Readings on Literature, Music, and the Arts
NOTE TO STUDENTS: In order to access these readings, you will need an LCCC email address and password. When you click on the links below, you will be prompted to log in to the Bass Library system in the same way you log in to MyCampus and Canvas. Some of these links will take you directly to a PDF or HTML version of the reading selection. Other links will take you to the library’s catalogue page for the selection where you will have to use the “Full Text Finder” link to access the reading in a different database. You can read the selections online or print them, and many are available to download.
Roland Barthes, “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative”
Writing Questions:
- In “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative,” Roland Barthes offers a theoretical framework for reading literature. Write a Literary Interpretation Essay that applies Barthes’s theory (as espoused in this essay) to a work of literature you are reading for your class.
Roland Barthes, “Plastic”
Writing Questions:
- Roland Barthes’s “Plastic” can be read as a cultural analysis of plastic. Though it was first published in the 1950s, plastic as a material has not disappeared (if anything, plastic has become ubiquitous). Toward the end of Barthes’s essay, he writes how “the world can be plasticized, and even life itself since, we are told, they are beginning to make plastic aortas” (93). Write an Analysis Essay that analyses how something has been plasticized. As you analyze this artifact, follow Barthes’s approach to analysis: break down the elements of this artifact and consider what these parts mean individually. Then, bring them together to look for patterns that reveal larger meanings. What does the plasticization of this thing “say” about the cultures or societies that use it? How does the use of this plasticized artifact communicate something about a culture or society, and what does that communication mean?
J. M. Coetzee, “Emerging from Censorship”
Writing Questions:
- After an extended discussion around state-sponsored censorship, writers’ responses to censorship, and public rhetorical framing of writers’ responses to censorship, J.M. Coetzee concludes his essay by acknowledging how he has “not addressed the question of whether there are circumstances in which legally enforced censorship may be justifiable, and in specific the question of whether language that is felt by broad groups of people to insult and demean them ought to be permitted public airing” (49). He continues by explaining that this debate is “part of a political debate about the relative weight of individual and group rights” (49). After reading Coetzee’s essay, consider the ubiquity of social media platforms as spaces for public writing and speech, and consider the United States’ history of state-sponsored censorship of books, other writings, and even of curricular content in public schools of all levels (including college). With these ideas in mind, and with Coetzee’s essay fresh in your memory, write a Summary and Response Essay. You should first summarize Coetzee’s essay, including his thesis, main ideas, and most important examples. In your Response, you should addresses the questions Coetzee leaves unaddressed: Are there circumstances in which legally enforced censorship might be justifiable? Is language that is felt by broad groups of people to insult and demean them permissible in spaces of public discourse? Do or should individual or group rights have more weight in terms of the creation of laws and regulations? Support your position with examples and reason.
Jacques Derrida, “The Law of Genre”
Writing Questions:
- Jacques Derrida’s “The Law of Genre” begins with the repeated statement that “Genres are not to be mixed” (202). Later, Derrida asks “can one identify a work of art, of whatever sort, but especially a work of discursive art, if it does not bear the mark of a genre, if it does not signal or mention it or make it remarkable in any way?” (211). Genres can serve as useful means of classifying or identifying works of art (and here “art” can be understood loosely to refer to any form of created media). They might simplify discussions around works of art. Yet can they limit the experience of a work of art? How does one describe a work of art that seems to participate in multiple genres? After reading “The Law of Genre”, write an Analysis essay that explores the identity of a work of art by analyzing how it participates in multiple genres. What is this work of art? Pay attention to how the work of art exhibits traits of any of its genres–and pay attention to how you try to describe those traits. What makes the work of art feel or appear to follow the genres you identify? As you analyze the work according to these genre elements, consider the implications of those elements, and ask: must art align with genre traits? If so, how “free” can art be? For this project, treat the word “art” as loosely as you’d like. After all, “art” itself can be considered a genre.
Additional Readings on Food and Eating
- Roland Barthes, “Literature and Discontinuity”
- Maurice Blanchot and Leslie Hill, “For Friendship”
- Maurice Blanchot and Leslie Hill, “The Beast of Lascaux”
- J. M. Coetzee, “Elizabeth Costello and the Problem of Evil”
- Wesley Morris, “The Morality Wars: Should Art Be a Battleground for Social Justice?”
- Katharina Schäfer and Tuomas Eerola, “How Listening to Music and Engagement with Other Media Provide a Sense of Belonging: An Exploratory Study of Social Surrogacy”
- Carolyn S. Ticker, “Music and the Mind: Music’s Healing Powers”
- Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, “Does Studying the Arts Enhance Academic Achievement?”
- Robert H. Woody, “Music Education Students’ Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: A Quantitative Analysis of Personal Narratives”
