This blog runs for the students of M.A .English 2nd year.It covers the paper-1( Contemporary Critical Theory)
Module-1(Death of the Author)by Roland Barthes.
Key terms
.New Criticism.
.Russian Formalism
.Intentional Fallacy.
.Affective Fallacy
.Defamiliarisation
.Various Schools of criticism
a.)2oth century Genre Criticism
b.)Deconstruction School.
c).New Historicism
d).Reader-Response Criticism
e).Psycho-analytical school.of criticism
f.)Marxist school of criticism
g.)Structualism school of criticism
h.)Post structualism.school of criticism
i.)Post colonalism.school of criticism
j.)Expressive school of criticism.
k0.Archetype school of criticism.
l.)Socio-cultural school of criticism.
m.)Biological school of criticism.
n).Feminist school of criticism.
o)Expressive school of criticism.
p.Queer theories.
.
Module-1(Death of the Author)by Roland Barthes.
Key terms
.New Criticism.
.Russian Formalism
.Intentional Fallacy.
.Affective Fallacy
.Defamiliarisation
.Various Schools of criticism
a.)2oth century Genre Criticism
b.)Deconstruction School.
c).New Historicism
d).Reader-Response Criticism
e).Psycho-analytical school.of criticism
f.)Marxist school of criticism
g.)Structualism school of criticism
h.)Post structualism.school of criticism
i.)Post colonalism.school of criticism
j.)Expressive school of criticism.
k0.Archetype school of criticism.
l.)Socio-cultural school of criticism.
m.)Biological school of criticism.
n).Feminist school of criticism.
o)Expressive school of criticism.
p.Queer theories.
.
Attention!This is to inform you all that though every attempt will be made to present the best of the material about the paper concerned.But the material is subject to change and any queries are most welcome .
ReplyDeletewishing all the readers a good luck!
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
ReplyDeletePlace of birth -Cherbourg.
Father's name-Louis Barthes.
The languages known to him were French,Latin and Greek along with English.He was the fan of the famous author "Marcel Proust" from whom he learned that the central idea which was even developed later in various texts,;a book is the product of a different self from the one we exhibit in our habits,in society,in our vices".(Contre Sainto-Beauve).Therefore,a new concept came in seen that there is no connection between an author's life and his works.Barthes focus is on viewing any piece of literature as a mere text,one of the several texts,self-contained and self sufficient linguistic activity.
Barthes works;
1.Le degre zero I'ecriture(Writing degree zero)(1953).
2.The elements of Semiology(1964).
3.La mort de l'auter(1968)
4.The pleasures of the text.(1975).
5.Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes(1977).
6.A lover's discussion;fragments
Module-2 A Deconstructive angel
ReplyDeleteby M.H.Abrams.
Meyer (Mike) Howard Abrams (born July 23, 1912) is an American literary critic, known for works on Romanticism, in particular his book" The Mirror and the Lamp". Under Abrams' editorship, the Norton Anthology of English Literature became the standard text for undergraduate survey courses across the U.S. and a major trendsetter in literary canon formation.
The major theories given by him are as follows:
1.Mimetic Theories:(deals in relation of work and Universe)
2.Pragmatic Theories:(deals in relation of work and audience).
3.Expressive Theories:(deals in relation of work and artist)
4.Objective Theories.(deals in close reading of work).
Discussing the main features of Deconstruction in relation to J. Hillis Miller’s The Critic as Host.
ReplyDeleteDeconstruction, as applied in the criticism of literature, designates a theory and practice of reading which claims to "subvert" or "undermine" the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinate meanings of a text.
(Abrams (1993), p.225)
So, the system of language falls short in bringing across the meaning of the text as originally implied by the author? Or, to put it differently, that the language of the text itself makes a definite reading of the text impossible when looking at it through the eyes of deconstruction? Jacques Derrida, founder of deconstruction, saw it as follows: he says that...
[...] signs cannot incorporate any absolute, univocal meaning, nor do signifiers directly refer to their respective signifieds. Signifiers can do no more than relate to and become other signifiers which are divorced from the world "out there".
(Merrell (1985), p.1
What is Modernism?
ReplyDeleteDon't confuse Modernism in Literature or the Modernists movement with the standard dictionary definition of modern. Modernism in Literature is not a chronological designation. Modernism in Literature consists of literary work possessing certain loosely defined characteristics. The following characteristics of Modernism answer the question what is Modernism?
Modernism is marked by a strong and intentional break with tradition. This break includes a strong reaction against established religious, political, and social views.
Modernists believe the world is created in the act of perceiving it; that is, the world is what we say it is.
Modernists do not subscribe to absolute truth. All things are relative.
Modernists feel no connection with history or institutions. Their experience is that of alienation, loss, and despair.
Modernists champion the individual and celebrate inner strength.
Modernists believe life is unordered.
Modernists concern themselves with the sub-conscious.
Postmodernism
ReplyDeletePostmodernism. The term postmodernism is sometimes applied to the literature and art after World War II (1939-45), when the effects on Western morale of the first war were greatly exacerbated by the experience of Nazi totalitarianism and mass extermination, the progressive devastation of the natural environment, and the omnious fact of overpopulation. Postmodernism involves not only a continuation, somtimes carried to an extreme, of the contertraditional experiments of modernism, but also diverse attempts to break away from modernist forms which ahd, inevitably, become in their turn conventional, as well as to over-throw the elitism of modernist "high art" by recourse to the models of "mass culture" in film, television, newspaper cartoons, and popular music. Many of the works of postmodern literature-- by Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon, Roland Barthes, and many others-- so blend literary genres, cultural and stylistic levels, the serious and the playful, that they resist classification according to traditional literary rubrics.
An undertaking in some postmodernist writings is to subvert the foundations of our accepted modes of thought and experience as to reveal the "meaninglessness" of existence and the underlying "abyss," or "void," or "nothingness" on which any supposed security is conceived to be precariously suspended. Postmodernism in literature and the arts has parallels with the movement known as poststructualism in linguistic and literary theory; poststructuralists undertake to subvert the fondations of language in order to show that its seeming meaningfulness dissipates, for a rigorous inquirer, into a play of conflicting indeterminacies, or else to who that all forms of cultural discourse are manifestations of the ideology, or of the relations and constructions of power, in contemporary society.
Structuralism
ReplyDeleteStructuralism is a way of thinking about the world which is predominantly concerned with the perceptions and description of structures. At its simplest, structuralism claims that the nature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself, and in fact is determined by all the other elements involved in that situation. The full significance of any entity cannot be perceived unless and until it is integrated into the structure of which it forms a part (Hawkes, p. 11). Structuralists believe that all human activity is constructed, not natural or "essential." Consequently, it is the systems of organization that are important (what we do is always a matter of selection within a given construct). By this formulation, "any activity, from the actions of a narrative to not eating one's peas with a knife, takes place within a system of differences and has meaning only in its relation to other possible activities within that system, not to some meaning that emanates from nature or the divine" (Childers & Hentzi, p. 286.). Major figures include Claude Lévi-Strauss (LAY-vee-strows), A. J. Greimas (GREE-mahs), Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes (bart), Ferdinand de Saussure (soh-SURR or soh-ZHOR), Roman Jakobson (YAH-keb-sen), Vladimir Propp, and Terence Hawkes.
Post-Structuralism (which is often used synonymously with Deconstruction or Postmodernism) is a reaction to structuralism and works against seeing language as a stable, closed system. "It is a shift from seeing the poem or novel as a closed entity, equipped with definite meanings which it is the critic's task to decipher, to seeing literature as irreducibly plural, an endless play of signifiers which can never be finally nailed down to a single center, essence, or meaning" (Eagleton 120 - see reference below under "General References"). Jacques Derrida's (dair-ree-DAH) paper on "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (delivered in 1966) proved particularly influential in the creation of post-structuralism. Derrida argued against, in essence, the notion of a knowable center (the Western ideal of logocentrism), a structure that could organize the differential play of language or thought but somehow remain immune to the same "play" it depicts (Abrams, 258-9). Derrida's critique of structuralism also heralded the advent of deconstruction that--like post-structuralism--critiques the notion of "origin" built into structuralism. In negative terms, deconstruction--particularly as articulated by Derrida--has often come to be interpreted as "anything goes" since nothing has any real meaning or truth. More positively, it may posited that Derrida, like Paul de Man (de-MAHN) and other post-structuralists, really asks for rigor, that is, a type of interpretation that is constantly and ruthlessly self-conscious and on guard. Similarly, Christopher Norris (in "What's Wrong with Postmodernism?") launches a cogent argument against simplistic attacks of Derrida's theories:
Metaphysics of Presence - "beliefs including binary oppositions, logocentrism, and phonocentrism that have been the basis of Western philosophy since Plato"
ReplyDeleteTrace : "Meaning seems to reside in words (or in things) only when we distinguish their difference from other words (or things). For example, if we believed that all objects were the same color, we wouldn't need the word red (or blue or green) at all. Red is red only because we believe it to be different from blue and green (and because we believe color to be different from shape). So the word red carries with it the trace of all the signifiers it is not (for it is in contrast to other signifiers that we define it)" .