Second lecture for my students in English 104A, UC Santa Barbara, spring 2012. Course website: http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/s12/index.html

1. Lecture 2: Days of Swine & Roses
Babbitt, William Carlos Williams,
& Ferdinand de Saussure
English 104A
Spring 2012
4 April 2012
O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet […]
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.42-44

2. “The categorical fixity of Enlightenment thought was
increasingly challenged, and ultimately replaced by an
emphasis upon divergent systems of representation. […]
Tentative at first, the idea exploded from 1890 onwards into an
incredible diversity of thought and experiment in centres as
different as Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Munich, London, New York,
Chicago, Copenhagen, and Moscow […] Most commentators
agree this furore of experimentation resulted in a qualitative
transformation in what modernism was about somewhere
between 1910 and 1915. […] In retrospect, […] it is hard not to
see that some kind of radical transformation did indeed occur
in these years. Proust’s Swann’s way (1913), Joyce’s Dubliners
(1914), Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1914), Mann’s Death in
Venice (1914), Pound’s ‘Vorticist manifesto’ of 1914 (in which
he likened pure language to efficient machine technology) are
some of the marker texts [...]”

3. “[...] some of the marker texts published at a time that also
witnessed an extraordinary efflorescence in art (Matisse,
Picasso, Brancusi, Duchamp, Braque, Klee, de Chirico,
Kandinsky, many of whose works turned up in the famous
Armory Show in New York in 1913, to be seen by more than
10,000 visitors a day), music (Stravinsky’s The rite of spring
opened to a riot in 1913 and was paralleled by the arrival of the
atonal music of Schoenberg, Berg, Bartok, and others), to say
nothing of the dramatic shift in linguistics (Saussure’s
structuralist theory of language, in which the meaning of words
is given by their reference to other words rather than by their
reference to objects, was conceived in 1911) and in physics,
consequent upon Einstein’s generalization of the theory of
relativity with its appeal to, and material justification of, non-
Euclidean geometries.”
―David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity

4. The Word
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.”
― John 1:1
“As St Paul admirably put it, it is in the ‘Logos’ […] that
we ‘live, move and have our being.’”
― Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses” (tr. Ben Brewster, quoting Acts 17:28)

5. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
● Swiss linguist, author
of Cours de linguistique
générale (The Course
in General Linguistics)
● Published
posthumously by former
students in 1916
● First translated into
English in 1974
● Highly influential in
early- to mid-twentieth-
century thought

6. The (Saussurean) Linguistic Sign
● Language (and other
systems of meaning)
consist of signs: elements
of meaning consisting of
symbols that point toward
something in “the real
world.”
● Signifier: the thing that does
the pointing (a word, for
instance)
● Signified: the thing that is
pointed to (the thing in the
real world)

7. The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign
● One of Saussure’s most influential principles:
signs are arbitrary
● The relationship between the signifier and the
signified is not “natural”: it is determined by culture
(has a history, and does not come somehow from
inherent properties of the thing itself)
English: tree
Finnish: puu
French: arbre
German: Baum
Italian: albero
Latin: lignum
Russian: дерево
Spanish: árbol
Etc ...

8. This is not “naturally” obvious …
“Why, Huck, doan’ de French people talk de same
way we does?”
“No, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said
— not a single word.”
“Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?”
“I don’t know; but it’s so. I got some of their jabber
out of a book. Spose a man was to come to you and say
‘Polly-voo-franzy’- what would you think?”
“I wouldn't think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him over de
head.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1884), ch. 14

9. For Saussure, meaning is based on
difference between signs
“bat” “cat” “Matt”

10. William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
● Physician, poet
● Today’s poems are
from Spring and All
(1923)
● Key terms (for our
purposes):
● Free verse
● Imagism
● Modernism

11. Imagism
● Most influential 1912-1917
● Amy Lowell’s famous definition (1915-17):
Imagist poetry is …
● Free to choose its own subjects
● Free to create its own rhythms
● Expressed in common speech
● Presents an image that is …
– Hard
– Clear
– Concentrated

12. The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

14. For context …
“My love is like a red red rose
That’s newly sprung in June:
My love is like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune […]”
― Robert Burns, “My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose”
“O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm [...]”
― William Blake, “The Sick Rose”

15. The Rose (The rose is obsolete)
The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air---The edge
…............................
The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end---of roses
(Williams, “The Rose” lines 1-5, 21-22)
Juan Gris, “Roses” (1914)

16. ● The rose is stripped of symbolic associations. It is
not a figure for romantic/sexual love.
● It is simply a rose … and the occasion for reflection.
Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses―
(lines 18-20)
● Williams’s rose is not soft, not organic, but hard,
metallic, sharply defined.
● Williams’s metallic rose is made by “the sense” –
created in the mind, defined by difference, in the
way that Saussure said that words have meaning.

17. But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry―
(lines 10-13)
● The end of the symbolic order of language opens
new possibilities for meaning.
● Meaning, defined by difference, is mirrored by the
hard consonant sounds in the poem (“copper,”
“cuts,” “column” …)
● And by the typographical feature of the long dashes
that separate words from each other, cleanly, as
Saussurean signs are given meaning by their
separation.

18. Harry Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
● First American to win
the Nobel Prize in
Literature (1930)
● First commercially
successful novel: Main
Street (1920)
● Refused Pulitzer Prize
for Arrowsmith in 1925.
● Several novels are set
in the fictitious city of
Zenith

19. “Babbittry”
from the Oxford English Dictionary
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈbabᵻtri/ , U.S. /ˈbæbətri/
Forms: Babbitry (irreg.), Babbittry. Also with
lower-case initial.
Etymology: < the name of George F. Babbitt (see
BABBITT n.2) + -RY suffix.
orig. N. Amer.
Behaviour and attitudes characteristic of or
associated with the character George Babbitt (see
2
BABBITT n. ); esp. materialistic complacency and
unthinking conformity.

20. George Babbitt
“His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-
six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made
nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor
poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling
houses for more than people could afford to pay.”
(p. 4; ch. 1, sec. 2)
“By golly, I don’t look so bad. I certainly don’t look
like Catawba. If the hicks back home could see
me in this rig, they’d have a fit!”
(p. 90; ch. 8, sec. 2)

21. Babbitt’s Ethics
● Negotiable and flexible, based on personal
convenience and what is profitable at the
moment
“Babbitt, though he really did hate men recognized as
swindlers, was not too unreasonably honest” (p. 39; ch.
4, sec. 4)
● Based on conformance to specific orthodoxies
“Babbitt was again without a canon which would enable
him to speak with authority. Nothing in motoring or real
estate had indicated what a Solid Citizen and Regular
Fellow ought to think about culture by mail.” (p. 66; ch. 6,
sec. 3)

22. “mysterious malaise” (p. 26; ch. 3, sec. 2)
● A primary element of novel’s plot is the development of
George Babbitt’s personality: he begins being slightly
dissatisfied without being able to articulate why (or
being willing to admit that this is the case).
“this great and treacherous day of veiled rebellions” (p. 78; ch. 7, sec. 2)
At the Babbitts’ dinner party: “Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was
not merely bored but admitting that he was bored.” (p. 103; ch. 9, sec.
1)
“he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that
he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so
unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.” (p. 109; ch. 9, sec. 2)
“he [Babbitt] expanded with delight and wondered how, before his
vacation, he could have questioned the joys of being a solid citizen.” (p.
158; ch. 14, sec. 4)

23. The City of Zenith
“The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning
mist; austere towers of steel and cement and
limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods.
They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly
and beautifully office-buildings.”
(First two sentences of the novel)
“Awful good to get back to civilization! I certainly been
seeing some hick towns! I mean— Course the folks
there are the best on earth, but gee whiz, those Main
Street burgs are slow.”
(Chum Frink, p. 97; ch. 8, sec. 2)
“Zenith the Zip City—Zeal, Zest and Zowie—
1,000,000 in 1935.” (135; ch. 13, sec. 3)

24. For Monday...
● One of our primary focal points will be the way
that language is used by Babbitt & co.
● A thought to get you started:
We also insist that politics demands complex
thinking and that poetry is an arena for such
thinking: a place to explore the constitution of
meaning, of self, of groups, or nations,—of value.
―Charles Bernstein, “Revenge of the Poet-Critic” (1999)

25. Administrative Matters
● Attendance
● Crashing

26. Lecture 2: Days of Swine and Roses
The image of Ferdinand de Saussure (slide 5) comes from Wikimedia Commons; it is
a photo originally taken by F. Jullien Genève, and is out of copyright. Source &
more info at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ferdinand_de_Saussure_by_Jullien.png.
Saussure's diagram incorporating a picture of a tree (e.g., slide 6), and derivatives
thereof are from Wikimedia Commons. Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tree.gif
The photo of Matt Damon (slide 9) is also from Wikimedia Commons. Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Damon_cropped.jpg
The passport photo of WC Williams (slide 10) is in the public domain because it is a
work of the U.S. Federal Government. Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Carlos_Williams_passport_photograph_1
921.jpg
The photo on slide 13 is my own work. It is available at http://fav.me/d25rhjg
Juan Gris's Roses (slide 15) is out of copyright. Source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Juan_Gris,_Roses,_1914.jpg
The photo of Sinclair Lewis (slide 18) is a faithful photographic representation of a
U.S. Government work.