The Language of Eudora Weltys Losing Battles :: Eudora Welty Losing Battles

The talking to of Eudora Weltys Losing BattlesIn his essay, The Languages of Losing Battles, Mr. Bass contends that the form of terminology used by cardinal major characters in Eudora Weltys Losing Battles, Julia Mortimer and Granny Vaughn, serves as a challenge to the mannish-authored decrees (Bass) institute throughout the book. Julias idioms are teaching, writing, and books, (Bass)while Granny Vaughn, on the other hand, uses oral language to transmit family history. While Julias province is one of ideas and abstraction in the indite word, Granny Vaughns stories are concrete, empirical, and rooted in actual events and real people. How these deuce methods of questioning male authority are used by the twain characters is discussed at length by Mr.Bass, and this discussion comprises much of the bulk of this article.The male-authored decrees challenged by the two women throughout the bookare numerous, and Mr. Bass makes use of unaccompanied a few of these to make his point. Int ruth, although his thesis is strong and headspring composed, most this article consists of arather opaque discussion of biblical symbolism, and how its various applications in thenovel relate to Granny Vaughns spoken class myth. In Losing Battles,Julia has writtenher own apocrypha (Bass) on leaves torn from her bible. This is used by Bass as aprototype of written challenge to male authority. In some way, Bass contends, thewritten word of Julia is a symmetricalness to Grannys dominance of the family, althoughJulias words must be taken for what they are, since she is not vivacious to interpret them.While the written word moves outward toward the abstract or conceptual and awayfrom the concrete center, the spoken language of Granny Vaughn and others draws inclose to make the emblematic concrete, familial. (Bass) What exactly this balance does for the furthering of the womens influence in the book is a question that seems to havebeen left for the reader to answer.include in the pie ce is an interesting discussion of banners and battles, andthe way that these images mark the main conflict of the novel between local andabsolute.Bass uses the emblem of Jacks torn branch that flowed free from hisshoulder like some old flag carried home(a) from far-off battle. to represent aconvergence of a banner with a battle.Mr. Bass has taken a risk with his attempt to win over his readers that