Text and ContextWhat is Literary Studies?…what is it for, and how do we do it?

ENG 110 Introduction to Literary Studies – Week 1

What is the purpose of literature and why do we read?

PLEASURE

ESCAPISM

KNOWLEDGE

INTELLECTUALDEVELOPMENT

EMPATHY

LITERACY

UNLOCKMEANING

INTERPRETIVESKILLS

MORALITY/SOCIAL GOOD

Aesthetics (OED)Adjective:

concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty:the pictures give great aesthetic pleasure

giving or designed to give pleasure through beauty:the law applies to both functional and aesthetic objects

Noun:

a set of principles underlying the work of a particular artist or artistic movement:the Cubist aesthetic

Origin: late 18th century (in the sense 'relating to perception by the senses'): from Greek aisthētikos, from aisthēta 'perceptible things', from aisthesthai 'perceive'. The sense 'concerned with beauty' was coined in German in the mid 18th century and adopted into English in the early 19th century.

Ethics (OED)

Noun[usually treated as plural] moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity: medical ethics also enter into the question

[usually treated as singular] the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles: neither metaphysics nor ethics is the home of religion

The term ‘ethics’ has perhaps come to replace the idea of ‘morality’ in the way we think about literary texts in C20th and C21st.

What is Literary Studies?

✎a discipline and a method

Joseph J. Kockelmans, Interdisciplinarity and Higher Education (Penn State Press, 1975), pp.16-17

Disciplina - from the Latin term for instruction.

By the medieval period discipline meant: • the seven liberal arts, taught at

University• any subject taught at university• branches of learning that

proceed methodologically (mathematics and logic)

• science

Liberal Arts:• Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric,

Logic)• Quadrivium (Mathematics,

Geometry, Music and Astronomy)

• governed by Philosophy

From Herrad von Landsberg, Hortus Deliciarum, c. 1180

Literary Studies and the Renaissance

HumanitiesRenaissance Humanism (15th century Italy)

• studia humanitatis (the studies of humanity)• this new curriculum included grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and

moral philosophy

“… a) the concept of a unique, autonomous, personal self, to be shaped through b) the study of the language and literature of ancient Greece and Rome, c) according to the perspectives of a group of primarily literary academic disciplines.”

Proctor, Robert E. Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools : With a Curriculum for Today’s Students (Indiana University Press, 1998), p.13.

Philip Sidney - the beginnings of English

literary criticism?

Poets “indeed, do merely make to imitate, and imitate both to delight and teach, and delight to move men to take that goodness in hand, which without delight they would fly as from a stranger; and teach to make them know that goodness whereunto they are moved: - which being the noblest scope to which ever any learning was directed”

“Poesy” he says “is an art of imitation,” it produces a speaking picture, with this end, - to teach and delight.”

In 1580 Sidney writes the “Defense of Poesy” in response to Stephen Gosson’s attack on the literary arts, and theatre.

Literary Studies from the mid-C20th

Literary theory challenges the idea that a "good" text (in aesthetic terms) = "good" text (in moral terms)

Some of the theoretical schools/approaches we cover in this module:

• New Historicism• Psychoanalysis• Marxism• Feminism• Deconstruction/Ethics• Postcolonialism

Morality or Ethics?

Stephen Tanner claims that ‘ethical’ has replaced the term ‘moral’ in literary criticism (58)

“Unlike ‘moral,’ which suggests a universal and unchanging foundation in human nature, ‘ethical’ suggests a constructed code appropriate for certain groups or situations.” (58)

What do Literary Critics do?

Critical Toolbox

Textual analysis – develop interpretive skills

Scholarship - critical material written by literary scholars

Historical context

Theoretical frameworks – feminism, psychoanalysis

Always start and finish with the text