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LET Competencies:
Literary Criticism | 1
3. Survey of Literary Theories/Approaches
a.Classical Literary Theory. This theory is premised on the idea that literature is an imitation
of life. It is interested in looking at literature based on:
Mimesis (Plato). Mimesis is the Greek word for imitation. We try to see whether a
piece of literary work shows imitation of life or reality as we know it. If it is, what is
imitated? How is the imitation done? Is it a good or bad imitation?
Function (Horace). Function refers to whether a piece of literary work aims to
entertain (dulce) or to teach or to instruct (utile).
Style (Longinus). Style refers to whether the literary work is written in a low, middle,
or high style. Longinus even suggested a fourth style which he called the sublime.
Catharsis (Aristotle). Catharsis refers to purgation, purification, clarification, or
structural kind of emotional cleansing. Aristotle’s view of catharsis involves purging of
negative emotions, like pity and fear.
Censorship (Plato). Censorship is an issue for Plato for literary works that show bad
mimesis. Literary works that show bad mimesis should be censored according to
Plato.
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Revolution, and the American Depression.
On the other hand, the Moral-Philosophical approach emphasizes that the larger function
of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues. Literature is interpreted
within a context of the philosophical thought of a period or group. Jean Paul Sartre and
Albert Camus can be read profitably only if one understands existentialism. Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter is seen as a study of the effects of sin on a human soul.
Robert Frost’s “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” suggests that duty takes
precedence over beauty and pleasure.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-
meeting?
Be it so if you will; but, alas! It was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman brown. A stern, a
sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night of that
fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not
listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed strain.
When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, whit his hand on the
open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of
future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should
thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. …
c. Romantic Theory. William Wordsworth explained his idea on romanticism in his Preface
to the Second Edition of the Lyrical Ballads.
d. American New Criticism/New Criticism. This theory believes that literature is an organic
unity. It is independent of its author or the time when it was written or the historical context. It
is concerned solely with the ‘text in itself’, with its language and organization. It does not
primarily seek a text’s meaning, but how it speaks itself. It encourages attentive close reading
of texts, a kind of democratization of literary study in the classroom, in which nearly everyone
is placed on an equal footing in the face of a ‘blind text.’ It looks into how the parts relate to
each other, achieve its order and harmony, contain and resolve irony, paradox, tension,
ambivalence, and ambiguity.
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To use this theory, one proceeds by looking into the following:
the persona
the addressee
the situation (where and when)
what the persona says
the central metaphor (tenor and vehicle)
the central irony
the multiple meanings of words
In a station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the
crowd Petals on a wet, black bough
Ezra Pound
This approach also uses Northrop Frye’s assertion that literature consists of variations on a
great mythic theme that contains the following:
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e.g.
Lam-ang – archetype of immortality
Superman in the movie Superman Returns – death and rebirth archetype
Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings – wise old man archetype
g. Odysseus - hero of initiation
Aeneas – hero of the quest
Jesus Christ – sacrificial scapegoat
Structuralist Literary Theory. This theory draws from the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de
Saussure. Language is a system or structure. Our perception of reality, and hence the ways
we respond to it are dictated or constructed by the structure of the language we speak.
This theory assumes that literature, as an artifact of culture, is modeled on the structure of
language. The emphasis is on ‘how’ a text means, instead of the ‘what’ of the American
New Criticism. The structuralists argue that the structure of language produces reality, and
meaning is no longer determined by the individual but by the system which governs the
individual. Structuralism aims to identify the general principles of literary structure and not to
provide interpretations of individual texts (Vladimir Propp and Tzvetan Todorov).
The structuralist approach to literature assumes three dimensions in the individual literary
texts:
the text as a particular system or structure in itself (naturalization of a text)
texts are unavoidably influenced by other texts, in terms of both their formal and
conceptual structures; part of the meaning of any text depends on its intertextual
relation to other texts
the text is related to the culture as a whole (binary oppositions)
Jabberwocky
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
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h. Deconstruction. This theory questions texts of all kinds and our common practices in
reading them. It exposes the gaps, the incoherences, the contradictions in a discourse and
how a text undermines itself. The deconstructionist critic begins by discerning a flaw in the
discourse and then revealing the hidden articulations.
Deconstructing a text calls for careful reading and a bit of creativity. The text says
something other than what it appears to say. The belief is that language always betrays its
speaker (especially when there is a metaphor).
A deconstructive critic deals with the obviously major features of a text, and then he/she
vigorously explores its oppositions, reversals, and ambiguities. The most important figure in
deconstruction is the Frenchman Jacques Derrida.
How to do deconstruction:
identify the oppositions in the text
determine which member appears to be favored or privileged and look for
evidence that contradicts that favoring or privileging
expose the text’s indeterminacy
Prison
Mila D. Aguilar
Prison is
a double wall;
one of adobe,
the other
so many layers
of barbed wire,
both formidable.
The outer wall
is guarded
from watch towers.
The other is the prison
within,
where they will
hammer you
into the image
of their own likeness
whoever they are.
i. Russian Formalism. This theory stresses that art is artificial and that a great deal of
acquired skill goes into it as opposed to the old classical maxim that true art conceals its art.
The Russian Formalists, led by Viktor Shklovsky, aimed to establish a ‘science of literature’
– a complete knowledge of the formal effects (devices, techniques, etc.) which together
make up what is called literature. The Formalists read literature to discover its literariness –
to highlight the devices and technical elements introduced by the writer in order to make
language literary.
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distorting time in various ways – foreshortening, skipping, expanding, transposing, reversing,
flashback and flashforward, and so on.
Defamilairization – this means making strange. Everything must be dwelt upon and described
as if for the first time. Ordinary language encourages the automatization of our perceptions
and tends to diminish our awareness of reality. It simply confirms things as we know them
(e.g. the leaves are falling from the trees; the leaves are green).
Retardation of the narrative – the technique of delaying and protracting actions. Shklovsky
draws attention to the ways in which familiar actions are defamiliarized by being slowed
down, drawn out or interrupted. Digressions, displacement of the parts of the book, and
extended descriptions are all devices to make us attend to form.
Naturalization – refers to how we endlessly become inventive in finding ways of making sense
of the most random or chaotic utterances or discourse. We refuse to allow a text to remain
alien and stay outside our frames of reference – we insist on ‘naturalizing’ it.
Carnivalization – the term Mikhail Bakhtin uses to describe the shaping effect of carnival on
literary texts. The festivities associated with the Carnival are collective and popular;
hierarchies are turned on their heads (fools become wise; kings become beggars); opposites
are mingled (fact and fantasy, heaven and hell); the sacred is profaned; the rigid or serious
is subverted, mocked or loosened.
old age sticks
up Keep
Off
signs) &
scolds Forbid
den Stop
Must
n’t Don’t
j. Marxist Literary Theory. This theory aims to explain literature in relation to society –
that literature can only be properly understood within a larger framework of social
reality. Marxists believe that any theory that treats literature in isolation (for instance, as
pure structure or as a product of the author’s individual mental processes) and keeps it
in isolation, divorcing it from history and society, will be deficient in its ability to explain
what literature is.
Marxist literary critics start by looking at the structure of history and society and then
see whether the literary work reflects or distorts this structure. Literature must have a
social dimension – it exists in time and space; in history and society. A literary work
must speak to concerns that readers recognize as relevant to their lives.
Marxist literary criticism maintains that a writer’s social class and its prevailing
‘ideology’ (outlook, values, tacit assumptions, etc.) have a major bearing on what is
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written by a member of that class. The writers are constantly formed by their social
contexts.
Learn, he said,
learn words
that you may pry off
these letters
that have made me
old and bent.
I came back
many years later
with my words
I knew he wanted
but by then
it was too late.
I listened to him
die with words:
you are lucky
to have learned words
they will keep you
from having bent shoulders.
By his deathbed
I cried
and spat off
letters while
my shoulders bent
with grief.
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Feminism asks why women have played a subordinate role to men in the society. It is
concerned with how women’s lives have changed throughout history and what about
women’s experience is different from men.
Feminist literary criticism studies literature by women for how it addresses or expresses
the particularity of women’s lives and experience. It also studies the male-dominated
canon in order to understand how men have used culture to further their domination of
women.
Critics like Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Ellman, and Kate Millett were among the first to
reveal that throughout literary history women have been conceived of as ‘other,’ as
somehow abnormal or deviant. As a result, female literary characters have been
stereotyped as bitches, sex goddesses, ols maids. For the first time in history, criticism
posited a female reader for whom stereotypes of womanhood were offensive.
I
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
II
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race will run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
III
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse and the worst
Times still succeed the former.
IV
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
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There is a need to escape from the implicit body of assumptions to which English, the
language of the colonizing power, was attached: its aesthetic and social values, the
formal and historically limited constraints of genre, and the oppressive political and
cultural assertion of metropolitan dominance – of center over margin.
Postcolonial critics also study diasporic texts outside the usual Western genres,
especially productions by aboriginal authors, marginalized ethnicities, immigrants, and
refugees.
‘…Then a knock at the door and a young man in heavily starched white shorts and shirt comes in to
offer his services as cook.
“Wetin you fit cook?” asked Chief Nanga as he perused the man’s sheaf of testimonial, probably not
one of them genuine.
“I fit cook every European chop like steak and kidney pie, chicken puri, misk grill, cake omelette.
…”
“You no sabi cook African chop?”
“Ahh! That one I no sabi am- o,” he admitted. “I no go tell master lie.” “Wetin
you de chop for your own house?” I asked, being irritated by the idiot.
“Wetin I de chop for my house?” he repeated after me. “Na we country chop I de
chop.” “You country chop no be Africa chop?” asked Chief Nanga.
“Na him,” admitted the cook. “But no be me de cook am. I get wife for house.”
My irritation vanished at once and I joined Chief nanga’s laughter. Greatly encouraged the cook
added:
“How man wey get family go begin enter kitchen for make bitterleaf and egusi? Unless if the man
no get shame.” (p. 46)
from A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe
Following World War II a new kind of society began to emerge, variously called post-
industrial society, multinational capitalism, consumer society, media society. This
society is characterized by:
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a new type of consumption
planned obsolescence
ever more rapid rhythm of fashion and styling changes
the penetration of advertising, television, and the media
the replacement of the old tension between city and country, center and
province, by the suburb and by universal standardization
the growth of the great networks of superhighways and the arrival of the
automobile culture
The term postmodern has been applied to a style or a sensibility manifesting itself in any
creative endeavor which exhibits some element of self-consciousness and reflexivity.
fragmentation intertextuality
discontinuity decentring
indeterminacy dislocation
plurality ludism
metafictionality parody
heterogeneity pastiche
Perhaps the greatest liberating feature of postmodern writing has been the mixing of
writings and intertextual referencing. The borders between genres have become more
fluid. Artists and writers no longer quote texts; they incorporate them, to the point where
the line between high art and commercial forms seems increasingly difficult to draw.
Examples:
The works of Andy Warhol
The poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Haryette Mullen, Susan Howe
The novels of Don de Lillo, Jasper Fforde, Thomas Pynchon, William Gibson
Movies like Moulin Rouge, Matrix, Vanilla Sky, Inception, Adjustment Bureau, Stranger
than Fiction, Mamma Mia
The works of Michel Foucault
n. Reader Response Criticism can be seen as a reaction in part to some problems and
limitations perceived in New Criticism. New Criticism did not suddenly fail to function: it
remains an effective critical strategy for illuminating the complex unity of certain literary
works. But some works do not seem to respond well to New Criticism’s ‘close reading.’
New ideas about the conceptual nature of knowledge, even scientific knowledge,
questioned a fundamental assumption of New Criticism. New Criticism was arguably
emulating the sciences; but in the wake of Einstein’s theory of relativity, Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle, or Gӧ del’s mathematics, and much else, it seems clear that the
perceiver plays an active role in the making of any meaning, and that literary works in
particular have a subjective status (as opposed to New Criticism’s objective reality of
the literary work).
For the believers of reader-response theories (Rosenblatt, Bleich, Fish), the object of
observation appears changed by the act of observation. ‘Knowledge is made by
people, not found,’ according to David Bleich (1978). Writing about literature should not
involve suppressing readers’ individual concerns, anxieties, passions, enthusiasms. A
response to a literary work always helps us find out something about ourselves. Every
act of response, he continues, reflects the shifting motivations and perceptions of the
reader at the moment. Readers undergo a process of ‘negotiation’ with a community of
readers to seek a common ground.
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Louise Rosenblatt (1978) called for criticism that involved a ‘personal sense of
literature, an unself-conscious, spontaneous, and honest reaction,’ but this should be
checked against the text and modified in a continuing process. While multiple
interpretations are accepted, some readings are considered incorrect or inappropriate
because they are unsupportable by the text. The focus is on the ‘transaction’ between
the text and the reader, i.e. a poem is made by the text and the reader interacting.
Stanley Fish (1980, 1989) moves away from the idea of an ideal reader who finds
his/her activity marked out, implied, in the text, and he moves toward the idea of a
reader who creates a reading of the text using certain interpretive strategies. Three (3)
important questions need to be asked by the reader:
a. How do I respond to this work?
b. How does the text shape my response?
c. How might other readers respond?
Fire and Ice
Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
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