06 August 1999 | Is there a Text in this Class?
#memoriesfromdiaries 💜
Prof. JD was one of the highly respected senior Professors in town!
He has added claim to fame as the musician who set to music the grand ol’ College Song, ‘Praise be to God beyond all age…’ 🎼
A gentleman of the highest order, his dressing etiquette, his sprightly demeanour, and his genial disposition were greatly admired by all of us, his fans.
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| 06 August 1999, my personal diary entry |
An amazing pianist (personally, I’ve never seen a pianist like him ever), his fingers simply floated on the piano, even while transporting us all to another world altogether!
Added, we’ve never seen one frivolous or vain word anywhere, anytime on our gentleman Professor!
He came! He taught! He conquered!
All our hearts alike!
On this particular day in our class, as was wont with Prof. JD, he came around each row to check whether we all had our texts with us!
[You see, only when he is fully convinced would he proceed to take us all on a memorable trip down the exciting tracks and trails and alleys and byways of Dr. Faustus!] 😍
Yes! Prof. JD taught us Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus!
As ‘doers’ of the text, this particular diary entry would, I’m sure remind us spontaneously of Stanley Fish’s much popular book titled, Is there a Text in this Class? which also contains his seminal essay on the same title!
“Is there a Text in this Class?”
In this lovely, 400-page book, Stanley Fish narrates the incident which proved the trigger and the motivation for him to write this particular book!
Here goes Fish, Stanley Fish -
On the first day of the new semester a colleague at Johns Hopkins University was approached by a student who, as it turned out, had just taken a course from me.
She put to him what I think you would agree is a perfectly straightforward question;
“Is there a text in this class?”
Responding with a confidence so perfect that he was unaware of it (although in telling the story, he refers to this moment as “walking into the trap”), my colleague said,
“Yes; it’s the Norton Anthology of Literature" whereupon the trap (set not by the student but by the infinite capacity of language for being appropriated) was sprung:
“No, no,” she said, “I mean in this class do we believe in poems and things, or is it just us?”
Now it is possible (and for many tempting) to read this anecdote as an illustration of the dangers that follow upon listening to people like me who preach the instability of the text and the unavailability of determinate meanings; but in what follows I will try to read it as an illustration of how baseless the fear of these dangers finally is!
Here in this above passage, Fish has an amazing point to make!
His colleague, has taken the question - in say - one particular context!
But in order to understand the essence of the utterance, he had to modify on this ‘context’!
Fish is of the firm opinion that,
The language we use in our everyday lives, is enmeshed, embedded and understood only within a social system of norms! (the context!)
That’s hence, in his famous theory of ‘affective stylistics’, Fish reiterates that, the meaning of a text is found in the reader’s experience of that text!
For example, the reader of Paradise Lost is not only subject to the intricate rhetorical complexities of the text, but subsequently become the subject of the text, themselves!
Again, one reason why, he calls texts as ‘self-consuming artifacts’!
and also signs off on his famous fourth thesis that,
the proper site of analysis is not the text but the reader!
Simply beautiful, ain't it?
Coming back,
The way Prof. JD taught us Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus was simply phenomenal! Chunks and chunks of those beautiful Marlowean mighty lines still stay safe and secure in our minds and hearts!
On this particular day’s evening, Bagat, Wes and myself, we were making our way to the gala Book Fair in town, when we were surprised to see Prof. JD there at the Book Fair with his son, buying cartloads of books for his personal library collection!
Yes! later we came to know that he buys books by the dozens!
Prof. JD was also very delighted to see us at the Book Fair!
While returning, en route, we spotted Prof. SF with his little son!
Well, those days Prof. SF was called the Scooter-Professor, since he was one of the very few Professors who came to College on the good ol’ Bajaj Scooter! (By the way, now his little son is a much grown-up gentleman, working with a reputed Corporate in Chennai. (How soon time flies!)
We apprised Sir that we were returning from the Book Fair, and so he said he’d walk along with us down the huge Thillai Nagar Main Road!
Night, I was a bit fatigued with the day’s work and shuttle, that I wanted to sleep a bit early. So I feigned sickness to our Warden Prof. Prasanna, who promptly gave me a tablet, and so I quietly went to sleep!
Needless to say, all of us hostelers had our fair share of frolic as part of our much adored and venerated impishness quotient 😋 all through our College days! 🤗
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