MAJORSHIP
Area: ENGLISH
Focus: Literary Criticism
LET Competencies:
1. show understanding of the ideas and
principles of each literary theory/approach
2. apply the ideas and principles of each literary theory/approach in reading, interpreting, and analyzing selected works in prose and poetry
1.
Literature and Literary Theory
Ă Traditionally, literature is regarded as a
homogenous body of works with similar characteristics which are read in similar
ways by an undifferentiated audience.
Ă Today with the impact of literary theory to
the study of literature, the latter is seen as an area in a state of flux.
Ă Literature, as a body of writing together
with its moral and aesthetic qualities, can be seen as a site of struggle where
meanings are contested rather than regarded as something possessing timeless
and universal values and truths.
Ă Literary theories can offer various ways of
reading, interpreting, and analyzing literature, but they do not offer any easy
solutions as to what literature is, or what its study should be.
Ă These theories aim to explain, or at times demystify, some of the assumptions or beliefs implicit in literature and literary criticism.
2.
Literary Criticism and Literary Theory
Ă Literary criticism involves the reading,
interpretation and commentary of a specific text or texts which have been
designated as literature.
Ă Two conventions or assumptions which tend
to be inherent in its practice are:
a) that criticism is secondary
to literature itself and dependent on it and b) that critical interpretations
or judgments seem to assume that the literary text which they are addressing is
unquestionably literature.
Ă If literary criticism involves the reading,
analysis, explication, and interpretation of texts which are designated as
literary, then literary theory should do two things: a) it ought to provide the readers with a
range of criteria for identifying literature in the first place, and an
awareness of these criteria should inform critical practice; and b) it should
make us aware of the methods and procedures which we employ in the practice of
literary criticism, so that we not only interrogate the text, but also the ways
in which we read and interpret the text.
Ă Literary criticism is best understood as
the application of a literary theory to specific texts.
Ă Literary criticism also involves the
understanding and appreciation of literary texts.
Ă Two primary questions of literary criticism
are: a) why does a piece of literature have the precise characteristics that it
has? (how does it work?) and b) what is the value of literature?
Ă Any literary theory has to account for: a)
the nature of representation in the text; b) the nature of reality and its
relation to representation; c) how the representation of reality is
accomplished or subverted and denied; and d) what conventions or codes
particular writers, literary schools or periods might employ to achieve
representation.
Ă Literary theory also addresses questions of
what makes literary language literary, as well as the structures of literary
language and literary texts, and how these work.
Ă Literary theory is also concerned with the study of the function of the literary text in social and cultural terms, which in turn leads to a construction of its value.
3.
Survey of Literary Theories/Approaches
a.
Classical Literary Theory.
This theory is premised on the idea that literature is an imitation of
life. It is interested in looking at
literature based on:
Ă
Mimesis (Plato).
Mimesis is the Greek word for
imitation. We try to see whether a piece
of literary work shows imitation of life or reality as we know it. If it is, what is imitated? How is the imitation done? Is it a good or bad imitation?
Ă
Function
(Horace). Function
refers to whether a piece of literary work aims to entertain (dulce) or to teach or to instruct (utile).
Ă
Style (Longinus). Style refers to whether the literary work is
written in a low, middle, or high style.
Longinus even suggested a fourth style which he called the sublime.
Ă
Catharsis (Aristotle). Catharsis refers to
purgation, purification, clarification, or structural kind of emotional
cleansing. Aristotle’s view of catharsis
involves purging of negative emotions, like pity and fear.
Ă Censorship (Plato). Censorship is an issue for Plato for literary works that show bad mimesis. Literary works that show bad mimesis should be censored according to Plato.
b. Historical-Biographical
and Moral-Philosophical Approaches. The Historical- Biographical approach sees a literary work chiefly,
if not exclusively, as a reflection of its author’s life and times or the life
and times of the characters in the work.
A historical novel is likely to be more
|
PETER STOCKMANN. And now you are convinced? DR. STOCKMANN. Well, certainly. Aren’t you too,
Peter? [Pause]. The University chemists corroborated . . . PETER STOCKMANN. You intend to present this document
to the Board of Directors, officially, as the medical officer of the springs? DR. STOCKMANN. Of course, something’s got to be
done, and quick. PETER STOCKMANN. You always use such strong
expressions, Thomas. Among other things, in your report you say that we
guarantee our guests and visitors a permanent case of poisoning. DR. STOCKMANN. But, Peter, how can you describe it
any other way? Imagine! Poisoned internally and externally! PETER STOCKMANN. So you merrily conclude that we
must build a waste-disposal plant - and reconstruct a brand new water system
from the bottom up! DR. STOCKMANN. Well, do you know some other way out?
I don’t. PETER STOCKMANN. I took a little walk over to the
city engineer this morning and in the course of conversation I sort of
jokingly mentioned these changes - as something we might consider for the
future, you know. DR. STOCKMANN. The future won’t be soon enough,
Peter. PETER STOCKMANN. The engineer kind of smiled at my
extravagance and gave me a few facts. I don’t suppose you have taken the
trouble to consider what your proposed changes would cost? DR. STOCKMANN. I never thought of that. PETER STOCKMANN. Naturally. Your little project
would come to at least three hundred thousand crowns. DR. STOCKMANN. [astonished]. That expensive! PETER STOCKMANN. Oh, don’t look so upset - it’s only
money. The worst thing is that it would take some two years. DR. STOCKMANN. Two years? PETER STOCKMANN. At the least. And what do you
propose we do about the springs in the meantime? Shut them up, no doubt!
Because we would have to, you know. As soon as the rumor gets around that the
water is dangerous, we won’t have a visitor left. So that’s the picture,
Thomas. You have it in your power to literally ruin your own town. DR. STOCKMANN. Now look, Peter! I don’t want to ruin
anything. PETER STOCKMANN. Kirsten Springs are the blood
supply of our town, Thomas – the only future we’ve got here. Now will you
stop and think? from
The Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen |
meaningful when either its milieu or that of its author is understood. James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, and John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath are certainly better understood by readers familiar with, respectively, the French and Indian War (and the American frontier experience), Anglo-Norman Britain, the French Revolution, and the American Depression.
On the other hand, the Moral-Philosophical approach
emphasizes that the larger function of literature is to teach morality and to
probe philosophical issues. Literature
is interpreted within a context of the philosophical thought of a period or
group. Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus
can be read profitably only if one understands existentialism. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
Scarlet
Letter is seen as a study of the effects of sin on a human soul. Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening” suggests that duty takes precedence over beauty and pleasure.
|
Had
Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a
witch-meeting? Be it so
if you will; but, alas! It was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman brown.
A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man
did he become from the night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when
the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen because an
anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain.
When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and,
whit his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of
saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery
unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should
thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. …
from Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne |
c. Romantic Theory. William Wordsworth explained his idea on romanticism in his Preface to the Second Edition of the Lyrical Ballads.
He explained that poetry should:
·
have a
subject matter that is ordinary and commonplace.
·
use
simple language, even aspiring to the language of prose.
·
make
use of the imagination.
·
convey
a primal (simple, uncomplicated) feeling.
·
present
similitude in dissimilitude (similarities in differences).
|
She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside
the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very
few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone Half
hidden from the eye! -- Fair as a star, when only one Is shining
in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy
ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The
difference to me! William
Wordsworth |
d. American New Criticism/New Criticism. This theory believes that literature is an organic unity. It is independent of its author or the time when it was written or the historical context. It is concerned solely with the ‘text in itself’, with its language and organization. It does not primarily seek a text’s meaning, but how it speaks itself. It encourages attentive close reading of texts, a kind of democratization of literary study in the classroom, in which nearly everyone is placed on an equal footing in the face of a ‘blind text.’ It looks into how the parts relate to each other, achieve its order and harmony, contain and resolve irony, paradox, tension, ambivalence, and ambiguity.
To use this theory, one proceeds by looking
into the following:
·
the
persona
·
the
addressee
·
the
situation (where and when)
·
what
the persona says
·
the
central metaphor (tenor and vehicle)
·
the
central irony
·
the
multiple meanings of words
|
In a station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd Petals on a wet, black bough
Ezra Pound |
e.
Psychoanalytical Theory.
This theory applies the ideas of Freudian psychology to literature.
Freud sees the component parts of the psyche as three groups of functions: the id,
directly related to the instinctual drives; the ego, an agency which regulates and opposes the drives; and the superego, another part of the ego with
a critical judging function.
It encourages the reader/critic to be creative in
speculating about the character’s or author’s motivations, drives, fears, or
desires. The belief here is that
creative writing is like dreaming – it disguises what cannot be confronted
directly – the critic must decode what is disguised. A direct relation between the text and the
author is presupposed and made the center of inquiry.
|
O Rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm, That flies in the night, In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy; And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. William
Blake |
f. Mythological/Archetypal Approach. This approach to literary study is based on Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. Repeated or dominant images or patterns of human experience are identified in the text: the changing of seasons, the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, the heroic quest, or immortality. Myths are universal although every nation has its own distinctive mythology. Similar motifs or themes may be found among many different mythologies, and certain images that recur in the myths of people separated in time and place tend to have a common meaning, elicit comparable psychological responses, and serve similar cultural functions. Such motifs and images are called archetypes.
This approach also uses Northrop Frye’s assertion that literature consists of variations on a great mythic theme that contains the following:
·
the
creation and life in paradise: garden
·
displacement
or banishment from paradise: alienation
·
a time
of trial and tribulation, usually a wandering: journey
·
a
self-discovery as a result of struggle: epiphany
· a return to paradise: rebirth/resurrection
|
e.g. Lam-ang – archetype of immortality Superman in the movie Superman Returns – death and
rebirth archetype Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings – wise old man
archetype Odysseus - hero of initiation Aeneas – hero of the quest Jesus Christ – sacrificial scapegoat |
g. Structuralist Literary Theory. This theory draws from the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure. Language is a system or structure. Our perception of reality, and hence the ways we respond to it are dictated or constructed by the structure of the language we speak.
This theory assumes that literature, as an artifact of culture, is modeled on the structure of language. The emphasis is on ‘how’ a text means, instead of the ‘what’ of the American New Criticism. The structuralists argue that the structure of language produces reality, and meaning is no longer determined by the individual but by the system which governs the individual. Structuralism aims to identify the general principles of literary structure and not to provide interpretations of individual texts (Vladimir Propp and Tzvetan Todorov).
The structuralist approach to literature assumes three
dimensions in the individual literary texts:
·
the
text as a particular system or structure in itself (naturalization of a text)
·
texts
are unavoidably influenced by other texts,
in terms of both their formal and conceptual structures; part of the
meaning of any text depends on its intertextual relation to other texts
·
the
text is related to the culture as a whole (binary oppositions)
|
Jabberwocky Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre
and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the
mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware of the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws
that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The
frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time
the manxome foe he sought – So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood
awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood, The
Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And
burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through The
vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went
galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to
my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He
chortled in his joy.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre
and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the
mome raths outgrabe. Lewis Carroll |
h. Deconstruction. This theory questions texts of all kinds and our common practices in reading them. It exposes the gaps, the incoherences, the contradictions in a discourse and how a text undermines itself. The deconstructionist critic begins by discerning a flaw in the discourse and then revealing the hidden articulations.
Deconstructing a text calls for careful reading and a bit of creativity. The text says something other than what it appears to say. The belief is that language always betrays its speaker (especially when there is a metaphor).
A deconstructive critic deals with the obviously major features of a text, and then he/she vigorously explores its oppositions, reversals, and ambiguities. The most important figure in deconstruction is the Frenchman Jacques Derrida.
How to do deconstruction:
·
identify
the oppositions in the text
·
determine
which member appears to be favored or privileged and look for evidence that
contradicts that favoring or privileging
·
expose
the text’s indeterminacy
|
Prison Mila D.
Aguilar
Prison is a double
wall; one of
adobe, the other so many
layers of barbed
wire, both
formidable. The outer
wall is guarded from watch
towers. The other
is the prison within, where they
will hammer you into the
image of their
own likeness whoever
they are. |
i. Russian Formalism. This theory stresses that art is artificial and that a great deal of acquired skill goes into it as opposed to the old classical maxim that true art conceals its art. The Russian Formalists, led by Viktor Shklovsky, aimed to establish a ‘science of literature’ – a complete knowledge of the formal effects (devices, techniques, etc.) which together make up what is called literature. The Formalists read literature to discover its literariness – to highlight the devices and technical elements introduced by the writer in order to make language literary.
The key
ideas in this theory are:
· Baring the device – this practice refers to the presentation of devices without any realistic ‘motivation’
– they are presented purely as devices. For example, fiction operates by distorting time in various ways
– foreshortening, skipping, expanding,
transposing, reversing, flashback and flashforward, and so on.
·
Defamilairization – this means making strange. Everything must be dwelt upon and described
as if for the first time. Ordinary language encourages the automatization of
our perceptions and tends to diminish our awareness of reality. It simply confirms things as we know them
(e.g. the leaves are falling from the trees; the leaves are green).
·
Retardation of the narrative – the technique of delaying and protracting
actions. Shklovsky draws attention to
the ways in which familiar actions are defamiliarized by being slowed down,
drawn out or interrupted. Digressions,
displacement of the parts of the book, and extended descriptions are all
devices to make us attend to form.
·
Naturalization – refers to how we endlessly become inventive in finding
ways of making sense of the most random or chaotic utterances or
discourse. We refuse to allow a text to
remain alien and stay outside our frames of reference – we insist on
‘naturalizing’ it.
·
Carnivalization – the term Mikhail Bakhtin uses to describe
the shaping effect of carnival on literary texts. The festivities associated with the Carnival
are collective and popular; hierarchies are turned on their heads (fools become
wise; kings become beggars); opposites are mingled (fact and fantasy, heaven
and hell); the sacred is profaned; the rigid or serious is subverted, mocked or
loosened.
|
old age sticks up Keep Off signs) & youth yanks them down (old age cries No
Tres) & (pas) youth laughs (sing old age
scolds Forbid den Stop Must n’t Don’t
&) youth goes right on gr owing old
e.e. cummings |
j. Marxist Literary Theory. This theory aims to explain literature in relation to society – that literature can only be properly understood within a larger framework of social reality. Marxists believe that any theory that treats literature in isolation (for instance, as pure structure or as a product of the author’s individual mental processes) and keeps it in isolation, divorcing it from history and society, will be deficient in its ability to explain what literature is.
Marxist literary critics start by looking at the structure of history and society and then see whether the literary work reflects or distorts this structure. Literature must have a social dimension – it exists in time and space; in history and society. A literary work must speak to concerns that readers recognize as relevant to their lives.
Marxist literary criticism maintains that a writer’s social class and its prevailing ‘ideology’ (outlook, values, tacit assumptions, etc.) have a major bearing on what is written by a member of that class. The writers are constantly formed by their social contexts.
|
The Farmer’s Son Alfredo Navarro Salanga
There is great power in reason it comes like so much rain or like strong wind in a dry month.
My father was bent by work his shoulders were bent in a contract he never understood.
While I was still a young man he sent me to school and bid me walk with straight shoulders.
Learn, he said, learn words that you may pry off these letters that have made me old and bent.
I came back many years later with my words I knew he wanted but by then it was too late.
I listened to him die with words: you are lucky to have learned words they will keep you from having bent shoulders.
By his deathbed I cried and spat off letters while my shoulders bent with grief. |
k. Feminist Criticism. This is a specific kind of political discourse; a critical and theoretical practice committed to the struggle against patriarchy and sexism. Broadly, there are two kinds of feminist criticism: one is concerned with unearthing, rediscovering or re-evaluating women’s writing, and the other with re-reading literature from the point of view of women.
Feminism asks why women have played a subordinate role to men in the society. It is concerned with how women’s lives have changed throughout history and what about women’s experience is different from men.
Feminist literary criticism studies literature by women for how it addresses or expresses the particularity of women’s lives and experience. It also studies the male-dominated canon in order to understand how men have used culture to further their domination of women.
Critics like Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Ellman, and Kate Millett were among the first to reveal that throughout literary history women have been conceived of as ‘other,’ as somehow abnormal or deviant. As a result, female literary characters have been stereotyped as bitches, sex goddesses, ols maids. For the first time in history, criticism posited a female reader for whom stereotypes of womanhood were offensive.
|
To the Virgins to Make
Much of Time Robert Herrick
I Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time
is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow
will be dying.
II The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher
he’s a-getting, The sooner will his race will run, And nearer
he’s to setting.
III That age is best which is the first, When youth
and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse and the worst Times
still succeed the former.
IV Then be not coy, but use your time, And
while ye may, go marry; For, having lost but once your prime, You may
forever tarry. |
l. Postcolonial Criticism. Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by Third World countries after the decline of colonialism: for example, when countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild themselves. Many Third World writers focus on both colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture. Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempts both to resurrect their culture and to combat the preconceptions about their culture.
Postcolonial literatures emerged in their present form out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial center. Language became a site of struggle for postcolonial literatures since one of the main features of imperial oppression is control over language.
There is a need to escape from the implicit body of assumptions to which English, the language of the colonizing power, was attached: its aesthetic and social values, the formal and historically limited constraints of genre, and the oppressive political and cultural assertion of metropolitan dominance – of center over margin.
Postcolonial critics also study diasporic texts outside the usual Western genres, especially productions by aboriginal authors, marginalized ethnicities, immigrants, and refugees.
Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial theory
involves analysis of nationality, ethnicity, and politics with
poststructuralist ideas of identity and indeterminacy, defining postcolonial
identities as shifting, hybrid constructions.
|
‘…Then a knock at the door and a young man in heavily starched white
shorts and shirt comes in to offer his services as cook.
“Wetin you fit cook?” asked Chief Nanga as he perused the man’s sheaf
of testimonial, probably not one of them genuine.
“I fit cook every European chop like steak and kidney pie, chicken
puri, misk grill, cake omelette. …”
“You no sabi cook African chop?”
“Ahh! That one I no sabi am-o,” he admitted. “I no go tell master
lie.”
“Wetin you de chop for your own house?” I asked, being irritated by
the idiot.
“Wetin I de chop for my house?” he repeated after me. “Na we country
chop I de chop.”
“You country chop no be Africa chop?” asked Chief Nanga.
“Na him,” admitted the cook. “But no be me de cook am. I get wife for
house.”
My irritation vanished at once and I joined Chief nanga’s laughter.
Greatly encouraged the cook added:
“How man wey get family go begin enter kitchen for make bitterleaf and
egusi? Unless if the man no get shame.” (p. 46) from A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe |
m. Postmodern Literary Theory. Postmodern is a term used to refer to the culture of advanced capitalist societies. This culture has undergone a profound shift in the ‘structure of feeling.’ A whole new way of thinking and being in the world emerged – a paradigm shift in the cultural, social, and economic orders.
Following World War II a new kind of society began to emerge, variously called post-industrial society, multinational capitalism, consumer society, media society. This society is characterized by:
· a new type of consumption
· planned obsolescence
· ever more rapid rhythm of fashion and
styling changes
· the penetration of advertising, television,
and the media
· the replacement of the old tension between
city and country, center and province,
by the suburb and by universal standardization
· the growth of the great networks of superhighways and the arrival of the automobile culture
The term postmodern has been applied to a style or a sensibility manifesting itself in any creative endeavor which exhibits some element of self-consciousness and reflexivity.
The common features of postmodern texts are:
fragmentation intertextuality
discontinuity decentring
indeterminacy dislocation
plurality ludism
metafictionality parody
heterogeneity pastiche
Perhaps the greatest liberating feature of postmodern writing has been the mixing of writings and intertextual referencing. The borders between genres have become more fluid. Artists and writers no longer quote texts; they incorporate them, to the point where the line between high art and commercial forms seems increasingly difficult to draw.
|
Examples: The works of Andy Warhol The poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Haryette
Mullen, Susan Howe The novels of Don de Lillo, Jasper
Fforde, Thomas Pynchon, William Gibson Movies like Moulin Rouge, Matrix, Vanilla Sky, Inception, Adjustment Bureau, Stranger
than Fiction, Mamma Mia The works of Michel
Foucault |
n. Reader Response Criticism can be seen as a reaction in part to some problems and limitations perceived in New Criticism. New Criticism did not suddenly fail to function: it remains an effective critical strategy for illuminating the complex unity of certain literary works. But some works do not seem to respond well to New Criticism’s ‘close reading.’ New ideas about the conceptual nature of knowledge, even scientific knowledge, questioned a fundamental assumption of New Criticism. New Criticism was arguably emulating the sciences; but in the wake of Einstein’s theory of relativity, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, or GÓ§del’s mathematics, and much else, it seems clear that the perceiver plays an active role in the making of any meaning, and that literary works in particular have a subjective status (as opposed to New Criticism’s objective reality of the literary work).
For the believers of reader-response theories (Rosenblatt, Bleich, Fish), the object of observation appears changed by the act of observation. ‘Knowledge is made by people, not found,’ according to David Bleich (1978). Writing about literature should not involve suppressing readers’ individual concerns, anxieties, passions, enthusiasms. A response to a literary work always helps us find out something about ourselves. Every act of response, he continues, reflects the shifting motivations and perceptions of the reader at the moment. Readers undergo a process of ‘negotiation’ with a community of readers to seek a common ground.
Louise Rosenblatt (1978) called for criticism that involved a ‘personal sense of literature, an unself-conscious, spontaneous, and honest reaction,’ but this should be checked against the text and modified in a continuing process. While multiple interpretations are accepted, some readings are considered incorrect or inappropriate because they are unsupportable by the text. The focus is on the ‘transaction’ between the text and the reader, i.e. a poem is made by the text and the reader interacting.
Stanley Fish (1980, 1989) moves away from the idea of an ideal reader who finds his/her activity marked out, implied, in the text, and he moves toward the idea of a reader who creates a reading of the text using certain interpretive strategies.
Three (3)
important questions need to be asked by the reader:
a.
How do
I respond to this work?
b.
How
does the text shape my response?
c.
How
might other readers respond?
|
Fire and Ice Robert Frost
Some say the world will
end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of
desire I hold with those who
favor fire. But if it had to perish
twice, I think I know enough of
hate To say that for
destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. |