Literary Theory
OMG!
Paweł Stachura
pawels@ifa.amu.edu.pl
321A,
Mon. 0945 a.m. - 1115 a.m.
Housekeeping information
Credits: no attendance
10 questions, 6/4 (4 for lecture)
60% passes
Fachliteratur (i.e. Bibliography):
Anthologies
Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An
Anthology. Malden: Blacwell, 2004
Robert Con Davis and Donald Schleifer.
Contemporary Literary Criticism. London: Longman,
1989.
--. Literary Criticism and Theory: The Greeks to the
Present. London: Longoman, 1989.
Peter Brooker. Modernism/Postmodernism. London:
Longman, 1992.
David Lodge and Nigel Wood. Modern Literary
Criticism and Theory. London: Pearson Longman,
2008
Bibliography (2): Histories
René Wellek. A History of Modern Criticism:
1750-1950. (5 vol.) New Haven: Yale UP, 1965.
George Watson. The Literary Critics: A Study of
English Descriptive Criticism. London:
Chatto&Windus, 1964.
H.B. Nisbet (ed.) The Cambridge History of
Literary Criticism. (9 vol.) Cambridge UP, 19902007.
Bibliography (3): Textbooks
Robert Scholes. Structuralism in Literature: An
Introduction. New Haven, Yale UP, 1974.
Rene Wellek and Austin Warren. Theory of
Literature. 1949.
Richard Harland. Literary Theory from Plato to
Barthes. London: MacMillan, 1999.
‘Introduction’ books: Terry Iggleton, Jonathan
Culler etc.
Bibliography (4): original texts
Paul Ricoueur. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay
on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970.
Hans Robert Jauss. Historia literatury jako
prowokacja dla teorii literatury, Warszawa: IBL,
1999.
Roman Ingarden. The Literary Work of Art.
(Dzieło literackie) 1938, 1973.
Northrop Frye. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1957.
Topic areas:
th
20
Century
!9th Century background: Historicism,
Geistgeschichte, positivism, biographical and
social determinism (1 lecture)
Masters of the hermeneutics of suspicion: Marx,
Nietzsche, Freud (3 lectures)
Topic Areas:
th
20
Century (2)
Heritage of the masters of suspicion (modernism and post– schools)
– psychoanalytical criticism
– modern Marxism and New Historicism (!)
– postcolonialism and ethnic criticism
– feminist criticism
(– critical poststructuralism: Barth, Derrida, Foucault)
Heritage of historicist thought: continuations and revisions (problematically)
– Geistgeschichte and hermeneutics (Dilthey, Ingarden, Hirsch, Iser, Jauss)
– external determinism vs ‘intristic’ (formalist) criticism
– historicist genology vs continuity of tradition (Bakhtin, Curtius, Eliot,
Bloom)
– naive mimesis vs modern theories of mimesis (Auerbach)
– history of rhethorics vs modern narratology (Jakobson, Barthes, Genet)
– biographical criticism vs reader-response (Ingarden, Hirsch, Iser, Jauss)
In all: 15 lectures, 1 in reserve (brackets)
End of the
th
19
Century
Historicism (historical determinism)
– blooming of historiography: Hegel, Ranke,
Michelet, Lelewel, Travelyan, Prescott
– causality and choice of determinants: spiritual
(Geistgeschichte, leading idea), materialistic
(positivism)
– choice of metaphors: biological (development of
a nation, alien elements etc.)
- development (modernity) vs periodization:
Ranke, Gervinus
Historicism in literary theory
– work as product of society (nation)
– work as historical document
– does national literature ‘develop’?: determinants
and metaphors: epochs, spirits, expressions
– consequences: national histories of literature,
periodization, problematization and leading
ideas, genology and favoured genres, value of
representativity, canon, ‘externality’ of
description, adoption of ‘positivist superstitions’
Examples
Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Geschichte der
poetischen Nationalliteratur der Deutschen,
1835–42.
– the term Geistgeschichte, periodization,
leading ideas, exemplarity of epochs
Geistgeschichtge = history of ideas
Wilhelm Scherer, Geschichte Deutschen
Literatur, 1883.
– external economic determinism
Examples (2)
Vladimir Strakhov, The Struggle with the West
in Our Literature, 1882.
– single leading idea
Edmund Gosse, A History of French Literature,
1897.
– genius and/or spirit (of feudalism, of the
Church etc.)
William Peterfield Trent (ed.), The Cambridge
History of American Literature, 1907.
– external political determinism: e.g.
Parrington’s comment about Puritans
Examples (3)
Karl Hildebrand, German Thought from the
Seven Years’ War to Goethe’s Death, 1880.
Perry Miller, The New England Mind, 1939,
1952.
– (Geistgeschichte) Puritan theology as
determinant
Maria Kuncewiczowa, The Modern Polish Mind,
1962.
– recent example of Geistgeschichte (catalogue
of leading ideas as layout for anthology)
Andrzej de Lazari, Ideas in Russia, 1999.
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine
(1828–1893)
Reponse to theoretical problems of historicism
History of English Literature 1864
race – milieu – moment
(Joseph Arthur de Gobineau)
(Geoffroy Saint–Hillaire and Balzac)
(Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
Taine’s choices of determinants: materialism
and/or leading ideas (Geistgeschichte)
Application: positivist criticism
Eneas Sweetland Dallas, Poetics, 1852
George Eliot, ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’
1856
Matthew Arnold, ‘The Function of Criticism at
the Present Time’ 1965
Emilé Zola, Le Roman Experimental, 1880.
(Claude Bernard, Introduction a l’etude de la
medicine experimentale, 1865.)
‘Positivist superstitions’
‘silly novels’: literature must be useful…
…and it is useful when it is realistic…
…and then it becomes ‘truly’ moralizing
literature can be ‘seen as it really is’ (Ranke,
Gervinus, Arnold)
literature, in turn, ‘reflects’ things as they really
are
above all, literature ‘reflects’ a ‘development’ of
a nation
there is a deterministic relation between nation
and its literature
‘Objectivity’
KNOWLEDGE
LINGUISTIC
STORAGE AND
TRANSMISSION
Zoology
Zoology textbook
etc.
OBJECT
SUBJECT
History of English
Cow
SUBJECT
English
literature
??????
?!
HISTORY?
?
SUBJECT
?!
History
textbook
Heritage of historicist and positivist
determinism
history of ideas, leading ideas of national
literatures
genology understood as historical development;
rise and primacy of the novel
‘grand narratives’ of national literary histories
naive notions of literature ‘in’ society: canon
wars, educational fantasies
Objections
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Primitive notions of mimetic representation
(reflective, transparent)
Disregard of creative imagination and
individual genius (determinants or reflective
representation)
Disregard of history of ideas (positivist school
of material and social determination)
Disregard and ignorance of literary traditions
In extreme cases: no interest in artistic quality
or even content of text
Reactions (20th century)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Hermeneutics of suspicion (followers of Marx,
Nietzsche, Freud)
Theories of imagination (aesthetic criticism,
return to Romanticism) OR theories of
mimesis
Hermeneutics (espeicially Dilthey)
Eliot, Curtius etc.
The main objection to historicism, voiced by
formalists (Eliot, Rye), who concentrated on
‘what the text says’ ahistorically
Hermeneutics of suspicion
Paul Ricoueur. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay
on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970.
Marx – Nietzsche – Freud
Hermeneutics
Contemporary
political criticism
''Postmodernism''
Culture
studies
Nietzsche
MarxFreud
!!!
Geistgeschichte
(national schools)
???
(Combined)
Positivism
(psychological
or economic)
S
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Now when Lucifer sought after the Mother of Fire in his Centre,
and thought to reign therewith over the Love of God and all the
Angels, and when Adam also desired to try in the Essence what
the Mother or Root was from whence Evil and Good did spring,
and purposely brought his Desire thereinto, in order to become
knowing and full of Understanding thereby: Both Lucifer and Adam
were captivated in their evil or false Desire in the Mother, and
broke off themselves from Resignation which proceeds from God,
and so were caught by the Spirit of the Will, by the Desire in the
Mother. Which Desire immediately got the Dominion in Nature;
and so Lucifer stuck fast in the wrathful Source of Fire, and that
Fire became manifest in the Spirit of his Will, whereby the Creature
in its Desire became an Enemy to the Love and Meekness of God.
Jacob Boehme, The Way to Christ, 1622.
