode of individual text to which the New Criticism often resort, Culler advocates exploring the potential factors behind the text that affect the signification process, so as to build the Structuralist Poetics in a general sense. I discuss such issues as "literary competence", "convention and naturalization", and "further reflections on Structuralism". Following its innate logic, Structuralism develops into post-Structuralism, and that is also a natural line of my dissertation to follow Culler's poetics in the third chapter, "Poetic Explorations in the Perspective of Deconstruction". Culler analyzes and assesses the deconstructionist ideas of Derrida and the Yale School, clears a lot concepts of deconstruction, and discusses the application of deconstructionist theory to the reading and interpretation of literary texts. He makes unprecedented emphasis on literary reading, which alters the rational position he takes when studying Structuralist Poetics, manifesting a creativevalue of deconstruction in the interpretation of textual meanings. Literary study meets with setbacks with the prosperity of cultural study, but Culler successfully gets in for the study of various discourses, studying the mechanics affecting literary system, discussing the application of semiotics to legislation and to tourism, pondering on the controlling norms affecting theoretical writing, and on the " Imagined Communities .", getting beyond the limits of traditional literary study, and revealing in the theories of other subjects the domination and victory of literariness. Returning to literature with new insights from other subjects, Culler reflects on a lot of literary issues and clarifies a number of theoretical matters. And that is the main content in chapter four of this dissertation. In the concluding summery, I suggest a more extensive study of Culler and his works, and give proper assessment of the scholar. In the light of the study of literary variation, I also analyze the referential value of Culler's poetics in the literary study in China, especially in the construction of literary theory."Variation" is a key word in Culler's poetic ideas. While introducing literary theories from Europe to USA, he combines them to the practice of America, making the theories "different discourses" from those of European theoretical entity. Meanwhile, his "discourses" are not totally the same as those of other American scholars. For instance, his idea about "literary competence" is quite unique, different from both Jameson and Robert Scholes who also endeavor to introduce into USA Structuralism. Such differences manifest the essence of Culler's poetic ideas, showing its unique value in the process of his inquiry into the signification of literary signs. This will help us to understand his poetic ideas, and to gain access to his poetics as an entire system. To certain extents, the ideas of literary variation will be a major methodology in the project of the inquiry into Culler's poetics.This dissertation on Jonathan Culler's poetics is a case study, but the issues involved in it are of general significance. To certain extents, Culler's poetic study reflects the development and changes in literary study in the West since the 1960s. Culler's study traces the literary theories since Structuralism, making analysis of anumber of literary issues. The scope of his study includes linguistics, semiotics, poetics, textual interpretation as well as cultural studies, having put forward some ideas of subtle insight, which are of great value to the current literary study. His attitude towards cultural study, his study of literary signification, his upholding of literariness, and his study and reflection on literary theories are of leading issues in literary studies, and he often puts forward ideas of deep insight in his study. By a general study and systematic analysis of Jonathan Culler's poetic ideas, I aim in this dissertation at filling up the blank so far in lack of a general study of Culler, providing some reference for a comprehensive assessment of Culler in China, so that we can make better use of his poetic ideas in the practice of literary study. Meanwhile, in building up the system of Culler's poetics, I inspect the variations of such literary theories as Structuralism and Deconstruction in the process of their "traveling" across different cultures. By studying the role Culler plays in the process, I further elaborate the mechanics that affect culture dissemination and acceptance, so as to give reference to the creation of literary theory in China, and to further development of comparative study of poetics between China and the Western countries.