Hello Readers!
In literary criticism, there are many theories and concepts to dig deeper, which helps in better and insightful reading of any literature. New Criticism introduced many modern theories such as structuralism and post structuralism, psycho-linguistics, psychoanalysis, reader response theory and many others. Jacques Derrida, a post-structuralist critic, is considered as the father of deconstruction theory, who quoted that,
"Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique."
In this blog, we shall see how a poem can be read deconstructively.
These are some blogs which can be helpful to understand the concept of structuralism and post-structuralism. Here are two links to get to know more about deconstruction.
Dr. Dilip Barad sir has explained one poem with this concept on YouTube.
To explore the topic, Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare is taken here for deconstructive reading.
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Source:
One of the key concepts to read this sonnet is to examine the otherness of its words and meanings, because for deconstructive reading of the poem one should first do verbal reading of a poem. Without going towards emotional side or any subjective side of the poem. Deconstruction deals with language, its words and meaning. If one digs deeper in the theory, one can find that there are many meanings of a single word, and the very activity of searching for meanings is the deconstruction of work.
Note: While reading the poem keep asking this question to yourself 'who is celebrating whom?' or 'what is being celebrated?'
One after the following let's raise some questions against the poem and try to find the following.
## Binary Oppositions ##
How to read Binaries? The term which is more privileged should be kept at left hand side and terms which are under privileged should be put at right hand side. See the setup below.
1. Human Beings | Nature
2. Life | Death
As the general reading of the sonnet seems to centralize the element of nature, and human beings or here, beloved seems to be in the less privileged side of the binary. But as the sonnet unfolds it is just the opposite. Human beings at the center because the poet wants to compare the beauty of the beloved with nature, and the poet makes high remarks on the beloved beauty and justifies the human beauty more than nature. It seems that the poet has forgotten the reality of life. The sonnet has so well celebrated beauty of beloved that the concept of death seems to be kept unprivileged.(line 11) How human poetry or work of art can give life to anybody?(line 14) The last line of the sonnet has kept hold of one binary which is life opp. death, and questioned the element of human's being immortal by a mere work of art or poetry.
## Free Play/Undecidability of Meanings ##
Is there any word/s that convey more than one meanings?
Yes, there are many. shake, buds, fair, possessions, complexions, temperate, rough winds, ... These are some of the words which carry various meanings with other contexts also. Finding the exact meaning of the words may lead to the otherness of meanings. And then mostly endless journey of finding meanings of meanings begins. These words raise some question in mind, for instance, what is the use of the word possession here in the sonnet ? What does the poet want to say by that word? Is it in context of human abilities to control something or overpower the nature? Nature which has already been marginalized in the poem also has some attributions in the sonnet which clearly suggest that human agency has underestimated nature as an entity. Such words are untrimmed, rough winds, too hot the eye of heaven etc.
## Hegemony & Subjectivity ##
The use of word I makes one think that for whom this sonnet is written after all ? Is poet praising himself as a lover and possessing powers to control the beloved's beauty and nature? What if the poet dies during the creation of the sonnet? or to be less criticizing and less deconstructive, What if the poet fails to write a sonnet for her beloved? If failed, will his beloved's beauty be eternal ever? The implied meanings of power struggles to be more privileged is shown here as male dominated society has been doing since ages, it generates threats to the beloved that if the poet write a sonnet, only then the beauty will be eternal, otherwise not.
In a nut shell the poem leaves us with lot of questions, deconstructions starts happening by just raising such questions and the reader naturally turns deconstructive to read the poem against itself.
All the parameters used above to do deconstructive reading of the sonnet has conveyed the quote mentioned above, that language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique. We have now seen that how language leads us to the otherness of meanings and that how words and binaries play within the poem with potential of deconstruction by itself.
* Impressions/feedback of learning experience from TED-Ed platform.
Being a global learner, one can come across many online learning platforms such as Flinnt, Wiki Educator, Coursera, Khan Academy, edX, Moodle, and enrich their knowledge. Every digital learning platform carries some specifications in it. Similarly TED-Ed also is one of the widely used and accepted learning platforms. But still it seems that its under development but still this newly emerging platform provides good learning experience. Starting from video resources to discussion forum and taking multiple choice tests, its very learner friendly and easygoing platform. Moreover TED has its own massive video database from which many educators register themselves in TED-Ed. Many educators first generate their content on YouTube and then create courses on TED-Ed.
Rather than copying anything from web, one online review about TED-Ed is worth reading. It gives very detailed information about how to use this platform also. Click the link below.
Here is the link of one of the assignment which is generated on TED-Ed by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Click the link below.
It was indeed a good experience learning this topic of criticism in the platform of TED-Ed. The content was made in very lucid and easy way so that learners can actively grasp the crux part of content, other sections such as Think, Did deeper were very useful in testing the analytical skills and learning.
Here are some glimpses of the TED-Ed assignment created by Dr. Dilip Barad sir.
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| Watch Video |
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| Think and take small quiz |
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| Dig Deeper and read resources |
We might be knowing about learning from nuggets. These digital platforms serve such nuggets from which we can learn very effectively. TED-Ed can be very useful in future if it is used by the teachers from schools and colleges also.
One more remarkable thing for TED Ed is it encourages students to be future ready. Future ready in the sense it helps students to create their own TED style videos for future reference, so that they can also inspire people or may become educators also.
Expecting the best out of the world never goes in vain. In this CoViD-19 pandemic students can join, engage and create something on their own in the field of education. It's the right time to be Glocal, which is Global + Local. It will be blissful for all the learners around the world.
If you are interested in doing more in deconstructive reading, you can apply and practice it on some more poems then...
Reference:
Belsey, Catherine, Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press
Thank You!
Well written !
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