Introduction to Literary Studies

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Introduction to Literary Studies
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What is literature ?

• Broad definition all the written manifestations
  of a culture
• Narrow definition demarcates 'literary' from
  'non-literary' texts
• Constant re-negotiation of literary conventions
• But oral traditionDoes literature only exist
  in printed form?

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Why do we read ?

• Revealed subjective worlds
• Entertainment / instruction
• Authors experience or view of world/life
• Artistic quality of text

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What is literature ?

• Plato (429-347 BC) literature is a lie
  --"appearance rather than the truth"
• Aristotle (384-322 BC) literature is mimesis ?
  imitation of reality
• English poet Sidney (1554-1586) "to teach and
  delight"

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What is literature ?

• Roman writer Horace (65-8 BC) pleasure and
  profit (aut delectare aut prodesse) ? aesthetic
  experience
• English Romantic poet William Wordsworth
  (1770-1850) subjective expression of author's
  personality
• American Romantic writer Edgar Allen Poe
  (1809-49) "art for art's sake"
• English Romantic writer Matthew Arnold (1822-88)
  Synthesis and exposition of ideas in beautiful
  works

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Criteria

• fictionality
• specialized language
• lack of pragmatic function
• ambiguity

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fictionality

• Literary texts, even if they attempt to represent
  reality, are ultimately products of a writer's
  imagination, i.e. at least the characters and
  their conversations are fictitious.

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Example

• Sesca Rompas climbed on to a plastic stool and
  peered through a dirty window at her brother,
  Aldo Kansil, lying motionless in a bed below. He
  was a pitiful sight two drips attached, arms
  swathed in bandages, his face an angry mosaic of
  burns.

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specialized language

• poetic function
• defamiliarization
• prosodic features
• rhetorical devices

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Example Defamiliarization

• Foot passengers, jostling one anothers
  umbrellas, in a general infection of ill-temper,
  and losing their foot-hold at street-corners,
  where tens of thousands of other foot passengers
  have been slipping and sliding since the day
  broke (if this day ever broke), adding new
  deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking
  at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and
  accumulating at compound interest. (Charles
  Dickens, Bleak House, ch. 1)

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Example Prosody

• Just around the corner, an anxious-looking couple
  were standing close together, clutching plastic
  bags.

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Example Prosody

• Just around the corner,
• An anxious-looking couple
• Were standing close together,
• Clutching plastic bags.

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"Found Poem" by Ronald Gross

• All too often, humans who sit and stand
• Pay the price of vertical posture.
• Sitting And standing combine with the force of
  gravity,
• Exerting extra pressure on veins and tissues
• In and around the rectal area.
• Painful, burning haemorrhoids result.
• The first thought of many sufferers
• Is to relieve their pain and their discomfort.
• Products, however, often used for this
• Contain no anaesthetic drug at all, or one
• Too weak to give the needed pain relief,
• Or only lubricate. But now, at last
• There is a formulation which provides
• Pain-killing power, prolonged relief, on contact.
  
• (Gross/Quasha 1973 475)

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Lack of Pragmatic Function

• Literary texts need not have been intended for
  any specific purpose.
• Literary texts can have a range of intentions.
• Literary texts gain their more specific and
  possibly individual pragmatic function in the
  reading process.

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Ambiguity

• Literary texts are more open to interpretation
  and their meanings are never fixed.

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Genres
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Genres

• Genres are groups of texts with similar or
  correlated features. They are defined by certain
  conventions and are subject to historical
  changes.
• Distinguished by form of communication
  (narrative, drama), mood/attitude (elegy,
  satire), content (crime, SF), relation to reality
  (mimetic vs. non-mimetic), and aesthetic effect
  (comedy, horror)
• By no means can genres be regarded as closed
  categories their boundaries are blurred.

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Genres

• Aristotles Poetics distinguished
• Tragedies
• Comedies
• Three major generic groups
• Prose Fiction (narrative)
• Drama
• Poetry

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The Medium
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The Medium

• Orality
• Written literature
• Audiovisual literature / hypertext literature

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Reading Texts

• Author and production produktionsästhetisch (New
  Criticism)
• Text itself textimmanent (New Historicism)
• Readers response rezeptionsästhetisch
• Aesthetic codes
• Mimetic relationship to content

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Editions

• Plain text
• Critical edition of text
• Annotated edition
• Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism

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Literary Criticism

• Hermeneutics (Hermeneutik) what does a text
  mean?
• Hermeneutic circle (presuppositions system of
  associated commonplaces Black)
• Analysis (Analyse) how does a text construct
  meaning?
• Structure, composition, style

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Literary History

• Development of literature
• E.g. world literature, English literature, North
  American literature
• Canon
• Selection of important authors, genres, text of
  certain period
• Literary Periods
• Particular events, texts and contexts, shared
  assumptions and values define a period

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English Literatures

• English Literature
• Literature written in English by English, Welsh,
  Anglo-Irish, Scottish, and Black British
  authors
• New English Literatures (postcolonial
  literatures) authors in former colonies New
  Zealand, Australia, India, Africa, Caribbean,
  Canada, Pacific Island
• American Literature
• Literature written in English by American,
  Canadian, Caribbean, African American,
  Hispanic/Chicano, Native American, Asian
  American, and other immigrant authors

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Literature Reference

• Stephen Matterson and Daryl Jones. Studying
  Poetry. London Arnold, 2000.
• Jeremy Hawthorn. Studying the Novel 1985. 5th
  ed. London Arnold, 2005.
• Mick Walis and Simon Shepherd. Studying Plays.
  1998. 2nd ed. London Arnold, 2002.
• Chris Baldick. Oxford Concise Dictionary of
  Literary Terms. Oxford and New York Oxford UP,
  2004
• J. A. Cuddon. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary
  Terms and Literary Theory. London Penguin Books,
  1998.