Group Vi-Literary Criticism
Group Vi-Literary Criticism
Group Vi-Literary Criticism
TOPICS
The New Criticism &
Mini-Critics
02 Marxist Criticism
The term "new criticism" is a literary movement that started in the last 1920s and 1930s
which originated to traditional criticism that new critics saw as largely concerned with
matters pertaining to the text (Le.. the biography or psychology of the author/ or the work's
relationship to literary history).
New Criticism proposed that a work of literary art should be regarded as autonomous
and so should not be judged by reference to considerations beyond itself.
2. Psychoanalytic Criticism
3. Post Colonialism
This refers to the period following the decline of
colonialism or during the end or lessening of
domination by Europeans.
4. Existentialism
A philosophy promoted by Jean Paul Sartre Jean Paul Sartre
and Albert Camus that views each person as an
isolated being who is cast into an alien universe,
and conceives the world as possessing no
inherent human truth, value or meaning
Albert Camus
Existentialism
This views literature as a special class of language, rested on the assumption that
there’s a fundamental opposition between literary (or poetical) language and ordinary
language.
Linguistic Criticism or Dialogic Theory
Literature then is held as subject to critical analysis by the sciences of linguistics but
also by a type of linguistics different from that adapted to ordinary discourse.
The "New Criticism" in literary theory
6. Surrealism.
An Avant Garde theory eliminates the distinction between art and life by introducing elements
of mass culture.
This is the most forward or newest, emergent theory. It is likened to an alienated form of
theory from the established order.
It kinds of challenged societal norms to shock the sensibilities of its audience. The major
figure in surrealism is Andre Breton.
The "New Criticism" in literary theory
7. Structuralism.
A way of thinking about the words which is predominantly concerned with the
perceptions and description of structures. It claims that the nature of every element in any
given situation has no significance by itself, and it is determined by all the other elements
involved in that situation. It also states that all human activity is constructed, not natural or
“essential.” Any activity from the actions of a narrative to not eating one’s peas with a
knife takes place within a system of difference and has meaning only in its relation to
other possible activities within that system, not to some meaning that emanates from
nature or “the diving.”
8. Post-Structuralism/and Deconstruction.
This is a reaction to structuralism and works against seeing language as "a stable,
closed system." A shift from seeing the poem or novel as a closed entity, equipped
with irreducibly plural, an endless play of signifiers which never be finally nailed
down to a single center, essence or meaning. It is interchangeably used with what is
called "postmodernism." Deconstruction, on the other hand, is the idea that has come
to be interpreted as "anything goes" since nothing has no real meaning or truth.
ACTIVITY ENHANCERS
1. What is your point of view regarding the "leaf of faith?"
2. Write some exemplified meaning of the following archetype: Colors (read, white, blue, green, black, white)? the Wise Old
Man? Nature (the moon, the sun)?
3. Why do we have shadow?
4. Do you consider that a poem consists less of a series of referential and veritable statements about the real world beyond it?
5. Give examples of Marxism in which the "material conditions are formed".
6. Do you agree with Sartre when he stated that "Everyone is condemned to be free?" and that "each person is an isolated being
cast into an alien universe?"
7. Do you really consider the world, in particular, as "absurd."
8. What do you think is the fundamental opposition between literary (or poetical) language and ordinary language?
9. How is formalism theory viewed as the primary function of ordinary language?
10. Why is linguistics considered as "science?"
11. Internet Researching: assign for major figures of surrealism.
Excerpts Of Post Colonialism Literary Criticism
Set in Manila during the Martial Law years, the novel is narrated by a highly introspective,
well-educated, middle-aged Filipina. The reader only knows her a “B,” the daughter of
prominent liberal lawyer and well-respected retired judge whose wife has died ten months
before the events of the novel take place. The small party of the title initiates the novel and
introduces the reader to B’s coterie. The occasion is a reunion of her friends, all Cornell
graduates planning their future homecoming. This is obviously an elite crowd which, however,
does not exclude nouveaux riches. Prominent among them is a general-to-be and his young
mistress who are the target of catty gossip by former classmates who try to eclipse each other in
flinty gowns and trendy Dior-cut barongs free of peasant embroidery but hand painted, severely
collared and cuffed. The men characters in the story are in a particularly ebullient mood. They
toast each other jokingly for the restructured society and the vision of greatness.
Mini Critic
When reading Silas Marner, for instance, the reader may necessarily interact with the text,
asking specific, text-related questions, such as:
4. The intention of this technique is to show how by studying the first 50 or 60 lines (or
more) of a number of books, the reader can begin to open the text up to a richer range of
interpretations and meanings through attempting a close reading which starts with the
book’s first paragraphs but could then be continued for the rest of the narrative, opening
and it up further.
5. In terms of character, plot, narrator and style, openings are often meant to “introduce”
the text to the reader and frequently the first pages serve as overtures to the narrative they
start. The more thought given to these areas, the more Individual portions of the narrative,
will seem to have significance: what is specific to the text, in terms of time of writing.
Genre, author, historical context, setting, narrative and stylistic devices, main theme and so
on.
Mini Critic
6. The reader should consider the effect that the initial sentence has or may consider the
following questions: a). Does it directly give information about characters or places? B).
Does it throw readers into the narratives as though they had entered the story in the middle?
C). Is it in speech marks? And d) Is it authoritative or hesitant, or rambling?
7. It is important to note that there is no limit to what can be said about the opening of a
text, it would be possible to write a book about the start of any one of the texts you might
be reading from now on or from this point onward. In addition, it may not be necessarily
the opening of a text that can be analyzed, but also the concluding chapter, the middle part
of the book, or any chapter depending on the one who will analyze or write a critic.
Mini Critic
6. The reader should consider the effect that the initial sentence has or may consider the
following questions: a). Does it directly give information about characters or places? B).
Does it throw readers into the narratives as though they had entered the story in the middle?
C). Is it in speech marks? And d) Is it authoritative or hesitant, or rambling?
7. It is important to note that there is no limit to what can be said about the opening of a
text, it would be possible to write a book about the start of any one of the texts you might
be reading from now on or from this point onward. In addition, it may not be necessarily
the opening of a text that can be analyzed, but also the concluding chapter, the middle part
of the book, or any chapter depending on the one who will analyze or write a critic.
02 Marxist
Criticism
Marxist Criticism
Historical materialism
In 1859, in the preface to his Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy), Marx wrote that the hypothesis that had served him as the basis
for his analysis of society could be briefly formulated as follows:
In the social production that men carry on, they enter into definite relations that are
indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a
definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on
which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character
of the social, political, and intellectual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men
which determines their existence; it is on the contrary their social existence which determines
their consciousness.
Marxist Criticism
Raised to the level of historical law, this hypothesis was subsequently called historical materialism.
Marx applied it to capitalist society, both in Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (1848; The Communist
Manifesto) and Das Kapital (vol. 1, 1867; “Capital”) and in other writings. Although Marx reflected upon his
working hypothesis for many years, he did not formulate it in a very exact manner: different expressions
served him for identical realities. If one takes the text literally, social reality is structured in the following
way:
1. Underlying everything as the real basis of society is the economic structure. This structure includes (a)
the “material forces of production,” that is, the labour and means of production, and (b) the overall “relations
of production,” or the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution. Although
Marx stated that there is a correspondence between the “material forces” of production and the indispensable
“relations” of production, he never made himself clear on the nature of the correspondence, a fact that was to
be the source of differing interpretations among his later followers.
Marxist Criticism
2. Above the economic structure rises the superstructure, consisting of legal and
political “forms of social consciousness” that correspond to the economic structure. Marx
says nothing about the nature of this correspondence between ideological forms and economic
structure, except that through the ideological forms individuals become conscious of the
conflict within the economic structure between the material forces of production and the
existing relations of production expressed in the legal property relations. In other words, “The
sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society”
and is at the base of society. “The social structure and the state issue continually from the life
processes of definite individuals . . . as they are in reality, that is acting and materially
producing.” The political relations that individuals establish among themselves are dependent
on material production, as are the legal relations.
Marxist Criticism
Analysis of society
To go directly to the heart of the work of Marx, one must focus on his concrete program
for humanity. This is just as important for an understanding of Marx as are The Communist
Manifesto and Das Kapital. Marx’s interpretation of human nature begins with human need.
“Man,” he wrote in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
Class struggle
Marx inherited the ideas of class and class struggle from utopian socialism and the
theories of Henri de Saint-Simon. These had been given substance by the writings of French
historians such as Adolphe Thiers and François Guizot on the French Revolution of 1789. But
unlike the French historians, Marx made class struggle the central fact of social evolution. “The
history of all hitherto existing human society is the history of class struggles.”
In Marx’s view, the dialectical nature of history is expressed in class struggle. With the
development of capitalism, the class struggle takes an acute form. Two basic classes, around
which other less important classes are grouped, oppose each other in the capitalist system: the
owners of the means of production, or bourgeoisie, and the workers, or proletariat.
Marxist Criticism
“The bourgeoisie produces its own grave-diggers. The fall of the bourgeoisie and
the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” (The Communist Manifesto) because
the bourgeois relations of production are the last contradictory form of the process of
social production, contradictory not in the sense of an individual contradiction, but of a
contradiction that is born of the conditions of social existence of individuals; however, the
forces of production which develop in the midst of bourgeois society create at the same
time the material conditions for resolving this contradiction. With this social development
the prehistory of human society ends.
Marxist Criticism
When people have become aware of their loss, of their alienation, as a universal
nonhuman situation, it will be possible for them to proceed to a radical transformation of
their situation by a revolution. This revolution will be the prelude to the establishment of
communism and the reign of liberty reconquered. “In the place of the old bourgeois
society with its classes and its class antagonisms, there will be an association in which the
free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
But for Marx there are two views of revolution. One is that of a final conflagration,
“a violent suppression of the old conditions of production,” which occurs when the
opposition between bourgeoisie and proletariat has been carried to its extreme point. This
conception is set forth in a manner inspired by the Hegelian dialectic of the master and
the slave, in Die heilige Familie (1845; The Holy Family).
Marxist Criticism
If one reads The Communist Manifesto carefully one discovers inconsistencies that
indicate that Marx had not reconciled the concepts of catastrophic and of permanent
revolution. Moreover, Marx never analyzed classes as specific groups of people opposing
other groups of people. Depending on the writings and the periods, the number of classes
varies; and unfortunately, the pen fell from Marx’s hand at the moment when, in Das
Kapital (vol. 3), he was about to take up the question. Reading Das Kapital, one is
furthermore left with an ambiguous impression with regard to the destruction of
capitalism: will it be the result of the “general crisis” that Marx expects, or of the action
of the conscious proletariat, or of both at once?
Literary Theory
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