Approaches to Genre: The Novel

Linguistic anthropologists think about language ideologies as representing, in the words of Paul Kroskrity, “the perception of language and discourse that is constructed in the interest of a specific social or cultural group.” Arguably, readers and writers of novels form groups of this kind in different times and places. Occasionally novelists attempt to innovate regarding “the perception of language and discourse” that a novel communicates to readers. Flaubert might be one example of this. For linguistic anthropologist Michael Silverstein, language ideologies are “sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use.” Certain novels (Proust will be our example here) represent users of language making claims about how language is being used and what it is being used for. Representing language in use thus becomes both a critical and an aesthetic task in these novels. Kroskrity further emphasizes that “language ideologies are productively used in the creation and representation of various social and cultural identities (e.g. nationality, ethnicity). Language, especially shared language, has long served as the key to naturalizing the boundaries of social groups.” We will take sexuality as one particular kind of socio-cultural and linguistic identity that novelists (Genet, Cather, Smith, Ben Jelloun) have explored. So in this seminar we will investigate 1) the possibility that novels can be taken to be archives in which language ideologies and their functions are recorded and critically] examined, 2) the possibility that novels are themselves linguistic objects (utterances) that are caught up in language ideologies of their own, including ideologies of the aesthetic, and 3) the ways in which novels that take up the issue of sexuality and its histories can become entangled in various kinds of language ideologies and can sometimes also reflect on those entanglements as part of their reflection on what sexuality is. Along with six novels (four originally written in French), we will be reading a good deal of literary criticism, linguistic anthropology, and sociology of language and culture.

A reading knowledge of French is not required, but anyone who has it should plan to read the French- language novels in French. Please make an effort to obtain the editions of the novel listed here. We will be starting with Flaubert in week 2. We can discuss ways of obtaining copies of the other novels at the first meeting. I’ll be sending around pdfs of three articles to read for the first meeting shortly before the start of the semester.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary: either the Folio edition (ed. Laget) or the Lydia Davis translation published by Penguin.
Marcel Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe/Sodom and Gomorrah: either the Folio edition (ed. Compagnon) or the John Sturrock translation published by Penguin.
Jean Genet, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs/Our Lady of the Flowers. There is only one English translation (Frechtman- Grove Press). If you are reading in French, please try to obtain the edition published by L’arbalète (ISBN 2070751473) and NOT the Folio edition.
Willa Cather, The Professor’s House, Vintage Classics
Ali Smith, How to Be Both, Anchor
Tahar Ben Jelloun, Partir (Folio); Leaving Tangier (Arcadia)