TSL 3102 LITERATURE IN ENGLISH Introduction to Theories of Literary Criticism

Dr. Nil Farakh Sulaiman Language Department IPGMK Pendidikan Teknik Kompleks Pendidikan Nilai

Tasks
1. Discuss and analyse definitions of criticism, theory and literature. 2. Discuss the importance of literary theory for readers. 3. Analyse a selected short story making use of one of the literary theories discussed in the lecture. 4. Prepare a mind map on literary theories (ISL) http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm
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Literary Criticism (definition)

The informed evaluation, analysis, description or interpretation of a piece of literature. May examine a particular literary work, or may look into an authors writing as a whole. Some of the functions of a critic are to:
introduce authors we dont know encourage readers to re-evaluate a work compare different works / ages / cultures increase our understanding of a work relate art to life / religion etc

Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory.
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Literary Criticism (definition)

Acts as different lenses that critics use to view and talk about art, literature and culture. These different lenses allow critics to:
consider works of art based on certain assumptions within that school of theory focus on particular aspects of a work they consider important.

E.g.: If a critic is working with

1. Marxism, s/he might focus on how the characters in the story interact based on their economic situation 2. Post colonialism, s/he might consider the same story but look at how characters from colonial powers (Britain, France, Dutch etc) treat characters.
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Literary Theory (definition)

The philosophical discussion of the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of literature. A description of the underlying principles/tools by which we attempt to understand literature. Refers not to the meaning of a work of literature but to the theories that reveal what literature can mean. Refers to any principles derived from internal analysis of literary texts or from knowledge external to the text that can be applied in multiple interpretive situations.
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Literary Theory (definition)

Formulates the relationship between author and work from the standpoint of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts. Recently, literary theory has sought to explain the degree to which the text is more the product of culture than an individual author and in turn how those texts help to create the culture. The status of literary theory within the academic discipline of literary studies continues to evolve.
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Literature (definition)
Latin litterae (plural for letter) Literally means acquaintance with letters The art of written works most commonly used to refer to works of the creative imagination especially poetry and prose Controversial issue:
Literature encompasses far more than just fiction, also refers to non-fiction (memoirs, biography, and other works that are factual in scope) Exclude works on grounds of weak or faulty style, use of slang, poor characterization and shallow construction Genres such as romance, crime and mystery, science fiction, horror and fantasy are also excluded as being DrNil/ipgkpt/2013 literary

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HISTORICAL & BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM

The basic tenets of this criticism most clearly articulated in the 19th century. The basic premise is that literary meaning is grounded in the author the author is the context in which the work is studied and is the cause of the works meaning. The search for the authors original intention. To ask what a literary work means is to ask what the author meant when he or she created it. In order to study the author as context, it is necessary for the historical critic to examine the work against its historical surroundings and determine how these surroundings worked with the individuality of the author and the individuality of the age to create and define the text. DrNil/ipgkpt/2013

 Assumes that by examining the facts and motives of an authors life, the meaning and intent of his/her literary work can be illuminated. Views a literary work chiefly as a reflection of its authors life and times or the life and times of the characters in the work.

HISTORICAL & BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM

E.g. John Miltons sonnet On His Blindness best understood when one realizes that the poet became totally blind when he was 44 and On His Deceased Wife, a tribute to his second wife, Katherine Woodcock

Assumes that the relationship between art and society is organic; views a literary work in relation to the standards and social milieu of the period in which it was produced.
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HISTORICAL & BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM

A historical novel is likely to be more meaningful when either its milieu or its author is understood,

e.g.

J.F. Coopers Last of the Mohicans the French and Indian War W. Scotts Ivanhoe Anglo-Norman Britain Charles Dickenss Tale of Two Cities the French Revolution John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath the American Depression

Advantage: This approach works well for some works which are obviously political in nature Disadvantage: This approach tends to reduce art to the level of biography and make it relative (to the times) rather than universal
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NEW HISTORICISM/ CULTURAL STUDIES

It seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time. Assumes that every work is a product of the historic moment that created it. Resists that history is a series of events that have a linear, causal relationship. Does not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather we interpret events as products of our time and culture. Believes that we dont have clear access to any but the most basic facts of history our understanding of what such facts mean is strictly a matter of interpretation, not fact.
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NEW HISTORICISM/ CULTURAL STUDIES

Holds that we are subjective interpreters of what we observe. The difference between traditional historians and new historicists:
Traditional historians What happened? What does the event tell us about history? New historicists How has the event been interpreted? What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?

Major figures: Michel Foucault, Clifford Geertz, Stephen Greenblatt, Pierre Bourdieu.
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NEW HISTORICISM/CULTURAL STUDIES

Differs from the historical criticism of the 1930s and 1940s
It is informed by the poststructuralist, and reader-response theory of the 1970s, as well as by the thinking of feminist, cultural and Marxist critics. It is treacherous to reconstruct the past as it really was as we have been conditioned by our own place and time to believe that it was. Less fact- and event-oriented than historical critics wonder whether the truth about what really happened can ever be purely or objectively known. Less likely to see history as linear and progressive. Less likely to think of literature in terms of specific eras, each with a definite, persistent and consistent spirit of the times. Hence, literary texts have no single or easily identifiable historical context.
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 Based on the theories of Karl Marx. Concerns itself with class differences, economic and otherwise, and implications and complications of the capitalist system. Marxism attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experience. Marxism is interested in answering these questions:
Whom does it (the work, the effort etc) benefit? The elite? The middle class? How the lower or working classes are oppressed?

MARXISM

Marxism follows a process of thinking called the material dialectic:

what drives historical change are the material realities of the economic base of society, rather than the ideological superstructure of politics, law, philosophy, religion and art .
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MARXISM
What is social reality? The working class people (the proletariat) have been oppressed, suppressed and cajoled into believing that reality is simply the way things are. The working class people have been manipulated by the bourgeoisie to accept their values and beliefs whose only goal is to keep the working class in its place. This ideology unconsciously hinders the working class from progressing forward. The core principles of Marxist thought:
offers to humanity a social, political, economic and cultural understanding of the nature of reality, of society and of the individual society shapes our consciousness social and economic conditions directly influence how and what we believe and value
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MARXISM
Tends to view literature in the light of modes of production, and their property relations, and class struggles focuses on power and money in works of literature. Pertinent tenets:
The evolving history of humanity and its ways of thinking are determined by the changing mode of its material production that is, of its basic economic organization. Human consciousness in any era is constituted by an ideology (a set of beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling) through which human beings perceive, and by which they explain, what they take to be reality. A Marxist critic explains the literature in any era by revealing the economic, class and ideology determinants of the way an author writes, and examining the relation of the text to the social reality of that time and place.
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POLITICAL CRITICISM
A piece of literature is regarded as political when it touches political, gender, racial and class issues Simultaneously, a text which doesnt discuss all the above issues is also political. Why? Because it doesnt want to disturb the peaceful order of the society and doesnt want to disturb the ruling classs power (Dr. Rodney Sharkey)

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GENDER CRITICISM
Signifies the socially constructed differences between men and women which operate in most societies and which leads to forms of inequality, oppression and exploitation between the sexes. Sexuality and literature first became an issue within the feminist movement. Examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works. Today includes a number of approaches:
1. Masculinist approach advocated by poet Robert Bly 2. Lesbian approach 3. Gay approach
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FEMINISM
A feminist critic sees cultural and economic disabilities in a patriarchal society that have hindered or prevented women from realizing their creative possibilities and womens cultural identification as a merely negative object or other. Man is defined as a dominating subject. Assumptions and concepts:
Our civilization is pervasively patriarchal; economically, politically, socially and psychologically. This patriarchal ideology pervades many great literatures. Such works lack autonomous female role models. Examines the patterns of thought, behaviour, values, enfranchisement (freedom), and power in relations between the sexes. All feminist activities, have as their ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.
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LESBIAN & GAY CRITICISM

Views that feminism questions traditional views of gender but fails to question similarly traditional views of same-sex relations. Practical problems in lesbianism:
What is a lesbian text? Is it one describing lesbian relationship? Is it one written by a lesbian author? Is it one in which hidden kinds of pleasure are offered to an implied lesbian reader? Are texts lesbian if neither author nor content are explicitly lesbian? How much of a text has to be about lesbianism to be regarded as lesbian?
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LESBIAN & GAY CRITICISM

There are many parallels between lesbian and gay criticism. Scholars and critics have emphasized that lesbian relationships need to be viewed as separate and distinct from either heterosexual or gay relationships due to the additional pressures on women living in a male-dominated world. Overall, there is strong political component within both gay and lesbian literature, as the worlds they depict are routinely filled with characters who suffer violence, discrimination, marginalization and ridicule.
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POSTMODERNISM/POST-STRUCTURALISM
This approach concerns itself with the ways and places where systems, frameworks, definitions, and certainties break down the centre cannot hold. Maintains that frameworks and systems are merely fictitious constructs and that they cannot be trusted to develop meaning or to give order. Every act of seeking order or a singular Truth is absurd because there exists no unified truth. Holds that there are many truths, that frameworks must bleed, and that structures must become unstable or decentred. Concerns with the power structures or hegemonies and power and how these elements contribute to and/or maintain structures to enforce hierarchy.
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POSTMODERNISM/POST-STRUCTURALISM
Resistance to traditional forms of knowledge making science, religion and language.
Language, the basis of our knowledge making is an unreliable system of communication.

Since language system cannot be trusted to convey truth, the very bases of truth are unreliable. What is truth truths are an illusion about which it has been forgotten that they are illusions. Tagline; we cannot trust the sign/language for there is a breakdown of certainty between the sign and the signifier, which leaves language systems hopelessly inadequate for relying meaning so that we are in eternal freeplay (indeterminacy) or instability.
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POSTMODERNISM & LITERATURE

Narrative
Grand narratives are resisted e.g. the believe that through science, the human race will improve is questioned. Look at how events, characters, plots contradict themselves; selfcritical.

Author
The death of the author; the birth of the reader. The reader plays a role in interpreting the text and developing meaning from the text

Typical questions: 1. How does the work undermine or contradict generally accepted truths? 2. If we change the point of view of the text, how would the story change? 3. Whose story if not told in the text? Theorists: Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzche, Rolant Bathes
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 Similar to cultural studies concerned with literature produced by colonial powers and works produced by those who were/are colonised. Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial hegemony (western colonizers controlling the colonized). E.g. Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe
Colonial ideology is manifested in Crusoes colonialist attitude toward the land upon which he shipwrecked and toward the black man he colonizes.

POST-COLONIALISM

Questions the role of the western literary canon and western history as dominant forms of knowledge making.
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POST-COLONIALISM
The terms first world, second-world and third world nations are critiqued by post-colonial critics because they reinforce the dominant positions of western cultures populating first world status. Typical questions:
1. How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial oppression? 2. What does the text reveal about the problematic of postcolonial identity, including the relationship between personal and cultural identity? 3. What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance? 4. How does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference the ways in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form individual identity?
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 Builds on Freudian theories of psychology Peoples behaviour is greatly affected by their:

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

Freud believed that the impact of the above elements of mind was inescapable and influence not only our behaviour but also dreams. Psychological criticism deals with a work of literature primarily as an expression, in fictional form, of the personality, state of mind, feelings, and desires of its author.
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Unconscious influenced by childhood events Desires sexuality Defenses develop because people try to keep all of the conflict buried in the unconscious (selective perception, selective memory, denial, regression etc)

PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM
The assumption of psychoanalytic critics is that a work of literature is correlated with its authors mental traits.
Reference to the authors personality is used to explain and interpret a literary work. Reference to literary works is made in order to establish, biographically, the personality of the author. The mode of reading a literary work itself is a way of experiencing the distinctive subjectivity or consciousness of its author.

This theory requires that readers investigate the psychology of a character or an author to figure out the meaning of a text (although to apply an authors psychology to a text can also be considered DrNil/ipgkpt/2013 biographical criticism).

 Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~ 360 BC present) Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s present) Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s present) Psychoanalitic Criticism, Jungian Criticism (1930s present) Marxist Criticism (1930s present) Feminist Criticism (1960s present) Reader-Response Criticism (1960s present) Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966 present) Gender/Queer Studies (1970s present) New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s present) Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s present)
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TIMELINE

 Why does literary theory importance for readers? 1. Guide for an informed evaluation, analysis, description or interpretation of a piece of literature 2. Evaluate the influence of authors cultural background with the piece written 3. Compare different works / ages / cultures 4. Increase understanding of a work under study 5. Relate a piece of literature with personal life
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DISCUSSION