Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" Deconstructionist Perspective
Discussion Questions: 261:
Explain this quote from J. Hillis Miller: “‘Deconstruction
is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a
demonstration that it has already dismantled itself’” (qtd.
261).
261-62:
Explain: "To deconstruct a text ... is to show that a text
... can have intertwined, opposite 'discourses'--strands of
narrative, threads of meaning" (261-62).
262:
Explain Derrida's thoughts about "hierarchies in
miniature" (262).
Explain Derrida's thoughts on logocentrism and phallogocentrism.
263:
What, according to Murfin, is Derrida's goal?
Explain Derrida's connection to Ferdinand de Saussure.
Explain Derrida's concept of differance.
264:
Explain: "any work of literature that we interpret defies
the laws of Western logic, the laws of opposition and
noncontradiction" (264).
265:
Explain the European structuralist discipline of semiology.
Explain Claude Levi-Strauss's concept of mythemes.
Explain Derrida's views on structuralist beliefs.
266:
How, according to Murfin, is deconstruction similar to and
different from formalism?
Describe the difference between metaphor and metonymy.
266-67:
What is "the difference between the formalist concept of
literary ambiguity and the deconstructive concept of
undecidability" (266-67)?
267:
Explain Derrida's claim that "there is nothing outside
the text" (qtd. 267).
268:
Explain: "A text is not a unique, hermetically sealed
space" (268).
Explain the role of etymology in deconstruction.
269:
How, according to Murfin, may deconstruction be described
as reading? Explain.
270-71:
Explain the significance/relevance of de Man's journalism
during World War II.
271:
What notions about deconstruction does Miller refute? Explain.
Explain: "Reading itself ... is an act that leads to
further ethical acts, decisions, and behaviors in a real world
involving relations to other people and to society at large"
(271).
272:
Explain: "'deconstructive discourses' have pointedly and
effectively questioned ... the tendency of historians to view
the past as the source of (lost) truth and value, to look for
explanation in origins, and to view as unified epochs .. what
are in fact complex and hetergeneous times in history" (272).
273:
Explain Miller's views on the law and narrative.
274:
How, according to Murfin, has deconstruction been employed
by feminist and psychoanalytic theorists?
275:
How, according to Murfin, does Edward Said employ
deconstruction?
276:
What, according to Murfin, does Eilenberg argue?
277:
How, according to Murfin, does Eilenberg exemplify deconstruction?
