The Taming of the Text

Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture

Willie Van Peer

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781134834631
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

The contributors of this text, first published in 1988, provide a dynamic view of the social functioning of texts, taking account of linguistic, literary and cultural elements. They bring together innovative perspectives on literary analysis and theory, on pragmatics and discourse analysis, as well as on text linguistics and reception theory. Various text types are examined, and the editor introduces each chapter in order to draw them all together to make a fascinating and cohesive whole.

PART I
Type and theory

Evermore cross'd and cross'd,
nothing but cross'd

(The Taming of the Shrew, IV. v. 10)

1
Conventions of representation

Where discourse and ideology meet

Mary Louise Pratt

The production and consumption of text and discourse serves particular purposes. A part from aesthetic ones, which are studied in poetics and stylistics, texts also represent social values and traditions and relate to ideological positions. These originate in extra-textual structures of reality and society. Literary as well as non-literary texts encode these values and their inherent contradictions.

By looking at what at first sight presents itself as a 'neutral' event, i.e. landscape descriptions (in texts), Mary Louise Pratt reveals how such descriptions function socially, especially as manifestations of domination. The landscapes described in both literary and nonliterary texts since the seventeenth century emanate from a conventionalized discourse in which the landscape is viewed first and foremost as a commodity.Hence its description needs not so much a neutral rendering of facts, but rather an 'enrichment' in terms of value. A careful textual analysis reveals what linguistic means authors employ in arriving at such a codification of value. In particular the aestheticization of the landscape (in comparing it to a painting), the creation of semantic density (by over-modification and nominalization) and the rendering of a relationship of dominance between the seer and the seen (through the use of metaphors) are given special prominence. Such conventions of representation as revealed by the analysis are not static,though. Their very existence creates the potential for their being contradicted and eroded. As a comparison with other texts reveals, the conventionalized discourse of domination in landscape description is prone to both variation and undermining. In this respect, textual analysis may contribute to a better understanding of the process of historical evolution of text types and the power by which they function in society. Such understanding is a prerequisite for a general theory of literature.

Consider the following passage, the opening paragraphs of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, first published in 1719.

I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, tho' not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade lived afterward at York, from whence he married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good name in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay, we call ourselves and write our name, Crusoe, and so my companions always called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of them was lieutenant collonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Coll. Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never knew any more than my father or mother did know what was become of me.

Being the third son of the family, and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free-school generally goes, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea, and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and perswasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propension of nature tending directly to the life of misery that was to befal me.¹

This text deploys a set of conventions of representation readily recognizable to any reader of eighteenth-century novels or the picaresque tradition. There is the opening statement of pedigree, and even some outright arbitrariness in the acquisition of one's name. There is the early emergence of wander-lust in the redundant middle child, the abandonment of family and community against all entreaties, and the life of supposed misery and misfortune which results. Many of these same conventions are used in the following passage as well. This text is the opening of Richard Lemon Lander's book Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition to Africa, published in 1830.

Many allusions to my earlier history occurring in the following pages, it may not, perhaps, be deemed impertinent on my part, if I should attempt to give a short and hasty sketch of my life, devoted as it has been to perpetual wanderings and chequered by a thousand misfortunes.

My family is as ancient, I dare say, as that of any upon the face of the earth, although, notwithstanding the profoundest research, I have been unable to trace its descent, with genealogical accuracy and precision, to a more remote era than the period of my grandfather's nonage; the history of all my ancestors previous to him being either mixed with fable, or involved in doubt and uncertainty...

I am the fourth of six children, and was born at Truro, in Cornwall, in 1804, on the very day on which Colonel Lemon was elected Member of Parliament for the Borough. Owing to this striking coincidence, singular as it may seem, my father, who was fond of sounding appelations, at the simple suggestion of the doctor who attended the family, added Lemon to my baptismal name of Richard: an example of the trivial means by which people are oftentimes accommodated with an extra name. As nothing remarkable occurred for the first five or six years after I came into the world, I shall pass them over in silence, simply observing that when yet in infancy, whilst I was in the act of gazing one morning at something attached to the ceiling of my father's stable, a piece of iron, having a sharpened edge, fell and entered my forehead; which accident was of so serious a nature that I was ill for several weeks, and narrowly escaped with life.

My rambling inclinations began to display themselves in early youth. I was never easy a great while together in one place, and used to be delighted to play truant and stroll from town to town, from village to village whenever I could steal an opportunity.²

Here again, we find the comic lack of pedigree, the arbitrariness of name, the reference to a life of misery resulting from the passion-driven individualism of the wanderer. Lander here invokes another commonplace of eighteenth-century narrative, that of the childhood accident, made most memorable for us by Tristram Shandy's excruciating encounter with a window sash. The childhood accident is a comic device whose function is, among other things, to overexplain, or to overdetermine, the eccentricities and the immoderacies of the protagonist's character in adulthood.

The point I want to examine in these texts is the very obvious one that they use many of the same conventions of representation – one might even say they are instances of the same discourse –though one is from a fictional novel and the other from a nonfictional travel account. Now we might want to account for these similarities by saying that Richard Lander is 'novelizing' his travel account, that he is borrowing or imitating, or redeploying the novelistic discourse exemplified by the Robinson Crusoe passage. At the same time, however, we would probably also want to say that Defoe is borrowing or imitating or redeploying in his novel the discourse of nonfictional autobiography. We are left with what looks like a chicken and egg problem. Are the conventions of representation which these texts share primarily novelistic or primarily autobiographical? Are they primarily associated with fiction or with nonfiction? The answer I'd like to consider is that they are not primarily one or the other. They exist as conventions of representation relatively independent of both genre distinctions and the fiction–nonfiction distinction. They can – and indeed should – be studied across those categories.

The next four passages quoted here exemplify another case of the kind of convention of representation I am talking about, and again the examples come from novels as well as nonfictional travel accounts. These four passages are all versions of what I have called the 'woe-is-me' scene, Here, after a peak experience, whether of triumph or defeat, the speaker-protagonist pauses in solitude to assess his or her situation. There follows an enumeration of misfortunes and woes, then a plunge into the pits of despair, from which the protagonist is rescued by some new hopeful thought, often religious in character. This self-generated consolation mobilizes the protagonist again physically, and the narrative action proceeds. Again, I think most novel readers will find this device a familiar one. The four examples here include:

1. Sir James Bruce the night after discovering what he believed to be the source of the Nile (1770);
2. Robinson Crusoe after completing his first house (1719);
3. Mungo Park in Africa having been robbed of all his possessions by Moorish bandits (1802); and
4. Samuel Richardson's Pamela having failed in a nocturnal attempt to escape from a country house where she is being held (1740).

There is no need to work through these examples individually here – the conventions are clear. Some of the common surface linguistic features of the 'woe-is-me' scene are indicated in these quotations by my italics, notably the introductory time phrase that suspends the narrative sequence, the enumeration of troubles and woes, and the but-clause that introduces the ray of hope.

1. The night of the 4th, that very night of my arrival, melancholy reflections upon my present state, the doubtfulness of my return in safety, were I permitted to make the attempt, and the fears that even this would be refused, according to the rule observed in Abyssinia with all travellers who have once entered the kingdom; the consciousness of the pain that I was then occasioning to many worthy individuals, expecting daily that information concerning my situation which it was not in my power to give them; some other thoughts, perhaps, still nearer to the heart than those, crowded upon my mind, and forbad all approach of sleep...
   I went to the door of my tent; everything was still; the Nile at whose head I stood, was not capable either to promote or to interrupt my slumbers, but the coolness and serenity of the night braced my nerves, and chased away those phantoms that, while in bed, had oppressed and tormented me.
   It was true, that numerous dangers, hardships, and sorrows, had beset me through this half of my excursion; but it was still as true that another Guide, more powerful than my own courage, health or understanding, if any of these can be called man's own, had uniformly protected me in all that tedious half; I found my confidence not abated, that still the same Guide was able to conduct me to my now wished for home.³
2. Having now fixed my habitation, I found it absolutely necessary to provide a place to make a fire in, and fewel to burn; and what I did for that, as also how I enlarged my cave, and what conveniences I made, I shall give a full account of it in its place. But I must first give some little account of my self, and of my thoughts about living, which it may well be supposed were not a few.
   I had a dismal prospect of my condition, for as I was not cast away upon that island without being driven, as is said, by a violent storm, quite out of the course of our intended voyage, and a great way, viz. some hundreds of leagues out of the ordinary course of the trade of mankind, I had great reason to consider it as a determination of Heaven, that in this desolate place and in this desolate manner I should end my life; the tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with my self, why Providence should thus compleately ruine its creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, without help abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.
   But something always returned swift upon me to check these thoughts, and to reprove me.⁴
3. After they were gone I sat for some time looking around me with amazement and terror. Whichever way I turned, nothing appeared but danger and difficulty. I saw myself in the midst of a vast wilderness, in the depths of the rainy season, naked and alone; surrounded by savage animals, and men still more savage. I was five hundred miles from the nearest European settlement. All these circumstances crowded at once on my recollection, and I confess that my spirits began to fail me... The influence of religion, however, aided and supported me. I reflected that no human prudence or foresight could possibly have averted my present sufferings. I was indeed a stranger in a strange land, yet I was still under the protecting eye of that Providence who has condescended to call himself the stranger's friend.⁵
4. ... and so when I came to the pond side, I sat myself down on the sloping bank, and began to ponder my wretched condition; and thus I reasoned with myself.
   Pause here a little, Pamela, on what thou art about, before thou takest the dreadful leap; and consider whether there be no way yet left, no hope, if not to escape from this wicked house, yet from the mischiefs threatened thee in it. I then considered; and after I had cast about in my mind everything that could make me hope, and saw no probability; a wicked woman, devoid of all compassion! A horrid helper, just arrived in this dreadful Colbrans! An angry and resenting master, who now hated me, and threatened the most afflicting evils!...
   I was once rising, so ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Type and theory
• PART II Models and methods
• PART III Form and interpretation
• Name index
• Subject index