User:Andre castro/2/annot/suleiman

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki

Suleiman, Susan Redundancy and the "Readable" Text

Suleiman, Susan (1980). Redundancy and the "Readable" Text. Poetics Today 1(3), pp.119-142


Susan Suleiman dedicates this article to the role of redundancy, in what she refers to as the "readable" text. Such term, the "readable" text was elaborated by Roland Barthes in order to refer to the text that are "serious, closed, structured , constrained, authoritarian, redundant; it imposes a meaning and turns the reader into a consumer, not a producer" (p.119) in opposition the "writable"text that ask for the reader collaborative effort in the creation of the text.


Suleiman focuses her study on the genre of the ideological novel (contained within the broader field of realistic novel)- "a novel written in the realistic mode and seeking to persuade its reader of the validity or of the falsehood of a particular doctrine"(pp119-120). One of the main devices employed in this literary genre consists of redundancy, as means clearing the text from plural meanings and ambiguities, so that a single correct meaning prevails (120). Suleiman refers to Barthe's description of the "readable" text as its "obsessive fear of failing to communicate meaning". If meaning must be communicated at all costs ambiguities and noise must be ignored from communication and redundancy will ensure the message is received as intended.


Because redundancy can act at different levels of a text, Suleiman propose a classification of the main types of ambiguity which can be found in realistic fiction. In order to accomplish this task Suleiman relies on schema (based on the works of A.J. Greimas and Gérard Gennette) of the main elements of narrative, that allows for a more focused classification. The schema distinguishes two levels: the level of the story or narrative content, encompassing characters, and event; and the level of discourse, which concerns the delivery of the story, centered on the narration and the temporal organization.

On the level of the story some of the present types of redundancy are: repetition of an event or sequence of events(A.1.1), the unchangeable qualities of a character(A.2.2), the performance of the same action by same character types (doctors, pilots)(A.3.1), a single character pronounces several time the same commentary concerning an event (A.5.2), the context is metonymically redundant with the character (banker in bank, baker in the bakery)(A.6), The actantial role a character is redundant with his qualities (hero is handsome and generous) (A.9)

On the level of discourse the dected types are: Narrator maintains the same type of contact with the reader (B.1); The narrator pronounces several times the same commentary about a character (B.2); Narrator indicates several times the source from which he obtained his information (specially in auto-diegetic narratives) (B.3); The focalization is maintained (B.4).

And lastly on the in-between level of story and discourse: An event that is told more than once (C.1); An event becoming redundant with the interpretative commentary the narrator makes about it (C.2)


Suleiman concludes by asserting that 'the excessively redundant text is one which allows for no surprises, which "follows the rules" of readability, of genre, of semantic or formal or discursive coherence too faithful'(p.140). In the Sulleiman's opinion low-brow genres are prevented from being considered serious literature, because they follow their formula without much innovation. "They are too familiar, and if that very fact constitutes their charm for their fans, it also prevent them from acceding to the status of serious literature"(p.14)

connect to Eco reading of Bond novels - the reason that keeps reader reading is its too familiar and unsurprising formula
  


EXPLORE
redundancy in spam - what is it trying to achieve
redundancy in advertisement or political campaigns

the body of a sub-genre of spam emails as single narrative - the same character facing similar challenges, in similar context and behaving consistently throughout