Question about literary language

[Ruben Meijerink]

In the book Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction there's the following passage:

The qualities of literature can't be reduced either to objective properties or to consequences of ways of framing language. (...) Language resists the frames we impose. It is hard to make the couplet 'We dance round in a ring...' into a fortune-cookie fortune or 'Stir vigorously' into a stirring poem. When we treat something as literature, when we look for pattern and coherence, there is resistance in the language; we have to work on it, work with it.

Framing is "pouring into the correct form" and "structuring" right? But what does resistance in language mean? Can anyone explain the main idea of this passage? I don't really get what "consequences of ways of framing language" and the example with the couplet means.

Thanks a real lot

[Mohammad Ahmad]

I think what is meant in " resistance in language" is what is beyond the literary style which involves the figure of speech. Of course literary language has a unique style will differ than the scientific language and almost we describe it as an "expressive mode" of writing because it carries expressions of emotions and senses, therefore this restriction-as in your given data you named or someone else named as a "resistance in language"- which imposed on the literary style is only known by the man of letter or who enjoys the literature in general.
For poetry, of course, there are additional restrictions such as the rhyme and the meter.
Therefore, I guessed the writer of the introduction justly means this aspect.

[cacian]

In the book Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction there's the following passage:

The qualities of literature can't be reduced either to objective properties or to consequences of ways of framing language. (...) Language resists the frames we impose. It is hard to make the couplet 'We dance round in a ring...' into a fortune-cookie fortune or 'Stir vigorously' into a stirring poem. When we treat something as literature, when we look for pattern and coherence, there is resistance in the language; we have to work on it, work with it.

Framing is "pouring into the correct form" and "structuring" right? But what does resistance in language mean? Can anyone explain the main idea of this passage? I don't really get what "consequences of ways of framing language" and the example with the couplet means.

Thanks a real lot

this sounds like a second world war motto with the word resitance there the French resistance shall I say.
anyway
I am not sure what is the author behind this is trying to achieve but one thing I noticed is this
language does not put on a resistance it us that does.
we make it so that it puts on a show.
framing a language is just saying trimming it to look a model on a cat walk. we look for beauty and yet we parade skinny dippy to wear hardly nothing or an impossible something. one extreme to the other and then we achieve nothing.
language is flamboyant but we keep dazzling with flames and drinking it under a table so much so we say nothing and loud everything.
I think language is a reflection on us and if it is resisting it is because we are.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

This notion you offered Cacian, is not absent out of my mind, i.e. the resistance is in our side as readers and learners, but I think the author doesn't refer to that.
It is already to find such resistance at the readers' comprehension side according to different cultures.

[PeterL]

I agree with cacian. "...language does not put on a resistance it us that does."

[Ruben Meijerink]

Thanks all, it's really kind. But I'm afraid I still don't get what "resistance" here means :( Sorry

I might add some context (no pun intended), namely the suggestion the author poses that when language is removed from other contexts, detached from other purposes, it can be interpreted as literature (though it must possess some qualities that make it responsive to such interpretation).
He refers to this in the (...) I placed in the quote

[AuntShecky]

If I understand the question correctly, the "resistance" originates with the writer who wants to sculpt the language into the shape he wants it to be and continues with the reader who has to suppress his natural bent toward viewing language literally. For instance: "we dance around in a ring" is not a typical message found inside a fortune cookie; "stir vigorously"
reads at first glance as a direction in a recipe, not a line in a poem.

Literary writing contains straightforward language, but, unlike fortune cookie messages, recipes, textbooks, it also enters the realm of figurative language. A writer has to employ creativity and ingenuity in order to fashion a brand new metaphor to explain something that's never been explained before-- in T.S. Eliot's term, "express the unexpressible." The reader has to tap into the original writer's creativity and ingenuity in order to get on the writer's "wave length" so to speak, in order to get the most out of the written words. As the speaker of the O.P's quoted passage states: "we have to work on it, work with it."

Hope that makes sense.

[cacian]

This notion you offered Cacian, is not absent out of my mind, i.e. the resistance is in our side as readers and learners, but I think the author doesn't refer to that.
It is already to find such resistance at the readers' comprehension side according to different cultures.

may I ask what the meaning of your signature is?

[Mohammad Ahmad]

Now then! You ask about my signature, they are words of mine...of course, it is a literary maxime.... follow me Cacian, follow me and you will find the new...
2- To those still incapable to understand literature:
Literature as many specialists said; it is the art which had to be read from the end.
look to those English idioms and expressions:
Kick the bucket
Can I say kicks the bucket or the bucket has been kicked?
blue moon \\ once in a blue moon
Is it reasonable to see a blue moon?
it rains cats and dogs
Is it reasonable that thy sky dropping down cats and dogs?
Be up with the lark
Can I say for example: Be up with dawn or with rooster crowing?
Indeed what I mentioned is "drop in the ocean" compared with the literary language and indeed it is the "resistance" because sometimes we cannot originate the new but to stick on the old.
lastly this question needs too long time to be controlled, but still I think which I focus on is the headline of the point.

[JBI]

The modEl does nOt reflect the frame. So shoving it into the frame requires some cutting and pushing, thus, literary theory.

[kelby_lake]

In the book Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction there's the following passage:

The qualities of literature can't be reduced either to objective properties or to consequences of ways of framing language. (...) Language resists the frames we impose. It is hard to make the couplet 'We dance round in a ring...' into a fortune-cookie fortune or 'Stir vigorously' into a stirring poem. When we treat something as literature, when we look for pattern and coherence, there is resistance in the language; we have to work on it, work with it.

Framing is "pouring into the correct form" and "structuring" right? But what does resistance in language mean? Can anyone explain the main idea of this passage? I don't really get what "consequences of ways of framing language" and the example with the couplet means.

Thanks a real lot

It seems the critic fancies himself as a bit of a poet. I think his argument is, as he says, "Language resists the frames we impose". Therefore although we try to get literature to fit into neat patterns, it doesn't work. I guess the "stir vigorously" thing relates to 'found poetry'- the whole point of that being that it is poetry made out of everyday things, and indeed that it resists the idea of what writing is poetic and what is not. As an instruction, it is objective and straightforward but if you were to treat it as a poem, a piece of literature, it would be much harder to find sense in it. 'Stir' has a literal meaning but it also has a more abstract one, which isn't as easy to articulate.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

But how does it resist the frame we impose? I think we can subjugate the literature to work objectively as we want.
In addition, if we suppose he further meant that the audience is one of the considerable things must be taken into the writer consideration, I think this view can be controlled by the writer himself, therefore, it can be considered as a secondary factor.
By most reviewing and revising the writer could impose his work to go obediently as he wanted, therefore, I think only the small writers or the beginners could face this problem.
Shoving it into frame requires some cutting and pushing, this is not problem, the focal point of the problem, as we are translator, is always with the words related to culture because those words are hardly to be literally translated.

[kelby_lake]

But how does it resist the frame we impose? I think we can subjugate the literature to work objectively as we want.

You've proved the point; we have to force it to bend to our desires.





In addition, if we suppose he further meant that the audience is one of the considerable things must be taken into the writer consideration, I think this view can be controlled by the writer himself, therefore, it can be considered as a secondary factor.
By most reviewing and revising the writer could impose his work to go obediently as he wanted, therefore, I think only the small writers or the beginners could face this problem.
Shoving it into frame requires some cutting and pushing, this is not problem, the focal point of the problem, as we are translator, is always with the words related to culture because those words are hardly to be literally translated.

The writer can guide the reader's opinion but he can't control it. We are independent thinkers with our own minds.