Literary Theory

Literary Theory. Gender, Culture and Adaptation Studies

The literary work examined

in relation to

the world the audiencethe author

or examined in itself

M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953)

Introduction: Orientation of Critical Theories

The literary work in relation to:

The literary work in relation to:

Work of art – universe:How art reflects / mirrors / represents the world

e.g., realism (or the effect of the real)

Work of art – artist:How the artist creates, what it is the artist

expresses

The literary work in relation to:

Work of art – audience What effect the work of art has / should have

Work of art – in itself:What it is like (formal, structural analyses)

Mimetic theories

Mimesis and imitation rather: representationAristotle’s Poetics: dramatic plot as imitation of an actionColeridge: imitation of nature in being an organic unityRealistic 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: reader’s contribution to textreading 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 subconsciousSigmund 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 art’s sake (l’art pour l’art)No one theory can explain all works(The essay is an introduction to his book on the

Romantics: The Mirror and the Lamp, 1953

M.H. Abrams, “Orientation of critical 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 criticismRecreate 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.

An example: gender studies

• Mimetic approach: the way the work represents gender issues in society

• Pragmatic approach: the way the work can help raising awareness and show alternative models of relating to gender issues

• Expressive approach: the way the author expresses the experience of being a woman, a man, a human being of a specific gender

• Objective approach: e.g.,écriture féminine

(an aside about basic terms)

• female ≠ feminine ≠ feminist biological vs socio-cultural vs political context and terminology

• 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

Judith Butler

GenderTrouble,1990

Gender as performance

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, 1993

Another example: adaptation theory

“My method has been to identify a text-based issue

that extends across a variety of media, find ways to study it comparatively, and then tease out the theoretical implications from multiple textual examples. At various times, therefore, I take on the roles of formalist semiotician, poststructuralist deconstructor, or feminist and postcolonial demythifier;

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

The language of literary criticism

“A statement may be used for the sake of the reference, true or false, which it causes. This is the scientific use of language. But it may also be used for the sake of the effects in emotion and attitude produced by the reference it occasions. This is the emotive use of language.” I.A. Richards, “The two uses of language” (ch. 34 from The Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) also in Lodge's 20th Century Literary Criticism

• BBI-FLI-101E INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

• • PLEASE READ THE TASKS CAREFULLY.• • I PLEASE PROVIDE A BRIEF DEFINITION (1-2

LINES) FOR THE FOLLOWING TERMS• (10 X 1 POINT):

• II PLEASE EXPLAIN IN A PARAGRAPH WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE FOLLOWING TERMS

• (2 X 3 POINTS):

• III TECHNICAL ANALYSIS. PLEASE READ THE POEM BELOW CAREFULLY.

• A) TECHNICAL FOCUS. Please list 3 possible ways you could write a meaningful analysis of the following text. Mention the technical focus for each of your possible analyses and write a title for each. Make sure you choose appropriate approaches that would help toward an interpretation, since the next task will be to actually write one of the 3 analyses you suggest here. (3 X 2 POINT):

•

• B) ANALYSE TEXT IN DETAIL CONCENTRATING ON ONE OF THE FEATURES YOU LISTED ABOVE. (PLEASE USE SEPARATE SHEET.) (10 POINTS, SEE TABLE BELOW)

• Argumentation (make points, prove them with quotes from text) 2 points

• Use of critical terminology (apply terms learnt for the exam) 3 points

• Use of course material (apply concepts discussed in lectures) 3 points

• Essay format (one page, paragraphs, beginning, middle, ending) 2 points

EXTRA MATERIAL

What follows has not been discussed in the lecture but may provide useful - feel free to continue.

Literary criticism as a systematic study

“It is clear that criticism cannot be a systematic study unless there is a quality in literature which enables it to be so. We have to adopt the hypothesis, then, that just as there is an order of nature behind the natural sciences, so literature is not a piled aggregate of 'works' but an order of 'words'.”

Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)

Vassilis Lambropoulos, David Neal Miller , eds.Twentieth-Century Literary Theory:An Introductory Anthology

http://www.sunypress.edu/p-861-twentieth-century-literary-theo.aspxhttp://books.google.com/books/about/20th_century_literary_criticism.html?id=WSMaAQAAIAAJ

David Lodge, 20th century literary criticism: a reader (1972)

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

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&f=false

Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, Peter Brooker,A reader's guide to contemporary literary theory(1985; 5th edition 2005)

From theories to Theory

English Literature as a discipline: designed and consolidated 2nd half of 19th c (a

consequence of the coming of the national dimension into prominence)

Canon construction, canon as a national narrativeHistorical, biographical, moral and rhetorical

considerations were blendedAs an academic discipline it started to develop in a

way to meet scientific criteria

From theories to Theory New Criticism

New Criticism was a movement in literary theory thatdominated American and had an impact on Englishliterary criticism in the middle decades of the 20thcentury.

Its chief critical strategy was close reading, particularlywhen discussing poetry, emphasizing that a work ofliterature functions as a self-contained, self referentialaesthetic object.

From theories to Theory New Criticism

New Criticism developed in the 1920s-30s and peakedin the 1940s-50s. The movement is named after JohnCrowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism.

New Critics focused on the text of a work of literatureand tried to exclude the author's biography andintention, historical and cultural contexts, andmoralistic bias from their analysis.

Reader's response was not taken into account either.

From theories to Theory New Criticism

New Critics often performed a "close reading" of thetext and believed the structure and meaning of the textwere intimately connected and should not be analyzedseparately.

The main aim of New Criticism was to make literarycriticism scientific.

From theories to Theory New Criticism

One of the most common grievances against the NewCriticism, is an objection to the idea of the text asautonomous; detractors react against a perceived antihistoricism, accusing the New Critics of divorcingliterature from its place in history.

From theories to Theory New Criticism

Another objection comes from the reader-responseschool of theory, rightly claiming that the fundamentalclose reading technique is based on the assumptionthat the subject and the object of study - the readerand the text - are stable and independent forms, ratherthan products of the unconscious process ofsignification.

From theories to TheoryI. A. Richards

I. A. Richards (1893–1979) , English literary critic.His books, especially Principles of Literary Criticism(1924) and Practical Criticism (1929), proved to befounding influences for the New Criticism.

The concept of 'practical criticism' led in time to thepractices of close reading, what is often thought of asthe beginning of modern literary criticism. Richards isregularly considered one of the founders of thecontemporary study of literature in English.

From theories to TheoryI. A. Richards

In Practical Criticism he advocated an empirical studyof literary response. He removed authorial andcontextual information from thirteen poems, includingone by Longfellow and four by decidedly marginalpoets. Then he assigned their interpretation toundergraduates at Cambridge University in order toascertain the most likely impediments to an adequateresponse. This approach had a startling impact at thetime in demonstrating the depth and variety ofmisreadings to be expected of otherwise intelligentcollege students as well as the population at large.

From theories to TheoryI. A. Richards

The question arises, however, whether suchinterpretations are misreadings or relevant varieties ofreading.

From theories to Theory

René Wellek and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literaturewas much ahead of its time when it first published in1949.

By the 1970s and 80s the term “study of literature” wasgetting to be substituted by the term “theory” and soontaken over by “Theory” with capital T.

From theories to Theory

Theory has a history and is categorized into schools,such as – roughly in the order of their appearance –Liberal Humanism, New Criticism, Formalism,Structuralism, Marxist, Psychological Approach,Archetypal Approach, Myth Criticism, CulturalCriticism, Post-structuralism, Deconstruction, NewHistoricism, Reader’s Response Criticism,Hermeneutic Approach, Phenomenological Criticism,Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, Feminism, GenderStudies, Queer Theory, Ecocriticism, etc.

Structuralism

Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics ofFerdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Pragueand Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structurallinguistics was facing serious challenges from the likesof Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance inlinguistics, structuralism appeared in academia in thesecond half of the 20th century and grew to becomeone of the most popular approaches in academic fieldsconcerned with the analysis of language, culture, andsociety.

Marxist literary criticism

Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describingliterary criticism based on socialist and dialectictheories. Marxist criticism views literary works asreflections of the social institutions from which theyoriginate. According to Marxists, even literature itself isa social institution and has a specific ideologicalfunction, based on the background and ideology of theauthor.

Marxist literary criticism

The simplest goals of Marxist literary criticism caninclude an assessment of the political 'tendency' of aliterary work, determining whether its social content orits literary form are 'progressive'. It also includesanalyzing the class constructs demonstrated in theliterature.

Structuralism

The structuralist mode of reasoning has been appliedin a diverse range of fields, including anthropology,sociology, psychology, literary criticism, andarchitecture.

The most prominent thinkers associated withstructuralism include the linguist Roman Jakobson, theanthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the psychoanalystJacques Lacan, the philosopher and historian MichelFoucault, the philosopher and social commentatorJacques Derrida, and the literary critic Roland Barthes.

Structuralism

Proponents of structuralism would argue that aspecific domain of culture may be understood bymeans of a structure - modelled on language - that isdistinct both from the organizations of reality andthose of ideas or the imagination. In the 1970s,structuralism was criticized for its rigidity andahistoricism.

New Historicism

New Historicism is a school of literary theory,grounded in critical theory, that developed in the1980s, primarily through the work of the critic StephenGreenblatt.

New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand thework through its historical context and to understandcultural and intellectual history through literature,which documents the new discipline of the history ofideas.

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a term introduced by Frenchphilosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 bookOf Grammatology.

Deconstruction refers to a process of exploring thecategories and concepts that history and tradition hasimposed on a word or a work. Deconstruction suggestsanalysis with high precision.

Deconstruction

In describing deconstruction, Derrida famouslyobserved that "there is nothing outside the text." Thatis to say, all of the references used to interpret a textare themselves texts, even the "text" of reality as areader knows it. There is no truly objective, non-textualreference from which interpretation can begin.

Deconstruction, then, can be described as an effort tounderstand a text through its relationships to variouscontexts.

Post-structuralism

The post-structuralist movement may be broadlyunderstood as a body of distinct responses toStructuralism. Structuralism argued that human culturemay be understood by means of a structure - modeledafter structural linguistics - that is distinct both fromthe organizations of reality and the organization ofideas and imagination.

Post-structuralism

The post-structuralist approach includes the rejectionof the self-sufficiency of the structures thatstructuralism posits and an interrogation of the binaryoppositions that constitute those structures.

Reader-response criticism

Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theorythat focuses on the reader (or "audience") and his orher experience of a literary work, in contrast to otherschools and theories that focus attention primarily onthe author or the content and form of the work.

Although literary theory has long paid some attentionto the reader's role in creating the meaning andexperience of a literary work, modern reader-responsecriticism began in the 1960s and '70s, particularly inAmerica 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 in1929 analyzed a group of Cambridge undergraduates‘misreadings.

Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as anactive agent who constitutes meaning to the workand completes its meaning through interpretation.

Reader-response criticism argues that literature shouldbe viewed as a performing art in which each readercreates his or her own, possibly unique, text-relatedperformance.

Reader-response criticismvs. New Criticism

It stands in total opposition to the theories offormalism and the New Criticism, in which the reader'srole in re-creating literary works is ignored. NewCriticism had emphasized that only that which is withina text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to theauthority or intention of the author, nor to thepsychology of the reader, was allowed in thediscussions of orthodox New Critics.

Psychoanalytic criticism

Psychoanalytic literary criticism refers to literarycriticism or literary theory which, in method, concept,or form, is influenced by the tradition ofpsychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.

Psychoanalytic reading has been practiced since theearly development of psychoanalysis itself, and hasdeveloped into a heterogeneous interpretive tradition.

Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environmentfrom an interdisciplinary point of view where allsciences come together to analyze the environmentand brainstorm possible solutions for the correction ofthe contemporary environmental situation.

Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that isknown by a number of other designations, including"green (cultural) studies", "ecopoetics", and"environmental literary criticism".

From theories to Theory

Delia Da Sousa Correa and W. R. Owens: TheHandbook to Literary Research. 2nd ed. London:Routledge, 2010

Theory exerts an institutional pressure. Students ofliterature are supposed to understand that their variousprojects must demonstrate an awareness of Theory.

Theory is a dominant academic discourse, a body ofknowledge that should be acquired and applied.

From theories to Theory

Theory is not a given field of knowledge with many‘schools’ which has to be sampled and picked fromand applied, but is an institutional extrapolation froman ongoing process of debating and thinking aboutliterature and criticism.

Theories

If so, can any work be analyzed by any method andcritical perspective

↕ ↕ ↕Certain works are more suitable for an analysisaccording to a particular method or critical perspective

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 hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year.

Frost cont.

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound's the sweepOf 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.

Approaches

New CriticismMarxistCulturalPsychologicalArchetypalEcocriticism

William Blake(1757-1827)

The Chimney Sweeper

When my mother died I was very young,And my father sold me while yet my tongueCould scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said,"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet; and that very night,As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, - That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

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.

Approaches

MarxismCulturalNew Historicism

Carol Ann Duffy(1955)

Sit at Peace

When they gave you them to shell and you saton the back-doorstep, opening the small green envelopeswith your thumb, minding the queues of peas, you weresitting at peace. Sit at peace, sit at peace, all summer.

When Muriel Purdy, embryonic cop, thwacked the backof your knees with a bamboo-cane, mouth open, soundlessin a cave of pain, you ran to your house,a greeting wean, to be kept in and told once again.

Nip was a dog. Fluff was a cat. They sat at peaceon a coloured-in mat, so why couldn’t you? Sometimesyour questions were stray snipes over no-man’s land,bringing sharp hands and the order you had to obey. Sit –

Duffy, cont.

At – Peace! Jigsaws you couldn’t do or dull stampsdidn’t want to collect arrived with the frost.You would rather stand with your nose to the window, cloudingthe strange blue view with your restless breath.

But the day you fell from the Parachute Tree, they camefrom nowhere running, carried you in to a quiet roomyou were glad of. A long silent afternoon, dreamlike.A voice saying peace, sit at peace, sit at peace.

Approaches

CulturalPostmodernismFeminismGender

John Donne(1572-1631)

A Valediction: Of Weeping

Let me pour forth

My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,And by this mintage they are something worth.

For thus they bePregnant of thee ;

Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more ;When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore ;

So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.

Donne, cont.

On a round ballA workman, that hath copies by, can layAn Europe, Afric, and an Asia,And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.

So doth each tear.Which thee doth wear,

A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow

This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so.

Donne, cont.

O ! more than moon,

Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere;Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbearTo teach the sea, what it may do too soon;

Let not the windExample find

To do me more harm than it purposeth :Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.

Charles Tennyson Turner(1808-1879)Letty’s Globe

When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year, And her young artless words began to flow, One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know, By tint and outline, all its sea and land. She patted all the world; old empires peep'd Between her baby fingers; her soft hand Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd, And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss; But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry-- 'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!' And while she hid all England with a kiss, Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

Charles Tennyson Turner(1808-1879)Letty’s Globe

When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year, And her young artless words began to flow, One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know, By tint and outline, all its sea and land. She patted all the world; old empires peep'd Between her baby fingers; her soft hand Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd, And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss; But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry - 'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!' And while she hid all England with a kiss, Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

Critical approaches

Wilfred L. Guerin, Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C.Reesman, John R. Willingham:A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 4thed. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Oress, 1999