Literary Theory

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Literary Theory

• Looking at the conditions that make meaning
  possible.

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Access to a text

• A writer is never in complete control of what
  he/she says.
• The writer never really has complete control over
  language. Language has meaning and logic of its
  own.

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Reading a Text

• You should not read a text only to uncover the
  authors intent, but read it from your own point
  of view. In other words, from the perspective of
  how it affects you.
• You can read a novel from many different
  perspectives and it can generate different
  impressions.

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Interpreting a Text

• Access to a text is always mediated by a theory.
• All interpretation is theory dependent.
• The whole explosion of theory is actually a
  recognition.

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Two Ways to Look at Literary Theory

• An intrique into debates in cultural inquiry.
• An entry into engaging in philosophical questions.

Meaning does not reside in the text. It is
produced for the text.
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19th Century Approaches

• Authored-Centered
• Literary Theory was Authored-Centered. If you
  understood the author, then you understood the
  text.
• Psychobiography
• Looking at the piece through a psycho-analytical
  profile of the author. (i.e. Dickens analyzing
  why there are so many villians in his writing.

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19th Century Approachescontinued

• Text-Centered
• In this approach the text is isolated from the
  author and concentration is on the internal
  dynamics. What makes the meaning work is based
  solely on the text.
• Reader-Centered
• Emphasis is on the role played by the reader in
  constructing a meaning for the text.
• The theory is that the act of reading is to bring
  in all kinds of conventions to make it have
  meaning in the first place.

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19th Century Approachescontinued

• History-Centered
• This theory looks at the way a countrys culture
  shapes a text.
• Deconstruction
• In this theory meaning does not reside in the
  text. All you have is meaning effectively spread
  across the surface of the text. This is based on
  the belief that language is essentially unstable
  due to the fact that all works carry more than
  one (1) meaning and that the same words have
  different associations for people. In essence,
  the meaning of the text is essentially
  indeterminate.

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Evaluating Text

• Certain features make a work more literary
• Packaging the way certain writers are marketed.
  Implicit evaluation of the work of different
  writers.
• Withstanding the test of time more substance.
• Political dimension i.e. Shakespeare has been
  deified (canonized). Who counts and who doesnt
  count is more than just what the critics think.
• Writers can be de-canonized. Some fall and new
  ones enter.
• There is no stability in a writers reputation.

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Intrinsic Approaches

• Focus on the mechanics of the text. Internal.
• i.e. How does irony, methaphors, etc. work?
  How does the writer use syntax?
• In other words, examining the formal properties
  of the work.
• Intrinsic Critics Russian Formalists, New
  Critics, Structuralists and Deconstructionists.
• They all look at the text as if it exists in a
  social vacuum.

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Extrinsic Approach

• The focus is on the circumstances of the writing
• Psychobiographers, Culturalists and Historical
  Criticism look at what is psychologically,
  socially culturally, and historically specific
  about the text. What is it about this time and
  this society that make it possible to write at
  all?
• Feminist, Marxist and Sociological Criticism look
  at the cultural, social and political
  implications of the text.
• In essence, there is no final reading of a text.
  No one has the last word.

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Literary Criticism

• Sociological Criticism
• Sociology through literature The way of looking
  in how a literary work is entangled in the
  process that surrounds its production, its
  inception.
• Factors that influence literature Writers in
  the middle ages were paid by the page. That is
  why so many of the works are so long. The
  vulgarity of the market shaped this literature
  that we revere. (Dr. Paul Maltby) For example
  Political constraints - Blakes symbolism is as
  a result of being jailed for his remarks, so he
  wrote in code.

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Literary Criticism (continued)

• Russian Formalists (between 1915 1930)
• Instead of questions of interpretation, they
  considered what makes a work specifically
  literary. Looking for criteria literariness
  and defamiliarization. They are asking if it
  helps you see the world in a new way? This would
  be a good sign for the Russian Formalists. It is
  a way in which to desensitize us to the world,
  our surroundings, i.e. to make it look strange
  again.
• For the Russian Formalist, literature has to
  perpetually renew itself to remain literary.
  They look at the way in which the material is
  arranged shaped. For example, flashbacks may
  be a way in which a story is arranged. The
  literary devices are used to create effects. For
  the Russian Formalist, literature is the kind
  that goes beyond the cliches.
• Russian Formalists are exclusively intrinsic.
  They lack social dimension.

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Literary Criticism (continued)

• New Critics In the 1930s, Capitalism fell into
  crisis. In the environment Marxist theory came
  into dominance.
• The new critics, many from the southern U.S.,
  wanted to form a new criticism---something like
  Marxist literary theory (which should be used as
  a weapon in class war, the ideal of Marxist
  literature).

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Literary Criticism (continued)

• New Critics Flourished during the 1930s and
  40s. A text-centered criticism.
• We dont know the authors intentions 99 of
  the time.
• Close reading looking at the words on the
  page and how they behave.
• Language is public property.
• All a critic needs is a knowledge of how
  language operates.
• Even authors cant give a definitive account
  of their writing.

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Literary Criticism (continued)

• New Critics (continued)
• What new critics value about literature is the
  extent to which it deviates from scientific
• discourse which is unequivacal---clear and to the
  point.
• Literature goes to the other extreme. It
  exploits to the full extent, i.e. ambiguity,
  irony, etc. It can be treated totally
  independent of the world around it.

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Literary Criticism (continued)

• New Criticism (continued)
• Deficiencies of this approach to literature
• No relationship between time and place.
• The reader is not able to read like
  scholars and have a grasp of how parody etc. are
  used in the text.

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Literary Criticism (continued)

• New Criticism (continued)
• You lose the interconnections between texts.
  We learn from the text---we read certain kinds
  of codes and bring this to the next text.
• Meaning resides inside the text. You dig
  down into the text and pull it out as if
  timeless. However, this does not work because it
  does not take into account the different
  interpretations of different readers and how
  language has different meaning over time. The
  word on the page can change its meaning over
  time. No two people read the same text in the
  same way.

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Structuralism

• Structuralism overthrew the model of objects
  existing independently of language.
• Barthe Its impossible to write a narrative
  without an implicit set of rules. According to
  Barthe, The reader is a repository of the rules
  of conventions insofar as they are aware of the
  rules.
• The goal of all structuralism activity is to
  reconstitute the meaning---discover how meaning
  is possible in the first place.

• Codes (can apply to all literature)
• Engine code recognize what counts as a
  mystery and the clues that lead to a solution.
• Recognize Character
• Symbolism
• Cultural Code need knowledge to make sense of
  a text.
• Codes collectively make up the language. There
  is not langue without the codes.

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Structuralism (continued)

• Structuralists believe they are the most
  scientific.
• As structuralists, what makes us human is that we
  generate meaning.
• Reading is an institution that produces meaning
  for the text.

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Structuralism (continued)

• Saussure If words stood for pre-existing
  concepts, they would all have exact equivalence
  in meaning from one langue to the next.
  Different languages chop up reality in different
  ways. It is language that structures what we
  take to be reality.
• There can never be an ultimate classification.
  The way we perceive the world is structured for
  us by the language we use.
• Language does not reflect the word---it
  constructs an image of it.

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Semiotics

• Semiotics is the study of sign systems in which
  linguistic sign systems serve as the paradigm.
• Chomsky
• Langue / Parole
• vs
• Competence / Performance

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Semiotics (continued)

• Competence Innate ability how produced.
• Parole what is spoken
• Langue the underlying system of rules, grammar.
• Saussure says language is a system of differences
  without positive terms. The relationship between
  a word and object is arbitrary the sign itself
  has no intrinsic meaning.
• There is no meaning without an underlying
  system of rules. All meaning is dependent on
  language.

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Saussure

• The linguist who introduced Post-Structuralist
  criticism
• Signifier (SR) (Meaning
  or Words)
• SIGN
• Signified (SD) (Meaning
  or Concept)
• Saussure says that the SR and the SD are as
  inseparable as the 2 sides of a piece of paper.

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Post Structuralism SR SD continued

• For Saussure SR SD are as follows
• Sign
• PIG
• Break down to sound or the markings. What they
  signify is a 4-legged farm animal.

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Post Structuralism SR SD continued

• Derrida argued that, in fact, SR SD are not
  inseparable.
• Below is an example of how the signifier can be
  the same but have a different signified.
• not cow LAMB Biblical reference (lamb of God)
• fluffy creature The Silence of the Lamb
• innocence meal
• All different meanings, shifting meanings,
  meanings changing over time.

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Post Structuralism SR SD continued

• Derrida The term he used to denote what he saw
  as shifting meanings was deferred. The meaning
  is deferred in other words there is no fixed,
  stable meaning behind words.
• Metaphysics of Presence to believe there is a
  meaning that is fully present behind a word.
  Derrida says this is an illusion. There is no
  stable meaning. Words continue to attract new
  meanings. The word Derrida uses is play.

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Post Structuralism SR SD continued

• Transcendental Signified Derrida argues that
  core terms cannot serve as a foundation because
  that term is subject to the play of language
  like any other word.
• Foundational Terms i.e. God, Mind, Spirit,
  Freedom. They could only truly be foundation if
  they actually stood outside of the play of
  language, yet they cannot do that because all
  words impact on others.

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Post Structuralism SR SD continued

• Play As a result of Derridas use of this
  word, it can be seen why Structuralism is
  sometimes referred to as anti-foundational.
• Western philosophy was built on the foundational
  philosophies that there is an abiding meaning
  under every signified that is the same for all of
  us.
• Derrida says we have meaning effects no fixed
  meaning, but superficial play of signifiers. The
  consequence of Derridas belief is that it
  undermines the scientific text. For example, the
  Bible. A debate can be ended if you say the
  Bible was written by God---the ultimate
  transcendental signified.

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Post Structuralism SR SD continued

• Post Structuralism is sometimes explained as a
  decentralizing philosophy.

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Post Structuralism Saussure Derrida

• Saussure When he spoke of the SR and the SD and
  their inseparability, he was not thinking about
  cultural differences and different periods of
  time. Linguistics at the time were not thinking
  that way, even though to us it may seem evident.
• Derrida There is nothing outside the text.
  We can only know the world through text.

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Post Structuralism-Derrida continued

• Derrida We do not have meaning. We have
  meaning effects (constant change of meaning)
• In other words, it is how cultures understand a
  word, not individuals.
• We are not in control of language, language is
  in control of us.

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Post Structuralism-Derrida vs Structuralists
continued

• We want to make sense of the world so we need
  these transcendental signifieds --- as a people
  --- thats why we put fixed meaning to them.
  However, per Derrida, it really does not exist.
  No center core, ultimate meaning or foundation.
• According to Derrida, our concepts are
  generated by the play of language. It is not
  that the concepts were already there and we
  applied language to them.

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Derrida vs Structuralists

• Derrida says we can only know the world through
  language.
• Structuralists Views Scientific approach to
  understanding a text. Language is stable. There
  is a center some sort of foundation.

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How Do All These Ideas Relate to Literary Theory?
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Deconstruction A Particular Way to Read a Text

• For Deconstructionist Critics there can never be
  absolute knowledge of anything because language
  can never say what we intend it to mean.

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A Deconstructive Reading of a Text

• Undecidability They highlight the
  undecidability of a text - how indeterminate its
  meanings are. Prior to deconstructionism, the
  whole premise of literary criticism was to
  discover the meaning of the text.
• Once you have done away with author and decisive
  meaning, you have opened it up to a plurality of
  meaning.
• THE LINK BETWEEN TEXT MEANING IS CUT.

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A Deconstructive Reading of a Text

• A Deconstructionist reading tries to bring out
  the logic of the texts writing as opposed to the
  authors intent. Can do this because the author
  has no control of how the language behaves on the
  page.

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The Deconstructionist View

• Their readings avoid closure. They advocate a
  freedom to interpret and reinterpret meaning.
• We need not live with restricted definitions of
  things.
• Deconstructionists are only interested in the
  words on the page and how they operate (a
  text-centered approach).
• Deconstructionists are playing with meaning.

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Deconstructionism

• The hayday of Deconstructionism was during the
  late 70s. It has been in decline since the
  80s.

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A Deconstructionist View

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• pg.219(para 2) Hillis is saying there is
  no ultimate voice in the narrative that can serve
  as the guarantor of the meaning.
• pg.19 (6 lines from the bottom) glow is to
  haze as story is to meaning. Seems like that is
  what he is trying to say.

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A Deconstructionist View

• Deconstructionism - expose the illusionaryness of
  meaning.
• Why do this?
• Can be seen as annalistic.
• Is it irresponsible to reduce a text to simply a
  play of words when could interpret its intended
  meaning?

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Center Approaches to Criticism

• Life experiences shape meaning of a text. Each
  time one reads is different.
• Interpretation is situational. Thus, the
  different approaches to criticism based on
  perspective are the following
• Author-Centered
• Text-Centered
• History-Centered
• Reader-Centered

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Author-centered Approach

• Author-Centered
• Meaning resides with the author.
• The purpose is to uncover the authors intention.

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Text-centered Approach

• Text-Centered
• Meaning resides exclusively in the text. There
  is no concern with who the author is or the
  historical backdrop.
• This approach deals with the mechanics within the
  text, i.e. metaphors, etc.
• The Literary Theories fitting into this approach
  are Russian formalism, Anglo-American New
  Criticism , Structuralism and Deconstruction

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History-Centered Approach

• History is put first.
• The historical context is established first.
• It reflects the world around it.
• It can be subjective because read from their own
  social position.

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Reader-Centered Approach

• Reader-Centered
• Relatively new form of criticism perspective.
• Began with Structuralists.
• Cultural response on the part of the reader.
• Texts literary repetoire influences the readers
  reaction.
• How the reader reacts to the text and how the
  literary devices of the text manipulate the
  readers reaction.

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Cultural Criticism

• Challenging the idea of the canon.
• Identify the cultural forces that make a literary
  text formidable.
• Challenges New Criticism and Formalism attitude
  that meaning lies only within the text.
• A Cultural Critic is concerned about for whom the
  author is writing.

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Cultural CriticismContinued . . .

• Cultural Critics re-established the history of
  the text.
• Cultural Critics reject the idea that meaning is
  the product of an isolated mind.
• Cultural Critics look at all things to get a
  network of meanings.
• Cultural Critics look for what made the
  consciousness of the author in the first place.

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Cultural CriticismContinued . . .

• Overview of Cultural Theory
• Cultural Criticism recovers the cultural space
  out of which a literary work rose.
• Cultural Criticism examines texts in relation to
  other texts.
• Cultural Criticism is more thorough than
  critiques of the past.
• Cultural Criticism believes that society is an
  arena in which a plurality of cultures compete
  for cultural supremacy.
• Cultural Criticism acknowledge that subjectivity
  is understood as a cultural construct.
• Cultural Criticism supports the idea that
  consciousness is culturally constructed.

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Cultural CriticismContinued . . .

• The Cultural Critic is a political being. Why?
• Because we are dealing with a class-structured
  society
• Because we have conflicting ideologies.
• Cultures are competing thus the critic cannot
  stay neutral.

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Cultural CriticismContinued . . .

• A Cultural Critic needs to do research.
• The Cultural Critic has to know the author and
  the context (time) in which the author is writing.

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New Historicism

• Stephen Greenblatt coined this term. He was a
  professor at Berkeley in California and is
  currently at Harvard.
• This is an approach to reading literature in an
  historical context.
• History is written by the conquerors and the
  victors.
• History is always competing for the state of
  being official.

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New Historicismcontinued

• What counts as history is always selective.
• Different generations come along and rewrite
  history according to their sense.
• Counter-Memory A counter view to the official
  memory.
• Literary Artifact Ways something could be
  considered.

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New Historicismcontinued

• New Historicists see certain problems with the
  recording of history
• History is received in the form of narratives- it
  is textual.
• Often times there is narrative commentary. There
  is a selection process, i.e. on t.v. one is
  dependent on the camera location. At a miners
  strike the cameraman is behind the police, thus
  only see miners charging the police and never
  the other way around.
• You only experience any event through your own
  cultures prevailing discourses.

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New Historicismcontinued

• Representational model of History
• Not necessarily accurately reflected. A version
  of something.
• Institutions determine how history is written,
  i.e. Warren Commission or Academia, thus will get
  a different point of view.
• No truth is universal.
• Literature cannot be understood outside of
  history.
• You only experience any event through your own
  cultures prevailing discourses.

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New Historicismcontinued

• An Interactive Model
• Literature can itself shape events.
• Literature feeds off of other texts.
• New Historicists try to locate a literature text
  in relation to institutes, beliefs and power
  relations.
• Subjectivity Historical critiques are shaped
  and formed by discourses of their own time. They
  can only read a literary text from their social
  position.
• You only experience any event through your own
  cultures prevailing discourses.

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New Historicismcontinued

• There will always be different versions of
  history competing to be the official history.
• A story or poem needs to be located within its
  social circumstances.
• Ex. Heart of Darkness Conrads book was set in
  the colonial period. What was the accounting
  given for?
• Civilizing this other culture
• Enlightening this other culture