8/11/2019 Beginning With Beginnings

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Beginning with Beginnings

Today, our group is focusing on the idea of Beginnings- we are beginning with beginnings in

literary and cultural discourses. I would like to start by referring to Foucaults discussion of

Beginnings in his essay The Order of Discourse, which was originally the text of his inaugural

lecture at the University of Paris. He talks about a reluctance, a fear to begin, a desire to enter an

ongoing discourse without being the one from whom discourse proceeds, the one who must

initiate it by beginning. He speaks for a lot of people when he talks about this fear of beginning,

a reluctance to have attention focused on one and a desire to be on the other side, the anonymous

side of discourse from the outset. This indicates, to me the gravitas of beginning the onerous

responsibility it carries, the potential danger it can invoke. In one way, Foucault goes on to say,

institutions have responded to this fear of beginnings ironically by focusing even more attention

on them, by solemnizing them, by surrounding them with ritual and ceremony, by trying to

hedge them around, to control and formalize them.

This is clearly indicated in literary and cultural texts where we have generic beginnings in many

cases. To move to a very different register for a moment, in his Introduction to the Winnie the

Pooh stories, A.A. Milne refers to the Er-HMM noise we make before we recite poetry or sing

or speak in publicthe preliminary Are you listening? Throat clearing which he says is what

introductions are. We have seen our regular version of this in our Good Morning/Afternoon-

Am I audible? Can you hear me at the back with which nearly every speaker has invariably

begunthe throat clearing, the formality, the ritualistic overcoming of the awkwardness of

beginning.

Nowhere is this more clearly indicated in literary/ cultural texts than in what I have called the

generic beginning, the beginning whose form and function are predetermined. This ranges from

the fairy tale once upon a time which immediately signals what we are going to listen to and

sets certain parameters of listening to the epic beginning which combines invocation and

summary.

To take three examples: we have The Iliadwhich invokes the muse and indicates the Trojan war,

in its interpretation anyhow centers around the horrendous slaughter that war entails and who the

central figure isAchilles.

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.

Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs andvultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men,

and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.

To look at The Odysseythe wanderings of Odysseus and his sufferings are clearly the theme:

Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous

town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he

8/11/2019 Beginning With Beginnings

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was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men

safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own

sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching

home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know

them.

These establish the epic beginning, conventionalizes our expectations of it at any rate to an certain

extent that when centuries later, Milton writes Paradise Lost he does not neglect the schema:

OF Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

BroughtDeath into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, tillone greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]

SingHeav'nly Muse.

We Know we are going to listen to an epic and what it is about and nor is the prayer to the museoverlooked.

But while there are many such conventional beginnings, another good example would be The address

to the Dear Reader or the Gentle Reader in Victorian novels, which has a whole world of convention

embedded within it literary/cultural discourse is always resilient, it plays around with beginnings, it

sometimes opts for convention, it sometimes summarizes, sometimes tantalizes, sometimes subverts,

sometimes concludes through that rite of passage - the beginning.

The remaining speakers in our group will therefore be briefly examining beginnings in different genres

and texts in Macbeth,in a metaphysical poem, in a trilogy of novels, in a short story and in a film.

Hopefully, our beginning, middle and conclusion will illustrate our theme Beginning with Beginnings.

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