LITERARY CRITICISM An Introduction to Theory and Practice ww Third Edition Charles E. Bressler Houghton College BB a sasernecriv onsLoray of CangiossCatsigingn-Pubiation Date ent ChalesE. Tea ecg a intoduction a theory a pats / Chae 2. ote inde Incladt Biogephal references and inde, ‘Banos tibees Laisa, tie srusedeat swonsres10 Once again, for Darlene, my best friend and loving wife, and Heidi, my muck loved daughter ions Editor Cartie Branxton Baitoial Assistant: ernifer Migueis ‘VP Director of Preduction and Manufacturing: Barbara Kittle Senior Managing Eaitor: Ann Marie McCarthy Senior Production Editor: Shelly Kuppermnan Prepress and Manufacturing Manager: Nick Sltsis Prepress and Manufacturing Buyer! Sherry Lowi: Director of Marketing: Beth Mj Senior Matketing Manager. Rachel Falk Marketing Assistant: Christine Moodie Cover Design Director: Robert Farrar Wagner Cover Art Theodore]. 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Li Pearson Education, Upper Sale River, New Jersey wz x Contents Foreword ix Tothe Reader — xii 1 Defining Criticism, Theory, and Literature 1 Eavesdropping on a Literature Classroom 1 Cana Text Have More Than One interpretation? — 3 How to Become a Literary Critic 3 What Is Literary Criticism? 4 What Is Literary Theory? 6 Making Meaning from'Text. 7 ‘The Reading Process and Literary Theory 8 What Is Literature? 10 Literary Theory and the Definition of Literature 12 The Function of Literature and Literary Theory 13. Boginning the Formal Study of Literary Theory 14 Further Reading 15 2 A Historical Survey of Literary Criticism 16 Introduction 16 Plato (ea. 427-347.) 16 Aristotle (384-322 B.c.) 18 Horace (65-8 8.c.) 21 Longinus (First Century a.p.) 22 Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) 23 Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) 24 John Dryden (1631-1700) 24 Alexander Pope (1688-1744) 25 William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 26 Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893) 29 Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) 30 Henry James (1843-1916) 32 Modern Literary Cr 4 Further Reading 357 Structuratism meses nachtonic analysis), Saussure opened anew avenue of investigation, SsKihe how the b sound is elated to other sounds in use a the some Ce by Principles of modern linguist Unlike many of his contemporary linguists, Saussure rejected the Fe pram ea anwuage structure. Inits place, he asserted that langua ated nai termined by is own internaly structured and highly sjooes alized rules. These rules gover all aspects of a language, including the Spunet its speakers wll identify as meaningful, grouping various oe eit roto inese Sounds into words, and how these words may be arranged to Produce meaningful communication within a given language ‘The Structure of Language Aconding fo Saussure, all languages are governed by their own internal ince el lon mitzor or imitate the structure of the world. The hove Leagy noah da, number of fotal phonemes for any one language being and the most inthe mid sixties. American English, for example, Ehrsists of approximately forty-three to forty-five phoneises, depending on {hese forty-five distinct sounds that serve as the building blocks aera Sractlish For example, the first sound heard in the word pins the Tet phoneme, the second /I/, and the last /n/..A phoneme cont identified in prone enclosing the grapheme—the writen symbol that represents te Phoneme’s sound—in virgules or diagonal lines. Although each phoneme makes a distinct sound that is meaningful and coneoeal ge gbeakers ofa particular language, in actuality a phenome & For potaneet family of nearly identical speech souncis called allophones try atstanee in the word pit, the first phoneme is /p/. and in thevoe spin, ihe second phoneme is also /p/. Although the /p/ appears in bork words, Sam Phoneme are simply two different allophones of the phoneme /pl. Pow Phonemes and allophones arrange themselves to produce eae inafol speech in any language is not arbitrary, but is governed by a pre- seribed set of rules developed through time by the species of language. For example, in Modern American English (1755-present), no Engli anna with the two phonemes /m/ and /b/. In Middle English f (1200-1500), these phonemes could combine to form the two terminal sounds of a word, resulting, for example, in the word lamb, where the /m/ find /2/ were both pronounced. Over time, the rules of spoken English ; have changed so much that when lamb appears in Modern English, /b/ has {ost ts phonemic value. The study of the rules governing the meaningful f units of sound ina linguistic system is called phonology, whereas tine study, of the production of these sounds is known as phonetics Structuralism 79 word in addition to phonemes, another major building block of language is the morpheme, the smallest part of a word that has lexial or grant ical Sighifeance, (Lexical refers to the base ot root meaning of a word; gram- matical refers to those elements of language that express relationships bes fiveen words or groups of words, such as the inflections [-ed},{-s}, and Ling) that carry tense, number, gender, and so on). Like the phoneme, the umber of lexical and grammatical moxphemes varies from language te language. In American English, the number of lexical morphemes far ous, dlistances the relatively handful of grammatical morphemes (ten or 20) For Hstance inthe word reaper, (reap) is a lexical morpheme, meaning “to rips ple fax” and (ec) is a grammatical morpheme, meaning “one whe.” (Nee {hatin print morphemes are placed in braces.) All words must have a lexical morpheme (hence their great number), whereas not every word need havea grammatical morpheme. How the various lexical and grammatical mon. Phemes combine to form words is highly rule-governed and is known in modem linguistics asthe study of morphology. Another major building block in the structure of language is the actual arrangement of words in a sentence—its syntax. Just as the placement of phonemes and morphems in individual words isa rule-governed activity, Sos the arrangement of words in a sentence, For example, although nativg speakers of English would understand the sentence “John threw the ball io the ait” such speakers would have difficulty ascertaining the meaning Pee et the air into the ball John.” Why? Native speakers ofa language have mastered which strings of morphemes are permitted by syntactic rubg and which are not. Those that do not conform to these rules do not fone English sentences and are called ungrammatical. Those that do conform tq the established syntactic structures are called sentences or grammatical Sequences. In most English sentences, for example, the subject ("John") pre- cedes the verb (“threw”), followed by the complement (“the bail inte the 2) Although this structure can at times be moditied, such changes must follow tightly prescribed rules of syntax if a speaker of English s to be understood Having established the basic building blocks of a sentence—phonemes, morphemes, and syntax—language also provides us with one additional body of rules to govern the various interpretations or shades of meaning