More constraint presentation follow-up

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Issac asked for clickable links, so I’ve added links to all the works I cited (or used) in my presentation to the post that has the audio version. I’ll also add, that Mike Wenthe made my day in his post where he refers to me as “cartoonist, critic, and comics theorist”.

Issac also commented:

It’d be interesting to hear you talk a little more about the ways in which the form of, for example, a sonnet counts as “constraint,” when other formal considerations (Schulz’s four-panel layout in Peanuts or the generic assumptions of, say, detective fiction) don’t count. In some ways, the formal constraints of a sonnet are dictated by genre, so that they hardly seem optional for Shakespeare; on the other hand, if someone chose to draw a webcomic with the same constraints of panelization that Schulz used (four square panels only), wouldn’t that be a formal constraint?

Some key differences are apparent between the sonnet, the Schulz example, and generic conventions. Generic conventions are easiest to place outside the realm of constraint because they lack systematization in almost all cases&em;excepting an Oulipo offshoot, called Oulipopo (the extra po standing for “policière”) which worked to apply constraints to detective fiction.

The case of Schulz and comic strips are “institutional” constraints (a term which I think I took from Jan Baetens (this article)). The key part for me is that these constraints are pushed onto the artist from above. Granted, the artist voluntarily chooses to create work within the institution (in this case newspaper comic strips), knowing the constraints that will be applied, so they probably do fit into all the elements of my definition of constraint as I list them in my presentation.

How does this differ from the obstruction model taken up by Madden and Hart, where Madden passes the constraint down to Hart? Perhaps there is no real difference, and I should modify my statements in that presentation. I can’t help feeling that an issue of power and authority comes to play here that makes me want to push the institutional constraints to the side. I would say that your example of someone choosing to work under a panel structure similar to Schulz’s would be an example of constraint. That element of choice contrasts nicely in my mind with the idea of constrained creation. The institutional power issue is what makes me balk at including the Schulz example in my particular categorization. Though, if you’ve seen the Von Trier film, The Five Obstructions (where Madden and Hart’s project originated), the exertion of power is a major part of the film and its tensions.

The case of Shakespeare and sonnets may be even more thorny as my knowledge of the subject is limited. I’m not clear on how sonnet structure is dictated by genre (perhaps you could elaborate on that). I don’t see poetic forms as genre, but a sonnet is a systematized form. The goal of the Oulipo at its early stages (and perhaps still, though I believe the idea has lessened greatly in importance) was to create forms for use by other writers. The actual creation of works would serve as examples of those forms. This harkens back to forms such as the sonnet where it is shared and used by many writers. One can imagine that a form gaining such widespread use would create a different perception (more genre-like) than, for example, the constraint used by Harry Mathews to write his book Cigarettes (a constraint based on permutations that he has never fully divulged) which was only used once.

To connect this to the previous case, I don’t believe anyone was imposing sonnets on Shakespeare. He could have easily written some less structured type of rhymed couplets (though at the time, I believe there were expectations of what a poem was that are more restrictive then modern times). The difference between the sonnet form as genre-like and a prose genre like detective fiction is the strict formal constraint of a sonnet, absent in detective fiction. Detective fiction has certain expected elements, but there is no definitive structure to it. In some strange sense this makes me think of different ways people have tried to define “comics” from the very clearly delineated definition (like Kunzle in his History of the Comic Strip) to less structured ideas like what I put forth in my column on the topic.

Tags: Comics, comics-constraint, Constraint, genre, Literature, oulipo, poetry

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Published:: 10.08.08 / 10pm

Category:: Comic Strips, Comics, Constraint, Literature, Theory and Practice

Tagged as:: Comics, comics-constraint, Constraint, genre, Literature, oulipo, poetry

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Isaac Cates 10.08.08 / 10pm

As interested as you are in constraint, I think it’d really be worth your time for you to make a study of poetic form (and the history of particular poetic forms). There are some good and fairly accessible books on the subject.

As for the sonnet: especially in Shakespeare’s time, it’s both a form (fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhymed a certain way) and a genre (featuring, for example, unrealizable or idealized love). Since Shakespeare, poets have worked to destabilize the generic qualities of the sonnet (though the history of the form still casts shadows over pretty much any sonnet-shaped poem), and to a lesser extent they’ve tried revisions and variations on the formal structure as well.

But when Shakespeare set out to write a sonnet sequence, his readers would have had expectations about his performance both formally and generically. And, to an extent, I think that both sorts of expectations could be felt as constraints.

As I see it, the generic constraints of the sonnet (or of detective fiction) are really no different in kind from the insistence that Tom Hart allude to Brian Eno lyrics. In either case, we see constraints on content and structure: the detective story expects clues, a motive for the culprit, the gradual discovery of plots, etc. A sonnet expects certain kinds of idealization of the beloved. A comic strip expects a punch line in the last or next-to-last panel.

As for Schulz and Peanuts, I really think the only difference we could point to between a “constrained” four-panel layout and an “imposed” four-panel layout is the degree of the artist’s awareness of the constraint. If someone naively repeats a format or a structure without thinking about it as a constraint, then it could hardly “count” for the purposes of critical analysis. But I have a hard time imagining that Schulz was unaware of this layout as a constraint. (Imagine having to fill it six times a week, and it will certainly start to feel constraining.)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that really all media are constraining in some way. By working in deliberately or self-consciously constrained forms, a poet or a cartoonist can get better at negotiating this inherent constrainedness in seemingly “free” expression.

DerikB 10.10.08 / 10am

I’m not much of a poetry reader, but if you’ve got a book to recommend I’ll check it out.

I think there is a terminological problem at play here. All media are constraining in one sense or another, I agree, but I see a difference in degree and, often, in kind of the type of constraint practiced by the Oulipo or related creators and the type of constraint found in generic conventions or institutional restrictions. I see a difference between an author writing a mystery novel, following certain expectations of genre, and a work like John Barth’s LETTERS (an epistolary novel where correspondents, dates, and organization are dictated by a specific structure (Sorry, can’t find a good explanation of it anywhere)) or many of the works of Gilbert Sorrentino (like Gold Fools or Aberration of Starlight). I would imagine you see a difference between the constrained works you and Mike use and those of the Schulz example.

Perhaps we need a different term to speak of these self-conscious, deliberate, and systematic constraints, thought the use of “constraint” is rather widely used as this point.

Isaac Cates 10.10.08 / 10pm

My position, I guess, is that I’m more interested in the continuities between these two kinds of constraint than I am in the differences.

It’s true that deliberately setting out to write oulipian (or oubapian) work is (and feels) different from writing genre fiction, or any other conventionally constrained form. But the difference as I understand it is mainly that in oulipo the constraints are arbitrary, not inherited, and chosen for the project at hand (often in advance of a subject for the project). There’s still an awful lot of similarity between oulipian constraints and the formal constraints poets or novelists adopt by convention — because adopting those formal or generic constraints is still a choice.

A good first place to start learning about poetic form is John Hollander’s Rhyme’s Reason. It’s short, and it can come across as a little show-offy or smug sometimes, but it explains everything pretty clearly. There are also more detailed books. I like David Caplan’s Poetic Form: an Introduction, too.

I taught a course on poetic form last year. If you’d like me to send you the syllabus, I can.

DerikB 10.11.08 / 11am

Thanks for the book suggestions, my library’s got a copy of the Hollander book ready for me to pick up.

I’m interested more in the differences than the continuities, and how the use of the constraints provide a kind of critical view on convention.

Madinkbeard

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