Critical Theory PDF Notes - 31719583 - 2024 - 03 - 09 - 17 - 54

English for Competitive Exams: Grade I, II, III, Asst., Prof.
, NET, SSC
By: Dr. S.K.Sharma, ( Asst. Prof.)
Lingua Franca
RPSC Assistant Professor Exam 2023
Critical Theory
Courses offered:
1. English Literature for : NET/SET , GATE, Assistant Professor,
Ph D Entrance, B A and M A
2. English for Competitive Exams: RPSC Grade I & II (Teacher’s
Recruitment Exams), REET, RAS, RJS, SSC, Bank Services etc.
3. Complete English Grammar and Vocabulary Course for various
competitive Exams
Dr. S.K. Sharma

Asst. Prof. of English
College Education
6th Rank in all over Rajasthan
M A, M Phil, NET, SET, Ph D (English Literature)
Helpline No: 8000166081

Download “Lingua Franca’ App.
Youtube Channel: Dr S K Sharma, English
Download Lingua Franca app. From the playstore, Helpline No. 8000166081 Page 1
English for Competitive Exams: Grade I, II, III, Asst., Prof., NET, SSC
New Criticism
 A mode of literary analysis that developed in the Southern US in the
1930s and 1940s and became the dominant way of reading and thinking
about literature in the American Academy until the advent of
Structuralism in the 1960s.
 New Criticism treats the literary work of art as a standalone, self-
sufficient object that can only be properly appreciated in isolation.
 There are some British writers who are included in New Criticism
 1. T S Eliot,
 2. I A Richards
 3. Empson
 F R Leavis
Factors which contributed to the rise of New Criticism

 There was a widespread dissatisfaction both in England and America,
with the contemporary literary situation. Victorian prudery, and the old-
fashioned concerns with moral and social values came to be regarded as
obstacles in the way of literary and critical developments. The New
Critics were against the over-emphasis on the background and
environment of the literature and concentration upon the author instead of
the work.
 The Chicago School of Critics( 1930-1952) : Attack on New Criticism

 It is also called Neo-Aristotalianism, due to its strong emphasis on
Aristotle’s concept of plot, character and genre.
 These critics included
 1. R S Crane
 2. Elder Olson
 3. Richard McKeon
 4. Norman Maclean
 5. Bernard Weinberg
 Ronald Crane’s essay ‘History Verses Criticism in the Study of

Literature’ published in 1935 is considered the first publication of the
Chicago School.
 The limitations of the New Critics were pin-pointed by a group of critics
who have come to be known as the Chicago critics because they all
worked at the University of Chicago. Ronald Crane is the most important
member of the group.
 The Chicago Critics are critical of the dogmatic assumptions of the New
critics. Their approach is pluralistic. ( ie they use different methods and
techniques) as opposed to the monistic approach. ( ie use of one method
alone) of the New Critics.
I A Richards (1893 - 1979)

 With his friend CK Ogden he published two early books.
 1. The Foundations of Aesthetics ( 1922 with J Wood)
 2. The Meaning of Meaning ( 1923)
 But he is best known for the next three
 1. Principles of Literary Criticism ( 1924)
 2. Science and Poetry ( 1926)
 3. Practical Criticism : A Study of Literary Judgement ( 1929)
 These last three helped to establish practical criticism as a central feature
of literary education, at Cambridge. While the first two proposed that
poetry promotes vital kinds of psychological flexibility, in part because it
offers’ pseudo-statements’ rather than true and false propositions.
 Practical Criticism : A Study of Literary Judgement ( 1929)

 It was very popular book in the colleges and universities of England for
decades. I A Richards gave some poems to the students, without giving
them the title and the name of the poet. He came out with a very
shocking conclusion that every student drew out different conclusion.
 It reveals that I A Richards is a staunch advocate of a close textual and
verbal study and analysis of a work of art. His approach is pragmatic and
empirical. The objective of his work was to encourage students to
concentrate on ‘ the words on the page’ rather than relying on

preconceived or received belief about a text.
 He says a poet writes to communicate, and the language is the means of
that communication. Language is made up of words and words carry four
kinds of meaning.
 1. Sense — something that is communicated in plain literal meaning.
 2. Feeling — Emotion or emotional attitude — The way a writer sees the
object
 3. Tone — Writer’s attitude to his reader
 4. Intention — Writer’s aim; The effect which the author is trying to
bring about by his words.
 While taking about metaphor he talks about vehicle and tenor.
 I A Richards in his Practical Criticism : A Study of Literary Judgement (
1929) talks about two uses of languages
 1. Referential or Scientific — Words which are used in science are
referential words.
 2. Emotive— Words that are used in literature are emotive words. They
tell about your attitude towards things.
 Science makes statements, poetry makes pseudo-statements.
 I A Richards describes the human mind as a system of impulses. There
are conflicting instincts and desires and wants — or appetencies as
Richards calls them, as opposed to ‘aversions’ — in the human mind.
 Art is a means whereby we can gain emotional balance, mental
equilibrium, peace and rest.
 I A Richards, along with T S Eliot, may be called the foundling father of
New Criticism. He has been a constant source of inspiration to the new
critics — more particularly John Crowe Ransom and William Empson.
 But he differs from the New Critics in one important respect. While the
New Critics limit themselves rigorously to the poem under consideration.
I A Richards also takes into account its effect on the readers. For him the
real value of a poem lies in the reaction and attitudes it creates, and
whether or not it is conducive to greater emotional balance, equilibrium,
peace and rest in the mind of the readers.
 He turned criticism into a science and considered knowledge of

psychology necessary for literary criticism.
 Richards believes that an adequate knowledge of psychology is essential
to literary criticism.
 I A Richards has used the term ‘synaesthesis’ to denote ‘a harmony and
equilibrium of our impulses’.
 In 1936-38 he visited China, partly to promote his and Ogden’s language-
learning system known as Basic English ( as much-simplified version of
English, with a vocabulary of only 850 words.
 His last specially literary book was ‘Coleridge on Imagination’ ( 1934)
 Eliot’s critical book ‘Sacred Wood’.
 Autotelic – The term autotelic was coined was Eliot. Autotelic means a
poem is self- contained itself. You don’t go beyond the text. He talks
about the autonomy of text.
 T S Eliot
 The Functions of Criticism’
 It was a response to Murry who challenged the idea of Eliot presented in
her various work ‘ Tradition and Individual Talent ( 1919) and his ‘
Romanticism and Tradition’
 T S Eliot in his 1923 essay‘The Functions of Criticism’ says if a critic is
to justify his existence, he should endeavour to discipline his personal
prejudices and cranks-tares …. in the common pursuit of true judgement.
F R Leavis (1895-1978)
 1. New Bearings in English Poetry ( 1932)
 2. Revaluation ( 1936)
 3. The Great tradition ( 1948)
 4. The Common Pursuit ( 1952)
New Bearings in English Poetry (1932)
 It was F R Leavis who taught how to read Waste Land in this book.
 F R Leavis is more Eliotian than Eliot himself.
Revaluation (1936)
 This is an influential book continued to reshape the main line of English

poetry, tracing it through John Donne and Alexander Pope to Hopkins
and Eliot, and aiming iconoclastic attack at Edmund Spenser, Milton and
P B Shelley.
The Common Pursuit
 A phrase by Eliot
The Great tradition (1948)
 In this work he pronounces the great English novelist to be Jane Austen,
George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad, dismissing other major
fiction ( eg that of Henry Fielding ,Laurence Sterne, Thomas Hardy, and
most of Charles Dickens’ work apart of Hard Times.
 F R Leavis confounded the journal ( with his wife Qeenie Roth) ‘
Scrutiny’. It dominated the literary and cultural scene of England during
that period.
 New Criticism — 1930’s to 50s/60s

 In 1941 John Crowe Ransom came out with a book titled ‘The New
Criticism’. ( A volume of essays) The name of the movement is after this
book.
 John Crowe Ransom used the term ‘ Ontological Critic’. A critic’s work
should be based on words on page.
 Ransom criticizes Eliot, Empson, Richards and Leavis in this book. He
tells you that Eliot is interested in experimenting with language. Richards
is interested in exploring the mind of the poet. (Psychology). FR Leavis is
a moralist. He is interested in morality.
 The key names of New Criticism are
 1. John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)
 2. Allen Tate (1899-1979)
 3. Cleanth Brooks ( 1906-1994)
 4. R P Blackmur (1904-1965)
 5. W K Wimsatt (1907-1965)
 6. Monroe Beardsley ( 1915-1985)
 Ransom’s students ( Cleanth Brooks and Warren) dominated the literary

scene in America ‘ Understanding Poetry’ .
 Close verbal analysis— You analyse the words on the page. It is done in
England by Empson in ‘ Seven Types of Ambiguity’. Empson’s ‘ Seven
Types of Ambiguity’ was published in 1930. Empson was I A Richards’
student.
 Eliot calls it ‘ Lemon Squeezer School of Criticism’.
 Wimsatt book ‘The Verbal Icon’ published in 1954.
 W K Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley

 Intentional Fallacy
 In 1946 W K Wimsatt ( in collaboration of Monroe C. Beardsley)
published his essay ‘ The Intentional Fallacy ( reprinted in his The
Verbal Icon, 1954)
 While analysing the poem you follow the intention of the poet.
Intentional fallacy is the error of criticizing and judging a work of
literature by what is writer’s intention was and whether or not he has
fulfilled it rather than concentrating on the work itself. The intention of
the poet is neither available nor desirable.
 Affective Fallacy
 A term defined by Wimsatt and Beardsley in 1949 as a principle of New
Criticism. ( The Verbal Icon, 1954). It is a critical error of evaluating a
work of art in term of its results in the mind of the audience.
 Personal Heresy term by C S Lewis
Pathetic Fallacy
 A phrase invented by John Ruskin in 1856 (Modern Painters). A writer
commits fallacy when he imposes human feelings to the inanimate nature.
 “ The one red leaf, the last of its clan
 That dances as often as dance it can
( Coleridge’s Christabel)
 Thus rainclouds may ‘weep’ or flowers may be ‘joyful’ in sympathy with
the poet’s ( or imagined speaker’s ) mood.
 The New Critics were inspired by I A Richards famous experimental

work “ Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgement’ ( 1929)
Cleanth Brooks
 The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947)
 A collection of essays by Cleanth Brooks. The title contains an allusion
of Donne’s poem The Canonization’ as well as John Keats’s poem Ode
on a Grecian Urn.
 The Well Wrought Urn is divided into eleven chapters, ten of which
attempt close readings of celebrated English poems from verses in
Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Yeats’s ‘Among School Children’. The
eleventh, famous chapter, entitled ‘The Heresy of Paraphrase’ is a
polemic against the use of paraphrase in describing and criticizing a
poem. A poem is non-paraphrasable. The moment you paraphrase the
poem its beauty is lost.
 Cleanth Brooks (1906-94) — American critic — His college text book
Understanding Poetry ( with R P Warren, 1938) helped to establish the
methods of the “New Criticism’ in classroom.
 Cleanth Brooks major works of poetic criticism are—
 1. Modern Poetry and Tradition ( 1939)
 2. The Well Wrought Urn ( 1947)
 Both regarded ambiguity and paradox as the typical virtues of poetry.
 He talks about the ‘interior life of the poem’ and codifying the principles
of close reading.
Allen Tate (1899-1979)

 Allen Tate talks the concept of Tension. In his essay ‘Tension in Poetry in
1938. He says ‘The meaning of good poetry is its tension’, the full
organised body of all the extension and intension that we can find in it.’
 The term is made up of omitting the prefixes of terms Extension and
Intension
 He believes that tension is needed for a work to be complete/ whole.
There is a mutually beneficial relationship between Extension ( The
literal meaning/ concrete / particular meaning / Primary meaning /

Denotation) and Intention ( The Metaphorical Meaning/ Abstract/
General Meaning/ Secondary Meaning / Suggestive Meaning /
Connotation)
Russian Formalism
 Russian Formalism mainly focussed on the form or structure of a literary
work, instead of its content, but New Criticism believed that form and
content are closely connected and equally important.
 A literary theory which developed in Russia in the early 1920s.
Practitioners and followers were called Formalists. It was finished by
1930 because Stalinist and Socialist Marxist pressures on the individuals
involved.
 The theory of Russian Formalism had begun earlier, in the Moscow
Linguistic Circle (founded in 1915) and in OPOJAZ (an acronym of ‘ The
Society for the Study of Poetic Language’, based in St Peterburg),
founded in 1916. The main figure in the Moscow linguistic Circle was
Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), who helped to found Prague School in
1926.
 Just like the New Critics, they believed that everything is there in the text.
A poem has nothing to do with the social reality or any political view.
 It ignited the Marxist Critics so these formalists were thrown out of
Russia.
 1. Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984)
 2. Boris Tomashevsky 1890-1957)
 3. Boris Eikhenbaum ( 1886-1959)
 Viktor Shklovsky tells you that a poem/literature is “the sum total of all
he stylistic devices employed in it.”
 Roman Jacobson, Rene Wellek and other Russian Formalist rejected
party literature, so they had to leave Mascow. They are forced to leave
Mascow.
 Roman Jacobson established Prague School ( 1920)
 It is Viktor Shklovsky who talks about defamiliarsation. The language

becomes different. You don’t use a different language in poetry. You use
the same language but in a very special, conscious use of language so
much so that it becomes strange for you.
 Mukarovsky gave the concept of ‘foregrounding’.
 Russian Formalists talked only about devices, the stylistic and linguistic
devices.
 Roman Jacobson changes linguistic devices to the functions of language.
 Roman Jacobson speaks about —
 1. Function
 2. Speech Event
 His Books
 1. Linguistics and Poetics by Roman Jacobson
 2. Two Aspects of Language by Roman Jacobson
Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)

 He was a Russian linguist and literary critics.
 Bakhtin was one of those who continued to live in Russia. He is often
associated with the Russian Formalists, but in reality his work was always
quite distinct in its goal and ambitions.
 His important terms are
 1. Carnivalesque
 2. Dialogism
 3. Polyphonic
 4. Heteroglossia
 5. Chronotope
Carnivalesque/ Carnivalization
 Carnivalization has to do with Roman Catholics. Originally a Carnival
was a feast observed by Roman Catholics before the Lenten fast began.
The word Carnival means ‘to put away flesh. Traditionally, meat was not
eaten during the Lenten fast; this, a carnival would be the last occasion on
which meat was permissible before Easter. Broadly speaking, a carnival
is an occasion or season of revel, of merriment, fasting and entertainment.
In times past carnivals became the symbol of ‘ the disruption and

subversion of authority’. They organise a feast before Easter. This is the
last time they eat meat before Easter. They organise dance, music, and
roles are reversed. This is disruption and subversion of authority.
 Bakhtin analyses the novels of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky and
he finds that in Tolstoy there is only one voice, a final voice. You will
hear Tolstoy’s voice in every character. So is it with Shaw.
 In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novels there are different voices. It is disruption
and submission of authority.
 Dialogic — Two voices
 Polyphonic — Many voices
 Tolstoy’s
 1. War and Peace
 2. Another Inn
Fyodor Dostoevsky
 Crime and Punishment ( Book about psychology of criminal)
 If you say it said by Shakespeare. It is a fallacy of quotation. You should
say Kent has said so—
 There are two types of writings
 1. Author has no authoritarian voice. It is only voice which we hear. It is
called Monologic. ie only one voice. Eg Works of Tolstoy
 In his works we hear only his voice. Only his voice matters in his works.
No voice opposes his voice. Another example is Bernard Shaw.
 But in Dostoevsky we find different voices. It is polyphonic or dialogic
or diglosia.
 Shakespeare’s plays are polyphonic.
 Mikhail Bakhtin is for ‘Polyphonic’.
 Diglosia — Different characters and different situations use different
voices.
Heteroglossia
 Literary means ‘a mixture of tongues. A term coined by variety and

diversity of languages used in epic and in the novel. He distinguished
between the language used to represent the attitudes and opinions of the
author and that used by individual characters in fiction and epic.
Metalanguage
 Language used to talk about language, it is called secondary language.
Foregrounding
 Foregrounding is a term coined by Mukarovsky. Using language in such a
way that it appears new and it becomes focus standing out of words.
Devices came to forefront. Thus drawing attention to how they (literary
works) say something rather than what they say.
 Foregrounding — To bring something into the highest prominence, to
make it dominant in perception.
 Mukarovsky says literariness of a work consists ‘ in the maximum of
foregrounding of utterance, that is, the foregrounding of ‘ the act of
expression, the act of speech itself’.
 Victor Shklovsky in his book ‘Art as Technique’ (1917) gave the concept
of ‘defamiliarisation’.
 Vladimir Propp and Shlklovsky made distinction between fabula ( story)
and syuzhet ( plot).
 Fabula is a raw material of the story while ‘syuzhet’ (plot) is the way a
story is organised.
 Roman Jakobson –The object of literary science is not literature, but
literariness, that is, what makes a given work literary work. Literariness
was understood in terms of defamiliarization, as a series of deviations
from ordinary language.
Structuralism
 Structuralism is an intellectual movement which began in France in the
1950s and is first seen in the anthropologist Claude Levis- Strauss and the
literary critic Roland Barthes.
 Structuralism has its origin in linguistics and strictly speaking in

Saussure. His book ‘ Course in General Linguistics’ ( 1916)
 The essence of Structuralism is the belief that things cannot be
understood in isolation — they have to be seen in the context of the larger
structures they are part of
 When you relate Tristram Shandy to the genre of novel only then will you
be able to understand that what there is in Tristram Shandy. That is you
go beyond the text.
 The focus of structuralism is to find out the underlying system of any
text. ( Langue)
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

 Though structuralism proper began in the 1950s and 1960s, it has its roots
in the thinking of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).
Saussure views can be summarized in three pronouncements
 Things in language are
 1. Arbitrary
 2. Relational
 3. Language is constituted
Arbitrary
 The meanings we give to words are purely arbitrary, and that these
meanings are maintained by convention only. There is no inherent
connection between a word and what it designates. There is nothing in the
word like ‘hut’, ‘mansion’ ‘palace’: you impose meaning on words. So
things are arbitrary in language.
 Relational
 No word can be defined in isolation from other words.
 You can understand an interrogative sentence in relation to an assertive
sentence. So things are relational in language.
 If we paired opposites then this mutually defining aspects of words is
even more apparent; the term ‘ male’ and ‘ female’, for example, mainly
have meaning in relation to each other; each designates the absence of the
characteristics included in the other, so that ‘male’ can be seen as mainly

meaning ‘ not female’, and vice verse. This relational aspect of language
gave rise to a famous remark of Saussure’s, ‘In a language there are only
differences, with fixed terms’. All words, then, exist in differencing
networks.
 A mobile phone is a mobile phone because it is not telephone.
 Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) introduced two terms ‘ langue’ and
‘parole’. The English equivalent are approximately, but inadequately,
‘language’ and ‘speech’.
 He says language is a game of signs and signs are made of signifier and
signified.
 Langue — Langue is the code shared by the members of a particular
speech community.
 Parole — Parole is the use of that code in speaking and writing.
 Donne’s poem ‘Good Morrow’ (Parole) can be understood only when
you relate it to Donne’s poetry. (Genre). You compare ‘Good Morrow’ to
‘ Good Morning Alba’. A poem is an example of parole and when you
keep it in the genre of Donne’s poems it is langue. You can understand it
when you relate it to Donne’s poetry (genre).
 Noam Chomsky made a similar dichotomy with his terms ‘competence’
and ‘performance’.
Signifier/ Signified
 In language ‘chair’ as a spelling is ‘signifier’ and the concept what it
stands for is ‘signified’.
 H U T — These graphic marks are signifier
 The picture which is made in our mind is signified
 Hut is external reality. Hut word is not inherent in it. You impose it on it.
 The system of language has nothing to do with any external reality.
Semiotics/ Semiology
 Semiotics — This term was used by an American critic C S Peirce.
Semiotics is the theory of sign system in language.
 Semiology — This term used by Saussure. Semiology is science of sign

in general.
Diachronic/ Synchronic
 Terms coined by Ferdinand de Saussure. (Greek— ‘through/across time’,
and ‘ together time’)
 Diachronic study of language means you study the origins, development,
history and change of language.
 Synchronic study of language means the study of language as it is used in
day to day life. The synchronic approach entails the study of a linguistic
system in a particular linguistic system in a particular state, without
reference to time.
 You must teach the learner the kind of language as it is used today.
Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic

 Roman Jakobson talks about it. Language works on two axes ie the
syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes.
 Syntagmatic axis — Chain relationship
 Paradigmatic — Choice relationship
 In literary theory, structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a larger
structure.
 Structuralism in linguistics — Ferdinand de Saussure’s ‘ Course in
General Linguistics— langue and Parole, Synchronically and
Dichronically
 Saussure focuses not on the use of language ( called ‘parole’or speech’)
but rather on the underlying system of language ( called ‘langue)
 He says how the elements of language relate to each other in the present,
synchronically rather than diachronically.
 Saussure argued that linguistic sign were composed of two parts —
Signified and Signifier.
 Lacan ( School) — Psychoanalysis, Structuralism, Post- structuralism—
Main interest- — Psychoanalysis
Claude Levi-Strauss
 Element Structure of Kinship is by Claude Levi- Strauss
 He coined the term ‘mytheme’ on the analogy of phoneme and
morpheme. There is a myth structure. If you want to understand a myth
you have to understand it in relation to the whole myth structure.
 For example you cannot understand a single phoneme singly, you
understand it in relation to complete phonemicla structure.
 The Savage Mind ( 1962) — Bricolage is a term used by Strauss to
describe the mentality of the non-industrial subject or primitive man. In
The Savage Mind’ Strauss compares primitive man to the bricoleur. “He
says savage had the same structure as the civilized mind and human
characteristics are the same everywhere.”
Roland Barthes
 1. Mythologies ( 1957)
 2. S/Z (1970)
 3. Element of Semiology ( 1965)
 4. The Death of the Author — Essay ( 1968)
 5. The Pleasure of the Text ( 1973)
 S/Z (1970) —
 It is Roland Barthes structural analysis of ‘ Sarrasine’, the short story by
Honore de Balzac.
 In this book he talks about Readerly Text and Writerly Text.
 Readerly Text ( Lisible)— Reader’s response is passive. Texts that are
straightforward and demand no special effort to unerstand
 Writerly Text ( scriptible)— It demands the reader to find out the
meaning. The meaning is not immediately evident and demand some
demand on the part of the reader.
 Barthes identified five codes in his work S/Z
 1. The Proairetic code
 2. The Hermeneutic Code
 3. The Cultural Code
 4. The Semi Code

 5. The Symbolic Code
 This is not the part of Structuralism. It is a part of Reader Response
Theory.
 Barthes first book ‘ Writing Degree Zero’ ( 1953) is a response to Jean-
Paul Sartre on the question of literary style and political commitment.
 In Barthes Structuralism and Post Structuralism meet together. Barthes
was a structuralist who later became post structuralist.
 Death of the Author marks the beginning of post-structuralism. Death of
the author means the birth of the reader. So every reader has different
interpretation. The essay argues against traditional literary criticism’s
practice of incorporation the intentions and biographical context of an
author in an interpretation of a text.
Noam Chomsky
 He wrote
 1. Syntactic Structures ( 1957)
 It contains his celebrated sentence — ‘Colourless green ideas sleep
furiously’. He says it is grammatically correct sentence that has no
discernible meaning. And argues for the independence of syntax ( the
study of sentence structures) from semantics ( the study of meaning)
 2. Aspects ( 1965)
 Humorously BC was interpreted as before Chomsky.
 He talks about ‘Competence’ and ‘Performance’.
 He talks about surface structure and deep structures in ‘syntactic
structure’.
Roman Jakobson
 1. Linguistics and Poetics
 2. Two Aspects of Language
 School — Moscow linguistic circle
 Prague Linguistic Circle
Jonathan Culler
 He wrote ‘ Structuralist Poetics’.
 He is concerned with the intelligibility of the text to the reader.
 The so-called ‘Gang of Four’ of structuralism was Levi-Strauss, Lacan,
Barthes and Foucault.
 Terence Hawkes’s book — Structuralism and Semiotics’ ( 1977)
 David Lodge’s book— ‘ Working with Structuralism’ ( 1980)
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)

 He is one of the founders of semiotics. He categorized signs as being one
of the three types.
 1. Icon — Specific properties in common with their objects.
 2. Index — directly influenced by the objects.
 3. Symbol — Convention based relationship with the objects
 Icon — A physical resemblance to the signified.
 Index — An index shows evidence of what is being represented.
 Symbol — A symbol has no resemblance between the signifier and the
signified. The connection between them must be culturally learned.
Post- structuralism
 It is a critical perspective (theory) that developed in the 1960s/1970s and

rejected ideas developed by structuralism.
 In structuralism connection between language and outer reality is severed
and in Post-structuralism the connection between the signifier and
signified is severed” — Alan Terry
 If this link is severed, one signifier can stand for any number of
meanings. If a poem has any number of meaning so it has no meaning at
all.
 If one signifier can represent any number of signifieds, it means it does
not signify anything at all. So meaning is dead. Meaning is dead because
meaning is indeterminate and it is also not stable. ‘Red’ signifier may be

signified as danger, colour, prostitution etc.
 Peter Barry says that structuralism is rooted in linguistics and linguistics
is a scientific study of language. Post-structuralism on the other hand is
rooted in philosophy and philosophy is a matter of uncertainties. This
point of view is encapsulated in Nietzsche’s famous remark ‘There are no
facts, only interpretations.’
 In Post-structuralism the verbal sign is constantly floating free of the
concept it is supposed to designate. Thus, the post-structuralist’s way of
speaking about language involves a rather obsessive imagery based on
liquids — signs float free of what they designate, meanings are fluid and
subject to constant ‘slippage’ or ‘ spillage’
 The kind of language post-structuralists use is, eupohoric, bombastic.
Post- structuralism says that language does not create any reality because
there is no reality at all and therefore language is only fluid.
 Post-structuralism emerged in France in the late 1960s. The two figures
most closely associated with this emergence are Roland Barthes and
Jacques Derrida( 1930-2004)
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

 Derrida’s three books
 1. Speech and Phenomena
 2. Of Grammatology ( 1967) — Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak
 3. Writing and Difference ( 1967) — Collection of his early essays
 ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences’ was
published in this book as a chapter.
 The starting point of post-structuralim may be taken as his 1966 lecture
‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences’
 Derrida gives some terms—
 1 . Logocentricism — Word centerd
 2. Phonocentricism —Sound centered ( speech)
 3. Differance
 Differance — A word coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida

which he uses in opposition to logecentricism. It is derived from the
French word ‘ Differ’ meaning
 Differ+ Defer
 Differ means, be different from. It means meaning differs from reader to
reader. A poem has different meaning and contradictory meaning.
 Defer — Defer means ‘to postpone’. So real meaning is always
postponed. It is delayed. Meaning is delayed.
 Trace —
 A term coined by Derrida. A word is present in another word by virtue of
its presence but its absence. It is potentially inherent or present by virtue
of its absence.
 ‘Hot’ means that ‘cold’ is absent in the word ‘Hot’.
Aporia
 The term is used in the theory and deconstruction. It literary means an
impasse, and refers to a kind of knot in the text which cannot be solved
because what is said is self-contradictory.
 Aporia suggests the ‘ gap’ or ‘lacuna’ between what a text means to say
and what it is constrained to mean.
Dissemination
 Scattering or dispersal of meaning. No meaning is stable. Dissemination
basically suggests a multiplicity of meanings which are not under control.
It suggests a textual free play which is joyous, unstable and excessive.
 Derrida uses’ dissemination’ in a special sense with regard to language.
By it he refers to the ‘spilling’ or ‘diffusion’ of meaning; the surplus or
excessive of meaning which is inherent in the use of all language.
Supplement
 It means ‘to replace’.
 The term ‘ supplement’ is used by French philosopher Jacques Derrida to

denote the unstable equilibrium and thus a constantly shifting relationship
which exists between speech and writing.
 Eg Writing can replace speech
Logocentricism
 Term coined by Ludwig Klages
 Popurlaised by Derrida
 Logocentricism literally means ‘ centered on the word’; All western
civilization is based on different thoughts forming one concept — “
saying/speech is important than writing’.
 But Derrida says writing is as important as speech. Derrida opposed
logocentricism and phonocentricism.
 Phonocentricism means sound centring)
 A key text in post-structuralism is Derrida’s book ‘ Of Grammatology’.
The slogan, ‘ There is nothing outside the text’ is the most frequently
quoted line from this book. This quotation appeared in an essay on ‘
Rousseau’, part of the highly influential book ‘ Of Grammatology ( 1967)
 Here Text, Derrida menas
 1. Text is not restricted by a book’s margins or binding.
 2. A test overruns, spills over its borders. The end of the ‘book’ in not the
end of the ‘writing’.
 3. Every text carries ‘traces’ of other texts ( Notion of intertextuality)
 4. Every text is, therefore, a network of other texts, from which it differs.
 The post-structuralist literary critic is engaged in the tasks of ‘decentring’
the text. This process is given the name of ‘deconstruction’, which can
roughly be defined as applied post-structuralism. It is often referred to as
‘reading against the grain or reading the text against itself’, with the
purpose of ‘knowing the text as it cannot know itself.’ — Terry Eagleton
 Deconstruction does not mean destruction. It does not destroy a text. It
means undoing. You undo a text. There are warring significations in a
text and you bring out those significations. ‘ You read the text against the
text itself does not know. You undo the poem means you give another
meaning of the poem.
Phenomenology
 Husserl says object in itself is not important but your consciousness of the
object is important.
Hermeneutics
 It means interpreter. It has to do with interpretations of text. A text can
have different meanings at different times by different interpreters.
 Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences — It

was a lecture presented at John Hopkins University on 21 October 1966
by philosopher Jacques Derrida. The lecture was then published in 1967
as a chapter of ‘Writing and Difference’.
 Discussing the anthropology of Claude Leiv-Strauss, Derrida argues that
we are all ‘bricoleurs’ ( creation of a work from a diverse range of things
that happen to be available or work created by such process), creative
tinkerers who muse use the tools find around us.
 Although presented at a conference intended to popularise structuralism,
the lecture is widely cited as the starting point for post-structuralism in
the United States.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

 Foucault’s important books
 1. Madness and Civilization(1961)
 2. The Birth of the Clinic (1963)
 3. Discipline and Punish (1975)
 4. The History of Sexuality 1976)
 Foucault is poststructuralist but he is different from Derrida, Lacan and
Barthes.
 Foucault talks about discourse. He talks about political and social forces,
and ideological and social control.
 He was inspired by German philosopher, Nietzsche who says all

knowledge is an expression of the ‘will to power’.
Roland Barthes—
 1. The Structural Analysis of Narrative ( 1966) — Related to
Structuralism
 2. The Pleasure of the Text ( 1973) — Post-structuralism
 The Structural Analysis of Narrative (1966) — Text is something
produced by the author.
 The Pleasure of the Text (1973) — Text is produced by the readers so
endless free play of meaning.
 Above two works show Barthes shifts from Structuralism to Post-
structuralism.
Yale School
 A group of literary critics associated with deconstruction in America,
centred on Yale University. Chief critics of them are —
 1. Harold Bloom
 2. Paul de Man
 3. Geofferey Hartman
 4. J Hillis Miller
 They had a great support of Derrida.
 J Hillis Miller (1928-2921)

 One of the central figures in American deconstruction. Miller’s readings
of Victorian fiction and poetry have been exemplary.
 He wrote an essay “The Critic as Host’. It is a response to M H Abrams ‘
The Deconstructive Angel’ which Abrams attacked the deconstructive
strategy of leaving the text undecided.
 Miller believes that any literary text, as a ceaseless play of
‘irreconcilable’ and ‘contradictory’ meanings, hence, that ‘all reading is
necessarily misreading.
Postcolonial Criticism
Postcolonialism-
 Postcolonialism is a critical study of cultural, political and economic
legacy of colonialism and imperialism. It seeks to understand the
oppression, resistance and adaptation which occurred during the colonial
rule and its impact after decolonialization.
 John McLeod in the ‘ Beginning Postcolonialism’ says postcolonial
criticism involves —
 1. Reading text produced by the writers whose country has a history of
colonialism.
 2. Reading text produced by the writers who has migrated from the
country which has a history of colonialism.
 Postcolonial theory re-examines colonial and postcolonial literature
especially concentrating upon the social discourse between the colonizer
and the colonized. Postcolonial theory talks about national and ethnic
identity, racism, sterotypes, ambivalence, hybridity, mimicry, culture
resistance, imperialism and language during and after the colonial period.
 It is a kind of literature that is written by people of formerly colonized
countries. Although some literary works that were produced by the
colonizer can also be labelled and classified under the umbrella of
postcolonial literature since such literature deals with the relationship
between the colonized and the colonizer. For example
 1. A Passage to India by E M Forster
 2. Tempest by Shakespeare
 3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
 A Passage to India by E M Forster

 A Passage to India tries to highlight some of the relationships that exists
between the colonizer and the colonized.
 The novel portrayed India as a savage and disorganised. Forster focused
on the racial tension and the cultural misunderstanding that divided the
natives and the Anglo-Indian.
 Novel shows how cultures were forced to mix with one another and the
consequence that came along from that hybridity.
 Aziz is a typical westernized Indian intellectual. He is a blending of
occidental and oriental culture. This double cultural identity puts him in
an awkward situation and arouses his sense of loss, uneasiness and grief.
 The monotonous appearance and the meaningless echo of the caves
manifest Forster’s overall impression of India, ie primitiveness and chaos.
 Reading any novel for Postcolonial perspective includes mimicry,
ambivalence, otherness, racism and prejudice.
Tempest by Shakespeare
 It allegorically represents various aspects of colonial oppression.
Prospero’s supreme control over the island and over the spirits fo the
island symbolises his imperialistic nature within the play.
 The theme of colonialism is represented through Prospero and Caliban’s
relationship in the play.
 Prospero takes the island’s resources and uses them for his own gain. He
forces the island’s natives to learn to speak his language. He believes that
island’s natives are monsters, savage.
 Caliban is represented as an colonized who defends or resists against
colonialist tyranny.
 The ancestry of postcolonial criticism can be traced to Frantz Fanon’s ‘
 The Wretched of the Earth’ ( 1961)

 Postcolonial theory developed in 1980s and 1990s under the influence of
Edward Said’s Orientalism ( 1978)
 Postcolonial as a distinct category emerged only in 1990. Even Selden’s
‘Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Theory’ ( 1985) and Jeremy
Hawthorn’s ‘ A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory’ (
1992) did not mention in their first edition.
 By the 1990s, the term established itself in academic and popular
discourse.
 There was a shift in attitudes in 1980a and 1990s. Earlier Postcolonial

writers worked primarily within European genres and merely adding to
them a degree of exotic Africanisation but now they use African and
Asian forms, supplemented with European-derived influences. So, we
have three phases—
 1. Adopt Phase — ( Humble Apprentice)

 In the first stage you accept their norms in literature.
 In this phase Postcolonial writer adopts the standard form ( European
form) or model ( especially in the novel) and accepts their ( colonizers)
tradition entirely — which is considered universal.
 Adapt Phase- ( Mere Licensee)
 In the second phase you become aware of your own identity. So you
apply the rules of English literature on your own literature.
 The second stage can be called the ‘ Adopt’ phase, since it aims to adapt
the European form to African subject matter, thus assuming partial rights
of intervention in this genre.
 Adept Phase-
 In the third stage Adept stage you separate yourself completely from the
colonizers. You talk about your own thing.
 In the final phase there is a declaration of cultural independence whereby
African writers remake the forms to their own specification, without
reference to European norms.
 This might be called the ‘ Adept’ phase, since its characteristic is the
assumption that the colonial writer is an independent ‘adept’ in the form,
not a humble apprentice, as in the first phase or a mere licensee, as in the
second.
 Important writers related to Postcolonial criticism are following —

 1. Frantz Fanon
 2. Edward W. Said
 3. Homi Bhabha
 4. Gayatri Spivak
 5. Bill Ashcroft et all

 6. O Mannoni
 7.Albert Memmi
 8.Ranjit Guha
 Frantz Fanon
 1. The Wretched of the Earth ( 1963)
 2. A Dying Colonialism ( 1965)
 3. Black Skins, White Masks ( 1967)
 In ‘A Dying Colonialism’, Fanon addresses the problem of woman in
colonialism.
The Wretched of the Earth (1961) — Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre

 In this book Fanon says that Colonizers attempt to write the precolonial
history of a colonized people as one of ‘barbarism, degradation and
bestiality in order to justify the supremacy of colonial society.
 Fanon believes that the first step towards a postcolonial perspective is to
reclaim one’s own past, then second is t begin to erode the colonialist
ideology by which that past had been devalued.
 Fanon says that decolonisation can’t be possible through gentleman
agreement and by shaking hands. It will be possible only by violence.
 He used Manichaean as an analogy of colonialism.
Black Skin, White Masks

 A blackman puts the mask of Whiteman. He wants to be like a whiteman.
 Frantz Fanon says that you are told that you are barbarous, primitive,
uncivilized so you try to become like white people but you fail and this
results in violence.
Edward W. Said (1935-2003)

His important works include
 1. Orientalism ( 1978)
 2. The World, the Text, and the Critic ( 1983)
 3. Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature: Yeats and Decolonization (

1988)
 4. Culture and Imperialism ( 1993)
Orientalism (1978)
 Postcolonial theory developed under the influence of Edward Said’s
Orientalism ( 1978) . This book can be said to inaugurate postcolonial
criticism proper. It exposes Eurocentric universalism which considers
Europeans or Western as superior and believes that what is not European
or Western is inferior.
 The term ‘Orient’ refers to the rising sun in the east and comes from the
Latin word ‘ Oriens’.
 Coined by Said to refer to East.
 He says West started writing fantasy stories about the East and it came
out in the form of poetry, drama, travelogue etc.
 Orient — connected with East
 Occident — Western part especially Europe and America
 Spivak calls it ‘source back’ and Bhabha refers to it as ‘inauguration the
postcolonial field’.
 Said basic charge is that the Orient as conceived by the Orientalist is a
fiction of their own imagining bearing no resemblance to the actual
Orient. He says that many of the most Orientalist scholars never even
visited the Orient, relying instead on second-hand accounts of it, as
though the actuality of the Orient did not really interest them.
 Said said colonialism consists of military, political components but
discursive components are also there. And these discursive components
are the most important. It captures your mind through literature, ideology,
film, TV, radio, newspaper. They convince you what they are doing is in
your own benefit. It is a Whiteman’s burden to enlighten you, make you
advanced.
 It is the discursive component which makes the colonizers survives.
Criticism in Orientalism
 Textual Attitude
 Textual attitude is an attitude in which one attempts to apply what they

have read to their lives and encounters.
 Two situations to favour the textual attitude—
 1. When a human confronts something fairly unknown. In that case a
person would use not only previous experience but also what one has read
about it to deal with this unknown.
 2. The second situation Said mentions is the appearance of success. He
says that if a person reads a book and then finds a statement within it to
be true, that person is more likely to read more books by the same author
and believe them.
 Orientalism means the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and
cultures, languages, and people by Western Scholars.
 Edward Said in his essay ‘ Crisis’ describes the dissimilarity between
reality and what text say about reality, using what Orientalists say about
the Orient in text.
 For the Orientalists, the Orient was something to be encountered and
dealt with to a certain extent.
 This happened because of the mysteriousness of the Orient to the
Westerners. It was the text of the Orientalists, from the West that shaped
the image and reality of the Orient.
 They held the textual attitude towards the Orient.
 Said next move is ‘preposterous transition” — Orientalists override the
Orient.
 This transition comes down to Westerners wanting to control the Orient
to dehumanize them in a way to make the Orient their own, their slave.
 Thus Said relates Orientalism to colonization.
 Orientalism is grounded in text. It is then a textual and mental
colonization of the Orient. This makes the Orientalists to control Orient.
 Said brings out that, a white middleclass Westerner believes that it is
human prerogative not only to manage to the non-white world but also to
won it, just because by definition it is not quite as human as ‘we’ are.
 Said finishes his essay describing his and the Orient crises.
 The present crisis dramatizes the disparity between texts and reality.
 He not only exposes the source of Orientalism’s views but also to reflects
on its importance, for the contemporary intellectual feel that to ignore a
part of the world is to avoid reality.
 So this avoiding of reality is the crisis.
 Edward FitzGerald said that I have made original, the better by
translating Omar Khayyam’s( Persian) The Rubaiyat.
 This is the attitude of English people. He means to say that he has done
something good Omar Khayyam’s.
 Homi Bhabha (1949)

 1. Nation and Narration (1990)
 2. The Location of Culture (1994) — A collection of essays
 Some terms related to Bhabha
 1. Ambivalence
 2. Hybridity
 3. Third Space
 4. Mimicry
 5. Mockery
Ambivalence
 Two different/conflicting feelings/beliefs/reactions/ for a particular
object. It contains both positive and negative components — love-hate
relationship.
 Ambivalence is the co-existence of contradictory feelings or impulses
towards the same object. Sigmund Freud adopted this term from Eugen
Bleuler’s groundbreaking work on schizophrenia. For Freud, ambivalence
stems from the basic bisexuality of human beings and from the structures
of the Oedipus Complex, which means that a child can simultaneously
love and hate both its parents.
 In the Postcolonial studies ambivalence has been used by critics like
Homi Bhabha to account for the difficult situation of the subaltern subject
torn between the material benefits colonization sometimes brings (eg job
in colonial administration) and crushing weight of the loss of national

sovereignty.
 Aziz likes some Brtishers and dislikes others.
Hybridity
 A term used in contemporary Postcolonial studies to theorize and to a
certain degree celebrate a global state of mixedness — a mixedness of
cultures, race, ethnicities, nations, and so on.
 Today the term is probably associated with Homi Bhabha, who uses the
term to stress the interdependence of colonizer and the colonized, and to
therefore, argue that one cannot claim a ‘purity’ of racial or national
identity.
 By ‘Hybridity’ Homi Bhabha means that colonialism cannot be described
in monolithic terms ie.it is a combination of two: colonizers and
colonized.
 The settlers colonized places and forced the indigenous people to follow
their way of culture and life. The indigenous people tried to follow the
culture of the colonizers but an element of resistance was there
throughout. After the Britishers left their colonies the natives were in a
confused state. Their raw, pure and ethnic culture was lost and they failed
to follow the colonized culture completely. They were somewhere in a
lost culture.
 New transcultural forms arise from cross cultural exchange.
Third Space
 The term was organised by Homi Bhabha. ‘ Third Space’ is a creative
space that lies between discourse or position of the ruling subject and the
discourse or position of the subaltern subject.
Mimicry
 Mimicry is a desire to break the ties with ‘self’ in order to move towards
other.
 When a member of a colonized society imitates the language, dress,

politics or cultural attitude of their colonizers, he has to intentionally
supress one’s own cultural identity. The result is ‘blurred copy’ of the
colonizers. That why mimicry becomes mockery, since it can appear to
parody whatever it mimics.
 Mimicry is thus, as Homi Bhabha says an ambivalent strategy whereby
subaltern peoples simultaneously express their subservience to the more
powerful and subvert that power by making mimicry seem like mockery.
 A contemporary form of this can be seen today in the way in which call
centre jobs from Australia, the UK, US, and elsewhere are exported to
India precisely because as a direct result of colonization there are
operators there who can mimic English speakers from those countries.
Subaltern
 The term coined by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci says ‘sub’
means ‘under’ and altern means Other. Its meaning is ‘of inferior rank’. It
refers to those groups in the society who are subjects to the hegemony of
the ruling classes.
 The term has been adopted in postcolonial studies from the work of the
Subaltern Studies Group, a team of historians, who aimed to promote a
systematic discussion of subaltern themes in South Asian Studies. The
group was formed by Ranajit Guha and others. The group’s seminal
essays Selected Subaltern Studies ( 1988) was edited by Ranajit Guha and
Gayatri Spivak, with a foreward by Edward Said.
 The concept of Sublatern gained popularity with Gyatri Spivak’s essay
‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ (1985). Gayatri talks about Indian woman
who is subject to double colonization ie colonialism and patriarchal. She
says that one who is under another cannot speak.
Diaspora Studies
 Writing about immigrant writers, their suffering and loss.
Negritude
 The term ‘Negritude’ was coined by Amie Cesaire and Senghor.

 Negritude is the sum of cultural values of black world. Negritude
overcomes the cultural and psychological damage of colonialism.
 Negritude means you are trying to salvage your own identity. A blackman
is trying to salvage his own identity.
 Woman is the nigger of the world.
 Woman is the slave to the slaves’ John Lennon and Yoko Ono
 Key Concepts and Thinkers of Postcolonial Studies
 1. O Mannoni
 Mannoni’s ‘Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization
(1956) is one of the earliest attempts to analyse the psychological
processes of colonialism.
 Dependency Complex— The term used by Mannoni. The native suffers
from a ‘dependency complex’. The European exploits this and casts
himself in the form of parents and master and becomes protector/provider
to the child native.
 Albert Memmi
 The Coloniser and the Colonized (1965) — It analyses the psychology of
colonialism and the effect it has upon both the colonizer and the
colonised.
 Memmi uncovers three development in the process of colonisation
 1. Profit
 2. Privilege
 3. Usurpation
 Memmi distinguishes between the colonial, the coloniser and the
colonialist.
 Aime Cesaire
 Discourse on Colonialism (1972) — It was a passionate attack on
colonial domination and pleaded for ‘negritude’.
Nagugi wa Thing’o
 Decolonising the Mind (1986) — It focussed primarily on the use of
English as a weapon by the coloniser.
 He says ‘Cultural bomb’ is the biggest weapon of the West. This helps to
destroy the peoples’ belief in their names, unity capacity and heritage.
 Colonial Alienation
 Term used by Ngugi
 Colonizer dominates the mentality of colonized by two ways
 1. Destructing or undervaluing the peoples’ culture, art etc.
 2. The Conscious elevation of the language of the coloniser
 Together these two resulted in the dissociation of the sensibility of the
native from his natural and social environment. This is what Ngugi terms
‘Colonial alienation’.
 Holy Trinity in the context of postcolonialism—

 1. Gayatri Spivak
 2. Homi Bhabha
 3. Edward Said
 Postcolonial spelt without a hyphen is used to suggest — That the entire
world is now the postcolonial era. It functions as a historical category.
 Imagined Communities
 Concept propounded by Benedict Anderson
 It means that a nation is a community, socially constructed imagined by
people who perceive themselves as a part of group.
 The Empire Writes Back : Theory and Practice in Post-colonial

Literatures ( 1989)by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin
 The title refers to Salman Rushdie’s 1982 article ‘The Empire Writes
Back with a Vengeance’.
 The phrase refers to the ways postcolonial voices respond to the

colonizer’s literary canon. It refer to the act of challenging of previous
stories, discourses about people, cultures, events etc.
 This book arose from the works of African, Caribbean and Indian writers
and artists, who were discussing and debating postcolonialism and had
already started ‘ writing back’ in order to recuperate and reacknowledge
the pre-colonial parts of their identities.
 In the chapter ‘ Replacing Language’, two terms are used
 1. Abroagation
 2. Appropriation
 1. Abroagation—
 Abrogation allow for poly-dialectical cultures to exist.
 It is a refusal to use the language of the colonizer in a correct and
standard way.
 Abrogation is the rejection by postcolonial writers of a normative concept
of ‘correct’ English and the concept of inferior ‘dialects’.
Appropriation
 Appropriation is the term used by the authors to describe the
reconstitution of language of the centre and to remould language of its
new usage.
Some terms
Neocolonialsim
 It refers to the continuing economic dominance and exploitation of the
‘politically-free’ Third World countries by the European and imperial
powers.
Cultural Resistance
 The practice of using your own culture (meanings and symbols) to
contest and combat a dominant power.
Stereotypes
 It refers to the highly generalised views of the colonizers about the

colonized. These views are mostly negative and are false representation
of a given reality.
Racism
 Racism is the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another.
Feminist Criticism
 Feminism — Feminism refers to the various movements which
advocate that a woman should have the same opportunities and rights
as a man has.
 Feminist Criticism — Feminist criticism believes that whatever
literature is available before us is written from male-perspective.
Feminist criticism re-examines the generally accepted works to show
how gender stereotypes are involved in their functioning. It is an
application of feminism while interpreting any literary work.
 Feminist
 A feminist is someone, not necessary a woman, who seeks equal rights
and respects form women.
 The word ‘feminist’ refers to a person whose beliefs and behaviour are
based on feminism.
 Feminine
 Someone who is feminine is a person who displays what are
traditionally considered womanly qualities such as grace, politeness,
and compassion.
 Femininity (womanliness) — A set of attributes, behaviour and roles
collectively known as gender identity imposed on women. It decides
how women should think and act.
 A Serious Proposal to the Ladies by Mary Astell in 1694 –First book
on feminism.
Waves of Feminism
 1. First-wave of feminism
 It started in 1880s. ( Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the

Rights of Woman) Mary Wollstonecraft talks about woman’s
education.
 It was a period of liberal feminism.
 It was a period of feminist activity that occurred within the time
period of the 18th, 19th and early 20th century throughout the world,
particularly in the UK, Canada, the Netherlands and the US. It focused
on legal issues, primarily on gaining women’s suffrage ( the right to
vote)
 The term first-wave was coined in March 1968 by Martha Lear
writing in ‘The New York Times Magazine’, who at the same time
also used the term ‘second-wave’ feminism.
 Second-wave of feminism
 It was the period of radical change
 Began in 1960s/1989s in US.
 Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique ( 1963) is an important work in
this wave.
 It broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family,
and the workplace reproductive rights.
 Because of second-wave feminist advocacy second wave feminism
also drew attention to domestic violence and marital rape issues,
changes in custody and divorce law.
 Slogan — “The Personal is Political”. This concept is believed to have
originated from Carol Hanisch’s 1969 essay titled ‘The Personal is
Political’.
Third-Wave Feminism
 Began in early 1990s in US.
 Term coined by Rebecca Walker. Rebecca Walker responded to
Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court with an article in Ms.
Magazine, ‘Becoming the Third Wave” (1992) where she speaks the
celebrated sentence, ‘I am the Third Wave’. This giving the movement

a name.
 Susan Faludi’s book “ Backlash : The Undeclared War Against
Women” ( 1991)
 Third wave feminists have broadened their goals, focusing on ideas
like queer theory, and abolishing gender role expressions and
stereotypes.
 Unlike the determined position of second wave feminists about
women in pornography, sex work, and prostitution, third wave
feminists were rather ambiguous and divided about these themes.
 ‘Race’ and ‘Class’ are central issues of the Third Waves.
Fourth Wave Feminism

 2008/2010/2012 to Present
 Jennifer Baumgardner identifies fourth wave feminism.
 Kira Cochrane, author of ‘All the Rebel Women: The Rise of Fourth
Wave Feminism” defines Fourth wave feminism as movement
‘connected through technology’ — Facebook, Twitter and other social
media.
 Focus women homosexuality, transgender, Black Feminism. Cyber
Feminism, Cyberspace, Cyborg, Eco-feminism
Feminist Criticism
1. Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women ( 1792)
2. Olive Schreiner’s Women and Labour
3. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own ( 1929)
4. Simone de Beauvour’s The Second Sex
Male
 1. Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women’ ( 1869)
 2. The Origin of the Family by Friedrich Engel ( 1884)
Two categories Feminist Critics
 1. Anglo-American
 2. Anglo-French
Difference between Anglo-American Feminists and Anglo-French

Feminists
 Anglo-French gave three points
 1. Role of theory
 2. Nature of Language
 3. The Value of Psychoanalysis
 1. Role of theory
 Anglo-American Feminism has no theory behind it whereas Anglo
French Feminists have post-structuralism and psychoanalytic criticism
behind them.
 2. Nature of Language
 Anglo-French Feminist says that Feminist writings should be written
in feminine language.
 Kristeva talks about ‘Semiotic’ and ‘Symbolic’. She says that
symbolic is male’s language. Sentences are logical, well patterned,
and grammatical whereas female’s language is ‘semiotic’. Her
language has loosed structure, poetic, fluid, displacement, slippage,
condensation.
 Male’s language is ‘Prose’ while Female’s language is poetry.
 For this notion of ‘semiotic’ and ‘symbolic’ Kristeva is indebted to
Lacan and his distinction between two terms ‘Imagery and
‘Symbolic’.
 The Value of Psychoanalysis

 Kate Millet’s ‘Sexual Politics’ (1969) — Condemns Freud as a prime
source of patriarchal attitude against which feminist must fight.
 But Freud was defended by Juliet Mitchell’s ‘ Psychoanalysis and
Feminism’ ( 1974)
 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar use the idea ‘social castration’. The
term signifies women’s lack of social power this lack being
represented by means of the word ‘ castration’
 Jane Gallop’s book ‘Feminism and Psychoanalysis’ is the continuation

of psychoanalysis. But it switches from the Freudian to Lacanian
variety. — What is indirect (implicit) is Freud is direct (explicit) in
Lacan’s system, mainly that phallus is not the physical biological
object but a symbol of power which goes with it.
 Another name in the rehabilitation of Freud is Jacqueline Rose, her
book ‘The Haunting of Sylvia Plath’ is an example of feminist-
psychoanalytic approach. Rose combined feminism, psychoanalysis
and politics.
 Rose’s argument in favour of Lacan and Freud shows sexual identity
to be ‘ a cultural construct’.
 Jerry Aline Flieger says
 “ It was fascinated and troubled by Lacan’s characterisation of the
phallus as the signifier of signifiers, as well as by his infamous
statement’ There is no sexual relation’ and ‘woman does not exist’.
Thus I was relieved and grateful when feminists such as Jacqueline
Rose and Jane Gallap in the late 70s and early 80s, performed
ingenious and persuasive readings of Lacan as critic of phallocracy,
rather than advocate.
 Stephen Heath, in his essay in “ Feminist Literary Criticism’ quotes
Roland Barthes —
 “The monument of psychoanalysis must be traversed — not
bypassed’.
 The Mad Woman in the Attic (1979) by Gilbert and Gubar is based on
Jane Eyre.
 Subject — Victorian Literature
 Anglo- American study is actually a thematic study of text — that
how woman have been mispresented in literature.
 They ( A A) maintain a major interest in traditional critical concept
like theme, motif and characterisation.
 Virginia Woolf said that there is no ready sentence for woman to
express herself.
 Derrida said your psychology is male dominated but your language is

also male dominated so he mixed these two things and coined the term
“Phallogocentric”
 Phallogocentric — The privileging of masculine (the phallus) in
understanding meaning or social relations.
 Phallocentric — Phallus centered + logocentric ( word centered)
 Anglo-American Feminism dislikes Freud and says that Freud was for
the men. So they are Anti- Freud.
 Elaine Showalter
Elaine Showalter’s Works
 1. A Literature of their Own: British Women novelist from Bronte to
Lessing ( 1977)
 2. Towards a Feminist Poetics ( 1979)
 3. Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness ( 1981)
 4. Female Malady ( 1985)
 5. Sexual Anarchy ( 1990)
 6. Inventing herself : Claiming a feminist intellectual heritage ( 2001)
 Androtext — Books by men
 Gynotext — Books by women
 She coined the term ‘gynocritics’, meaning the study of gynotexts.
 Elaine Showalter detects in the history of women’s writing three
phases
 1. Feminine Phase ( 1840-80)— Subordination/ Imitation
 2. Feminist Phase ( 1880-1920)— Protest
 3. Female Phase ( 1920 onwards) — Phase of autonomy
 Feminine — In this phase women writers imitated dominant male
artistic norms and aesthetic standards.
 Feminist — In this phase radical and often separatist positions are
maintained by women writers.
 She became conscious and started reading books and started to revolt.
 Female Phase — This phase looked particularly at female writing and
female experience.
 A Literature of their Own by Elaine Showalter: British Women

Novelist from Bronte to Lessing.
French Feminism
 1. Julia Kisteva
 2. Helen Cixous
 3. Irigaray
 Julia Kristeva
 Kristeva talks about the pre-Oedipal ‘semiotic’ language.
 Coined the term ‘Inter Textuality’ (mosaic of quotation) in her essay
‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’ in 1966. The idea is the part of wider
psychoanalytical theory which questions the stability of the subject.
 Helen Cixous
 The term ‘Ecriture Feminism’ used by Cixous in ‘The Laugh of
Medusa’ (1976) which means ‘women’s writing. A writing which is
typically feminine in style, language, tone and feeling.
 Cixous says write through your bodies.
Luce Irigaray
 ‘This Sex Which is Not One’ (1977)
 In the eight chapter ‘ Women on the Market’ ( In the book ‘This Sex
Which is Not One’) she draws upon Karl Marx’s theory of capital and
commodities to claim that women are exchanged between men in the
same way as any other commodity is.
 The female is female by virtue of certain lack of qualities. — Aristotle
 Woman is nothing but a womb. — A Roman Saying
 A woman is an imperfect man. — St Aquianas
 Woman is not undeveloped man but diverse’. — Tennyson
 A Woman is just a woman but a good cigar is a smoke. — Kipling’s
poem’ The Betrothed’.
 The Female Eunuch ( 1970) book by Germaine Greer
 Simone de Beauvoir coined the term ‘Other’ in feminism.
Helen Cixous /Julia Kisteva/ Luce Irigaray

 Helen Cixous proposed a concept ‘ecriture feminine’ ( Female
writing)
 She used this term in her essay ‘ The Laugh of the Medusa’
 She denotes writing which is typically, characteristically feminine in
style, language, tone and feeling, and completely different from (and
opposed to) male language and discourse.
 On the other hand, Luce Irigaray posits a ‘woman’s language’, which
is multiple, fluid, diverse and heterogeneous and which evades male
phallocentric monopoly. This theory has a morphological basis
associated with the structure and shape of the genital organs.
 A third and related point of view is proposed by Julia Kristeva; a
‘language’ which is pre Oediapal and pre-linguistic and is
fundamentally semiotic as opposed to male-controlled language which
she describes as symbolic. ( Semiotic / Symbolic)
 For her notion of the basic opposition between the semiotic and the
symbolic Kristeva is indebted to Jacques Lacan and his distinction
between two realms, the Imagination and the Symbolic.
 Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics’ in 1969 condemns Freud as a prime
source of the patriarchal attitudes against which feminists must fight.
 Simone de Beauvoir in his ‘ The Second Sex’ ( 1949) says —

 ‘One is not born a woman; rather, one becomes a woman’.
 Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar use the idea of social castration’. This
term signifies women’s lack of social power, this lack being
represented, by means of word ‘castration’, as a male possession,
though not as in any sense a male attribute.
 Sandra M Gilbert and Suasn Gubar’s book ‘The Madwoman in the

Attic’ take Wuthering Heights as an example of feminist criticism.
 The ‘French’ feminist have adopted and adapted a great deal of

(mainly) post-structuralist and psychoanalytic criticism as the basis of
much of their work.
 Anglo-Americans maintain a major interest in traditional concepts like
theme, motif and characterisation. They see the close reading and
explication of individual literary texts as the major business of
feminist criticism — common to liberal humanist approach.
 Julia Kristeva uses the term the symbolic and the semiotic to designate
two different aspects of language.
 Symbolic associated with authority, order, gathers, repression and
control.
 By contrast semiotic aspect of discourse is characterised not by logic
and order, but by ‘displacement, slippage, and condensation’. Kristeva
sees the semiotic as the language of poetry as opposed to prose.
 For her notion of the basic opposition between the semiotic and the
symbolic Kirsteva is indebted to Jacques Lacan and his distinction
between two realms, the Imaginary and Symbolic.
 Lacan — Lacan talks about three stages

 1. Imaginary — Poetry
 2. Real
 3. Symbolic — Prose
Kristeva
 1. Semiotic
 2. Symbolic
 A Room of One’s Own — Virginia Woolf (1929) — She says that you
can’t think of a woman’s independence unless she has her own room
in her house and 500 pounds a year.
 Simon de Beauvoir in her book ‘The Second Sex’ ( 1949) says that a
woman is not born rather one becomes a woman. His theory is that a
woman is not born but made. Culture is responsible for this.
 Virginia Woolf said that it was Dorothy Richardson who gave the
psychological sentence of woman otherwise you write masculine
language.
 The traditional view about woman is represented by Aristotle’s
Poetics in which he says that woman and slaves are baser things.
 Margaret Fuller is also associated with Feminism. She wrote a book
‘women in the 19th century’.
 Juliet Mitchell in her book ‘Psychoanalysis and Feminism’ (1974)
says that ‘feminism is the longest revolution’.
 In Juliet Mitchell shocked her fellow feminist by challenging the
established belief that Freud was the enemy.
 Kate Millett’s ‘Sexual Politic’ (1969) condemns Freud as a prime
source of the Patriarchal attitude against which feminist must fight.
 Toril Moi distinguishes between Feminine, Female, Feminist

 Feminine — Cultural term ( Gender identity)
 Feminist — A Political term
 Female — A biological term (sex)
 She says
 She wrote book “ Sexual/ Textual Politics’ ( 1985)
 They used two terms ( Kate Millet’s term) — ‘Sex’ and ‘gender’
 Sex is a biological term. By biological factor a woman is different
from man.
 ‘Gender’ is a cultural term. Woman is not born. You make her a
woman.
 Lacan says ‘There is no sexual relation and ‘woman does not exist’.
 Jacqueline Rose and Jane Gallop believes ‘Lacan as a critic of
phallocracy( society or system dominated by male) rather than
advocate’.
Womanism
 Term coined by Alice Walker
 Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender’ — Alice Walker
 The word ‘feminism’ was coined by Charles Fourier.
Anxiety of Authorship
 Concept by Gilbert and Gubar
 A woman’s ‘anxiety of authorship’ is a fear that she is not capable of
writing at all, that she will never be predecessor.
Judith Butler (1956- )

 American gender theorist
 Related to third-wave feminist queer theory
 Her Books
 1. Gender Trouble : Feminism and Subversion of Identity ( 1990)
 2. Bodies That Matter : On the Discursive Limits of Sex ( 1993)
 Her notable ideas
 1. Gender as social construction
 2. Gender performativity — Butler believes that femininity is
constructed by ‘performative acts’. It can be changed. Female can do
the work that is traditionally associated with man.
 Who has said, “ Movement and change are the essence of our being;
rigidity is death; conformity is death’ — Virginia Woolf
 Gay Liberation Movement has its origin in the Stonewall Riots of
1969.
 The term ‘Chora’ was introduced by Kristeva. It is symbolic of
‘womb’. Kristeva uses the term as part of her analysis of the
difference between the semiotic and the symbolic realism.
 ‘Compulsory heterosexuality’ term by Adrienne Rich
Psychoanalytic Criticism
 A tradition of modern literary interpretation using methods derived from

psychoanalysis.
 Literary criticism or theory which, in method, concept, or form, is

influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.
 Psychoanalytic Criticism, therefore, explores the language of the
unconscious, of the repressed and the hidden as embodied in the literary
or cultural texts such as art or fiction, with particular attention to the
repression of sexuality and its desires.
The Key figures of Psychoanalytic Criticism are following—
 1. Sigmund Freud ( 1856-1039)
 2. Jacques Lacan ( 1901-1981)
 3. Harold Bloom ( 1930-2019)
 4. Carl Jung ( 1875-1961)
 1. Sigmund Freud ( 1856-1039)

 Sigmund Freud came out with a book ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ in
1899/1900.
 W H Auden was very fond of Freud and he wrote a poem in his memory.
 Freud says that there are things you want to do but you don’t do because
of the rules, values etc. These certain things are repressed. Freud says
what is repressed is returned. He says: ‘return of the repressed.’ You
relegate your desire to the unconscious. And the rule is that there is
always a return of the repressed. It will return in your dreams. What
happens in dream is — Displacement and Condensation.
 Displacement — One thing is shown in another thing.
 Condensation — So many things are condensed in one thing.
 The same thing happens in literature. Literature is a game of metaphor
and metonymy.
 Metonymy — You are doing displacement in terms of Freud.
 Eg. Crown stands for kings. Bench stands for judges.
 Metaphor — Metaphor can stand any number of meanings. Things get
condensed. Metaphor is a condensed simile.
 Eg. The ship ploughed the waves.
 The ship is cutting to waves.
 The plough is cutting to soil.
 You have mixed, condensed two things.

 There is always a return of the repressed.
Freud’s Terms
 Freud distinguished three components of the human psyche
 Id — unconscious
 Ego — Consciousness
 Super Ego — Conscience
Id — unconscious
 Freud’s centre of attraction.
 It is the area of instincts, dreams, desires and all that that does not come
to the fore in our consciousness. (
Ego — Conscious Mind
 It mediates between the unconscious id and the superego. It is the source
of our decision-making and our rational thought.
Super Ego — Conscience

 The ethically component of the personality.
 It provides moral standard.
Freud’s Iceberg Theory

 It metaphorically represents the mind’s three levels
 1. Conscious
 2. Subconscious or Preconscious
 3. Unconscious
 1. Conscious
 Only 10 percent visible just like a tip of iceberg.
 2. Subconscious or Preconscious
 Just below the surface
 The Preconscious contains easily accessible memories.
 3.Unconscious
 Vast submerged portion
 It contains desires and memories, influencing behaviour despite being

largely inaccessible.
Freud’s Psychosexual Development

 He talks about five stages—
 1. The Oral Stage
 2. The Anal Stage
 3. The Phallic Stage
 4. The Latent Stage
 5. The Genital Stage
 Freud in his ‘ The Interpretation of Dreams’ ( 1900) says Hamlet is

unable to kill his uncle because uncle’s sin reminds him that he himself is
literally no better than sinner he is to punish.
 Ernest Jones‘s essay “Hamlet and Oedipus’ ( 1949) . Jones analyses
Hamlet through Sigmund Freud’s Oedipus complex,
 Freud referred to woman as ‘ dark continent’.
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)

 Lacan’s works
 1. Ecrits ( 1972)
 2. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis ( 1977)
 Lacan says, “The unconscious is structured like a language”.
 Unconscious is compared to language. Language is a combination of
infinite signs.
 The unconscious is not a chaotic mass of disparate material, as might
formerly have been thought, but an orderly network, as complex as the
structure of a language: ‘ What the psychoanalytic experience discovers
in the unconscious is the whole structure of language’.
 In the western philosophy the conscious mind has long been regarded as
the essence of selfhood. This view is encapsulated in the proclamation by
the philosopher Decartes.
 “I think, therefore I am” ( Man is what he is because he can think. The

kernel of your existence, of your being is your conscious mind. )
 Lacan revers this into, “ I am where I think not”. Lacan has to say
something very opposite. It is the unconscious which is the kernel,
nucleus of your existence. That is, in the unconscious, where my true
selfhood lie. Man’s real self is not his conscious but his unconscious.
 Lacan argues that two ‘dream work’ mechanism identified by Freud,
‘Condensation’ and ‘Displacement’ correspond to the basic poles of
language identified by the linguist Roman Jakobson, that, to metaphor
and metonymy.
 Lacan talks about three stages
 1. Real Stage
 2. Imaginary Stage
 3. Symbolic Stage
 Lacan says that in imaginary stage has no identity of its own. Its identity
is mixed with its mother’s identity when a child sees the mirror it gets its
own identity
 The symbolic stage starts where he starts to learn order, power, strength,
logic etc.
 So people started talking that poetry is in imaginary stage and prose is in
symbolic stage.
 Julia Kristeva says that feminist writings are in imaginary stage because
you don’t find any order, logic, power etc in their writings.
 Toril Moi — Sexual/ Textual Politics
 Psychobiography — This term was used by Erik Erikson
 The Road to Xanadu written by Livingston Lowes.
Harold Bloom (1930-2019) (America)

 His important works
 1. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973)
 2.A Map of Misreading ( (1975)
 3. Agon ( 1983)
 His was influence by Romantic writers. Bloom’s doctoral dissertation

was on PB Shelley titled ‘Shelley’s Myth-making’.
 The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973) is a book by Harold
Bloom on the anxiety of influence in writing poetry. He tells you about
the Oedipus complex in literature. He says a poet has a particular poet in
his mind and he wants to imitate him and excels him. That poet is his
father figure. This is the anxiety of a writer because he wants to capture
the role of the poet. He wants to become as good as that poet.
 He suggests six ways to overcome this anxiety of influence –
 1. Clinamen
 2. Tessera
 3. Kenosis
 4. Daemonization
 5. Askesis
 6. Apophrades
 1. Clinamen
 Bloom defines this as ‘ poetic misreading or misprision proper’. The poet
attempts to correct the predecessor’s mistake.
 2. Tessera
 Completion and antithesis
 The author elaborates the work of their predecessor, extending them into
new conceptual terrain.
 3. Kenosis
 A movement toward discontinuity with the precursor. The poet attempts
to break with the predecessor.
 4. Daemonization
 Neither divine nor human
 5. Askesis
 Defined by Bloom as a ‘ Self-purgation’ that aims at ‘ a state of
solituede’.
 6. Apophrades
 Return of the dead
Carl Jung (1875-1961)

 Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
 Collective Unconscious —
 The concept is introduced by Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl Jung to represent
a form of unconscious memories ( that part of mind containing memories
and impulses of which the individual is not aware)
 Common to mankind as a whole and originating in the inherited structure
of the brain.
 Sometimes referred to the idea that a segment of the deepest unconscious
mind is genetically inherited and is not shaped by personal experience.
 So Jung believes the ‘ collective unconsciousness’ is both
 1. Primordial — Existing at or from the beginning of time.
 2. Universal
 Electra complex term coined by Carl Jung in 1913.
Some important terms-
 Sublimation — Transformation of the sexual instincts towards non-sexual
ends. For instance, sexual urges may be given sublimated expression in
the form of intense religious experience or longings.
 Libido — Energy drive associated with sexual desire.
 Libido is part of drive which Freud called ‘Eros’, which means life
instinct, the opposite of which is Thanatos, which is death instinct.
 Other Terms
 1. Transference
 2. Projection
 Both are defence mechanism
 3. Screen Memory
 4. Freudian Slip ( Parapraxis)
 Transference — eg When you observe characteristics of your father in a
new boss. They can be good or bad feelings.
 Projection — eg A woman has been unfaithful to her husband but who
accuses her husband of cheating on her.
 Screen Memory — A trivial memory whose function is to destroy a

more significant one.
 Slip of tongue, slips of the pen or unintended actions.
 Metafiction — Term coined by William H Gass in his book ‘Fiction and
the Figures of Life’. Metaficton occurs in fictional stories when the story
examines the elements of fiction itself.
Modernism
 In literature ‘Modernism’ was a rejection of traditional realism

(Chronological plots, continuous narratives relayed by omniscient
narrators, ‘closed ending’ etc) in favour of experimental forms of various
kinds.
 The period of high modernism was twenty years from 1910 to 1930 and
some of the literary ‘ high priests’ of the movement ( Writing in English)
were T S Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Wallace
Stevens and Gertrude Stein and ( Writing in French or German) Marcel
Proust, Stephane Mallarme, Franz Kafka.
 1910-1930 — High Modern

 1930s — Retreat
 1960s — Again resurgence took place
 Important characteristics of the literary modernism

 1. A new emphasis on impressionism (description of mental impression
rather than explanation of external reality) and subjectivity.
 2. 3. A blurring of the distinctions between genres, so that novels tend to
become more lyrical and poetic, for instance, and poems more
documentary and prose-like.
 3. A new liking for fragmented forms, discontinuous narrative, and
random-seeming collection of different material.
 4. Literature dedicated to experimentation and innovation.
Difference between modernism and postmodernism

 1. Modernism began in the 1890s and lasted till 1945. Postmodernism
began after the Second World War, especially after 1968.
 2. Modernism believes in rational thought while postmodernists believe
everything is irrational.
 3. Modernism places a strong emphasis on science, whereas
postmodernists are anti-scientific.
 4. Modernists reflect the values of European and Western thought
whereas postmodernists believe in multiculturalism.
 5. Modern art is characterised by simplicity and elegance. It believes in
‘decoration is a crime’ (Ornament and Crime — an essay of Adolf Loos)
and ‘ less is more’ ( Ludwig Rohe) while postmodern art is decorative
and elaborate.
 Postmodern literature is a form of literature which is marked, both
stylistically and ideologically on such literary conventions fragmentation,
paradox, unreliable narrators and downright impossible plots.
 The importance of ‘Modernism’ is in the understanding of 20 th century
culture, whereas ‘postmodernism has only become current since the
1980s. ‘Modernism’ is the name given to the movement which dominated
the arts and culture of the first half of the 20 th century. The effect of
Modernism was felt in art movement like Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism
and Futurism.
 Surrealism
 Development of Dadaism
 It is an advance form of realism.
 Also known as super realsm. The term superrealsm was coined by
Guillaume Apollinaire ( French) in 1917.
 It is an Anti-rational movement in art and literature in 1920s and 1930s
launched by Andre Breton. His book — Manifesto of Surrealism ( 1924).
 The modern poetry and modern writing has been influenced by
Surrealism.
 Influenced by symbolists and Sigmund Freud’s theory of unconscious.
 You don’t distinguish any facts, you present them as they came to your
mind. Both rational and irrational.
 It is an express in art and literature the workings of the unconscious mind.
Futurism
 A short-lived avant-garde movement in European art and literature
launched in 1909 by Italian poet Filippo Marinetti.
 Futurism violently rejected previous artistic tradition and convention
along with accepted grammatical rules, in an attempt to express the
dynamism and speed of 20th century machine age and praised the
splendour of war and patriotism.
 The effect of modernism was felt in art movement like Cubism, Dadaism,
Surrealism and Futurism.
Expressionism-
 A style and movement in the early 20th century art, theatre, cinema and
music that tries to express people’s feelings and emotions rather than
showing events and objects in a realistic way. It was an extreme reaction
against realism and naturalism.
 In English-speaking world expressionist dramatic techniques were
adopted in some of the plays of Eugene O’ Neill and Sean O’ Caesy, and
in the ‘Circe episode of James Joyce’s novel ‘ Ulysses’(1922); in poetry
T S Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ (1922).
 In the further sense, the term is sometimes applied to the belief that
literary works are essentially expressions of their author’s mood and
thoughts.
Dadaism (Dada)-
 Movement consisted of the artist who rejected the logic, reason, and
aestheticism and prefer nonsense, irrationality and anti-bourgeois.
 A nihilistic movement in art and literature started in 1916 in Zurich (
Switzerland) by Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, HugoBall and Richard
Huelsenbeck. It emerged out in 1916 out of disgust with the brutality and
destructiveness of the First World War to engender the negative art and
literature that would destroy the false values of modern Bourgeois

society.
 The basic word in the Dadaist’s vocabulary was ‘nothing’. In art and
literature it was an arrangement of unrelated objects and words in a
random fashion. Eg poetry of T S Eliot and Ezra Pound.
The Pylon Poetry

 It is poetry of 1930s.
 Their poetry is full of modern imagery derived from industry and
technology eg trains, trams.
 The title ‘Pylon’ was derived from one of Spender’s poem ‘ The Pylons’ (
1933)
 Important poets— Spender, Auden, MacNeice, Day Lewis
Imagism
 It is a reaction against the tradition of Romantic and Victorian poetry that
emphasised the use of excessively elaborate language.
 T E Hulme is known as the father of Imagism. Ezra Pound learned it from
Hulme.
 Important Writers
 1. T E Hulme
 2. Ezra Pound
 3. Amy Lowell
 4. Hilda Dolittle
 5. William Carlos Williams
 6. Ford Maddox Ford
Characteristics
 1. Concrete poetry not vague and abstract
 2. Economical use of words. That’s why they don’t use connectives.
Imagist poetry is just like snapshot.
 3. Use of free verse — verse libre
 4. Use of common speech
Postmodernism
 It started in the 1940s, 1950s and even 1970s.

 Modernism and Postmodernism are not two successive stages but two
attitudes.
 Modern writing starts with Edith Sitwell.
 They (Modern) lament the loss of values. Now you don’t have a simple
life and simple literature as well.
 There was a chronological order in the literature before the modern
period.
 ‘These fragments I have shored against my ruins’ — From The
Wasteland by T S Eliot.
 Now things are fragmented in modern literature.
 T S Eliot laments that loss of religion. Modern writers lament this
fragmentation of religion, values and overall social system.
 Postmodern writers on the other hand celebrate this fragmentation.
 Postmodern literature is eclectic, aleatory, allusive, pastiche.
 Eclectic means choosing from different sources.
 Aleatory means randomly.
 Intertextuality — Julie Kriteva
 The Wasteland is a poem of allusion all compact.
 Postmodern writers are very liberal in the use of language. Postmodern
writers use a bombastic, flamboyant language.
 In Postmodern writing the distinction between different genres of
literature collapses.
 Postmodernism literature wants you to study the work because the work
is self-reflexive. It is a kind of narcissism. Narcissism means loving
oneself or attracted by oneself.
 So far Postmodernism is concerned there are three important names

 1. Jurgen Habermas
 2. Jean- Francois Lyotard
 3. Jean Baudrillard — High priest of modernism
 Habermas talks about Enlightenment (1650-1750) the age of reason and

good sense. He says that in Postmodernism this reason and good sense
and sensibility has collapsed.
 Now the allusion has become reality and if allusion becomes reality this
reality ( the actual reality) has no meaning at all.
 When surface has become depth then depth has no meaning at all.
 You are learning your life style from TV it means you are living a fake
life. You gave no life style of your own at all.
 Grand narrative ( Metanarrative)

 Lyotard’s terms
 Ideas, concepts, notions, or beliefs which can function to legitimate
certain social actions and practices.
 Similarly, the notion of ‘Enlightenment’ has served to legitimate a
movement towards secular reason.
 Lyotard says ‘postmodern age’ has incredulity towards all grand
narratives.
Hyperreality
 Two people related to this concept
 1. Umberto Eco
 2. Baudrillard
 Umberto Eco coined this term in his essay ‘ Travels in Hyperreality’.
 Hyperreality, in semiotics and postmodernism, is an inability of
consciousness to distinguish reality from the simulation of reality.
 Baudrillard defined hyperreality ‘the generation by models of real
without origin or reality’.
 Baudrillard gives two examples of hyperreality
 1. Disney World
 2.T V Shows
Heterology
 Bataille
 Science of what is completely other

 A branch of philosophy concerned with the problems of the existence of
the ‘other’ or unknowable being’ which has been interpreted as God (
Leivnas) or the Indigenous Subject ( Certeau)
 Habermas’ Modernity — an Incomplete Project ( 1980)

 Habermas says Derrida and Foucault are ‘ young conservatives’ as they
attacked ideas of reason, clarity, truth and projects — Enlightenment.
 Lyotard criticizes Habermas of his phrase neo/new conservatives’
 Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition : A Report on Knowledge’ ( 1979)
 Lyotard’s essay ‘Answering the Question — What is Postmodernism’.
 Baudrillard’s book ‘ Simulations’ (1981)
 Baudrillard is related to ‘loss of the real’.
 His essay ‘ Simulacra and Simulations ( 1981)
 The third stage of sign is important, Disneyland is actually ‘third- order
simulation. ( a sign which conceals an absence)
 In Postmodernism the distinction between what is real and what is
simulated collapses; Everything is a model or an image; all is surface
without depth; this is the hyperreal as Baudrillard says ‘Gulf was never
happened, that what really took place was a kind of televisual virtual
reality.
 Umberto Eco says modernists try to destroy the past the postmodernism
relies that the past must be revisited ‘with irony’. They foregrounded
irony.
 Simulacrum
 Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deluze were associated with this term.
 For Jean Baudrillard Simulacrum and Simulation are interchangeable.
 According to Baudrillard Simulacrum is essentially the copy of copy
means copy of something that is not itself and original. He talks about the
loss of the real.
 Simulation
 Two name associated with this term
 1. Umberto Eco
 2. Baudrillard
 Umberto Eco
 Hyperreality of contemporary or postmodern life.
 Simulation is an attempt to produce something more real than the real
itself and in that way compensate for its absence or impossibility.
 Baudrillard
 It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality or what
he also calls hyperreal.

New Historicism
 What is known as New Historicism in America is known as Cultural
Materialism in England.
 Greenblatt first uses New Historicism in 1980 in his ‘Introduction to the
Power of Forms in the English Renaissance’.
 Stephen Greenblatt’s book Renaissance Self-Fashioning: from More to
Shakespeare’ (1980) is usually regarded as its beginning. (Self-
Fashioning — A willingness to transfer oneself into another.)
 J W Lever’s book — The Tragedy of State
 In old historicism you treated history as background/context/setting. You
have used history as a context. You read book understand the
background. In New Historicism history is treated as co-text. It is based
on the principle of equal weighing. Both history and text have equal
weighing.
 These studies are based on Shakespeare and Jacobean text.
 A simple definition of the new historicism is that it is a method based on
the ‘parallel’ reading of literary and non-literary texts, usually of the same
historical period. That is to say, new historicism refuses to ‘ privilege’ the
literary texts; instead of a literary ‘ foreground’ and a historical
‘background’ it imagines and practices a mode of study in which literary
and non-literary texts are given equal weight and constantly inform or
interrogate each others.
 This ‘equal weighting’ is suggested in the definition of new historicism

offered by the American critic Louis Montrose: he defines it as a
combined interest in ‘ the textuality of history, the historicity of the texts’.
 He means to say that read history as a text. He talks about A Midsummer
Night’s Dream’. In this work you will find Shakespeare is following
patriarchal society.
 New Historicism is an American term. It is a method of parallel reading
of both literary and non-literary texts generally of a particular period.
They do reading on Renaissance period.
 New Historicism and Renaissance Drama — This book is by Richard
Wilson and Richard Dutton.
 Archival Continuum — The term has been used by Wilson and Dutton in
their book ‘New Historicism and Renaissance Drama’.
 We have been reading a text with the age. Age is the setting, background
and the text is the jewel. You said up to now that age is only context,
background and the text was treated as jewel, foreground. Tilliard’s book
‘Shakespeare World Picture’ is an example of this. Tilliard talks about the
text in the context of that age.
 People of New Historicism said that non-literary text is not simply a
context and you have been privileging a literary text. But both literary
and the non-literary texts are important. History is to be read as a text.
That non-literary text is a co-text.
 A literary text tells you about the text, about that age in the same amount
as a historical text tell you about that age.
 A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ tells you that in the Elizabethan age
patriarchal system was prevalent. A book of history also tells you that the
social order in the Elizabethan age was patriarchal. So A Midsummer
Night’s dream is a historical book.
 New Historicism is greatly influenced by Foucault. Foucault talks about ‘
Discursive Structures’ . Discursive means discourse (mindset). It means
the mindset of a particular group.
 Althusser’s — Interpellation
 Gramsci’s — Hegemony
 Foucault’s — Discursive practices

 All three use three different terms for the same concept.
 There are different discursive structures in our society. It is not
monolithic. A mindset controls the things.
 Panoptic Surveillance — This means all-seeing surveillance. There is no
field of human activity which is not controlled by surveillance, these
structures.
 New Historicism accepts Derrida view that there is nothing outside the
text, in the special sense that everything about the past is only available to
us in textualised form; it is ‘thrice-processed, first through the ideology,
or outlook, or discursive practices of its own time, then through those of
ours, and finally through the distorting web of language itself.
 In England New-historicism is known as cultural materialism. The term
cultural materialism was used by Raymond Williams in his book “Culture
and Society”.
 Graham Holderness says that this ‘Cultural Materialism’ is ‘politicised
form of historiography’.
 The term cultural materialism was made popular by Jonathan Dollimore
and Alan Sinfield in their collection of essays ‘Political Shakespeare’.
 People belonging to cultural materialism say that TV , Films, TV Serials,
Cinema are not inferior to literature but they are the material of our
culture. Our culture includes modern music, T V, Films etc.
 Difference between Cultural Materialism and New- historicism

 1. People belonging to New historicism believe in dissent ie individual
should have the freedom to exercise his dissent but at the same time they
are pessimist. They think it is not possible. But the people belonging to
Cultural Materialism are optimistic. They give their own values to things.
 2. People belonging to Cultural Materialism study a Shakespearean text
with the help of a non- literary text of their own contemporary time while
people belonging to New historicism say that you should study a
Shakespearean text with the help of a non-literary text of the Elizabethan
period.
 Greenblatt introduced the terms ‘Resonance’ and ‘Wonder’.

 The terms were used by Greenblatt later it became a chapter in his book ‘
Learning to Curse’ ( 1990)
 He says if you go any art exhibition then you have two distinct models for
examination — Resonance and Wonder.
 Greenblatt says ‘ Resonance is the power of the displayed objects to reach
out beyond its formal boundaries to a larger world, to evoke in the
viewers the complex, dynamic cultural forces from which it has emerged
and for which it may be taken by a viewer to stand.’ It echoes in your
mind the whole larger context of the object.
 Wonder – It is a wow-factor.
 It is the object’s ability to stop his viewer in his or her tracks, to convey
an arresting sense of uniqueness, to evoke an exalted attention’.
 ‘Practicing New Historicism’ (2000) is a combined work of Greenblatt
and Catherine Gallagher.
 The term ‘Self-fashioning’ means “ A willingness to transform oneself
into another’.
Cultural Studies
 It is associated with two people Richard Hoggard and Raymond
Williams. Hoggard wrote ‘ The Uses of Literacy’ (1957) and Raymond
Williams wrote ‘ Culture and Society’ ( 1958)
 Culture Studies is the interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature,
practice or ways of life. You must study everything whether it is cinema,
music, drama, TV Serial etc. Only literary study is not sufficient. They
are associated with Bermingham University.

Critical Theory PDF Notes - 31719583 - 2024 - 03 - 09 - 17 - 54

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Critical Theory PDF Notes - 31719583 - 2024 - 03 - 09 - 17 - 54

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

English for Competitive Exams: Grade I, II, III, Asst., Prof.

Dr. S.K. Sharma

Helpline No: 8000166081

Factors which contributed to the rise of New Criticism

 The Chicago School of Critics( 1930-1952) : Attack on New Criticism

 Ronald Crane’s essay ‘History Verses Criticism in the Study of

I A Richards (1893 - 1979)

 Practical Criticism : A Study of Literary Judgement ( 1929)

concentrate on ‘ the words on the page’ rather than relying on

 He turned criticism into a science and considered knowledge of

 This is an influential book continued to reshape the main line of English

 New Criticism — 1930’s to 50s/60s

 Ransom’s students ( Cleanth Brooks and Warren) dominated the literary

 W K Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley

 The New Critics were inspired by I A Richards famous experimental

Allen Tate (1899-1979)

literal meaning/ concrete / particular meaning / Primary meaning /

 It is Viktor Shklovsky who talks about defamiliarsation. The language

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)

In times past carnivals became the symbol of ‘ the disruption and

 Literary means ‘a mixture of tongues. A term coined by variety and

 Structuralism has its origin in linguistics and strictly speaking in

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

characteristics included in the other, so that ‘male’ can be seen as mainly

 Semiology — This term used by Saussure. Semiology is science of sign

Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic

 4. The Semi Code

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)

 It is a critical perspective (theory) that developed in the 1960s/1970s and

meaning is indeterminate and it is also not stable. ‘Red’ signifier may be

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

 Differance — A word coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida

 The term ‘ supplement’ is used by French philosopher Jacques Derrida to

 Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences — It

Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

 He was inspired by German philosopher, Nietzsche who says all

 J Hillis Miller (1928-2921)

 A Passage to India by E M Forster

 The Wretched of the Earth’ ( 1961)

 There was a shift in attitudes in 1980a and 1990s. Earlier Postcolonial

 1. Adopt Phase — ( Humble Apprentice)

 Important writers related to Postcolonial criticism are following —

 5. Bill Ashcroft et all

The Wretched of the Earth (1961) — Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre

Black Skin, White Masks

Edward W. Said (1935-2003)

 3. Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature: Yeats and Decolonization (

 Textual attitude is an attitude in which one attempts to apply what they

 Homi Bhabha (1949)

in colonial administration) and crushing weight of the loss of national

 When a member of a colonized society imitates the language, dress,

 The term ‘Negritude’ was coined by Amie Cesaire and Senghor.

 Key Concepts and Thinkers of Postcolonial Studies

 Holy Trinity in the context of postcolonialism—

 The Empire Writes Back : Theory and Practice in Post-colonial

 The phrase refers to the ways postcolonial voices respond to the

 It refers to the highly generalised views of the colonizers about the

 It started in 1880s. ( Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the

celebrated sentence, ‘I am the Third Wave’. This giving the movement

Fourth Wave Feminism

Difference between Anglo-American Feminists and Anglo-French

 The Value of Psychoanalysis

 Jane Gallop’s book ‘Feminism and Psychoanalysis’ is the continuation