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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 public the 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
begun the 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 Iliad which 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 is Achilles.
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 and
vultures, 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 Odyssey the 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

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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
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, [ 5 ]
Sing Heav'nly Muse.
We Know we are going to listen to an epic and what it is about and nor is the prayer to the muse
overlooked.
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.