(Some) Twentieth-Century Literary Theories

(Some) Twentieth-Century Literary Theories*

 

 


 

Formalism

 

Formalism stresses the importance of literary form in determining the meaning of a work. Formalist scholars consider biographical, historical, and social questions to be irrelevant to the real meaning of a literary work. Formalists read the text closely, paying attention to organization and structure, verbal nuances, and to multiple meanings. the formalist critic tries to reconcile the tensions and oppositions in the text in order to develop a unified reading.

 

The formalist movement began in England with I.A. Richards’ Practical Criticism (1929). He asked his students to read famous poems without telling them the poets names. This encouraged close reading of the text without relying on the poets reputation, biological data, or historical context.

 

The American formalist movement, called new criticism, was made popular by college instructors. It was seen as a way for students to work along with an instructor instead of listening to lectures. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren put together a series of textbooks that have been used in colleges for years. After the 1950’s, new critics began to reevaluate their theories and broaden their approaches. Few scholars currently maintain a strictly formalist approach, however nearly every critical movement of this century owes a debt to the close reading techniques introduced by formalists.

 

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Reader-Response Criticism

 

Reader-response criticism is a view that opposes formalism. Reader-response critics see a readers interaction with a text as central to its interpretation. They feel a literary work has gaps that a reader must fill in form his own experiences and knowledge. Nearly every reader supplies personal meanings or observations, this makes each readers response unique. Differing interpretations by different readers can be seen as different personalities constructing meaning form the same series of clues. The reader not only creates the literary work, but the literature may alter the readers experience and his interpretation.

 

Reader-response theorists believe in recursive reading. This is reading a work several times with the idea that no interpretation is set in stone. Later reading may produce a different interpretation. The reception theory, proposed by Hans Robert Jauss, suggests that each new generation reads the same literary work differently. This is because each age of readers has experienced different historical events, read different books, and has been aware of different critical theories.

 

Reader-response criticism has received serious attention since the 1960’s, when Norman Holland’s Dynamics of Literary Response formulated the theory. Wolfgang Iser (The Implied Reader, 1974) said that in order to be an effective reader you must be familiar with the conventions and codes of writing. Stanley Fish argued that there may not be any “objective” text at all. He says that no two readers read the same book, though they can be trained to have similar responses if they have had similar experiences.

 

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Sociological Criticism

 

Sociological theorists believe that a literary work cannot be separated from the social context in which it was created. They speculate on why a particular work might have been written and explore ways in which it reacts to a specific situation. Two strong arms of sociological criticism have emerged as dominant. These are feminist criticism and Marxist criticism.

 

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Feminist Criticism

 

Modern feminist criticism began in the late 1960’s. It began with works such as Mary Ellman’s Thinking About Women (1968) and Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1969). In general, feminist critics take the view that our culture and literature is primarily controlled by males. Simon de Beauvior stated that a person is not born feminine but becomes so through cultural conditioning. Feminist critics assert that Western culture defines feminine as “other” to the male, as passive and emotional, opposite to the masculine who are dominating and rational.

 

Feminist critics claim that paternalistic cultural stereotypes pervade the works of literature in the canon. They point out that until recently the canon consisted almost exclusively of works by males focusing on male experiences. One response by the feminist critics has been to reread the works in the traditional canon and to examine any covert sexual bias in the work. A second focus has been the redefinition of the canon. The feminist scholars have rediscovered women writers who were ignored during their own times. Thus several women writers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are now recognized as worthy of study and consideration.

 

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Marxist Criticism

 

Marxist criticism is based on reading of literature on social and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx and Engels believed that the dominant capitalist middle class would eventually be overthrown by the working class. In the meantime, they thought the middle class capitalists would exploit the working class. Marx and Engels regarded all parts of society as tainted by the corrupt values of middle class capitalists.

 

Marxist critics apply these views to their reading of all literary work. They attempt to analyze literary works of any era as products of ideology, or network of concepts, that supports the interest of the cultural elite and suppress those of the working class. Some see all Western literature as distorted by the privileged views of the elite class. Marxist criticism developed in the 1920’s and 1930’s in Germany and the Soviet Union. American and British Marxism has received its greatest attention since 1960.

 

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New Historicism

 

New historicist critics focus on text in relation to the historical and cultural contexts of the period in which it was created and evaluated. These are considered integral parts of the text. History is not composed of objective fact. it is interpreted and reinterpreted depending on the power structure of a society. Louis Althusser suggests that ideology intrudes in the discourse of an era, positioning readers in a way that “subjects” them to the interests of the ruling establishment. Michel Foucault feels that truth is produced by the interaction of power and the systems in which the power flows and it changes as society changes. Mikhail Bakhtin suggests that any discourse contains within it many independent and sometimes conflicting voices.

 

In historical criticism literature does not exist outside time and place and cannot be interpreted without reference to the era in which it was written. Criticism also cannot be evaluated without reference to the time and place it was written. Historical critics believe that readers are influenced and shaped by the cultural context of their eras. Some new historicists present criticism as negotiations between past and present texts. Their criticism involves both the cultural context in which the text was written and the present cultural context.

 

Feminist critics adopted some new historicist positions in the 1970’s. They focused on male-female power conflicts. Likewise, Marxist critics adopted the term “cultural materialism” which focuses on the political significance of a literary text.

 

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Psychoanalytic Criticism

 

Psychoanalytic criticism focuses on a literary work a as an expression in fictional form of the inner workings of the human mind. The premises and procedures used in psychoanalytical criticism was developed by Sigmund Freud. Some major points of his theories depend on the idea that much of what is most significant to us does not take place in our conscious life. Freud believed that we have been forced to repress much of our experience and many of our desires in order to coexist peacefully with others. French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan combined Freudian theories with structuralist literary theories to argue that the essential alienating experience of the human psyche is the acquisition of language.

 

Psychoanalytic Terms

 

  • id – Part of the mind that determines sexual drives and other unconscious compulsions that urge individuals to unthinking gratification.
  • ego – Conscious mind that strives to deal with demands of id and to balance its needs with messages from the superego.
  • superego – Part of the unconscious that seeks to repress the demands of the id and to prevent gratification of basic physical appetites.
  • condensation – Takes place in dreams when several elements form repressed unconscious are linked together to form a new, yet disguised, whole.
  • symbolism – Use of representative objects to stand for forbidden objects.
  • displacement – Substitution of a socially acceptable desire for a desire that is not acceptable.
  • Oedipus complex – Repressed desire of a son to unite sexually with his mother and kill his father.
  • projection – Defense mechanism in which people mistakenly see in others antisocial impulses they fail to recognize in themselves.

 

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Structuralism

 

Structuralism concentrates on literature as a system of signs that have no inherent meaning expect in their agreed upon or conventional relation to one another. It is usually described as a way to understand how works of literature come to have meaning for us. Structuralism developed from linguistic theory. French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure suggested that the relationship between an object and the name we use to designate it is purely arbitrary. He was interested in how language worked.

 

Literary structuralism leads readers to think of literary works as part of a larger literary system. It focuses on the importance of difference. Structuralists believe literature is basically artificial because the purpose of literature is not primarily to relay data.

 

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Deconstruction

 

Deconstruction developed form structuralism. It argues that every text contains within it some ingredient undermining its purported system of meaning. The practice of finding the point at which the text falls apart because of internal inconsistencies is called deconstruction. Deconstructive theorists like formalists and structuralists have a concern for the work itself. Also like formalists deconstructionists focus on the possibility for multiple meanings in a text. They believe any text is capable of many diverse readings. As structuralists, deconstructionists see literary texts as part of a larger system of discourse.

 

Deconstruction is not really a system of criticism. It offers a way to take apart a literary text and reveal its separate layers. Deconstructionists refuse to accept any one way of reading a work. They guard against fixed conclusions and arbitrary operating assumptions.

 

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NOTE: the information in this section was summarized by Shirley Williams–a more in-depth view can be found in the textbook: Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing, 2nd ed. by Kirzner and Mandel.

 

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