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Role of Spectacle in Tragedy
Spectacle is one of the six components of tragedy, occupying the category of the mode of imitation.
Spectacle includes all aspects of the tragedy that contribute to its sensory effects: costumes, scenery,
the gestures of the actors, the sound of the music and the resonance of the actors' voices. Aristotle
ranks spectacle last in importance among the other components of tragedy, remarking that a tragedy
does not need to be performed to have its impact on the audience, as it can be read as a text.
Spectacle (opsis)
Refers to the visual apparatus of the play, including set, costumes and props (anything you
can see). Aristotle calls spectacle the "least artistic" element of tragedy, and the "least
connected with the work of the poet (playwright).
For example: if the play has "beautiful" costumes and "bad" acting and "bad" story, there is
"something wrong" with it. Even though that "beauty" may save the play it is "not a nice thing".
Spectacle is like a suspenseful horror film.
Summary
Aristotle now narrows his focus to examine tragedy exclusively. In order to do so, he provides a
definition of tragedy that we can break up into seven parts:
(1) it involves mimesis;
(2) it is serious;
(3) the action is complete and with magnitude;
(4) it is made up of language with the "pleasurable accessories" of rhythm and harmony;
(5) these "pleasurable accessories" are not used uniformly throughout, but are introduced in separate
parts of the work, so that, for instance, some bits are spoken in verse and other bits are sung;
(6 ) it is performed rather than narrated; and
(7) it arouses the emotions of pity and fear and accomplishes a katharsis(purification or purgation) of
these emotions.
Next, Aristotle asserts that any tragedy can be divided into six component parts, and that every
tragedy is made up of these six parts with nothing else besides. There is (a) the spectacle, which is the
overall visual appearance of the stage and the actors. The means of imitation (language, rhythm, and
harmony) can be divided into (b) melody, and (c) diction, which has to do with the composition of the
verses. The agents of the action can be understood in terms of (d) character and (e) thought. Thought
seems to denote the intellectual qualities of an agent while character seems to denote the moral
qualities of an agent. Finally, there is (f) the plot, or mythos, which is the combination of incidents and
actions in the story.
Aristotle argues that, among these six, the plot is the most important. The characters serve to advance
the action of the story, not vice versa. The ends we pursue in life, our happiness and our misery, all
take the form of action. That is, according to Aristotle, happiness consists in a certain kind of activity
rather than in a certain quality of character. Diction and thought are also less significant than plot: a
series of well-written speeches have nothing like the force of a well-structured tragedy. Further,
Aristotle suggests, the most powerful elements in a tragedy, theperipeteia and the anagnorisis, are
elements of the plot. Lastly, Aristotle notes that forming a solid plot is far more difficult than creating
good characters or diction.
Having asserted that the plot is the most important of the six parts of tragedy, he ranks the remainder
as follows, from most important to least: character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. Character
reveals the individual motivations of the characters in the play, what they want or don't want, and how
they react to certain situations, and this is more important to Aristotle than thought, which deals on a
more universal level with reasoning and general truths. Melody and spectacle are simply pleasurable
accessories, but melody is more important to the tragedy than spectacle: a pretty spectacle can be
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arranged without a play, and usually matters of set and costume aren't the occupation of the poet
anyway.
Answer :
Aristotle is referring to Suspension of disbelief in character arts
(especially in the fantasy genre)
fictions (impossibilities) that seem plausible can make good drama, while not-impossible but
ridiculously unlikely actions make bad drama. He's drawing a fairly fine distinction in that
some things that didn't happen seem like they could have happened: you easily suspend
disbelief. Science fiction is most rife with this, and the stories that Aristotle cites as examples
(Oedipus, The Odyssey) have a tinge of the sci-fi to them.
Aristotle In his Poetics he describes a number of qualities useful, if not crucial, to the art
of drama. One of these is the idea of probability:
In general, the impossible must be justified by reference to artistic requirements, or to the higher
reality, or to received opinion. With respect to the requirements of art, a probable impossibility is to be
preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible. Again, it may be impossible that there should be men
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such as Zeuxis painted. Yes, we say, but the impossible is the higher thing; for the ideal type must
surpass the reality.
The key phrase in understanding the concept, I think, is the requirements of art.
If we were looking at the requirements of science I think the improbable would be hugely preferred
to the impossible. However, Aristotle believed that arts purpose was to represent a reality higher,
greater, or perhaps just more harmonious, than our own.
His example, Zeuxis, painted highly idealised portraits. For Aristotle this was ok, because it
represented reality in a way that was higher, or more perfect. Aristotle justified this by reference to
the action of the drama, where each action must bear a relationship of plausibility with objective
reality and with the previous events within the drama. It becomes more acceptable to a dramas
audience, he says, to introduce impossibility, such as a god, rather than an improbability,
Q2.
A commonplace is a rhetorical device developed by teachers like Aristotle, and has been used in
numerous applications in public speaking for many years. Ironically, the commonplace is less common now,
though youll still see references to commonplace books, which are quite different.
Even before Aristotle, the Sophists, a group of itinerant scholars traveling the various Greek city-states often
taught how to write and deliver speeches. They often performed such speeches for audiences to gain new
students, and were occasionally asked to speak on a specific topic with little preparation time. In order to
create material that sounded scholarly, they usually had prepared a number of themes or compositions that
could be easily adapted quickly to be performed at will.
Aristotle called these themes commonplaces, and by the term he meant no
derision. In fact he taught his students to create a variety of prepared themes, which could be delivered as
occasion required.
Q3 . Art of Rhetoric .
Aristotles Art of Rhetoric is one of the first and most important textbooks for
speech production. Following Aristotle, the purpose of rhetorical speech consists
in persuading by argumentation. In this respect he defines rhetoric as the
faculty of discovering the possible means of persuasion in reference to any
subject whatever. (Rhetoric I, 1355b/14,2). Now, persuasion presupposes as
any perlocutionary act that the utterances have been understood by the
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audience, in short: it presupposes (text) comprehension.1 When analysing the
first three phases of rhetoric heuresis, taxis and lexis two features in particular
stand out on account of the role they play in argumentation: topos and metaphor,
which are treated in the heuresis and the lexis. 2 Metaphor works in a heuristic
and aesthetic manner, while topos operates in a heuristic and logical manner.
This difference is grounded in their respective characteristics, which will be
discussed in the second and third sections of this paper. In the fourth section it is
shown how metaphor and topos are based on common knowledge and how they
are used in rhetorical text production.
Literary Device (Point of View ):Point of view is the perspective from which a story is narrated. Every story has a
perspective, though there can be more than one type of point of view in a work of literature. The most common
points of view used in novels are first person singular (I) and third person (he and she). However, there
are many variants on these two types of point of view, as well as other less common narrative points of view.
The term point of view (POV) refers to who is telling a story, or who is narrating.
The narrator of a story or novel can appear in three main ways: first person,
second person and third person.
Definition:
Point of view is the manner in which a story is narrated or depicted and who it is that tells the
story. Simply put, the point of view determines the angle and perception of the story
unfolding, and thus influences the tone in which the story takes place. The point of view is
instrumental in manipulating the readers understanding of the narrative. In a way, the point of
view can allow or withhold the reader access into the greater reaches of the story. Two of the
most common point of view techniques are the first person, wherein the story is told by the
narrator from his or her standpoint and the third person wherein the narrator does not figure in
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the events of the story and tells the story by referring to all characters and places in the third
person with third person pronouns and proper nouns.
First Person : This narrator is usually the protagonistof the story, and this point of view allows
the reader access to the characters inner thoughts and reactions to the events occurring. All of
the action is processed through the narrators perspective, and therefore this type of narrator
may be unreliable.
Second Person : This point of view either implies that the narrator is actually an I trying to
separate himself or herself from the events that he or she is narrating, or allows the reader to
identify with the central character. This was popularized in the 1980s series Choose Your Own
Adventure, and appears in the recent novel Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton:
Third Person
This point of view definition uses he and she as the pronouns to refer to different
characters, and provides the greatest amount of flexibility for the author.
Significance of Point of View in Literature
The choice of the point of view from which to narrate a story greatly affects both the
readers experience of the story and the type of information the author is able to
impart. First person creates a greater intimacy between the reader and the story, while
third person allows the author to add much more complexity to the plot and
development of different characters that one character wouldnt be able to perceive on
his or her own.
Therefore, point of view has a great amount of significance in
every piece of literature. The relative popularities of different types of point of view
have changed over the centuries of novel writing. For example, epistolary novels were
once quite common but have largely fallen out of favor. First person point is view,
meanwhile, is quite common now whereas it was hardly used at all before the
20th century.
Example:
In the popular Lord of the Rings book series, the stories are narrated in the third person and all
happenings are described from an outside the story point of view. Contrastingly, in the
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popular teen book series, Princess Diaries, the story is told in the first person, by the
protagonist herself.
Definition of Stream of Consciousness (or Internal Monologue)
When used as a term in literature, stream of consciousness is a narrative form in which the
author writes in a way that mimics or parallels a characters internal thoughts. Sometimes this
device is also called internal monologue, and often the style incorporates the natural chaos
of thoughts and feelings that occur in any of our minds at any given time. Just as happens in
real life, stream-of-consciousness narratives often lack associative leaps and are characterized
by an absence of regular punctuation.
The term stream of consciousness first came about in 1890 when the philosopher and
psychologist William James used it in his book, The Principles of Psychology. He used it to
describe the natural flow of thoughts that, even while the different parts are not necessarily
connected, the brain does not distinguish one thought as strictly independent from the next.
May Sinclair was the first person, in 1918, to adapt the definition of stream of consciousness
to literature.
Difference Between Stream of Consciousness and Free Writing
The activity of free writing is a technique to remove inhibitions from creativity. Free
writing encourages a writer to get words down on paper without editing or worrying about
the product, knowing that most of it will not necessarily be all that interesting.
Stream of consciousness, on the other hand, is writing that has been
polished and has a purpose, even while giving the impression that it is somewhat random.
Authors who use the technique of stream of consciousness do so with intentions to guide the
character from one place to the next internally and not just let the characters thoughts go
haywire.
Significance of Stream of Consciousness in Literature
Stream of consciousness is a device that gained
popularity in twentieth-century literature. There are some examples of stream of
consciousness before this time, such as in the 1757 novel Tristam Shandy or Edgar Allen
Poes precursor style in The Tell-Tale Heart and other works. In general, however, its
considered a modern style.
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Stream of consciousness can be found in literature from different cultures and languages.
Stream of consciousness examples can be found in the works of French writer Marcel Proust,
Indian writer Salman Rushdie, Irish writer James Joyce, Italian writer Italo Svevo, Mexican
writer Roberto Bolao and contemporary American novelist Dave Eggers. Authors use stream
of consciousness to more closely follow a characters interior life. Stream of consciousness
gives a very direct view into the subtle and sometimes rapid shifts in the way a character
thinks while going about his or her day. This provides a very intimate relationship between the
reader and the character.
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Definition of Symbolism
When used as a literary device, symbolism means to imbue objects with a certain
meaning that is different from their original meaning or function. Other literary
devices, such as metaphor, allegory, and allusion, aid in the development of
symbolism. Authors use symbolism to tie certain things that may initially seem
unimportant to more universal themes. The symbols then represent these
grander ideas or qualities. For instance, an author may use a particular color that
on its own is nothing more than a color, but hints at a deeper meaning. One
notable example is in Joseph Conrads aptly titled Heart of Darkness, where the
darkness of the African continent in his work is supposed to symbolize its
backwardness and the possibility of evil there .
There are also cultural symbols, such as a dove representing peace. The
American flag: The thirteen red and white stripes on the American flag
symbolize the original thirteen colonies, while the fifty stars are a symbol for
the fifty states.
The five Olympic rings: The primary symbol of the Olympics is the image of
five interlocking rings
Nathaniel Hawthorne named his novel The Scarlet Letter after the central symbol of the
book.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams takes its name from the most prevalent symbol
in the play.
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Q5 .
Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind,
but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous
characters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce
seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter.
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That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there
is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to
instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama
may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it
includes both in its alterations of exhibition and approaches nearer than either to the
appearance of life, by eshewing how great machinations and slender designs may
promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general
system by unavoidable concatenation.
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It is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are interrupted in their
progression, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of
preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection
of dramatick poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by
those who in daily experience feel it to be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes
seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of passion. Fiction cannot move so
much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that
pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be
considered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of
one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and
that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety.
When Shakespeares plan is understood, most of the criticisms of Rhymer and Voltaire
vanish away. The play of Hamlet is opened, without impropriety, by two sentinels; Iago
bellows at Brabantios window, without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms
which a modern audience would not easily endure; the character of Polonius is
seasonable and useful; and the Grave-diggers themselves may be heard with applause.
The force of his comick scenes has suffered little diminution from the changes made by a
century and a half, in manners or in words. As his personages act upon principles arising
from genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and
vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and therefore
durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits, are only superficial dies, bright
and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of
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former lustre; but the discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they
pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them.
Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and
obstructs the progress of the action. Shakespeare found it an encumberance, and instead
of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour. His
declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his power was the power
of nature; when he endeavoured, like other tragick writers, to catch opportunities of
amplification,
'SINCE THE END OF POETRY IS PLEASURE, THAT CANNOT BE UNPOETICAL WITH WHICH
ALL ARE PLEASED.' .
must be familiar to his imagination: he must be conversant with all that is awfully
vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the
minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must all concur to store his mind
with inexhaustible variety: for every idea is useful for the enforcement or
decoration of moral or religious truth; and he who knows most will have most
power of diversifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions
and unexpected instruction."
Samuel Johnson
2.
" It is a general rule in poetry, that all appropriated terms of art should be
sunk in general expressions, because poetry is to speak an universal
language. This rule is still stronger with regard to arts not liberal, or
confined to few, and therefore far removed from common knowledge."
Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets)
3.
4.
Poetry
"It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by pastorals, which,
not professing to imitate real life, require no experience; and, exhibiting
only the simple operation of unmingled passions, admit no subtle
reasoning or deep inquiry."
Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets)
5.
Poetry; Similes
"A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject; must
show it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy
with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be sufficient to
recommend it. In didactic poetry, of which the great purpose is instruction,
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a simile may be praised which illustrates, though it does not ennoble; in
heroics, that may be admitted which ennobles, though it does not
illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, independently
of its references, a pleasing image; for a simile is said to be a short
episode."
Johnson: Pope (Lives of the Poets)
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I might perhaps include all which it is necessaryto say upon this subject by
affirming, what few persons will deny, that, of two descriptions, either of passions,
manners, or characters, each of them equally well executed, the one in prose and
the other in verse, the verse will be read a hundred times where the prose is read
once.
One could easily argue that a poem (or a song) has a longer life in the memory
than a passage from a work of prose (i.e. a novel). This isn't just because a poem
tends to be a shorter work. It's also because of the cadence and rhythm, natural
mnemonic devices. In depicting poems about realistic, common people in rustic
environments, Wordsworth was rejecting the poetry of the past which tended to
treat kings, queens, and heroes in an overly regimented style. For Wordsworth,
real people were more relevant. More to the point, Wordsworth believed that
sublime emotions can be discovered in the experience and reflection of common
experiences.
In other words, it can be inspiring to identify extraordinary virtue in a poem about
an extraordinary hero whose exploits are unbelievable to the point of being
legendary. Wordsworth supposed that (his main concept) it would also be
inspiring, more relevant, and more rewarding to identify extraordinary virtue in a
poem about ordinary life.
While Wordsworth is not setting out a complete poetic defense wherein he defines
his aesthetic
("I have therefore altogether declined to enter regularly upon this defence"),
it is true that in the Preface he does discuss his ideas of what the poet is, what
poetry is and, most importantly to Lyrical Ballads, what the language of poetry is.
Wordsworth first implies that a Poet is one who arranges language expressing
ideas in metrical form. This language he arranges is "in a state of vivid
sensation." In other words, it is emotional reaction to ideas or emotional
expressions of feeling.
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The Poet is one who "rationally" (i.e., reasonably) imparts the "vivid
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Answer :In his "Preface" to the Lyrical Ballads (1802), William Wordsworth lays
out many of the ideas often associated with Romanticism in English poetry.
Among those ideas are the following:
1. an emphasis on the "real language" actually spoken by human beings,
especially human beings from the lower reaches of society. Wordsworth thus
rejects the kind of poetic language that had come to seem stale, artificial, and
unconvincing.
2. an emphasis on "vivid sensation," or heightened emotion and perception.
3. an emphasis on using poetry to provide "more than common pleasure."
4. an emphasis on "incidents and situations from common life."
5. an emphasis on using imagination to throw a certain coloring over
descriptions of such incidents and situations so that ordinary things should be
presented to the mind in an unusual way . . . in order to make these incidents
and situations interesting by tracing in them . . . the primary laws of our nature:
chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of
excitement.
6. an emphasis on [l]ow and rustic life, which often reveals essential human
nature more readily than the kinds of lives lived by the allegedly more
sophisticated persons of the upper classes.
7. an emphasis on the essential passions of the heart.
8. an emphasis on a plainer and more emphatic language than is usually found
among the highly educated
9. an emphasis on the ways human emotions are incorporated with the beautiful
and permanent forms of nature.
10. a rejection of the kinds of arbitrary and capricious habits of expression
traditionally used in conventional poetry
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Nevertheless, reflectionism has been a deep-seated tendency in Marxist
criticism, as a way of combating formalist theories of literature which lock the
literary work within its own sealed space, marooned from history.
In its cruder formulations, the idea that literature reflects reality is clearly inadequate. It
suggests a passive, mechanistic relationship between literature and society, as though
the work, like a mirror or photographic plate, merely inertly registered what was
happening out there. Lenin speaks of Tolstoy as the mirror of the Russian revolution of
1905; but if Tolstoys work is a mirror, then it is, as Pierre Macherey argues, one placed at
an angle to reality, a broken mirror which presents its images in fragmented form, and is
as expressive in what it does not reflect as in what it does. If art reflects life, Bertolt
Brecht comments in A Short Organum for the Theatre (1948), It does so with special
mirrors. And if we are to speak of a selective mirror with certain blindspots and
refractions, then it seems that the metaphor has served its limited usefulness and had
better be discarded for something more helpful.
As such, Frye contends, in a vein similar to the New Critics that literary criticism must be put
on a systematic and scientific basis.
He dismisses as Pseudo-criticism all criticism with centrifugal tendencies, that is, which
diverts our attention away from the literary work itself.
He counts in this regard C literary criticism that masquerades as casual value-judgments,
ones that are not based on literary experience . . . but are . . . derived from religious or
political prejudice.
He is evidently thinking here of what the New Critic John Crowe Ransom calls the
Moralistic Approach To Literary Criticism Practised By The Humanists And The Marxists Alike );
literary criticism that focuses on the author as the source of the literary work
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(the so-called intentional fallacy against which Wimsatt and Beardsley also famously
warned).
He dismisses in this regard all Sentimental Judgments that are
based either on non-existent categories or antitheses (Shakespeare studied life,Milton books)
or on a visceral reaction to the writers personality .
Evidently, Frye shares much in these three respects with the New Critics and their opposition
to moralistic, affective (reader-oriented) and intentional (author-oriented) approaches to
criticism.
In their place, Frye advocates a rhetorical or structural analysis of a work of art ,
an approach that is centripetal in thrust, rather thancentrifugal.
Another huge influence on Frye in this regard is Aristotles philosophy and literary
theory. Aristotle famously argued that to understand any natural or humanly-made
phenomenon,
it is necessary to ascertain the four conditions (causes) necessary to its
existence:
1. The Material Cause (the material of which something is made in the case of
art, the words and actions of humans and their natural and social environments
represented),
2. The Efficient Cause (the divine or human agent responsible for its existence
the artist or author),
3. The Formal Cause (what it is meant to be, what shape it is meant to have),
and
4. The Final Cause (to what end it exists, its ultimate purpose).
Frye is uneasy with emphasising the first two of these causes because each tends to be
centrifugal, that is, to lead the critic away from the literary work per se.
For example, the material cause of the work of art , for Frye consists in the
social conditions and cultural demands which produced it .
The quest to understand the material cause of literary works leads the critic outside of his
own discipline (i.e. the study of literature) and into the province of biography, socio-political
history and literary history.
Similarly, the quest to understand the efficient cause of the literary work
leads the critic to focus on the relationship between the writer and his / her work, rather than
the work itself.
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Alluding evidently to Freudian psychoanalysis, Frye cites in this regard what he terms the
Fallacy of Premature Teleology , the view that the critic should not look for more in the
poemthan the poet may safely be assumed to have been conscious of putting there .
Frye asserts that a kind of literary psychology connecting the poet with the poem is
unavoidable for revealing the failures in his expression, the things in him which are still
attached to his work as well as his private mythology, his own . . . peculiar formation of
symbols, of much of which he is unconscious .
However, Frye is of the view that criticism should not degenerate into mere biography for
the simple reason that this leads one away from the work in order to focus on the individual
responsible for it.
structure of literature and one turned toward the other cultural phenomena that
form the social environment of literature"
Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great literature, but to
some possession of its power of utterance. The ultimate aim is an ethical and
participating aim, not an aesthetic or contemplative one, even though the latter may be
the means of achieving the former. [From The Well-Tempered Critic]
Literature cultivates your "conscious life," giving you deeper insight into the use and value of
language.
Giabatista Vico :
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He actually championed the idea that philosophy had a huge debt to poetry and was
even derived from poetry. I call him "the first modern thinker to understand that all major
verbal structures have descended historically from poetic and mythological ones"
A PARODY
is a work that mimics in an absurd or ridiculous way the conventions and style of
another work - in order to derive ridicule, ironic comment or affectionate fun.
Critics defines parody as any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive
imitation of another cultural production or practice .
Duchamp's parody of the Mona Lisa adds a goatee and moustache. Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
A PASTICHE is a medley of various ingredients; a hotchpotch, farrago, jumble . The term
denotes a technique employing a generally light-hearted tongue-in-cheek imitation of another's style;
although jocular, it is usually respectful (as opposed to parody, which is not).
Pastiche is prominent in popular culture. Many genre pieces, particularly in fantasy, are essentially
pastiches. George Lucas Star Wars series is often considered to be a pastiche of traditional science
fiction television serials or radio shows.
Parody
An imitative work created to mock, comment on or trivialize an original work, its subject, author,
style, or some other target, by means of satiric or ironic imitation.
Pastiche
A work of visual art, literature, or music that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more
other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates.
Example: The movie "Super 8" is a pastiche of 1980's adventure films, specifically imitating the style
of Stephen Spielberg's early career, because it celebrates and embraces the style unironically.
Pastiche and Parody are often confused because they both involve imitation, but the easiest way to
distinguish the two is this: Pastiche embraces the imitation through general affection for the source
material, whereas Parody is meant to mock and make fun of the source material.
Satire
Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies,
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abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals,
corporations, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its
greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon and as a tool to draw
attention to both particular and wider issues in society.
intellectual achievements of the male culture, and internalized its assumptions about female
nature (New, 137).
2. Feminist: The Feminist phase (18801920 ) was characterized by womens writing that
protested against male standards and values, and advocated womens rights and values, including
a demand for autonomy.
3. Female: The Female phase (1920 ) is one of self-discovery.
Showalter says, Women Reject Both Imitation And ProtestTwo Forms Of Dependency
The Marxist view of the necessary dialectical relationship between theory and practice also applies to
the relationship between female experience and feminist politics.If the confusion of female with
feminist is fraught with political pitlfalls. this is no less true of the consequcnces of the collapse of
feminine into female. Among many feminists it has long been established usage to make 'feminine'
(and 'masculine') represent social constructs (patterns of sexuality and behaviour imposed by cultural
and social norms), and to reserve 'female' and 'male' for the purely biological aspccts ofsexual
difference.Under patriarchy men will always speak from a different position than women,and their
political strategies must take this into account
Virginia Woolf believe A womens writing is always feminine; the only difficulty liwed in defining
what we means by feminine
The feminist struggle, she argues, must be seen historically and politically as a three tiered
one, which can be schematically summarised as follows:
1. Women demand equal access ( the symbolic order. Liberal feminism. Equality.
2. Women reject the male symbolic order in the name difference. Radical feminism.
Femininity extolled.
3. Women reject the dichotomy between masculine and feminine as mClaphysical
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
21
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criticism ?
New Criticism
By the late thirties both psychoanalytic and sociological criticisms had
lost much of their vogue, and many of the younger critics turned 'for guidance to a group that
has since come to be known as the New Critics. These New Critics are mainly the followers of
T. S. Eliot but they have also been deeply influenced by Coleridge, Henry James, Ezra Pound
and I. A. Richards. This New Criticism flourished in the forties and fifties. The most
important critics of this school were John Crowe Ranson, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren,
and R. P. Blackmur.
The Chief Ideal Before The New Critics Was To Free Literature From
The Pressure And Competition Of Science. They asserted that content and form are separable
that 'the content of a poem could be located only in the specific dynamics of the form.' They
tried to read a poem as a poem and were anti-historical.
New Criticism was decidedly an American movement. But a reaction had set
against it under the leadership of Ronald S. Crane of the University of Chicago. The Chicago
School of Critics known as neo-Aristotelians insisted upon a return to questions of
design and structure.
The New Critics have been criticised by Lionel Trilling for neglecting the historical
sense.
While analysing a poem, a play or a work of literature, the New Critics very often
laid stress on ambiguity, irony, paradox and tension.
In fiction they stressed upon 'the point of view' and the metaphoric use of language.
Critics like Cleanth Brooks and William Empson indulged in elaborating their complexities of
interpretation without caring for the meanings imposed by history. In fiction, they laid
emphasis on symbolism. They contributed for the refinement of critical sensibility.
The New Critics treated all literary works as if they were lyrics. Sometimes they provided
monolithic readings that stiffen the poem into a moral allegory. In general, they seem to
believe that criticism can or should become an impersonal technique approaching the
precision of science.
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
22
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2.
the "danger . . . of assuming that there must be just one interpretation of the poem as a whole, [and] that
it must be right" (113)
3.
4.
5.
the limitation of literary criticism to the study of the literary object, i.e., the work itself
However, at the same time, Eliot takes the opportunity to disavow that school of criticism. He ridicules one
of the methods of New Criticism, known today as close reading, describing it thus:
The method is to take a well-known poem . . . without reference to the author or to his other work, analyse
it stanza by stanza and line by line, and extract, squeeze, tease, press every drop of meaning out of it that one
can. It might be called the lemon-squeezer school of criticism. . . . I imagine that some of the poets (they are all
dead except myself) would be surprised at learning what their poems mean . .
Eliot is here giving voice to one of the most common objections to New Criticism, namely that it removes all the
enjoyment from a work of literature by dissecting it. This essay strongly asserts that enjoyment is an important
component of the reading of literature. Eliot makes no distinction between "enjoyment and understanding,"
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
23
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seeing the two not "as distinct activitiesone emotional and the other intellectual. To understand a poem comes
to the same thing as to enjoy it for the right reasons" .
On the whole question of enjoyment, Eliot diverges from the general trend of New Criticism,
which primarily concerned itself with interpretation. Eliot further distances himself from the New Critics with
his implication of the possibility of misunderstanding a poem , an idea that the New Critics would consider
heretical.
-FREUDs
Comment ?
Freud places art and pathology together as comparable strategies of
adaption,for artists and neurotics.In an Autobiographical Study Freud offers
a midecal diagnosis of how the imagination allows the libido
to
get
24
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He continues, Orientalism is a style of thought based upon an ontological and
epistemological distinction made between the Orient and (most of the time) the Occident.
[9] Orientalism, as a body of produced knowledge, isand does not simply representa
considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do
with the Orient than it does with our world.
[10] It is a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has
been a considerable material investment.
[11] Said dots other definitions of what he means by Orientalism throughout the book, and
his belief in the connection between the production of knowledge and (state) power is far from
subtle: Orientalismis knowledge of the Orient that places things Oriental in class, court,
prison, or manual for scrutiny, study, judgment, discipline, or governing.
[12] Also, he states: Orientalism is better grasped as a set of constraints upon and
limitations of thought than it is simply as a positive doctrine, and Orientalism was
ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the
familiar (Europe, the West, us) and the strange (the Orient, the East, them).
[13] Said claims that when not used to describe the whole of Asia, the term Orientwas
most rigorously understood as applying to the Islamic Orient.
[14] This claim is contrary to my own experience as an Oriental who clearly hails from
East Asian heritage. This claim is also interesting considering that British colonialism in
India predates similar involvement in the Islamic Middle East/Orient, to use Saids
terminology. Thus, it is somewhat strange to cut off the Orient at the Islamic (Central
Arab) Middle East and Egypt, excluding most of what lies east of Iraq and west of Egypt.
Finally, for Said, the Orientalist attitude toward the Oriental (subject) peoples was one of
condescension and superiority, as exemplified by the British viceroy Lord Cromer in late
nineteenth century Egypt, who believed that Orientals simply do not know what is best for
them and thus require European counsel and guidanceism
Edward Saids
analytical framework became, for good or ill, the dominant scholarly paradigm. In the wake
of the appearance of Saids volume, a decade or more passed before the scholarship on
25
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popular or academic Orientalism in Germany attempted to move beyond what Said had
intitially said on the subject.
The purpose of this essay is to consider the exceptionalism of German Orientalism, one that
employs imagery of the Orient for very different purposes than the French and British
variants.
The central question under consideration regards the utility of this imagery in the
tradition of German Orientalism. The construction of the idea of the Orient in German
thought and literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, I argue, did not
allow German thinkers to identify with the dominant powers of western Europe, but rather
with the Oriental Other. In other words, they were engaged in a process of self-Othering.
One hesitates to describe German Orientalism as being special in light of the imposing
tradition of arguments over the Sonderweg thesis.
New light might be shed on a different variant of Orientalism by comparing the German
phenomenon with Irish Orientalism, as described by Joseph Lennon: to study Irish writings
on the Orient ... is also to study Irish cultural narratives of antiquity, Celticism, and nation
The image of the Orient with which they identified was, of course, one of their own making.
To argue that these German thinkers identified with the oriental victims of western
imperialism is not to argue that they were, in reality, such victims. Nor is it to argue that this
identification came as a result of any genuine engagement with or understanding of the
Other with whom they sought to identify.
Self-Othering, as it is described below, was a curious rhetorical strategy which
involved two distinct forms or acts of Othering imaginative constructions of the
oriental Other with whom one could identify and the western imperial Other, against
whom one was seeking to construct an identity.ii Both the Indian and western European
Others could be made to serve as the ideal mirrors for thinkers who wished to see
themselves, and their country, at twice their natural size.
As a rhetorical strategy, self-Othering has some noteworthy historical precedents in
Michel de Montaignes essay On Cannibals and Bartolem de Las Casass Short
Account of the Destruction of the Indies, both composed in the sixteenth century.
Montaigne was writing in reaction to the devastation of the Wars of Religion in
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
26
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France, while Las Casas was issuing his condemnation of the inhumanity of Spanish
imperialism. Both authors, however, were taking advantage of the blank canvas that
had been provided by the New World in order to level their critiques of contemporary
European society.
The difficulty of dealing with German Orientalism begins, naturally enough, with
Said himself. In the Introduction to Orientalism, he wrote that despite the fact that by
about 1830 German scholarship had fully attained its European pre-eminence ... at no
time in German scholarship during the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century could
a close partnership have developed between Orientalists and a protracted sustained
national interest in the Orient. There was nothing in Germany to correspond to the
Anglo-French presence in India, the Levant, North Africa.
What German Oriental scholarship did, he continued, was to refine and elaborate
techniques whose application was to texts, myths, ideas, and languages almost literally
gathered from the Orient by imperial Britain and France. If there could be no
sustained national interest in the Orient; if there was nothing in Germany to
correspond to the Anglo-French presence in India, the Levant, North Africa, how then
did German Orientalism fit into Saids larger thesis? Said continued, what German
Orientalism had in common with Anglo-French and latter American Orientalism was a
kind of intellectual authority over the Orient within Western culture. This authority
must in large part be the subject of any description of Orientalism, and it is so in this
study. The German thinker of this era that Said pays the most attention to is Goethe,
whose role in what Schwab calls the Oriental Renaissance was, to be generous,
minimal.
One of the central contentions of Saids argument is the claim that the Orient has
helped define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality,
experience (Orientalism 12). In the case of numerous German Indophiles of the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries this speculation simply does not hold
true. The remarkable degree of identification of German thinkers with India has
already been suggested and verified in considerable detail with regard to Herder,
Adam Mller, and Joseph Grrres among others. In the following discussion I will
focus on the case of Friedrich Schlegel. With the publication of his
Indier
[On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians] in 1808, Schlegel emerged as the
27
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particularly important figure since his arguments in that essay opened the door to the
establishment of Sanskrit studies and academic Indology in Germany. It is also worth
adding, though it will not come in for consideration here, that Schlegel, far more than
Herder before him, first introduced what we might call racial speculation into his
In hisGesprch ber Poesie [Dialogue on Poetry] (1799), he contended that after the fall of
the Roman Empire, European literature had been resuscitated by the heroic poetry of
the Middle Ages, a tradition that had its roots in the German people (KFSA II 296).
The wild energy of Gothic poetry was influenced, he claimed, by charming
fairytales of the Orient, an influence introduced by contact with Arab culture.
Occident-blogspot.com/ORIENTAL NOTES on GERMAN and FRENCH ORIENTALISM
Saids sharp focus only on British and French, and to a lesser degree American, Orientalism is
one of the key criticisms that is often raised about his approach in Orientalism. He defends his
decision, saying that he chose to focus primarily on British and French scholarship about the
Orient because those two countries took the first major steps in Oriental scholarship, and
that there scholarship was later elaborated upon by the Germans.
[18] Said argues that Germany lacked, [a] national interest in the Orient and thus was not an
example of Orientalism as he defines it.
28
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He did acknowledge/claim though that, what German Orientalism had in common with
Anglo-French and later American Orientalism was a kind of intellectual authority over the
Orient within Western culture.
[20] It is interesting here to note Saids rather generic use of the descriptive Western,
considering that he claims in Orientalisms new afterword that such a term refers to no stable
reality.
[21] Other critics have noted that Said is inconsistent in his use of the term Orient,
fluctuating between the position that it is a fiction and the position that it has been
misrepresented by the Orientalists.
In one of the more recent critiques of Orientalism, the British Orientalist and Arabist Robert
Irwin contends that Saids explanation decision to largely ignore German Orientalism is built
upon spurious claims. Despite Irwins often caustic tone throughout his book, which is part
criticism of Orientalism (and sometimes of Said himself) and part a history, quite fascinating
and overdue it must be said, of European Oriental Studies, he brings up some valid issues and
points to several errors of fact made by Said in the passage quoted from Orientalism above:
To Saids way of thinking, since Britain was the leading imperial power in modern times, it
follows that it must have been the leading centre for Oriental studies and, since Germany had
no empire in the Arab lands, it followed that Germanys contribution to Oriental studies must
have been of secondary importance. Butthe claim that Germans elaborated only on British
and French Orientalism is simply not sustainable. Consider the cases of [the German
Orientalists] Hammer-Purgstall, Fleischer, Wellhausen, Goldziher (Hungarian, but writing and
teaching in German), Nldeke and Becker. It is impossible to find British forerunners for
these figures. The reverse is much easier to demonstrate. We have seen how much Nicholsons
Literary History of the Arabs, Wrights Arabic Grammar, Lyalls translation of Arabic poetry,
and Cowans Arabic-English Dictionary explicitly owed to German scholarship. These works
are not marginal, but central to Arabic studies in Britain. Is it really possible that British
scholars were mistaken in their belief that they needed to follow German scholars of Arabic
and Islam? And why did Renan, whom Said believes to have been a major French Orientalist,
believe that Germans dominated the field? And what about the overwhelming pre-eminence of
German scholars in Sanskrit studies?
29
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[22] Said differentiates thus between British and French Orientalism: British Oriental
expertise fashioned itself around consensus and orthodoxy and sovereign authority; French
Oriental expertise between the [world] wars concerned itself with heterodoxy, spiritual ties,
eccentrics.
[23] His primary examples to support this view are the British Orientalist Sir Hamilton Gibb
and the French Catholic Orientalist Louis Massignon, whose book on the medieval Baghdadi
Sufi Mansur al-Hallaj is filled with Roman Catholic motifs. Irwin is critical of Saids
generalization of European Orientalism, and takes him to task for ignoring or glossing over
major Orientalist scholars who do not fit his paradigm, such as the pioneering American
scholar Marshall G. S. Hodgson and the Lebanese-British Arab Orientalist Albert Hourani.
Similarly, one could also bring up the Lebanese historian Philip K. Hitti, the founder of
Princeton Universitys Department of Near Eastern Studies, which is coincidentally where
Bernard Lewis holds an emeritus professorship. In the one brief, superficial reference to Hitti,
Said praises him for leading a department devoted to scholarship and teaching, as opposed to
the Harvard department Gibb was in, which, according to Said, took a more policy-oriented
approach.
[24]Irwin is also critical of Saids failure to substantively address either Russian or Latin
Orientalism. With regard to Russian scholarship, he remarks, if one wants to give full and
proper consideration to the relationship between Orientalism and imperialism, then one should
turn to Russia with its vast empire of Muslim subjects in the Caucasus and Central Asia. No
history of Orientalism can be regarded as serious if it has totally neglected the contribution of
the Russians.
[25] Saids neglect of Orientalist scholarship in Latin may, argues Irwin, explain why he has
such difficulty pinpointing a precise start date for Orientalism, as he ignores some of the
earliest European works, which were all written in Latin.
[26].Critics of Orientalism also take issue with Saids somewhat arbitrary and often unsure,
they argue, choice of dating with regard to the beginnings of Orientalism. Said himself
seems to settle on Napoleon Is arrival in Mamluk Egypt in 1798 as the start of a sustained
Orientalism. According to Said, Napoleon launched a full-scale Orientalist project while in
30
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Egypt where he sought to document information and connect with the locals as a defender of
Islam.
[27] Further, it is clear that Said sees Frances time in Egypt (1798-1801, though Bonaparte
himself secretly left in 1799) as a major milestone in the history of Orientalism: After
Napoleonthe very language of Orientalism changed radically. Its descriptive realism was
upgraded and became not merely a style of representation but a language, indeed a means of
creation.
Q21. EPIC THEATRE was primarily proposed by Bertolt Brecht who suggested that
a play should not cause the spectator to identify emotionally with the characters or action before him or her,
but should instead provoke rational self-reflection and a critical view of the action on the stage. Brecht
thought that the experience of a climactic catharsis of emotion left an audience complacent. Instead, he
wanted his audiences to adopt a critical perspective in order to recognise social injustice and exploitation
and to be moved to go forth from the theatre and effect change in the world outside. For this purpose,
Brecht employed the use of techniques that remind the spectator that the play is a representation of
reality and not reality itself. By highlighting the constructed nature of the theatrical event, Brecht hoped to
communicate that the audience's reality was equally constructed and, as such, was changeable.
31
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Bertolt
Brecht
believed
that
whilst
theatre
provided
entertainment for the spectator it should also engage the
spectators reasoning rather than their feelings. Therefore,
he used a dialectic theatre that intellectually engaged his
audience through methods that echoed Marxs theory, namely
that man and society should be re-examined in order to
create an equal society.
The task of theatre is not to reflect a fixed reality, but to
demonstrate how character and action are historically
produced, and so how they could have been, and still can be,
different.
History
Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and
practice of a number of theatre practitioners who were responding to the political climate of the time through
the creation of a new political theatre.
Epic theatre was a reaction against popular forms of theatre, particularly the naturalistic approach pioneered
by Constantin Stanislavski. Like Stanislavski, Brecht disliked the shallow spectacle, manipulative plots, and
heightened emotion of melodrama;
Techniques
One of the most important techniques Brecht developed to perform epic theater is the Verfremdungseffekt,
or the "alienation" effect. The purpose of this technique was to make the audience feel detached
from the action of the play, so they do not become immersed in the fictional reality of the stage or
become overly empathetic of the character. Flooding the theater with bright lights (not just the stage),
having actors play multiple characters, having actors also rearrange the set in full view of the audience and
"breaking the fourth wall" by speaking to the audience are all ways he used to achieve the
Verfremdungseffekt.
As with the principle of dramatic construction involved in the epic form of spoken drama
amalgamated or what Brecht calls "non-Aristotelian drama", the epic approach to play
production utilizes a montage technique of fragmentation, contrast and contradiction,
andinterruptions.
Each scene, and each section within a scene, must be perfected and played as rigorously and
with as much discipline as if it were a short play, complete in itself. Without any smudges.
And without there being the slightest suggestion that another scene, or section within a scene,
is to follow those that have gone before
32
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Brecht used comedy to distance his audiences from the depicted events and was heavily
influenced by musicals and fairground performers, putting music and song in his plays.
Terry Eagleton argues that Bertolt Brecht regards any attempt to define the literary
work as spontaneous whole which reconciles the capitalist contradictions between
essence and appearance, concrete and abstract, individual and social whole, as a
reactionary nostalgia. (Eagleton, 2002, 65) The Hegelian and Marxist prints are very
obvious here in emphasizing the role of the dialectical struggle of the opposites to
generate a synthesis, which is usually left for the spectators themselves to formulate. The
issue of hegemony and consent in the Brechtian plays always provokes the audience to
find a synthesis out of this dialectical struggle between the thesis and anti-thesis, which is
usually a revolution.
Bertolt Brechts aggressive political idealism and determination in using art to pose
challenging questions about the conflicts between society and morality generated intense
controversy throughout his lifetime. Technically, by his late twenties, Brecht had begun to
visualize a new theatrical system that would serve his political and artistic sensibility. He saw
the stage as an ideological forum for leftist causes and wanted to create theater that depicted
human experience with the brutality and intensity of a boxing match. He rejected the
conventions of stage realism and Aristotelian drama, which offer empathetic identification
with a hero and emotional catharsis. Brecht did not want his audience to feel, but rather to be
shocked, intellectually stimulated, and motivated to take action against an unjust society and
to awaken them to social responsibility.
Such simplicity may be the effect of the fact that Brecht only insists on the base/superstructure
distinction as Terry Eagleton asserts in his Ideology: An Introduction. The statement as such is
manifested in the way Eagleton attempts to show Brecht as standing against the idea of
"selfhood" as "received". The "selfhood" as a consequence becomes the "ideological illusion"
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
33
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that is imposed on people's minds. The kind of "received identity" that Brecht describes is
actually the product of the superstructures.
Although Eagleton as the representative of so many other Marxists
underestimates Brecht's vulgar Marxism, the field of western Marxism itself- as enjoying a
more philosophically accomplished scholarship- is replete with contradictions that emerge in
the works of its well-known practitioners. The contradiction, on the other hand, might be one
of the important elements that bind the western Marxists due to the expanded topography of
the field itself.
The main contradiction in the field of western Marxism owes to the
Hegelian pedigree of its forefathers. According to Tony Bennett, the western Marxists see
Marx through Hegelian lens as an example we can turn to Lukacs whose treatment of the
Hegelian concept of "Totality" as the other to ideology proves to be quite idealistic . The
escape from idealism, however, seems to be a far-fetched dream of every Marxist, a dream
that has never come true.
The analysis of this play not only helps the reader to identify Brecht as an illuminating
rather than simplistic playwright but also introduces the bridge between Brecht's drama and
his Marxism. When analyzing works of Brecht, one does not have to do much to keep her
distance from the zone of complexity in that the dark times Brecht lived in demanded a
response that needed to be more "urgent" than complicated as Karen Leeder observes.
34
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the unities of time and place which had long been recognized by Critics and
dramatists as essential requirements. But Johnson thought a little bit other wise.
In his consideration Shakespeares history plays not come under the review of
this law of three unities because their very nature which essentially referred to a
chronological replacement of times and places. In other plays Shakespeare has
largely preserved the unity of action. His maintaining the structure of a dramatic
plot- providing a beginning, middle and an end serves for Shakespeares
awareness of the artistic necessity of plot construction. Very logically the
dramatist arranges the connection and coherence of the incidents which very
naturally finds a gradual development.
The historical background on the observance of three unities had the foundation
on two basic principles one suggested that without them no play can attain
credibility. But neither of the viewers had the reasonable support.
The classical unities, Aristotelian unities, or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage
in Aristotle's Poetics. According to Johnson, the unities of time and place are
not essential for good play. They may add to the pleasure of beauty but
neglect may provide more. As the highest graces of a play intends to copy nature
instruct life, the observance of the unities of time and place becomes the product
of superfluous and showiness art.
Suspension of disbelieve is an essential for a good drama. Johnson admits the
awareness of the spectators disbelief, which is mostly sub-conscience and
suspended. In this regard Coleridge points out that several dramatic devices may
prove unnecessary of illusion. He argues that it the rejection of unities of time
and place is accepted then what is the use of dressing up after the medieval royal
customs. Coleridge can be refuted on certain grounds. Without this device a play
can rarely offer any real difficulty to the imagination which is only a winged
creature, not a snail. Here again Johnsons attack on the unities remains
one of the finest and wittiest things in his criticism. Later forms of
expressive arts, including movies, in the modern age have presented
the unworthiness of the device.
Johnson can be regarded to have a different out look among the neo-classical
scholars. Neo classical always seems to glorify academic values in critics
accepts Shakespeares violation of unities and also the mingling of tragic and
comic elements as liberating ideologies. In this regard Johnson is pioneer of
them who had the efforts to make intelligence liberated. Johnson is accused of
being
an outright dissenter against the neo classic rules and proprieties
but is also a signal in the world of criticism of the enhance of concept and
views.
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
35
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Johnson claims that with Shakespeare's histories, the unites of time, place, and action are largely
irrelevant since, in his plays, "the changes of action be so prepared as to be understood, that the
incidents be various and affecting, and the characters consistent, natural and distinct. No other
unity is intended, and therefore none is to be sought."
With his other works (comedies and tragedies), Johnson adds that Shakespeare sustains the
unity of action; even when the events are out of order or superfluous, Shakespeare does stick to
Aristotle's linear progression of having a discernible beginning, middle, and end.
In terms of time and place, the law of the unities states that for a play to be credible (believable),
the events of the play should be limited to a particular place and the time limited to 24 hours.
Otherwise, the audience will have trouble suspending disbelief (believing the events could
happen) which is to say the audience will have trouble forgetting that they are watching a play.
Johnson counters this by saying that all plays are plays:
The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last,
that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.
Therefore, these limitations based on being credible to the audience can not be applied. Johnson
also adds that the pleasure of watching theater is that it is fictional; it is not necessary that they
have to believe it could happen: "The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of
fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more."
Johnson adds that "the unities of time and place are not essential to a just drama . . . " and that
simply sticking to the rules does not make a drama good. That which makes Shakespeare's plays
"just" is how deeply they apply to human nature. This is perhaps the most significant praise in the
essay. For Johnson, there is something true and universal about Shakespeare's appreciation of
human nature and this is what makes him timeless. Johnson notes that: "This therefore is the
praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirror of life . . . "
Johnson does fault Shakespeare for focusing too much on the convenience of the storyline,
therefore ignoring the use of his plays as instruction (showing how good could/should triumph
over evil). But overall, it is Shakespeare's ability to copy nature (art imitating life), being believable
or unbelievable, that makes any of Shakespeare's so called faults irrelevant.
36
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37
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purpose of the Preface was to defend his poems against the charges of lowness and unpoeticalness that had
been made against both their subjects and their diction to use the words of Graham Hough. The overall intention
of Wordsworth was two-fold, that is, to relate poetry as closely as possible to common life, by removing it in the
first place from the realm of fantasy, and in the second by changing it from the polite or over-sophisticated
amusement to a serious art. .
According to him, poetry should be the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, not mere satisfaction of a
taste for imagery and ornament. Wordsworths aim in all this is to show that the poet is a man appealing to the
normal interests of mankind, not as a peculiar being appealing to a specialized taste. He says:
He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and
tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are
supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, who
rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighted to contemplate similar volitions
and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them
where he does not find them.
In his Preface Wordsworth made four claims:
3. third, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be
presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and,
4. last, above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly
though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature. The greater part of the Preface is
devoted to justification of the first two claims, and this has caused too much stress to be laid on
them while the fact remains that it is on the last two claims that the greatness of his poetry rests.
THE POETIC LANGUAGE of the eighteenth century was unreal, and its substance was far from being an
interpretation of the universal spirit of man. Wordsworth did inestimable service in insisting on a new and true
orientation. But he went too far; he said that rustic life and language were the simplest and purest being
elementary, in close touch with nature, and unspoiled by social vanity. The fact remains that the rustic has little
originality, few ideas, and makes almost no attempt to correlate them.
It is also true that Wordsworth proposed to prune it of peculiarities but, as Coleridge
observed, this would render it the same as the language of any other section of the community similarly treated.
Wordsworth also asserted that the language of poetry differs in no way from that of prose, with the single
exception of metre. This is the controversy that still rages and Wordsworths finest poetry does not show any
influence of this idea. Geoffrey H. Crump has stated categorically that
In his greatest poems he forgot his theories, or the poems are great enough to dwarf the
theories into insignificance, and in his later works he intentionally discarded them.
Wordsworth was a complete innovator who saw things in a new way. Those who approach his poetry for the first
time notice two peculiarities its austerity and its appearance of triviality. It is so in the case of those who fail to
see the quality of really human sympathy. Besides, Wordsworth himself is responsible for inviting this sort of
response, as he had no relish for the present. Shelley said about him that he was hardly a man, but a wandering
spirit with strange adventures and no end to them. The triviality of manner is the manner through which he could
convey the profoundest truths. While reading Wordsworths poems, it is impossible not to be struck by two things
38
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Parallels/Echoes
Balances
Contradictions/paradoxes
Shifts/Breaks in:
Tone
Viewpoint
Time
Person
attitude
3
4
5
6
7
Reflections/Repetitions
Symmetry
Contrasts
Patterns
Effect: To show textual unity and Coherence
Conflicts
Absences/Omissions
Linguistic quirks
Aporia
Effect:To show textual disunity
39
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recollected in Tranquility
Eliot expresses his anti romantic view of creative process in Tradition
and the Individual Talent. He disapproves of the romantic view of
poetry as a sentimental expression of subjective feelings. Accordingly he
rejects the emotive statement of Wordsworth-emotion recollected in
tranquility. Wordsworths formula involves three components for poetic
composition- emotion, recollection and tranquility.
Regarding the first component, Eliot puts forward his own theory of
emotion and feelings. He distinguishes between emotion and feeling. He
says hat emotion arises out of personal incident or situation of a poets
life. It is closely associated with a poets private life.
Feelings, on the contrary are only remotely or thinly associated with
personal situation. Feelings can be aroused by an image, a word or a
phrase. For example, the Ode of Keats contains a cluster of feelings which
have nothing particular to do with the Nightingale, but which the
Nightingale partly perhaps because of its evocative name and partly
because of its reputation, served to brig together.
40
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Eliot does not accept that poetry has always something to do with
recollection. In other words recollection is not an indispensable material
for poetry. Earlier Eliot observes that the more perfect the artist, the more
completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind
which creates. This statement implies that poetry is not completely
candid (frank) expression of the total personality of a poet. Rather it is an
expression of a significant aspect of life. And in creative process, there is a
great deal which is conscious and deliberate. Thus Eliot attaches
importance to intellect and rational faculty in addition to emotion and
feelings.
In one of his influential essays The Metaphysical Poets Eliot praises the
metaphysical poets for their unified sensibility, which results from
a fusion of emotion and intellect. Here too he recommends a unified
sensibility- a synthesis of emotion and intellect.
41
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by
focusing
Greek arch,
on
"beginning,"
archetypes
and typos,
(from
the
"imprint")
in
42
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form
of
literary
criticism,
it
dates
back
to
1934
when Maud
Origins
Frazer
The anthropological origins of archetypal criticism can pre-date its
analytical psychology origins by over thirty years. The Golden
Bough (18901915), written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir
James George Frazer, was the first influential text dealing with
cultural mythologies. Frazer was part of a group of comparative
anthropologists working out of Cambridge University who worked
extensively on the topic. The Golden Bough was widely accepted as
the seminal text on myth that spawned numerous studies on the
same subject. Eventually, the momentum of Frazers work carried
over into literary studies.
In The Golden Bough Frazer identifies with shared practices and
mythological beliefs between primitive religions and modern
religions. Frazer argues that the death-rebirth myth is present in
almost all cultural mythologies, and is acted out in terms of
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
43
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44
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45
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Frye
Bodkins Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, the first work on the subject of
archetypal literary criticism, applies Jungs theories about the collective
unconscious, archetypes, and primordial images to literature. It was not
until the work of the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye that
archetypal criticism was theorized in purely literary terms. The major
work of Fryes to deal with archetypes is Anatomy of Criticism but his
essay The Archetypes of Literature is a precursor to the book. Fryes
thesis in The Archetypes of Literature remains largely unchanged
in Anatomy of Criticism. Fryes work helped displace New Criticism as
the major mode of analyzing literary texts, before giving way
to structuralism and semiotics.
Fryes work breaks from both Frazer and Jung in such a way that it is
distinct from its anthropological and psychoanalytical precursors. For
Frye, the death-rebirth myth that Frazer sees manifest in agriculture and
the harvest is not ritualistic since it is involuntary, and therefore, must be
done. As for Jung, Frye was uninterested about the collective
unconscious on the grounds of feeling it was unnecessary: since the
unconscious is unknowable it cannot be studied. How archetypes came
to be was also of no concern to Frye; rather, the function and effect of
archetypes is his interest.
For Frye, literary archetypes play an essential role in refashioning
the material universe into an alternative verbal universe that is
humanly intelligible and viable, because it is adapted to essential
human needs and concerns .
There are two basic categories in Fryes framework, comedic and tragic.
Each
category
is
further
subdivided
into
two
categories: comedy and romance for the comedic; tragedy and satire (or
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
46
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ironic) for the tragic. Though he is dismissive of Frazer, Frye uses the
seasons in his archetypal schema. Each season is aligned with a literary
genre: comedy with spring, romance with summer, tragedy with autumn,
and satire with winter.
Comedy is aligned with spring because the genre of comedy is
characterized by the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection. Also,
spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness. Romance and
summer are paired together because summer is the culmination of life in
the seasonal calendar, and the romance genre culminates with some sort
of triumph, usually a marriage. Autumn is the dying stage of the seasonal
calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre because it is, above all,
known
for
the
fall
or
demise
of
the
protagonist.
Satire
47
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the difference between Oriental and Occidental Philosophy is that Oriental refers to Eastern
Philosophy and Occidental refers to Western Philosophy
48
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Modernism
Postmodernism
49
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1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
objective
rational
scientific
global
claims
positivist
utopian
central
the best
linear
generalizing
theoretical
abstract
unification
subjective
irrational
anti-scientific
local claims
constructivist
populist
fragmented
better
non-linear
non-generalizing
practical
concrete
diversity
50
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logic and with the dominance of the Baconian inductionism and the emergence of the
Newtonian physics, the first foundations of modernism were laid.
Before the Renaissance, Europe was a theocratic society, in which God
was the center of the universe and the supernatural phenomena ruled the natural
phenomena and the ARISTOTELIAN DEDUCTIONISM was common, but when
Bacon put more emphasis on the role of observation, and when Newton discovered some
laws of the nature, man got proud of himself and found himself the center of the universe.
Believing he could find the ultimate truth, he left no room for God or for the supernatural
and reason. Rationalism and scientific method took over as the dominant
interpretations of life.
As in philosophy, the modern period was started by DESCARTES who believed
in exact and objective knowledge. He was a rationalist who believed in reason, thinking
that reason can grasp truths, independent of time and place.
The picture born in the Enlightenment gave rise to a civilization which
was founded on scientific knowledge of the world and rational knowledge of value, which
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
51
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placed the highest premium on individual human life and freedom, believing that such
freedom and rationality would lead to social progress through virtuous, self-controlled
work, and create a better material, political, and intellectual life for all.
Origin of Postmodernism in France
Postmodernism philosophy originated primarily in France during the 1960s and 1970s
and was greatly influenced by phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis,
Marxism, and structuralism.
These intellectual movements portrayed the human subject as alienated
in contemporary society, estranged from his or her authentic modes of experience and
being, whether the source of that estrangement was capitalism (for Marxism), the
scientific naturalism (for phenomenology), excessive repressive social mores (for
Freud), and bureaucratically organized social life and mass culture (for existentialism).
In fact, all rejected the belief that the study of humanity could be modeled on
(objectivity) or reduced to the physical science (reductionism); hence they avoided
behaviorism and naturalism. Unlike hard sciences, they focus not merely on facts but
on the meaning of facts for human subjects.
Another important factor in the development of postmodernism was the situations after
the Second World War which led to the decline of grand theories including Nazism,
Fascism, and finally Marxism. Lyotard (1984) argued that modern philosophies
legitimized truth-claims not on logical or empirical ground, but rather on the grounds
of accepted stories or metanarrative about knowledge of the world-- what
Wittgenstein termed as language games. He further argued that in our postmodern
condition, these meta-narratives no longer work to legitimize truth- claims. In a
way, he stressed the fragmentary and plural characteristics of reality, believing that
there is no universal truth and no grand theory is credible
52
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Outside philosophical and scientific inquiry after the Second World War new
tendencies in art, literature, music and architecture emerged which critiqued
the bourgeois capitalist social order that carried the economic load of
modernity. To name a few developments: dissonant and atonal music,
impressionism, surrealism, and expressionism in painting, literary realism,
and the stream of consciousness novel emerged which seemed to open the
imagination to a subjective world of experience which was ignored by the
modern society and technology.
53
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54
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Imagism is a type of poetry that describes images with simple language and great focus.
It came out of the Modernist movement in poetry. In the early 1900s, poets abandoned the
old ways of writing poems and created a new movement in poetry called Modernism.
Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored
precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It has been described as the most influential
movement in English poetry since the activity of the Pre-Raphaelites.[
1] As a poetic style it gave Modernism its start in the early 20th century,
[2] and is considered to be the first organized Modernist literary movement in the English
language.
[3] Imagism is sometimes viewed as 'a succession of creative moments' rather than any
continuous or sustained period of development.
[4] Ren Taupin remarked that 'It is more accurate to consider Imagism not as a doctrine,
nor even as a poetic school, but as the association of a few poets who were for a certain
time in agreement on a small number of important principles'.
[5] The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and
Victorian poetry, in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets, who were
generally content to work within that tradition. In contrast, Imagism called for a return to
what were seen as more Classical values, such as directness of presentation and economy of
language, as well as a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms. Imagists
use free verse.
Imagist publications appearing between 1914 and 1917 featured works by many of the most
prominent modernist figures, both in poetry and in other fields. The Imagist group was
centered in London, with members from Great Britain, Ireland and the United States.
Somewhat unusually for the time, a number of women writers were major Imagist figures.
A characteristic feature of Imagism is its attempt to isolate a single image to reveal its essence.
This feature mirrors contemporary developments in avant-garde art, especially Cubism.
Although Imagism isolates objects through the use of what Ezra Pound called "luminous
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
55
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Pre-Imagism
Well-known poets of the Edwardian era of the 1890s, such as Alfred Austin, Stephen Phillips,
and William Watson, had been working very much in the shadow of Tennyson, producing
weak imitations of the poetry of the Victorian era. They continued to work in this vein into the
early years of the 20th century.[7] As the new century opened, Austin was still the serving
British Poet Laureate, a post which he held up to 1913. In the century's first decade, poetry
still had a large audience; volumes of verse published in that time included Thomas Hardy's
The Dynasts, Christina Rossetti's posthumous Poetical Works, Ernest Dowson's Poems,
George Meredith's Last Poems, Robert Service's Ballads of a Cheechako and John Masefield's
Ballads and Poems. Future Nobel Prize winner William Butler Yeats was devoting much of
his energy to the Abbey Theatre and writing for the stage, producing relatively little lyric
poetry during this period. In 1907, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Rudyard
Kipling.
The origins of Imagism are to be found in two poems, Autumn and A City Sunset by T. E.
Hulme. These were published in January 1909 by the Poets' Club in London in a booklet
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
56
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called For Christmas MDCCCCVIII. Hulme was a student of mathematics and philosophy; he
had been involved in the setting up of the club in 1908 and was its first secretary. Around the
end of 1908, he presented his paper A Lecture on Modern Poetry at one of the club's meetings
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Ibsen and then Shaw, Galsworthy and Granville Barker were the chief exponents of this
realistic drama of ideas.
To Shaw, drama was pre-eminently a medium for articulating his own ideas and
philosophy. He enunciated the philosophy of life force which he sought to disseminate
through his dramas. Thus Shavian plays are the vehicles for the transportation of ideas,
however, propagandizing they may be. Shaw wanted to cast his ideas through discussions.
Out of the discussions in the play
Arms and The Man Shaw breaks the idols of love and war.
The iconoclast Shaw pulls down all false gods which men live, love admire and adore. By a
clever juxtaposition of characters and dialogues,
Shaw shatters the romantic illusions about war and war heroes Shaws message is that war is no
longer a thing of banners and glory, as the nineteenth century dramatist saw it, but a dull and
sordid affair of brutal strength and callous planning out.
58
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Bluntschli
is the very mouth piece of the play that exposes the scourge
of war. There is a lot of learning in the disillusionment of Riana and Sergius. In the play he
has taken a realistic view not only of war and heroism but of love and marriage. He has taken
a realistic view of life as a whole. He has blown away the halo of romance that surrounds
human life as a whole. His message in this play is, therefore, the destruction not only of the
conventional conception of the heroic soldier but of the romantic view of marriage, nay, of life
as a whole. He pleads for judging everything concerning human life from a purely realistic
point of view. This is the message he conveys through the play, Arms and The Man.
59
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[4] This thesis was developed in relation to J. M. W. Turner's painting of The Golden Bough, a
sacred grove where a certain tree grew day and night. It was a transfigured landscape in a
dream-like vision of the woodland lake of Nemi, "Diana's Mirror", where religious
ceremonies and the "fulfillment of vows" of priests and kings were held.
Virginia Woolf, in an entirely different context, has brilliantly described the self-deluding effect of
this activity: Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and
delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size .
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sought to understand the historical evolution of words and literary forms. Literary
study was primarily the work of gentlemen (and a few ladies) with little interest in
the social implications of literature. In the early twentieth century two socially
conscious schools of criticism, Progressivism and Marxism, challenged these older
styles. Marxist critics took up the question of historicization by deepening this
critique of capitalism's control of society and literature. Marxist criticism in the
1930s took a variety of forms but all sought to understand the creation and
interpretation of literature as a social act fundamentally involved in shaping the
course of history.
The most common counter to these openly political ways of historicizing literature
was (and still is) the claim that literature was somehow above politics. This vague
charge was developed into a powerful argument with the rise of a group of
scholars who came to be known as the New Critics most notably John Crowe
Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks, with the criticism of
T.S. Eliot much honored as an inspiration. These scholars solidified an antihistorical approach that dominated literary studies throughout the middle
decades of the twentieth century. The literary formalism of the New Critics
emerged from two quite different but mutually reinforcing forces. On the one
hand, there was a desire to professionalize literary study in academia by putting
it on a more objective, scientific footing reminiscent of the newly emergent social
sciences. On the other side, there was a consciously political move to suppress
the radical implications of Marxist styles of literary history. Several of the New
Critics were associated with the Southern agrarians, a group of authors critical
of modern capitalism via the rather different route of nostalgia for the preindustrial South.
The idea of timeless literature has been with us for some time, often attached
to the notion of the classics. But the idea of the classics is itself an historical
Literary Criticism [Section-E ] Selected Notes
61
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concept, one emerging in the Renaissance when classical Greece and Rome
were rehistoricized as models for aesthetic creation.
While the New Criticism was immensely successful in institutionalizing itself as
the single proper mode of doing literary analysis from the late 1930s to the mid1960s, its dominance did not go unchallenged.Young critics emerging in the light
of the Civil Rights, Black Power, Chicano, Native American, women's, gay, and
other movements of the 1960s and 1970s began to reexamine deeply the ways in
which what passed as the canon of literary texts, and the styles of literary
analysis, left out both their own historical experiences, and their own ways of
experiencing the social power of the written word.
62
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One
might
have
thought
that
historians
would
welcome this effort to show that they too wrote in language, and
that they would come closer to historical truth if they took
account of the ways in which their narratives were shaped by
poetic rules similar to those found in literature. But few empiricist
historians embraced this analysis. Instead its influence blended
with a theoretical invasion from France that also used formalism
to blow apart formalism.
63
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In Anatomy, Frye argued that judgments are not inherent in the critical
process. He further asserted that literary criticism can be "scientific" in its
methods and its results, without borrowing concepts from other fields of
study. Literary criticism, in Frye's view, can and should be autonomous in
the manner that physics, biology, and chemistry are autonomous
disciplines.
For Frye, literature is schematic because it is wholly structured by myth
and symbol. The critic becomes a kind of scientist, determining how
symbols and myth are ordered and function in a given work. The critic
need not, in Frye's view, make judgments of value about the work; a
critical study is structured by the fact that the components of literature,
like those of nature, are unchanging and predictable.
Frye believes that literature occupies a position of extreme importance
within any culture. Literature, as Frye sees it, is "the place where our
imaginations find the ideal that they try to pass on to belief and action,
where they find the vision which is the source of both the dignity and the
joy of life." The literary critic serves society by studying and "translating"
the structures in which that vision is encoded.
In Northrop Frye's text "Don't You Think it's Time to Start Thinking" he
makes a link between language and thinking.
64
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65
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66
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67
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68
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69
ii