Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Vassilis Lambropoulos, David Neal Miller , eds. Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: An Introductory Anthology David Lodge, 20th century literary criticism: a reader (1972)
Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, Peter Brooker, A reader's guide to contemporary literary theory (1985; 5th edition 2005)
http://books.google.com/books?id=QNmFm4M_RXkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs _ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, http://books.google.com/books?id=6TZ2iVrS6MgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&
Its chief critical strategy was close reading, particularly when discussing poetry, emphasizing that a work of literature functions as a self-contained, self referential aesthetic object.
Such an approach has been criticized as constituting a conservative attempt to isolate the text and to shield it from external, political concerns such as those of race, class, and gender.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.
Frost cont. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
The concept of 'practical criticism' led in time to the practices of close reading, what is often thought of as the beginning of modern literary criticism. Richards is regularly considered one of the founders of the contemporary study of literature in English.
Structuralism Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism appeared in academia in the second half of the 20th century and grew to become one of the most popular approaches in academic fields concerned with the analysis of language, culture, and society.
Marxist literary criticism Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and dialectic theories. Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate. According to Marxists, even literature itself is a social institution and has a specific ideological function, based on the background and ideology of the author.
Marxist literary criticism The simplest goals of Marxist literary criticism can include an assessment of the political 'tendency' of a literary work, determining whether its social content or its literary form are 'progressive'. It also includes analyzing the class constructs demonstrated in literature.
Blake cont.
And by came an angel who had a bright key, And he opened the coffins and set them all free; Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run, And wash in a river, and shine in the sun. Then naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind; And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father, and never want joy. And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work. Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm; So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.
Structuralism The structuralist mode of reasoning has been applied in a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, and architecture.
The most prominent thinkers associated with structuralism include the linguist Roman Jakobson, the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, the philosopher and social commentator Jacques Derrida, and the literary critic Roland Barthes.
Structuralism Proponents of structuralism would argue that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure - modelled on language - that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imagination. In the 1970s, structuralism was criticized for its rigidity and ahistoricism.
New Historicism New Historicism is a school of literary theory, grounded in critical theory, that developed in the 1980s, primarily through the work of the critic Stephen Greenblatt.
New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical context and to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature, which documents the new discipline of the history of ideas.
Deconstruction Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Deconstruction refers to a process of exploring the categories and concepts that history and tradition have imposed on a word or a work. Deconstruction suggests analysis with high precision.
Deconstruction In describing deconstruction, Derrida famously observed that "there is nothing outside the text." That is to say, all of the references used to interpret a text are themselves texts, even the "text" of reality as a reader knows it. There is no truly objective, non-textual reference from which interpretation can begin. Deconstruction, then, can be described as an effort to understand a text through its relationships to various contexts.
Post-structuralism The post-structuralist movement may be broadly understood as a body of distinct responses to Structuralism. Structuralism argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure - modeled after structural linguistics - that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and the organization of ideas and imagination.
Post-structuralism The post-structuralist approach includes the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute those structures.
Reader-response criticism Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or "audience") and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work. Although literary theory has long paid some attention to the reader's role in creating the meaning and experience of a literary work, modern reader-response criticism began in the 1960s and '70s, particularly in America and Germany, in works by Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, Roland Barthes, and others.
Reader-response criticism An important predecessor was I. A. Richards, who in 1929 analyzed a group of Cambridge undergraduates misreadings. Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who constitutes meaning to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance.
Psychoanalytic criticism Psychoanalytic literary criticism refers to literary criticism or literary theory which, in method, concept, or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.
Psychoanalytic reading has been practised since the early development of psychoanalysis itself, and has developed into a heterogeneous interpretive tradition.
Ecocriticism Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyze the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation. Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations, including "green (cultural) studies", "ecopoetics", and "environmental literary criticism".
Theory exerts an institutional pressure. Students of literature are supposed to understand that their various projects must demonstrate an awareness of Theory.
Theory is a dominant academic discourse, a body of knowledge that should be acquired and applied.
Theories
If so, can any work be analyzed by any method and critical perspective Certain works are more suitable for an analysis according to a particular method or critical perspective
Critical approaches Wilfred L. Guerin, Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, John R. Willingham: A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 4th ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Oress, 1999
M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953)
in relation to
the world the audience the author in itself
or examined
WORK OF ART
AUTHOR
AUDIENCE
Mimetic theories
Mimesis and imitation rather: representation Aristotles Poetics: dramatic plot as imitation of an action Coleridge: imitation of nature in being an organic unity Realistic imitation: recognizable (it is like what the reader knows) Aristotle: imitation: an internal relation of form to content, vs an external relation of copy and original You are aware of the resemblance of tragic action to human behaviour and you are aware of the conventions of tragic drama as different from other forms
Pragmatic theories
1970s: reader-response criticism, Literary Pragmatics: readers contribution to text reading actualizes potential meaning 18th century: art has to be useful "The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing, (Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare) Follows classical theory of rhetoric (= art of persuasion) 5 part process: invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery
Expressive theories
Art as an expression of feelings: For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings William Wordsworth in Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) Art as an expression of the personal subconscious Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) psychoanalytical criticism Art as an expression of the collective unconscious C.G. Jung, archetypes, archetypal images
Objective theories
The work of art studied in itself, as a closed system: internal structure, form, internal consistency - its "intrinsic" rather than "extrinsic" qualities. art for arts sake (lart pour lart) No one theory can explain all works (The essay is an introduction to his book on the Romantics: The Mirror and the Lamp, 1953
objective theories
expressive theories
pragmatic theories
textual criticism
The editorial art - establishing the text The aim of a critical edition should be to present the text, so far as the available evidence permits, in the form in which we may suppose that it would have stood in a fair copy, made by the author himself, of the work as he finally intended it. W. W. Greg, The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (rev. edn. Oxford 1954)
authorial intention
A design or plan in the author's mind: We argued that the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art, and it seems to us that this is a principle which goes deep into some differences in the history of critical attitude. The Intentional Fallacy by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley (1946) In: The Verbal Icon: studies in the meaning of poetry (also In: Lodge's 2Oth c. Literary Criticism)
impressionistic criticism
Recreate the poem while writing about the poem. The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does) [...] It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem an ends in impressionism and relativism. [...] Plato's feeding and watering of the passions was an early example of affective theory, and Aristotle's countertheory of catharsis was another The Affective Fallacy by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley (1949) In: The Verbal Icon: studies in the meaning of poetry (also In: Lodge's 20th c. Literary Criticism)
value judgements
Literary criticism has in the present day become a profession, - but it has ceased to be an art. Its object is no longer that of proving that certain literary work is good and other literary work is bad, in accordance with rules which the critic is able to define. English criticism at present rarely even pretends to go so far as this. It attempts, in the first place, to tell the public whether a book be or be not be worth public attention; and, in the second place, so to describe the purport of the work as to enable those who have not time or inclination for reading to feel that by a short cut they have become acquainted with its contents. Both these pojects, if fairly well carried out, are salutary. Anthony Trollope, Autobiography (1883), ch. xiv
interpretation
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art... The temptation to interpret Marienbad should be resisted. What matters in Marienbad in the pure, untranslateable, sensuous immediacy of some of its images, and its vigorous if narrow solution to certain problems of cinematic form... In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (1967)
deconstructing interpretations
We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things. (Montaigne) Quoted in Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences [1967], Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge Classics, 2001) page 351-370:351.
feminism gender studies - political vs academic context and terminology, - focus on women vs focus on gendered experience of being human feminist literary criticism gender studies in literature
Gender as performance
Judith Butler
Gender Trouble, 1990 Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, 1993
Duffy, cont.
At Peace! Jigsaws you couldnt do or dull stamps didnt want to collect arrived with the frost. You would rather stand with your nose to the window, clouding the strange blue view with your restless breath. But the day you fell from the Parachute Tree, they came from nowhere running, carried you in to a quiet room you were glad of. A long silent afternoon, dreamlike. A voice saying peace, sit at peace, sit at peace.
Linda Hutcheon
but at no time do I (at least consciously) try to impose any of these theories on my examination of the texts or the general issues surrounding adaptation. All these perspectives and others, however, do inevitably inform my theoretical frame of reference Hutcheon, Linda (2009-04-04). Preface to A Theory of Adaptation . T & F Books US. Kindle Edition.
Linda Hutcheon
It is the very act of adaptation itself that interests me, not necessarily in any specific media or even genre. My working assumption is that common denominators across media and genres can be as revealing as significant differences.
Linda Hutcheon
.A Theory of Adaptation begins its study of adaptations as adaptations; that is, not only as autonomous works. Instead, they are examined as deliberate, announced, and extended revisitations of prior works. Because we use the word adaptation to refer to both a product and a process of creation and reception, this suggests to me the need for a theoretical perspective that is at once formal and "experiential."
Linda Hutcheon
This book is not, however, a history of adaptation, though it is written with an awareness of the fact that adaptations can and do have different functions in different cultures at different times. A Theory of Adaptation is quite simply what its title says it is: one single attempt to think through some of the theoretical issues surrounding the ubiquitous phenomenon of adaptation as adaptation.
Linda Hutcheon
A Theory of Adaptation Routledge, 2006