Aesthetics (/
New Criticism Introduction. NEXT; In a Nutshell. New Criticism is all about the text. No need to read hundreds of pages of history or dig up evidence of Jane Austen.
Introduction to Modern Literary Theory. Psychoanalytic. Criticism. The. application of specific psychological principles (particularly. Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.
In. addition to Freud and Lacan, major figures include. Shoshona Felman, Jane Gallop, Norman Holland, George Klein, Elizabeth. Wright, Frederick Hoffman, and, Simon Lesser. Key. Terms: Unconscious. Freud's. model of the psyche: Id.
The id houses. the libido, the source of psychosexual energy. Ego. - mostly to partially (< -- a point of debate) conscious. Superego. - often thought of as one's .
Real. - an unattainable stage representing all that a person is. Both Lacan and his critics argue whether. Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. Literary Theory: An Introduction.
Ellmann. Maud, ed. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. London. Longman, 1. The Interpretation of Dreams. Gay. Peter, ed. The Freud Reader. London: Vintage, 1. Modern Literary Theory.
Is and in to a was not you i of it the be he his but for are this that by on at they with which she or from had we will have an what been one if would who has her.
A Comparative Introduction. See Chapter 5. Lacan. Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection.
Sarup. Madan. Jacques Lacan. London: Harvester, Wheatsheaf. The Legend of Freud. Suggested Websites: Marxism. A. sociological approach to literature that viewed works of literature. Marxism generally focuses on the clash between the dominant.
The Frankfurt School is also associated with. Marxism (Abrams, p.
Childers and Hentzi, pp. Major. figures include Karl Marx, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson. Raymond Williams, Louis Althusser (ALT- whos- sair), Walter Benjamin. MEEN), Antonio Gramsci (GRAWM- shee), Georg Lukacs (lou- KOTCH). Friedrich Engels, Theordor Adorno (a- DOR- no), Edward Ahern. Gilles Deleuze (DAY- looz) and Felix Guattari (GUAT- eh- ree). Key. Terms(note: definitions below taken from Ann.
B. Dobie's text, Theory into Practice: An Introduction to. Literary Criticism - see General Resources below): Commodificaion.
For example, class conflicts. To understand social events, one must have a grasp. Further. references: Cathouse. Louis. Lenin and Ideology. New York: Monthly Review. P, 1. 97. 1. Cary.
Nelson, and Lawrence Gross berg, eds. Marxism and the. Interpretation of Culture. London: Macmillan, 1.
Bullock. Chris and David Peck. Guide to Marxist Criticism. Eagleton. Terry. Criticism and Ideology. New York: Schocken. Jay. Martin. Marxism and Totality.
Berkeley: U of California. P, 1. 93. 5. Jameson. Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth- Century Dialectical.
Theories of Literature. Princeton: PUP, 1. Modern Literary Theory. A Comparative Introduction. See chapter 6. Williams. Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: OUP, 1. 97.
See. also the works of Walter Benjamin, Tony Bennett, Terry Eagleton. John Frow, Georg Lukacs, Pierre Macherey, Michael Ryan, and. Ronald Taylor. Suggested Websites: Postcolonialism. Literally. postcolonialism refers to the period following the decline of. European. empires. Although the term postcolonialism generally.
In its use as a critical approach, postcolonialism. Among the many challenges facing postcolonial. Edward Said, for example. Orientalism to describe the discourse about the. East constructed by the West. Major. figures. include Edward Said (sah- EED), Homi Bhabha (bah- bah), Frantz Fanon. NAWN), Gayatri Spivak, Chinua Achebe (ah- CHAY- bay) , Wole.
Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Jamaica Kincaid, and Buchi Emecheta. Key. Terms: Alterity. Eurocentrism. - . It is an instance. The assimilation and adaptation. John Lye - see General Literary. Theory Websites below).
Imperialism. - . The term is used by some to describe. Further. references: Ashcroft. Bill, Griffiths, and Tiffin, Helen. The Empire Writes. Back: Theory and Practice in Post- Colonial Literatures Ashcroft.
Bill. Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post- Colonial. Studies Reader. Guneratne. Anthony R. The Virtual Spaces of Postcoloniality: Rushdie. Ondaatje, Naipaul, Bakhtin and the Others. Harding. Sandra and Uma Narayan, ed. Border Crossings: Multicultural.
Postcolonial Feminist Challenges to Philosophy 2. Fanon. Frantz, Black Skin.
White Masks. London: Pluto, 1. Said. Edward. Orientalism. Myth, Literature, and the African World. Spivak. Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural. Politics. London: Routledge, 1. Spivak. Gayatri Chakravorty.
The Post- Colonial Critic: Interviews. Strategies, Dialogues. Sarah Harasym. London: Routledge. Trinh. T. Minh- Ha, Woman. Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality. Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Narayan, Yasunari Kawabata, Anita Desai, Frantz Fanon.
Kazuo Ishiguro, Chinea Acheve, J. M. Coetzee, Anthol Fugard. Kamala Das, Tsitsi Dangarembga, etc. Suggested. Websites: Existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophy (promoted especially by Jean- Paul.
Sartre and Albert Camus) that views each person as an isolated. A person's. life, then, as it moves from the nothingness from which it came. Guerin). In a world without. Sartre viewed. as human beings central dilemma: . Authenticity. - to make choices based on an individual code of ethics. A choice. made just because .
Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. The Stranger. Cooper. D. Existentialism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1. Hannay. A. Kierkegaard, London: Routledge, 1. Heidegger. Martin. Being and Time. John Macquarrie and Edward. Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, 1.
Fear and Trembling. Lentricchia. Frank.
After the New Criticism. See chapter 3. Marcel. G. The Philosophy of Existentialism, New York: Citadel. Press, 1. 96. 8. Moran.
R. Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2. Beyond Good and Evil. Ricoeur. P. Oneself as Another. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago.
University of Chicago Press, 1. Sartre. Jean- Paul.
Existentialism and Humanism and Being. Nothingness. Taylor.
C. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1. Astone Rd 230 Manual Arts more. Phenomenology. and Hermeneutics. Phenomenology. Phenomenology is a philosophical method, first developed by Edmund.
Husserl (HUHSS- erel), that proposed . Husserl. viewed consciousness always as intentional and that the act of. Art is not a means of securing pleasure, but. The work is the phenomenon by which we. Eagleton, p. 5. 4; Abrams, p. Guerin. p. 2. 63). Hermeneutics. Hermeneutics sees interpretation as a circular process whereby.
Two. dominant theories that emerged from Wilhelm Dilthey's original. E. Hirsch who, in accord with Dilthey. Martin Heidegger (HIGH- deg- er) who argued. The reader's . For Heidegger.
Hans Georg Gadamer (GAH- de- mer), then, a valid interpretation. Key. Terms: Dasein. We live in meaning, and.
Consequently there. This intentionality.
The Space of Literature. Derrida. Jacques. Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl's. Theory of Signs. Gadamer. Hans- Georg. Truth and Method.
New York: Crossroad. Habermas. J. Communication and. Evolution of Society. Halliburton. David. Poetic Thinking: An Approach to Heidegger.
Heidegger. Martin. Being and Time. John Macquarrie. New. York: Harper & Row, 1.
Hirsch. E. D. The Aims of Interpretation. Husserl. Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental.
Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1. Magliola. Robert R.
Phenomenology and Literature: An Introduction. Phenomenology of Perception. Colin Smith. London: Routledge, 1. Palmer. Richard. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schliermacher. Ricouer. Paul. The Conflict of Interpretation: Essays in Hermeneutics.
Suggested. Websites: Russian. Formalism/Prague Linguistic Circle/Linguistic Criticism/Dialogic. Theory. These. linguistic movements began in the 1.
Soviets in the 1. Czechoslovakia and were continued. Prague Linguistic Circle (including. Roman Jakobson (YAH- keb- sen), Jan Mukarovsky, and Ren. The Prague Linguistic Circle viewed literature as a special.
Formalism views the primary function of. In contrast. it views literary language as self- focused: its function is not.
Literature is held to be subject. Abrams, pp. An important contribution. Victor Schklovsky (of the Leningrad group) was to explain. Key. Terms: Carnival. In carnival, official authority. Heteroglossia. - .
In a monological form, all the.
New Criticism. New Criticism Introduction. In a Nutshell. New Criticism is all about the text.
No need to read hundreds of pages of history or dig up evidence of Jane Austen's love life. In fact, forget about when and where the author lived, and whether the author was rich or poor, man or woman.
What's that, you say? You have the author's very private personal journal?
The New Critics don't care. It's the text that matters. They're not interested in reading every writer's innermost personal musings—that kind of navel gazing is best reserved for yo' momma—and they're not going to call the psychic hotline to figure out what some poet meant to say.
Their motto is: If the poem is good, if the book is well written, it'll say everything. See, many of the New Critics took a hard line against studying anything .
But these guys and gals weren't totally banishing history, biography, and politics. It's not like they don't think those things are important. It's just that they believe the text—and nothing but the text—should be the main focus of literary study. Instead of reading Hamlet to get clues about Shakespeare's life (Did he think Queen Elizabeth was the best monarch ever? Was he secretly Catholic?), they wanted to just read. Hamlet. Period. But there's really no . That's not giving them enough credit.
They close read every word in order to gain insight into the work's form, literary devices, technique, and so on. They were all about studying the poem as a poem, the play as a play, and the novel as a novel. Given that you're reading this page, we bet you're already a bit of a New Critic yourself. New Criticism was developed in the early 2. That's when close reading became a skill that everyone could practice and apply—regardless of background or politics. Suddenly, people didn't need to wear a tweed coat and study history and the classics in order to read poetry and novels closely. Which was really kind of liberating.
The New Critics were a great democratizing force that said: you, too, can know everything there is to know about Shakespeare. Unlike many theories that seem to have been developed for the sole purpose of stumping newcomers, New Criticism is actually pretty welcoming. So get your magnifying glasses ready, Shmoopers. The New Critics want you to out how this text functions. They wanted to make the whole activity more systematic—scientific, even. And in the process, New Criticism made literary analysis more democratic, too; power to the (book- lovin') people, man. To talk about Keats's poems, you don't need to get dusty comparing different manuscript versions.
You don't even need to spend years reading the history of England. Or researching different styles of 1. Keats's Grecian urn. Nope, you just need to get really up close and personal with the poems. New Criticism demands you ask yourself questions like: What ingredients make his poems good?
Is it the paradoxes? The tension between different ideas? The sound of the meter and rhyme? That whole . That's because all it demanded of readers was to, well, read. To pay attention to what was on the page (and what was markedly missing from it). Without New Criticism's notion of close reading, book clubs would be more like fan clubs: ?
But that handy dandy New Criticism toolbox allows us to discuss why Pride and Prejudice reads so well, in a pithy and understandable fashion. You know, who doesn't love the irony, the misunderstandings, and the marriage plots? Ladies, grab your knitting gear, let's talk some lit. Why Should Theorists Care? Before the New Critics arrived on the scene, English literature studies were all about history. All the great thinkers believed that in order to truly dig into a book's themes, you had to know the history of the language the work was written in, how it got written, what the author's life was like.
And so on and so forth. In fact, folks back then even maintained a strict division between being a critic and being a scholar. Critics were supposedly amateurs who just read literature for fun. Scholars were supposed to be the real professionals—the professors who knew every nit- picky detail, like how Shakespeare signed his name, and what sort of paperweights Dickens kept on his desk. These two different camps—the amateur critics and the professional scholars—asked very different questions. If you were a critic, you tried to answer questions about quality: which poems were good or bad?
Which novels were just so- so, and which were sparkling and brilliant? On the other hand, if you were a scholar, you kept your nose to the grindstone. You studied facts and spewed literary history. Imagine we gave an apple to one old- school critic and one old- school scholar. The scholar would tell you all about the history of apple trees and maybe even about how this particular apple traveled from an orchard in Washington to our little neighborhood market. But the critic would bite into it, and tell you whether it was a perfectly tart and crisp apple or kind of sad and mealy. So what did New Criticism do?
Combined the two, of course. If we gave a New Critic an apple, she would closely examine it, then eat it slowly, and then explain why it was good or bad.
New Critics wanted to create a whole system for appreciating and criticizing literature. These critics didn't simply gush praise for a poem; they tried to explain why it was an extraordinary example of the poetic form. They asked questions like: What's going on with language in the poem? Where do the line breaks fall?
How do all of these formal elements contribute to the poem's major themes? If it weren't for New Criticism, we might still be studying literature by tracking down every allusion to astronomy in John Donne. Or imagine some future scholar starts reading Harry Potterin order to deduce what we thought about magic and science in the 2. Yikes. As interesting as those studies might be, they're not really about the text: they're about 1. They take us further and further away from the text itself—which, when you think about it, is where all of the text's meaning actually lives.