Assignment 5

Peter Barry's "Tackling Textuality – With Theory"

In “Tackling Textuality – With theory” (Barry 2000) Peter Barry explains how literary theory is important when understanding a text. Barry starts by giving examples of how a normal text analysis would be carried out in a non theory environment and then gives his own examples on how one could better this method. He here presents a list of ten steps, where overall structural patterns, micro patterns, similarities in the text, overt or covert material, meaning and significance, genre, look for metaphors, the surface structure, stages and phases and semantic meaning are discussed.
From this base Barry asks the question “where does that leave us?” He reasons that literary criticism never could grow out of these ten defined points but also that they are insufficient.

Using Shakespeare’s sonnet 73 Barry here exemplify this, highlighting the texts religious and historical meaning. Barry here makes use of the themes: literature and history, language, gender and literature and psychoanalysis. With history as a subject Barry shines upon the fact that the reformation set into motion by Henry the Eighth also shut down monasteries and with them the choir-stalls went into ruin, this is not explained by the ten earlier stated rules. Using gender as a subject Barry examines gender based conventions and what signs there are that the text is written by a man rather than a woman. In the language part Barry among other things examines how Shakespeare seems to violate the natural word order and how this affects the text. In the psychoanalysis theme Barry discuss the speaker's strategy of seduction is in this poem trying to analyze the mental processes of the writer.

Barry in the next segment analyzes the text from a deconstructive view where one “read the text against itself”. Using Oread by Hilda Doolittle and Transit by Adrienne Rich as examples Barry using contradictions, linguistics quirks, breaks and omissions within the text looks behind them. Barry using these methods of deconstruction comes to many interesting results, Citing the last analysis of absences and omissions Barry writes “The deconstructive reading seems to enhance the perceived strangeness of this remarkable poem. We are left, then, with a poem that seems to be fighting a civil war with itself.” This goes well with the final message Barry leaves: “Literary theory often intensifies the difficulties of reading, and constantly throws up more problems than it is capable of solving” he also states that “the complexities /../ really are there”. This finishes his work on how to better literal analysis.

Keywords

Textuality, literary theory, close reading, where does it leave us, the relationship between literature and psychoanalysis