Dear Peter,

Deconstruction is no longer controversial.  Or haven't you heard?

Diana

Sent from my iPod

On Mar 3, 2010, at 12:46 AM, Peter Montgomery <[log in to unmask]>  
wrote:

> And your evidence for these assertions, or have you just been given  
> a ticket
> to ride?
>
> P.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "DIana Manister" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2010 7:23 AM
> Subject: Re: 'Gerontion' -- the dramatic arc
>
>
>> Dear Ken,
>>
>> Multiform ambiguity occurs as the writer's unintended meanings  
>> distort
>> his ostensible intent.
>>
>> The narrator of Gerontion is unreliable in a conventional way, in  
>> that
>> his self-characterizations are undermined by implications of which  
>> the
>> author is unaware. N's distaste for others is presented as ostensible
>> evidence of his superiority, but it betrays intolerance and  
>> grandiosity.
>>
>> Eliot allows his personal animus to cloud his characterization of
>> Gerontion's narrator, which he no doubt intended to be a pious seeker
>> of faith but who is easily deconstructed as a snobbish misogynistic
>> anti-Semite.
>>
>> Gerontion's author's intention is contradicted by unintended  
>> signifieds.
>>
>> Postmodern authors allow for multiple intentionalities in their  
>> texts,
>> and their texts can often withstand deconstruction as Gerontion  
>> cannot.
>>
>> Diana
>>
>> Sent from my iPod
>>
>> On Feb 27, 2010, at 9:30 AM, Ken Armstrong <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> DIana Manister wrote:
>>>> Who says the Jew is Jesus? He's depicted as negatively as Fresca
>>>> and von Kulp. Who are they? Mary Magdelene and The Blessed Mother?
>>> You have to place yourself in the poem. Where is Gerontion while
>>> being read to by a boy? What is being read? Where does one find "the
>>> jew" (not "a jew") squatting on a window sill? One who owns "the
>>> house"? One who has been spawned, blistered, patched and peeled,
>>> i.e. the "fish" in stained glass in just those city-centers of
>>> Europe? What is the significance of the poem's locale to "the field
>>> overhead"? You'd have to give up your fantasy Eliot, the negative
>>> one for whom all things created in his poetry somehow equate to
>>> psychological fissures and fractures, to dig to the real one whom
>>> the critics you quote do not touch. The odd thing to me is how
>>> obvious it is that he hasn't been touched, that such an easy
>>> identification of "the jew" is so difficult for the Eliot
>>> Distraction League to simply see, not to say they couldn't sober up,
>>> gather themselves, and push on from that obvious beginning
>>>
>>> What happened to your championing of multiform ambiguity? What are
>>> the windy spaces and who supplies the wind?
>>>
>>> Ken
>>>
>