Works cited:
I. Introduction
A. theory transforms reading from innocence to awareness
B. theory revitalizes our engagement with texts
C. theory asks questions from point of view of writer,
of work, of reader, or of “reality”
D. Jakobson’s diagram:
ADDRESSER --- CONTEXT --- ADDRESSEE
MESSAGE
CONTACT
CODE
__________________________________________________________________
=
WRITER
CONTEXT
READER
WRITING
CODE
=
ROMANTIC-
MARXIST
READER-ORIENTED
HUMANIST
FORMALISTIC
STRUCTURALIST
E. The importance of politics in literary theory
II. New Criticism (1920s - Britain; 1940s and 50s - America)
A. Anglo-American tradition
B. influence of British 19th cent. poet and critic Matthew
Arnold
C. profound, reverential regard for literary works themselves
D. scrutiny --- discrimination --- tradition of “the best”
--- canon -- exclusive and
hierarchical
E. importance of T.S. Eliot’s essay “Tradition and the
Individual Talent” (1919) --
importance of the “depersonalization” of the artist
Eliot: “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but
an escape from
emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape
from personality.”
F. emphasis on science, objectivity, impersonality, medium
as focal object of
analysis
G. tradition of works --- “essence” of human experience
H. I.A. Richards: Principles of Literary Criticism
(1924): criticism should
emulate the precision of science
I. William Empson: Seven Types of Ambiguity
(1930)
1. emphasis on ambiguity as the defining characteristic
of poetic language
2. virtuoso feats of close, creative “practical criticism”
in action
3. detaching of literary texts from their contexts in
the process of “reading”
their ambiguities
III. Russian formalism
A. Like New Criticism, it aims to explore what is specifically
literary in texts and
rejects the “limp spirituality” of late Romantic poets in favor
of a detailed and
empirical approach to reading
B. more interest in METHOD, scientific basis for theory
of literature
C. states that human “content” (emotions, ideas, “reality”
in general) possesses no
literary significance in itself, but merely provides a context
for the functioning of
literary “devices”
D. Peter Steiner: 3 metaphors as generative models
for Russian formalism
1. machine: lit crit = mechanics / text = heap of
devices
2. organic: text = fully functioning organism of
interrelated parts
3. system: lit text = product of entire literary
system and even of the meta-
system of interacting lit. and non-lit. systems
E. SEE PHOTOCOPIES of section on NARRATIVE (pp. 33-34)
F. importance of Bakhtin
1. language or discourse AS social phenomenon
2. language is made to disrupt authority and liberate
alternative voices
3. monologism vs. polyphony, or dialogism
4. importance of Carnival: breaks up this unquestioned
organicism and
promotes the idea that major literary works may be multi-levelled
and
resistant to unification
G. Voloshinov: words are active, dynamic social signs,
capable of taking on
different meanings and connotations for different social classes
in different social
and historical situations
IV. Reader-oriented theories
A. SEE PHOTOCOPY OF DRAWING (from p. 46)
B. The READER applies code to poem and thereby actualizes
what would
otherwise remain only potentially meaningful
C. ADDRESSEE is NOT a passive recipient of an entirely
formulated meaning,
but an active agent in the making of meaning
D. SEE PHOTOCOPY (p. 48-49): Wordsworth poem and
reader interpretation
E. Wolfgang Iser: lit. texts always contain blanks
which only the reader can fill
F. Umberto Eco (The Role of the Reader [1979]) argues
that some texts are “open”
and invite the reader’s collaboration in the production of meaning,
while others
are “closed” and predetermine the reader’s response (comics,
detective fiction).
G. Questions to be asked
1. Who is the reader?
2. Who are the possible narratees (types of people to
whom the narrator
addresses the discourse)?
3. How do different readers construct meaning?
H. Other reader-oriented ideas
1. Phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer)
2. Horizons of expectations (Hans Robert Jauss)
3. Implied Reader (Wolfgang Iser)
4. Reader’s Experience (Stanley Fish)
5. Conventions of Reading (Jonathan Culler)
6. Reader psychology (Norman Holland, David Bleich)
V. Marxist theories
A. Longest history / Marx 1850s; Marxist criticism = 20th
c. phenomenon
B. Marx
1. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines
their being, but,
on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”
2. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in
various ways;
the point is to change it.”
C. engage philosophy with real world
D. mental and ideological systems are products of real
social and economic
existence
E. Mukarokvsky’s Marxist view: canons of great literature
are socially generated
F. Soviet Social Realism
1. the modernist rejection of traditional realism paradoxically
left Social
Realism as the leading custodian of bourgeois asthetics
G. George Lukács: first major Marxist critic
(1930s-50s)
1. realist approach
2. Hegelian style of Marxist thought, treating lit. works
as reflections of an
unfolding system; a realist work must reveal the underlying
pattern of
contradictions in a social order
3. insistence on material and historical nature of the
structure of society
4. novel REFLECTS reality, rejects the merely “photographic
representation”; “frames a mental structure” transposed into words
H. Bertolt Brecht
1. opposition to Social Realism
2. the alientation effect as theatrical device; rejection
of Aristotelian cathartic
theater
3. shock produces thought about social injustice
I. The Frankfurt School: Adorno and Benjamin
(1930s-50s)
J. “Structuralist” Marxism: Althusser, Goldmann and
Machery (1960s)
1. anti-Hegelian
2. literature can distance itself from ideology
K. Recent developments
1. Raymond Williams: cultural studies (1950s
and 60s)
2. Terry Eagleton (1970s)
a. anti-Hegelian
b. critique of British critical tradition
3. Fredric Jameson (1970s)
a. narrative is not just a literary form or mode but an
essential
“epistemological category”; reality presents itself to
the human
mind only in the form of stories
VI. Structuralist theories
A. The author is “dead”; anti-humanist
B. Barthes’ idea (1968): Writers only have the power
to mix already existing
writings, to reassemble or deploy them; writers cannot use writing
to “express”
themselves, but only to draw upon that immense dictionary of
language and
culture which is “always already written”
C. Ferdinand de Saussure (1910s)
1. Swiss linguist
2. What is the object of linguistic investigation?
3. What is the relationship between words and things?
4. LANGUE = social aspect of language (system)
PAROLE = individual realization
of the system in actual instances of
language (utterance)
5. words are SIGNS, made up of 2 parts
a. the SIGNIFIER: the mark, either written
or spoken, and
b. the SIGNIFIED: what is “thought” when the
mark is made,
the concept
STOP LIGHT: signifier (“red”)
_________________
signified (stop)
6. the science of these sign-systems = SEMIOTICS or SEMIOLOGY
D. Other structuralists
1. Propp - “narrative syntax”
2. Todorox - a “grammar” of literature
3. Genette - theory of discourse
E. SEE PHOTOCOPY (pp. 115-18) “Metaphor and Metonymy:
Jakobson and Lodge”
F. Jonathan Culler
1. influence of Noam Chomsky
2. “competence” and “performance”
3. emphasis not on the text, but on the reader of the
text; the reader’s
SYSTEM of reading
VII. Poststructuralist theories
A. late 1960s
B. importance of the constant, ever-changing activity of
the signifier as it forms
chains and cross-currents of meaning with other signifies and
defies the orderly
requirements of the signified
C. Bakhtin School
1. rejected Saussurean notion of language, saying that
all instances of
language had to be considered in a social context
D. Barthes 1960s and 70s
1. the “plural text”
2. readers have the power to “open and close the text’s
signifying pro-
cess”
3. pleasure of the text lies in its plural meanings for
the reader(s)
E. Psychoanalytic theories
1. Freud: lit. work as symptom of the artist
2. Holland; reader’s “transactive” relation to the
text is foregrounded
3. Jung: “archetypal” criticism; relationship bet.
personal and collective
unconsciousness
F. Jacques Lacan
1. “considers that human subjects enter a pre-existing
system of signifiers
which take on meanings only within a language system.
The entry into
language enables us to find a subject position within a relational
system
(male/female, father/mother/daughter). This process and
the stages which
precede it are governed by the unconscious.” (Selden 138)
G. Julia Kristeva
1. semiotic = prelinguistic flux of movements, gestures,
sounds, and
rhythms VERSUS
2. symbolic = the regulation of the semiotic; the beaten
pathways become
logic, coherent syntax and rationality of the adult
H. Deleuze and Guattari: schizoanalysis
I. Jacques Derrida
“The notion of ‘structure’, he argues, even in ‘structuralist’
theory has always presupposed a ‘centre’ of meaning of some sort.
This structural analysis (to find the structure of the centre would be
to find another centre). People desire a centre because it guarantees
being as presence. For example, we think of our mental and physical
life as centred on an ‘I’; this personality is the principle of unity which
underlies the structure of all that goes on in this space. Freud’s
theories completely undermine this metaphysical certainty by revealing
a division in the self between conscious and unconscious.” (Selden
144)
“Deconstruction can begin when we locate the moment when a text transgresses the laws it appears to set up for itself.” (Selden 147)
K. American Deconstruction: De Man, White, Bloom,
Hartman and Miller
L. Michel Foucault
1. Discourse and power
2. “In politics, art, and science, power is gained through
discourse:
discourse is a ‘violence that we do to things’.” (Selden
160)
3. There is no such thing as an objective text; what is
“true” depends on
who controls the discourse
M. New Historicism
VIII. Postmodernist and postcolonialist theories (post-WWII)
A. Peter Brooker: “In general terms it can be said
to describe a mood or
condition of radical indeterminacy, and a tone of self-conscious,
parodic
scepticism towards previous certainties in personal, intellectual
and political
life.” (describing postmodernism) (Selden 175)
B. Hassan, from Paracriticisms (1975):
Postmodernists create “open, dis-
continuous, improvisational, indeterminate, or aleatory structures.”
(Selden
177)
C. the theme of the ABSENT CENTRE; profound sense of ontological
uncertainty
D. Jean Baudrillard
1. “the loss of the real”
2. world of simulation
E. Jean-François Lyotard
1. “the end of the grand narratives”
2. Marxism as a now vestigial metanarrative
F. Terry Eagleton
G. Fredric Jameson
1. Andy Warhol’s work “reveals the total interpenetration
of aesthetic
and commodity production”
H. Linda Hutcheon
1. postmodernist paradox: a “use and abuse” of history
I. Postcolonialism
1. an awareness of power relations between Western and
“Third-World”
cultures not taken seriously into account in postmodernist thought
2. Postmodernism and poststructuralism direct their critique
at the unified
humanist subject, while postcolonialism seeks to undermine the
imperialist
subject.
3. Edward Said: to elucidate the function of cultural
representations in the
construction and maintenance of “First/Third-World” relations
4. Gayatri Spivak
5. Postcolonial criticism in general draws attention to
questions of identity
for individual human subjects, including the critics themselves,
in relation to
broader national histories and destinies.
J. Problems with the prefix “post-” !!
IX. Feminist theories
A. Goals
1. to disturb the complacent certainties of patriarchal
culture
2. to assert a belief in sexual equality
3. to eradicate sexist domination in transforming society
B. More a “cultural politics” than a theory or theories
C. Many feminists agree with the Lacanian and Derridean
modes of post-
structuralist thinking in their refusal of the (masculine) notion
of authority or
truth.
D. Mary Eagleton: Feminist Literary Criticism
(1991)
E. Pluralism
1. represents feminism’s “creativity and flexibility”
2. BUT may signal a lack of direction (too much plurality)
3. “there is no one ‘grand narrative’, but many ‘petits
récits’, grounded
in specific cultural-political needs and arenas” (Selden
205)
F. First-Wave Feminist Criticism
1. Virginia Woolf
a. A Room of One’s Own (1929) and Three
Guineas (1938)
b. wide-ranging slate of feminist projects
1. mother’s allowances
2. divorce-law reform
3. proposals for women’s colleges and newspapers
4. points out women’s collusion in their own
victimization
c. recognition that gender identity is socially
constructed and can be
challenged and transformed
d. continually examined problems facing women writers
e. adopted Bloomsbury sexual ethic of “androgyny”
f. rejected the type of feminism that was only an
inversion of male
chauvinism
g. great awareness of the directness of women’s
writing
h. essay: “Professions for Women”
1. imprisoned by 19th c. ideal of the “Angel in
the House”
2. repressed by taboo on expression of female
sexuality
2. Simone de Beauvoir
a. founder of feminist newspapers and journals;
activist
b. The Second Sex (1949)
c. recognition of vast difference bet. the interests
of the two sexes
and in its assault on men’s biological and psychgological,
as well
as economic, discrimination against women
d. “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman;...it
is civili-
zation as a whole that produces this creature...Only the
intervention
of someone else can establish an indiviudal as an Other.”
G. Second-Wave Feminist Criticism
1. Betty Friedan: The Feminine Mystique
(1963)
a. revelation of frustrations of white, heterosexual,
middle-class
American women--careerless and trapped in domesticity
b. founder of NOW (1966)
2. Five main foci
a. biology
b. experience
c. discourse
d. the unconscious
e. social and economic conditions
3. Themes
a. omnipresence of patriarchy
b. the inadequacy for women of existing political
organization
c. the celebration of women’s difference as central
to the cultural
politics of liberation
4. Break between “Anglo-American” and “French” feminist
criticisms
5. Kate Millett: Sexual Politics (1969)
a. influenced by civil rights, peace, and other
protest movements
b. distinction between “sex” and “gender” (sex -
biology; gender -
culturally acquired sexual identity)
c. analysis of masculinist historical, social and
literary images of
women
d. foregrounds the view of the female reader
6. Marxist Feminism
a. Shulamith Firestone: The Dialectic of
Sex (1970); “regards male
domination as primary and quite independent of other social
and
economic forms of oppression...theoretical aim is to substitute
sex
for class as the prime historical determinant, and to
present the
‘class struggle’ as itself a product of the organization
of the
biological family unit” (Selden 216)
b. Juliet Mitchell: “Women: The Longest
Revolution” (1966)
c. Michele Barrett: Women’s Oppression Today:
Problems in
Marxist Feminist Analysis (1980)
H. Elaine Showalter: Women’s Writing and Gynocriticism
1. feminist critique (concerned with women readers)
2. “gynocritics” (concerned with women writers)
3. profound difference bet. women’s writing and men’s
4. women’s writing
a. “feminine” phase (1840-80)
b. “feminist” phase (1880-1920)
c. “female” phase (1920 ---)
I. French Feminist Critical Theory
1. derived from de Beauvoir’s perception of woman as the
“Other” to man
2. secualty (together w/ class and race) is identified
as a binary opposition
3. this opposition registers difference bet. groups of
people
4. differences are manipulated socially and culturally
in ways which cause
one group to dominate or oppress another
5. influence of psychoanalysis and Lacan’s work
6. Gallop warns of emphasis on Lacan’s work, which “involves
a sub-
ordination of female sexuality”
7. female sexuality associated with poetic productivity
8. Kristeva: polarity between “closed”, rational
systems and “open”,
disruptive, “irrational” systems
9. Cixous: “écriture féminine” ; celebrated
manifesto of “women’s
writing” which calls for women to put their “bodies” in their
writing
10. Irigary: promotes radical “otherness” of women’s
eroticism and its
disruptive enactment in language/ fluidity and multiplicity
of women’s
difference
11. l’écriture féminine “asserts not the
sexuality of the text but the textuality
of sex” (Mary Jacobus)
12. This writing reshapes literary canons; refuses a unitary
or universally
accepted body of theory; overly politicizes the whole domain
of discursive practice; it is fluid, multiplex, heteroglossic and subversive.
J. Black, Women-of-Color, and Lesbian Literary Theories