Literary criticism

• Historical-Biographical Approach


  Its focus is on the life, times, and environment of the author, and this approach deals with the effects of these factors on the work of art
• Most of literary works can be analysed in the light of historical-biographical method
• Historical-Biographical approach


  Establishes a bridge between the reader and the worlds of the author
• The life of the author, the historical events and the values of his age help us understand the work, and in a similar way the literary work gives information of the author and his own period
• Taine's phrase "race, millue, et moment"


  • a. Race "culture & history"
  • b. Millue "place"
  • c. Moment "time"
• Taine's comparison of a work of literature


  To the fossil of a leaf which tells the world of a previous age
• Moral-Philosophical Approach or Moral/Thematic Criticism


  The larger function of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues
• Plato emphasized moralism and utilitarianism, Horace stressed that literature should be delightful and instructive
• The basic position of such critics is that the larger function of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues
• Horace's view on literature

  It should be "dulce et utile" or "sweet & useful" means literature should be both entertaining and enlightening
• Sidney's view on "right poets"

  They imitate to teach and delight, and to imitate borrow nothing of what is, hath been or shall be, but range, only reined with learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be and should be
• The important thing is the moral or philosophical teaching. On its highest plane this is not superficially didactic, though it may at first seem so
• In the larger sense, all great literature teaches. The critic who employs the moral-philosophical approach insists on ascertaining and stating what is taught
• Textual Studies/Textual Scholarship


  This approach can be considered as the beginning of New Criticism. The critic studies what urges the author to write such a work, what influences him, and what kind of historical motives are reflected
• Textual criticism


  Its ideal is the establishment of an authentic text, or the "text which the author intended"
• There are countless ways in which a literary text may be corrupted from what the author intended
• Traditional approaches analyse a work of art as the mirror of the author and the society of the period in which it is written
• Studying the historical events of the period, getting information about the author's life and experiences could help us understand what the text explains and what the author intends
• A reader who stays more or less on the surface of a piece of literature has at least understood part of what it is about
• Ones who intend to employ the traditional approaches to a literary work will almost certainly employ them simultaneously
• Impressionism focused on personal appreciation of the text, Naturalism saw humans as animals definable by science, New Humanism valued the moral qualities of art, New Criticism declared the objective existence of a text and that the text is more important
• New Criticism


  Intends literary criticism to be "more scientific, or precise and systematic", move from historical scholarship to aesthetic appreciation and understanding, and aim to "define and enjoy the aesthetic or characteristic values of literature"
• According to Ransom, New Criticism must focus on the "text itself" or "the words on the page"
• Wimsatt and Beardsley's view on a poem

  A poem possesses an ONTOLOGICAL status, it has its being and exists like any other object. A poem is an ARTIFACT or a VERBAL ICON. It is not answerable to criteria of truth, accuracy of representation, or imitation of morality
• Wimsatt and Beardsley's view on the author


  A poem, once published, no longer belongs to the author but to the public. The author has no privileged claim over his work
• Intentional Fallacy


  The meaning of poem must not be equated to its author's feelings or stated or implied intentions. The poem's meaning IS NOT an expression of private experiences or intentions of the author
• Affective Fallacy


  The reader's emotional response to the text it neither important nor equivalent to its interpretation. Instead, the poem's meaning resides in its structure and must be dealt with scientifically
• Eliot's view on "poor readers and/or poor criticism"


  A poem can meaning anything its reader or author wishes it to mean
• Eliot's "Objective Correlative"


  A set of objects, situation, a chain of events, or reactions that can effectively awaken in the reader the emotional response the author desires without a direct statement of that emotion
• Other related tents of ANC

  • Organic unity
  • Paradox, irony, and ambiguity
  • Form (overall effect that a poem creates)
  • Heresy of Paraphrase
• Methodology of New Criticism

  1. Examine text's diction— denotation, connotation, and etymology

  2. Examine all allusions— their roots and primary text or source

  3. Analyze all images, symbols, and figures of speech

  4. Examine and analyze various structural patterns and prosodic feature (rhyme, meter, etc.) as well as grammatical and tonal patterns

  5. Consider the tone, theme, pointof-view, dialogue, foreshadowing, narration, parody, setting, etc

  6. Look for interrelationship of elements

  7. State the poem's overarching effect
• Psychoanalytic Criticism


  It aims to cure mental disorders 'by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements of the mind through interaction
• Freud's model of the psyche

  Id, ego and super ego; unconscious, conscious and conscience vice versa
• Libido


  The energy drive which is associated with the sexual desire and is the most powerful factor pushing all sorts of desires and fears in a human life
• Eros and Thanatos


  Love or life instinct, and the opposite death instinct
• Psychic processes


  Transference and Projection. Transference refers to the reactivated past and projection to the negative aspects of ourselves
• Dream work


  Real events and desires are transformed into dream images through displacement and condensation
• Freudian Interpretation


  Attributes sexual connotations to objects
• What Freudian Psychoanalytic Critics focus on

  • Literary interpretation to distinguish the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious mind
  • Associate the literary work's overt content with the former and convert content with the latter, privileging the latter as being that the work is really about and aiming to disentangle the two
  • Pay close attention to unconscious motives and feelings, whether those of the author or characters
  • Demonstrate the presence of psychoanalytic symptoms, conditions, or Freudian phases in the literary works
  • Make large scale applications of psychoanalytic concepts to literary history
  • Identify a 'psychic' content for the literary work at the regard of social or historical content, pointing the individual psycho-drone above the social drama of class conflict
• Lacan's influence


  His theory of 'Mirror stage' influenced many of the scholars like Levi-Strauss, Saussure and Roman Jacobson