Introduction to Contemporary Critical Theory or
From Literary Analysis to Cultural Studies
“ no discourse about literature is theory-free”
Taken from: Ramond Selden and Peter Widdowson. A Reader’s Guide to
Contemporary Literary Theory. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky.
1993
1920’s-1960’s: Modernism and Historicism
Modernism
 Anglo-American school of literary criticism
 “a profound, almost reverential regard for ‘the text itself,’ with literary
works as icons of human value deployed against twentieth century cultural
barbarism.’ the work divorced from context, such as cultural or historical
setting, personal background of the writer
 attempt to be objective – disregard for the personal or cultural ‘input’ of the
writer or reader
 goal: to train students in close textual analysis of ‘good’ literary texts
 a ‘canon’ of select text should be taught: those that demonstrated ‘organic
wholeness’ stylistically and thematically and convey moral and social
values consistent with the European classical tradition (representing the
cultural biases of the critics themselves)
 celebrates organic wholeness- controlled artistic order and harmony
despite any thematic or stylistic tension and conflict; resolution of irony,
paradox, tension or ambivalence
 designates as less worthy texts: less controlled stylistically, containing
‘loose ends’
 T.S. Eliot considered Hamlet: “So far from being Shakespeare’s
masterpiece, the play is most certainly a failure. In several ways the play
is puzzling and disquieting as is none of the others.”
 ‘proper moral values’: classical, restrained, eurocentric, traditional (as
opposed to twentieth century cultural decline
 Priveleged texts (included in the canon of great writers): Jane Austen,
George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad.
 Excluded from the canon: Dickens, Lawrence, Hardy, the Brontes (and
miscellaneous works of the ‘greats’ that did not fit the parameters of
modernism e.g. Hamlet, Mill on the Floss)
Historicism
 Cultural periods are unified, coherent, static
 They can be understood in terms of a dominant cultural ideology
 Texts are assessed in terms of their ability to reproduce that ideology
 E.g classic critical background to Shakespeare: The Elizabethan World
Picture, E.M. W. Tillyard, 1943
1970’s-1980’s: Psycholanalysis , Marxism, Structuralism
Psychoanalytic theories
 Freud and Jung
 stream of consciousness
Marxism
 class analysis, power
Structuralism
 focus on the language of texts
 signals of the writer’s intention communicated through the use of language
 deconstruction, signs, tropes
 French linguistic critics dominate: Saussure
1980’s-present: Postmodernism
Reader Response
 A literary work does not pop into the world as a finished and neatly
parceled bundle of meaning; rather meaning depends on the historical
situation of the interpreter
Gender Studies
 Feminism
 Revisits text to reinterpret absent or present female characters
 Revisits texts written by women
New Historicism
 Historical periods are not unified entities
 There is no single history, only discontinuous and contradictory histories
 The idea of a uniform and harmonious culture is a myth
 Culture is never static; on the contrary it is always in the process of
change.
 At any given period, residual, dominant and emergent aspects of culture
may exist simultaneously- causes the reader to look at marginalized and
subversive aspects of the text – indications of cultural change
 These changing aspects of culture are generally understood in terms of
power relations
 All interpretations of past literature arise from a dialogue between past and
present
 Our attempts to understand a work will depend on the questions our own
cultural environment allows us to raise
Poststructuralism
 Deconstruction
 Language cannot be studied in isolation, is part of a social context
 Discourse – the social context of language- is often understood in terms of
power(Foucault)- causes the critic or reader to look at who is privileged in
the text and who is not, who speaks and does not speak
Postmodernism
 Describes both artistic expression and critical theory – celebrates
similar values and style
 Expresses skepticism towards previous certainties in personal
intellectual and political life
 believes that the grand “narratives” of human progress and liberation,
rooted in Enlightenment thought, have lost credibility
 dismisses the tradition of perceived hierarchy between high and
popular culture
 intermingles genres and media, breaks down boundaries between
different forms of artistic expression and discourse
 rejects the elitism, sophisticated formal experimentation and tragic
sense of alienation found in modernist writers
 celebrates open, discontinuous, indeterminate structures
 expresses profound sense of uncertainty: neither the world nor the self
any longer possess unity, coherence, meaning
 is not necessarily depressing, often playful, self-reflexive and selfparodying fiction
 raises questions rather than supplying answers
Danziger’s approach to literature
 trained as an undergraduate in modernism, values close analysis of the
text, rejects constraints of the canon of the formal criteria for “good
literature” and for evaluating “good literature”
 trained as a graduate in postmodernism – values social and cultural
orientation of contemporary criticism, issues of gender, power, questions
raised by the text, reader responses to the text
 expects students to: read closely, use the text to support interpretation,
stay open-minded, recognize and be conscious of the influence of their
own cultural perspectives as readers
Key Terms in Contemporary Critical Theory
Canon
Carnival
Closed/open texts
Codes
Allegory
A symbolic narrative in which the major features of the movement of the
narrative all refer symbolically to some action or situation
Appropriation
The process by which one sector in society takes over the aspects of
another – language,forms of writing, film, theater – could be imperial
appropriation of the indigenous culture, could be postcolonial appropriation of the
imperial culture
Colonialism
Commodification
Cultural materialism
Deconstruction
Differences
Discourse
Existentialism
freud
Feminism
Hegemony
Hybridity
The space in which cultural meanings and identities always contain the
traces of other meanings and identities
Hermeneutics
Icons
Imperialism
Inclusion/exclusion
Intention
Jung
Location/dislocation
Magic realism
Marginality/marginalization
marxism
Modernism
Nativism
The return to a pre-colonial or native culture or language
naturalism
New criticism
New historicism
orientalism
other
Postcolonialism
Postmodernism
poststructuralism
power
privilege
Reader response
realism
Resistance
romanticism
Semiotics
Signs/signification
Space and time
Stream of consciousness
text
trope
Key People
Benjamin, Walter
Said,
Bhaktin
Spivak
Williams
Foucault
Greenblatt