Jonathan Culler - Wikipedia Jonathan Culler From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. Find sources: "Jonathan Culler" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Jonathan Culler Born (1944-10-01) October 1, 1944 (age 76)[1] Cleveland Occupation Professor, Author Academic background Alma mater Harvard University St. John's College, Oxford Academic work Institutions Selwyn College, Cambridge Brasenose College, Oxford Yale University Cornell University Jonathan Culler (born 1944) is an American literary critic. He is Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His published works are in the fields of structuralism, literary theory and literary criticism. Contents 1 Background and career 2 Major works 3 Contributions to critical theory 4 Bibliography 5 See also 6 References 7 Sources 8 External links Background and career[edit] Culler attended Harvard for his undergraduate studies, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in history and literature in 1966. After receiving a Rhodes scholarship, he attended St. John's College, Oxford University, where he earned a B. Phil (now M. Phil) in comparative literature (1968) and a D.Phil in modern languages (1972).[2] His thesis for the B. Phil., on phenomenology and literary criticism, recorded Culler's first experiences with structuralism. The thesis explored the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the criticism of the "Geneva School" using the ideas of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, and Ferdinand de Saussure. Culler's "expanded, reorganized and rewritten" doctoral dissertation, "Structuralism: The Development of Linguistic Models and Their Application to Literary Studies," became an influential prize-winning book, Structuralist Poetics (1975).[3] In the years 1971 - 1974 he was married to the poet Veronica Forrest-Thomson Culler was Fellow in French and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at Selwyn College, Cambridge University, from 1969–1974, and Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford and University Lecturer in French from 1974-77.[2] He was Visiting Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Yale University in 1975. He is a past president of the Semiotic Society of America (1988), the American Comparative Literature Association (1999-2001), Secretary of the American Council of Learned Societies (2013-17), and Chair of the New York Council for the Humanities (2016-17. He has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001-) and the American Philosophical Society (2006-). Currently, he is Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University.[4] Culler is married to deconstructionist critic Cynthia Chase. Major works[edit] Culler's Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature won the James Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association of America in 1976 for an outstanding book of criticism.[2] Structuralist Poetics was one of the first introductions to the French structuralist movement available in English. Culler's contribution to the Very Short Introductions series, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, received praise for its innovative technique of organization. It has been translated into 26 languages, including Kurdish, Latvian, and Albanian. Instead of chapters on critical schools and their methods, the book's eight chapters address issues and problems of literary theory. In The Literary in Theory (2007) Culler discusses the notion of Theory and literary history's role in the larger realm of literary and cultural theory. He defines Theory as an interdisciplinary body of work including structuralist linguistics, anthropology, Marxism, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism. His Theory of the Lyric (2015) approaches the Western lyric tradition, from Sappho to Ashbery, exploring the major parameters of the genre and contesting two dominant models of the lyric: lyric as the intense expression of the author's affective experience, and lyric as the fictional representation of the speech act of a persona. Both these models, according to Culler, are extremely limiting and ignore what is most distinctive and exciting about lyric poems. Contributions to critical theory[edit] Culler believes that the linguistic-structuralist model can help "formulate the rules of particular systems of convention rather than simply affirm their existence." He posits language and human culture as similar. In Structuralist Poetics Culler warns against applying the technique of linguistics directly to literature. Rather, the "'grammar' of literature" is converted into literary structures and meaning. Structuralism is defined as a theory resting on the realization that if human actions or productions have meaning there must be an underlying system that makes this meaning possible, since an utterance has meaning only in the context of a preexistent system of rules and conventions. Culler proposes that we use literary theory not to try to understand a text but rather to investigate the activity of interpretation. In several of his works, he speaks of a reader who is particularly "competent." In order to understand how we make sense of a text, Culler identifies common elements that different readers treat differently in different texts. He suggests there are two classes of readers, "the readers as field of experience for the critic (himself a reader)" and the future readers who will benefit from the work the critic and previous readers have done. Culler's critics complain of his lack of distinction between literature and the institution of writing in general. John R. Searle has described Culler's presentation of deconstruction as making "Derrida look both better and worse than he really is;" better in glossing over some of the more intellectually murky aspects of deconstruction and worse in largely ignoring the major philosophical progenitors of Derrida's thought, namely Husserl and Heidegger.[5] Bibliography[edit] Selected publications: Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty. London: Elek Books; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974. Revised edition: Cornell University Press, 1985. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. Revised edition: Routledge Classics, 2002. Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, and Croatian translations. Saussure (American Title: Ferdinand de Saussure). London: Fontana Modern Masters; Brighton: Harvester, 1976. New York: Penguin, 1977. Second revised edition, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986; London: Fontana, 1987. Japanese, Serbian, Slovenian, Portuguese, Turkish, and Finnish translations. The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. Revised edition, "Routledge Classics," Routledge, 2001, Cornell University Press, 2002. Japanese translation. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982; London: Routledge, 1983. Japanese, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Serbian, Chinese, Polish, Korean, Hungarian, and Czech translations. Barthes (American Title: Roland Barthes). London: Fontana Modern Masters; New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. French, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese translations. Revised and expanded edition, Roland Barthes: A Very Short Introduction, OUP, Oxford, 2001. ed. The Call of the Phoneme: Puns and the Foundations of Letters. Oxford: Blackwells, and Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987. Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions. Oxford: Blackwells, and Norman, U of Oklahoma Press, 1988. Japanese translation. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; reedition 1999. Polish, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Italian, German, Spanish, Croatian, Japanese, Romanian, French, and Latvian translations. Ed., with Kevin Lamb, Just Being Difficult? Academic Writing in the Public Arena. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Ed. Deconstruction: Critical Concepts, 4 vols. London: Routledge, 2003. Ed. with Pheng Cheah, Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson. Routledge, 2003. "The Literary In Theory" Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Chinese, Japanese, and Polish translations Theory of the Lyric. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Czech translation. See also[edit] List of deconstructionists References[edit] ^ "Culler, Jonathan 1944- - Dictionary definition of Culler, Jonathan 1944-". Encyclopedia.com: FREE online dictionary. 1 October 1944. Retrieved 30 March 2017. ^ a b c Shea, Victor (1993). "Jonathan Dwight Culler". In Makaryk, Irene Rima (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms, p. 283-84. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-6860-X. ^ Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975), pp. viii-ix. ^ "Jonathan D. Culler". Department of English Cornell Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2017-03-30. ^ Searle, John R. "The Word Turned Upside Down" The New York Review of Books, Volume 30, Number 16, October 27, 1983 Sources[edit] Beers, Terry. "Reading Reading Constraints: Conventions, Schemata, and Literary Interpretation" Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 18 (1988): 82-93. Culler, J. The Literary in Theory Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Culler, J. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Culler, J. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. Revised edition: Routledge Classics, 2002 Gorman, D. "Theory of What?" Rev. of Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Jonathan Culler. Philosophy and Literature 23.1 (1999): 206-216 Schauber, E. & Spolsky, E. "Stalking a Generative Poetics" New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 12.3 (1981): 397-413. Schleifer, R. & Rupp, G. "Structuralism" The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism 2nd ed. (2005). External links[edit] James Russell Lowell Prize Authority control BIBSYS: 90105674 BNE: XX1036956 BNF: cb120290799 (data) CANTIC: a11700075 CiNii: DA00046908 GND: 118155180 ISNI: 0000 0001 2142 4150 LCCN: n50019772 NDL: 00436996 NKC: jo2003163248 NLG: 197288 NLK: KAC200907827 NTA: 069824223 PLWABN: 9810693302905606 SELIBR: 182596 SNAC: w6w126cd SUDOC: 028459466 VIAF: 86612942 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n50019772 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jonathan_Culler&oldid=980052515" Categories: 1944 births Harvard University alumni American Rhodes Scholars Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Yale University faculty Cornell University faculty Fellows of Brasenose College, Oxford Fellows of Selwyn College, Cambridge Living people Structuralism American academics of English literature American literary critics Hidden categories: BLP articles lacking sources from March 2008 All BLP articles lacking sources Articles with hCards Wikipedia articles with BIBSYS identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with CINII identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with NDL identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLG identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLK identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version Languages Български Čeština Deutsch Español Italiano مصرى Slovenčina Edit links This page was last edited on 24 September 2020, at 09:41 (UTC). 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