Assn. in LIterary Crit.

8/10/2019 Assn. in LIterary Crit.

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James C. Royo Eng29 (Literary Criticism)

10:00 11:00 Prof. Aileen Talidano

1. Explain Literary Criticism.

Literary criticism is the evaluation, analysis, description, or interpretation of literary works. Itis usually in the form of a critical essay, but in-depth book reviews can sometimes be consideredliterary criticism. Criticism may examine a particular literary work, or may look at an author'swritings as a whole.

2.

Types of Literary CriticismFormalist Criticism

--This type of criticism concerns itself with the parts of a text and how the parts fit together tomake a whole. Because of this, it does not bring in any information outside of the text: biographyof the author, historical or literary allusions, mythological patterns, or the psychoanalytical traitsof the characters (except those traits specifically described in the text.)

--The formalist critic examines each part of the text: the 46 chapters, the 15 parts, the characters,

the settings, the tone, the point of view, the diction, the fictional world in which the characterslive. After analyzing each part of the text, the critic then describes how they work together.

Traditional Criticism

In traditional criticism, you examine how the authors life, his or h er biographical information, isreflected in the work. You research all facets of his background and find traces of his or herexperiences shown in the text. Question how the work sho ws pieces of the authors past, his/herinterests, biases, etc.

Sociological CriticismThis type of criticism can include discussions of society, of social relationships, and of

historical events which might affect society during the time period of the work.

In Sociological criticism, you should examine all types of politics--for example Marxism,feminism, totalitarianism, primitivism--not just conservatism and liberalism. Concentrate on how


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societies in the various political isms distinguish between members of various races, socialclasses, sexes, or cultures. The sociological critic looks for themes of oppression and liberation;such themes may concern an individual, a family, a small group, or an entire society.

Marxism * (cover under sociological)

The 'Frankfurt School' a nd Walter Benjamin :(Horkheimer, Adorno)...Literature the only placewhere totalitarian society can be resisted...Detachment gives significance and power...Popular artan expression of the economic system which shapes it. Modern technology has profoundlyaltered the status of art...No longer the preserve of a special elite...New media destroy the"religious" feeling toward art...Art becomes designed for "reproducibility"...Art more open to

politics.

Structuralist

Emphasis: How works can be understood, the conventions that enable readers to make sense ofthem. Examine how the work is built, constructed.There are "rules" that govern interpretation of texts. Look at exposition, flashbacks,foreshadowing, syntax, diction. Ask yourself, How is the work put together to developmeaning?To be a skilled reader means that one knows the conventions of meaning which allow a personto make sense of it

Feminist Criticism

Women readers bring different perceptions/expectations to literary experience Challenge to the"canon"--the whole body of texts that make up the traditionConcerned with literary representations of the female...exclusion of the female voice fromliterature, criticism, theoryStereotypes of women

Images of women in literature...exclusion of women from literary history in patriarc halsocieties...connection between social and literary mistreatment of women... Females obscured by "patriarchal values...Search for the "female imagination," the "female

plot"Challenging of the most basic assumptions


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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.

Post-structuralism

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,
http://www.textetc.com/criticism/rhetoric-approaches.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/stylistics.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/metaphor-approaches.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/poststructuralist-criticism.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/myth-criticism.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/myth-criticism.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/poststructuralist-criticism.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/metaphor-approaches.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/stylistics.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism/rhetoric-approaches.html


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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.

3. Theories of Literary Criticism

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:

Cambridge School (1920s

1930s): A group of scholars at Cambridge Universitywho rejected historical and biographical analysis of texts in favor of close readings of the texts

themselves.

Chicago School (1950s): A group, formed at the University of Chicago in the 1950s, that

drew on Aristotles distinctions between the various ele ments within a narrative to analyze the

relation between form and structure. Critics and Criticisms: Ancient and Modern (1952) is themajor work of the Chicago School.

Deconstruction (1967 present): A philosophical approach to reading, first advanced

by Jacques Derrida that attacks the assumption that a text has a single, stable meaning. Derrida

suggests that all interpretation of a text simply constitutes further texts, which means there is no

outside the text at all. Therefore, it is impossible for a t ext to have stable meaning. The practice

of deconstruction involves identifying the contradictions within a texts claim to have a single,

stable meaning, and showing that a text can be taken to mean a variety of things that differ

significantly from what it purports to mean.


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Feminist criticism (1960s present): An umbrella term for a number of different

critical approaches that seek to distinguish the human experience from the male experience.

Feminist critics draw attention to the ways in which patriarchal social structures have

marginalized women and male authors have exploited women in their portrayal of them.

Although feminist criticism dates as far back as Mary Wollstonecrafts A Vindication of the

Rights of Woman (1792) and had some significant advocates in the early 20th century, such as

Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, it did not gain widespread recognition as a theoretical

and political movement until the 1960s and 1970s.

Psychoanalytic criticism: Any form of criticism that draws on psychoanalysis, the practice of analyzing the role of unconscious psychological drives and impulses in shaping

human behavior or artistic production. The three main schools of psychoanalysis are named for

the three leading figures in developing psychoanalytic theory: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and

Jacques Lacan.

Freudian criticism (c. 1900 present): The view of art as the imagined fulfillment of

wishes that reality denies. According to Freud, artists sublimate their desires and translate their

imagined wishes into art. We, as an audience, respond to the sublimated wishes that we share

with the artist. Working from this view, an artists biography becomes a useful tool in

interpreting his or her work. Freudian criticism is also used as a term to describe the analysi s

of Freudian images within a work of art.

Jungian criticism (1920s present): A school of criticism that draws on Carl Jungs

theory of the collective unconscious, a reservoir of common thoughts and experiences that all

cultures share. Jung holds that literature is an expression of the main themes of the collective

unconscious, and critics often invoke his work in discussions of literary archetypes.


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Lacanian criticism (c. 1977 present ): Criticism based on Jacques Lacans view that

the unconscious, and our perception of ourselves, is shaped in the symbolic order of language

rather than in the imaginary order of prelinguistic thought. Lacan is famous in literary circles

for his influential reading of Edgar Allan Poes The Purloined Letter.

Marxist criticism: An umbrella term for a number of critical approaches to literature that

draw inspiration from the social and economic theories of Karl Marx. Marx maintained that

material production, or economics, ultimately determines the course of history, and in turn

influences social structures.These social structures, Marx argued, are held in place by thedominant ideology, which serves to reinforce the interests of the ruling class. Marxist criticism

approaches literature as a struggle with social realities and ideologies.

Frankfurt School (c. 1923 1970): A group of German Marxist thinkers associated

with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. These thinkers applied the principles of

Marxism to a wide range of social phenomena, including literature. Major members of theFrankfurt School include Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Herbert

Marcuse, and Jrgen Habermas.

New Criticism (1930s 1960s): Coined in John Crowe Ransoms The New Criticism

(1941), this approach discourages the use of history and biography in interpreting a literary work.

Instead, it encourages readers to discover the meaning of a work through a detailed analysis of

the text itself. This approach was popular in the middle of the 20th century, especially in the

United States, but has since fallen out of favor.


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New Historicism (1980s present): An approach that breaks down distinctions

between literature and historical context by examining the contemporary production and

reception of literary texts, including the dominant social, political, and moral movements of the

time. Stephen Greenblatt is a leader in this field, which joins the careful textual analysis of New

Criticism with a dynamic model of historical research.

New Humanism (c. 1910 1933): An American movement, led by Irving Babbitt and

Paul Elmer More, that embraced conservative literary and moral values and advocated a return to

humanistic education.

Post-structuralism (1960s 1970s): A movement that comprised, among other things,

Deconstruction, Lacanian criticism, and the later works of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault.

It criticized structuralism for its claims to scientific objectivity, including its assumption that the

system of signs in which language operates was stable.

Queer theory (1980s present): A constructivist (as opposed to essentialist)

approach to gender and sexuality that asserts that gender roles and sexual identity are social

constructions rather than an essential, inescapable part of our nature. Queer theory consequently

studies literary texts with an eye to the ways in which different authors in different eras construct

sexual and gender identity. Queer theory draws on certain branches of feminist criticism and

traces its roots to the first volume of Michel Foucaults History of Se xuality (1976).

Russian Formalism (1915 1929): A school that attempted a scientific analysis of the

formal literary devices used in a text. The Stalinist authorities criticized and silenced the

Formalists, but Western critics rediscovered their work in the 1960s. Ultimately, the Russian

Formalists had significant influence on structuralism and Marxist criticism.


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Structuralism (1950s 1960s): An intellectual movement that made significant

contributions not only to literary criticism but also to philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and

history. Structuralist literary critics, such as Roland Barthes, read texts as an interrelated system

of signs that refer to one another rather than to an external meaning that is fixed either by

author or reader. Structuralist literary theory draws on the work of the Russian Formalists, as

well as the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure and C. S. Peirce.

Is Object ivi ty 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.


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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


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can be nebulous or plainly wrong. Speculative theory self-referencing, 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?

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


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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.

4. How to Use It?

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.


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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?


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Reference:

http://www.textetc.com/criticism.html

http://www.scribd.com/doc/18167893/Types-of-Literary-Criticism

http://literarybible.blogspot.com/2009/06/basic-types-of-literary-criticism.html

http://literarybible.blogspot.com/search/label/literary%20theory

http://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48496
http://www.textetc.com/criticism.htmlhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism.htmlhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/18167893/Types-of-Literary-Criticismhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/18167893/Types-of-Literary-Criticismhttp://literarybible.blogspot.com/2009/06/basic-types-of-literary-criticism.htmlhttp://literarybible.blogspot.com/2009/06/basic-types-of-literary-criticism.htmlhttp://literarybible.blogspot.com/search/label/literary%20theoryhttp://literarybible.blogspot.com/search/label/literary%20theoryhttp://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48496http://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48496http://www.ipl.org/div/pf/entry/48496http://literarybible.blogspot.com/search/label/literary%20theoryhttp://literarybible.blogspot.com/2009/06/basic-types-of-literary-criticism.htmlhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/18167893/Types-of-Literary-Criticismhttp://www.textetc.com/criticism.html

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