Literary Theory

"Literary theory" is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of literature. By literary
theory we refer not to the meaning of a work of literature but to the theories that reveal what literature can
mean. Literary theory is a description of the underlying principles, one might say the tools, by which we
attempt to understand literature. All literary interpretation draws on a basis in theory but can serve as a
justification for very different kinds of critical activity. It is literary theory that formulates the relationship
between author and work; literary theory develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary
study, both from the standpoint of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic presence
within texts. Literary theory offers varying approaches for understanding the role of historical context in
interpretation as well as the relevance of linguistic and unconscious elements of the text. Literary theorists
trace the history and evolution of the different genresnarrative, dramatic, lyricin addition to the more
recent emergence of the novel and the short story, while also investigating the importance of formal
elements of literary structure. Lastly, literary theory in recent years has sought to explain the degree to
which the text is more the product of a culture than an individual author and in turn how those texts help
to create the culture.
1. What Is Literary Theory?
"Literary theory," sometimes designated "critical theory," or "theory," and now undergoing a
transformation into "cultural theory" within the discipline of literary studies, can be understood as the set
of concepts and intellectual assumptions on which rests the work of explaining or interpreting literary
texts. Literary theory 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. All critical practice
regarding literature depends on an underlying structure of ideas in at least two ways: theory provides a
rationale for what constitutes the subject matter of criticism"the literary"and the specific aims of
critical practicethe act of interpretation itself. For example, to speak of the "unity" of Oedipus the
King explicitly invokes Aristotle's theoretical statements on poetics. To argue, as does Chinua Achebe,
that Joseph Conrads The Heart of Darkness fails to grant full humanity to the Africans it depicts is a
perspective informed by a postcolonial literary theory that presupposes a history of exploitation and
racism. Critics that explain the climactic drowning of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening as a suicide
generally call upon a supporting architecture of feminist and gender theory. The structure of ideas that
enables criticism of a literary work may or may not be acknowledged by the critic, and the status of
literary theory within the academic discipline of literary studies continues to evolve.
Literary theory and the formal practice of literary interpretation runs a parallel but less well known course
with the history of philosophy and is evident in the historical record at least as far back as Plato. The
Cratylus contains a Plato's meditation on the relationship of words and the things to which they refer.
Platos skepticism about signification, i.e., that words bear no etymological relationship to their meanings
but are arbitrarily "imposed," becomes a central concern in the twentieth century to both "Structuralism"
and "Poststructuralism." However, a persistent belief in "reference," the notion that words and images
refer to an objective reality, has provided epistemological (that is, having to do with theories of
knowledge) support for theories of literary representation throughout most of Western history. Until the
nineteenth century, Art, in Shakespeares phrase, held "a mirror up to nature" and faithfully recorded an
objectively real world independent of the observer.
Modern literary theory gradually emerges in Europe during the nineteenth century. In one of the earliest
developments of literary theory, German "higher criticism" subjected biblical texts to a radical
historicizing that broke with traditional scriptural interpretation. "Higher," or "source criticism," analyzed
biblical tales in light of comparable narratives from other cultures, an approach that anticipated some of
the method and spirit of twentieth century theory, particularly "Structuralism" and "New Historicism." In
France, the eminent literary critic Charles AugustinSaint Beuve maintained that a work of literature could
be explained entirely in terms of biography, while novelist Marcel Proust devoted his life to refuting Saint
Beuve in a massive narrative in which he contended that the details of the life of the artist are utterly
transformed in the work of art. (This dispute was taken up anew by the French theorist Roland Barthes in
his famous declaration of the "Death of the Author." See "Structuralism" and "Poststructuralism.")

Perhaps the greatest nineteenth century influence on literary theory came from the deep epistemological
suspicion of Friedrich Nietzsche: that facts are not facts until they have been interpreted. Nietzsche's
critique of knowledge has had a profound impact on literary studies and helped usher in an era of intense
literary theorizing that has yet to pass.
Attention to the etymology of the term "theory," from the Greek "theoria," alerts us to the partial nature of
theoretical approaches to literature. "Theoria" indicates a view or perspective of the Greek stage. This is
precisely what literary theory offers, though specific theories often claim to present a complete system for
understanding literature. The current state of theory is such that there are many overlapping areas of
influence, and older schools of theory, though no longer enjoying their previous eminence, continue to
exert an influence on the whole. The once widely-held conviction (an implicit theory) that literature is a
repository of all that is meaningful and ennobling in the human experience, a view championed by the
Leavis School in Britain, may no longer be acknowledged by name but remains an essential justification
for the current structure of American universities and liberal arts curricula. The moment of
"Deconstruction" may have passed, but its emphasis on the indeterminacy of signs (that we are unable to
establish exclusively what a word means when used in a given situation) and thus of texts, remains
significant. Many critics may not embrace the label "feminist," but the premise that gender is a social
construct, one of theoretical feminisms distinguishing insights, is now axiomatic in a number of
theoretical perspectives.
While literary theory has always implied or directly expressed a conception of the world outside the text,
in the twentieth century three movements"Marxist theory" of the Frankfurt School, "Feminism," and
"Postmodernism"have opened the field of literary studies into a broader area of inquiry. Marxist
approaches to literature require an understanding of the primary economic and social bases of culture
since Marxist aesthetic theory sees the work of art as a product, directly or indirectly, of the base structure
of society. Feminist thought and practice analyzes the production of literature and literary representation
within the framework that includes all social and cultural formations as they pertain to the role of women
in history. Postmodern thought consists of both aesthetic and epistemological strands. Postmodernism in
art has included a move toward non-referential, non-linear, abstract forms; a heightened degree of selfreferentiality; and the collapse of categories and conventions that had traditionally governed art.
Postmodern thought has led to the serious questioning of the so-called metanarratives of history, science,
philosophy, and economic and sexual reproduction. Under postmodernity, all knowledge comes to be seen
as "constructed" within historical self-contained systems of understanding. Marxist, feminist, and
postmodern thought have brought about the incorporation of all human discourses (that is, interlocking
fields of language and knowledge) as a subject matter for analysis by the literary theorist. Using the
various poststructuralist and postmodern theories that often draw on disciplines other than the literary
linguistic, anthropological, psychoanalytic, and philosophicalfor their primary insights, literary theory
has become an interdisciplinary body of cultural theory. Taking as its premise that human societies and
knowledge consist of texts in one form or another, cultural theory (for better or worse) is now applied to
the varieties of texts, ambitiously undertaking to become the preeminent model of inquiry into the human
condition.
Literary theory is a site of theories: some theories, like "Queer Theory," are "in;" other literary theories,
like "Deconstruction," are "out" but continue to exert an influence on the field. "Traditional literary
criticism," "New Criticism," and "Structuralism" are alike in that they held to the view that the study of
literature has an objective body of knowledge under its scrutiny. The other schools of literary theory, to
varying degrees, embrace a postmodern view of language and reality that calls into serious question the
objective referent of literary studies. The following categories are certainly not exhaustive, nor are they
mutually exclusive, but they represent the major trends in literary theory of this century.
2. Traditional Literary Criticism
Academic literary criticism prior to the rise of "New Criticism" in the United States tended to practice
traditional literary history: tracking influence, establishing the canon of major writers in the literary
periods, and clarifying historical context and allusions within the text. Literary biography was and still is
an important interpretive method in and out of the academy; versions of moral criticism, not unlike the

Leavis School in Britain, and aesthetic (e.g. genre studies) criticism were also generally influential
literary practices. Perhaps the key unifying feature of traditional literary criticism was the consensus
within the academy as to the both the literary canon (that is, the books all educated persons should read)
and the aims and purposes of literature. What literature was, and why we read literature, and what we
read, were questions that subsequent movements in literary theory were to raise.
3. Formalism and New Criticism
"Formalism" is, as the name implies, an interpretive approach that emphasizes literary form and the study
of literary devices within the text. The work of the Formalists had a general impact on later developments
in "Structuralism" and other theories of narrative. "Formalism," like "Structuralism," sought to place the
study of literature on a scientific basis through objective analysis of the motifs, devices, techniques, and
other "functions" that comprise the literary work. The Formalists placed great importance on the
literariness of texts, those qualities that distinguished the literary from other kinds of writing. Neither
author nor context was essential for the Formalists; it was the narrative that spoke, the "hero-function,"
for example, that had meaning. Form was the content. A plot device or narrative strategy was examined
for how it functioned and compared to how it had functioned in other literary works. Of the Russian
Formalist critics, Roman Jakobson and Viktor Shklovsky are probably the most well known.
The Formalist adage that the purpose of literature was "to make the stones stonier" nicely expresses their
notion of literariness. "Formalism" is perhaps best known is Shklovsky's concept of "defamiliarization."
The routine of ordinary experience, Shklovsky contended, rendered invisible the uniqueness and
particularity of the objects of existence. Literary language, partly by calling attention to itself as language,
estranged the reader from the familiar and made fresh the experience of daily life.
The "New Criticism," so designated as to indicate a break with traditional methods, was a product of the
American university in the 1930s and 40s. "New Criticism" stressed close reading of the text itself, much
like the French pedagogical precept "explication du texte." As a strategy of reading, "New Criticism"
viewed the work of literature as an aesthetic object independent of historical context and as a unified
whole that reflected the unified sensibility of the artist. T.S. Eliot, though not explicitly associated with
the movement, expressed a similar critical-aesthetic philosophy in his essays on John Donne and the
metaphysical poets, writers who Eliot believed experienced a complete integration of thought and feeling.
New Critics like Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren and W.K. Wimsatt placed a
similar focus on the metaphysical poets and poetry in general, a genre well suited to New Critical
practice. "New Criticism" aimed at bringing a greater intellectual rigor to literary studies, confining itself
to careful scrutiny of the text alone and the formal structures of paradox, ambiguity, irony, and metaphor,
among others. "New Criticism" was fired by the conviction that their readings of poetry would yield a
humanizing influence on readers and thus counter the alienating tendencies of modern, industrial life.
"New Criticism" in this regard bears an affinity to the Southern Agrarian movement whose manifesto, I'll
Take My Stand, contained essays by two New Critics, Ransom and Warren. Perhaps the enduring legacy
of "New Criticism" can be found in the college classroom, in which the verbal texture of the poem on the
page remains a primary object of literary study.
4. Marxism and Critical Theory
Marxist literary theories tend to focus on the representation of class conflict as well as the reinforcement
of class distinctions through the medium of literature. Marxist theorists use traditional techniques of
literary analysis but subordinate aesthetic concerns to the final social and political meanings of literature.
Marxist theorist often champion authors sympathetic to the working classes and authors whose work
challenges economic equalities found in capitalist societies. In keeping with the totalizing spirit of
Marxism, literary theories arising from the Marxist paradigm have not only sought new ways of
understanding the relationship between economic production and literature, but all cultural production as
well. Marxist analyses of society and history have had a profound effect on literary theory and practical
criticism, most notably in the development of "New Historicism" and "Cultural Materialism."
The Hungarian theorist Georg Lukacs contributed to an understanding of the relationship between
historical materialism and literary form, in particular with realism and the historical novel. Walter
Benjamin broke new ground in his work in his study of aesthetics and the reproduction of the work of art.

The Frankfurt School of philosophers, including most notably Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and
Herbert Marcuseafter their emigration to the United Statesplayed a key role in introducing Marxist
assessments of culture into the mainstream of American academic life. These thinkers became associated
with what is known as "Critical theory," one of the constituent components of which was a critique of the
instrumental use of reason in advanced capitalist culture. "Critical theory" held to a distinction between
the high cultural heritage of Europe and the mass culture produced by capitalist societies as an instrument
of domination. "Critical theory" sees in the structure of mass cultural formsjazz, Hollywood film,
advertisinga replication of the structure of the factory and the workplace. Creativity and cultural
production in advanced capitalist societies were always already co-opted by the entertainment needs of an
economic system that requires sensory stimulation and recognizable clich and suppressed the tendency
for sustained deliberation.
The major Marxist influences on literary theory since the Frankfurt School have been Raymond Williams
and Terry Eagleton in Great Britain and Frank Lentricchia and Fredric Jameson in the United States.
Williams is associated with the New Left political movement in Great Britain and the development of
"Cultural Materialism" and the Cultural Studies Movement, originating in the 1960s at Birmingham
University's Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Eagleton is known both as a Marxist theorist and
as a popularizer of theory by means of his widely read overview,Literary Theory. Lentricchia likewise
became influential through his account of trends in theory,After the New Criticism. Jameson is a more
diverse theorist, known both for his impact on Marxist theories of culture and for his position as one of
the leading figures in theoretical postmodernism. Jamesons work on consumer culture, architecture, film,
literature and other areas, typifies the collapse of disciplinary boundaries taking place in the realm of
Marxist and postmodern cultural theory. Jamesons work investigates the way the structural features of
late capitalismparticularly the transformation of all culture into commodity formare now deeply
embedded in all of our ways of communicating.
5. Structuralism and Poststructuralism
Like the "New Criticism," "Structuralism" sought to bring to literary studies a set of objective criteria for
analysis and a new intellectual rigor. "Structuralism" can be viewed as an extension of "Formalism" in
that that both "Structuralism" and "Formalism" devoted their attention to matters of literary form (i.e.
structure) rather than social or historical content; and that both bodies of thought were intended to put the
study of literature on a scientific, objective basis. "Structuralism" relied initially on the ideas of the Swiss
linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. Like Plato, Saussure regarded the signifier (words, marks, symbols) as
arbitrary and unrelated to the concept, the signified, to which it referred. Within the way a particular
society uses language and signs, meaning was constituted by a system of "differences" between units of
the language. Particular meanings were of less interest than the underlying structures of signification that
made meaning itself possible, often expressed as an emphasis on "langue" rather than "parole."
"Structuralism" was to be a metalanguage, a language about languages, used to decode actual languages,
or systems of signification. The work of the "Formalist" Roman Jakobson contributed to "Structuralist"
thought, and the more prominent Structuralists included Claude Levi-Strauss in anthropology, Tzvetan
Todorov, A.J. Greimas, Gerard Genette, and Barthes.
The philosopher Roland Barthes proved to be a key figure on the divide between "Structuralism" and
"Poststructuralism." "Poststructuralism" is less unified as a theoretical movement than its precursor;
indeed, the work of its advocates known by the term "Deconstruction" calls into question the possibility
of the coherence of discourse, or the capacity for language to communicate. "Deconstruction," Semiotic
theory (a study of signs with close connections to "Structuralism," "Reader response theory" in America
("Reception theory" in Europe), and "Gender theory" informed by the psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and
Julia Kristeva are areas of inquiry that can be located under the banner of "Poststructuralism." If signifier
and signified are both cultural concepts, as they are in "Poststructuralism," reference to an empirically
certifiable reality is no longer guaranteed by language. "Deconstruction" argues that this loss of reference
causes an endless deferral of meaning, a system of differences between units of language that has no
resting place or final signifier that would enable the other signifiers to hold their meaning. The most
important theorist of "Deconstruction," Jacques Derrida, has asserted, "There is no getting outside text,"

indicating a kind of free play of signification in which no fixed, stable meaning is possible.
"Poststructuralism" in America was originally identified with a group of Yale academics, the Yale School
of "Deconstruction:" J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartmann, and Paul de Man. Other tendencies in the
moment after "Deconstruction" that share some of the intellectual tendencies of "Poststructuralism"
would included the "Reader response" theories of Stanley Fish, Jane Tompkins, and Wolfgang Iser.
Lacanian psychoanalysis, an updating of the work of Sigmund Freud, extends "Postructuralism" to the
human subject with further consequences for literary theory. According to Lacan, the fixed, stable self is a
Romantic fiction; like the text in "Deconstruction," the self is a decentered mass of traces left by our
encounter with signs, visual symbols, language, etc. For Lacan, the self is constituted by language, a
language that is never one's own, always anothers, always already in use. Barthes applies these currents
of thought in his famous declaration of the "death" of the Author: "writing is the destruction of every
voice, of every point of origin" while also applying a similar "Poststructuralist" view to the Reader: "the
reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single
field all the traces by which the written text is constituted."
Michel Foucault is another philosopher, like Barthes, whose ideas inform much of poststructuralist
literary theory. Foucault played a critical role in the development of the postmodern perspective that
knowledge is constructed in concrete historical situations in the form of discourse; knowledge is not
communicated by discourse but is discourse itself, can only be encountered textually. Following
Nietzsche, Foucault performs what he calls "genealogies," attempts at deconstructing the
unacknowledged operation of power and knowledge to reveal the ideologies that make domination of one
group by another seem "natural." Foucaldian investigations of discourse and power were to provide much
of the intellectual impetus for a new way of looking at history and doing textual studies that came to be
known as the "New Historicism."
6. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism
"New Historicism," a term coined by Stephen Greenblatt, designates a body of theoretical and interpretive
practices that began largely with the study of early modern literature in the United States. "New
Historicism" in America had been somewhat anticipated by the theorists of "Cultural Materialism" in
Britain, which, in the words of their leading advocate, Raymond Williams describes "the analysis of all
forms of signification, including quite centrally writing, within the actual means and conditions of their
production." Both "New Historicism" and "Cultural Materialism" seek to understand literary texts
historically and reject the formalizing influence of previous literary studies, including "New Criticism,"
"Structuralism" and "Deconstruction," all of which in varying ways privilege the literary text and place
only secondary emphasis on historical and social context. According to "New Historicism," the
circulation of literary and non-literary texts produces relations of social power within a culture. New
Historicist thought differs from traditional historicism in literary studies in several crucial ways. Rejecting
traditional historicism's premise of neutral inquiry, "New Historicism" accepts the necessity of making
historical value judgments. According to "New Historicism," we can only know the textual history of the
past because it is "embedded," a key term, in the textuality of the present and its concerns. Text and
context are less clearly distinct in New Historicist practice. Traditional separations of literary and nonliterary texts, "great" literature and popular literature, are also fundamentally challenged. For the "New
Historicist," all acts of expression are embedded in the material conditions of a culture. Texts are
examined with an eye for how they reveal the economic and social realities, especially as they produce
ideology and represent power or subversion. Like much of the emergent European social history of the
1980s, "New Historicism" takes particular interest in representations of marginal/marginalized groups and
non-normative behaviorswitchcraft, cross-dressing, peasant revolts, and exorcismsas exemplary of
the need for power to represent subversive alternatives, the Other, to legitimize itself.
Louis Montrose, another major innovator and exponent of "New Historicism," describes a fundamental
axiom of the movement as an intellectual belief in "the textuality of history and the historicity of texts."
"New Historicism" draws on the work of Levi-Strauss, in particular his notion of culture as a "selfregulating system." The Foucaldian premise that power is ubiquitous and cannot be equated with state or
economic power and Gramsci's conception of "hegemony," i.e., that domination is often achieved through

culturally-orchestrated consent rather than force, are critical underpinnings to the "New Historicist"
perspective. The translation of the work of Mikhail Bakhtin on carnival coincided with the rise of the
"New Historicism" and "Cultural Materialism" and left a legacy in work of other theorists of influence
like Peter Stallybrass and Jonathan Dollimore. In its period of ascendancy during the 1980s, "New
Historicism" drew criticism from the political left for its depiction of counter-cultural expression as
always co-opted by the dominant discourses. Equally, "New Historicisms" lack of emphasis on
"literariness" and formal literary concerns brought disdain from traditional literary scholars. However,
"New Historicism" continues to exercise a major influence in the humanities and in the extended
conception of literary studies.
7. Ethnic Studies and Postcolonial Criticism
"Ethnic Studies," sometimes referred to as "Minority Studies," has an obvious historical relationship with
"Postcolonial Criticism" in that Euro-American imperialism and colonization in the last four centuries,
whether external (empire) or internal (slavery) has been directed at recognizable ethnic groups: African
and African-American, Chinese, the subaltern peoples of India, Irish, Latino, Native American, and
Philipino, among others. "Ethnic Studies" concerns itself generally with art and literature produced by
identifiable ethnic groups either marginalized or in a subordinate position to a dominant culture.
"Postcolonial Criticism" investigates the relationships between colonizers and colonized in the period
post-colonization. Though the two fields are increasingly finding points of intersectionthe work of bell
hooks, for exampleand are both activist intellectual enterprises, "Ethnic Studies and "Postcolonial
Criticism" have significant differences in their history and ideas.
"Ethnic Studies" has had a considerable impact on literary studies in the United States and Britain. In
W.E.B. Dubois, we find an early attempt to theorize the position of African-Americans within dominant
white culture through his concept of "double consciousness," a dual identity including both "American"
and "Negro." Dubois and theorists after him seek an understanding of how that double experience both
creates identity and reveals itself in culture. Afro-Caribbean and African writersAime Cesaire, Frantz
Fanon, Chinua Achebehave made significant early contributions to the theory and practice of ethnic
criticism that explores the traditions, sometimes suppressed or underground, of ethnic literary activity
while providing a critique of representations of ethnic identity as found within the majority culture.
Ethnic and minority literary theory emphasizes the relationship of cultural identity to individual identity
in historical circumstances of overt racial oppression. More recently, scholars and writers such as Henry
Louis Gates, Toni Morrison, and Kwame Anthony Appiah have brought attention to the problems inherent
in applying theoretical models derived from Euro-centric paradigms (that is, structures of thought) to
minority works of literature while at the same time exploring new interpretive strategies for
understanding the vernacular (common speech) traditions of racial groups that have been historically
marginalized by dominant cultures.
Though not the first writer to explore the historical condition of postcolonialism, the Palestinian literary
theorist Edward Said's book Orientalism is generally regarded as having inaugurated the field of
explicitly "Postcolonial Criticism" in the West. Said argues that the concept of "the Orient" was produced
by the "imaginative geography" of Western scholarship and has been instrumental in the colonization and
domination of non-Western societies. "Postcolonial" theory reverses the historical center/margin direction
of cultural inquiry: critiques of the metropolis and capital now emanate from the former colonies.
Moreover, theorists like Homi K. Bhabha have questioned the binary thought that produces the
dichotomiescenter/margin, white/black, and colonizer/colonizedby which colonial practices are
justified. The work of Gayatri C. Spivak has focused attention on the question of who speaks for the
colonial "Other" and the relation of the ownership of discourse and representation to the development of
the postcolonial subjectivity. Like feminist and ethnic theory, "Postcolonial Criticism" pursues not merely
the inclusion of the marginalized literature of colonial peoples into the dominant canon and discourse.
"Postcolonial Criticism" offers a fundamental critique of the ideology of colonial domination and at the
same time seeks to undo the "imaginative geography" of Orientalist thought that produced conceptual as
well as economic divides between West and East, civilized and uncivilized, First and Third Worlds. In this
respect, "Postcolonial Criticism" is activist and adversarial in its basic aims. Postcolonial theory has

brought fresh perspectives to the role of colonial peoplestheir wealth, labor, and culturein the
development of modern European nation states. While "Postcolonial Criticism" emerged in the historical
moment following the collapse of the modern colonial empires, the increasing globalization of culture,
including the neo-colonialism of multinational capitalism, suggests a continued relevance for this field of
inquiry.
8. Gender Studies and Queer Theory
Gender theory came to the forefront of the theoretical scene first as feminist theory but has subsequently
come to include the investigation of all gender and sexual categories and identities. Feminist gender
theory followed slightly behind the reemergence of political feminism in the United States and Western
Europe during the 1960s. Political feminism of the so-called "second wave" had as its emphasis practical
concerns with the rights of women in contemporary societies, women's identity, and the representation of
women in media and culture. These causes converged with early literary feminist practice, characterized
by Elaine Showalter as "gynocriticism," which emphasized the study and canonical inclusion of works by
female authors as well as the depiction of women in male-authored canonical texts.
Feminist gender theory is postmodern in that it challenges the paradigms and intellectual premises of
western thought, but also takes an activist stance by proposing frequent interventions and alternative
epistemological positions meant to change the social order. In the context of postmodernism, gender
theorists, led by the work of Judith Butler, initially viewed the category of "gender" as a human construct
enacted by a vast repetition of social performance. The biological distinction between man and woman
eventually came under the same scrutiny by theorists who reached a similar conclusion: the sexual
categories are products of culture and as such help create social reality rather than simply reflect it.
Gender theory achieved a wide readership and acquired much its initial theoretical rigor through the work
of a group of French feminist theorists that included Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous,
and Julia Kristeva, who while Bulgarian rather than French, made her mark writing in French. French
feminist thought is based on the assumption that the Western philosophical tradition represses the
experience of women in the structure of its ideas. As an important consequence of this systematic
intellectual repression and exclusion, women's lives and bodies in historical societies are subject to
repression as well. In the creative/critical work of Cixous, we find the history of Western thought depicted
as binary oppositions: "speech/writing; Nature/Art, Nature/History, Nature/Mind, Passion/Action." For
Cixous, and for Irigaray as well, these binaries are less a function of any objective reality they describe
than the male-dominated discourse of the Western tradition that produced them. Their work beyond the
descriptive stage becomes an intervention in the history of theoretical discourse, an attempt to alter the
existing categories and systems of thought that found Western rationality. French feminism, and perhaps
all feminism after Beauvoir, has been in conversation with the psychoanalytic revision of Freud in the
work of Jacques Lacan. Kristevas work draws heavily on Lacan. Two concepts from Kristevathe
"semiotic" and "abjection"have had a significant influence on literary theory. Kristevas "semiotic"
refers to the gaps, silences, spaces, and bodily presence within the language/symbol system of a culture in
which there might be a space for a womens language, different in kind as it would be from maledominated discourse.
Masculine gender theory as a separate enterprise has focused largely on social, literary, and historical
accounts of the construction of male gender identities. Such work generally lacks feminisms' activist
stance and tends to serve primarily as an indictment rather than a validation of male gender practices and
masculinity. The so-called "Mens Movement," inspired by the work of Robert Bly among others, was
more practical than theoretical and has had only limited impact on gender discourse. The impetus for the
"Mens Movement" came largely as a response to the critique of masculinity and male domination that
runs throughout feminism and the upheaval of the 1960s, a period of crisis in American social ideology
that has required a reconsideration of gender roles. Having long served as the de facto "subject" of
Western thought, male identity and masculine gender theory awaits serious investigation as a particular,
and no longer universally representative, field of inquiry.
Much of what theoretical energy of masculine gender theory currently possesses comes from its
ambiguous relationship with the field of "Queer theory." "Queer theory" is not synonymous with gender

theory, nor even with the overlapping fields of gay and lesbian studies, but does share many of their
concerns with normative definitions of man, woman, and sexuality. "Queer theory" questions the fixed
categories of sexual identity and the cognitive paradigms generated by normative (that is, what is
considered "normal") sexual ideology. To "queer" becomes an act by which stable boundaries of sexual
identity are transgressed, reversed, mimicked, or otherwise critiqued. "Queering" can be enacted on
behalf of all non-normative sexualities and identities as well, all that is considered by the dominant
paradigms of culture to be alien, strange, unfamiliar, transgressive, oddin short, queer. Michel
Foucault's work on sexuality anticipates and informs the Queer theoretical movement in a role similar to
the way his writing on power and discourse prepared the ground for "New Historicism." Judith Butler
contends that heterosexual identity long held to be a normative ground of sexuality is actually produced
by the suppression of homoerotic possibility. Eve Sedgwick is another pioneering theorist of "Queer
theory," and like Butler, Sedgwick maintains that the dominance of heterosexual culture conceals the
extensive presence of homosocial relations. For Sedgwick, the standard histories of western societies are
presented in exclusively in terms of heterosexual identity: "Inheritance, Marriage, Dynasty, Family,
Domesticity, Population," and thus conceiving of homosexual identity within this framework is already
problematic.
9. Cultural Studies
Much of the intellectual legacy of "New Historicism" and "Cultural Materialism" can now be felt in the
"Cultural Studies" movement in departments of literature, a movement not identifiable in terms of a single
theoretical school, but one that embraces a wide array of perspectivesmedia studies, social criticism,
anthropology, and literary theoryas they apply to the general study of culture. "Cultural Studies" arose
quite self-consciously in the 80s to provide a means of analysis of the rapidly expanding global culture
industry that includes entertainment, advertising, publishing, television, film, computers and the Internet.
"Cultural Studies" brings scrutiny not only to these varied categories of culture, and not only to the
decreasing margins of difference between these realms of expression, but just as importantly to the
politics and ideology that make contemporary culture possible. "Cultural Studies" became notorious in the
90s for its emphasis on pop music icons and music video in place of canonical literature, and extends the
ideas of the Frankfurt School on the transition from a truly popular culture to mass culture in late
capitalist societies, emphasizing the significance of the patterns of consumption of cultural artifacts.
"Cultural Studies" has been interdisciplinary, even antidisciplinary, from its inception; indeed, "Cultural
Studies" can be understood as a set of sometimes conflicting methods and approaches applied to a
questioning of current cultural categories. Stuart Hall, Meaghan Morris, Tony Bennett and Simon During
are some of the important advocates of a "Cultural Studies" that seeks to displace the traditional model of
literary studies.

For all its shortcomings, literary criticism still provides the poet with the tools for self-evaluation and selfimprovement. It introduces work of periods and cultures different in theme and treatment.
Literary criticism comes in various shapes and aims. At best it poses searching questions of the writer, and
insists that he understands how the arts, the sciences and philosophy have different but coexisting
concepts of truth and meaning. Art in the end cannot be divorced from contemporary life, and that
consideration leads on to literary theory.
Introduction
Literary critics have many skills, {1} but those which the practising poet needs to acquire are close
reading, explication and evaluation. And the first two because most poems fail through lack of care. The
originating emotion still clots the lines or, in striving for originality, the work becomes muddled,
pretentious or incoherent. The incomprehensible can always be taken for the profound of course, and no
doubt much get published for that reason, but only the beginner will see publication as the sole purpose of
writing. Poems take too much of the writer's time and emotional lifeblood not to be made as good as
possible, and dishonesty will spoil even the best talents. Poems grow through evaluation, that dialogue
between what has been written and what was originally hoped for, between what the poems say now and
what they might with further work. Self appraisal is inescapable.
But the critic's eye is a rare gift, rarer than sainthood, Housman thought, and matters have lately become
more controversial. Criticism is not fashionable, and has been replaced by literary theory in many
university departments. {2} The criticism that continues to be written naturally concentrates on
established figures. The remainder, the reviewing/criticism appraising the great torrent that pours off the
small presses, is often partisan, shallow and/or doggedly optimistic. {3} Even the aims of criticism seem
somewhat doubtful. {4} No single critical approach seems invariably successful, {5} and insights from
differing approaches do not necessarily cohere. Nothing brings finality of judgement, moreover, and one
critic's findings can be undone by another's ingenuity. Much more damaging, the premises even of literary
theory have been uprooted by radical theory. {6}
Purposes of Theory
What does literary criticism hope to achieve? There are many schools of thought, {7} but all take as their
starting point the analysis of the reader's or listener's response. Poems may be complex, requiring a good
deal of explanation or even correction of corrupt scripts, but there has to be an immediate impact of some
sort: not very strong, and not blatantly emotional necessarily, but something that allows the critic to ask:
how is this obtained? how significant is it? how does it compare with similar works? No impact and there
is nothing to analyze. The work has failed, at least where that particular reader is concerned, and no
amount of critical cleverness, literary allusions and information will bully him into responding to what he
cannot feel.
But who is the reader? Each and everyone, as Stanley Fish might claim {8}, or Milton's "select audience
though few"? Poets may not make money but they still have markets to consider. Whom are they writing
for the editors of leading magazines, friends, society at large, or themselves? And to say something
significant about the world around them, to resolve personal quandaries, to gain a literary reputation with
those who count? In an ideal world all aims might be served by the one work, but the world is not ideal,
and aims needed to be sorted out.
It is the original intention or purpose of writing, that much historical and sociological analysis attempts to
understand. In Shakespeare or Chaucer, and much more so in the poetry of ancient Greece or China, there
are different conventions to appreciate, and many words cannot be fully translated. {9} The difficulties
afflict more than the professional translator or literary scholar, as modern poetry very much uses
recherch imagery and far-flung allusion. A simple word like "faith" would be very differently
appreciated in the church-going communities of small-town America and the Nietzsche-reading
intelligentsia of London's Hampstead. The meaning, the literal meaning of the poem, might be the same
but not the insights that gave the poem its real subject matter.
With conventions come the expectations of the audience. Sidney wrote for the great country house,
Shakespeare for the public stage; Middleton for the City. Their work is different in rhetoric, diction and
imagery, and had to be. Social distinctions may be much less marked today, but the intellectual traditions

continue. Poets are very choosy about their venues. Writers who live in California will keep a Manhattan
address. {10} Poems that work well on the page will not necessarily rise to a public performance. All this
is obvious, what professional prose writers think about before accepting a commission, {11} but is
commonly overlooked by the beginning poet.
Is Objectivity Possible?
Since poets love their creations, and must do to continue writing, how objective can they be? Again, there
is much disagreement. {12}
Some poets, stunned by yet another wrong-headed review, come to believe that they alone, or at least a
small circle of like-minded poets, have any real critical ability. Only they really know what is good and
not so good in their own work. And anyone attending workshops regularly may well agree.
But few academic critics will accept that poets make the sounder judgements. {13} Not a demarcation
dispute, they say, but simple experience and logic. Artists are notoriously partisan, and look at colleagues'
work to learn and borrow. And consider a Beethoven sonata: we can all distinguish between the beginner
and the accomplished pianist even though possessing no piano-playing skills of our own. True, but the
analogy is not exact. Poems are written in a language we all read and speak. Even to use language
correctly calls on enormously complex skills, so that poetry may be but a small addition, a thin
specialization. On that scale the differences between good and bad in poetry may be analogous to
deciding between two almost equally good pieces of piano-playing. That exceeds the competence of most
of us, and we hand over to the usual competition panel of musicians and conductors.
Certainly we can accept that critics and poets intend different things, namely articles and poems. And that
there is nothing to stop the poet becoming an excellent critic (many have {14}) or academic critics from
the learning the difficult art of writing poetry. {15} The experience may well be enriching for both. But
the question is more insidious. What exactly is it that the critic produces in his article, and how does it
shape the reader's response? An earlier generation (much earlier, that encountered by I. A. Richards in his
pioneering reading experiments at Cambridge {16}) sought to make poems out of their responses. Artists
do influence each other, and imitation is no doubt the sincerest form of flattery. But Richard's examinees,
and perhaps inevitably, without the time and skills to do a decent job, turned in very juvenile work;
Richards could dismiss the approach as entirely wrong-headed. Analysis was what was wanted not
adroit phrases but method, the careful reductive method of the sciences. By all means write up the
exercise engagingly afterwards, but first read with great attention, asking the right questions. So was born
the New Criticism, and few doubt that this was a large step forward. {17}
But that does not invalidate the question. The New Critics were now doing what every good poet does or
should do examining and reexamining the work from every conceivable angle: diction, imagery,
meaning, shape, etc. Previous critics had rushed to judgement without putting in the fundamental spade
work. But what the New Critics produced, the journal article or book, had none of the attraction of the
original poem, and indeed became increasingly technical, employing a jargon that only fellow specialists
could enjoy. The general reader was not catered for, any more than poets, most of whom were writing in
different styles anyway, with different problems to address. Criticism retreated to academia, and
eventually bred a poetry that had academia for its readership. {18}
More than that, criticism became an end in itself. {19} The intellectual gymnastics currently performed
by the great names of American criticism are not grounded in the poem being analyzed, but in the tenets
of radical theory. The poem may serve as the original impetus, as something about which to parade their
skills, {20} but the criticism has detached itself and become somewhat like a Modernist poem. It draws
inspiration from literary theories, and these can be nebulous or plainly wrong. Speculative theory selfreferencing, and as enclosed as medieval scholasticism will not help poets working in other traditions,
but does underline an earlier question: what is the status, the ontological status, of the critical article?
Schools of Criticism
Suppose we bear that question in mind in surveying the various schools of criticism. There are many, but
could perhaps be grouped as:
Traditional

Though perhaps Edwardian in style, this approach essentially one of trying to broaden understanding
and appreciation is still used in general surveys of English literature. There is usually some
information on the writer and his times, and a little illustration, but no close analysis of the individual
work or its aims.
New Criticism
The poem (the approach works best for poetry, and especially the lyric) is detached from its biographical
or historical context, and analyzed thoroughly: diction, imagery, meanings, particularly complexities of
meaning. Some explanation of unfamiliar words and/or uses may be allowed, but the poem is otherwise
expected to stand on its own feet, as though it were a contemporary production.
Rhetorical
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and the rhetorical approach attempts to understand how the content of
the poem, which is more than intellectual meaning, is put across. How arguments are presented, attitudes
struck, evidence marshalled, various appeals made to the reader all are relevant.
Stylistic
Style is the manner in which something is presented, and this approach concentrates on the peculiarities
of diction and imagery employed, sometimes relating them to literary and social theory.
Metaphorical
Metaphor enters into consideration in most approaches, but here the emphasis is deeper and more
exclusive, attention focusing on the ways that metaphors actually work: metaphors are not regarded as
supporting or decorative devices, but actually constituting the meaning.
Structuralist
Here the writing is related to underlying patterns of symmetry which are held to be common to all
societies. Evidence is drawn from sociology and anthropology, and the approach attempts to place the
work in larger context rather than assess its quality.
Post-structuralist
In contrast to the New Critics approach, which stresses interdependence and organic unity, the
Poststructuralist will point to the dissonances and the non sequiturs, and suggest how the poem works by
evading or confronting traditional expectations.
Myth Theory
The approach derives from Northrop Frye and attempts to place poems into categories or subcategories
into which all literature is divide by archetypal themes e.g. the myth of the hero, his subjugation of
enemies, his fall. The approach somewhat anticipated structuralism, draws on various psychologies, and
is less concerned with isolating what is special than showing what it has in common with works in a
similar category.
Freudian
Not only is the diction examined for sexual imagery, but the whole work is seen through Freudian
concepts: struggles of the superego, the Oedipus complex, with the repressed contents of consciousness,
etc. The aim is illumination of psychic conflicts, not aesthetic ranking.
Jungian
Jungians search for recurring poetic images, symbols and situations in poems, but their aim is not to
categorize poems as Northrop Frye does but to relate them to larger patterns in society, whether native
peoples or high civilizations.
Historical
Poems are placed in their historical context to explain not only their allusions and particular use of
words, but the conventions and expectations of the times. The approach may be evaluative (i.e. the critic
may suggest ways of responding to the poem once the perspective is corrected), or may simply use it as
historical data.
Biographical
As with the historical approach, a poem may be used to illuminate the writer's psychology, or as
biographic data. No less than the correspondence, remembered conversations, choice of reading matter,
the poem is analyzed for relevance to its author.

Sociological
Here the focus is on society as a whole, and critics assess the social factors at work in a poem, which may
be everything from the attitudes a writer inherits from his social background to the markets which
supported his literary efforts.
Political
It may be the political movements the poet supported which interest the critic, but more commonly the
poem is assessed on political lines: how fairly or effectively it promotes political action or attitudes.
Marxist
The poem may be assessed on its political correctness on its support for workers against capitalist
exploitation but most Marxists praise work that analyses or describes the injustices which Marxist
societies aim to overcome.
Moralist
Many poets have strong ethical or religious convictions, but the moralist critic usually has a broader
interest. Literature has a humanizing or civilizing mission, and the critic values work which furthers that
end: promotes tolerance, social justice, sensitivity to individual wishes and talents, etc.
Cognitive Scientific
In contrast to others, which generally possess an humanities orientation, that of cognitive science attempts
to relate poems to patterns of brain functioning. The approach is in its infancy, but holds some promise in
the fractal self-similarity exhibited by works of art.
Testing the Approaches
Which approach is best? That which proves the most illuminating is the usual answer. The various
approaches are not entirely distinct, and one can aim for a wise eclecticism {21}, incorporating several
approaches in the one article. Certainly this adds length and multiple perspectives to the critical article,
but are the individual approaches sound in themselves? They may provide more matter to ponder, but that
is surely no proof of value.
Suppose that the critical approach employed was not only shaky but fatuously offensive. An extreme
example might be a Nazi appraisal of German writers which graded them crudely on their genetic
makeup, from blonde Aryans (good) to eastern Jews (atrocious). Would we add this approach to the
others? If we say emphatically not, then we must accept that critical approaches need support that we can
independently assess. And this innocuous request raises the ominous problems of truth and meaning.
These are real and important. If literature had no truths to convey, there would be nothing to distinguish it
from recreation or entertainment. Governments might support the arts to keep a restless society off the
streets, but truth would remain the province of science, where bureaucrats went for information to back
policy decisions. But in fact art, logic and science all have truths, different and no doubt wary of each
other, but not fundamentally at loggerheads. Art aims at fullness and fidelity to human experience, and
therefore includes the wider social spectrum.
No doubt, to return to Germany, we could argue that our example would not happen in practice. The Nazi
article would not in any way clarify our responses to German writers. But suppose it did? A critic
appealing to nationalist sentiments might very well have been plausible to his contemporary audience. We
ourselves might even find some merit in the judgements. Unless we were very insensitive to Jewish
problems in thirties Germany, and lumped all German writers together, we would not be able to help
noticing differences in setting and outlook which had a material bearing on the writing. It might be a
fearfulness or hopelessness in the outlook or actions of the main protagonists, and we should have to ask
ourselves whether the work presented a true view of humanity, or was simply an historical aberration.
Wider issues always obtrude, and we have either an ethos to defend, or to find a theory independent of
time and context.
The latter was one hope of radical theory, which undercut the varied and apparently successful criticism
of the nineteen fifties and sixties by adopting the approaches of philosophy and science. Not only
cutbacks in university tenure, or the end of the publishing boom, {22} but an unexamined belief in its
right to exist, led to the downfall of traditional literary study. Of course it is possible to argue for a liberal,
pluralist, democratic approach, but the argument leads through to philosophical, political and sociological

matters, and here the radical critics seized the armoury. The New Critics had dismissed the larger context
of literary criticism, and the moralists carried little weight. The radicals demanded that poetry represent
its age, and that age they viewed through the spectacles of left-wing and continentalphilosophic concerns.
Their arguments, though perhaps not the tactics, were certainly needed. Approaches do matter, and they
must justify themselves before a wider tribunal if art is to be more than make-believe. Hence the Theory
Section of this guide. A descriptive critic may simply note the characteristics of the new poetry capturing
academic interest, {23} even its declining readership, but the practising poet needs to examine the
theories underlying and supporting new work. If simply faddish and incoherent, then the poems are
unlikely to possess any lasting value.
Is Criticism a Sham?
But does criticism really work? Do we analyze carefully and consult our books on theory before
responding to a work? Not usually. Impressions come first. But we then have to think why and how we
are responding in a certain way. Is the poem strained, hackneyed, overworked, etc.? And if so, by what
criteria? In setting out thoughts on paper, and then attempting to substantiate them, we are honing
essential skills.
Perhaps a good deal of academic criticism is suspect. The goal is already known: certain authors are to be
esteemed, and criticism has simply to find additional support. Often the canon intervenes crudely.
Literature is divided into essential writers (which all students must read, and other works be compared
to), the acceptable (enjoyable but not to be taken too seriously) and the bad (which no one will confess to
liking). The canon is consulted, and reasons found for praising or condemning the writer concerned.
Literary guides are replete with examples, and argument is often puerile the dismissive sneer, the
appeal to the knowledgeable, right-thinking majority, the comparison of a poor poem by the despised
author with a good one by the favoured. But the inanities only underline the need for sharper and
independent reading skills. Background and temperament ensure that there will be some writers we shall
never like, but we do not have to concoct false reasons for our own tastes.
Practical Critiquing
Now a change of tone. Suppose we look at criticism in practice, at what a young poet might be told, who's
pleased with his poem, and doesn't need analysis to know it's good. Tactfully and more modestly than in
these notes, we might have to say:
But have you checked got a colleague to read it through, asked a tutor, presented the piece at a poetry
workshop? Readers are perverse creatures, and will cavil in strange ways. Anticipate. Criticize the piece
yourself, in your own time, from all angles, before the wounding remarks bring you up short. Remember
that evaluation is not a handing down of judgments, but a slow acquisition of essential writing skills.
Appraisal needs honesty and independent judgment, plus a whole battery of techniques that literary critics
have developed over the centuries. The better libraries will have long shelves devoted to literary criticism,
which you must read and absorb. Indeed you must put pen to paper yourself, and write your own notes
and essays. As in everything literary, perception develops with your ability to express and reflect on that
perception.
What are the techniques of poetry analysis, and which are worth acquiring? Even on a simple poem you
will find a wide range of comments, many of them perplexing if not downright daft. Which critics can
you trust for sensible and enlightening comment?
You must make your own judgments. That is the nature of literary criticism. Moreover, until you can
appraise the various critical attitudes, weighing up the strengths and shortcomings of each approach, you
are not evaluating but just borrowing undigested material for the student essay. That may win you good
grades, but it won't help with unfamiliar work, or develop the skills needed to rescue your own
productions.
Writers and critics develop at their own pace, and the more precocious are not always the more lasting.
Talented authors commonly write from something buried deep within, from something that is ungraspable
but troubling, and which seems not to fit any of the established criteria. Progress in such cases is bound to
be slow, and perhaps should be if the issues are being properly addressed. But you're not working against

a stopwatch: you have a lifetime to appreciate the great writers, and to understand what you are
attempting yourself.
:Suggestions
1. Start with the literary criticism of poems you know and love. You will be more engaged by the
arguments, and start to understand how criticism can open unsuspected levels of meaning and
significance.
2. Read literary criticism of contemporary work and, if at all possible, of poems similar to your own,
which will at least help you anticipate the reception likely from editors and workshop presentations.
3. Research has moved from literary criticism to literary theory, which is not written for ready
comprehension. Nonetheless, you will need to know where critics are coming from, and therefore the
theoretical bases of their remarks.
4. Don't despise the elementary grounding provided by schoolbooks. University texts have much to do
with academic reputations and tenure, but those for younger students aim more to help and encourage.
5. Be severe but not over-severe with your creations. You enjoyed writing them, and that pleasure must
still be on the page to enthuse, challenge and enchant your readers. The merely correct has little to
commend it.
6. Use a checklist. For example:
title appropriate to subject, tone and genre? Does it generate interest, and hint at what your poem's
about?
subject what's the basic situation? Who is talking, and under what circumstances? Try writing a
paraphrase to identify any gaps or confusions.
shape what are you appealing to: intellect or emotions of the reader? What structure(s) have you used
progressions, comparisons, analogies, bald assertions, etc.? Are these aspects satisfyingly integrated?
Does structure support content?
tone what's your attitude to the subject? Is it appropriate to content and audience: assured, flexible,
sensitive, etc.?
word choice appropriate and uncontrived, economical, varied and energizing? Do you understand each
word properly, its common uses and associations? See if listing the verbs truly pushes the poem along.
Are words repeated? Do they set mood, emotional rapport, distance?
personification striking but persuasive, adds to unity and power?
metaphor and simile fresh and convincing, combining on many levels?
rhythm and metre natural, inevitable, integrate poem's structure?
rhyme (if employed) fresh, pleasurable, unassuming but supportive?
overall impression original, honest, coherent, expressive, significant?
Conclusions
Why practise criticism at all? Because it's interesting, and opens the door to a wider appreciation of
poetry, particularly that in other languages.
It's also unavoidable. Good writing needs continual appraisal and improvement, and both are better done
by the author, before the work is set in print. Most academics write articles rather than poems, but there
seems no reason why their skills should not deployed in creating things which by their own submission
are among the most demanding and worthwhile of human creations. Nor should poets despise
professional literary criticism. In short, the approaches of this section should give poets some of the tools
needed to assess their work, and to learn from the successful creations of others.
MARXIST VIEWS
Overview

Marxists believe that economic and social conditions determine religious beliefs,
legal systems and cultural frameworks. Art should not only represent such conditions
truthfully, but seek to improve them.
Marxist aesthetics is not flourishing in today's consumerist society, but continues to
ask responsible questions.
Introduction
Karl Marx (1818-83) turned Hegelism on its head. Far from making thought govern
the world, and seeing history as the gradual unfolding of Reason, Marx argued that
all mental systems (ideologies) were the products of social and economic realities. To
these realities he ascribed religious beliefs, legal systems and cultural expression.
Marx emphasized that it is not the consciousness of men that determines their social being, but the other
way about. And whereas philosophers have interpreted the world variously, the important need was to
change it.
But revolution did not come where the flaws in capitalism were most evident, in Germany or Britain, but
in Russia: an agrarian, perhaps even medieval country bankrupted by war and economic mismanagement.
Marx had not foreseen nor made provision for the increasing bureaucratic and centralized control of
industrialized societies, but this was precisely what Lenin and then Stalin were obliged to create. The
democratic and practical politics of Marx became abstract under Engels (dialectic materialism), and then
centralized under Lenin. The extreme poverty and backward nature of Russia, together with the wars
which the fledgling Bolshevik state fought against Tsarist and capitalist armies, called for extreme
measures. Art, philosophy and literature, which have always possessed some autonomy, were brought into
the war effort. They had to be accessible to the masses and promote their needs: the arts had to exemplify
and instruct. Entertainment could only be escapism and divert the proletariat from their task. At times the
arts must descend to propaganda to put their points across. Even censorship, self- or state-imposed, could
be required. Mistakes need to be pointed out, but political leaders should not be undermined, nor hardwon Marxist principles be thoughtlessly discredited. {1}
Theorists in Communist Regimes
Georg Lukcs (1885-1971) attempted a philosophical justification of Bolshevism in his 1923 History and
Class Consciousness and became the leading Marxist theoretician of literature, writing from the Soviet
Union and his native Hungary. {2} In Lukcs's view, realism meant more than rendering the surface
appearance: it meant providing a more complete, true, vivid and dynamic view of the world around.
Novels were reflections of life, and therefore not real, but they nonetheless involved the mental framing
that eluded photographic representation. Writers created an image of the richness and complexity of
society, and from this emerged a sense of order within the complexity and contradictions of lived
experience.
Lukcs also adopted the Hegelian dialectic in stressing the contradictions of class struggle. Capitalism
had destroyed the feudal order, replacing it by more efficient production. Yet the private accumulation of
capital was in its turn a necessary step to factory production, and from the consequent exploitation of
labour came social protest and finally communism.
Given this nineteenth century viewpoint, Lukcs had little patience with modernist experimentation. He
criticized the techniques of montage, inner monologues, streams of consciousness in writers like Joyce,
Kafka, Beckett and Faulkner, and saw these narrow concerns with subjective impressions as a
contribution to the angst and alienation prevalent in western societies. Capitalism deprived workers of a
common purpose, and the ideology of modernism then emphasized the triviality and impoverishment of
such isolated lives.
Bertolt Brecht, in contrast, was a maverick. He fled Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933,
wrote in exile during the war years, continued in America before being hauled in front of the McCarthy
Committee, and finally settled in East Germany where his prestige was a mixed blessing for the
authorities. Social realism was his detestation, and his famous technique of "baring the device" derives
from the Russian Formalist concept of defamiliarization. Actors in Brecht's plays express emotion, but
only by gestures which the audience can understand but not identify with. Improvisation is used

extensively, plus anything that came to hand: Brecht rejected a formal construction of plays and was
constantly attempting to unmask the disguises of an ever-devious capitalist system. {3}
The Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse went further than
Brecht in rejecting social realism altogether and by giving a privileged position to art and literature. These
alone can resist the domination of a totalitarian state. Popular art inevitably colludes with the economic
system that shapes it, whereas Modernism has the power to question. Art acts as an irritant, a negative
knowledge of the real world. Built of Freudian and Marxist elements, their Critical Theory advocates an
art that makes the down-trodden masses aware of their exploitation and helplessness. Absurd
discontinuities of discourse, the pared-down characterization, the plotless depiction of aimless lives all
these are needed to shake audiences from the comfortable notion that the horrors and degradations of the
twentieth century have left the world unchanged. Commercial exploitation of music in advertising and
films, for example, forces serious composers like Schoenberg to produce fragmental atonal work. Each
note is cut off from harmony with its neighbours and thus proceeds directly from the unconscious, much
as individuals are forced to fend for themselves in monolithic free-market systems. {4}
Walter Benjamin, though associated with Marxism and Surrealism, adopted various positions at first,
most of them subtle, not to say ambiguous. Art, he thought, occupied a fragile place between a regression
to a mythic nature and an election to moral grace. After his reading of Lukcs and meeting with Brecht,
he saw art as a montage of images specifically created for reproducibility. Stripped of mystique and ritual
awe, the artist had now to avoid exploitation by revolutionizing the forces of production. Technique was
the answer. Innovations arise in response to the asocial and fragmented conditions of urban existence, and
mass communications should be harnessed to politicize aesthetics. {5}
European Structuralist Marxists
Both Marxists and Structuralists see society as the fundamental reality. But where Marxists believe that
society is a historical entity, evolving out of contradictions, Structuralists believe that societies are
underlain by deep, self-regulating and unchanging rules. The Rumanian critic Lucien Goldman used
Structuralist ideas in his study of Racine's tragedies, finding similarities of form between the tragedies,
Jansenism and the French nobility. In his Pour une sociologie du roman of 1964, Goldman looked at the
modern novel, again finding elements that reflected the market economy. Just as the state and the big
corporations increasingly turn values into commodities, so we see objects in contemporary novels being
given a status formerly enjoyed by individuals.
Louis Althusser foreshadowed Poststructuralism by regarding society as decentred, having no overall
structure or governing principle. Levels exist, but in complex relationships of inner conflict and mutual
antagonism: a far cry from the economic foundations of simple Marxism. Art is something between
science and ideology, the latter being "a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to the
real conditions of their existence". Art is therefore not entirely a fiction, nor of course the view of its
author. {6}
Pierre Macherey's A Theory of Literary Production regarded a text as not an autonomous or once-created
object, but an assemblage of material unconsciously worked over. Ideology may be lived entirely
naturally, but once ideology enters into a text all its gaps and contradictions become exposed. The author
attempts to cover them up the very choice of saying something means that other things cannot be said
and the critic attends to the repressed and unspoken: a theory with obvious psychoanalytic
ramifications. Recently, Macherey has placed more emphasis on the educational system, and removed art
from the privileged status it enjoyed under Goldman and Althusser. {7}
Post-structuralist Marxism
The English Marxist Terry Eagleton took over the Althussian view that literary criticism should become a
science, but rejected the hope that literature could distance itself from ideology. Literature is simply a
reworking of ideology, by which Eagleton means a reworking of all those representations aesthetic,
religious, judicial which shape an individual's mental picture of lived experience. With the arrival of
Poststructuralism, Eagleton shifted from studies of the English novel to a reappraisal of Walter Benjamin,

employing Derridean deconstruction and Lacanian psychoanalysis to undermine certainties and fixed
forms of knowledge. {8}
The American Frederic Jameson sees ideology as strategies of containment which allow societies to
explain themselves by repressing the underlying contradictions of history (in a Hegelian sense.)
Texturally, these containments show themselves as formal patterns. Some are inescapable. Narrative, for
example, is how reality presents itself to the human mind, in science as well as art. And reality still exists,
exterior to human beings: Jameson does not accept the Poststructuralist view that everything is just a text.
Indeed, in his reading of Conrad's Lord Jim, Jameson shows how past interpretations impressionist,
Freudian, Existential, etc. both express something in the text and describe the demand for capital in the
modern state. {9}
Critique
Though the Marxist is one of the most vigorous and varied of twentieth century schools of aesthetics, its
bases of evaluation are difficult to establish. {10} Neither Marx nor Engels supposed that the
superstructure of the state political, legal, artistic simply reflected its economic constitution, but
insisted that such a constitution was still the ultimate reality. How men worked defined their existence and
aspirations. All other aspects of human life love, fraternity, nationalism, honesty, etc. had eventually
to be translated into economic terms, and these judged against Marxist orthodoxy.
Then there is the cultural life of communist countries. Marx stressed praxis, the practical, relative and
culturally determined. Regardless of what liberalism claimed in theory, the reality in nineteenth century
Europe was inequality and exploitation. Lenin, who had spent long years in exile struggling with the
theoretical aspects of Marxism, had clear notions of what theory implied and needed. Artistic freedom
may have been equated with social liberation in the heady days of the Bolshevik take-over, but cultural
diversity would only weaken a state fighting for its life. Experimentation was stigmatized as decadently
bourgeois, and the debate polarized between communist (good) and noncommunist (bad). Artists were
either for or against progressive ideology: there was no in-between.
So the social realism. Yet the trouble was not the stereotyping the tireless factory manager, the smiling
peasants but that the stereotyping was untrue. The communist world was very different from what
artists were allowed to show. Control was very crude. Art must provide appropriate models for behaviour
since what people read they would act upon, and criticism had therefore to be curtailed or stifled. And art
which the west might appraise on several grounds flowering of tradition, depth of feeling, subtlety and
expressiveness, keenness of observation, wealth of inventiveness came to be judged on one criterion
alone: political correctness. {11}
There are more fundamental problems. Literature is broad and richly diversified: Marxism is not. How
can the second encompass the first? Of course if Marxism were a scientific theory, a small number of
laws would serve to explain a wide range of effects. But Marxism is not a scientific theory. Deductions
from its generalizations have been spectacularly inaccurate. The rise in living standards of capitalist
working class; revolution in Russia of all places; the Russian-Chinese conflict; the repression under
Lenin, Stalin and all Soviet leaders to Gorbachev himself, the uprisings in Berlin, Budapest, and Prague.
Marxist theory "explained" all these events, but only by cooking up suspect subsidiary hypotheses. If
Marxism fails intellectually, do not its aesthetics fall to the ground? {12} Similarly, where supported by
them, is not Marxist aesthetics open to the objections levelled at Structuralism and Lacanian theory?
Not so, say modern Marxists. Possibly, at least outside China and North Korea, the communist world has
crumbled away, but events do not necessarily invalidate Marxism. We should study political thought and
the circulation and reproduction of capital in the modern state without the presuppositions of class
struggle. Moreover, totalitarian Russia under Stalin was very far from anything Marx envisaged, {13} and
it has seemed to some western economists that market economies succeed in spite of the farrago of
unproved and mutually conflicting theories they are taken as representing. {14}
Perhaps there is no one, coherent Marxist philosophy. The attempts outlined above to rehabilitate Marx
have drastically revised or even rewritten him. The same can be said of analytical Marxism, which has
combined analytical philosophy with economics and game theory. Both it and Marxist thought generally
(i.e. produced in western bourgeois societies: little was allowed inside communist countries) is

excessively theoretical and rarefied. It thrives in university departments of literature but not in the
workplace. Prominently, it fails in its first requirement, which is not simply to analyze society, but to
change it. {15}
But western apologists have answers. One is to take the line of Terry Eagleton's: "When Shakespeare's
texts cease to make us think, when we get nothing out of them, they will cease to have value. But why
they make us think, why we get something out of them (if only for the present) is a question which
must be referred at once to the ideological matrix of our reading and the ideological matrix of their
production. It is in the articulation of these distinct moments that the question of value
resides." {16}Unfortunately, the unspoken assumption is that the ideological matrix will endorse the
Marxist view. Certainly Shakespeare's plays offer abundant material for analysis in terms of social history,
late Renaissance thought, hermeticism, Tudor political theory, etc., but such analyses would start from
assumptions very different from Marxist, and reach different conclusions.
A second line is to postpone aesthetic discussion until bourgeois society is replaced by a more egalitarian,
Marxist society. Then perhaps the arts can enjoy a more independent role, and questions of political
subservience will fade away. Little in the world now encourages a Maxist solution, but American foreign
policy after 9/11, and the financial crisis, have accelerated a search for more viable societies.
Introduction to Literature: Marxism. Michael Delahoyde. http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/
marxist.crit.html. Short article and references.
2. Marxist Literary Criticism: Brief Guide. http://www.assumption.edu/users/ady/
HHGateway/Gateway/Marxistlitcrit.html. Short article.
3. Iain Sinclair: Revolutionary Novelist or Revolting Nihilist? Ben
Watson.http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/critlit/SINCLAIR.htm. Appreciative review of Sinclair's novels
and poetry.
5. Marxist Literary Criticism. Stephen Conway. 1996.http://www.subverbis.com/essays/marxistlitcrit.rtf.
Short but cogent article.
6. Marxism and Art: An Introduction to Trotskys Writings on Art. Alan Woods. Dec.
2000.http://www.trotsky.net/trotsky_year/
marxism_and_art.html. Long article, with links to more of Trotsky's writings.
7. Marxist Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/. Very extensive directory.
8. Marxism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism. Brief article but good links.
9. Karl Marx. Jonathan Wolff. Aug. 2003. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/ Detailed entry, with short
bibliography but only one link.
10. Georg Lukcs. Eve Tavor Bannet. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/georg_lukacs.html. Detailed article, with some intext links.
11. Existentialism. Georg Lukcs. 1945/2001. http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/lukacsx1.html.
Example of Lukcs's writing, translated from the German by Henry F. Mins.
12. Bertolt Brecht. http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc15.htm. Introduction, with a few links.
13. Bertolt Brecht. 1995. http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/ goodwoman/brecht_bio.html.
Encyclopaedia Britannica entry.
14. International Brecht Society. Feb. 2004. http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/german/brecht/index.html. Very
full resources.
15. Max Horkheimer. http://www.stub.uni-frankfurt.de/archive/ ehorkheimervita.htm. Detailed biography
and bibliography.
16. Theodor Adorno. http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-ador.htm. Brief outline of ideas, plus links.
17. Theodor Adorno. Brent Dean Robbins. 1999. http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Adorno.html. Very
extensive listings.
18. Theodor W. Adorno. Lambert Zuidervaart. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/. May 2003.
Detailed Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry.
19. Herbert Marcuse Association. Christian Fuchs. Aug. 2003. http://cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/
christian/marcuse/welcome.html. Good bibliographies and listings.
20. Fragments of the Passagenwerk. http://www.othervoices.org/gpeaker/Passagenwerk.html. A meander

through the Arcades project of Walter Benjamin

21. International Walter Benjamin Gesellschaft. Donate Lissner and Karl Solibakke. http://www.walterbenjamin.org/. Very extensive site, in German and English.
22. Walter Benjamin and Max Horkheimer: From utopia to redemption. Ilan GurZeev.http://construct.haifa.ac.il/~ilangz/Utopia4.html. Scholarly article on Frankfurt School.
23. Illuminations: The Critical Theory Website. Douglas Brown and Douglas Kellner. Dec.
1998.http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/. Short collections of links relating to the important figures
of the Frankfurt School.
24. Louis Althusser. Jan. 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Althusser. Introduction, with in-text
liks.
25. Marxist Media Theory: Althusser. Daniel Chandler. Oct. 2002. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/
Documents/marxism/marxism09.html. A critical look at Marxist media theory.
26. Louis Althusser Archive. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/. Brief articles and
links.
27. Louis Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses". Mary Klages. Nov.
2001.http://www.colorado.edu/English/
ENGL2012Klages/1997althusser.html. Marxism and Structuralism, an extended essay.
28. Pierre Macherey. Sep. 2003. http://www.generation-online.org/p/pmacherey.htm. Brief notes.
29. Terry Eagleton. 1999. http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/ critical/eagleton.htm. Brief
biography.
30. Ideology and Subjectivity: Marxist theory. Ron
Strickland.http://www.english.ilstu.edu/strickland/495/ideology.html. Course paper theory mentioning
Althusser, Eagleton and others.
31. In the Gaudy Supermarket. Terry Eagleton. May 1999. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n10/eagl01_.html. A
London Review of Books review of A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason: Toward a History of the
Vanishing Present by Gayatri Chakravorty.
32. Frederic Jameson. William McPheron. 1999. http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/jameson/.
Excellent introduction, with exerpts, interviews, links, etc.
33. 'Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' by Frederic Jameson. Wes Cecil.
1990.http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/
postmodernism/jameson_review.htm. Book review.
34. Fredric Jameson. Douglas Kellner. http://www.uta.edu/huma/ illuminations/kell19.htm. Rather
technical article on Jameson and Postmodernism.
35. Introduction to Modern Literary Theory. Kristi Siegel. Jan.
2003.http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm. Introduction to types, bibliographies and Internet listings.
36. Contemporary Critical Theory. Tim Spurgin. Oct. 1997. http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/
english/courses/60A/marxist.html. Useful booklist, but nothing on line.
37. Why Marx is man of the moment. Francis
Wheen.http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1530250,00.html. Sunday July 17, 2005
article in UK Observer on Marx's continuing relevance.

STRUCTURALIST CRITICISM
Structuralism is concerned not so much with what things mean, but how they mean; it is a science
designed to show that all elements of human culture, including literature, are understandable as parts of a
system of signs. This science of signs is called "semiotics" or "semiology." The goal is to discover the
codes, structures, and processes involved in the production of meaning. "Structuralism claims that human
culture itself is fundamentally a language, a complex system of signifieds (concepts) and signifiers. These
signifiers can be verbal (like language itself or literature) or nonverbal (like face painting, advertising, or
fashion)" (Biddle 80). Thus, linguistics is to language as structuralism is to literature.
Structuralists often would break myths into their smallest units, and realign corresponding ones. Opposite
terms modulate until resolved or reconciled by an intermediary third term.
Structuralism was a reaction to modern alienation and despair; it sought to recover literature from the
isolation in which it had been studied, since laws governing it govern all sign systems -- clothing, food,
body 'language,' etc.
What quickly became apparent, though, was that signs and words don't have meaning in and of
themselves, only in relations to other signs and entire systems. Hence, post-structuralism.
POST-STRUCTURALISM
Post-structuralism contests and subverts structuralism and formalism. Structuralists are convinced that
systematic knowledge is possible; post-structuralists claim to know only the impossibility of this
knowledge. They counter the possibility of knowing systematically a text by revealing the "grammar"
behind its form and meaning. Texts contradict not only the structuralist accounts of them, but also
themselves. All signifieds are also signifiers (a car symbolizes achievement).
DECONSTRUCTION
Deconstructive criticism posits an undecidability of meaning for all texts. The text has intertwined and
contradictory discourses, gaps, and incoherencies, since language itself is unstable and arbitrary. The
critic doesn't undermine the text; the text already dismantles itself. Its rhetoric subverts or undermines its
ostensible meaning.
Jacques Derrida opposed the "metaphysics of presence, . . . the claim in literature or philosophy that we
can find some full, rich meaning outside of or prior to language itself." The hierarchy of binaries on
which this assertion rests is untenable. Privileging speech over writing = logocentrism; spoken or written
words have meaning only by "differance" from other words. Deconstructive critics focus on the text like
the formalists, but direct attention to the opposite of the New Critical "unities." Instead, they view the
"decentering" of texts and point out incompatabilities, rhetorical grain-against-grain contradictions,
undecidability within texts. There is often a playfulness to deconstruction, but it can be daunting to read
too.