Neither Literally nor as Metaphor
Pynchon's the Crying of Lot 49 and the Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16006488 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Frank Palmeri (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1987 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 979-979 |
| Publication date | 1987-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | ELH (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-8304 • E-ISSN: 1080-6547 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2873106 |
| OpenAlex | W2329479989 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 1 |
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published a year or two before Pynchon started writing The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Kuhn argued that the production of meaning can take place only on the basis of models. In Kuhn's view, normal science operates within the framework of a paradigm-a set of partially grounded assumptions, definitions, conventions, questions, and procedures. The experimentation that the paradigm makes possible paradoxically produces anomalous data that call the validity of the model into question as they accumulate. Yet the dominant model will not be discarded until an alternative that accounts for these anomalies has been formulated. In the period of crisis, when normal science stands virtually paralyzed between paradigms, the emergence of the new model reveals the metaphorical nature of all models. The scientist working within the framework of a new model actually sees a different world, for observed data are shaped by the questions the paradigm formulates and the criteria it sets for acceptable answers.1 Myths and literary genres, like scientific paradigms, serve as conventional models of explanation. Just as normal science and periods of crisis alternate in the history of science, literary history consists of works that observe generic conventions and works that combine or invert them. Levi-Strauss has demonstrated that myths mediate contradictions within a culture. Moving this insight from
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Crying · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Psychoanalysis · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · History · Philosophy · Postmodernism in Literature and Education · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.12 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2001 - 2022 (22) |
| Highly cited | No |