1. What Is Literary Theory?
Differences among schools
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Differences among schools
The different interpretive and epistemological perspectives of different schools of theory often arise from, and so give support to, different moral and political commitments. For instance, the work of the New Critics often contained an implicit moral dimension, and sometimes even a religious one: a New Critic might read a poem by T. S. Eliot or Gerard Manley Hopkins for its degree of honesty in expressing the torment and contradiction of a serious search for belief in the modern world. Meanwhile, a Marxist critic might find such judgments merely ideological rather than critical; the Marxist would say that the New Critical reading did not keep enough critical distance from the poem's religious stance to be able to understand it.[citation needed] Or a post-structuralist critic might simply avoid the issue by understanding the religious meaning of a poem as an allegory of meaning, treating the poem's references to "God" by discussing their referential nature rather than what they refer to.[citation needed] A critic using Darwinian literary studies might use arguments from the evolutionary psychology of religion.[citation needed] Such a disagreement cannot be easily resolved, because it is inherent in the radically different terms and goals (that is, the theories) of the critics. Their theories of reading derive from vastly different intellectual traditions: the New Critic bases his work on an East-Coast American scholarly and religious tradition, while the Marxist derives his thought from a body of critical social and economic thought, the post-structuralist's work emerges from twentieth-century Continental philosophy of language, and the Darwinian from the modern evolutionary synthesis.[citation needed] In the late 1950s, the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye attempted to establish an approach for reconciling historical criticism and New Criticism while addressing concerns of early reader-response and numerous psychological and social approaches. His approach, laid out in his Anatomy of Criticism, was explicitly structuralist, relying on the assumption of an intertextual "order of words" and universality of certain structural types. His approach held sway in English literature programs for several decades but lost favor during the ascendance of post-structuralism. For some theories of literature (especially certain kinds of formalism), the distinction between "literary" and other sorts of texts is of paramount importance. Other schools (particularly post-structuralism in its various forms: new historicism, deconstruction, some strains of Marxism and feminism) have sought to break down distinctions between the two and have applied the tools of textual interpretation to a wide range of "texts", including film, non-fiction, historical writing, and even cultural events. Mikhail Bakhtin argued that the "utter inadequacy" of literary theory is evident when it is forced to deal with the novel; while other genres are fairly stabilized, the novel is still developing.[7] Another crucial distinction among the various theories of literary interpretation is intentionality, the amount of weight given to the author's own opinions about and intentions for a work. For most pre-20th century approaches, the author's intentions are a guiding factor and an important determiner of the "correct" interpretation of texts. The New Criticism was the first school to disavow the role of the author in interpreting texts, preferring to focus on "the text itself" in a close reading. In fact, as much contention as there is between formalism and later schools, they share the tenet that the author's interpretation of a work is no more inherently meaningful than any other. Schools
Aestheticism – associated with Romanticism, a philosophy defining aesthetic value as the primary goal in understanding literature. This includes both literary critics who have tried to understand and/or identify aesthetic values and those like Oscar Wilde who have stressed art for art's sake. Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Harold Bloom African-American literary theory American pragmatism and other American approaches Harold Bloom, Stanley Fish, Richard Rorty Cognitive literary theory – applies research in cognitive neuroscience, cognitive evolutionary psychology and anthropology, and philosophy of mind to the study of literature and culture. Frederick Luis Aldama, Mary Thomas Crane, Nancy Easterlin, William Flesch, David Herman, Suzanne Keen, Patrick Colm Hogan, Alan Richardson, Ellen Spolsky, Blakey Vermeule, Lisa Zunshine Cambridge criticism – close examination of the literary text and the relation of literature to social issues I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, Q.D. Leavis, William Empson. Critical race theory Cultural studies – emphasizes the role of literature in everyday life Raymond Williams, Dick Hebdige, and Stuart Hall (British Cultural Studies); Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno; Michel de Certeau; also Paul Gilroy, John Guillory Dark Side of the Rainbow – a strategy of analyzing works with the accompaniment of music and finding and extrapolating thematic similarities between the two, named after a popular practice that came about in the 1970s Darwinian literary studies – situates literature in the context of evolution and natural selection Deconstruction – a strategy of "close" reading that elicits the ways that key terms and concepts may be paradoxical or self-undermining, rendering their meaning undecidable Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Gayatri Spivak, Avital Ronell Descriptive poetics Brian McHale Feminist literary criticism Eco-criticism – explores cultural connections and human relationships to the natural world Gender (see feminist literary criticism) – which emphasizes themes of gender relations Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Elaine Showalter Formalism – a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text German hermeneutics and philology Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Erich Auerbach, René Wellek Marxism (see Marxist literary criticism) – which emphasizes themes of class conflict Georg Lukács, Valentin Voloshinov, Raymond Williams, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin Narratology New Criticism – looks at literary works on the basis of what is written, and not at the goals of the author or biographical issues W. K. Wimsatt, F. R. Leavis, John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, T.S. Eliot New historicism – which examines the work through its historical context and seeks to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose, Jonathan Goldberg, H. Aram Veeser Postcolonialism – focuses on the influences of colonialism in literature, especially regarding the historical conflict resulting from the exploitation of less developed countries and indigenous peoples by Western nations Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha and Declan Kiberd Postmodernism – criticism of the conditions present in the twentieth century, often with concern for those viewed as social deviants or the Other Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Maurice Blanchot Post-structuralism – a catch-all term for various theoretical approaches (such as deconstruction) that criticize or go beyond Structuralism's aspirations to create a rational science of culture by extrapolating the model of linguistics to other discursive and aesthetic formations Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva Psychoanalysis (see psychoanalytic literary criticism) – explores the role of consciousnesses and the unconscious in literature including that of the author, reader, and characters in the text Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Harold Bloom, Slavoj Žižek, Viktor Tausk Queer theory – examines, questions, and criticizes the role of gender identity and sexuality in literature Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Michel Foucault Reader-response criticism – focuses upon the active response of the reader to a text Louise Rosenblatt, Wolfgang Iser, Norman Holland, Hans-Robert Jauss, Stuart Hall Realist James Wood Russian formalism Victor Shklovsky, Vladimir Propp Structuralism and semiotics (see semiotic literary criticism) – examines the universal underlying structures in a text, the linguistic units in a text and how the author conveys meaning through any structures Ferdinand de Saussure, Roman Jakobson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Mikhail Bakhtin, Juri Lotman, Umberto Eco, Jacques Ehrmann, Northrop Frye and morphology of folklore Other theorists: Robert Graves, Alamgir Hashmi, John Sutherland, Leslie Fiedler, Kenneth Burke, Paul Bénichou, Barbara Johnson, Blanca de Lizaur Realism, Naturalism, Modernism 1940-1960 [Study Notes] Literary historians arbitrarily carve out the decades between 1940 to 1960 as “realism, naturalism and modernism” as an extraordinarily fertile moment in the development of African American writing. This era produced a rich and complex collection of writings and many diverse pieces for literary and cultural magazines although standard literary histories tend to obscure those writers.
War, Migration, Desegregation, and Social Revolution We use World War II as the outer boundary of this period, during the second wave of the Great Migration. Many African Americans headed for economic opportunity in the major war industries or went abroad to fight. Truman created the Commission on Civil Rights in 1947. In 1954 there was Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education which desegregated public schools. In 1955 Alabama saw the Bus Boycott which began the “nonviolent protest movement.” African American literary production from the 1940s to the 1960s is emphatically northern, urban, and set mainly in the black American culture capitals: Chicago, Boston, and Harlem. White youth copied the zoot suit vogue, along with many elements of bop, or hip talk. This language of hip, or the “new poetry of the proletariat” introduced a distinctly black urban idiom into the American language. Urban sensibility pervades the literature with the signs, sights, and sounds of the city. Setting the tone was Richard Wright’s 1940 publishing sensation Native Son. Urban Realism At least in strictly literary terms, Wright’s novel christened the 1940s decade. A book of the Month Club selection, Native Son made Wright the first African American writer to receive both critical acclaim and commercial success simultaneously. After him, other black writers began to be noticed. Wright is credited with having set the stage for these successes and creating publishing opportunities for many black writers. Native Son greatly transformed American culture and African American letters of the post-World War II era. Wright, along with Alain Locke and others, set a tone that black writers should no longer care for or serve their white audience. Their work should be focused on true self-expression for their own people about their own issues. Wright used ingredients from Marxism, social protest, urban and secular ideas. Native Son shaped a radically new agenda and established for African American writing a new center of gravity, one that documented the gritty realities of urban living for black Americans filtered through the lenses of urban sociology and the conventions of naturalism. Wright began investigating the Chicago School of Urban Sociology, especially its theories about juvenile delinquency and the urban environment. What forces and powers were at play in the social environment? He used his character of Bigger Thomas to show how the environment affects the mind, body, and spirit and this technique was seen as a form of social protest. Social protest writing did not begin with Wright; it was there in the fugitive slave narrative, the abolitionist orator, poets, essays, pamphlets, letters, and in the novels of racial uplift. With the emergence of Richard Wright, black art and social protest were one and the same. Protest not only blended optimally with the aesthetics of naturalism and the reportorial practices of journalism and urban sociology but worked organically with a range of cultural activity–including grassroots organizing–underpinning a self-styled radical literary and intellectual movement. Other writers have been associated with the Wright style. William Attaway’s Blood on the Forge, Chester Himes’s The Lonely Crusade and If He Hollers Let Him Go, Ann Petry’s The Street. Ellison and Black Modernist Fiction There was a burgeoning vision of integration as a social ideal that called for minimizing emphatically racial subject matter with an “integrationist” temper. There was a call for “non-Negro” or nonracial subject matter, especially in the novel. Black characters and black urban setting seemed no longer central. For most critics, though, the turn from urban realism had less to do with integrationist ideals than with the exhaustion of the mode itself. It took the success of Invisible Man to further liberate those African American writers already chafing under the narrative straitjacket of realism and naturalism and thus breaking free of the pressures to protest injustice. Invisible Man had an experimental attitude and a commitment to social responsibility. It was the novel as artistic form and not primarily concerned with injustice, but with art. Modernism was being explored before Ellison. There was much debate over his work. Centering the plots of African American literary history, from 1940 to 1960, on the Wright-Baldwin-Ellison controversy and the paradigm of protest writing has resulted in a brotherhood narrative, which marginalizes women. Women writers were largely ignored. Poetry
A confluence of poetic forms. Gwendolyn Brooks’s “folksy narrative” and conventions of Italian and English sonnet forms. Realism and naturalism. Global realities of war and the spreading shadow of fascism. Extensive experimentation. The lyric, ballad, and sonnet. Brooks’s studied attention to form and technical craftsmanship links her with melvin Tolson and Robert Hayden. The three are frequently grouped together as highly technical poets in the tradition of modern experimentalists. Paragraphs on Melvin B. Tolson, WWII poetry and movement into the Black Arts Movement. Drama
A Raisin in the Sun won the New York Drama Critics Award and anticipated many of the defining concerns of a soon-to-be black arts movement, which exploded in the 1960s. It took on a pan-Africanist, anticolonialist agenda. In 1957 writers and intellectuals sought to establish the intricate connections between anti-colonialism and the movements for black civil rights for social and economic justice. Prophets of a New Day Malcolm X, the “fire prophet,” and one of the writers who would force social revolution “by any means necessary.” Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), whose signature poem, “Black Art, from his volume Black Magic Poetry, set much of the pace, form, and violent tone of the “new” black literature of the 1960s. Baraka’s had a desire for “killing poems” and “words as weapons” for art in the service of a struggle for human liberation. The 1940s to 1960s brought forth the first full crop of African American writers. The writers of this period were bolder, more militant. Black readers in particular were summoned to confront new literary realities. Literary Movements Literary Movements As mentioned in the previous module, attention to the context . in which a work of literature was created and distributed is a critical layer to include in one’s analysis. Beyond specific historical or cultural events relevant to a given literary work, appreciating the rise and fall of the prominence of particular literary movements can inform the interpretations of what we read. There are four major literary movements applicable to the study of modern short fiction: Romanticism , Realism , Naturalism , and Modernism . Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century characterized by a heightened interest in nature and an emphasis on individual expression of emotion and imagination. Romanticism flourished from the early to the mid-nineteenth century, partly as a reaction to the rationalism and empiricism of the previous age (the Enlightenment). In fiction, Romanticism is often expressed through an emphasis on the individual (a main character) and the expression of his or her emotional experience, such as by having the plot coincide with the character’s emotional conflicts. In opposition to the logic of the previous age, Romantic fiction sometimes even returns to Gothic elements, which often includes stories about the supernatural of the uncanny. (An example of this literary movement in this module is Edgar Allen Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelström.”) Realism was an artistic and intellectual movement of the late nineteenth century that stressed the faithful representation of reality or verisimilitude . Realism was a reaction to what were viewed as the exaggerations or flights of fancy of Romanticism. Realists sought to develop an artistic style that valued the faithful portrayal of everyday experience, what Henry James described as “the drama of a broken tea cup.” The development of realism coincided with the rise of social reform movements and many realistic writers and artists chose to focus on social issues, such as poverty and the plight of the working class, in cities as well as in the country. The height of realist writing in American literature is considered to have occurred from the time of the U.S. Civil War (c. 1865) to the turn of the century (c. 1900). Realism as a literary movement swept across the country. This wave also fostered an interest in Regionalism , the realistic portrayal of specific areas and locales almost as a fictional form of travel literature. It should be noted that literary realism was equally popular in Europe, such as in the work of Charles Dickens or George Eliot in England, Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert in France, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy in Russia. Overlapping with the development of Realism was the literary movement known as Naturalism (approximately 1880–1930). Naturalist literature sought to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to the characters and subjects represented in novels and short fiction. In this way, Naturalism is influenced more by philosophical ideals than literary techniques including, though not exclusively, existentialism and social determinism. Characters in naturalistic stories frequently confront social conditions or personal conflicts which cannot be reconciled through the exercise of free will alone; these characters may fall upon tragic circumstance due to their social class, the harsh realities of nature or the inner strife of conflicting emotions, morals, and passions. Naturalist authors borrowed some of the stylistic innovations of Realism, yet often felt Realist works did not portray everyday experience in its full grit and trauma, remaining more to middle class tastes. In order to convey what they felt to be the harshness of life circumstances across the spectrum of human experience, some Naturalist writers combined elements of Realism (a focus on the everyday) with elements of Romanticism (a focus on emotion and symbolism) in order to portray what they understood to be the futility of human striving in an indifferent universe. Modernism became the predominant literary and artistic movement of the 20 th century. Modernism is a broad term referring to the social thought, cultural expressions, and artistic techniques that broke with past traditions following the political upheavals across Europe in the mid–1800s (including the French Revolution) through the horrors of the first World War, as well as the scientific and technological developments flowing from the Industrial Revolution. Yet, ‘modernism’ also is a term that is specifically used in relation to a precise style of fiction that attempted to chronicle the personal alienation, cultural disruption, and even loneliness of living in a century of rapid and often traumatic change. Some modernist literature (Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, William Faulkner) relied on a style of writing known asstream-of-consciousness , where the narrative followed the organic (and sometimes chaotic) pathways of one or more characters’ thoughts. Other modernist authors, such as Hemingway, sought to pare down the comparatively flowery language of previous literary movements and present the complexity of modern life through crisp, sharp detail. Many modernist writers sought to create work that represented not simply a moment or a region (as in Realistic fiction) but a larger, universal truth that transcended personal experience. (Examples of this literary movement in this module include William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and Franz Kafka’s “Before the Law.”) The Modernist movement (which many believe is still active) is followed by postmodern innovations in fiction; post-modernist literature extends the disillusionment and disruption that characterized modernism by further fragmenting language and literary structures, even by creating “hybrid” forms so that it becomes less clear what is a poem and what is a story, for example. Some postmodernist literature exaggerates the irony at the height of Modernism to the point of becoming parody, obscuring what is comic and what is tragic about the subjects being represented. This course does not include an example of a postmodern short story (largely due to the difficulty in securing copyright of recent works) but students should be aware that a sizable body of literature exists that would no longer be best classified as “Modernist.” The work of the American author Kurt Vonnegut, particularly his novel SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE , is a prime example of postmodern fiction. (1) What Is Composition? Definition, Types, and Examples In the literary sense, a composition (from the Latin "to put together") is the way a writer assembles words and sentences to create a coherent and meaningful work. Composition can also mean the activity of writing, the nature of the subject of a piece of writing, the piece of writing itself, and the name of a college course assigned to a student. This essay focuses on practicing how people write. Key Takeaways In writing, composition refers to the way a writer structures a piece of writing. The four modes of composition, which were codified in the late 19th century, are description, narration, exposition, and argumentation. Good writing can include elements of multiple modes of composition. Composition Definition Just like a musician and an artist, a writer sets the tone of a composition to his or her purpose, making decisions about what that tone should be to form a structure. A writer might express anything from the point of view of cool logic to impassioned anger. A composition might use clean and simple prose, flowery, descriptive passages, or analytical nomenclature. FEATURED VIDEO A Guide To Learning About The Rules Of Composition Since the 19th century, English writers and teachers have been grappling with ways to classify forms and modes of writing so beginner writers can have a place to start. After decades of struggle, rhetoricians ended up with four categories of writing that still make up the mainstream of Composition 101 college classes: Description, Narration, Exposition, and Argumentation. Types of Composition Writing The four classical types of composition (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) are not categories, per se. They would almost never stand alone in a piece of writing, but rather are best-considered modes of writing, pieces of writing styles that can be combined and used to create a whole. That is to say, they can inform a piece of writing, and they are good starting points for understanding how to put a piece of writing together. Examples for each of the following composition types are based on the American poet Gertrude Stein's famous quote from "Sacred Emily," her 1913 poem: "A rose is a rose is a rose." Description A description, or descriptive writing, is a statement or account that describes something or someone, listing characteristic features and significant details to provide a reader with a portrayal in words. Descriptions are set in the concrete, in the reality, or solidity of an object as a representation of a person, place, or thing in time. They provide the look and feel of objects, a simultaneous whole, with as many details as you'd like. A description of a rose might include the color of the petals, the aroma of its perfume, where it exists in your garden, whether it is in a plain terracotta pot or a hothouse in the city. A description of "Sacred Emily" might talk about the length of the poem and the facts of when it was written and published. It might list the images that Stein uses or mention her use of repetition and alliteration.
Narration A narration, or narrative writing, is a personal account, a story that the writer tells his or her reader. It can be an account of a series of facts or events, given in order and establishing connections between the steps. It can even be dramatic, in which case you can present each individual scene with actions and dialog. The chronology could be in strict order, or you could include flashbacks. A narration about a rose might describe how you first came across it, how it came to be in your garden, or why you went to the greenhouse that day. A narration about "Sacred Emily" might be about how you came across the poem, whether it was in a class or in a book lent by a friend, or if you were simply curious about where the phrase "a rose is a rose" came from and found it on the internet. Exposition Exposition, or expository writing, is the act of expounding or explaining a person, place, thing, or event. Your purpose is not to just describe something, but to give it a reality, an interpretation, your ideas on what that thing means. In some respects, you are laying out a proposition to explain a general notion or abstract idea of your subject. An exposition on a rose might include its taxonomy, what its scientific and common names are, who developed it, what the impact was when it was announced to the public, and/or how was it distributed. An exposition on "Sacred Emily" could include the environment in which Stein wrote, where she was living, what her influences were, and what the impact was on reviewers. Argumentation Also called argumentative writing, an argumentation is basically an exercise in comparing and contrasting. It is the methodological presentation of both sides of an argument using logical or formal reasoning. The end result is formulated to persuade why thing A is better than thing B. What you mean by "better" makes up the content of your arguments. Argumentation applied to a rose might be why one particular rose is better than another, why you prefer roses over daisies, or vice versa. Argumentation over "Sacred Emily" could compare it to Stein's other poems or to another poem covering the same general topic. The Value of Composition A great deal of debate enlivened college theoretical rhetoric in the 1970s and 1980s, with scholars attempting to throw off what they saw were the confining strictures of these four writing styles. Despite that, they remain the mainstay of some college composition classes. What these four classical modes do is provide beginner writers a way to purposefully direct their writings, a structure on which to form an idea. However, they can also be limiting. Use the traditional modes of composition as tools to gain practice and direction in your writing, but remember that they should be considered starting points rather than rigid requirements. Download 43.35 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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