IRIS TUAN
2016/3/18
1
+ Self-Introduction
+ Syllabus
+ Course Textbooks
+ Course Requirements
+ Assign Groups
2016/3/18
2
課程簡介
Literary theory:
(1) Historical and Biographical Approaches
(2) The Formalist Approach
(3) The Psychological Approach: Freud
(4) Mythological and Archetypal Approaches
(5) Feminisms and Gender Studies
(6) Cultural Studies
(7) Reader-Response Criticism
(8) Dialogics
(9) Structuralism
(10) Poststructuralism, Including Deconstruction
補充 The contemporary theaters in the West and in Taiwan
2016/3/18
3
+ 18-week teaching materials
+ See the Syllabus
2016/3/18
4
+ A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature.
+
+
+
+
+
2016/3/18
5th Edition. Wilfred L. Guerin 等五人著.New York:
Oxford Press, 2005.
訂書：此堂課自願負責同學或大一班代
文訊雜誌社：王為萱
10048台 北市中山南路11號6樓
TEL:02-33435419
MAIL:mandybear_777@yahoo..com.tw
5
+ 1. Don’t be late.
+
+
+
+
+
2016/3/18
(3 times count as an absence.)
2. Don’t be absent.
(3 times absence will be dropped out)
3. Study hard.
4. May U All Pass & High Pass
6
+ 依學生人數而定分組，每週輪流報告
+ 期末亦為小組口頭報告
+ 報告時小組成員全部都上台，由小組中一人代表報
告，其餘人備詢回答問題
+ 並以小組為單位繳交期中與期末各一份Powerpoint
+ 在口頭報告時，與Powerpoint首頁, 註明小組中每
個人所分配負責的工作
2016/3/18
7
+ 本課程介紹西方各種文學理論與流派
+ 精讀五個名著
+ 並從《經典解碼．文學作品讀法系列》叢書中精心
挑選章節，介紹西方文學各個流派與批評方法。
+ 藉由學習此文學作品讀法的課，可學到如何用不同
的文學理論來詮釋解讀文學作品，實際了解理論、
創作與閱讀三者之間的關係。
2016/3/18
8
+ Attend all classes
+ Participate in discussion
+ Study hard
+ Present well in 2 oral group
presentations
+ Do well in exams
+ Good luck!
2016/3/18
9
+ I. Setting
+ II. Plot
+ III. Character
+ IV. Structure
+ V. Style
+ VI. Atmosphere
+ VII. Theme
2016/3/18
10
+ I. First, a note on Traditional
Approaches
+ II. Three Foundational Questions
2016/3/18
11
+ Do we have an accurate
version of what we are
studying?
1. General Observations
+ 2. Text Study in Practice
2016/3/18
12
+ 1. An Overview of Genre
+ 2. Genre Characteristics in Practice
2016/3/18
13
+ Kenneth Burke called it—a “high
class kind of gossip”
+ We are interested in: the
“inspection of successive drafts,
notebooks, the author’s literary
habits in general” (Gibson 171).
2016/3/18
14
+ Literature: part of the academic
curriculum
+ It “taught” something
+ It was a source of “knowledge”
+ Discipline of criticism
2016/3/18
15
+ In “Against Interpretation,” Susan
Sontag mounted a frontal attack on
most kinds of contemporary criticism,
which, she maintained, actually usurp
the place of a work of art (13-23).
+ She concluded with the
pronouncement that “in place of a
hermeneutics we need an erotics of
art.”
2016/3/18
16
+ The Civil War era and wilderness terrain of Cold
+
+
+
+
+
+
2016/3/18
Mountain correspond to the setting of the work of
literature:
(1) the antebellum South of Huckleberry Finn
(2) Puritan Massachusetts in “Young Goodman Brown”
(3) Cavalier England in “To His Coy Mistress”
(4) the eleventh-century Denmark in Hamlet
(5) the Deep South of the 1970s in “Everyday Use”
(6) the arctic desolateness and constant rain of
Frankenstein.
17
+ The conflict (plot) involving protagonist
and antagonist
+ E.g. Hamlet versus his uncle
2016/3/18
18
+ The young moviegoers
assess the roles of the
actors.
2016/3/18
19
+ A plot structure, the relatedness of actions,
+ the gradual buildup in suspense from a
situation full of potential to a climax and a
resolution
+ E.g. Macbeth’s rise to be king of Scotland
through foul and bloody means and the
poetic justice of his defeat and death by
one he had wronged.
2016/3/18
20
+ The acting technique in a film may be
realistic, as in Sean Penn’s in Mystic River,
or it may be stylized, as in Johnny Depp’s
in Pirates of the Caribbean.
21
+ Defined as the mood or feeling that
permeates an environment, atmosphere is
a further common ingredient in the two
parts of our analogy.
2016/3/18
22
+ The often rich and varied underlying idea
of the action is the theme.
+ The basic ingredients of literature:
+ (1) setting, (2) plot, (3) character, (4)
structure, (5) style, (6) atmosphere, and (7)
theme.
2016/3/18
23
+ 1. First, A Note on Traditional Approaches
+ Literature is primarily art
+ Widely divergent interpretive approaches
to literature
2016/3/18
24
+ A. Textual Scholarship: Do we have an accurate version
of what we are studying?
+ 1. General Observations
+ Textual criticism
+ James Thorpe in Principles of Textual Criticism, textual
criticism has as its ideal the establishment of an
authentic text, or the “text which the author intended”(50).
2016/3/18
25
+ Textual criticism-- studying the genesis
and development of a piece of literature
+ As A. E. Housman says, textual criticism is
the “science of discovering error in texts
and the art of removing it”(2).
2016/3/18
26
+
+
+
+
+
2016/3/18
A. “To His Coy Mistress”
The last word in this couplet:
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew.
Instead of “dew,” the first edition of the
poem had “glew,” which we now know is a
dialectal variant of “glow,” although it was
earlier thought to be another spelling of
“glue,” a senseless reading in the context.
27
+ Besides questionable readings, there are a
number of words whose meanings have
changed over the years but that must be
understood in their Elizabethan senses if the
play is to be properly interpreted.
+ E.g. “O that this too too solid flesh would melt”
(I. ii)
+ “solid” or “sully (to dirty, or make foul)—make
different interpretations
2016/3/18
28
+ Obsolete words in the story like “wot’st”
(know), “Goody” (Goodwife, or Mrs.), and
“Goodman” (Mr.) are defined in most desk
dictionaries, and none of the other words
has undergone radical semantic change.
2016/3/18
29
+ Among Alice Walker’s earliest short fiction
+ Publication in 1973
+ Critical edition--Barbara T. Christian’s
Women Writers Series
+ Including Major American Short Stories,
edited by A. Walton Litz
2016/3/18
30
+ A minor point of spelling
+ In this handbook, the authors maintained
the dominant spelling “De Lacy.”
2016/3/18
31
+ 1. An Overview of Genre
+ First, a word about the fountainhead of
criticism
+ Aristotle’s Poetics (4th century B.C.)
+ Arthur miller’s Willy Loman can be tragic
when they stress plot rather than
character or diction, or when they stress
the mimetic role of literature.
2016/3/18
32
+ Genre criticism– criticism of “kinds” or “types”
+ Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism
+ E. D. Hirsch’s Validity in Interpretation
+ Robert Scholes’s Structuralism in Literature
2016/3/18
33
+ Different literary genres are judged according to different
+
+
+
+
2016/3/18
standards.
Hamlet: Revenge Tragedy Par Excellence
The genre to which Hamlet belongs is drama.
Aristotle’s description of drama as “imitated human
action”
Tragedy: “serious action,” usually the downfall and
resultant misery or death of a person of significance
34
+ Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
+ Melancholy by the recent death of his father and the
remarriage of his mother to her late husband’s brother
+ The ghost of Hamlet’s father appears and reveals that he
was murdered.
+ Arrange a traveling players to present a drama
+ Characters: Ophelia, Polonius, Rosencrantz,
Guildenstern, Laertes, the king, the queen, young
Fortinbras of Norway
2016/3/18
35
+ A short story
+ A relatively brief narrative of prose fiction (ranging in
length from five hundred to twenty thousand words)
characterized by considerably more unity and
compression in all its parts than the novel—
+ In theme, plot, structure, character, setting, and mood.
+ Characters: Goodman Brown, Faith, the Devil, etc.
2016/3/18
36
+ A short story
+ Author: Alice Walker
+ She won the Pulitzer Prize for The Color
Purple
+ Characters: mother (Johnson), daughter
(Maggie), talented daughter (Dee), and a
black man (Hakim-a-barber”
2016/3/18
37
+ A novel, a long story involving characters
in actions usually pointing to some kind of
resolution.
+ The Gothic novel
+ In 18th Century England
+ Atmosphere of terror and horror brought
about by dark and foreboding settings,
often in mysterious medieval castles
2016/3/18
38
+ In the Gothic novel, characters tend to be
one-dimensional, cardboard figures like
black-hearted villains, pure and helpless
maidens, and handsome and virtuous
heroes.
+ A story within a story
+ It begins in the frozen reaches of the polar
North.
2016/3/18
39
Characters: Robert Walton, Victor
Frankenstein, the monster, Elizabeth, and
William.
Robert Walton, an English explorer, rescues
the man, Victor Frankenstein, tells Walton
the story of his life.
Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss scientist,
invented a monster in his lab.
2016/3/18
40
+ Call the approach genetic:
+ A work is considered in terms of its
origins
+ Criticism based on a close comparison of
texts has recently come under attack.
2016/3/18
41
+ 1. 分好組
+ 2. 買好教科書
+ 3. 下週帶書來上課
+ 4. 第一組學生準備下週報告
+ 5. 其他全部同學, 有空預習
+ 6. Happy opening week!
2016/3/18
42