COMENTARIO DE TEXTOS LITERARIOS

UNIT 2.

Discourse: is a term associated most closely to Foucault, it refers to the way in which meaning is formed,
expressed and controlled in a culture through its use of language.
It is through discourse that we constitute our experience, an analysis of discourse can reveal how we
see the world.
As language is the base symbol system through which culture is created and maintained, it can be said
that everything is discourse.
Meaning through language is controlled by the discursive structures of a culture.

New Historicism.
begins its quest to be political by denying that: a) any social world is stable b) artworks are separated
from the power struggles constituting a social reality.

accepts Foucault´s insistence that power operates through a myriad capillary channels, these include
not just coercion and governmental action, but also daily routines and language.

examines how particular texts are addressed to other texts, other discursive orders in the wider culture.
The text is a dynamic interweaving of multiple strands from a culture which is itself an unstable field of
contending forces.

wants to emphasize how history reveals the growth of forms of power that continuously affect subject´s
lives.

studies a literary text not as autonomous objects but as material products emerging out of a specific
social, cultural and political contexts.

breaks down the traditional distinction between literary and non-literary texts and forms.

Unit 3. Introduction to Feminism.

Feminist criticism is a part of the broader feminist political movement that seeks to rectify sexsist
discrimination and inequalities. Has brought revolutionary changes to literary and cultural studies by
expanding the canon, by criquing sexist representations and values, by stressing the importance of
gender and sexuality, and by proposing institutional and social reforms. Argue that women have a
literature of their own, possesing its own themes, characters, forms, styles and canons.
Feminist study of literature has generated a commitment to recovering forgotten, ignored, silenced or
disguised past women writers. This recovery of formerly excluded women-authored texts has led to the
re-reading of literary texts by men.
Writing by men is explored by feminist readers by (among other things) the way in which it
incorporates, replicates or otherwise perpetuates patriarchy inflected relationships between women and
men.
American feminists Gilbert and Gubar (The Madwoman in the Attic. 1979) argue that Jane Austen
created the paradigm of the double text which paid lip-service (express approval of or support for
something insincerely) to patriarchal literary standards, even while it subverted them. Gilbert and Gubar
also address (as did Virginia Woolf before them) the reality of women author´s exclusion from the
predominantly male pantheon of literary works (mostly on economic and social grounds), they argue.
Their reading of Charlotte Brontë´s Jane Eyre famously problematizes the female stereotypes the female
stereotypes of “angel” (Jane) and “monster” (Bertha, or the madwoman)
They challenge such male-centered theories of literary creativity as Harold Bloom´s massively influential
“anxiety of influence” by proposing an alternative “anxiety of authorship”.
-Patriarchal authority: literary tradition which conflicts with the woman writer´s autonomy. In general
terms it covers all manifestations of male-centered and male-dominated traditions.
Patriarchal texts which seek to deny female autonomy and authority (Emily Dickinson).
-Anxiety of influence: a term coined by Bloom. Describes the feelings a male writer experiences when
confronting his “paternal” literary precursors. Anxiety that he will be unable to liberate himself from, or
meet the standards and achievements of that prior presence. His fear that he is not a creator and that
the works of his predecesors assume essential priority over his own writings. Oedipal struggle: a man can
only become a poet by somehow invalidating his poetical father. A literary conflict.
-Anxiety of authorship: Gilbert and Gubar, countering Bloom´s masculinist anxiety of influence propose
an alternative. The battle of the woman writer is not against her male precursor´s reading of the world
but against his reading of her. She must seek a female precursor who proves by example that a revolt
against patriarchal literary authority is possible. Depicts the precursor poet as a sister or mother whose
example enables the creativity of the latercomer writer to develop collaboratively against the confining
and sickening backdrop of forbidding male literary authority.
-Écriture feminine. The French feminist Cixous advocates a type of writing that radically challenges
certain language patterns expressive of male totalizing practices and assumptions and advocates a de-
emphasising of the gender of the writer (female) in favour of the writing effect of the text (feminine).
Male textual practice has traditionally favoured (so the argument goes) an abstract, ananlytical discourse
from which women have been excluded on the grounds of their supposedly inferior capacity for these
forms of expression and thought.
French feminists (Cixous, Kristeva) produced a body of critical writings dedicated to the specifity of
feminine discourse as a way of contesting traditional patriarchal constructs of sexual difference. They
have found a way to challenge male domination in discourse in general and literary discourse in
particular.
Canon: a list of literary works considered to be permanently established as being of the highest quality.
Canonical.

ROOSTERS

Be aware that the critical approaches we are studying should not lead us to view a literary text as being
feminist or new historicist beforehand. These critical practices should enable us to interpret literary texts
from various critical viewpoints. We must bear in mind that the viewpoint resides in the reader, in us.

Bishop´s poem “roosters” was written at the beginning of Second World War
A linkage between national and sexual aggression can be observed.
Roosters breaks into two halves, the first suggesting that the national aggression of war is essentially
linked to masculinity.

After the roosters have fought and the body is flung on the ash-heap, the poem considers a second way
to understand a rooster´s emblematic significance.
Rather than invoking masculine aggression (and feminine passivity as its complement), their crowing
now recalls St. Peter, who was reminded of his denial by a rooster: “Deny, deny, deny”. But by
introducing the New Testament significance of roosters in the second movement of the poem, Bishop isn
´t suggesting that the roosters´cries are not emblematic of masculine aggression; rather, she suggests
that this association is far from essential or unchangeable.
She asks her roosters “What are you projecting?” but her poem makes us aware of what we project into
roosters: as emblems the birds mean what we make them mean, and we are not doomed to war
because of masculinity.

At the end of the poem, when the sun rises “faithful as enemy, or friend”, Bishop emphasizes the
multiple significance of anything to which we grant emblematic meaning
James Longenbuch Bishop´s Social Conscience

Another approach to Bishop´s poem emphasizes its dualism and contrasts.

The roosters can be read under two different views:
-As figures of militarization, denial and masculinity.
- As emblems of forgiveness and hope.
A transition is undergone throughout the poem. A shift in mood and chromatic focus takes place. The
theme of forgiveness which spans stanzas 30 to 39 prepares us for this shift. In these stanzas the speaker
signals an alternative masculinity.
The poem has undergone a progressive feminization from the overmasculine to the “lines of pink cloud
in the sky”
Ambiguity is part of this poem, the poem ends leaving uncertainty.
Strong anti-patriarchal and anti-militaristic tone.

UNIT 4

Lesbian critism aims:

- in part to challenge the erasure of lesbian existence from so much of scholarly feminist literature.
- an erasure not just anti-lesbian, but anti-feminist.
- to encourage heterosexual feminists to examine heterosexuality as a political institution which
disempowers women
- women identification and women bonding.
- this would become a politically activating impulse.

- Adrienne Rich´s main purpose is to consider the extent to which heterosexual desire and identity
are fundamental to women´s oppression.
- Heterosexuality is compulsory because only partners of the opposite sex are deemed appropriate. It
is not natural but social.
- Institutions by which women have traditionally been controlled: patriarchal motherhood, economic
exploitation, the nuclear family.
- Patriarchal society is threatened by women´s independent action.
- The lesbian, unless in disguise, faces discrimination, harassment and violence.
- Rich argues that the issue feminists have to address is not simple “gender inequality”.

Compulsory heterosexuality is central to creating and preserving the inequality between men and
women as it systematically ensures the power of men over women.

Rich creates woman-identified language to replace the stigmatized and clinical term “lesbianism”:
lesbian experience for the historical and and contemporary presence of lesbian creation, and lesbian
continuum to include the entire range of woman-identified experience.
Lesbian experience: refers to the actual presence of lesbians, past and present. It is simultaneously a
challenge to heterosexuality, to the “inclusion” within a male homosexuality, to male access to women.
- It is a reassertion of the female in all its empowering dimensions. It comprises both the breaking of
a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life.
- Rich creates woman-identified language to replace the stigmatized and clinical term lesbianism:
lesbian experience.
- Lesbian continuum: refers to all experiences shared by women –experiences that strengthen bonds
among themselves and against male oppression. The erotic and the spiritual, the physical and the
emotional;in short, the full range of woman-identified experience.
- Barry (on page136) designates a wide variety of female behaviour, spanning from informal mutual
help networks, supportive female friendships, sisterhood; and, finally, to sexual relationships.
Interconnections among the various ways in which women bond together.

- Patriarchal society pressure on women

- -Heterosoxuality: social not natural
- Feminists MUST address “compulsory sexuality”
- Feminists MUST accept lesbian possibility
- Woman identification is a source of energy. To deny it is a loss to women´s power.
- do not get stuck in false dichotomies but accept choices too.
Compared to Rich´s comparively conciliatory agenda, Smith is radical in her “black lesbians lesbians only”
stance. Rich adopts a more anti-essentialis approach, while Smith vigorously argues in favour of sexual
and ethnic exclusivity.

Barbara Smith. A black feminist approach to literature that embodies the realization that the politics of
sex as well as the politics of race and class are crucially interlocking factors.
Primary commitment to exploring how both sexual and racial politics AND black and female identity are
inextricable elements in Black women´s wrtitings.
A black feminist critic should:
- explore sexual and racial politics in black women´s writing
- assume an identifiable literary tradition
- examine its specific black female language
- demonstrate a tradition that doesn´t get ideas from white/male literary thought upon black women´s
art
- be innovative and daring
- link all that and the lit. work to the black women´s situation

When black woimen´s works are dealt:

by black literature: don´t see sexual politics implications
by white women: don´t see racial implications
so a black feminist movement would see the interlocking sex+race+class

Other terms realted to this unit:

Queer: traditionally a term of abuse designating homosexuals, was reclaimed by gay and lesbiian
militants as a self-referential term or token of pride to describe their (marginal) positionality with regard
to the dominant heterosexist culture.

Essentialism: Barry p.129. The feminist view that there is some natural, given essence of the feminine,
that is universal and unchangeable.

UNIT 5 INTRODUCTION TO ETHNIC AND POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

Postcolonial critics analyse the repercusions of European cultural and territoriañ expansion from its
beginnings to the present day.
Postocolonialism engages in strategies aimed at recovering the marginalized, excluded or otherwise
silenced colonial voices.
The postoclonial does not only refer to those literary authors who write back from the former colonies
but also to the movement of social and political contestation that seeks to challenge and destabilise the
ideological and anthopological foundations of imperialism.

One of the main aims of the critics was to do away with the stereotypes the coloniser had purposefully
utilised in order to dehumanise the colonised.
Stereotypes became a fundamental strategy to present an oversimplified and, on most occasions,
caricaturesque vision of the natives, who were repeatedly downgraded and even compared to animals.

*CHINUA ACHEBE AND JOSEPH CONRAD´S HEART OF DARKNESS

Achebe: "the real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude
has fostered and continues to foster. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this
dehumanization, which despersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art".
Norton p.2040
-Achebe published influential criticism exposing colonialist biase in English fiction and arguing for an
indigenous African literature. Indicting the view of Africa in Joseph Conrad´s classic Heart of Darkness, as
a reflection of European racist assumptions of the "darkness" or inferiority of African´s.
However critical of the European imperialist mission, presents Africans as savage, subhuman, and
incapable of speech. Achebe condemns these views as "offensive and deplorable". He focuses much of
his attack not on Conrad but on the critical position of Conrad´s text in the Western canon as a master
piece, a position largely forgiving of or blind to its racism. Thus its critical perception -up to the present
day- unthinkingly perpetuates racist stereotypes.
Achebe presupposes a social theory pf art, holding that art reflects and propagates social views and
values.
-Achebe´s analysis of the West´s imagination of Africa as a negative projection of itself draws on a
psychoanalytic model of colonialism which argues that Europen depictions of colonies as the "Other" are
symptomatic of the West´s own cultural neuroses.

Interview Achebe

In "Home and Exile" you discuss how British authors like Josep`h Conrad have negatively portrayed
African for hundreds of years. Why do you think is that?
The argument that I make is that there was a reason for it. Nothing goes on for that long if it´s not
meeting some desire. There is an almost deliberate effort to portray these people as other than human.
This was at the peak of the slave trade. The evidence is very, very clear. The people who were writing
said what they were doing. That´s the reason it coincided with and served the Atlantic slave trade.

Why do you think Westerns continue to present Africans to the world the way they do?
Well, that´s what I should be asking you (laughs). I can only guess. One of the most charitable
possibilities is that people get used to something. Whatever the reasons, the important thing is to
recognise this and deal with it, because we really cannot afford the problem, it has created.

Recently The New Yorker (in its March 26, 2001 issue) published the journal of a European traveling in
Africa, and the events and places the writer described weren´t particularly positive.
My quarrel with that fiction is not that it´s not positive. Africa is full of problems. I don´t deny that. But if
you are African or go to Africa with an open mind you´ll still see that these are people. They are not less
than human as suggested by much of this literature. You are not surprised to find, as Marlow is surprised
to find in Heart of Darkness, that these are people like himself. But I´m not saying, "Don´t criticize us", or
"Don´t find fault with us or what we do". David Livingston was asked, "What do you think about Africa?",
and he said, "Oh, they are capable of terrible deeds, but they are also capable of extraordinary and good
actions". In other words, like people anywhere else (laughs).

What is the effect of this media coverage?

That´s really the issue. It makes it impossible for us to understand one another. People go to Africa and
confirm what they already have in their heads and so thay fail to see what is there in front of them. This
is what people have come to expect. It´s not viewed as a serious continent. It´s a place of strange, bizarre
and illogical things, where people don´t do what common sense demands.

EDWARD SAID AND ORIENTALISM

Said´s Orientalism is a study of how the Western colonial powers of Britain and France represented
North African and Middle Eastern lands in the late 19 th and early 20th centuries.
The Orient is the collective noun Said uses to refer to these places. “Orientalism refers to the sum of the
West´s representations of the Orient.
The machinery of colonialism does not simply dissapear as soon as the colonies become independent.
Indeed, Said shows how the modes of representation common to colonialism have continued after
decolonisation and are still very much a part of the contemporary world.
Beginnig Postcolonialis. John McLeod. Manchester University Press pp 39-40.
Palestinian-born Amercan critic Edward Said (1935-2003) is one of the foremost representatives of
postcolonial critical practice and his landmark Orientalism (1978) is frequently credited with having laid
the groundwork for the field. Said was to become one of Michael Foucault´s most distinguished
discipoles, drawing on his studies of discourse and power, “to elucidate the function of cultural
representations in the construction and maintenace of First/Third World relations.
Said is credited with putting into circulation the tem “the Other” to describe the enduring stereotypes
and thinking about “the Orient” generated by European imperialism.
Guía Comentario de Textos Ingleses 2004. UNED. P.46

In this work, Sadi explores the way literature and other socio-cultural constructs presented a distorted
image of the colonised, turning him/her into hte “Other” and, thus, the antagonist of the European
citizen. “Otherness” becomes one of the central arguments in Said´s Orientalism , enabling him to
explore the way Western nations approach the Orien and how their lack of knowledge leads them to
create inconsistent stereotypes that downgrade the image of the region. Said alludes to the most
recurrent clichés generated by these partial, Eurocentric standpoints and which are based on negation
instead of on reaffirmation. The Orient is described according to what is not rather than to what it is,
contributing, thus, to perpetuate the inferiority of the Oriental people. Said, furthermore, points out that
the stereotypes that are more frequently associated with the Orient could be: timelessness, strangeness,
race, gender, feminine.
Guía de Nueva Literaturas en Lengua Inglesa UNED pp.35-36

NTRODUCTION TO ETHNIC AND POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES

The Bluest Eye

- Pecola, Claudia and Pauline are defined by how they respond to ideals of white female beauty.

- Pauline´s strategy of gauging her self-worth according to white screen legends is inherited and
intensified by her daughter Pecola, with even more devastating personal results. Pecola´s craving for
blue eyes, and her own strategies for acquiring them, from drinking milk out of a blue-and-white Shirley
Temple cup to asking Soaphead Church to cast a spell to change the colour of her eyes, provide much of
the narrative backbone of Morrison´s novel.

-Note that both Pauline and Pecola are described by the narrator as being physically unattractive.
The narrator wonders why she and her children are so ugly, including Pecola, “were so ugly”.
The source of that feeling of ugliness, the narrator realizes, lies less in empirical fact than in a deeply
held belief.
The dominant white ideology has been internalized by Pauline and Pecola, and the black community at
large.
Note that when Mr. Henry, the MacTeer roomer, first appears in the family, he teases the young Claudia
and Frieda by addressing the as Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers.
The girls “giggle” and their father “smiles”, indicating that a certain “ethnically marked” –white- standard
of beauty has become naturalized to the point that it has been internalized by the black community.
But not uniformly, so Claudia sets the terms of the debate when she describes her response on being
given a white, blue-eyed doll for Christmas:
I could not love the doll. But I could examine it to see what it was tajt all the world said was lovable.
Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made
one sound… “Mama”,… Remove the cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat still.. take off the head, shake
out the sawdust, crack the back against the brass bed rail, it would bleat still… The gauze back would
split, and I could see the disk with six holes, the secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness

The crescendo in violence stands in representation of what the narrative itself perfoms: it uncovers the
nuts and bolts of a white supremacist ideology, revealing it to be a mere construct- “a mere metal
roundness”- that can be as easily deconstructed as it is constituted/arrange/assembled in the first place.
This is what Claudia does before our very eyes. She realizes that race constructs are less about race than
they are about power: “we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed”.

Note how the entire text revolves around colour. Morrison´s palette foregrounds blue, certainly (as in
the title, first and foremost), but also, and emphatically, black and white.