Introduction to Modern Literary Theory

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Introduction to Modern Literary Theory

• A discussion of theory, why we use it, and how it
  helps us understand what we read.

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A Good Analogy

• Examine the ink blots on the next slides.
• What do you see in the image? Write down a short
  explanation of what you see.
• Be prepared to share.

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What is modern theory?

• In the study of literature, theory has
  traditionally referred to a set of general
  principles that can be used to classify or
  otherwise analyze a literary work. In some
  cases, theory is used to interpret or even
  evaluate texts.
• A critical essay may not clearly ground itself in
  a particular literary theory, but some general
  theory or set of assumptions about literature is
  implied in most interpretations or analyses.
• Theory changes with time and new theories are
  always being added to the traditional

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What Theory Tries to Explain

• What is literature?
• How is it produced?
• How can it be understood?
• What is its purpose?

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Why we study theory

• Literary criticism has two main functions
• To analyze, study, and evaluate works of
  literature.
• To form general principles for the examination of
  works of literature.

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Common Characteristics of Theory

• M.H. Abrams points out in The Mirror and the Lamp
  that any reasonably adequate theory takes some
  account of . . . four elements (6). These
  elements are
• The work itself
• The artist who creates the work
• The universe or the nature that is being imitated
  by the work
• The audience of the work

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Keep an Open Mind

• As we discuss these, you may find yourself
  agreeing with one or two theories while
  disagreeing heartily with another. Keep in mind
  that no single theory offers the right answer
  about a work of literature good literature is
  simply too varied. Keeping an open mind and
  listening to other points of view can enrich your
  own insights that is the purpose of criticism.

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Perspective

• Literary interpretation is often influenced by a
  persons perspective. For instance, an African,
  may have a very different reaction to The Color
  Purple than a reader with no experiences or
  appreciation for African culture.
• A female, for example, may have a stronger
  reaction to an individualized, feminist character
  than a chauvinist male might.
• Its all about how YOU, the reader, views a
  certain text. What perspective are you brining
  to the table? The truth is, there is no one
  correct way!

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Psychoanalytic Criticism

• Applying the principles of psychologists like
  Sigmund Freud and Jung to a literary work
• Analyzing characters within the work
• Analyze writers psyche, writing process, or the
  influence of the writers thoughts on the novel
• Effects of literature on readers

• Suggested Websites
• "Definition of Psychoanalytic Criticism" from
  virtuaLit (Bedford-St.Martin's resource)
• "Introduction to Psychoanalysis" by Dr. Dino
  Felluga
• "The Mind and the Book A Long Look at
  Psychoanalytic Criticism" by Norman N. Holland

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Key Terms

• Jungian Approach
• Three parts of self
• -Shadow (dark part of self)
• -Persona (social part of personality)
• -Anima (mans soul image)
• Neurosis occurs when someone fails to assimilate
  one of these levels of unconsciousness into his
  or her conscious and projects it onto someone
  else.

• Freud's model of the psyche
•   Id - completely unconscious part of the psyche
  that serves as a storehouse of our desires,
  wishes, and fears. The id houses the libido, the
  source of psychosexual energy.
• Ego - mostly to partially conscious part of
  the psyche that processes experiences and
  operates as a mediator between the id and
  superego.
• Superego - often thought of as one's
  "conscience" the superego operates "like an
  internal censor encouraging moral judgments in
  light of social pressures" (Bressler)

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Key Terms (cont)

• Unconscious - the irrational part of the psyche
  unavailable to a person's consciousness except
  through dissociated acts or dreams.

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• Can help understand works with characters who
  have obvious psychological issues
• Helps us understand the writers mind and
  therefore his work

• Disadvantages
• Makes literature a scientific case study
• Can we psychologically analyze dead writers?
• Not all works allow for this approach
• Sex is overdone

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Example

• Given the Essential Questions for a
  Psychoanalytic Reading, and the information on
  Hesse (the author), practice using psychoanalytic
  theory on Siddhartha.

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New Criticism

• Takes a text as an autonomous object, non-related
  to the author, the culture, or the event it stems
  from
• Explores the world within the text
• Started in 1920s and 1930s

• Suggested Websites
• "New Criticism Explained" by Dr. Warren Hedges
  (Southern Oregon University)
• "Definition of the New Criticism" - virtuaLit
  (Beford-St. Martin's Resource)

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KEY TERMS

• Heresy of Paraphrase - assuming that an
  interpretation of a literary work could consist
  of a detailed summary or paraphrase.
• Close reading "a close and detailed analysis of
  the text itself to arrive at an interpretation
  without referring to historical, authorial, or
  cultural concerns" (Bressler)

• Intentional Fallacy - equating the meaning of a
  poem with the author's intentions.
• Affective Fallacy - confusing the meaning of a
  text with how it makes the reader feel. A
  reader's emotional response to a text generally
  does not produce a reliable interpretation.

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• - Do not have to know the authors background
• -Do not have to be familiar with historical
  context
• -Can analyze language and imagery

• Disadvantages
• -Text seen in isolation
• -Cannot account for allusions
• -Ignores context of work
• -Reduces literature to a series of rhetorical
  devices

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Example

• Using Poisonwood Bible, what would this critical
  approach (new criticism) focus on and what would
  it leave out?

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Marxism

• Sees art and literature as forced by the
  conditions that existed in history
• Deals with clash between classes
• Articulation of dominant class
• Art reflects age in which it was created

• Suggested Websites
• "Definition of Marxist Criticism" - virtuaLit
  (Bedford-St. Martin's resource)
• Marxist Theory and Criticism - from the Johns
  Hopkins Guide to Literary Criticism
• "Marxism and Ideology" by Dr. Mary Klages -
  University of Colorado at Boulder

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Key Terms

• Material circumstances - the economic conditions
  underlying a society
• Reflectionism - the superstructure of a society
  mirrors its economic base and, by extension, that
  a text reflects the society that produced it
• Superstructure - The social, political, and
  ideological systems and institutions that are
  generated by the people

• Commodification Wanting thing not for their use
  but their ability to impress others or to sell
• Conspicuous consumption Getting things merely
  for selling or trading
• Dialectical materialism the eternal struggle to
  find a solution among conflicting ideologies to
  bring about change

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• Look at the work in the context it was written
• Allows you to research and understand the culture
  more
• Can see multiple perspectives from dominant and
  dependent classes

• Disadvantages
• Have to be aware of the culture and economic
  system in place when written
• Have to assume the man was out to get the
  people
• Has to be a class conflict, not race or gender
  (class matters most)

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Example

• What is a major class conflict that you have seen
  in a movie or read in literature recently? What
  was the dominant class point of view? What was
  the inferior class point of view? Briefly
  analyze how this conflict was resolved or how it
  should have been resolved using Marxist theory.

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Reader-Response Theory

• Analyzes readers role in production of meaning
• Text itself means nothing until someone reads it
• Reading is a function of personal identity
• Authors use strategies to elicit responses from
  readers

• Suggested Websites
• "Reader Response Various Positions" - Dr. John
  Lye - Brock University
• Reader Response Theory and Criticism - Johns
  Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory Criticism
• "The Author, the Text, and the Reader" - Clarissa
  Lee Ai Ling, The London School of Journalism

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Key Terms

• Interpretive communities - a concept, articulated
  by Stanley Fish, that readers within an
  "interpretive community" share reading
  strategies, values and interpretive assumptions
• Transactional analysis - a concept developed by
  Louise Rosenblatt asserting that meaning is
  produced in a transaction of a reader with a
  text. As an approach, then, the critic would
  consider "how the reader interprets the text as
  well as how the text produces a response in her"

• Horizons of expectations - a reader's
  "expectations" or frame of reference is based on
  the reader's past experience of literature and
  what preconceived notions about literature the
  reader possesses
• Implied reader - the implied reader is "a
  hypothetical reader of a text, a construct that
  is unrelated to the real reader
• -Developed by Wolfgang Iser

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• No one interpretation
• Interpretations change over time

• Disadvantages
• Can be too subjective
• No clear criteria to account for differences from
  one reader to the next
• Highly personal at times

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Postmodernism

• For Jean Baudrillard, postmodernism marks a
  culture composed "of disparate fragmentary
  experiences and images that constantly bombard
  the individual in music, video, television,
  advertising and other forms of electronic media.
  The speed and ease of reproduction of these
  images mean that they exist only as image, devoid
  of depth, coherence, or originality"

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Postmodernist Theories

• Deconstruction
• Hermeneutics
• Semiotics

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Deconstruction

• Sees literature as fluid parts and not one whole,
  with multiple meanings and ways to look at and
  not one large meaning.
• Infinite number of signifiers
• Deconstruction - Stanford University
• Deconstruction - Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary
  Theory Criticism

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Hermeneutics

• Sees interpretation as a circular process whereby
  valid interpretation can occur by seeing the
  literary work as a whole and as a combination of
  its parts
• Can analyze the historical authorial intent and
  at the same time the language within the text to
  gain understanding
• Phenomenology Online - page developed by Max van
  Manen

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Semiotics

• The science of signs
• Proposes that human actions and productions have
  shared meaning to a group of people
• Linguistics is a branch of semiotics
• "Semiotics for Beginners" - Dr. David Chandler
  (University of Wales)
• Semiotics - Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary
  Theory Criticism

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Signified and Signifier

• Sign vs. Symbol - According to Saussure, "words
  are not symbols which correspond to referents,
  but rather are 'signs' which are made up of two
  parts a mark,either written or spoken, called a
  'signifier,' and a concept (what is 'thought'
  when the mark is made), called a 'signified.
• Meaning--the interpretation of a sign--can exist
  only in relationship with other signs. (I.e. The
  stoplight color red signifies "stop," even though
  "there is no natural bond between red and stop)
  (105).
• Meaning is derived entirely through difference,
  e.g., referring back to the traffic lights'
  example, red's meaning depends on the fact that
  it is not green and not amber

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Feminism

• Suggested Websites
• Approaches to Feminism - Stanford Encyclopedia of
  Philosophy
• "What is Feminism and Why Do We Have to Talk
  About It So Much?" by Dr. Mary Klages -
  University of Colorado at Boulder
• Feminist Theory An Overview - Elixabeth Lee -
  The Victorian Web

• Concerned with impact of gender on writing and
  reading
• Desire for a new literary canon (not men)
• Deals with conflicts between often dominate male
  and inferior female in traditional literature
• Deals with female issues

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Key Terms

• Androgeny- world without genders
• Écriture féminine- style, women must write about
  their experiences to strengthen the work
• Essentialism- a female image above and beyond
  social constructs

• Phallologocentrism - language ordered around an
  absolute Word (logos) which is masculine
  phallic, systematically excludes, disqualifies,
  denigrates, diminishes, silences the feminine

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• Allows for more female authors works to be read
• Get to see an alternative perspective in
  literature
• Understand women more
• Not all dead white men

• Disadvantages
• Often attack works solely based on male
  authorship
• Often too theoretical
• Distinct female style often excludes elements
  that get novels into the canon

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Example

• Look at a novel by Barbara Kingsolver from the
  feminist perspective, whether it be The Bean
  Trees or Poisonwood Bible. What elements exist
  to show this political battlefield that often
  exists in feminist literature. List
  characteristics that make the novel feminist.

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Historical/Cultural CriticismA.K.A. New
Historicism

• Takes the work and looks at it in context of the
  world it came out of (opposite of New Criticism)
• Good to use for Shakespearean works as well as
  older works, to gain more understanding of
  authors and impact
• Analyzes historically accurate influences on
  author and storyline.

• Sources
• -Any sight that deals with the history of the
  time period a novel, play, or poem was written in

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Key Terms

• The intentional fallacy meaning of a work is
  determined by authors intention

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• To fully understand works by some authors, one
  must be able to understand where they are coming
  from. For example, Milton was blind and one must
  know that to get any meaning out of his essay On
  His Blindness
• Necessary to place allusions in appropriate
  context
• Good to recognize patterns

• Disadvantages
• Reduces art to level of biography
• Works not necessarily seen as universal
• Can date certain works (feel not as applicable to
  modern life.)

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Example

• Choose a text that you have recently read and are
  familiar with. What was your personal response
  to that text? Why did you react the way you did
  while reading it? What did you see in the text
  that caused you to react in one way or another?

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Existentialism

• Philosophy (Satre and Camus) that views each
  person as an isolated being thrust into a
  universe with no truths, values, or meanings
• Nothing to nothing
• All choices possible
• Absurd and anguished
• Condemned to be free

• Suggested Websites
• "Existentialism" - Stanford Encyclopedia of
  Philosophy
• "The Ethics of Absolute Freedom" by Dr. David
  Banach
• "Jean-Paul Sartre The Humanism of
  Existentialism" by Dr. Bob Zunjic (University of
  Rhode Island)

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Key Terms

• Absurd - a term used to describe existence--a
  world without inherent meaning or truth.
• Authenticity - to make choices based on an
  individual code of ethics (commitment) rather
  than because of societal pressures. A choice made
  just because "it's what people do" would be
  considered inauthentic.

• "Leap of faith" - although Kierkegaard
  acknowledged that religion was inherently
  unknowable and filled with risks, faith required
  an act of commitment (the "leap of faith") the
  commitment to Christianity would also lessen the
  despair of an absurd world.

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• Ultimate choice is the characters, no external
  pull
• Potential explanation for need for religion

• Disadvantages
• Confined by constructs of society
• Can drive you insane
• Why are we here then?
• I might as well just die

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Post-colonialism

• School of thought that existed in the
  post-European empire period, the body of
  theoretical literature that existed in that time
• Takes us back to time and place to examine works
  (resurrect culture)
• Free from modern constructs of history

• Suggested Websites
• "Post-Colonialism" - Wikipedia Encyclopedia
• "Some Issues in Postcolonial Theory" by Dr. John
  Lye (Brock University)
• "Introduction to Postcolonial Studies" by Dr.
  Deepika Bahri (Emory University)

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Key Terms

• Alterity Being different than ones community
• Diaspora- Being forced as an ethnic culture to
  leave original homeland and dispersed throughout
  world
• Eurocentrism an emphasis on European or Western
  beliefs, often at expense of other cultures.
  Aligned with current and past power structures in
  the world.

• Hybridity - The assimilation and adaptation of
  cultural practices, the cross-fertilization of
  cultures can be seen as positive, enriching, and
  dynamic, as well as as oppressive
• Imperialism- If you dont know it I dont know
  you

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Advantages and Disadvantages

• Advantages
• Forces us to look at lost cultures and the
  origins of alternative cultures (non-Western)
• Considers literature in context and therefore
  makes it easier to understand at times

• Disadvantages
• Hard to completely remove from modern realm
• Have to assume there is an oppressed people in
  order to use
• Cannot apply to all Western works

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Example

• Consider some of the American Literature that you
  read last year. Was any of it from a perspective
  other than a colonist? A European? A white male?
  Were there any characters that stood out as not
  fitting into their culture or society? How or why?

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So

• Now you have the basics, and when I say that I
  mean BARE minimum you need to know to begin to
  understand the literary criticisms you will
  become familiar with this year. Keep your notes
  as we will refer back to them often, as we read
  literary criticisms of the novels we read and as
  we start to analyze literature ourselves.
• YOU HAVE THE KEYS, unlock the doors
• ?

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Sources

• Dr. Kristie Siegel
• www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm
• Skylar Hamilton Burris
• Literary Resources Criticism
• http//editorskylar.tripod.com
• www.theory.org.uk
• Richter, David H. (2000). Falling Into Theory.
  Boston Bedford/St. Martins.