Literary Theory (25%) Flashcards
Russian Formalism:
-20th century
-literariness of literature: the verbal strategies that make it literary, the foregrounding of language itself, and the ‘making strange’ of experience that they accomplish
-reoriented literary study towards questions of form and technique
New Criticism:
-1930s-1950s
-text-oriented approach
-text as autonomous whole, not a historical document
-examined the interactions of their verbal features and the ensuing complications of meaning rather than the historical intentions and circumstances of their authors
-
Phenomenology /Reader-Response Criticism:
-reader-oriented/reception-oriented approach
Structuralism:
-1960s-1970s
-De Saussure’s sign; language as a system of signs
-how is meaning produced?
-sought to analyse structures that operate unconsciously
-langue (abstract concept of language) vs parole (speech)
-Roland Barthes, “The death of the Author”(structuralist and later poststructuralist)
Post-structuralism:
≠ autonomous, stable speaking subject
-language is not a function of the speaker
-language rather has power over the speaker than vice versa
-language –> unstable (sign= signifier + signified…+signified ad infinitum)
-meaning is forever postponed or deferred (Derrida)
-Poststructuralist thinking aims at:
* In general: critique of binary
thinking and logocentrism
* Exposing the explicit, and implicit
hierarchised binaries in any text
(i.e. culture); questioning the
often naturalised status of the
hierarchies
* Critique of grand narratives
(grands récits) (Jean-François
Lyotard)
* Deconstruction
Feminism and Gender Studies:
-1960’s; precursos going back to the 18th century
-women’s rights
-construction of gender roles
-Feminist criticism draws attention to the difference and
potential tension between female and feminine and
challenges essentialist concepts of femininity.
Psychoanalysis:
Marxism:
-context-oriented approach
-Karl Marx (1818-1883)
-thinking and experiences are shaped by economic realities
-“products of material/historical circumstances and of the repressive ideologies that serve to blind us to this fact”
-literature as a product of socioeconomic and ideological circumstances
New Historicism:
-context-oriented approach
-1980’s -today?
-literature should be studied withim its historical context
-no single history, pluralism of histories
-The adjective “new” in “New Historicism” implies two things:
a) It points towards a renewed critical interest in historical
perspectives after structuralism and deconstruction.
b) It implies that there are ‘older’ forms of historicism, which it
revisits, contests, and updates.
Postcolonialism:
-1980s -today?
-role of colonialism in European culture
-impact of European colonialism in/on former colonies
-‘self’ vs ‘other’
Ecocriticism:
-relation between the human being and the environment
-consideration of textual explorations and representations of the natural world
-representation and construction of nature in the text
-have also turned to matters of gender and race in their relationship to the discursive mediation of the natural environment
Which approaches exist to Literature?
1.Text-oriented approaches
2.Author-oriented approaches
3.Reader-oriented approaches
4.Historical reality as context
linguistic turn:
-Language ≠ transparent medium to grasp and communicate reality
-language shapes thought
First-wave feminism:
(ca. 1880–1920)
* focus on women’s rights
Second-wave feminism:
(ca. 1960s–1980s)
* focus on the opposition sex/gender, canon revision, images
of women
