English 105A: Handout on Critical Theory
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English 105A: Early Shakespeare
Fall 2002
TA: Geoffrey McNeil
Contents |
[edit] Trajectories in Recent Critical Theory
[edit] TEXT
1) the actual words of a book in their original form or any form they may have been transmitted or transmuted to; 2) a book of such words; 3) the main body of matter in a book – apart from notes, commentaries, glosses, index, appendices, etc.; 4) a short passage taken from the Bible as the theme or subject of a sermon
[edit] PHENOMENOLOGY
A method of philosophical inquiry which lays stress on the perceiver’s vital and central role in determining meaning. The method demands close inspection of mental and intellectual states and processes. By using this method, it is possible to reveal the underlying nature of consciousness and phenomena, atemporally and ahistorically. An individual human mind is the center and origin of meaning. A literary critic enters and investigates the underlying nature and essence of a work of literature under scrutiny and thus into the author’s consciousness. See Edmund Husserl, Martin Heideggar, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
[edit] READER-RESPONSE
Concerned with the relationship between reader and text and vice versa, i.e. the different ways in which the reader participates in the course of reading a text and the different perspectives which arise in the relationship. It is concerned with the reader’s contribution to the text and critical of those which ignore reader’s role (Formalism & New Criticism). The text has no meaning until it is read: the reader actualizes potential meaning; his or her reading creates the meaning of the text. See Wolfgang Iser, Umberto Eco, Stanley Fish.
[edit] NEW CRITICISM
Critical movement of the 1920s advocating close reading and textual analysis rather than emphasis on the personality of the poet/writer, history, and political and social implications of the text. Reappears, radically changed, half a century later, as structuralism and deconstruction. See T.S. Eliot, John Crowe Ransom, I.A. Richards, Allen Tate, R.P. Blackmur, Kenneth Burke, Cleanth Brooks, W.K. Wimsatt, Robert Penn Warren.
[edit] STRUCTURALISM
Movement throughout human sciences concerned broadly with the analysis of “language.” “Language” refers not only to speech and writing, but also to other “signs” of communication: signals, body language, clothes, artifacts, status symbols, etc. Anything which can convey communication is a sign (i.e. a brochure, a timetable, a menu, et absurdam). The structuralist critic not only recognizes the language of “signs,” he/she is concerned with what those “signs” mean, or Signify. A text will have a word (the Signifier) and a specific meaning or implication for that word (the Signified). The critic tries to determine the relationship between the Signifier and the Signified. Works of literature are, to the structuralist critic, not, then, reflections of reality, but a collection of signs whose meanings must be analyzed and interpreted. See Ferdinand de Saussure, Clause Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes.
[edit] SEMIOTICS
The science of signs: the theory that language is made up of signs and signals. Semioticians study the conventions of communication whether in language or behavior. Developed by Saussure and C.S. Peirce.
[edit] POST-STRUCTURALISM
A critique of structuralism developed in the 1960s, addressing many different disciplines, which challenges the idea that one can effectively determine what the Signifier actually Signifies. Post-structuralists attack the idea of a single determinable meaning in a text – whenever we explain something, that explanation requires explanation and so on. Without a definite meaning, authority is lessened and texts become open. One post-structuralist, Roland Barthes, goes further by undermining the authority of the author – to him, a book is more than just the thoughts of the author, it involves the reader, society, the narrator, etc. Deconstruction is a relative of post-structuralism. See Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Derrida.
[edit] DECONSTRUCTION
A practice of reading developed most notably by Jacques Derrida which “teases out” the tensions between different significations within a text. A text can mean something very different than what it actually “says,” and it can have a plurality of meanings which erode “meaning.” There is no one essential meaning to any text; contradiction, subversion, betrayals all abound within a text. The very words within a text may actually undermine its stated purpose. See Derrida, Paul de Man, Harold Bloom. Very controversial among conservative thinkers: deconstruction undermines authority, allowing for feminist, minority, and “queer” readings of texts.
[edit] FEMINIST
A critical theory which attempts to describe and interpret (and reinterpret) the female experience in literature. While addressing the nature of women in literature in general, Feminism also criticizes fundamental assumptions about gender: phallocentrism, patriarchal notions, male values, and male views of women. In addition, some theorists postulate the existence of a writing that is specifically female (ecriture feminine) and has distinct, essentially female, characteristics [this is known as the essentialist position]. Other critics are more interested in how both men and women represent each other in literature [this is known as the relativist position]. Still other critics are interested in reclaiming or rediscovering lost female authors and all the texts which surround them. See Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf, Mary Ellman, Kate Millett, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Toril Moi, Elaine Showalter, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, amd Helene Cixous.
[edit] RACE AND ETHNICITY
This kind of critical theory focuses, generally, upon the African American, Asian American, Chicano, and Native American experience in literature. Like feminism, it seeks to reclaim texts written by and about Minorities, to reinterpret existing texts in light of theories of race and ethnicity, and explore how writers within and without a community understand themselves as members of a specific race or ethnicity. Major writers include Paula Gunn Allen, W.E.B. duBois, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., bell hooks, Cornel West.
[edit] POST-COLONIAL
Critical theory which, like Race and Feminist, examines literature through a previously disregarded minority: those members of countries which were colonized (by European countries). This type of criticism examines the effects of colonialism upon the native population, native perceptions of themselves and imperialist conquerors, and the idea of “the savage.” Much comes from Africa, India, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. See Chinua Achebe, Franz Fanon, and Edward Said.
