If literature is a “representation of life,” then representation is exactly the place where “life,” in all its social and subjective complexity, gets into the literarywork.
I can not tell if this is meant to be a point challenging the initial idea that literature represents life, or if the author is agreeing with it.
Although Plato's hostility to representation may seem extreme, we should recognize that some prohibitions or restrictions on representations have beenpracticed by every society that has produced them.
I found this to be a really compelling point. We really do still see fear of how representation may affect the beholder, and it is still a divisive argument.
ut representation does give us something in return for the tax it demands, the gap it opens. One of thethings it gives us is literature
I think this is a really interesting and valid point. What I do not get is how this serves as a conclusion to what the author presented at the beginning of this piece. He starts off pointing out that the idea that literature reflects life is flawed, and concludes saying that representation gives us literature. If the entire piece was meant to connect those two points, I got lost in my reading and fail to see how the points connect.
It seems that only the third angle of representation need be aperson: we can represent stones with dabs of paint or letters or sounds, but we can represent things only to people.
I do not think this is necessarily true. Take a religious sacrament for example. A person may perform a ritual or wear a certain article of clothing as a symbol, or representation, of a feeling they have towards deity. Deity is not a person, yet it is the someone/something in which something/someone is being represented. I do not think this distinction really impacts the author's argument, but rather begs the question as to why the author felt it necessary to make this statement at all when it could be challenged and in no way really supports his overall point.
Probably the most common and naive intuition about literature is that it is a “representation of life.
One of the biggest issues I have with generalizations such as these as that they immediately aliente the audience if said generalization isn't applicable to them. The author makes a good argument as to why this is in fact the case, but my first thought after reading the very first sentence of this piece was "Wait a second, I myself have not assumed that literature is a representation of life. Have I been interpreting literature wrong my whole life?"