Confessions of a Novice Literary Critic

Just another blog that attempts to analyse the process of analysing literary works -aka. CRITCEPTION

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The different ways we can interpret a text depend upon what we're trying to read into. A good simple example to try this out on is Robert Frosts poem 'the secret sits' W should ask ourselves, are we interpreting: The meaning of a word? ( does the word ring imply a formation of people? ) An utterance? ( does it have the intent of boasting? of lamenting?) A text as a whole? (Who are "we in relation to the Secret?)

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the 19th century was key in that key works appeared (such as the writings of Marx), which found their application and usefulness in fields outside of which they had originally been written. They were not constrained by usual disciplinary boundaries!

And then in the 60ties, things really heated up with lit. crit when writings in ares such as feminist theory, started having a HUGE impact on the understanding of different texts. A work could be read differently if it was seen through the framework of a relevant, non-literary theory!

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Literary theory is many different things, but these four key properties are what define it :

1) it’s Interdisciplinary , meaning it borrows from an array of sources and fields. From political theory, to psychology- the limits of lit. theory are far reaching.

2) it’s analytical and speculative- it examines instances and based on those makes well argumented assumptions. Theories of culture and literature aren’t like theories in physics- they can’t be ‘proven’ to be true using concrete ‘evidence’. They can only be more or less useful for providing meaning, and therein lies their value.

3) literary theories critique common sense- it’s their fundamental function to help us, the reader, question well established ‘universal truths’ and bring to light the fact that they are simply historical conventions. Take nothing for granted. Question everything. 

4) Lit. theory is reflexive, in that it engages in meta-thinking, or thinking about the thinking. In many ways it is a self critique, it urges the reader to try and understand the assumptions by which she/he has argued for a particular meaning, and that there is ALWAYS an underlying theory. Understanding the way we understand can help us clarify the holes in our reasoning, why we perceive things a certain way. We not only question established ways of thinking when we practice literary theory, we question why and how we’re doing that. 

source: Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler

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I understand what the cockapoo’s are complaining about- it simply isn’t reasonable that so many things outside of literature, like marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, should have such a big say in how we understand what we read. But don’t be discouraged, obnoxiously-adorable-pups! Society, culture, the self and meaning are connected in unforeseen ways. That’s what makes it so interesting!

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How can I know what I think unless I see what I write?

Erica Jong, Fear of Flying  

(via talesofpassingtime)

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Victor Shkolvski (1893-1984), Russian formalist and literary critic, gives his take on what makes art important.

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Source: Cultural Criticism & Transformation: a Media Education Foundation interview with bell hooks

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 And where is popular culture if not here, dear internet?

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Great quote from a great man. I’ve just started ‘The Age of Reason’ from Jean-Paul Sartre. You can expect some lit.crit. on it once I dig in a bit deeper...

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On Organic Unity and Theme

So what did great literature mean for the new critics, and what was their criteria?

New Criticism judged works based on what they perceived to be their  “organic unity” and whether they had a  “theme of universal significance”. In fact, organic unity meant that all of the elements of the story and text worked together to contribute to the theme, which is the complete meaning of a text. Crudely put, the theme is the ‘moral of the story’. But this quality, the quality of order in the form of unity, had to be balanced out by the quality of complexity, which is how you could tell if a work was really great or just kinda good. Great works used a number of  linguistic devises that made the story more real, more true-to-life. 

These devices are :

irony / a statement or event undermined by the context in which it occurs, or the inclusion of varying perspectives on the same character or event, which in some way undermine each other.

paradox/ a contrasting statement

ambiguity / a word, image or event that generates 2 or more different meanings

tension/ linking together of opposites, or the integration of the abstract(the universal) and the concrete, also known as concrete universals.

figurative language, such as images, metaphors, symbols and similes. 

Tension is also created by opposing images or concepts that constitute the other linguistic devices, so they overlap a lot. And order exists if all of these are in line with, and serve, the overarching theme.

An organic salute, 

Aleks

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I can’t say I agree with the New Critics in general, but I can confess that when I fall in love with a story, it almost always does posses deep, inherent tensions and ambiguities. Perhaps because they vibrate with the same unease that exists in our own lives. 

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This quote by Mathew Arnold reminds me of the philosophy of Alain de Botton, particularly in his Ted talk “Atheism 2.0”

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Let’s Start With a Bit of History

Perhaps not the most enticing way to kick off, but if you’re anything like me- which presumably you are, being here and all- you’ll need to have a firm historical base established before you can get deeper into any complex topic. That itch must be scratched, swiftly and efficiently.

Let’s get to it:

Contemporary lit. crit. thought can be traced back to the first half of the 19th century- predominantly with the arrival of a number of very white, very privileged and very well educated men on the scene of the intellectual elite. 

Mathew Arnold was the first of the bunch, a professor and poet best known for his lyric ‘Dover Beach’, as well as his conspicuous mutton chops likely to put wolverine out of business. He believed that culture could help the ‘self-centred working class’, as well as the ‘ arrogant upper-class’ transcend all of those weights- such as place, character and circumstance- to become ideal citizens. Something that they could do primarily with the help of poetry, and literature in general.

He was succeeded by T.S. Eliot, who not only believed literature to be of utmost importance in the development and betterment of human kind but who additionally created a list of criteria to extract those texts which would be best suited for the task. His list of best lit. EVER WRITTEN dominated much discussion about literature until the 1970, and still remains highly influential. Curious about what some of T.S. Eliot’s criteria were? They went along the lines of : 

-Should be highly impersonal

-Should be a perfect integration of both emotion and intellect (other wise it is either too irrational or too boring)

-Should contain much irony and wit! 

And this is where where him being a white privileged male comes painfully to the fore. All of these criteria then (and even today somewhat) are qualities seen as typically male, where as emotions and an unwillingness to ‘rationalise’ were seen as typically female. *More about gender and how it relates to lit. theory later.*

Next we have I.A. Richards, who is best known for doing an experiment on his undergrad students , aka. forever-the-guinea-pigs. He asked them to analyse a text without having given them any contextual information, like who the author was, when it was written. This might not seem like much today, but boy was it innovative back in the late 1800s. During that period and earlier, literature was  analysed, but mainly to debate of what meaning the author of a text meant to convey. In the new practice, dubbed Practical Criticism, which got it’s name from the title of Richard’s book, it was the text itself from which meaning emerged. This was to influence the future development of lit. crit. immensely. 

And last of all F.R. Levis, whom I slightly favour since he brought books to the fore instead of insisting that poetry was obviously the better of the bunch. He said that because of their scope and attention to detail, they could better represent life in all it’s fullness. He also did a very cool thing by expanding the scope of lit crit., arguing that it presented the best possible base for criticising contemporary culture.  That means that by learning and doing good lit. crit. we are essentially learning to analyse the world outside of the text- the society we are part of and the culture that surrounds our daily lives. How wonderfully useful!

A bit later on, these ideas spread to Arnold’s, Eliot’s, Richard’s and Lewis’s contemporaries in the US, and there began a movement know as New Criticism, which was more alike than it was different to Practical Criticism described above. 

I confess, I enjoyed reading about how these 4 guys basically started an avalanche of new thought and theory in lit. crit., one that still hasn’t stopped tumb(lr)ling until this very day. Although a lot of their ideas would now seem conservative and a bit snobby, it’s important to understand it’s basic premises. Mainly because, as my English Literature professor used to say, “Every new movement is a reaction to the former one; whether it is to affirm certain aspects of it, or reject it entirely.”

Off to a good start and an even better shower.

Confessing from the front,

Aleks

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Practical and New Criticism- the first wave of contemporary thinking about lit crit. See the following post for a textual summary

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The arts are our storehouse of recorded values. They spring from and perpetuate hours in the lives of exceptional people, when their control and command of experience is at its highest, hours when the varying possibilities of existence are most clearly seen and the different activities which may arise are most exquisitely reconciled, hours when habitual narrowness of interests or confused bewilderment are replaced by an intricately wrought composure.

(Richards [1924] 1972a: 110) from Literary Theory, the Basics by Hans Bertrens

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These 2 will be the sources for most of the basic theory. I’d highly recommended them for anyone who wants a rudimentary and uncomplicated introduction into the field. You can find them on the net if you snoop around enough- or you could just stick around here- more visuals guaranteed.

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Narratio (Background)

I could be writing a blog about fantastically underappreciated architectural details in Cologne (where I currently reside). Or, I could document everyday institutional or social phenomena I come across where service design-a new field of design that thinks in ways of systems and experiences, rather than aesthetics - is needed. I could posting my sketches of impressionable strangers who unwittingly stumble into my life. Or! I could be Retweetblogposting well designed diagrams that glaringly describe relations, hierarchies or processes.

These are all valid options when you want to share something with the world. Sharing is fun! You gain an understanding of why you’d be doing these things, how to do them better, as well as have it chronologically documented for future reference. Isn’t that the reason why anyone does it?

But, my dear implied reader, brise soleil details in Germany’s 4th largest city is not why you are here. You’re here because of an objective that gratifyingly unites  all personal passion hobbies : a better understanding of the human condition. Primarily the humans that are ourselves. 

There are a number of different mediums, such as  YouTube, medium, an actual written journal, etc, that I could be using. And many more types of text, such as movies, historical scripts, ads, theatre, etc, that could make up the source material the critical analysis is based on. But literary texts and poetry in particular have a long history of being “martyrs” of anatomisation, and they’ve done so with splendid poise. 

“Critiquing the literary is well documented practice that speaks volumes about how society ( and it the individual within it ) struggles to understand itself at a given moment in time.’’- me

For example, it wasn’t until the late 20th century that critics started taking the reader and how he interpreted the text to be key way of analysing it’s meaning. Until then, a meanings text was though to be either injected into it by the author, or inherent in the text itself. But a new form of consciousness started making headway and the idea that a text has no meaning until we, using our own beliefs, knowledge and experiences, understand there to be one. And voila! Reader response theory was born. A theory which I will unapologetically practice much of the time. 

So yes, there will be theory involved in the writing of this blog. In fact plural- lots of theories (joy!). But I’ll be worked through tin a comprehensive way, so no need to worry. And much of what I’ll post will be in the form of drawings or sketchnotes about the novels themselves. It won’t all be pure theory. 

But  didn’t you say tabula rasa when it comes to this crit lit business?

Being the obdurate nerd that I am, I’ll admit that I have dabbed in books on the basics of literary theory and criticism. So I have a vague idea of what that means and how to go about doing it. You wouldan’t want to listen to someone ramble about geckos for hours without the faintest idea about what reptiles are, right? 

Of course you wouldan’t.

A confessional salute, 

Aleks

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Exordium (Introduction)

First lit crit confession: Figuring out what certain books mean to say, and how they manage to do it so darn well is a daunting task.

You’ve got all reason to believe that by starting this blog, I’m naively taking on a challenge I know very little about-  

I’ll admit right off the bat I have no previous experience in the field of literary critique. Other than in grade school in the form of book reports, I don’t have any formal education in the subject. I can’t name a single lit. critic, and I have not, up until today, tried to evaluate the novel I’m reading in any sort of systematic or complex manner. Reading has always just been my favourite hobby- a way to immerse myself in a story that isn’t my own. So analysis didn’t seem favourable, or even remotely amusing.

But that’s changed in the last couple of years. Chalk it up to self-awareness or intellectual maturity, or what have you, but I’ve started to want more from the reading experience than just the uncanny bliss of total captivation. 

What I want is to have a higher, more holistic comprehension of what I’m reading.  

Which is far from easy, I know. It involves much note taking, many minutes of pre-during and post-reading musings, and determined reference research, involving lots more reading of a different kind. All of this has the capacity to ruin the reading experience as you, my dear implied reader, might have noticed in your own attempt to get more out of the texts you enjoy consuming.

Although prepared is not the right word, I am eager and willing to earn my novice title. And I plan to do so using a set of tools and methods that is idiosyncratic to me. More about the specifics later.

Let the confessions begin, 

Aleks