چکیده:
In this paper I would like to argue that from a de Manian perspective,
Shakespeare’s sonnets include an endless repetition of a set of seemingly
irreconcilable images and tropes whose significances are figured and
disfigured incessantly. De Man posited that figuration, i.e., the inherent
power of the texts to give meanings to their tropes, and disfiguration, that is, the
effacing mechanism of the text that forces the text to forget the meaning-making
process, are two sides of the reading coin. Following de Man’s definition of
reading as an inevitable misreading of texts that stems from the rhetorical and
figural nature of language, this paper claims that any attempt at reading the
sonnets in order to pinpoint their exact symbols and meanings is bound to be
entrapped in such an infinite loop of figuration and disfiguration, both
structurally and semantically, thus making the ultimate meaning of the sonnets
elusive and slippery because what they mean and signify is neither controlled by
the author nor achieved by the reader; the text itself controls the understanding of
the readers but only as much as the arbitrary nature of its language allows it to.
Therefore, this paper contends that this self-deconstructive nature of the sonnets
can be laid bare by mapping out the paradoxes, ironies, and tensions that are the
integral parts of this sonnet cycle, and also by showing how the text renders any
ultimate interpretation impossible.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"Following de Man’s definition of reading as an inevitable misreading of texts that stems from the rhetorical and figural nature of language, this paper claims that any attempt at reading the sonnets in order to pinpoint their exact symbols and meanings is bound to be entrapped in such an infinite loop of figuration and disfiguration, both structurally and semantically, thus making the ultimate meaning of the sonnets elusive and slippery because what they mean and signify is neither controlled by the author nor achieved by the reader; the text itself controls the understanding of the readers but only as much as the arbitrary nature of its language allows it to.
A De Manian Reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnets As de Man would have it, any de Manian reading of literary texts follows two aims: one, laying bare the monumental status of the work and, simultaneously, trying to question this authoritative status because such de Manian readings try to show that being canonical is an arbitrary quality that deceives the readers in showing that the work does have a unique meaning and significance, and two, finding out the ironies and paradoxes of the text in order to prove that any act of reading is ultimately a misreading because of the dual system of language, that is, the fact that like an allegory, the text says something and refers to something else that was not intended."