Recent Trends in Literary Criticism

R. NIRMALKUMAR RAJPRAKASH
Assistant Professor
PG & Research Department Of English
Government Arts College
Tiruvannamalai

 What is Literature?
How do we define literature and
literariness (Literary Qualities)?
What transforms/makes a verbal
message into a work of art, a think of
beauty, a text with its own literary
texture?
These are tricky questions that have
no single answers.

 I hereby pronounce you man & wife

can be said by a priest performing a
wedding where it assumes a religions
value with no literariness but the same
statement in film/story/fictional it
becomes literature.
Ordinary flee that bites and sucks
blood a quite common, but to John
Donne it is poetry.

Literature

Not for the sake of information.

The message of literature is not verifiable
as T/F.
NOT paraphrasable.
The Language of literature is not cryptic
like the language of science.
It is emotive
Literatures such as:
Religions, Adult, Tribal, Tourist, Pop,
Folk and even pertaining Medicine, Law,
Media and Journalism.

Literary Criticism
A Twin born-literary creation and
creative process.
It is concerned with defining,
classifying, expanding, evaluating,
works of literature.
The Word come into English, in the
first period of the 17th century, from
critic and critical, Criticus-Latin,
Kritikos-Greek, Krites-Greek = a
Judge. Early sense was of fault finding.

To Define Criticism

1. The Conscious evaluation or appreciation of

work of art either according to the critics
personal taste or according to some accepted
aesthetic ideas Increasingly it is stated as it
was always implied that to set up as a critic is
to set up as a judge of values.
Dictionary of World Literature.
2. The art of judging the qualities and values of an
aesthetic object, whether in literature or the
fine arts.
Encyclopedia Britannica

Poet
(Mother)

Poetry
(Child)

Critic
(Nurse)

Literary theories are different lenses-to

view and talk about art, literature and
even culture.

The Pre-Critical response to literature

Setting
Plot
Character
Structure
Style
Atmosphere
Theme

To His Coy Mistress

Hamlet
Heart of Darkness
Lord of the Flies
Paradise Lost

Criticism down the ages

Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (360

BC-Current)
Platos Republic
Aristotles Poetics
Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian
Criticism (1930s-Present)
Intrinsic Features-text exist within the text
itself.
Russian Formalism
Victor Shklovsky, Roman Jacobson
New Criticism
John Crowe Ransom, I.A. Richards, William
Emerson, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks

Psychoanalytic Criticism (1930s - Present)

Freud and Literature (Id, Ego, Super Ego)
The unconscious, the desires, and the
defenses.
Herald Bloom, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva
Carl Jung
Collective Consciousnessracial memory,
Shadow, the Anima and Spirit, Jungian critic
would look for archetypes.
Maud Bodkin
Marxist Criticism (1930s - Present)
Class differences, economic system, Capitalist
system.
Karl Marx, Leo Tolstoy, Eagleton

Reader Response Criticism (1960s to Present)

Readers reactions to literature
interpreting the meaning of the text.
Can be used in the psychoanalytic lens, a
feminist lens, or even structurlist lens.
Structuralism and Semiotics (1920s Present)
Emerges from theories of language and
linguistics.
Saussure, Claude Levi Strauss Frye, Chomsky,
Ronald Barthes

Post Structuralism, Deconstruction, Post

Modernism (1966s Present)
The Centre cannot hold.
Systems, Frame works, definitions and certainties
breakdown
Seeking order or a singular Truth. Text become plural.

Modernism

Post-Modernism

Romanticism/Symbolism
form
Hierarchy

Dadaism /Para physics antiform

Anarchy

Semantics

Rhetoric

Signified

Signifier

God the father

The Holy Ghost

 Kant
Nietzsche
Derrida
Foucault

New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s to

Present)

Its all relative:

Influenced by structuralist and post-structuralist
theories seeks to reconnect a work with the time
periodidentify with cultural and political
movements of the time.
Every work is the product of the historic movement
Michel Foucault

Post Colonial Criticism (1990s - Present)

Similar to cultural studies.

Post-Colonial critics are concerned with literature
produced by colonial powers and works produced by
those who are colonized.

Looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion

and culture.

Colonial hegemony (western colonizers controlling the

colonized)

Robin Crusoecolonial attitude toward the land.

The Tempest.

Heart of Darkness.
Edward Said, Gayathri Spivak, Homi Baba

Feminist Criticism (1960s - Present)

Concerned with the ways in which literature

(and other cultural productions) reinforce or
undermine the economic, political, social and
psychological oppression of women.
Patriarchy versions of oppressed women.
Women in marginalized (Eve as the origin of sin
and death in the world).
Biology determines our sex (male/female)
Culture determines our gender
(masculine/feminine).
Prompting gender equality.

First wave Feminism late 1700-1900

Womens suffrage movement.
Second wave feminism: 1960s
National organization for women.
Simon de Beauvoir, Elaine Showalter
Third wave feminism: Early1990s
Alice Walker.
Men and women both.

Research at Present
Sense of identity: A.D. Hope, Judith Wright
(Australia) Australia standardization.
Own history, culture and civilization that were
equal: Chinua Achebe (Africa).
Class conflicts from the perspective of the
oppressed Africa: Ngugis Devil on the Cross.
Wole SoyinkaTelephone Conversation
I who am poisoned with the beloved of both
where shall I turn divided in vainDerek
Walcott. Paradox of culture.

 Gender discrimination: Anita Desai.

Cultural milieuArundhati Roys The
God of Small Things, Karnads
Nagamandala.
Cross-cultural encountersBharathi
Mukhergees The Tigers Daughter.
Indian Spiritualism and western
materialism.
Identity crisisShashi Deshspandes
That Long Silence.

Review
Author-Oriented Approaches: Classicism and
Humanism of various kinds.
Context-Oriented Approaches:
Psychological contexts: Psychoanalytic criticism
of various schools.
Context of gender: Feminist/Lesbian/Gay
criticism.
Historical contexts: New Historicism/Cultural
materialism.
Colonial Contexts: Post/Neo Colonial Criticism.
Socio-Economic Contexts: Marxism of various
kinds.

 Socio-cultural contexts: Myth

criticism/Diologism.
Reader-oriented approaches: Reception
theory/Reader-response
(French/German/American)
Text/Language-oriented Approaches:
Formalism.
Practical/New Criticism.
Structuralism and stylistics.
Post-structuralism and Deconstruction
(French/American/Indian)