Story Cycle: Community Imagination and Imaginary Community

聯篇故事與社區想像

Spring, 2007

A Seminar with Prof. Chen Chi-szu
Latest Update: 2007/03/12

Notes on Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio

l          Where is Winesburg, Ohio? (18 miles to the North is Lake Erie, p100, Norton; a railroad leads east to Cleveland, p 111, Norton)

l          What are the sources of this composite novel? (p144-5)

The frame story, “The Book of Grotesque”

I、      The frame story, “The Book of Grotesque”:

1.          “figure and ground” relation

2.          What is the relation between the “grotesque figure” and the “young thing”?

As he grew somewhat sleepy but was still conscious, figures began to appear before his eyes. He imagined the young indescribable thing within himself was driving a long procession of figures before his eyes.
 
You see the interest in all this lies in the figures that went before the eyes of the writer. They were all grotesque. All the men and women the writer had ever known had become grotesque.  (6, emphasis added)

Are these figures “perceived” or “projected” as grotesque?

                             i.                Compared with the “young thing” these figures are “perceived” as grotesque.

                           ii.                The “young thing” itself is the drive to distort the figure, and the result of the projection is a grotesque.

3.          How a character become a grotesque in the story? By his/her persistence in a thought (his or her truth) or by the narrator’s distortion? In other words, is the grotesque figure, an “impression” or “expression” of the narrator/focalizer/author?

For an hour the procession of grotesques passed before the eyes of the old man, and then, although it was a painful thing to do, he crept out of bed and began to write. Some one of the grotesques had made a deep impression on his mind and he wanted to describe it. (6, emphasis added)

4.          grotesque vs norm: the function of the grotesque is to review/ criticize the norm through defamiliarization

                             i.                cf. Franco Moretti’s “The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture,”

II、   How well is the principle, theme of the frame story applied in the following stories? How does the image of “grotesque” play out through out the composite novel? What are the varieties of the grotesque?

III、 Can you recognize some patterns from the quilt of stories?

1.          a bildungsroman: about the progress of George Willard
(Read Franco Moretti’s essay on bidungsroman”

2.          The depression of female and the suppression of femininity (animus): in love, sexuality, marriage, politic, religion, and community formation
(Read Sally Adair Rigsbee’s “The Feminine in Winesburg, Ohio”)

3.          distortion of religion: How do the “Godliness” series relate to other stories and to the composite novel as a whole?

4.           

IV、Is "grotesque" an aesthetic principle/discourse Anderson adopts to criticize stereotype/norm of individualism and community? Or a term for the object of criticism?

1.          provincialism

2.          communism

3.          colonialism

4.          existentialist individualism (nobody, “Bartleby,” “The Invisible Man,” “The Underground man,” “the superfluous”

5.          imperial self, colonializing/colonialized self (self-made man, American Adam

V、   Foregrounded by the prevailing critical interests in individualism, the stranger, the self-made man, the imperialism, the `nobody', we will focus on the perception/conception/construction of community in the story cycle.

1.          What kind of community is constructed by the author? How is such a type of community (Closed vs. open, integrated vs. disintegrating) revealed in the beginning and ending of the story cycle?

2.          How does each character in each story (text-piece) interact with others, and respond to the community?

                             i.                Metaphor:

                           ii.                Metonymy: Each character is part and parcel of the community, and share common characteristic(s), value(s) of the community.

3.          Can such a community (town, city, reservation, etc.) be a character?

VI、Compared with novel, the story cycle stresses more on inter-connection than on unity.

Chen Chi-szu,
Assistant Professor,
English Department,
Tamkang University

kiss7445@mail.tku.edu.tw:

Office: 
(02)26215656 ext.2966
Room: FL632