LITERARY ANTHROPOLOGY

ANTHROPOLOGICAL CRITICISM
IN
LITERATURE

Prepared by Ellen Grace M. Ellorando

What is Anthropology?
Anthropology is a behavioral science that
studies about:
culture
values
components
practices
characteristics
functions
human species
ancestors (ethnicity)

ANTHROPOLOGY AND
LITERATURE
Strange Romance
Fiction vs. Anthropology
Though weve separated the fiction from the
anthropology, there is no way to easily
demarcate where FICTION ENDS and
ANTHROPOLOGY BEGINS.
Byler & Iverson 2012

LITERARY ANTHROPOLOGY
also known as ANTHROPOLOGICAL
CRITICISM in literature
proposed by Wolfgang Iser and Hans
Belting in 1993

WOLFGANG ISER
Born: 22 July 1926
Died: 24 January 2007
Birthplace: Germany
Profession: Literary Scholar
Workplace: University of
Glasgow
Wife: Lore Iser
For Iser, meaning is not an object to be found within a text,
but is an event of construction that occurs somewhere
between the text and the reader.

HANS BELTING
Born: 7 July 1935
Profession: German Art Historian
Birthplace: Germany
Workplace: Dumbarton Oaks
(Harvard University)

LITERARY ANTHROPOLOGY
Preliminary Definitions
A couple of assumptions regarding literary
anthropology:
a. Interdisciplinary field involves the
combining of two or more academic
disciplines into one activity
b. Transdisciplinary field connotes a
research strategy that crosses
many disciplinary boundaries to create
a holistic approach.

LITERARY ANTHROPOLOGY
c. Multidisciplinary Field composed of or
combining several usually separate branches of
learning or fields of expertise
Closely connected to anthropological turn
in the humanities and social sciences literary
studies vs. cultural studies (reframing of
traditional literary criticism and critical theory to
cultural criticism and cultural theory).

CHARACTERISTICS
Two rather different classificatory fields are
being joined together under the same academic
and epistemological roof:
Neo-philological field of literary studies
Cultural field of socio-anthropological studies
Result:
Literary text is being monitored as cultural
and historical, as well as culture is being
monitored as deeply textual.

DEFINITION OF/OR DISCIPLINE?

THE DILEMMA
If anthropology and literary criticism
are really united by the common notion
textualization of culture and
culturization of text, what is the basic
difference in source and the method?

SOLUTIONS
Anthropological view will relinquish the
concept of reality or atleast redefine it (world
becomes word).
The method of literary anthropology should
rely on the critical but also activist approaches
of gender studies, feminist movement and
criticism, postcolonial criticism.\

SOLUTIONS
Literary Anthropology should concentrate on
the actual problems of anthropologicalethnilogical research,using literary study
methods, but acknowledging the textualnarrative nature of anthropological research.
e.g. Literary Imagology
(Studies will focus on the problems of identity,
class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and other
forms of stereotypes, etc.)

EXAMPLE LITERARY PIECES

Fiction or Faction?
Susan Sontags books:
a. Illness as Metaphor
b. Aids and Its Metaphors
Considers the metaphors with which
acquired immune deficiency syndrome is
cloaked, the presentation of the illness as
plague and its bearing on the way society
views disease, sexuality and catastrophe.

EXAMPLE LITERARY PIECES

c. Regarding the Pain of Others
Considers the problem of war-photography as
an esthetic and ethic object.

Thank You and God Bless!

References:
http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/i
conoclasm/debruyn.htm
http://rcin.org.pl/Content/52179/WA248_713
26_P-I-2524_lebkow-between.pdf
www.wikipedia.org