Critical Approaches to Interpretation of literature - a review

Transcription

1 Chapter 2 Critical Approaches to Interpretation of literature - a review 2.1. Introduction to the review This chapter deals with critical theories from the twentieth century to the present. The researcher reviews the critical approaches relevant to the present study leading up to the Reader Response theory which was popular in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century. The review includes a detailed discussion of five critical categories of Reader Response theories, hereafter called paradigms, used in analyzing and interpreting select short stories of Saul Bellow. The Reader Response theoretical paradigms used for the study are: i) Subjective Reader Response Theory ii) iii) iv) Social Reader Response Theory Psychological Reader Response Theory Affective Stylistics v) Transactional Reader Response Theory Approaches to critical interpretation of literary works Literary criticism or literary interpretation is a creative process. It consists of defining, classifying, expounding and evaluating works of literature. In recent years, due to the increasing exposure, availability of books and greater freedom enjoyed by readers, the reading process has become more critical, adventurous, and exploratory. Readers thinking about literature, literary appreciation and interpretation has grown more varied and complex. The reading of literary works now has to reckon with competing critical perspectives which allow for different and interesting

2 11 interpretations of the text, the role of the author, the context of the text, and its language, and, importantly the role of the reader. This has resulted in a number of views, theories and approaches asking questions from various points of view. These may be classified as context-oriented approaches, author - oriented approaches, text oriented and language - oriented approaches and reader-oriented approaches (emphasis added). Biographical and historical criticisms are context- oriented approaches. Those that focus on the writer s mind and factors connected to authorial intentions are author - oriented approaches as in Classicism and Humanism of various kinds. Formalism, Practical and New Criticism, Structuralism, Stylistics, Poststructuralism and Deconstruction are text/language oriented - approaches. Readeroriented approaches lead to Reception theory and Reader-response criticism. On the whole, all literary theories and approaches depend on the author s perception, the context, the elements of the text and readers perception of the text Author-oriented approaches Author - oriented approaches are to the traditional approaches that focused on the writer s mind through other factors that contributed to the study of the authorial intentions. Later the socio-political history or author s biographical details were also studied as a supplement to the understanding of the writer s intentions. The prime focus in this approach is how the critic or the reader arrives at the author s intentions; the approach was intuitive and subjective. This approach considers the author as a god; as for the critic, he is the priest whose task is to decipher the writing of the god (Abrams 40-42) Classicism Classicism implied the pursuit of the ideal characters of literature in the classical Greco-Roman tradition. Italian Renaissance and literary scholarship aimed

3 12 at discovering treasures of classical literature. The printing of classics in Italy in the sixteenth century was an important event that made classical study an integral part of the humanistic education. Scholars who were interested in editing, collating and studying the classical texts passed on this tradition through generations. This formed the rebirth of Renaissance Criticism which is an important part of classicism Humanistic Approach Humanistic approach is indirectly connected with the Reformation in religion. The word humanist refers to one who is learned in the field of humanities. Humanism assumed the romantic position of man as the centre of the universe and emphasized the primacy of reason and imagination as against animal passions. The term humanism was coined in the mid-fifteenth century. It refers to scholarly humanists who edited and explained the classics in Greek and Latin that had contributed to the European Renaissance. Hence it was called Renaissance Humanism. Christian Humanism referred to the humanism of Sir Philip Sydney, Edmund Spenser and John Milton, they being Christian humanists endeavouring always to reconcile the novelties of the present with the august traditions of the past. The problem of how the religious scheme of the literary work bears on human concerns had occupied most serious of works. Liberal Humanism is a philosophical stance that highlights the agency and value of human beings, both individually and collectively. It derives from the humanism of Matthew Arnold which is the expression of an ideal Humanism as against man s animalist tendencies Context-Oriented Approaches of the twentieth century The following is an overview of critical approaches which were commonly used to analyse short stories: Biographical Criticism, Historical Criticism, Formalist

4 13 criticism, and New Criticism. The biographical and historical approaches were found wanting in substance and yielded place first to the formalists critical approach, and subsequently, with substantial modifications, to the New critical themes. This overview is followed by analyses of two short stories of Saul Bellow, viz., Looking for Mr. Green, and Zetland: By a Character Witness Biographical Criticism Biographical criticism highlights the view that knowledge of the author s life can help readers understanding and appreciation of the work. The biographical details of the writer enable the reader to read the writer s works considering the author s experiences which have shaped his creative works, either consciously or subconsciously. The biographical information enables the reader to understand the subtle meanings in the stories. The advent of modern critical theories led to a rejection of biographical criticism on philosophical grounds. However, the biographical approach to literature did not lose its importance because of its practical advantage in illuminating literary texts. A biographical criticism focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight gained from knowledge of the author s life. It must be remembered, however, that the biographical approach to literary texts needs much caution, for writers are notorious for revising the facts of their own lives by often deleting embarrassing details and inventing accomplishments, for literary impact. An expert biographical critic always takes care to base an interpretation on what is in the text itself: biographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, and should leave irrelevant material Historical Criticism Historical criticism contributed to an understanding of a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual contexts of the work, contexts

5 14 including the artist s biography and social milieu. Historical critics were less concerned with explaining a work s literary significance for readers than with enabling them to understand the work re-creating the text s meaning, and its impact on the original audience. A historical reading of a literary by explored the possible ways in which the meaning of the text changed over time. Reading ancient literature necessarily required the assistance of historical criticism. There have been many social, cultural, and linguistic changes which render older texts incomprehensible without such scholarly assistance. Historical criticism, in this regard may lead to a better understanding of ancient texts. This approach enables the reader to gather interesting facts from the text for a better and deeper understanding of the content. For example, in Jane Austen s Sense and Sensibility, Margaret is talking about a man of no profession it contains a different meaning than it would today. During Austen s time in England, the man without a profession would have been a gentleman, a man of wealth. In addition, knowing the English laws regarding women owning property at the time the novel was written not only is imperative to understanding why the women in the story are impoverished even though their father died very rich, but the knowledge also allows the reader to recognize themes throughout the text relating to the treatment of women. Literary works are born out of very specific moments in history, infused with the values and events of that time. Conversely, a powerful piece of literature can effectively influence the thinking and actions of its body of readers. The time period in which a literary work was created and the context of the story itself is an important analytical task. George Orwell s Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a fine example of how the

6 15 inferential/evaluative level of the novel was influenced by the historical events, values, politics, and conditions of Orwell's time. There are four steps in historical approach: 1. discovering the time when the poem was made, what happened to the author in that time, or is there any special moment in that time which is recorded by historian. 2. analyzing at glance whether it is connected or not between the content of the literary work and the certain historical moments after finding out the basic information of it concerning the when. 3. finding the clues left by the author, usually in the forms of special terms, symbols, or figurative language which is strongly related to the moment of the past which become the inspiration of the literary work was being made. 4. interpreting the literary work based on the moment underlying the creation of it by comprehending and analyzing the content related to its historical moment. Thus, this approach by investigating the social and cultural context contributed to a better understanding of the texts. A context includes the artist s biography and social milieu. Historical critics were seldom concerned with explaining a work s literary significance for today s readers than with helping the reader to understand the work by re-creating, as nearly as possible, the exact meaning and impact it had on its original audience. A historical reading of a literary work begins by exploring the possible ways in which the meaning of the text has changed overtime. Reading ancient literature necessarily requires the assistance of historical criticism. There have been many social, cultural, and linguistic changes that some older texts are incomprehensible without scholarly assistance.

7 Psychoanalytic criticism Psychoanalytic Criticism uses psychological theories and the technique of psychoanalysis for the interpretation of literary texts. Modern psychology has had an immense effect on both literature and literary criticism. Sigmund Freud s psychoanalytic theories changed the notions of human behaviour by exploring new or controversial areas, such as wish-fulfilment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression. Freud also expanded the sense of how language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect the unconscious, and repression. Freud admitted that he himself had learned a great deal about psychology from studying literature; Sophocles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dostoevsky were as important to the development of his ideas as were his clinical studies. Some of Freud s most influential writing was literary criticism, such as his psychoanalytic examination of Sophocles King Oedipus. The celebrated section in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), raises an important question for students: Was Freud implying that Sophocles knew or shared Freud s theories? The answer is of course, no; in analyzing Sophocles Oedipus. Freud complimented the dramatist for his profound insight into human nature revealed by the depth and complexity of characters. In focusing on literature, Freud and his disciples Carl Jung, Ernest Jones, Marie Bonaparte, and Bruno Bettelheim endorse the belief that great literature truthfully reflects life Psychological criticism Psychological criticism was further exploited by Norman Holland in his Psychological Reader Response Theory consisting of three parts. First, it investigates the creative process of the arts: the nature of literary genius and its relationship to normal, mental functions. The second involved the psychological study of a particular artist. Most modern literary biographies employ psychology to understand their

8 17 subject s motivations and behaviour. The third part was the analysis of fictional characters. Freud s study of Oedipus is the prototype for this approach, which tries to being modern insights about human behaviour into the study of how fictional characters act Gender Criticism: Gender Criticism examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works. Gender studies began with the feminist movement and were influenced by such works as Simone de Beauvoir s ( ) The Second Sex (1949) and Kate Millett s ( ) Sexual Politics (1970) as well as developments in sociology, psychology, and anthropology. Feminist critics believe that culture has been so completely dominated by men that literature is full of unexamined male produced assumptions. They see their criticism correcting this imbalance by analyzing and combating patriarchal attitudes. Feminist criticism which could also be looked at as a Reader Response initiative, emphasizes the role of the female reader and shows how an author s gender influences consciously or unconsciously his or her writing. Feminist critics carefully examine how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality The Bakhtin School The Bakhtin School looks at literature as a dynamic social discourse, capable of taking on different meanings and connotations for different social classes in different social and historical situations. The Bakhtin School arose in the later period of formalism although it was never part of that movement. Some prominent members of the Bakhtin movement are Mikhail Bakhtin ( ), Pavel Medvedev (1892-

9 ) and Valentin Voloshinov ( ). The school may be considered formalist in its concern for the linguistic structure of literary works, although works authored by Voloshinov, particularly, were deeply influenced by Marxism in the belief that language could not be separated from ideology. The Bakhtin School was not interested in abstract linguistics of the kind which later formed the basis of structuralism. They were concerned with language or discourse as a social phenomenon. It was Mikhail Bakhtin (1929) who developed the implications of this dynamic view of language for literary texts. The most important critical proposition to appear in Bakhtin s Problems of Dostoevsky s Poetics (1929) is the claim that Fyodor Dostoevski was the first truly polyphonic novelist in literary history. In essence, Bakhtin contends that the fictional characters created by Dostoevsky have been endowed with autonomous voices to such an extent that the reader can no longer discern any authorial control over their utterances or actions. However, he did not, as one might have expected, treat literature as a direct reflection of social forces but retained a formalist concern with literary structure, showing how the dynamic and active nature of language was given expression in certain literary traditions. He stressed not the way texts reflect society or class interests but rather the way language is made to disrupt authority and liberate alternative voices. A libertarian language is entirely appropriate in describing Bakhtin s approach, which is very much a celebration of those writers whose work permits free play of different value systems and whose authority is not imposed upon the alternatives. Bakhtin is profoundly un- Stalinist. Bakhtin, in his work Problem of Dostoevsky s Poetics (1929), developed a bold contrast between the novels of Tolstoy, and those of Fyodor Dostoevsky ( ). Bakhtin raises a number of themes developed by later theorists, Formalists,

10 and the New Critics who regarded texts as organic unities with integrated structures in which all loose ends are finally tied up into aesthetic unity by the reader Sociological Criticism Sociological Criticism examines literature in the cultural, economic, and political context in which it is written. The British Literary Critic Wilber Scott ( ) observed, it is the work not simply of a person, but of an author fixed in time and space, answering a community of which he is an important because articulate part. Sociological criticism explores the relationships between the artist and society. Sometimes it looks at the sociological status of the author to evaluate how the profession of the writer in a particular milieu affects what was written. Sociological criticism also analyzes the social context of literary works that is, what cultural, economic, or political values a particular text implicitly promotes. Finally, Sociological Criticism examines the role the audience has in shaping literary works. An influential type of sociological criticism has been Marxist criticism, which focuses on the economic and political elements of art. Karl Marx ( ) and Friedrich Engels ( ) were the dominant sociological critics Marxist criticism The Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukacs ( ), a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian, and critic was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretative tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the USSR. Marxist criticism often explores the ideological content of literature. Unlike a formalist critic who maintain that from and content are inextricably blended, Lukacs believed that content determines form and that therefore, all art is political. According to the Marxists even if a work of art ignores political

11 20 issues, it makes a statement on both economic and social issues. Marxist criticism is frequently evaluative and judges some literary works to be better than others on an ideological basis; this tendency can lead to reductive judgment on the literary outputs Myth Criticism Myth critics look for the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works. Myth Criticism is an interdisciplinary approach that combines the insights of anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion. Psychological criticism examines the artist as an individual whereas Myth criticism explores the artist s common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses symbols and situations consciously or unconsciously in ways that transcend its own historical milieu and resemble the mythology of other cultures. A central concept in myth criticism is the archetype, a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response. The idea of the archetype came into literary criticism from the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung ( ), a lifetime student of myth and religion. Jung believed that all individuals share a collective unconscious, a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person s conscious mind. Archetypal images and symbols which often relate to experiencing primordial phenomena like the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, Jung believed, would trigger the collective unconscious. Later, Northrop Frye ( ) defined the archetype in considerably less occult terms as a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one s literary experience as a whole. Identifying archetypal symbols and situations in literary works, myth critics link the individual text discussed to a broader context of works that share an underlying pattern. In analyzing the mythic elements of a short story, a critic will pay

12 special attention to the basic narrative structure, chief characters, key settings, 21 symbols and metaphors. Northrop Frye s Anatomy of Criticism (1957), which consists of four interrelated essays, explores the nature of literature and the function of the literature as an art form. His ultimate objective is to direct literary criticism toward a comprehensive system of theories, principles, and techniques, away from personal reactions and ideological interpretations Text Oriented approaches Formalism Formalism, one of the first major schools of literary study in the twentieth century, was a reaction to biographical and historical theories of literature. It considered literature as form, and content is only an effect of form. According to the formalist approach, usually associated with the American New Critics, form is an essential component of content. A formalist approach to literature seeks out meaning from a work by giving attention to the form or structure of a work and literary devices operating in it. While other approaches might be interested in how the literary work connects to social, cultural, or political realities outside of the text, Formalism examines the exclusively literary aspects of the work, focusing on the internal workings of the text rather than its external influences. Formalist critics like Roman Jakobson ( ) and Viktor Shklovsky ( ) highlighted the importance of form in their critique of literary works and aimed for an objective analysis of the literariness of the text. Formalism may be called a necessary first step in any study of literature. Formalism involves the reader in the narrative, presenting the reader with symbolic objects, characters, events in the story. These features frame reader s awareness in a

13 22 particular way. This artistic technique of presenting an audience common things in an unfamiliar way to enhance perception of the familiar is known as Defamiliarisation. Defamiliarisation became popular in the twentieth century art and theory, ranging over movements including Dada, postmodernism, epic theatre and science fiction. It is also used as a strategy used by recent movements such as culture jamming. It is relevant to point out here that in Saul Bellow s novels Jewish American culture jamming is present. But to know what the novel or a literary work of art is to know its form. Only after 20 th century the formal analysis occupied a central place in the literary study. The study of literature was concerned more with biography and history than with the study of narrative technique. Formalism regards literature as a distinct form of human knowledge to be examined on its own terms. To a formalist, a story is not primarily a social, historical, or biographical document; it is a literary work that can be understood only by reference to its intrinsic literary features. The intrinsic literary features are those elements found in the text itself. To analyse a story, the formalist critic focuses on the words of the text rather than the facts about the author s life or the historical context in which it was written. The critic would pay special attention to the formal features of the text viz; style, structure, imagery, tone, and genre. These features are usually not examined in isolation, because formalist critics believe that a literary text s special status as art depends on the manner in which all its elements work together to create the reader s total experience Close Reading A key method that formalists use to explore the intense relationship within a literary work is close reading. Close reading is a careful step-by-step analysis and analysis of a text. The purpose of close reading is to understand how various

14 23 elements in a literary text combine together to shape its effects on the reader. Since formalists believe that the various stylistic and thematic elements of literature work influence each other, these critics insist that form and content cannot be meaningfully separated. The complete interdependence of form and content is what actually makes a text literary interesting. When a work s theme is paraphrased for meaning only the aesthetic experience of the work is completely lost. According to Rene Wellek and Austin Warren in their influential work, Theory of Literature the formalist approach as the natural and sensible starting point for work in literary scholarship (256). From Formalism came Russian Formalism followed by the French Formalism which emerged in France under its influence Russian Formalism Russian Formalism established a scientific basis for the theory of literature. It explained how aesthetic effects are produced by the special use of language and literary devices. The Moscow Linguistic Circle was founded in 1915 before the Russian Revolution of The Prague Circle was started in 1926 with Roman Jakobson( ), Victor Shklovsky ( ) and Boris Eikenbaum ( ) as its major figures. French Formalism was influenced by Ferdinand Saussure s ( ) Linguistics. It attempted to introduce certain objectivity into the discipline of literature. Inspired by the success of structural linguistics and using it as a model, some critics thought that all human performances manifest a system of differential relations of signs. In fact, in many ways French Formalism is very closely related to Russian Formalism. Formalism later influenced New Criticism, a school of American literary criticism that emerged in the 1930s and 1940s adopting the formalist emphasis on form and objectivity. For New Critics, the goal was to separate the literary work from

15 24 any historical context and to view the work as a world unto itself. The approaches of Formalism and New Criticism lie in stark contrast to several critical approaches that emerged later in the twentieth century, including Marxist criticism, New Historicism, and Cultural Materialism. Unlike Formalism, these later theories and critical schools approach literature with an eye toward the impact and influence of social, political, and historical realities on the text New Criticism I.A. Richards ( ), a major exponent of New criticism exposed the dependence of literary criticism on props such as the biographical details of the author, or the historical background to the literary work, all of which lay outside the text. The American New Critics who reacted to historical criticism were John Crowe Ransom ( ), Allen Tate ( ), Cleanth Brooks ( ), Robert Penn Warren ( ), Kenneth Burke ( ), R. P. Blackmur ( ), William Empson ( ), I. A. Richards, while advocating close reading of the text, attacked extrinsic criticism, and focused on the close reading of the text. All these critics shared many attitudes, but followed different paths. What brings them together was their opposition to the system of academic and literary scholarship of their time. The New Critics maintained their interpretations entirely based on the context of the language of the text, thus giving rise to the critical practice called intrinsic criticism or criticism within the confines of the text as opposed to extrinsic criticism. Wimsatt ( ) and Beardsley ( ) in their two essays The Intentional Fallacy and The Affective Fallacy emphatically made a theortical statement of the New Criticism that Objective Criticism focused on the meaning of the work itself without being distracted by enquiries into the origin of works in personal experiences. However, New Criticism was challenged by Rene Wellek

16 25 ( ) who pointed out its serious weaknesses. He observed that the esoteric aestheticism of New Critics showed no concern with the social function of literature, and thus they could be termed formalists for this lack of social concern. The New Critics focused on the text and argued that literary language is connotative, and thereafter it led to a search for deep and secondary meaning. Thus, New Criticism encouraged the reader to attempt a close study of texts without, however, insisting on the separation of form and content. Instead, literary texts were seen as works unified by their devices, motifs, themes, and patterns. Furthermore, their emphasis on the text s internal unity made them concentrate on individual texts, whereas the Russian Formalists were more interested in general literary devices. In addition, both schools developed in different times and places and made different assumptions about literature. Russian Formalism originated in Russia before the Bolshevik revolution while New Criticism flourished in USA by the late 1930s, and thereafter extended to England, New Criticism focused on close reading of a text and analysed a literary work using symbols like metaphor and simile themes, setting, plot, and structure. According to the New Critics, a book should not be judged by its cover and the author's background but evaluated based only on the text itself. Since it deals with the text a close reading is to be done, which requires taking apart a text and looking at its individual elements, such as theme, setting, plot, and structure Emergence of Practical Criticism Prior to the 1920s, literary criticism took a largely historical slant. To understand a text, critics often looked to its historical background and the history of the language used in the text. But in 1929, a literary critic at Cambridge by the name of Ivor Armstrong Richards ( ) published Practical Criticism. His book

17 26 reported on an experiment that involved people reading and responding to poems without knowing who the authors were. Richards was interested in why people responded to these poems the way they did. In 1939, Richards began teaching at Harvard and influenced a new American literary theory. Two years later, John Crowe Ransom, ( ) English professor at Kenyon College, published New Criticism. The new book's title was applied to this young method of examining texts. New Criticism went on to become a popular method of literary analysis throughout the middle of the 20th century. In focusing on the text itself, New Critics intentionally ignored the author and the reader Intentional fallacy According to Intentional fallacy, it is impossible to determine an author's reasons for writing a text without directly asking him. And even if we did determine the author's intentions, they don t matter, because the text itself carries its own value. So, even if we're reading a book by a renowned author like Shakespeare, we shouldn't let the author's reputation taint our evaluation of the text Affective fallacy Similarly, Affective fallacy claims that we shouldn't waste time thinking about the effect a text may have on the reader because then we are polluting the text with our subjective influence. So, we should ignore how beautiful a poem may be or our reactions to an emotional novel. If we give in to our emotional reactions, we are less able to evaluate the text objectively. Besides authors and readers, New Critics would also argue that a text's historical and cultural contexts are also irrelevant. For example, even if we're looking at such a culturally significant text, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's ( ) Uncle Tom's Cabin, (1852) we should avoid the temptation to read it as an anti-

18 27 slavery novel. Instead, we should read it to see how the novel's elements, such as its setting and theme, work together to produce a unified, whole text. Thus, New Criticism stresses a close textual analysis and viewing the text as a carefully crafted, orderly object containing formal, observable patterns. New Criticism is also called an "objective" approach to literature. New Critics are more likely than certain other critics to believe and say that the meaning of a text can be known objectively. For instance, reader-response critics see meaning as a function either of each reader s experience or of the norms that govern a particular interpretive community, and deconstructionists argue that texts mean opposite things at the same time. Practical Criticism was pioneered by a group of scholars from Cambridge. They were Ivor Armstrong Richards ( ), William Empson ( ) and F.R. Leavis ( ). I. A. Richards established the technique called Practical Criticism by simply analyzing the words on the page without any reference to any other context. Practical Criticism proposes how to read a page objectively, and favoured a close reading of the text. New Criticism decontextualised objective reading by talking about a search for deeper meaning on a close reading of the text. In this close reading technique could be seen the seeds of the Reader Response criticism, later echoed in all post-structural critical approaches. Richards says that the aesthetic state is not different from the ordinary state in our life; the aesthetic experience is not different from any other experience. It has nothing special to commend it; only in an aesthetic experience there are a greater number of impulses which have to be brought into coordination with one another. In art experience, there is a resolution, an inner-animation and balancing of impulses. Impulses are those stimuli that motivate attitudes in us and the attitudes are the imaginable and

19 28 incipient activities or tendencies of action. This psychological theory is not Richards s creation, but he was the one who used it in relation to criticism, and in defence of poetic creation. Richard s psychologism, a theory that applies psychological conceptions to the interpretation of historical events or logical thought, shows that he is not concerned with the poetic object enclosing a certain structure in itself, but only with reader s responses to the object. Richards gives his explanation with reference to poems claiming that the poem is located in the reader and the poem itself the reader s response to it. Such cluttered open subjectivism leads the reader to the conclusion that poetic language is ambiguous, pluralistic, and open to different and diverse meanings. Richards then distinguishes four different kinds of meanings. They are sense, feeling, tone and intention. When we make an utterance, we direct the attention of our hearer to what we utter. We use language to convey the feelings that we wish to convey in our utterance. We arrange the tone depending on whom we are addressing. Finally, we have some intention, conscious or unconscious, and this modifies our utterance. There is interplay of these functions in any communication, written or spoken. Many of Richard s suppositions on the psychological factors governing poetic experience are not quite relevant in the context of contemporary theories Differences between Russian Formalism and New Criticism The Russian Formalists maintained that literary texts make use of language in such a way that it becomes strange and unfamiliar in a given context. They called this process defamiliarization. Thus, words can suddenly appear strange when placed in a literary context or combined with other words. This preoccupation with words made the formalists distinguish between form and content. For the formalists, only

20 29 form mattered since content, such as ideas, feelings or human experience, was just an excuse to organize language in a literary way. Hence, a formalist approach to a text enables the reader to make a close reading of the text. The formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the twentieth century is termed New Criticism Structuralism Structuralism developed during 1930s to 1970s. The Russian Formalists became Structuralists when their movement was brought to an end by the Soviet authorities in the 1920s. Scientists in the field of literary experiments studied the properties of literature in order to determine what it is and how it works. This scientific impulse was carried further in the middle of the twentieth century by a group of thinkers called Structuralists. Some of them were influenced by Roman Jakobson, one of the original Russian Formalists. Structuralists applied the insights of linguistics to literature and culture. They claimed that like language which is both everyday speech and the language system underlying it, literature consists of a manifest level and latent level. The latent level of the system of language consists of the vocabulary of possible terms and the rules for selecting and combining those terms which make everyday speech possible. Vladimir Propp ( ) who studied Russian Fairy tales found that they shared a common narrative morphology. Though each one was concerned with a different set of events and characters, all share the same basic set of abstract plot elements. The origin of Structuralism is located in the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure ( ) in his work A Course in General Linguistics, 1916). Saussure distinguished between two dimensions of language viz; how it is practised (Parole or Speech) and the language

21 30 system taken as a whole (langue or language). Saussure uses the word synchronic to name this systematic dimension of language, how it exists and changes during a certain period of time as it is spoken or practised. Saussure s ideas influenced literary and cultural criticism in several ways. They permitted Structuralist critics to shift attention away from the relation between texts and world and meaning, and towards how texts operate logically, what the mechanisms produce meaning, what meanings texts possess meanings in themselves and in common with other texts, how they are made up of parts in relation to one another, and vice versa. Saussure s ideas also allowed critics to study texts as systems of signs like the signified and the signifier. Finally, Saussurean linguistics allowed Structuralist criticism to agree with the way the elements of the manifest text are combined according to latent logical rules that are often the same as those found in other similar texts Stylistics The term stilistik has been in use since the early nineteenth century and in English it is found as early as in According to Oxford English Dictionary, Stylistics is an art of forming good style in writing and the science of literary style. There is a close compact between Stylistics and Linguistics, and Stylistics and Structuralism. The seminal ideas and methods in the science of linguistics are generally applied in the stylistic analysis of literary texts; Ferdinand de Saussure ( ) and Roman Jakobson ( ) are the scholars who shaped the course of stylistics in the twentieth century. Behind these modern movements is Russian as well as French Formalism, and behind all these modern versions is the ancient or pre-modern discipline known as rhetoric, which is part of the trivium in ancient Greece that are grammar, rhetoric and logic. Originally, it was developed as the art of speaking effectively in public, but later the meaning was extended to

22 comprehend the theory of eloquence, whether spoken or written, to be known as the 31 science of persuasion. In Rome it was developed by Cicero (107 BC) and Quintillian (35 AD-100AD) and during the Middle Ages rhetoric was a key subject in university education. In the twentieth century the re-incarnated form with a new interest in literary style is known as stylistics. Russian Formalism in the 1920s gave it a distinctive literary turn and Roman Jakobson s Closing Statement in the famous Conference on Style (in 1958), the proceedings of which were published as Style in Language edited by Thomas Sebeok, became the manifesto of stylistic studies. This was followed by number of books and articles by stylistic critics like Roger Fowler ( ), Raymond Chapman( ) H.G. Widdowson (1935- ), Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (1925- ) and others. As a result of the development in Formalism, Structuralism and Stylistics, the literary critic was compelled to study a work of art in terms of signs and meanings. A systematic approach to the study of language of a literary text and its correlation to literary reading and appreciation is useful in making us better readers. Jakobson s demonstration of the striking symmetries and equivalencies in Shakespeare s Sonnet 129 The expense of spirit and his earlier analysis of Charles Baudelaire s ( ) poem Les Chats with Claude Levi Strauss ( ) represent a trend setting feat in contemporary stylistics. Stylisticians do not take into account the role of the reader in realizing the poetic structures and a super-reader is the one who gives life to the linguistic structures. Linguistic structures are not fixed entities, but are in a constant state of flux. Since the 1980s, under the influence of Post-Structuralism and other developments in text and linguistics, many other approaches like Affective Stylistics by Stanley Fish, Reception theory, Reader-response criticism etc. have emerged, giving new insights to the later interpretation of stylistics. The critics who argued against the

23 32 structuralistic emphasis went on to give importance to the multiple meanings a language contributes in the interpretation processes. This led to Post-Structuralist theories Stylistics and Affective Stylistics Stylistics is the study and interpretation of texts to their linguistic style. Stylistics as a discipline links literary criticism to linguistics. It cannot function as a independent body but it can be applied to understanding of literature, journalism and linguistics. Canonical works of writing popular texts, advertising copy to news, nonfiction, and popular culture and political and religious discourse are the sources of study in stylistics. Stylistics as a conceptual discipline may establish principles capable of explaining particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language such as in the literary production and reception of a genre, in the study of folk art, in the study of spoken dialects and registers, and it can be applied to areas such as discourse analysis as well as literary criticism. Common features of style include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and individual dialects, the use of grammar, such as the observation of active voice and passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular language registers, and so on. In addition, stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between form and effects within a particular variety of language. Therefore, stylistics looks at what is 'going on' within the language; what the linguistic associations are revealed by language style Affective Stylistics Stanley Fish (1938) is the chief exponent of Affective Stylistics. It is based on the insight derived by reader-response criticism in the process of criticising a text. In affective stylistics, the focus is shifted from the spatial context of a page and its

24 33 observable regularities to the temporal context of a mind and its experience, that is, a transfer of power from the text to the reader. Stylistics itself was born of a reaction to the subjectivity and imprecision of literary studies. In fact, it is an attempt to put criticism on a scientific basis. Affective stylistics is not similar to impressionism, but rather a precision because the object of analysis is a process whose shape is continually changing. This formal characteristics of language will be used exactly to specify what a reader, as he comes upon the word or pattern, is doing, what assumptions he is making, what attitude he is entertaining, what acts he is being moved to perform. Affective stylistics proposes interpretative acts what are being described; they, rather than verbal patterns arranging themselves in space, are the content of the analysis. Hence, the reader s job is to extract the meanings that formal patterns possess prior to and independently of activities Post Structuralism Structuralism which dominated the French intellectual life in the 1960s was replaced by another movement called Post-Structuralism. Structuralism emphasized order, structure, and rules, whereas Post-Structuralism argued that language is subject to contingency, indeterminacy, and the generation of multiple meanings, the indeterminacy of the text. Post-structuralism represents a rapid dismantling of some of the most important assumptions underlying western culture and philosophy. The assumptions are a set of theoretical positions, which have at their core a self-reflexive discourse which is aware of the tentativeness, ambiguity, and the complex interrelations of texts and meanings. Post-Structuralist theory and practice can be seen in the work of the nineteenth-century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche ( ). Nietzsche joined issue with the dominant assumptions of western philosophy and Christian idealist culture where the idea is that there is

25 34 a coherent human subject, the belief that reality is a stable field of objects capable of being known by a neutral instrument called reason; the belief that knowledge is a recording device rather than a machine for constructing order and identity where there is none; the idea that moral good consists of the suppression of our material natures; and the belief that truth is a spiritual quality that rises above language. Nietzsche s critique of western moral idealism continues in the 20 th century in the work of Georges Bataille ( ), a French thinker whose work spans the era from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s and who also was a major influence on Post- Structuralism. Michel Foucault s ( ) earliest work which departed from the order of characteristic of Structuralism was his examination of the history of madness in the early 1960s. Foucault was not first to argue, following Nietzsche, that reason is not the transparent instrument of knowledge that philosophers and scientists have claimed it is, nor is it a touchstone for determining value. In later works Foucault argues that knowledge in society consists of discourses that as much posit and create objects to be known as record preexisting realities. In the mid 1960s, the writers and critics around the journal Tel Quel, (founded-1960, final issue-1982, based in Paris) many of whom, like Jacques Derrida ( ), and Julia Kristeva (1941- ), important Post-Structuralist thinkers, began to link the study of signification to radical political critiques of western capitalist society, especially to the disordering and subversion of the reigning modes for constructing subjectivity and reality through language. They focused on the way the signifying potential of language exceeded the semantic orders that lay at the basis of western capitalist culture. Post-Structuralism developed further in the mid 1970s through the work of Deleuze ( ), and Guattari ( ), psychoanalytic materialists who describe the immersion of culture, society, and human psychology in material nature.

26 Deconstruction In the 1970s, the basic principles of Structuralism were questioned by the Post Structuralists. As an answer to these queries, Deconstruction emerged as a serious challenge to other systems of thought. Deconstruction emphasizes open-endedness and undecidability and a careful attention to the problems involved in arriving at an idea of what is real through its representation. Deconstruction is text based, although here the notion of text is different. The world and the word are not treated as conceptual oppositions, giving more importance to the world over the word. According to Derrida there is nothing outside the text, and that the text is just gas. According to of Derrida all experiences and feelings are expressed only through the text and it is impossible to draw a firm line between reality and representation. Moreover, the text or language is not structured and it is more like a living organism that decomposes. It is always in a state of flux with no final meaning and on the fact that there is no outside to the text or no ultimate appeal to the lived experience Distinctive features of Post-structuralism and Deconstructionism Post-structuralism and Deconstruction convey different meanings to two different groups. There is the free play of the meaning. Language is incapable of conveying the truth. There is a Lacuna, in the decoding of interpretations. Derrida has expounded a theory of Differance, The term différance originated at a seminar given by Derrida in 1968 at the Société française de philosophie. The term in itself represents a synthesis of Derrida's semiotic and philosophical thinking. All of the concepts defined earlier are active in this theory.

27 36 The grapheme a represents several features in the application of this theory: In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language 1. Différance is the difference that shatters the cult of identity and the dominance of Self over Other; it means that there is no origin (originary unit). Différer [to differ] is to not be identical. 2. Différance marks a divergence that is written: the a that we can see, but not hear. 3. Différer [to defer] is to displace, shift, or elude. 4. Différance is the future in progress (the fight against frozen meanings); it is the displacement of signifying signifiers to the fringe, since there is no organizing, original, transcendental signified (196). The writing of différance refers to itself, because it breaks with the concepts of signified and referent. The emphasis on the theme of writing functions as an antidote against idealism, metaphysics and ontology. In Post-structuralism and Deconstructionism there is no center and no margins. Structure defines meanings, center and margins. There is an Aporia, a technical term applied to logical or rhetorical perplexities, impassable difficulties, logical paradoxes, and puzzlements. When understood in relation to deconstruction characteristics: the text dismantles itself, deconstructs itself, or undermines its own rhetorical foundations. Derrida declaress that there is no final meaning because each time one arrives at a set of key terms, or meaning one discovers the need to move on to more work Reader-oriented approaches Reader-oriented theories emerged during the late 1970s and 1980s. Reader oriented theories influenced other disciplines like psychology and psychoanalysis