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Robin, I'm not up to speed on Saussure, but I think I get the point with regard to literature that "the thing was already there" or in the theoretical jargon "always already there". You've lost me with the 'isochronic' - is this to do with brainwave activity? The issue of intentionalism has cropped up a few times already (in some of the weirdest contexts) but I'm not convinced by Tim's idea of an "exaggerated concept of intentionalism" or perhaps I haven't understood how it relates to Dylan and have missed something important. My first response to this is that the artist's intention - let's say how someone thinks about their work - is of secondary importance. Anyway it's only ever something we can infer, because even the author is not the ultimate authority. No one is. That said, we know that all human activity, and that very much includes art, has intent. That in art even accident is controlled accident - it's kept in the work, in other words, if it's seen to help. But perhaps I'm missing the point. I'm grateful that you at least have understood the two points I was making at the outset. Even I don't fully agree myself with the second point, and quite quickly admitted it was a 'mild provocation' - it was putting in exaggerated terms the view that though I do indeed think very highly of Dylan as a singer I don't think that much of him as a poet. As it happens, I don't believe my position, such as it is, has changed much from my second post on. Though if it were to have changed, I don't see that as a problem. If a stance is modified it suggests the one who held it has been open to persuasion. That would seem to me a healthy effect of discussion. It would only be considered a failing by those who believe that maintaining an inflexible position is a form of strength and sanity. Jamie Sent from my iPad > On 27 Oct 2016, at 22:31, Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Part of this also turns on what we prioritise as most important, or most relevant to the particular issue under discussion, in the text / (interaction) / reader || speech act / language system nexus. Tim would (in this context) push the reader to the fore, whereas I tend to push the text to the fore. > > It's not that Tim's right or I'm wrong here, but if we don't actually make the effort of noticing how the position we're coming from is going to (inevitably) colour what we say, we'll end up talking past each other. > > ... at long bloody last Ferdinand de Saussure's early papers have been (a) found (b) published (c) translated, and [perhaps most relevant here] (d) the knock-on effect has already started. > > Currently, not entirely caused by but linked to points (a)-(c) above, Saussure is being, not so much reinterpreted as interpreted properly for the first time. > > "Properly", in the sense (and now my own theoretical presuppositions are showing) that the text (A Course in General Linguistics) is no longer being misinterpreted. > > > >> The issue has arisen for me in this Dylan topic because of what I see as an exaggerated concept of intentionalism > Concur. Nice way of putting it. Sure you weren't once a New Critic? :-) > >> which appears to be an important part of the argument that song lyrics are not 'literature'. > "Literature" as a term is so problematic that it's best avoided, especially when the discussion ends up mistaking the label for the thing. In Saussurean terms, "literature" as a signified exists before <literature> as a signifier appears. The sign and the signifier both change, but the thing was already there. > >> >> All the points, such as yours below about 'spoken' stress and 'musical' time are really interesting and helpful > I'd go into this in more detail, and might if I remember, but I'm more than running out of steam, and have probably trespassed on everyone's patience further than I should already, but for me, it can be sort-of located in the sentence, "As a (spoken) language, English is isochronic between stresses." > >> but I am afraid I have seen nothing to change my view that song lyrics are as much a part of 'literature' as a novel or a poem or whatever. > Who's disagreeing? Way early on, back in the long ago past, Jamie made two separate points, in two posts, and later on, somehow got accused of changing his stance. When he tried to explain himself, it just seemed to get worse. Not, I think, Jamie's fault, since he did try to explain, with more forbearance than I would have shown, but that's the way it went. So: > > 1) Dylan is a great artist. > > 2) What Dylan does isn't "literature" in the sense used by the Swedish Academy, and as such, he shouldn't have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. > > This seemed to me, at the time, a necessary statement of the blindingly obvious, succinctly put. It never occurred to me at that point that there was any contradiction between Jamie's two statement, both of which I happen to agree with. > > Well, actually I don't entirely agree with Jamie's second point -- I can understand why he said it, but the dumpster fire ignited here and in the MSM is fun to watch. Better Dylan than Justin Bieber, for all of me. > > Robin > >>