Slideshow for the fourth lecture in my summer course, English 10, "Introduction to Literary Studies: Deception, Dishonesty, Bullshit." http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/m15/

1. Lecture 4:
Dishonesty and
Deception
PATRICK MOONEY, M.A.
ENGLISH 10, SUMMER SESSION A
25 JUNE 2105

2. Methodological principles (228–30)
●
Foucault offers a number of suggestions relating to how we “read”
discourse at a very broad level.
●
Remember that Foucault is a historian (and philosopher of history),
rather than a literary critic or theorist.
– And so these are not standard methods for interpreting literary
texts that are unambiguously applicable to literary texts.
– Nevertheless, his ideas have been very influential in the
humanities, including in literary studies, over the last thirty years.
●
In brief: Foucault argues for principles of reversal (recognizing what
is not said and why), discontinuity, specificity, and exteriority (staying
at the surface instead of digging down into the depths).

3. So who’s speaking?
“there is another principle of rarefaction, complementary to the first:
the author. Not, of course, the author in the sense of the individual
who delivered the speech or wrote the text in question, but the
author as the unifying principle in a particular group of writings or
statements, lying at the origins of their significance, as the seat of
their coherence.” (221)
“it was, during the Middle Ages, indispensable that a scientific text
be attributed to an author, for the author was the index of the work’s
truthfulness. A proposition was held to derive its scientific value from
its author. But since the seventeenth century this function has been
steadily declining: it barely survives now, save to give a name to a
theorem, an effect, an example or a syndrome. In literature, however,
and from the same period, the author’s function has become
steadily more important.” (221–22)

4. Some quick dramatic terminology
Upstage UL
ULC
(or
UL)
UC
URC (or
UR)
UR
Center stage CL (or L) L C R CR (or R)
Downstage DL
DLC
(or
DL)
DC
DRC (or
DR)
DR
AUDIENCE
Stage right Stage left

5. “What is so
perilous, then, in
the fact that
people speak,
and that their
speech
proliferates?
Where is the
danger in that?”*
* Foucault 216
Lillian Hellman in the 1970s

6. Lillian Hellman (1905–1984)
●
Successful Broadway playwright for several decades.
●
Refused to answer questions for the House Committee on Un-American
Activities in 1952, during the McCarthy years.
– Lost a great deal of income when HUAC prevented her from working in
Hollywood.
●
Had a thirty-year affair with married detective fiction author Dashiell
Hammett.
●
Had a notoriously loose relationship to her own biographical narrative in
her multiple memoirs and in her biographical fictions.
●
Sued literary critic Mary McCarthy after McCarthy said, on the Tonight
Show, that “every word she [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and
'the.’”

7. “Natural”
MRS. MORTAR. It is natural that young women should
think of young men. But it is not natural until it is
proper. (11; act I)
MRS. MORTAR. If you had a friend, you always got
mad if she liked anybody else. That’s what’s
happening now. And it’s unnatural. Just as unnatural
as it can be. I say you need a man of your own, and ―
(21; act I)

8. PEGGY. Well, Mortar said that Dobie was jealous of them, and that she
was like that when she was a little girl, and that she’d better get
herself a beau of her own because it was unnatural, and that she
never wanted anybody to like Miss Wright, and that was unnatural. (27;
act I)
MARY. She said it was unnatural for a girl to feel that way. […] That’s
what she said, Grandma. […] I’m just telling you what she said. She said
there was something funny about it, and that Miss Dobie had always
been like that, even when she was a little girl and that it was
unnatural―
MRS. TILFORD. Stop using that silly word, Mary.
MARY. (Vaguely realizing she is on the right track, hurries on. […]) But
that was the word she kept using. (36-37, act II, scene i)

10. Deception and self-deception
MRS. MORTAR. Patient with me? I Have worked my fingers to
the bone to help you both―
MARTHA. (Turns to papers.) Don’t tell yourself that too often,
Aunt Lily; you’ll come to believe it.
MRS. MORTAR. I know it’s true. Where could you have gotten
a woman of my reputation to give these children voice
lessons, elocution lessons? Patient with me? Here I’ve
donated my services―
MARTHA. You are being paid.
MRS. MORTAR. That small thing?
(19; act I)

11. MRS. TILFORD. You don’t Don’t you find it odd―
that they want so much to get rid of that silly
woman? She’s harmless enough―
CARDIN. (Smiles.) You don’t know what you’re
talking about, Amelia. You’ve never been around
her. Lily Mortar is not a harmless woman, although
God knows she’s silly enough. She’s a nasty,
tiresome, spoilt old bitch and if you’re feeling sorry
for her you’re wasting your time. (44; act II, scene ii)

12. “Oh, who cares?”
EVELYN. What you going to tell your grandmother?
MARY. Oh, who cares, I’ll think of something to tell
her. I can always do it better on the spur of the
moment. (28; act I)
MARY. (Hysterically, as she sees AGATHA about to
pick up phone.) Grandma! Please! I can’t go back! I
can’t! They’ll kill me! They will, Grandma! They’ll kill
me! (33; act II)

13. Some positions
on truth
Let’s take a look at the
end of Act II, scene ii (pp.
46-49 in particular).

14. Media credits
The photo of Lillian Hellman (slide 5) is probably under
copyright, but it is a low-resolution version used for
educational purposes, and no freely available alternative is
known to exist. Original source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lillian_Hellman.gif