UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of this... faculty as a 'language acquisition device,' an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The essential difference between novel and romance lies in the conception of characterization. The romancer does not attempt to cr...eate "real people" so much as stylized figures which expand into psychological archetypes. It is in the romance that we find Jung's libido, anima, and shadow reflected in the hero, heroine, and villain respectively. That is why the romance so often radiates a glow of subjective intensity that the novel lacks, and why a suggestion of allegory is constantly creeping in around the fringes. Certain elements of character are released in the romance which make it naturally a more revolutionary form than the novel. The novelist deals with personality, with characters wearing their personae or social masks. He needs the framework of a stable society, and many of our best novelists have been conventional to the verge of fussiness. The romancer deals with individuality, with characters in vacuo idealized by revery, and, however conservative he may be, something nihilistic and untamable is likely to keep breaking out of his pages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the last fifteen years or so, the women's novel has turned into the Amtrak of American literature; crashing through the gates a...t Aristotle, jumping the tracks at Horace, ignoring the flashing red lights at Boileau, and scooping up Alexander Pope in the cowcatcher. The rules are down and it's every stylist for herself in this best of all Tupperware parties, where plot and characterization have been replaced by the kind of non-stop chatter that enabled the French Foreign Legion to meet its enlistment quota for a hundred and fifty years. In the unlikely event that future scholars will bother to give our era a cultural tag, it will be called the Age of Women's Litter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The history of theater from the medieval period until the nineteenth century has been in large part a history of further and furth...er separations of the scene of dramatic action from the physical situation of the audience. Even as the subject matter--in the plays of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg--became more and more continuous with the life of the audience, the stage itself pulled in its apron, emphasized its proscenium, and became a room with an invisible fourth wall, allowing the audience to look in, while keeping it more definitely outside. The progress of film was the reverse. From the stylized and theatrical settings of the early dramas, silent films moved into greater and greater involvement with the actors. Previously the audience saw actors from a distance, with a sense of tableau and formal separation. Although they seemed to be like us, they were not: silent, hieratic, caught in frightened frenzies of comedy, tragedy, and melodrama.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, wit...h Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervishlike repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstacy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »