Literary Theory

Series 2: Handout #9

Yi-Fu Tuan (1930-): Chinese diplomatic family, educated at Oxford and Berkeley; originally taught at University of New Mexico, where he had large classes and little pressure to publish, and the freedom to, more of less, invent a new field of scholarship combining geography and philosophy—and inadvertently to become one of the founders of human geography, a branch of ecocriticism. (Just goes to show why there may be more opportunities for innovation outside R1 universities). He later went to the University of Minnesota, then the University of Wisconsin, Madison. You can read his ongoing topical “letters” here: http://www.geography.wisc.edu/~yifutuan/index.htm.

Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values (1974). Topophilia “includes all emotional connections between physical environment and human beings,” including the aesthetic, physical, historical, and impact of loss of familiar environments. Tuan uses this concept to ask about the relation of human physical and psychological well being and a sense of place connected to a personal and cultural history. He considers the cost of urbanization on this sense of place: what does the loss of our physical environment do to us? (Famous example: ducks still swim in the fountains of the Pompidou Center in Paris, where a pond once was.) Tuan also offers several models for the relationship between the city and the country (remember Raymonds Williams?) and offers some literary and historical context (indeed, his writings have been a boon to ecocritics who are also New Historicists).

Here are some questions prompted by Tuan on Place:

• Do you have an emotional attachment to a place, perhaps where you grew up? Do you find yourself drawn back “home”? Why? Constructed meaning, yes, but also “human nature”?
• Does our psychological health rely on the stability of place? Are we hard-wired this way? What is the impact of constant relocation and disruption on modern people?
• Note history of this from enclosure through the industrial revolution and urban renewal.

• BIG THREATENING QUESTION: Does the social constructivist perspective—beyond a certain point—actually support the disruptions of capitalism and imperialism by claiming that human beings don’t really “need” anything (e.g., stability of place rather than growth and change; rhythms connected to natural cycles rather than economic ones; attachments to the local rather than far-away abstractions; the transference of allegiance from the family to the state and corporation)? Is the social constructionist turn in literary studies really in support of the very things it claims to oppose (just as Foucault warned us)?

And on Aesthetic Experience:

· Does aesthetic appreciation have a physical (or spiritual) basis (i.e., a basis beyond cultural construction)? Consider the “sublime.”

· Are there some things we can agree are universally ugly? Why do we recoil from the ugly?

· What are some benefits of increased love of beauty (Elaine Scarry will say Beauty=Justice).

· How long can you sustain aesthetic appreciation? How can you enhance it? Is this one function of the critic: increased aesthetic pleasure and awareness?

· Can you plan an aesthetic natural experience (e.g., tourism)? Or does it have to happen spontaneously, as a surprise, a gift of fortune/providence?

· Are children more aesthetically aware of nature than adults? Why? What about rural people? Remember the Grapes of Wrath: “It working, and living, and dying on the land that makes it ours.”

· So, here we are, again, after 200 years, back to believing in Romanticism.

Assignment for next class: bring in something (object, text, image) that you regard as beautiful. I’ll ask you to explain your aesthetic choice.