PHI 3882 Spring 2010, Highlights and Lowlights from papers 2 and 3

Dostoyevsky's way of bringing realism and iconic symbols into the story are what makes his points valid and vivid. By providing insight into Dmitri's struggle, you receive a new understanding of how difficult love and wealth really is. It all started with his affair against his present wife, getting into debt, gaining the attention of Grushenka, and the possibility of him killing Fyodor and the servant. "Rather than choosing between realism and iconography, the fecund tensions between these two terms - the first a mode of presentation, the latter a canon of recurring images - are better negotiated by substituting the "picture" for the "icon" as the dominant visual analog of Dostoyevsky's novelistic iconography." ('The Icon in the Picture: Reframing the Question of Dostoyevsky's Modernist Iconography" Jefferson J. A. Gattral, The Slavic and East European Journal Vol 48, No 1, 2004). Money and love are two icons that are easily associable. It is apparent through the work, much like in life, that Dmitri is not strong enough to hold either responsibility.

 Here we have, sandwiched into the final paragraph, a quotation from an article about icons and realism in Dostoyevsky. I  very much doubt that the author of the essay understood the sentence that is quoted, and there is no attempt to explain it. Instead, some words from the article are sprinkled into the essay as though they will magically improve it.

That opening sentence sounds good, until we start to ask what it means. An argument is valid or invalid. Imagery is vivid or lifeless. You could say "Dostoyevsky argues that religion is necessary because we are all sinners who need forgiveness, and only a sinless being, such as God can provide forgiveness. This is a valid argument." You could also say, "When Lise imagines watching a child being crucified while eating 'pineapple compote', this vivid imagery recalls Ivan's earlier observation, when recounting the cruelties of the Turks, that Turks are particularly fond of sweets." But when points are described as being both vivid and valid, it gives the impression that you want to praise Dostoyevsky, since he is a great writer, and happen to be in the mood for using words that begin with "v". So too, since a very clever article used the words "icon" and "realism", it can't do any harm to adopt them as well. Nothing is gained, in this particular essay, by describing money and love as icons, because I haven't been told how an icon differs from a picture, nor given any explanation about the special role of icons in Russian orthodoxy. (Of course, I already know something about this, but if you don't tell me, how do I know that you know it?) The moral: don't try to impress the reader by quoting things you don't understand. Instead, try to make your points as simply as possible:

The constant need for both brothers to prove their own point leads to an enlightening of both Alyosha and Ivan's different viewpoints. Both brothers reach a greater understanding of their own beliefs by exposing each other to different perspectives.

This is straightforward, but it is an intelligent response to Ivan and Alyosha's argument, and I can tell that the person writing this understands what they are writing.

Or this:

...as we can note, what is emphasized from that night is the girl's body and how it felt on him. We could also say that the author attempts to draw a kind of relation to the fact that the whole act happened in the darkness. Because it was dark and Adso could not see anything, we could say that his love for the girl was blind. Futher, this infatuation blinded him to his beliefs and everything that was sacred to him. Plato also said that this common love makes man act emotionally and irrationally. This blind love makes Adso act without thinking of the consequence...

This starts from a simple observation - the encounter is described in tactile rather than visual terms, because it takes place in the dark. This is connected to the idea of blind love, and reference is made to Plato. The reference to Plato is quite natural and fits in with the flow of the passage.

Of course, you are encouraged to relate the novels we are studying to broader philosophical currents, but this must be done in such a way as to demonstrate your understanding:

One of Umberto Eco's major contributions to the field of literary theory has come in the form of his participation in the task of integrating the reader in the formative process of a novel. In fact, his two non-fiction books The Role of the Reader (1979) and The Limits of Interpretation(1990) are dedicated solely to examining this topic. ... It is then obvious to expect The Name of the Rose to be a sort of compendium or compilation of Eco's previous work, and since it is a novel itself, for it to evoke in the reader that participation and involvement that he had talked about in his previous books...From these pages it is pretty clear that Eco regards his novel as a completely open work, not attached to any particular interpretation, but open to what the reader can contribute to it.

Here, Eco's other writings are not merely mentioned, they are summarised. It is made clear that the student knows exactly what is meant by "an open work", and so the application of this to The Name of the Rose has a clear meaning.

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