Month: February 2023

Russian Formalism

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Meanings of “Russian Formalism” Literary Theory

The literary theory “Russian Formalism” is a literary theory that bases the criticism of a literary piece on its form and structure rather than external factors of the autobiography of the author, social, cultural, and economic factors. This theoretical concept stresses upon the analysis of literary terms used in the text, its syntax, structure, and form, leaving the ideological and connotative aspects. Yet, this concept does not ignore meanings; rather its aspects under analysis include rhyme, rhythm, intonation, and phonic elements and patterns with their impacts on meanings and interpretations.

Origin of “Russian Formalism” Literary Theory

The literary theory of “Russian Formalism” originated in Russia, the reason that it was called “Russian Formalism.” There are two schools of formalists. The first was the Moscow Linguistics Circle which was also abbreviated as MLK. It appeared in the literary world in 1915. Its chief architects were Roman Jakobson and Grigori Vinkour.

The second was the Petersburg Society of Poetic Language. It was established by its chief exponents Boris Eikenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky, and Boris Tomashevsky along with Osik Brik. It was established in 1916 shortly after MLK. Where the MLK founders were interested more in linguistic features of the texts, chiefly poetry, the formers were more interested in ethnology and philology.

Principles of “Russian Formalism”
  1. Literary pieces have specific structures and are systematic, making the “science of literature.”
  2. A literary text is a holistic piece of work having its own meanings and forms and it is a finished product.
  3. The text creates holistic meanings, comprising its content and form.
  4. Literary texts are not only coherent and timeless but also universal and constant and have fixed interpretations and meanings.
  5. A literary text invites interpretations based on its words, meanings, forms, structures, literary terms and figurative languages, metrical pattern, and rhyme scheme as well as cadence and rhythm of sentences which constitute its holistic meanings (message).
  6. A text has its own “literariness” that distinguishes it from ordinary pieces and ordinary language used in every writing.
  7. A literary text should have “defamiliarization” impacts on the readers to cause them to see the difference contrary to the “automation.” It, then, results in “deautomatized” vision of the readers.
  8. A narrative text has two major aspects; fabula and syuzhet (plot).
What Does “Russian Formalism” Not Include?
  1. Texts do not have meanings outside of their shapes, structures, and language.
  2. Texts do not occur in any time without having any background and cultural or societal impacts on them.
  3. The words do not stand as symbols subject to different interpretations.
  4. The author exists outside texts and that his/her moral upbringing, ideological affiliations, and political associations are not significant in the interpretations of the works.
Examples of “Russian Formalism” in Literary Pieces
Example # 1

From “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

By formalism critique of these verses, the readers come to know that poem comprises a fabula, having a plot in which the poet is himself involved in using metaphorical language and rhythmic tone through ABCDEE rhyming pattern. The poet has also personified the daffodils to make them sync with the mood of the poet, demonstrating not only a jolly tone but also a pleasant mood.

Example # 2

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Animal Farm is a type of fabula, presenting different types of characters and different types of plots, making readers feel defamiliarization. This type of fable has deep impacts on the readers as they feel themselves absorbed in reading an imaginary tale until they feel by the end that it is a serious lesson about politics and tyranny. This use of the technique of defamiliarization is what makes this story come up to the yardstick of formalism.

Example # 3

White Fang by Jack London

This novel by Jack London also shows the use of fabula and plot. Narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, the story shows the life of wolf-dogs through their perspective. The readers feel defamiliarized not only due to the narrator but also due to the seemingly objective fact about the life of wolf-dogs and the specifications of their lives.

Criticism of “Russian Formalism”

As formalism only sees a piece of literature from a formal perspective, using prosody, literary terms, and literariness of the work, it often ignores the historical aspects of the literary piece. Besides history, it also leaves the historical side of the story, its morality, reading public and cultural production, its psychological and gender aspects. Furthermore, it does not mean this critique is applied to all works in a holistic fashion; it just critiques certain parts, or only a few parts are used to critique a work. Interestingly, several such critiques mostly use metaphors, similes, and metonymy and arrive on the same conclusion. Positively, however, it has a very good way of teaching and learning critiquing works and making students able to learn criticism. It is often applied as a theory after the selection of the work, identifying its main features, articulating thematic strands through those features, and using those features to highlight its message.

Keywords in Formalism Literary Theory
  1. Grammatical Aspects in Formalism
  2. Figurative Features in Formalism
  3. Discursive Features in Formalism
  4. Linguistic Features in Formalism
  5. Rhetorical and Stylistic Features in Formalism
Suggestion Readings
  1. Berry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Culture Today. Manchester University Press, 2002.
  2. Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. Routledge, 2007

Kellner, Douglas, and Tyson Lewis. “Russian Formalism and the European Critical Tradition.” The SAGE handbook of Social Science Methodology (2007): 405-422.

Postcolonialism

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Etymology and Meanings of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory

Etymologically, the term, postcolonialism, comprises two words; post- which is a prefix and colonialism which means the philosophy of making and occupying colonies. Colonialism also comprises two words; colonial which means related to a colony and -ism which is a suffix. It means a type of philosophy. Therefore, colonialism means a period of political control over colonies subjugated by certain western countries. If post- is added to this, it means the time when colonialism has ended. The literature related to this period, when critiqued from this perspective, is called postcolonial literature, and studies conducted through this perspective are called postcolonial studies.

However, there is a little controversy over the use of hyphens such as post-colonialism and postcolonialism. Some theorists argue that both are the same, some state that post-colonialism is related to general studies, while others argue that dehyphenated term, postcolonialism, means solely a literary theory. Here, the word will be used only with reference to literature.

Literally, postcolonialism means the cultural study of the impacts and effects of imperialism and colonialism after it has ended, focusing on the consequences of the political control on the persons, individuals, subjects, subjectivities, agencies, organizations, identities, and above all culture. This study analyses not only history but also cultural documents and discourse through a postcolonial lens.

Definition of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory

Postcolonialism could be defined as a literary theory that critique a piece of literature from the perspective of tracing the impacts, effects, and aftershocks of colonialism on the people, culture, identity, nationalism, and so on.

Origin of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory

Although impacts of colonialism have emerged shortly after the end of physical colonialism, disregard of its other shapes, postcolonialism term emerged around or during the decade of the 80s in the western academies. It appeared as a humanistic inquiry specifically in relation to the rise of political feminism and critical race theory with benign intentions of the academics toward the formal colonial subjects after they have studied in the western academies and written stories of the political oppression of the former colonial masters. Although it has impacted almost all the humanities related epistemological fields, it has had wide-ranging impacts on literature emerging in the English language in any part of the world having undergone colonialism. Therefore, postcolonial literary theory has impacted how readers read a literary text, understand its national strands and transnational impacts, feel the political impacts of colonialism, and how it has impacted the reception as well as inquiry in the field of epistemic production.

Principles of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory

  1. Postcolonial texts appropriate colonial languages for literary writings. Most of the postcolonial writers have written in English, French, or the language of their masters.
  2. Most of the literary texts tell stories of the colonizers or involve them in the stories.
  3. Stories, poetic recitations, or poems are related to colonialism and its political impacts.
  4. Literary texts retell, rephrase, or rewrite colonial history and refute or present the colonial discourse.
  5. Postcolonial texts refute, reject, or rewind the colonial discourse and concentrate on decolonization and the struggles waged to implement it.
  6. Postcolonial literature mostly stresses upon nation, nationalism, indigeneity, valorization, and cultural identity.
  7. Postcolonial literary thoeory also stresses upon identity, power, agency, alterity, hybridity, subjectivity, subjection, subjugation, and other such cultural aspects.

Criticism Against “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory

  1. Postcolonialism has emerged quite late in the age of nationalism and hypernationalism. Yet, it addresses the issues related mostly to colonialism and not what is assumed as post-colonialism.
  2. It has not touched indigenous, racial, and native issues.
  3. It is addressing the postcolonial issues in the colonial language that is English or any other such language of colonialism.
  4. It is not postcolonialism but a new form of colonialism that is viewing the former colonies from a new perspective.

Examples of “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory

Example # 1

From Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

But apart from the church, the white men had also brought a government. They had built a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in ignorance. He had court messengers who brought men to him for trial. Many of these messengers came from Umuru on the bank of the Great River, where the white men first came many years before and where they had built the centre of their religion and trade and government. These court messengers were greatly hated in Umuofia because they were foreigners and also arrogant and high-handed. They were called kotma, and because of their ash-coloured shorts they earned the additional name of Ashy Buttocks. They guarded the prison, which was full of men who had offended against the white man’s law. Some of these prisoners had thrown away their twins and some had molested the Christians. They were beaten in the prison by the kotma and made to work every morning clearing the government compound and fetching wood for the white Commissioner and the court messengers.

This passage occurs in the popular novel of China Achebe, an icon of postcolonialism. The passage has several references to colonial landmarks such as the church, the white man, the District Commissioner, and the indigenous references such as Umuru, the Great River, and Umuofia. The relationships between both are based on power and power dissemination as the use of government shows. This shows that colonialism has impacted indigeneity severely and has left its landmarks proving hard to remove from the indigenous face.

Example # 2

From A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

Aziz was offended. The remark suggested that he, an obscure Indian, had no right to have heard of Post Impressionism a privilege reserved for the Ruling Race, that. He said stiffly, “I do not consider Mrs. Moore my friend, I only met her accidentally in my mosque,” and was adding “a single meeting is too short to make a friend,” but before he could finish the sentence the stiffness vanished from it, because he felt Fielding’s fundamental good will. His own went out to it and grappled beneath the shifting tides of emotion which can alone bear the voyager to an anchorage but may also carry him across it on to the rocks.

This passage occurs in the novel of E. M. Forster, A Passage to India. It shows the protagonist, Aziz, a native Indian, showing signs of a native undergoing colonialism and his impressions that some other race or tribe, or government is ruling them. When he states that Mr. Moor is not his friend, he is clearly referring to the power relationship that exists between them as the ruler and the ruled. This shows the impacts of colonialism and signs of postcolonialism.

Example # 3

From Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to. . . .”

This is the most popular passage in the novel, Heart of Darkness. Conrad has obliquely referred to colonialism that goes on in the name of one or the other differences where the locals are othered and thereupon prejudiced. He clearly states that it is “not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” though outwardly the mission is always benign and beneficial at least in the words that it is “white man’s burden” to civilize the rest of the brute races that live anywhere in the world he occupies.

Example # 4

From “Plants” by Oliver Senior

The world is full of shoots bent on conquest,
invasive seedlings seeking wide open spaces,
material gathered for explosive dispersal
in capsules and seed cases.

This poem is by Oliver Senior, a Jamaican female poet. She has beautifully summed up the impacts of colonialism in this stanza taken from her poem “Plants” to show its impacts on the locals like the seeds that the trees spread to germinate. In postcolonialism, it also becomes hard to kill all the seeds left by colonialism in the shape of language, education, and religion.

Example # 5

From “Don’t Talk to Me about Matisse” by Lakdasa Wikkramasinha

Talk to me instead of the culture generally—
how the murders were sustained
by the beauty robbed of savages: to our remote
villages the painters came, and our white-washed
mud-huts were splattered with gunfire.

The references to culture, murder, savages, villages and fun fire show that Lakdasa Wikkramasinha shows his understanding of the conflict they have undergone during colonialism. These are the impacts of the postcolonialism theoretical perspective that he demonstrates in his poetic output. He is clearly saying that they were murdered and killed in the name of culture. Therefore, he does not want to talk about it.

Keywords in “Postcolonialism” Literary Theory

Colonialism, postcolonialism, ambivalence, alterity, essentialism, strategic essentialism, ethnic, ethnicity, hegemony, exotic, exoticism, hybrid, hybridity, identity, indigenousness, identity, ideology, sovereignty, nativity, mimicry, orientalism, subaltern, subalternity

Suggested Readings

Young, Robert JC. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. John Wiley & Sons, 2016. Print.

Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory. Columbia University Press, 2019. Print. Goulimari, Pelagia. Literary Criticism and Theory: From Plato to Postcolonialism. Routledge, 2014. Print.

New Historicism

New historicism means the historicity of the texts, relating them to different ideas of the topicality in which they have been written and appeared.

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Etymology and Meanings of “New Historicism” Literary Theory

The literary theory, new historicism, comprises two words “new” and “historicism.” As new means something that is just coming, historicism is a theoretical concept that takes history into account when analyzing a social or cultural phenomenon. In other words, new historicism means that when critiquing narratives or poetry, or any literary text, the idea is to attribute the importance of that space and time when the text was written. It also means the historicity of the texts, relating them to different ideas of the topicality in which they have been written and appeared. It could also be stated that a book looked upon from the point of new historicism or new historicism criticism means taking into account the ideas, ideology, and cultural mores of that time.

Definition of “New Historicism” Literary Theory

New historicism could be defined as a conceptual framework or an approach in which a literary text is critiqued, interpreted, and analyzed within its given contextual history, cultural environment, and situation.

Origin of “New Historicism” Literary Theory

As a literary theory, New Historicism has appeared during the decade of the 50s. In its initial phase, it was also called cultural poetics. During the 80s, it became further popular through the points raised by Stephen Greenblat who is stated as the inventor of the term, historicism.

Principles of “New Historicism” Literary Theory
  1. As texts comprise acts performed by characters, they have material dynamics that become motives for the actions or acts.
  2. The uncovering of these dynamics or acts means to either conform to them or condemn them. This means that every act whether it is a performance act, or an act of uncovering has also a motive behind it.
  3. Literature does not exist without culturally ideological impacts. Therefore, no literary texts exist in isolation.
  4. Social boundaries do not exist neither social acts provide access to universal truths or permanent features of human nature.
  5. Literary texts show the culture thriving under capitalism and that language is apt to discuss the current economic phenomenon.
  6. A literary text has a context, history, and historical consciousness, providing context and learning to readers.
Criticism Against “New Historicism” Literary Theory

Some arguments put forward against New Historicism literary theory include;

  1. All fields of knowledge or epistemological categories are contaminated.
  2. A text is not just limited to age, environment, or social structure. It often crosses boundaries and locates itself in some other historical period, achieving universality.
  3. The meanings of texts are not fixed; they are always fluid and dependent on several factors other than history.
  4. It is just a desire to make history more democratic and normatively inclusive that is not possible.
Examples of “New Historicism” Literary Theory

Example # 1

From Animal Farm by George Orwell

“But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it? No, comrades, a thousand times no! The soil of England is fertile, its climate is good, it is capable of affording food in abundance
to an enormously greater number of animals than now inhabit it. This single farm of ours would support a dozen horses, twenty cows, hundreds of sheep-and all of them living in a comfort and a dignity that are now almost beyond our imagining. Why then do we continue in this miserable condition?

Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by human beings. There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word-Man. Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever.

If this text from Animal Farm by George Orwell is looked at from a New Historicistic perspective, its interpretation would be the same as has been done by other critics. This is an allegorical one in that Old Major is Karal Marx and he is discussing the social conditions where economics play an important part as man represents the bourgeois class and the rest are the proletariat. Although this relates to Marxism, it is the existing interpretations based on allegorical understanding.

Example # 2

From The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Now Antanas Rudkus was the meekest man that God ever put on earth; and so Jurgis found it a striking confirmation of what the men all said, that his father had been at work only two days before he came home as bitter as any of them, and cursing Durham’s with all the power of his soul. For they had set him to cleaning out the traps; and the family sat round and listened in wonder while he told them what that meant.

Although this story is set in the simple perspective of migration, it also shows how the US idea of a melting pot has melted the immigrants. At that time, it was a much publicized idea but the text also shows the capitalistic exploitations that the immigrants have had to undergo in the tight-knit and rule-based society of the United States.

Example # 3

From A Raisin in The Sun by Hansberry Lorraine

MAMA: I ain’t meddling—(Underbreath; busy-bodyish) I just noticed all last week he had cold cereal, and when it starts getting this chilly in the fall a child ought to have some hot grits or something when he goes out in the cold—
RUTH: (Furious) I gave him hot oats—is that all right!

This conversation occurs in the play of Hansberry. Mama and Ruth are talking to each to each other. The topicality of the issue is that African Americans are now getting some share of the prosperity and thinking on civilized and cultured lines of saving the next generation from the current discriminatory hell.

Example # 4

From “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift

It is a melancholyobject to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenancefor their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

This is an extract from “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift. If seen from a New Historicist perspective, this text is related to that age when children did not have much significance in the eyes of the government functionaries. Therefore, this sarcasm is directed at the government of those times. It has nothing to do with this age.

Example # 5

From Night by Elie Wiesel

My father was a cultured man, rather unsentimental. He rarely displayed his feelings, not even within his family, and was more involved with the welfare of others than with that of his own kin. The Jewish community of Sighet held him in highest esteem; his advice on public and even private matters was frequently sought. There were four of us children. Hilda, the
eldest; then Bea; I was the third and the only son; Tzipora was the youngest. My parents ran a store. Hilda and Bea helped with the work. As for me, my place was in the house of study, or so they said.

These words of Elie Wiesel show the text and its relation to the Holocaust as well as the Nazi oppression. Although it could be linked to any other such event in the world, it is only related to the Holocaust and has nothing to do with the current complications of realities.

Keywords in New Historicism Literary Theory

Historicism, materialism, cultural materialism, circulation, containment, context, contextual study, body politic, appropriation, expropriation, hegemony, ideology, epistemology, liminal, power, textuality, subversion

Suggested Readings

  1. Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. Routledge, 2012. Print.
  2. Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt. Practicing New Historicism. University of Chicago Press, 2000. Print.
  4. Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Duke University Press, 2007. Print. Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-fashioning: from More to Shakespeare. University of Chicago Press, 2012. Print.

Suggested read: Russian Formalism as a Literary Theory

New Criticism

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Introduction to New Criticism Literary Theory

When formalism was witnessing its heydays in the Soviet Socialist Republic pf Russia, New Criticism emerged in the United States as an alternative literary theory. The main emphasis of this theoretical concept was on the closed reading, specifically, of the poetic texts. The point was that a literary piece was self-referential having its own interpretations and meanings. As it was different from general criticism, it was named as “New Criticism.”

Meanings of “New Criticism” Literary Theory

New criticism means a new way to critique literary texts. This movement emerged during the half of the 20th century when formalism or Russian Formalism was also seeing its good days. The main point of this new criticism was to look at the poetic texts from a new angle by analyzing the language, literary terms, and linguistic features of the language. It means that it has stressed the idea of seeing relationships between form and text.

Origin of “New Criticism” Literary Theory

This literary theory borrowed its name from John Crowe Ransom’s book about criticism titled New Criticism which appeared in 1941. Later, T. S. Eliot also joined this movement of new criticism by writing about the tradition and talent of individual literary figures in his essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” and writing a critique of Hamlet, the popular Shakespearean play. His concept of “objective correlative” and critique of metaphysical poetry further fueled this movement. It was actually a reaction to philological and literary history schools which were dominant at that time in the United States.

Principles of New Criticism

  1. A text is an independent and autonomous entity, having its own existence after it is written.
  2. A text derives its meanings from its form and structure which are intimately connected with each other.
  3. Readers need to be adept in close reading to draw meanings from the text.
  4. The focus of the attention should be literary terms or devices such as irony, metaphors, conflicts, and tensions including paradoxes used in the text.
  5. This literary theory involves “intentional fallacy (author’s assumption), affective fallacy (error of judgment), the heresy of paraphrase and ambiguity.

Criticism Against New Criticism

  1. It only focuses on the text and excludes all other external factors impacting the production of the text.
  2. It does not seem suitable for all types of writing.
  3. It supposes or assumes that one reading is enough and correct to draw certain meanings.
  4. It ignores the readers and their cultural understanding and background.

Examples of New Criticism

Example # 1

From “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees

Archibald MacLeish has beautifully summed up how New Criticism literary theory is applied in letter and spirit to a point in this part of his poem “Ars Poetica.” The very first line defines what a poem should be, what it should say, and what it should look like. In fact, he is stating how a reader should perceive a poem, though, it seems that he is advising the poets on how to see their poems.

Example # 1

From Practical Criticism by I. A. Richards

“Since so many readers did not succeed in applying their intelligence, a paraphrase kindly supplied by one writer may be inserted here. It will help moreover to bring out an interesting double-reading that the seventh line of the poem lends itself to.

It is difficult to understand this poem first. After thinking about it a good deal I have come to the conclusion that this is the meaning of it – an elderly man, experienced in such matters, has found a girl grieving at the falling of leaves in autumn.”

These lines occur in Practical Criticism, a book of I. A. Richards. Although the poem he is referring to is not given here, a reader can easily perceive that he is referring to “heresy of paraphrase” that a reader can depend on the paraphrase of the main idea done by some other reader. This is the main point of New Criticism literary theory.

Example # 2

From “The Language of Paradox” by Cleanth Brooks

“Few of us are prepared to accept the statement that the language of poetry is the language of paradox. Paradox is the language of sophistry, hard, bright, witty; it is hardly the language of the soul. We are willing to allow that paradox is a permissible weapon which a Chesterton may on occasion exploit. We may permit it in epigram, a special subvariety of poetry; and in satire, which though useful, we are hardly willing to allow to be poetry at all. Our prejudices force us to regard paradox as intellectual rather than emotional, clever rather than profound, rational rather than divinely irrational.”

This passage occurs in The Language of Paradox, an essay by Cleanth Brooks in which he has discussed some points of New Criticism literary theory. Using paradox is one of them. He clearly discusses here the benefits of using paradoxes and how a paradox and its understanding help the readers to comprehend a poem. He also points out that it is our prejudice as a reader that does not understand a paradox which is a point of intellectualism rather than simple emotions.

Example # 3

From Metaphysical Poetry by T. S. Eliot

His fate was destined to a barren strand,
A petty fortress, and a dubious hand;
He left a name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

“Where the effect is due to a contrast of ideas, different in degree but the same in principle, as that which Johnson mildly reprehended. And in one of the finest poems of the age (a poem which could not have been written in any other age), the Exequy of Bishop King, the extended comparison is used with perfect success: the idea and the simile become one, in the passage in which the Bishop illustrates his impatience to see his dead wife, under the figure of a journey.”

This stanza and its explanation occur in Metaphysical Poetry, an essay by T. S. Eliot. He points out the contrast of ideas, and their impact, referring to comparison and use of similes to point out how these structural features of verses help the readers to understand them easily.

Example # 4

From Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson

“One feels the conceit must have arisen, in a mood of moral causitry, from a sense of the oddity in that reliance on convention which gives us different reactions to killing at different times; murder as well as soldiering, therefore, were in mind of the speaker, and are suggested to the audience.”

These lines written by William Empson in his book, Seven Types of Ambiguity, show how the lines from Macbeth are to be interpreted from their structural features. These lines are ‘findes thee in stought Norweyan Rankee, / Nohting affeard of what thyselfe didst make, / Strange images of death.”

Keywords in New Criticism Literary Theory

New Criticism, affective fallacy, intentional fallacy, close reading, heresy of paraphrase, ambiguity, structural features, metaphorical language, metaphorical features

Suggested Readings

Abrams, M.H. “New Criticism.” A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999. 180-182.

Grafe, Gerald. “What Was New Criticism? Literary Interpretation And Scientific Objectivity.” Salmagundi, no. 27, 1974, pp. 72–93. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40546822. Accessed 22 June 2021.

Lynn, Steven. Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory. 2nd ed. NY: Longman, 1998. Murfin, Ross, and Supriya M. Ray. The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms. Boston: Bedford Books, 1997.

Postmodernism

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Etymology and Meanings of “Postmodernism” Literary Theory

Etymologically, postmodernism comprises two words, post- and modernism. Here the post is a prefix added to modernism to create a cultural notion that exists after the passing of modernism. The term came into use in the decade of the 70s, though its first use is traced to John Watkins Chapman. However, he used it for painting, avoiding using the French Impressionistic style. It happed in 1870. Since then, the term has been used repeatedly by different people for different reasons.  

Definition of “Postmodernism” Literary Theory

Based on its meanings, the term, postmodernism literary theory or postmodernist literary theory could be defined as a style in fiction, novel, and poetry writing that demonstrates a leap forward from modernism. It is characterized by the conscious use of different earlier writing styles, norms, and literary conventions used by the writers in their modern words mixing them into one another.

Origin of “Postmodernism Literary Theory

Postmodernism, in literature, started around the decades of the 80s and 90s and emerged out of modernism. It instantly hit the literary world. Yet, it is uncertain when the first postmodern literary piece appeared on the scene, for several literary pieces are simultaneously modernist and postmodernist. Rather, modernism imperceptibly gave way to postmodernism which started replacing it. Soon postmodernism pervades all other fields of culture such as linguistics, sociology, art, and architecture. It is also linked to other theoretical perspectives in criticism such as deconstructionism and post-structuralism.

Despite its broad usage in art, architecture, philosophy, and social theory, postmodernism is also a critical theory, encompassing a type of literature that shows postmodern traits such as skepticism toward general and accepted trends or rejection of them. Literature that invades the universal real of accepted truths such as hierarchies, morality, truth, human nature, reason, scientific inquiry, social development, and social norms is postmodern literature.

Principles of Postmodernism Literary Theory

  1. Postmodernism critiques the past movements and tears them apart and sees that the past movements, tenets, and conventions do not hold validity in the postmodern culture.
  2. It rather presents an amalgamation of low and high art, or culture and shows a mosaic of all elements considered vulgar, or pure.
  3. Postmodernism uses parody and irony to criticize modernistic literature, or art and even goes to the extent of using black humor and comedy to view tragic aspects of life such as Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller, paints the grim picture of WWII in a comedic manner.
  4. Postmodernism shows that time and space are not as coherent and linear as the modernists and realists show in their works. It is non-linear and fragmented like the reality itself. Therefore, the postmodernism has experimented with time, space, reality, and narratives, presenting fragment ontological aspects of the postmodern culture.
  5. Postmodernism also presents a metanarrative that means to present a narrative about the narrative in a self-conscious manner, showing that text is also conscious of commentary on its artistic effects such as Italo Calvino’s novels.
  6. Despite being the tenet of modernism, absurdity, Theatre of Absurd, existentialism, and distortion of belief systems, postmodernism shows its different strands pervading in postmodern literary pieces.
  7. Postmodernism also attacks the existing canons of literary narratives, literary poetics, poetry, and even cultural conventions, showing that the issues of identity, sovereignty, culture definitiveness, and individual liberty do not hold merit now.
  8. There is no valid narrative or grand narrative in existence. All narratives spread on the basis of some assumptions that postmodernism lays bare.
  9. Postmodernism is contrary to all modernist ideas such as romanticism is Dadaism, form is disjunctive, design is a chance, purpose is a play, hierarchy is an anarchy, metaphor is metonymy, centre is an anarchy, and transcendence is immanence, etc.
  10. Meaninglessness, paranoia, subjectivity, multi-narrative, and a sense of the loss of time and space are some other tenets of postmodernism.

Criticism Against Postmodernism Literary Theory

  1. The collapse of narratives in postmodernism is in itself a grand narrative.
  2. Postmodernism is itself a product of late capitalism in the words of Frederick Jameson. Therefore, consumerism is its foundation rather than a product.
  3. Postmodernism is not a product, but an effect of consumerization and commodification of the culture in which different classes experience postmodernism in a different ways.
  4. Postmodernism is relevant to some social structures in the world that it may not hold any validity in the third-world proletariat social classes.
  5. Simulacra or hyperreality does not mean that reality has become unreality or that it is not a reality.

Examples of Postmodernism Literary Theory

Example # 1

From “Post-Modernism” by James Galvin
A pinup of Rita Hayworth was taped
To the bomb that fell on Hiroshima.
The Avant-garde makes me weep with boredom.
Horses are wishes, especially dark ones.
 
That’s why twitches and fences.
That’s why switches and spurs.
That’s why the idiom of betrayal.
They forgive us.
 
These are the first two stanzas of the poem of James Galvin whose title is ironically “Post-Modernism.” However, it has a hyphe,n while the term postmodernism is mostly used in its de-hyphenated shape. These two stanzas show that the thoughts of the poet are disjointed and he thinks one thing and then moves to another, showing postmodern features of disjointed thinking, avant-garde, unusual metaphors, and repetitions with minor changes. The slippery quality of the semantic language shows what postmodern poetry is like.

Example # 2

From “Thinking I Think I Think” by Charles Bernstein

. . .The man the man declined
to be, appraised at auction at
eighty percent of surface volume.
Cube steak on rye amusing twist
on lay demo cells, absolutely no
returns. Damaged goods are the only
kind of goods I ever cared about.
The lacuna misplaced the ladle,
the actor aborted the fable. Fold
your caps into Indians &
flaps.

Almost every line of this poem has a different thematic strand, different subject matter, and different linguistic nuances. This shows that the poetic conventions followed in the postmodernism do not seem valid for Charles of Bernstein in this stanza of his poem. It shows clearly from its verses which have broken almost all the rules of poetic conventions, too. Therefore, it becomes an excellent example of postmodern poetry.

Example # 3

From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O’Hare, and we made friends with a taxi driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoner of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn’t much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.

This passage shows the authorial intervention in the very beginning which points to the truth and its validity in the postmodern era. However, this intervention of the author at this point, and that too in the work of fiction points to how much the author feels free to twist and turn facts which also hold the same legitimacy as the author himself whose major point in this fiction is “So it goes.” This is a point of the mini-narrative, a feature of postmodern fiction.

Example # 4

From “The Circular Ruins” by Jorge Luis Borges

No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sink into the sacred mud, but in a few days there was no one who did not know that the taciturn man came from the South and that his home had been one of those numberless villages upstream in the deeply cleft side of the mountain, where the Zend language has not been contaminated by Greek and where leprosy is infrequent. What is certain is that the grey man kissed the mud, climbed up the bank with pushing aside (probably, without feeling) the blades which were lacerating his flesh, and crawled, nauseated and bloodstained, up to the circular enclosure crowned with a stone tiger or horse, which sometimes was the color of flame and now was that of ashes.

This passage occurs in the short story of Borges “The Circular Ruin.” Although this passage shows an unusual character, the end of the story shows that this unusual character is not even a character. He is rather a shadow who thins out in the air as he has descended on this ruin. This shows the postmodern trait of the fiction as having no specific character, no specific features, no specific mannerisms, and no specific setting. In other words, postmodern fiction also breaks all narrative conventions.

Example # 5

From “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” by Italo Calvino

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, “No, I don’t want to watch TV!” Raise your voice—they won’t hear you otherwise—”I’m reading! I don’t want to be disturbed!” Maybe they haven’t heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: “I’m beginning to read Italo Calvino’s new novel!” Or if you prefer, don’t say anything; just hope they’ll leave you alone.

This passage occurs in the novel of Italo Calvino in which he shows more conventions of narratology and narratives broken here. Not only he himself appears in this passage, but also he points out what type of novel he is going to write and what the reader is expecting from him, or doing with his fiction. This is an unusual narrative method, using the second person. This shows an excellent use of a postmodern feature of fiction writing.

Keywords in Postmodernism Literary Theory

Fragmentation, rejectionism, deconstructionism, sub-culture, simulacra, commodification, consumerization, micropolitics, hyper culture, hyper reality, avant-garde, grand recits, petit recits, metanarrative, totality

Suggested Readings

Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. Routledge, 2012. Print.

Childs, Peter. Modernism. Routledge, 2016. Print.

Quinones, Ricardo J. Mapping Literary Modernism. Princeton University Press, 2014. Print.

Hassan, Ihab. The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature. Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Print. Bertens, Hans, and Douwe W. Fokkema, eds. International Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice. John Benjamins Publishing, 1997.

Liberal Humanism

Etymology and Meanings of “Liberal Humanism” Literary Theory

The literary theory “Liberal Humanism” is also known as “Humanism Literary Theory” or “Humanism in Literary Theory” or “British Humanism.” It means a belief that values based on humanity are more important than religious dogmas, or creeds, and desires of human beings. These values must be upheld before other values. Therefore, any such ethical framework based on these values is actually a universal framework. In literature, it is a mode of inquiry that has emerged in Italy but spread to Europe and other European countries. It means that the western belief system is humanistic, and universal. Hence, it is applicable to all literary texts.

Definition of “Liberal Humanism” Literary Theory

Liberal humanism as a literary theory could be defined a theoretical perspective of approach that shows the universality of cultures, human beings, settings and thematic strands in all the literary texts disregard of the difference of cultures, human beings, views, ideas or even religions etc.

Origin of “Liberal Humanism” Literary Theory

The literary theory of “Humanism,” emerged from Italy, and spread throughout the world. It emerged in the United Kingdom during the 1840s. Its foundation was on the belief that the study and reading of literature make a person free from bad habits and bad ideas. This study connects human beings to enduring human values that are universal and the same everywhere. In fact, the major idea behind liberal Humanism was to instill middle-class values in the public and create a class that supports the British value system.

Principles of “British/Liberal Humanism” Literary Theory

  1. Literary pieces are timeless and important everywhere. They are universal and have the same meanings of humanity and human values for everybody.
  2. A literary text has universal meanings applicable to every culture.
  3. The best way to read a literary text is to read it without assumptions.
  4. A literary text comprises its own universal truths about human nature which is always constant and unchanging.
  5. A text has the same meanings for all individuals.
  6. A literary piece has the purpose to spread humane values.
  7. Form and content in a literary piece are integral parts.
  8. A literary work always contains truth.
  9. A literary piece always shows our true nature which is valuable.
  10. The subject of interpretation is always the text.

Examples of “Liberal Humanism” Literary Theory in Literary Pieces

1. Meursault in The Stranger by Albert Camus

Although the novel The Stranger by Camus is termed an absurd novel or a narrative of absurdity, it has some elements of liberal humanism. Meursault, the main narrator, demonstrates these points at various places in the text.

At one point, he says “I said that I didn’t believe in God. He wanted to know if I was sure and I said that I didn’t see any reason to ask myself that question; it seemed unimportant.”

This dialog of Meursault shows that he thinks that human nature is the same. It is unchanging and cannot change, while the chaplain, who is talking to him, also assumes that human nature is the same and that he should accept his proposition.

2. Liberal Humanism in The Passage to India by E. M. Foster

Among all the Britishers living in the town of Chandrapore as shown by Foster in his novel, A Passage to India, Cyril Fielding is the one who develops very easy and comfortable relationships with Indians. It shows the universal nature of human beings that is constant and same everywhere. If measured on this yardstick, the character of Aziz is also the same that he cultivates an easy friendship with other characters, including the Britishers.

3. Liberal Humanism in “A Poison” Tree by William Blake

I was angry with my friend;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears:

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see;

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

If the first and second tenets given above from Peter Berry are applied to this poem, the shows that it has meanings about human nature that are of hatred and jealousy. In other words, this poem has its own meanings setting aside the nature and character of its writer as well as the time when it was written or the context and the circumstances. It shows universal human nature or the assumption of liberal humanism literary theory that human nature is universal and that the objective of this piece is to spread these values that human beings should not cultivate hatred and form good relationships with each other.

Criticism of “Liberal Humanism” Literary Theory

  1. T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound argue that liberal humanism is sentimental, while Ezra Pound terms it as “an old bitch gone in the teeth.”
  2. The nation of humanity is overarching and abstract that is subject to transformation in different circumstances.
  3. Liberal human causes “othering” of other races.
  4. It has placed attributes based on assumptions that could be true or false.
  5. Words have different meanings for different people subject to language, people, culture, values, upbringing, and ethical framework.
  6. Truth does not have any definite definition and it is subject to ideologies.
  7. All literature is ideological.

Suggestion Readings

Berry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Culture Today. Manchester University Press, 2002. Print.

Bertans, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. Routledge, 2007. Print. Kellner, Douglas, and Tyson Lewis. “Liberal humanism and the European critical tradition.” The SAGE Handbook of Social Science Methodology (2007): 405-422.

Feminism Literary Theory

“I believe feminism is grounded in supporting the choices of women even if we wouldn’t make certain choices for ourselves.” Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

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Etymology and Meanings of “Feminism” Literary Theory

The term feminism is of French origin. It seems to have appeared in the late 19th century as feminisme which means being feminine or like women. The term was used earlier for feminine rights or by the people who advocated the rights of women. The term itself is suggestive of relating to women. Therefore, feminism means a philosophy that outlines women, their rights, figures, persona, identities, etc.

Definition of Feminism Literary Theory

From the etymology and meanings given above, it could be stated that feminism is a literary theory that stresses upon the feminine side of a story, showing how women act in the storyline, how they are presented in the setting, and how they are marginalized or not-marginalized etc.

Origin of “Feminism” Literary Theory

Despite having some freedom during the Grecian and Roman periods, women mostly found themselves in domestic situations, breeding and rearing the next generation. However, the Enlightenment brought a specific focus on inequality in gender, portraying women as subordinate to men. This thinking also penetrated the legal realm. It was as early as 1792 when Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the real work for feminism started. Since then, there is no looking back as this little effort entered in every other sphere of life, giving rise to social movements, political campaigns, and ideologies based on gender equality and the removal of stereotypes.

With time, different governments gave birth to different feministic movements such as the first liberal feministic wave emerged in the 19th century, which gave way to Marxist feminism and later radical feminism replaced it. This second wave also highlighted patriarchal supremacy, giving rise to multicultural, black, and even intersectional feminism. With the arrival of literary theory, it also became an integral part of literature and the feminist approach to critique literary pieces also ensued in the literary realm.

Principles of Feminism Literary Theory
  1. Feminism literary theory assumes that patriarchy, generally, oppresses women in social, political, economic, and even legal realms.
  2. The second assumption is that women are subordinate to men and that they are kept in this subjugation psychologically.
  3. Patriarchy marginalizes femininity in every sphere of life.
  4. Western as well as eastern civilizations are deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology and hence keep femininity subjugated.
  5. Femininity is a cultural production and not biological discrimination.
  6. Feministic activity, traits, and features are analyzed through feminist literary theory.
  7. Gender plays a significant role in every cultural, political, and economic sphere.

Criticism Against Feminism Literary Theory

  1. Feminism is just a single lens to view a literary text. It is not a pervasive theme of every thematic strand.
  2. It limits the ability of the readers to view the texts from any other angle such as psychoanalytic, cultural, Freudian, or Marxian, indigenous, colonial or queer.
  3. This is a selective perception of some concepts that pervade everyday life.
  4. It highlights the debate on social constructions of gender.
  5. Feminist theory ignores biological facts that determine social construction.
  6. It often marginalizes patriarchy and projects feminism more than required.
Examples of Feminism Literary Theory
Example # 1

From “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see he does not believe I am sick!

This passage occurs in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s representative story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The anonymous protagonist of the story is a woman. In this passage, she states it clearly that the patriarchy represented by her husband, John, has the right to have an upper hand over the femininity that she represents. She knows that such things happen in life and patriarchy is always practical, while fanciful thinking goes to femininity. Yet, she highlights that this stereotypical thinking may cause psychological issues to women as she suffers from it and the practicality does not give due advantage to this thinking.

Example # 2

From “Hills like White Elephant” by Ernest Hemingway

The girl stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Faraway, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.” And we could have all this,” she said. “And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.” “What did you say?” “I said we could have everything.” “We can have everything.” “No, we can’t.” “We can have the whole world.”

This conversation occurs between the girl and the American when they are at the railway station in “Hills like White Elephant, a short story of Hemingway. The girl is pregnant and wants to have a child. That is why she is looking beyond the moment, making the young man realize the future and what it holds for them in store. However, the has a terse and curt answer that is no. He wants an abortion. Therefore, this terse shows the patriarchy at work in making final decisions while femininity itself stays in the background by only working on verbal persuasion.

Example # 3

From “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

This passage occurs in the popular short story of Kate Chopin “The Story of an Hour.” The leanings of the story are clearly toward femininity when it presents the character of Mrs. Mallard who feels freedom and liberty when she receives the news of the death of her husband. However, when the contradictory news arrives, she instantly succumbs to the pressurssue that she has built in her heart about the suppression of patriarchy. This is how the feminism has been projected in literature.

From Literature, Criticism and Theory by Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royale

One way of understanding this claim would be in relation to the cultural construction of gender and sexuality. Reading Shakespeare can help us to think about ways in which sexuality is an unstable site of conflict and transgression, historically contingent, mobile, a performance. Writing at a time before categories of homo- and heterosexual desire had been institutionalized, medicalized, rigidified and policed, Shakespeare’s writing questions what it means to be a man or a woman, and what it means, as a man and as a woman, to desire men and to desire women.

This passage from the theoretical book of Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royale shows that feminism has been in vogue since the time of Shakespeare. The only difference is that the language was not evolved enough to encompass its difficult concepts into words. This passage shows how feminism has given birth to myriads of terms necessary to explain this theoretical concept.

Example # 4

From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it. It was then disclosed in the following manner. Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with: ‘I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy.

This passage occurs in Pride and Prejudice. It shows that both male members are not as much eager to meet Mr. Bingley, the rich young man who is arriving in that area, as the women are. Therefore, it shows that patriarchy is not much concerned about the feminine issues of marriage, partying, and forming relationships during the Victorian period.

Keywords in Feminism Literary Theory

Femininity, feministic, sexuality, gender, sexual identity, gender identity, sexism, sexism, misogyny, misogynistic, patriarchal, patriarchy, hostile sexism, heterosexual and homosexual tendencies

Suggested Readings
  1. Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. Routledge, 2016. Print.
  2. Walby, Sylvia. The Future of Feminism. Polity, 2011. Print.
  3. Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. Routledge, 2014. Print.

Modernism Literary Theory

Literary theory of modernism or modernism literary theory means a breakup of the literary pieces from the past conventions during the early 20th century.

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Etymology and Meanings of “Modernism” Literary Theory

The term modernism has been derived from a Latin term, modernus. It means the present time, the current or existing time. Literally, it connotes the contemporariness of the time that is present and not the past time.

Modernism in social sciences also means the same thing that is the present time, while the literary theory of modernism means a breakup of the literary pieces from the past conventions during the early 20th century.

Definition of “Modernism” Literary Theory

Modernism could be defined as a movement that rebelled against the classical and Victorian periods, conventions, and clear-cut or straightforward storytelling and poetry writing norms. This definition has two aspects. The first one implies rebellion against the conventions or set -standards and the second one is innovation. Therefore, modernism means a new trend in literary writings.

Origin of “Modernism” Literary Theory

In literature as a movement, modernism, which is often called literary modernism or modernist literature, emerged during the final years of the 19th century and early years of 20 century. This movement mostly emerged in English-speaking countries in Europe and the United States. It featured the representation of untraditional ways in writing fiction, poetry, and plays giving space to a wide array of experiments in form as well as expressions and style. The impacts of WWI on the social fabric of Europe led to the emergence of this movement which later turned into a theoretical perspective.

Principles of Modernism Literary Theory
  1. It broke from the established order in religious, political, and social realms.
  2. It broke away from accepted traditions.
  3. The belief in the world as per the perceptions of things became strong.
  4. It negated absolute truth and the experience of alienation.
  5. It showed that life is not systematic and ordered
  6. It paid attention to micro issues of the individuals and not the society as a whole.
  7. It showed disintegration against harmony.
  8. It demonstrated an openness to sexuality, non-superiority of ethics, and propagation of aesthetics.
  9. Its major focus was on personal and spiritual decadence.
  10. It rejected ideas of rationality, objectivity, and unity in things and the universe.
Criticism Against Modernism Literary Theory
  1. It stresses too much on individuality, disintegration, and the world.
  2. It has led to several non-issues that have exploded into postmodernism and several other ideologies.
  3. It has led to commodity fetishism and consumerism.
  4. Modernism has caused the destruction and disintegration of several political, religious, and social orders.
  5. It has brought various other literary theoretical perspectives into views such as atheism, capitalism, liberal capitalism, trans-humanism, and post-truth.
  6. It has given birth to materialism, negating nature.
Examples of Modernist Literature Literary Theory
Example # 1

From Ulysses by James Joyce

—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid? He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:

—Will he come? The jejune jesuit! Ceasing, he began to shave with care. —Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.

—Yes, my love?

—How long is Haines going to stay in this tower? Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.

—God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly.

This passage shows some of the features of a modernist novel. It shows how Malachi Mulligan in Ulysses by James Joyce thinks of his name in dactylic features as being absurd. The other questions and his attempt of equating them to the Hellenic traits show modernism and then his musings point to the modernist trait of self-reflection or stream of consciousness.

Example # 2

From To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

 Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude toward she her self which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl–pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!–who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones.

This passage about Mrs. Ramsay, her character traits, and her musings show some features of modernist literary theory. First, she thinks of herself in gendered terms and second that she is quite ambivalent about it as she does not know how to explain this. Despite this modernist thinking, she is in confusion when it comes to breaking social norms and mores.

Example # 3

From Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Ah, Mr. Kurtz!’ broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know ‘how long it would take to’ … I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too. I was getting savage. ‘How can I tell?’ I said. ‘I haven’t even seen the wreck yet— some months, no doubt.’ All this talk seemed to me so futile. ‘Some months,’ he said. ‘Well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.’ I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of verandah) muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot.

This pen picture of Mr. Kurtz from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad shows modernist traits in writing. He has broken away from the traditional way of writing narratives. This shows how inserting dialogues, emotions, and exclamations within the text became a new normal in modernist writings.

Example # 4

From “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

This is the first stanza of the celebrated poem “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot. The stanza shows Eliot breaking several poetic norms. He has not used any rhyme scheme. He has rathered termed April as the cruelest month which is not the poetic norm of those days. It was rather considered the best due to being in the spring season. Several other points such as desire, memory, and rain have been given meanings, not traditionally associated with them.

Example # 5

“In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:

Petals on a wet, black bough

This short poem by Ezra Pound shows the modernist theoretical perspective that is showing people through images. This is one of the best imagist poems written by one of the best imagist poets. The poem is purely modernist not only in writing and poetic conventions but also in its very themes.

Keywords in Modernism Literary Theory

Destabilization, fragmentation of reality, non-linearity, interiority, multiple perspective, allusiveness, self-consciousness, depiction of sexuality, invocation to classicism, grotesqueness, absurdity, absurdism, commodification

Suggested Readings
  1. Bertens, Hans. Literary Theory: The Basics. Routledge, 2012. Print.
  2. Childs, Peter. Modernism. Routledge, 2016. Print.

Marxism Literary Theory

What guides Marxism is a different model of society, and a different conception of the function of the knowledge. Jean-Francois Lyotard

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Etymology and Meanings of “Marxism” Literary Theory

The term “Marxism” is based on the name of Karl Marx, the chief exponent of Marxist political and social philosophy. The term, however, was first used by Karl Kautsky, who considered himself Marx’s staunch follower. That is why the term comprises two words, the name of Karl Marx, and -ism which means philosophy. Therefore, it means the social and political philosophy of Karl Marx though his colleague, Friedrich Engels, too, contributed to the philosophy considerably. The main exponent, though, was Karl Marx. Therefore, this school of thought always refers to Karl Marx.

Definition of “Marxism” Literary Theory

As a literary theory, Marxism could be defined a theoretical perspective that takes political, social, and cultural issues involving class differences, class consciousness, poverty, and issue of wages, or wealth into account when interpreting a text or critiquing a literary piece. This theory seeks to find these topics in fiction, poetry, and other literary works. In other words, it also could be defined as critiquing a literary text through a Marxian approach or approaching a text through a Marxian lens or perspective.

Origin of “Marxism Literary Theory

As Marxist literary theory is a materialistic one, it is clear that Karl Marx and Frederich Engels are its founders. Major teachings of this theoretical perspective have been derived from the main books that underline Marxism such as The German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto, and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Almost all the terms by Marx and Engels have contributed to Marxism in one or the other way. The most popular dictum of this literary theory has been summed up in the first line of The Communist Manifesto that “History of all hitherto existing classes is the history of class struggles.”

Principles of Marxism Literary Theory
  1. This literary theoretical perspective assumes that society has two classes, or better to say the capitalist society comprises of business class, or the bourgeoisie, and the workers, or the proletariat.
  2. The relations between both classes are based on labor, wages, commodities, prices, and production.
  3. The literary pieces present means of production and means of consumption, along with laborers and workers as the working class is showing at war with the business class on account of their dominant position on the means of production such as factories or fields.
  4. The workers have to work to live while the business class eyes only its profit. This creates a friction point between both classes, making the antagonistic to each other.
  5. The workers, having no stakes in the means of production suffer from, alienation, ennui, boredom, and tedium.
  6. The upper or business classes exploit the situation through institutional manipulation including media, educational institutions, and religion, creating a superstructure, besides means of production and financial institutions.
  7. The issues lead to further conflict that intensifies and lead to revolution such as in Animal Farm by George Orwell or by the end of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
  8. Marxist literary theory gives aesthetics secondary significance, upgrading the interest of the working class.
  9. Marxist paradigm applied to literature finds new ways to define social and cultural relations and issues through class-conflict prism.
Criticism Against Marxism Literary Theory
  1. A society or a culture is a holistic entity and not just a division of two classes always at war with each other.
  2. There is no clear-cut division of a society into two distinct classes.
  3. No superstructure always stays for or in the favor of the upper or business class. There is always social mobility from one class to another.
  4. No elements of a text can be analyzed in pure isolation.
  5. Not all texts have ideologies. A writer has a different vision of reality other than what the Marxists interpret through their individual lenses.
  6. A society comprises a multiplicity of classes, sections, and even races. Therefore, no text can present a coherent picture of the class conflict based on the Marxian concept.
Examples of Marxism Literary Theory

Example # 1

From Animal Farm by George Orwell

“Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.

This passage occurs in the novel, Animal Farm, by George Orwell. The speech delivered by Old Major seems to be a piece of an oratory delivered by a revolutionary. He is like the Marxian leader, Lenin urging the masses to rise against feudalism in Russia. Therefore, this seems a correct Marxian interpretation of this piece of literature. He even calls animals comrades, a title that every Communist or Marxist gives to his brother in ideology.

Example # 2

From The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentle-man of that name.

This passage occurs in the masterpiece of Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. It shows that West Egg represents the bourgeoisie class while East Egg represents the proletariat class. The interesting thing is that the house of the narrator lies in the middle of both of these places which shows that although he is aware of both of these classes, he does not seem to live in any of these. He rather longs to join West Egg. His desire to visit the mansion of Gatsby is actually a desire of an individual for social mobility, yet there is no lust for possessing a means of production involved.

Example # 3

From Tess of d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

“It was only my whim,” he said; and, after a moment’s hesitation: “It was on account of a discovery I made some little time ago, whilst I was hunting up pedigrees for the new county history. I am Parson Tringham, the antiquary, of Stagfoot Lane. Don’t you really know, Durbeyfield, that you are the lineal representative of the ancient and knightly family of the d’Urbervilles, who derive their descent from Sir Pagan d’Urberville, that renowned knight who came from Normandy with William the Conqueror, as appears by Battle Abbey Roll?”

This passage occurs in the popular novel of Thomas Hardy, Tess of d’Urbervilles. The father of Tess is rather feeling pride at finding that he belongs to a fine and upper class or bourgeoisie. This is not only his desire for upward social mobility but also his desire to join the upper class of those times, the d’Urbervilles. Therefore, he has tried to join them, sensing that obscurity of the pedigree would lend credence to his expression. This is the class mobility, an aspect of the Marxian approach to literature.

Example # 4

From Hard Times by Charles Dickens

His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great social distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest, was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast. ‘I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I was to do it or not, ma’am, I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.

This passage from Hard Times shows clear hints about Marxian philosophy at work. Dickens seems to be employing that capitalism has started taking its toll on different characters. Bounderby is feeling the heat, while Mrs. Gradgrind, too, is feeling that she has already joined this bandwagon. The social structure and its division show a perfect case of this theoretical concept of Marxism literary theory.

Example # 5

From The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton

We’re poorer than the Socs and the middle class. I reckon we’re wilder, too. Not like the Socs, who jump greasers and wreck houses and throw beer blasts for kicks, and get editorials in the paper for being a public disgrace one day and an asset to society the next. Greasers are almost like hoods; we steal things and drive old souped-up cars and hold up gas stations and have a gang fight once in a while. I don’t mean I do things like that. Darry would kill me if I got into trouble with the police. Since Mom and Dad were killed in an auto wreck, the three of us get to stay together only as long as we behave.

The mere names of Socs and Greasers show that the real idea behind The Outsiders is to show the class consciousness of Darry and his family. He knows clearly that he can never join the Greasers. However, it is interesting that this situation could be interpreted through the lens of race critical theory as Hinton has put it. The main point is that at that time Marxism or Communism could have invited a witch-hunt against him in the United States.

Keywords in Marxism Literary Theory

Class struggle, class consciousness, class discrimination, poverty, alienation, means of production, profit, marginal utility, capitalism, proletariat, antagonism, dialectical materialism, dialectics, fetishism, feudal society, hegemony, consumerism, commodification

Suggested Readings
  1. Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory. Verso, 2006. Print.
  2. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious. Cornell University Press, 2015. Print.
  3. Williams, Raymond, and Raymond Henry Williams. Marxism and Literature. Vol. 392. Oxford Paperbacks, 1977.

Magical Realism

At the end of the day, it’s about the reader’s attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism. Tea Obreht

Etymology and Meanings of “Magical Realism” Literary Theory

Magical realism comprises two words magical and realism which means to show things in a magical way, and that too as if they are happening in the real world. This style, first, started in painting to show fantastic images or scenes realistically. From there, it entered the literary realm, showing the inclusion of fantasy, myths, imaginary worlds, and other supernatural elements in narratives.

Definition of “Magical Realism” Literary Theory

From the above etymology and meanings, magical realism could be defined the presentation of magical situations, events and circumstances in literary texts as if they exists in reality and readers almost come to the point of believing them, knowing that they are just part of the fantasies.

Origin of “Magical Realism” Literary Theory

In literature, magical realism is stated to have emerged in Latin America. The major impact came from Alejo Carpentier, a Cuban writer, and Arturo Ulsar-Pietri, a Venezuelan writer. Both of them impacted the movement after they visited Europe and stayed in Paris to see the rise of surrealism (a literary movement that desired to release the unconscious mind through creative ways). This shortly occurred in the decade of 30s after the publication of a Revista de Occidente in Spanish and the emergence of an iconic Latin American figure, Jorge Luis Borges. The rise of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and other such novelists gave a new life to this literary movement and it soon spread across the globe, wooing eastern and western talent in fiction writing.

Types of Magical Realism Literary Theory

Due to the dominant hegemony of western literature, ideas, too, arrive from the Euro-centric critique of theories. It has been suggested that there are three major types of magical realism.

  1. European: showing estrangement and uncanniness such as in the stories of Franz Kafka.
  2. Matter of Fact: showing inexplicable events happening in the real world.
  3. The Native world view of anthropological: showing the indigenous world view through a Eurocentric perspective. (Spindler 1-4)
Principle Features of Magical Realism Literary Theory
  1. It favors the use of fantasy or fantastic elements such as myths, folk tales, or fables with renewed creativity to take the modern shifting realities into account.
  2. It presents fantasy in a real-world setting with real characters and a real timeframe.
  3. The literature of magical realism often shows the author exercising reticence about disclosing various information related to events and characters.
  4. The narratives of magical realism often comprise plenitude or disorienting details such as Borges does in his stories.
  5. Hybrid peeps through the plots of magical realist narratives, showing the mixture of urban/rural and colonial/indigenous areas.
  6. Magical realist literature often shows mixing reality into fiction and fitting it into reality, underlining the role of metafiction and story-within-a-story type of narratives.
  7. Magical realist narratives often use liquified irony to criticize modern political issues.
Criticism Against Magical Realism Literary Theory
  1. Magical realism is full of terminology that, sometimes, seems ambiguous.
  2. Magical realism narratives are more mysterious even than the mystery itself.
  3. Magical realism narratives are often removed from reality, making the readers fed up with such fantasies and misuse of imaginations.
Examples of Magical Realism Literary Theory

Example # 1

From “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.

This passage occurs in the story of Marquez, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings.” The entire story presents a fantasy in the rural setting where Pelayo finds himself in a new situation where he thinks the way out. He sees that there is a new opportunity for them to earn money from that old man who is very old, yet has unusually enormous wings as if he is a flying creature. This scene shows the fantasy world merging with the modern reality of poverty.

Example # 2

From “Samsa in Love” by Haruki Murakami

Samsa had no idea where he was, or what he should do. All he knew was that he was now a human whose name was Gregor Samsa. And how did he know that? Perhaps someone had whispered it in his ear while he lay sleeping? But who had he been before he became Gregor Samsa? What had he been?

This passage occurs in Murakami’s story “Samsa in Love” after he uses the narrative character of Kafka in his story. Gregor Samsa is shown as a human being with various rhetorical questions he poses to himself and then responds to in the next passages. The main purpose of this passage is to show how the narrative world has opened up more opportunities for Murakami to weave other narratives along the same lines to make readers stretch their imaginations to receive the underlying message.

Example # 3

From The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference.

This is the first passage of the story of Franz Kafka, who is labeled the pioneer of the European type of magical realism. The transformation of Gregor Samsa in the very first passage of the novel shows how Kafka has instantly taken his readers to a world of imagination that is not only awkward but also strange. It jolts the readers into thinking that it could happen to them in reality.

Example # 4

From “Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino

Leaving there and proceeding for three days toward the east, you reach Diomira, a city with sixty silver domes, bronze statues of all the gods, streets paved with lead, a crystal theater, a golden c*ck that crows each morning on a tower. All these beauties will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities. But the special quality of this city for the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman’s voice cries ooh!, is that he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think  they were happy, that time. This passage occurs in the collection of stories of Italo Calvino. The writer has used a “You-centric” narrative that does not seem a conventional way of narrating stories. This, too, does not seem a narrative. Rather, it shows the memories as if the writer is taking his readers along with him on a verbal tour of the cities he has seen in his life. This type of narrative shows how indigenous writers want the readers to see their indigenous world.

Suggested Readings
  1. Bloom, Harold, ed. Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Infobase Publishing, 2009. Ebook.
  2. Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1978. Print.
  3. Roh, Franz, and Irene Guenther. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Duke University Press, 1995. Print.