A Rose for Emily Short Analysis
I. THEORY Negative Knowledge Model by Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno Adorno’s own view is that art and reality stand at a distance from each other and that this distance gives ‘the work of art a vantage-point from which it can criticize actuality’ (Adorno 1977:160). He said, this critical distance comes from the fact that literature has its own ‘formal laws’. The first law is the ‘procedure and techniques’ which in modern art ‘dissolve the subject matter and reorganize it’ (1977:153). Second, he says that art is the ‘essence and image’ of reality rather than its photographic reproduction. An image in a work of art comes for Adorno from the artist (the subject) absorbing in the creative process what they perceive in reality (the object).
Adorno takes reality to be not empirical world we see through our eyes or through camera lens but the dialectical totality, a structure which can only be perceived by a process of thought linking things together and seeing how they effectively are. He also emphasizes the alienated nature of reality in contemporary Western society, a world where people appear to be at the mercy of the mechanical laws of the market and of a rationalized and bureaucratic State.
The literary work does not give us a neatly-shaped reflection and a knowledge of reality but acts within reality to expose its contradictions. ‘Art is the negative knowledge of the actual world’ (1977: 160). It means knowledge which can undermine and negate a false or reified condition. He opens up modernist writing to Marxist literary theory by showing that a different kind of relationship between the text and reality is possible: one of distance and negative knowledge rather than reflection.
II. ANALYSIS
II. I She does not pay for the tax. She refuses to pay taxes in Jefferson because the long dead Colonel Sartoris told her that she was not obligated to, because some privilages was given as the dispensation dating from the death of her
Adorno takes reality to be not empirical world we see through our eyes or through camera lens but the dialectical totality, a structure which can only be perceived by a process of thought linking things together and seeing how they effectively are. He also emphasizes the alienated nature of reality in contemporary Western society, a world where people appear to be at the mercy of the mechanical laws of the market and of a rationalized and bureaucratic State.
The literary work does not give us a neatly-shaped reflection and a knowledge of reality but acts within reality to expose its contradictions. ‘Art is the negative knowledge of the actual world’ (1977: 160). It means knowledge which can undermine and negate a false or reified condition. He opens up modernist writing to Marxist literary theory by showing that a different kind of relationship between the text and reality is possible: one of distance and negative knowledge rather than reflection.
II. ANALYSIS
II. I She does not pay for the tax. She refuses to pay taxes in Jefferson because the long dead Colonel Sartoris told her that she was not obligated to, because some privilages was given as the dispensation dating from the death of her