Deconstruction And Construction: Study On Jonathan Culler’s Literary Theory

Deconstructivism has gone through its glory time, which declared reversing the binary opposition of traditional culture, subverting logo centralism of western metaphysics. However, its influence and effect is just at beginning. How to grasp the essence and method of deconstructivism and put these to use of literary studying and construction of literary theory, it is not avoided to study a theorist, Jonathan Culler.Professor Jonathan Culler is one of the leading literary critics in the world, his thought involved many disciplines. Deconstruction is a very important section in his theory. In the one hand, his literary theory inherited Derrida’s theory, which always queries authority and criticizes tradition. In the other hand, he has been trying to construct a new theory in traditional literary theory and multi-theory context. It’s a pity that Culler’s deconstructive theory has been ignored and when people speak of deconstruction they only know Derrida and "Yale School". In many scholars’ view, Culler was just an elucidator not a creative theorist even if Culler has gained his reputation for his critical works such as Structuralist Poetics, On Deconstruction and Literary Theory:A Very Short Introduction. Reading Culler’s critical works, we can find that his deconstructive theory is not only abundant in content, which refer to everything of literary, but also novel in perspective and method. His deconstruction theory dispelled the negative functions and destructive power from Derrida’s deconstructive theory. Culler expressed his new opinion in the procedure of introducing Derrida and De Man’s theory and he set up a model of innovating a new theory.The aim of this paper is to explore the important role of deconstructive theory in Culler’s theory system and to take on the feature of deconstruction that contacted with structure, construct and deconstruction. It’s very crucial that investigates the development and restates the value of Culler’s deconstructive theory. Above all, the goal of studying on Culler’s deconstruction is to find new ways and inspirations for constructing China’s literary theory.Behind the fragmentary surface, there had a rigorous system in Culler’s literary theory. Based on linguistic theory, Culler analyzed the text structure and explored the infinite possibilities of text meaning from conventions and rules. Further more, he restated the questions of literary and conceptions from polybasic views. In order to present the logicality and system, this paper is made up four sections, involving language and semiology, text theory, reading theory and comprehensive literary theory.In the preface, I summarized Culler’s academic procedure and main works. For good family and studying experience, he had been famous for his excellent articles and works. From the researching papers of western or China, the studying on Culler’s theory isn’t optimistic, especially in foreign. Comparatively, it is active in local and has an accelerated tendency. I take deconstruction as my studying perspective to study because there are almost not paper which take aim at Culler’s deconstructive theory.Linguistics was the foundation of Culler’s theory. There was a bridge between linguistics and literary studying that Culler was trying to find. In his studying, in the one hand, he inherited the structural linguistics of Saussure, in the other hand, he analyzed that linguistic must relate with reader and readers’ literary abilities because of the weakness of structure linguistics. At the beginning of studying, Culler has been interesting in researching the sign, he has written many works about sign, such as The Pursuit of Signs, Framing the Sign and so on. Culler assured that self-referentiality was the distinct feature of literary sign and it was valuable in form. From the view of speech act theory, Culler assured that literary discourse was performative and literary was to do things with words. His analysis enriched the connotation of literary discourse and provided a new method for us.Text was not only the main place to analyze language and discourse for Culler but also the place to carry out his deconstructive reading theory. Culler’s text theory came into being the procedure of constructing a poetics with deepening the conception of literary text. At first, Culler thought that text was made up the signs and has a preexistent structure. Immediately, he found there had ambiguity and uncertainty in text. It was necessary to study text structure from deconstruction and construct a containment and interdisciplinary text theory.Reading was the main way to accomplish Culler’s deconstructivism theory. In Culler’s view, only when it was a reading strategy can deconstruction conduct in literary theory. Culler’s deconstruction didn’t extend to philosophy, politics and social ideology and his studying field was literary. Reading was writing in Culler’s theory, in other words, it was text construction. In the procedure of reading, the reader was a crucial role that was the perspective in constructing a reading model. There are three parts in this section. In the first part, from literary ability of reader, literary convention, new reading paradigm, interpretation and overinterpretation, explored the abilities that the reader should be possess and how this factors were in function in reading activities. In the second part, how the text meaning was deconstructed, how the meaning refer to the reader and how context react on meaning are the main questions that will discuss. The last part, Culler introduced several methods involving repeated reading, graft and inversions, while which learned from Derrida Culler put new meaning into these conceptions and made those be operable.Deconstructive theory was the foundation of Culler’s literary criticism. Taking deconstruction as research method, Culler informed his literary theory in the procedure of analyzing language, text and reading and Literary Theory was the result of his deconstructive theory. In this work, Culler discussed what is theory? What is literary? What were language, rhetoric function in literary? Culler presents a new literary theory in a distinctive way and new view. In the context of multiculturalism, Culler opinioned that it was the time of coming back to literary and rethink the meaning of literariness so that to establish the task of literary study.In conclusion, there are three questions to discuss. Culler continued his deconstructive theory in multicultural time and searched multi-perspective for literary study from post-colonialism, feminist criticism, culture study and so on. The distinctive feature of Culler’s deconstructive theory is the relation between structure, deconstruction and construction. The profound meaning and value of Culler’s deconstruction theory need further study. He provided many valuable methods and inspirations for our literary study.