Introducing Literary Criticism E-Book

Owen Holland

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Graphic Guides
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 117

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

From Plato to Virginia Woolf, Structuralism to Practical Criticism, Introducing Literary Criticism charts the history and development of literary criticism into a rich and complex discipline. Tackling disputes over the value and meaning of literature, and exploring theoretical and practical approaches, this unique illustrated guide will help readers of all levels to get more out of their reading.

Leseprobe

Published by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DPEmail: [email protected] 

ISBN: 978-184831-905-9

Text copyright © 2015 Icon Books Ltd

Illustrations copyright © 2015 Icon Books Ltd

The author and illustrator has asserted their moral rights

Originating editor: Kiera Jamison

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

What Is Literary Criticism?

For All Time?

Aesthetics vs Morality

Learning through Imitation

The Critic as Chameleon

A (Very) Brief History of Literary Criticism

The Theory of Forms

The Three Unities

Catharsis

Defenders of Poetry: Sidney and Shelley

Pope’s Criticism

Ancients and Moderns

Neoclassicism

The English Civil War and Literary Battle Lines

The Romantic Individual

Coleridge and Wordsworth: Romanticizing English Literature

The Function of Criticism

The Development of “English Literature” as a Discipline

Attacks on a Professional Literary Discipline

Aestheticism

The Critic as Artist

T.S. Eliot: The Poet as Critic

Modernism

Woolf and the Struggle of the Female Author

Some 20th-Century Approaches: Three Types of Formalism

Practical Criticism

New Criticism

Russian Formalism

From Literary Criticism to Literary Theory

Structuralism

Applications of Structuralism

From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism

Marxist Literary Theory

Psychoanalysis

Some Versions of Historicism

New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

Feminism

Intersectionality

Gender Studies

Key Figures in the Development of Gay and Lesbian Studies

Homosexual Identity and Critical Re-Readings

Postcolonial Studies

Can the Master’s Tools Dismantle the Master’s House?

Orientalism

Ecocriticism

Concluding Remarks

Glossary

Further Reading

About the Authors

Index

What Is Literary Criticism?

This is a (short) introduction to literary criticism. It is a book about literary criticism and so, by necessity, it is not a book of literary criticism. It’s a truism to say that the literary critic’s object of study is literature. A book about literary criticism, then, is only indirectly a book about literature. For this reason, thorny questions as to what constitutes “literature” will have to be left aside at the outset, but it covers: novels, poems and plays, certainly, and much else besides. A literary critic, or a philosopher, might well ask: what is literature?

WHAT IS WRITING? WHY DOES ONE WRITE? FOR WHOM?

The French philosopher, literary critic and communist, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) asked these very questions in 1947.

Our question is somewhat different: “What is literary criticism?” We might start with a broad generalization, and say that it includes any writing that claims to make judgements about the value, or otherwise, of literature in general or particular literary works. Arriving at such judgements is likely to entail interpretation (or close reading), comparison and informed analysis. Judgement might also involve claims about the intrinsic worth of literature, the aesthetic* merits and formal qualities of specific works, or their cultural and historical significance.

THOSE WHO POINT TO THE HISTORICAL CONTINGENCY OF LITERARY VALUE MIGHT NOT NECESSARILY AGREE WITH THOSE WHO ASSERT ITS INTRINSIC WORTH.

We will look at questions like this later on.

* Terms marked with an asterisk are explained in the Glossary on here-here.

For All Time?

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) is best known as a playwright and contemporary of William Shakespeare (1564–1616). When Jonson said this of Shakespeare:

HE WAS NOT OF AN AGE, BUT FOR ALL TIME.

… he made a claim about the universal and “trans-historical” value of Shakespeare’s writing.

So far, Jonson’s claim has been proved correct: Shakespeare’s plays are still performed for audiences that span the globe. Jonathan Bate (b. 1958), on the other hand, in his book The Genius of Shakespeare (1998), suggested that the globalization of Shakespeare might have had as much to do with the extension of the British Empire over large parts of the globe in the years after his death.

HAD THE HISTORY OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE TAKEN A DIFFERENT COURSE, PERHAPS LOPE DE VEGA (1562-1635), THE ACCLAIMED PLAYWRIGHT OF THE SPANISH GOLDEN AGE, MIGHT TODAY ENJOY SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBAL REPUTE.

So, is Shakespeare’s “genius” an innate quality of his being, or a matter of contingent and historical construction?

Aesthetics vs Morality

As such questions might suggest, the literary critic’s object of study is hardly a straightforward matter. For some, such apparently vulgar issues as imperialism and Empire ought not to be wheeled in when considering the specifics of literary value. On this view, questions of aesthetics and questions of morality are best kept separate.

THE SPHERE OF ART AND THE SPHERE OF ETHICS ARE ABSOLUTELY DISTINCT.

But can the “words on the page” of a given poem or novel really be held in splendid isolation from the text’s historical and cultural reception, or its history of publication and translation, or, say, its author’s penchant for producing propagandistic radio-broadcasts on behalf of Benito Mussolini, as did the 20th-century modernist poet Ezra Pound (1885–1972)?

For a literary critic, then, defining one’s object, or area, of study can be a contentious issue. Tracing the significance of references to Shakespeare in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) might rank alongside a study of the metrical patterning of Alfred Tennyson’s (1809–92) verse in terms of scholarly rigour, but both of these topics might sit oddly next to a critical re-reading of Theodor Adorno’s (1903–69) Aesthetic Theory (1970) or an essay* on contemporary avant-garde poetry.

Times in which nature confronts man overpoweringly allow no room for natural beauty; as is well known, agricultural occupations, in which nature as it appears is an immediate object of action, allow little appreciation for landscape.

Such is the scope of the field in its contemporary incarnation as an academic discipline that is taught and studied in universities.

If you cherish aspirations of becoming a literary critic, you could do worse than to start by reading widely in the history of literary criticism. This book is, first and foremost, an introduction to some of the major historical practitioners of literary criticism. Literary criticism has a long history.

Even a brief overview, such as this one, will take us from Ancient Greece to Renaissance England and through into more recent departures in 20th-century literary theory.

There are certain limits to this book. It is a concise survey of a tradition of literary criticism formed in Anglo-Saxon universities in the 19th and 20th centuries, oriented around syllabuses that have tended largely to rely upon certain exclusions: because this book is a survey of that tradition, no space will be made for figures such as Abdallah ibn al-Mu’tazz (861–908) or Lu Xun (1881–1936), even though both of these writers were highly respected literary critics in their respective cultures.

Edward Said A postcolonial critic we’ll return to on here

The relatively recent rise of courses in Comparative Literature and Postcolonial Studies has gone some way towards challenging the 20th-century dominance of English Literature, but this topic is large enough to merit a separate introduction in itself.

Learning through Imitation

Literary criticism is a practice perhaps best learned through imitation. The German philosopher Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) reflected on the history of the concept of mimesis* (a word we will encounter again shortly in Aristotle’s Poetics):

Our gift for seeing similarity is nothing but a weak rudiment of the once powerful compulsion to become similar and also to behave mimetically. And the lost faculty of becoming similar extended far beyond the narrow perceptual world in which we are still capable of seeing similarities.

The Critic as Chameleon

The best way of becoming a literary critic, then, is to read widely in the work of other literary critics, while also paying careful attention to the literary critic’s object of study.

One might think of the literary critic as a kind of empathetic chameleon, disinterestedly capable of extending imaginative sympathy to the range of human actors, conditions and motivations that are represented in literary texts.

As the etymology of the word chameleon reminds us (Greek: khamaileōn from khamai on the ground + leōn lion), the extension of imaginative sympathy should also involve the exercise of humility. (The word ‘humble’ has a common root in khamai).

Some, though, would regard with suspicion the universalism implied in this stance, seeing instead a cover for particular interests (of class, race or gender) that the literary critic will (consciously or unconsciously) bring to bear on a text. We will examine these issues further in the pages that follow.

A (Very) Brief History of Literary Criticism

The Republic of Plato (428–ca. 347 BC) is primarily a philosophical treatise that takes the form of a dialogue in which Plato’s teacher, Socrates (ca. 470–399 BC), is a main character.

The text establishes the conditions of governance for an ideal society or city-state, which will enable its citizens (although not its slaves) to pursue the good life.

The book remains a canonical text in the history of moral and political philosophy, but it also contains reflections on the place and function of the mimetic arts, including poetry, which make it a rewarding text for literary critics to study. It is also, in another sense, one of the earliest surviving examples of literary criticism.

In a well-known passage in Book 3, it is made clear that poets are not especially welcome in the ideal republic.

Suppose then there arrived in our city a man who could make himself into anything by his own skill, and could imitate everything. Suppose he brought his poems and wanted to give a display.We should salute him as divine, wonderful, a pleasure-giver: but we should then say that there is no one of his sort in our city and it is not allowed that there should be.We should therefore pour ointment on his head, give him a garland of wool, and send him off elsewhere.

The Theory of Forms

The decision to exclude poets from the republic is based on Plato’s suspicion of mimesis, or imitation, which is regarded as an artificial, or untruthful, deviation from the true essence of things. This is based on Plato’s theory of forms. A poet, unlike a maker of tables, for example, creates only second-hand representations. The poet’s imitation of, say, a table is, for Plato, an imitation of an imitation, insofar as the table-maker’s table is itself only an imitation of the essential, or divine, form of the table.

My theory of forms moves through three stages: form (universal idea) → object (particular) → representation of object (mimesis).

Plato also worried about the extent to which poets create inaccurate (and blasphemous) representations of the Greek gods, citing examples from Homer (ca. 8th century BC) and others, which might disrupt the smooth functioning of the ideal state. Similarly, because poetry stirs and excites the passions of those who hear it, poets might weaken the resolve and self-control of the city’s soldiers and guardians. Plato’s views about the function of poetry were thus very restrictive.

The only poetry admissible in our city is hymns to the gods and encomia* to good men.

Plato wanted a strictly useful poetry, subordinating the demands of artistic autonomy and independence to the greater good of the polis, or city-state. To many readers, his comments have often seemed like an argument for censorship. They can also be interpreted as part of a more playful and long-standing rivalry between the relative claims of poetry and philosophy as a route to truth.

By contrast, Aristotle (384–322 BC), in his treatise on Poetics, defended the mimetic arts – particularly epic, tragedy, comedy and dithyrambic*, and most music for the flute and lyre.

Mimesis is innate in human beings from childhood – indeed we differ from other animals in being most given to mimesis and in making our first steps in learning through it – and pleasure in instances of mimesis is equally general.

Aristotle’s treatise delineates the rules, derived from nature, governing the mimetic arts, including sections on the construction of plots in tragic drama and how to go about answering criticisms of Homer. Aristotle defended mimesis because it is a cause of pleasure, against Plato’s stricter focus on usefulness, linking the pleasure-giving aspects of mimesis to its teaching function. Aristotle’s views of mimesis, particularly tragedy and epic, had widespread influence during the European Renaissance in the 16th century and beyond.

The Three Unities

Aristotle’s theory of the unities of action, time and place, reconstructed from the Poetics, had particular influence in Renaissance Italy and France. In his discussion of plot, Aristotle emphasizes the importance of wholeness in order to achieve the requisite degree of order, amplitude and unity.

Tragedy endeavours as much as possible to confine itself to one revolution of the sun … whereas the Epic action has no limits of time.A plot should involve the mimesis (or representation) of a whole action, with a beginning, a middle and an end.

The extent to which Aristotle intended these remarks as descriptive observations or prescriptive rules is open to dispute, although he does offer more explicit guidance to practising playwrights.

Catharsis

Another important concept introduced in Aristotle’s Poetics is catharsis, relating particularly to tragic drama. Unlike comedy, which Aristotle defines in relation to “low”, or “ugly”, characters, tragedy concerns “high” actions represented in dramatic form, rather than narrative form (which belongs to epic).

His usage of the term has provoked much debate. There is no exact definition, but it is generally taken to refer to an almost therapeutic, or purgative, process by which audience members learn to comprehend human suffering without experiencing it to the same degree of intensity as is represented on stage.

Tragedy effects through pity and fear the catharsis of such emotions.

Catharsis can extend one’s imaginative sympathy and, as such, guide one’s behaviour. Tragic drama, then, has social meaning.

In the 1930s, the German Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) took up a polemical, or controversial, stance against Aristotle’s concept of catharsis, as part of his theorization of a politicized non-Aristotelian theatre. Brecht objected to the concept of catharsis because it presumes an audience of separate individuals, rather than seeing the audience as a political collective, capable of thinking and reasoning in response to the action presented on stage.

The audience’s identification with the “inexorable fate” of the tragic hero obscures the reality of human agency in socio-economic processes.

The Aristotelian play is essentially static; its task is to show the world as it is. The [Brechtian] learning-play is essentially dynamic; its task is to show the world as it changes.