Lit-Crit-Discussion Notes PDF

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Tutorial notes from Nick Franklin. Lecture notes on literary criticism....

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Lit Crit Discussion 1. How do I use this? In non-academic contexts, texts are meant to be ‘use alone’. - You read or hear the text and form your opinion. SLIDE 2: The Theory Wars in Lit Crit revolve around whether literature is different. Literary theory seeks to dispute ‘common sense’ interpretations of the meaning of a text. 2. Why? - Because common sense is a historical construction. - Because academia is about forcing people to think rather than accept assumptions. It aims to make students think differently about their objects of study. 3. So, what is literary theory? SLIDE 3 SLIDE 4 - using binoculars, a microscope, a telescope, a night-vision device or dark glasses changes the way you see things – adding levels of interpretation.

SLIDE 5 Part of the problem is that in literary studies – in contrast to, say, mathematics, we expect ambiguity and multiplicity1.2 - so, it is not a question of finding the ‘right’ interpretation - but of coherently and convincingly justifying an interpretation within the context. SLIDE 6 Literary criticism has traditionally been poor in methodology. Over the last 50 years lit crit has therefore borrowed methodology from other academic disciplines including:  anthropology (structuralism),  psychology (Freudianism),  economics (Marxism),  politics (New Historicism), and  biology (Darwinism). The assumptions of these methodologies lead to radically different conclusions.

1 multiplicity – a variety of meanings 2 it is its training in being able to work with ambiguity that makes studying literature a useful life skill

SLIDE 7 Key Questions 1. Can the text be isolated from the context in which it was written? 2. Can we know what the author’s true thoughts and ideology were? 3. Can we assume that authors are consciously or subconsciously ideologically motivated? 4. Can we analyse characters as if they were real people? Theory is enriching when we recognize that it is inherently speculative. - It is massively limiting if we accept it premises and therefore its conclusions dogmatically. Your objective therefore must be to  suspend your disbelief (it is counter-intuitive and anti-‘common sense’ by its very nature)  seek to understand its motivations, objectives and conclusions, and only then  constructively criticize its method. SLIDE 8 - in fact, there are over 80 schools of literary theory according to one specialized dictionary. Fortunately for your sanity, we are going to look at only five and largely focus on one. 4. What is historicism? - the analysis of a literary world in relation to the hegemonic ideas its contemporary culture. - assumes that history is made up of discrete period, each with a single dominant.

5. What is New Criticism? SLIDE 9 - the text can and should be analysed in isolation of its context. - ignore the author’s biography, ignore the reader’s response, ignore the historical context. - close reading: how do the elements work together to create the whole text? All modern criticism is a reaction to these two extreme positions. - all modern criticism: concentrates on political, social and economic factors (arguing that these factors determine the author’s creativity and audiences’ and critics’ interpretations); identifies how texts express the interests of dominant groups, especially rich and powerful men; argues that all readings are political and ideological; argues that traditional approaches have always interpreted texts conservatively, in ways that confirm and maintain the interests of the elite or dominant class. 6. What is New Historicism? SLIDE 10 - focuses on literature in its cultural context (so rejects New Criticism) - but unlike traditional historicism it rejects the existence of objective history. - rejects notions of fundamental human nature. Literature takes place in a complex and evolving social, historical, cultural, anthropological, economic and technological context and cannot be understood in isolation from that context. No interest in the aesthetic or moral value of literature - only interested in how literature conspires with the forces of oppression.

Rejects the cannon. - This is an interesting point. For better or worse, from the Renaissance until 1950 you could assume that educated British people had all read – or at least knew of – the same seminal texts (e.g. The Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, The Authorized Version, Paradise Lost, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations). These days it is almost impossible to find a group of people who have all seen the same film, let alone all read the same work of literature. We live in societies with no common cultural core/point of reference. 7. What is the methodology of New Historicism? 8. What is Cultural Materialism? Similar but British. - much more focused on finding marginal voices of dissent. - willing to accept the aesthetic value of texts - sees literature as a tool to understand history rather than history as a tool to understand literature (as the Historicists do).

Tentative Conclusions: The Contribution of NH/CM Clearly history is written by the victors and historians/literary critics in all ages have their baggage of assumptions. - All societies have a diversity of opinion. There is no such thing as a singular worldview that can be attached to a society. However, this is truer now than in the past. - Authors are undeniable a product of their times. If Shakespeare had been born a generation earlier or later he wouldn’t have written sonnets or history plays. If he had lived a hundred years earlier he’d probably have written morality plays. Were he alive today, he’d be writing TV series! - Plays were the result of social forces. For example the Master of Reveals could censor material and, for example, 50 expletives were removed from Othello by this official. - Historiography, sociology, anthropology, etymology and economics can give us fresh insights into what influences a text. - The canon as understood in the early 20th Century was restrictive and tended to overvalue dead white men. However, the canon in the last 50 years has proved to be quite porous and able to evolve with contemporary tastes. It could now be accused of deliberately ignoring much great and influential literature simply because it has a significant dose of religion. However, these new theories often went too far distorting facts and making exaggerated but hollow claims that did not stand up to analysis. The ‘theory wars’ were largely over by the mid-1990s with the sensible aspects of NH and Cultural Materialism incorporated into lit crit toolkit as useful tools. - one online literature guide has a title within its section on New Historicism that asks, “Does Anyone Still Read this Stuff?”

9. What is Queer Theory? SLIDE 11 - application of our new understanding about gender and identity to literature. The problem is that references to non-heteronormative (= ‘straight’) tend to be encoded and people tend to find what they are looking for (‘confirmation bias’). For example, in a moment of supreme silliness (on p. 235) Ejes suggests that there is homoeroticism in the description Suffolk’s and York’s death - this scene is almost identical to that of Talbot kissing his son’s wounds in 1Henry VI (incestuous homoeroticism?!) - the language in fact has much more to do with the mediaeval Catholic concept of ‘beautiful wounds’ (though that idea – and scorn for death – in fact goes back to the ideology of Roman gladiators. Recent studies suggest that our gay/straight binary understanding of sexuality doesn’t fit with Early Modern Society. - in the Renaissance the division was more between men and ‘incomplete men’ (girls, women and boys). Desire for the other according to this division was much more fluid. - These ideas go back to the Ancient Greeks; Aristotle said that to be female is to be, in a sense, deformed – women are incomplete men.

10. What is feminist criticism? SLIDE 12 1. The search for and re-evaluation of texts written by women but excluded from the canon 2. An analysis of what female characters say (and leave unsaid) and what is said about women in canonical words to make explicit the inherent sexism works of literature. Notice that feminist criticism rejects traditional psychoanalysis because of its incontrovertibly sexist foundations. Finally, Fem Crit points out that socially the Renaissance was only experienced by the privileged sex....