Literary Theory Quotes

“Perhaps literature is like weed.”
― Jonathan D. Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“Theory is driven by the impossible desire to step outside your own thought, both to place it and to understand it, and also by a desire for change – this is a possible desire – both in the world your thought engages and in the ways of your own thought, which always could be sharper, more knowledgeable and capacious, more self-reflecting.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“You can be involved with theory; you can teach or study theory; you can hate theory or be afraid of it. None of this, though, helps much to understand what theory is.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“The idea of literary competence focuses attention on the implicit knowledge that readers (and writers) bring to their encounters with texts: what sort of procedures do readers follow in responding to works as they do? What sort of assumptions must be in place to account for their reactions and interpretations? Thinking about readers and the way they make sense of literature has led to what has been called ‘reader-response criticism’, which claims that the meaning of the text is the experience of the reader (an experience that includes hesitations, conjectures, and self-corrections). If a literary work is conceived as a succession of actions upon the understanding of a reader, then an interpretation of the work can be a story of that encounter, with its ups and downs: various conventions or expectations are brought into play, connections are posited, and expectations defeated or confirmed. To interpret a work is to tell a story of reading.”
― Jonathan D. Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“وقتی مطالعات فرهنگی بر ادبیات انگِ نخبه‌گرایی می‌زند، متمایز کردنِ آن از بی‌فرهنگیِ بورژوایی که سنت دیرپای ملی است دشوار می‌شود. در ایالات متحد، دوری جستن از فرهنگ سطح بالا و مطالعه‌ی فرهنگ عامه بیش از آنکه حرکتی از نظر سیاسی رادیکال یا نشانه‌ی مقاومت باشد، آکادمیک کردن فرهنگ توده است. در مطالعات فرهنگی در آمریکا از آن پیوند با جنبشهای سیاسی که به مطالعات فرهنگی در بریتانیا نیرو می‌بخشیده است چندان اثری نمی‌یابیم، و می‌توان آن را عمدتاً بررسیِ غنی و میان رشته‌ای اما کماکان آکادمیکِ رویه‌های فرهنگی و بازنمود فرهنگی دانست. مطالعات فرهنگی «قرار است» رادیکال باشد، اما تصور وجودِ تقابل بین مطالعات فرهنگی‌ای فعال و مطالعات ادبی‌ای انفعالی شاید خوش‌خیالی باشد.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“The linguistic code is a theory of the world. Different”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“This view of literature as an aesthetic object that could make us ‘better people’ is linked to a certain idea of the subject, to what theorists have come to call ‘the liberal subject’, the individual defined not by a social situation and interests but by an individual subjectivity (rationality and morality) conceived as essentially free of social determinants.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction

“Communication depends on the basic convention that participants are cooperating with one another and that, therefore, what one person says to the other is likely to be relevant.”
― Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction