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Showing posts with the label literary theory

Bricolage Levi Strauss

Bricolage Bricolage is the skill of using whatever is at hand and recombining them to create something new. According to Levi-Strauss,    "The bricoleur is someone who uses 'the means at hand,' that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there, which had not been specially conceived with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and error to adapt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary."      In his essay Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences Levi-Strauss compares the working of the bricoleur and the engineer. The bricoleur, who is the “savage mind”, puts already existing things together in new ways, and makes do with whatever is at hand. What Levi-Strauss points out here is that signs already in existence are used for purposes that they were originally not meant for. As opposed to the bricoleur, the engineer, who is the “scie

The Study of Poetry by Matthew Arnold Summary and Notes

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                                    The Study of Poetry by Matthew Arnold Summary "Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact" - Arnold In his seminal work, the “Study of Poetry” Matthew Arnold opines that one should evaluate poetry by comparing and contrasting it with a piece from a high classic. According to Arnold, poetry is worthy of high destinies. We can notice in our society that many of the religions, principles, rules, creeds, and dogmas are all becoming questionable and broken over time. In the case of poetry too, many find it difficult to evaluate the true essence of good poetry. Arnold wanted to treat poetry as something worth higher value-capable of higher uses and called to higher destinies. He quotes lines from Wordsworth to define poetry, it is“the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science”; poetry is “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge”. All our beliefs like religion and philosophy are but the shadows an