Literature II

(An introduction to literary studies: Mario Klarer)

Literature: A written document which is aesthetic or which purpose is to be artistic. It is different from
texts of everyday usage such as newspapers, legal documents, etc.
Genre: It usually refers to one of the three classical literary forms of epic, drama, or poetry.
Text type: it refers to highly conventional written documents such as instruction manuals, sermons, etc.
Discourse: It is used as a term for any kind of classifiable linguistic expression. The classification is based on
the level of content, vocabulary, syntax as well as stylistic and rhetorical elements. Discourse includes
written and oral expression.
 Primary source: traditional objects of analysis in literary criticism, including texts from all literary
genres, such as fiction, poetry, or drama.
 Secondary source: texts such as articles (or essays), book reviews, and notes. All of which are published
primarily in scholarly journals.
Journals: they inform the reader about the latest result of researches.
Collections: essays are also published as collections compiled by one or several editors on a specific theme.
Festschrift: It is a collection of essays published in honour of a famous researcher.
Monographs: they are book-length scholarly treatises on a single theme.
Critical apparatus: A number of formal criteria in literary criticism such as footnotes, comments, etc.
The three major literary genres in textual studies are fiction, drama, and poetry.
 Fiction: Novel is one of the most important forms of prose fiction; its precursors are the epic and the
romance. The majority of traditional epics revolve around a hero who has to fulfill a number of tasks in a
multiplicity of episodes (Homer’s epic). Although traditional epics were written in verse, they clearly
distinguish themselves from other forms of poetry by length, narrative structure, the depiction of
characters, and plot patterns. The romance established itself as an independent genre and it was usually
written in prose. The romance is considered a forerunner of the novel because of its focused plot and
unified point of view. It also condenses the action and orients the plot toward a particular goal. At the
same time, the protagonist is depicted in more detail, describing insecurities and weaknesses which come
to the foreground anticipating distinct aspects of the novel.
The novel emerges in Spain and a century later in England. Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote puts an end
to the epic and to the romance by parodying their traditional elements (unheroic adventures). In England,
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe marks the beginning of this new literary genre which replaces the epic.
This new novel is characterized by the terms “realism” and “individualism”, and by grounding the plot in a
distinct historical and geographical reality.
 Subgenres:
 The picaresque novel: It relates the experiences of a vagrant rogue (picaro) in his conflict with the
norms of society. (Episodic narrative) it tries to lay bare social injustice in a satirical way. (Daniel Defoe’s
Moll Flanders).
 The bildungsroman: (novel of education) It describes the development of a protagonist from childhood
to maturity. (Eliot’s Mill on the floss)
 The epistolary novel: It uses letters as a means of first-person narration (Chboskythe perks of being a
wallflower)
 Historical novel: The actions take place in a realistic historical context (Truman Capote’s in cold blood).
 The satirical novel: It highlights the weakness of society through the exaggeration of social conventions
(Swift’s Gulliver’s travels).
 The utopian novel or science fiction novel: It creates alternative worlds as a means of criticizing social-
political conditions. (Margaret Atwood’s The handmaid’s tale)
 Gothic novels (Bram Stoker’s Dracula)
 Detective novel: (Agatha Christie’s murder on the Oriented Express).
 The short story: It has emerged as a more or less independent text type at the end of the eighteenth
century. The short story surfaces in short variants, the novella or novelette. A crucial feature in short
stories is their impression of unity since they can be read in one sitting without interruption. The plot of a
short story has to be selective focusing on the central moment or action, so it has less detailed description
than the novel.
 The novella or novelette: It holds an intermediary position between the novel and short story since its
length and narratological elements cannot be strictly identified with either of the two genres.

Basic elements of fiction

 Plot: It is the logical interaction of the various thematic elements of a text which lead to a change of the
original situation presented at the outset of the narrative. The plot encompasses the four sequential levels:
1. Exposition: Presentation of the initial situation.
2. Complication or conflict: It produces suspense
3. Climax
4. Resolution: Resolution of the complication with which the text ends.
Flashback: It introduces information conceding the past or future.

 Characters: They can be rendered either as types or as individuals. A typified character is dominated by
one specific trait and is referred to as a flat character. The round character usually denotes a persona with
more complexes and differentiates features. Medieval allegorical depictions of characters preferred
typification in order to personify vices, virtues, and religious positions. The individualization of a character
has evolved into the main feature of the genre of the novel.
Both typified and individualizedcharacters can be rendered in a text by showing and telling as two different
modes of presentation:
1. The explanatory characterization or telling: describes a person through a narrator (Charlotte Bronte’s
Jane Eyre)
2. The dramatic characterization or showing: Avoiding influence on the reader by a narrative mediator.
This method of presentation creates an impression on the reader that he or she is able to perceive the
acting figures without any intervention.

 Point of view: or narrative perspective: it characterizes the way in which a text presents persons, events
and settings. Three basic positions:
1. Omniscient point of view: The action of a text is either mediated through an exterior, unspecified
narrator (god-like perspective).
2. First-person narrator: The action of a text is mediated through a person involved in the action. First-
person narrators can adopt the point of view either of the protagonist or of a minor figure.
3. Figural narrative situation: The action of a text is presented without additional commentary. The
narrator moves background, suggesting that the plot is revealed solely through the actions of the
characters in the text.
 Setting: It is another aspect included in the analysis of prose fiction, and it is relevant to discussions of
other genres, too. It denotes the location, historical period, and social surroundings in which the action of a
text develops. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, the setting is clearly Dublin, 16 June 1904.

POETRY: It is one of the oldest genres in literary history. The genre of poetry is often subdivided into the
two major categories of narrative and lyric poetry.
1. Narrative poetry: Includes genres such as the epic long poem, the romance, and the ballad which
stories are clearly developed structured plots.
2. Lyric poetry: It is shorter and it is mainly concerned with one event, impression or idea.
 Most important elements in poetry:
Lexical-thematic dimension: “voice or speaker”. It is referred to issue if the Persona or the poet is the
same.
Imagery refers to a visual component of a text which can also include other sensory expressions. It is often
regarded as the most common manifestation of the “concrete” character of poetry.
The use of poetic language, more than the use of complex narrative situations, distinguishes poetry from
other literary genres. Concrete nouns and scenes are employed in order to achieve this particular effect.
These images and concrete objects often serve the additional function of symbols if they refer to a
meaning beyond the material object. (A cross in Christian is much more than two crossed wooden bars)
The poet can either use a commonly known (conventional symbol) or create his own (private symbol).
Rhetorical figures are characterized by their non-literal meaning; simile and metaphor are the most
commonly used. A simile is a comparison between two different things which are connected by “like”,
“than”, “as” or “compare”. The equation of one thing with another without actual comparison is called
metaphor.

Visual dimension: poem’s shape or visual appearance.

Rhythmic- acoustic dimension: It is achieved by choosing certain words in a line or stanza. The acoustic
element can enhance the meaning of a poem.
Meter: The smallest elements of meter are syllables which can be either stressed or unstressed.
Rhyme: It adds to the dimension of sound and rhythm in a poem.

Drama: The combination of verbal with non-verbal or optical visual means, including stage, scenery,
shifting of scenes, facial expressions, gestures, make-up, props and lighting.

Periods of English literatures: The criteria for classification derive from fields such as the history of the
language, national history, politics and religion, and art.
 The old English or Anglo-Saxon period: It began with the invasion of Britain by Germanic tribes in the
fifth century AD and lasted until the French invasion under William the conqueror in 1066. (Epic poem
Beowulf C eighth century)
 Middle English period: It started when the French-speaking Normans conquered England in the11th
century. Lyric poetry, long poems with religious contents and romance are from this period (Le morte d’
Arthur). This period also produce cycles of narratives, such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury tales.
 Renaissance(Elizabethan age): Revival of classical genres such as the epic (Spenser’s Faerie Queen) and
modern drama with William Shakespeare.
 Eighteen century (neoclassical): In this period, classical literature and literary theory were adapted to
suit contemporary culture. This was a time of influential changes in the distribution of texts, including the
development of the novel as a new genre and the introduction of newspapers and literary magazines such
as “the spectator”.
 Puritan age: It was the first literary phenomenon on the North American continent. Its texts reflects
historiography and theological orientations (Wheatley’s Poems on various subjects)
 Romanticism: It is considered the beginning of a new period in which nature and individual, emotional
experience play an important role. It is a reaction to the enlightment and political changes throughout
Europe and America at the end of the 18th century. (John Keats, William Blake).
 Realism and naturalism: realism’s main goal is to truthfully describe “reality” through language.
Naturalism on the truthful portrayal of the determining effects of social and environmental influences on
characters. While in the US these trends manifest themselves mostly in fiction, England is also famous for
its dramas of this period, including works of Bernard Shaw.
 Modernism: It can be seen as a reaction to the realist movements of the late nineteenth century.
Modernism discovered innovate narrative techniques such as stream-of-consciousness, or structural form
collage and literary cubism. (James Joyce’s "Ulysses").
 Postmodernism: This literary movement deals with Nazi crimes and the nuclear destruction of World
War II while structurally developing the approaches of modernism. Narrative techniques with multiple
perspectives, interwoven strands of plot, and experiments in typography characterize the texts of this era
(Raymond Federman’s Double or nothing).
 “Minority” literature: That is literature written by marginalized groups including women, gays, or ethnic
minorities, the latter mostly represented by African Americans, Chicanos, and Chicanas (Margaret
Atwood’s The handmaid’s tale).
 Post-colonial literature: This vast body of texts is also categorized under Commonwealth literature. The
literature of British colonies has contributed to a change in contemporary literature. In many cases,
dimensions of content have regained dominance and act to counterbalance the academic playfulness of
modernism and post-modernism. (Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart).

The war poets: A number of writers who ‘soldiered’ in various capacities during the First World War and
who recorded very memorably their feelings about their experience. The majority expressed disgust,
disenchantment, cynicism, revulsion, anger, and horror. It was the poetry of protest and it deglamorized
war forever. A number of poets died on the battlefield. Others including Robert Graves and Siegfried
Sassoon survived but were scarred by their experiences, and this was reflected in their poetry.
Wilfred Owen: (One of the greatest voices of WWI) His first experiences of active services led to shell
shock. While he was at a War Hospital in Scotland he met Siegfried Sassoon, who provided him with
guidance to bring his war experiences into his poetry. He returned to the battlefield but he was killed a
week before the armistice. (“Futility”).
Siegfried Sassoon: He was an antiwar poet and his public affirmation of pacifism, after he had won the
Military Cross and was still in the army, made him widely known. His antiwar protests were at first
attributed to shellshock, and he was confined for a time in a psychiatric hospital, where he met Wilfred
Owen, whose works he published after Owen was killed at the front. (“Does it matter?”)

Malvinas War: In 1982, the head of Argentina’s ruling military Junta authorized the invasion of Islas
Malvinas. The operation was designed to draw attention away from human rights and economic issues at
home by bolstering national pride. The war lasted 74 days and ended with the Argentine surrender on 14
June 1982, returning the islands to British control.
Tony McNally: He is an English war veteran and the author of the best-selling “Watching men burn”. Tony
is a tireless campaigner for better understanding and treatment of servicemen and women suffering from
mental health problems (“PTSD”).
Gustavo Caso Rosendi: Poeta Argentino que fue conscripto durante la Guerra de Malvinas. Con sus versos
irrumpe la narración habitual sobre Malvinas, que tomaba forma de crónicas periodísticas o documentales.
Publico “Soldados”, su libro de poesía sobre la guerra de Malvinas (2009). (“El ultimo enemigo”).

Modernism (Movement) refers to all the creative arts, especially poetry, fiction, drama, painting, music,
and architecture. In literature, modernism reveals a self-conscious breaking away from established rules,
traditions and conventions, fresh ways of looking at man’s position and function in the universe and many
experiments in form and style. Literary historians locate the beginning of the modernist revolt as far back
as the 1890s, but most agree that what is called high modernism came after WWI. (James Joyce’s
“Ulysses”, T.S. Eliot’s “The waste land”, Virginia Woolf’s “Jacob’s room”).
Modernism breaks up the narrative continuity, departing from the standard ways of representing
characters, and violating the traditional syntax and coherence of narrative language by the use of stream of
consciousness and other innovative modes of narration. A feature of modernism is the phenomenon called
the avant-garde a small, self-conscious group of artists and authors who deliberately set out to create ever-
new artistic forms and styles and to introduce sometimes forbidden subject matter. Some avant-garde
schools include symbolism, post-impressionism, futurism, cubism, imagism, Vorticism, and surrealism.

Modernist fiction: It deals with the changing effects of technology and modernity in different ways. The
modernist novel has shown three great preoccupations with the complexities of its own forms.
 A sense of the nihilist disorder behind the ordered surface of life and reality.
 The freeing of narrative art from the determination of a tedious plot.
 The modernist novel has a remarkable change in narrative techniques
 Some devices of the modernist novel include the multiplication and juxtaposition of perspectives, the
focalization of all evidence through a single “center of consciousness”, interior monologue( to pay more
attention to internal affairs), dislocates chronology, indirectly- presented information, and difficult “mind-
style”.

Modernist poetry flourished between World War I and the 60s broke from Victorian and Romantic
tradition and sought new, experimental ways to structure their work, including free verse and condensed
lines. Early modernist poets often used short, simple lines that prompted the reader to concentrate
intently on the poem’s images. Modernist such as T.S. Eliot used stanzas almost as prose writers use
paragraphs, to unify a specific point. (“The waste land”- T.S. Eliot)
Free indirect discourse/style: (the way the character would speak) it describes a special type of third-
person narration that slips in and out of character’s consciousness. Character’s thoughts, feelings, and
words are filtered through the third-person narrator in free indirect discourse. In this method of narration
the essential qualities and features of first-person direct speech are combined with the features of third
person indirect speech:
 Direct speech: he sat down on the floor and said, "What’s the use of living?”.
 Indirect speech: he sat down on the floor and wondered what was the use of living.
 Free indirect speech: he sat down and wondered what’s the use of living.
Interior monologue: (stream of consciousness) it is a technique of recording the continuum of impressions,
thoughts, and impulses either prompted by conscious experience or arising from the well of the
subconscious. Interior monologue entails presentation of a character’s thoughts by a third person
omniscient narrator who serves as a selector, presenter, guide, and commentator.
Stream of consciousness: it is a narrative device/mode used in literature to represent the multitudinous
thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind. It is characterized by dissociative leaps in thought and
lack of punctuation. Main characteristics:
 Recording numerous thoughts and feelings.
 Exploring external and internal forces that influence an individual’s psychology.
 Disregard of the narrative sequence.
 Absence of the logical argument.
 Dissociative leaps in syntax and punctuation.
 Prose difficult to follow.

Joycean style: (peculiarities of the writings of James Joyce) A high degree of stylistic and technical
inventiveness and originality in the use of the pun, symbolism and the stream of consciousness technique.
The use of little, or no punctuation and the joining up of numerous words. Plus his creation of “private
language”

Imagism: it was a movement in the early 20th century that used precision of imagery and clear language. It
was one of the most influential movements in English poetry. It is considered to be the first organized
modernist literary movement in the English language. Modernist poets decide that the best way to write
poetry was to describe things with simple and few words by abandoning rhyme and meter, among other
things.
In imagist poetry, the writer does not talk about the themes behind the image; they let the image itself be
the focus of the poem. The aim of imagism is that poets concentrate everything the poet wishes to
communicate into a vivid image.
Imagist poets: Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and Amy Lowell among others.

Image: An image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.
The tenets of imagist poetry:
 Direct treatment of the “thing” (subjective or objective)
 To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
 As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase.(free verse)
Imagist poets:
 Eliminate every unnecessary word (no ornament).
 Make everything concrete and particular.
 Do not try to make a poem by decorating prose or chopping it into poetic lines.
 Use musical tools with skill, without distorting the natural sounds, images, and meanings of language.

EZRA POUND (1885-1972): Critic, poet, impresario and propagandist, Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was one
of the shaping forces of modernism, with connections to the era’s most influential writers of prose and
poetry. He was the father of imagism stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language and foregoing
traditional rhyme and meter.(In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a seminal exchange of
work and ideas between English and American writers; he advanced the work of many contemporaries
such as W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Hernest Hemingway, and T.S. Elliot.)
Poems: “The Garret”, “Alba”.“In a station of the metro (1913)”: It is considered an early work of modernist
poetry as it attempts to “break from the pentameter”, incorporates the use of visual spacing as a poetic
device, and does not contain any verbs.

H.D. (1886-1961): Hilda Doolittle was born in Pennsylvania and attended university there where she
befriended Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Her work is characterized by the intense strength of
her images, the economy of language, and use of classical mythology. She was a feminist and a supporter
of women’s rights, she was an open bisexual, and she was involved in the early film industry.
Poems: “Oread” (1915), “the pool” (1915).
“Oread” free verse, this poem focuses only in one image (the sea crashing into the earth); she blends the
images of the sea and earth with her language, one single metaphor (speaker’s wish of unison between sea
and land).

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883-1963): American poet associated with modernism. He received his MD
from the University of Pennsylvania where he befriended H.D. and Ezra Pound. Williams began publishing
in small magazines and embark on a prolific career as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. He was one
of the principal poets of imagism, though as time went on, he disagreed with the values put forth in the
work of Pound and especially Elliot, who he felt were too attached to European culture and traditions.
Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh-and singularly American-poetic, who’s subject matter on the
everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people.
Poem: “This is just to say (1934)” it appears to be a piece of found poetry (a type of poetry created by
taking words, phrases and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by
making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting a new meaning).

 Free-verse: It is poetry that does not rhyme or have regular rhyme.

 Poetic devices: Literary devices that affect how a person reads a poem:
 Metaphor: The most common device. It’s a comparison between two, unlike things.
 Simile: It’s a comparison between two unlike things using “like” or “as”.
 Metonymy: One thing stands for something else that is closely related to it. (“Crown to refer to the
king”).
 Synecdoche: A small part stands in for a whole. (“Wheels stand for a car”).
 Personification: A not human thing is endowed with human characteristics.
 Synaesthesia: A mixing of senses (“He wore a loud yellow shirt”).
 Imagery: A term used to describe an author’s use of vivid descriptions.
 Irony: A difference between the surface meaning of the words and the implications that may be drawn
from them.
 Diction: word choice, other specific language an author, narrator, or speaker uses to describe events
and interact with other characters.


WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939): He was an Irish poet and one of the figures of the 20 th-century
literature. W.B. Yeats was considered to be a pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments. In
1923 he won the Nobel Prize in literature. Yeats was a very good friend of Ezra Pound.
 Yeats’ childhood and young manhood were spent between Dublin, London, and Sligo.
In London, in the 1890s he met the important poets of the day and acquired late-romantic, pre-Raphaelite
ideas of poetry. From the countryside of Sligo, he learned about the life of the peasantry and of their
folklore and myths. In Dublin, he was influenced by Irish nationalism; he came to see his poetry as a
contribution to the rejuvenation of Irish culture.
Yeats’ poetry began in the tradition of self-conscious romanticism, yet he is also cosmopolitan, insisted of
the transnationalism of the collective storehouse of images he called “Spiritus Mundi” or “Anima Mundi”.
In 1889, Yeats met Maut Gonne, then a 23-year-old English Heiress and ardent Irish nationalist. Yeats
developed and obsessive infatuation with her beauty and outspoken manner, and she had a significant and
lasting effect on his poetry and life thereafter.
In 1917 he married Georgie Hyde Lees. The automatic writing she produced (believed by Yeats to have
been dictated by spirits) gave him the elements of a symbolic system that he later worked out in his book
“A vision” (1925, 1937). The system was a theory of the movements of history and of the different types of
personality, each type related to a phase of the moon. At the center of the symbolic system were the
interpenetrating cones that represented the movement through major cycles of history and across
antitheses of human personality.
Poems: “The second coming” (1920) it is a free verse, modernist, visionary poem, it rhymes but do not
follow a pattern. Christian rhetoric. “When you are old” (1893) Romantic poet, it rhymes. Three stanzas
made up of four quatrains. It is about romantic ideas of non-correspondent love. “ The stolen child” (1889)
deriving from his experience in Sligo(Irish folklore).

JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941): James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish writer, it is considered to be one of
the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20 th century. He is credited, together
with Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, as a figure in the development of the modernist novel.
In 1914 he published his first book, “The Dubliners”, a collection of fifteen short stories. They form a
naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20 th century. The
centre of Joyce’s idea was an epiphany: a moment when a character experiences a life-changing self-
understanding or illumination. The collection is divided into childhood, adolescence, and maturity. (Eveline)
In 1916, he published “A portrait of the artist as a young man”. The book caught the attention of Ezra
Pound, who praised Joyce for his unconventional style and voice. The book traces the religious and
intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus,
the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology. Stephen questions and rebels against The Catholic and
Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self-exile from Ireland to Europe.
Joyce’s best-known work is Ulysses (1922) and is considered by many to be the finest modernist novel ever
written. The story recounts a single day in Dublin, on the surface, the novel follows the story of the three
main characters: Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly Bloom, as well as the city life around
them. But Ulysses is also a modern retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, with the three main characters serving as
modern versions of Telemachus, Ulysses, and Penelope.Ulysses is a genuinely moving story of married and
parental love. (The book was banned in Ireland and in The USA)
Finnegan’s wake´ (1939): It is one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. The entire
book was written in a largely idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of Standard English lexical
items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which critics believe were attempts to
recreate the experience of sleep and dreams.
Molly Bloom’s soliloquy (Ulysses): The character appears to be restless in her attempt to find sleep, as her
mind is racing from one thought to the next.
Bloomsday: The work and life of Joyce are celebrated annually on June 16 in Dublin. It is a commemoration
and celebration of the life of James Joyce during which the events of his novel Ulysses are relieved. Joyce
chose the date as it was the date of his first outing with his wife-to-be Nora Barnacle.
Introduction to the Dubliners this short-story collection by James Joyce published in 1914.It is an important
piece of writing and as a forerunner of the experimental style that Joyce would use in his later
works.Structure and Style of the book
 Section 1: (childhood)
 Section 2: adolescence (“Eveline”)
 Section 3: maturity.
 Section 4: public life

Joyce meant the Dubliners to be read as a novel of the city’s development, with its inhabitants growing
from innocence to experience. Joyce’s role as a recorder of the city develops the style in which the
"Dubliners" is written. He adopts an attitude of “scrupulous meanness” towards his characters, in which
Joyce balances sympathy and objectivity.
Epiphany: Joyce exposes his characters to moments of self-awareness or awareness of the true nature of
their environment.

D.H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930) David Herbert Lawrence, English author of novels, short stories, poems,
plays, essays, travel books, and letters. His novels “SonsandLovers” (1913), “TheRainbow”
(1915),and“Women in Love” (1920) made him one of the most influential English writers of the 20 thcentury.
Lawrence was born in the midland mining village of Eastwood, Nottinghamshire.
The Eastwood setting, especially the contrast between mining town and unspoiled countryside, the life and
culture of the miners, the strife between his parents, all became themes of Lawrence’s early short stories
and novels. For example, in his early novel “Sons and Lovers” (1913), against a background of paternal
coarseness conflicting with maternal refinement, Lawrence sets the theme of the demanding mother who
has given up the prospect of achieving a true emotional life with her husband and turns to her sons with a
repressive and possessive love.
The recurring theme of his short stories—which contain some of his best work—is the distortion of love by
possessiveness or gentility or a false romanticism or a false conception of the life of the artist and the
achievement of a living relation between a man and a woman against the pressure of class-feeling or
tradition or habit or prejudice. Lawrence's view of marriage as a struggle bound up with the deepest
rhythms and most profound instincts, derived from his own relationship with his strong-minded wife. He
explores this and other kinds of human relationships with a combination of uncanny psychological
precision and intense poetic feeling. His novels have an acute surface realism, a sharp sense of time and
place, and brilliant topographical detail; at the same time their high symbolism, both of the total patterns
of action and of incidents and objects within it, establishes a formal and emotional rhythm.”
“Odour of Chrysanthemums” is a short story by D. H. Lawrence. It was written in the autumn of 1909 and
after revision, was published in The English Review in July 1911. Elizabeth Bates is the main character of
the story. She has two young children and she is waiting for her husband Walter, a coal miner, to come
home. She thinks that he has gone straight to the pub after work and she feels very angry. D.H. Lawrence’s
short story goes straight from zero to super depressing at lightning speed. "Odour of Chrysanthemums"
follows the story of the Bates family on what initially appears to be a typical and relatively boring evening
in their lives…but quickly turns into so much more.
VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) was an English writer, feminist, essayist, publisher,critic and one of the
foremost modernists of the twentieth century. Woolf was amongthe founders of Modernism which also
includes T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and James Joyceamong others. Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental
illness throughout her life,of what is now termed bipolar disorder and committedsuicide in 1941 at the age
of 59. Her most famous works include the novels “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925), “To the Lighthouse” (1927), and
the book-length essay “A Room of One's Own” (1929), with its famous dictum, "A woman must have
money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Virginia Woolf proved to be an innovative and influential 20th Century author and is considered a major
innovator in the English language. In some of her works, she moves away from the use of plot and
structure to employ stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue to emphasize the psychological
aspects of her characters. Her novels and short stories are highly experimental: a narrative, frequently
uneventful and commonplace, is refracted—and sometimes almost dissolved—in the characters' receptive
consciousness. Intense lyricism and stylistic virtuosity fuse to create a world overabundant with auditory
and visual impressions. The intensity of Virginia Woolf's poetic vision elevates the ordinary, sometimes
banal settings of most of her novels. Themes in her works include gender relations, class hierarchy and the
consequences of war.
The bloomsomery group: A group of intellectuals that quickly grew to encompass many of London’s
literary circle, who gathered to discuss art, literature, and politics. Woolf was a significant figure in London
literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group. Their works and outlook deeply
influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism,
pacifism, and sexuality. The group had ten core members, among them were Clive Bell (art critic), Vanessa
Bell, (post-impressionist painter), E.M. Forster (fiction writer), Roger Fry (art critic and post-impressionist
painter), John Maynard Keynes (economist), and Leonard Woolf (essayist and non-fiction writer)
Woolf uses the interior monologue technique in her novels “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) and “To the
Lighthouse” (1927). Indirect interior monologuepresents shifts from third-person omniscient narration to
interior monologue by using verbs of perception such as “he thought” to enter the character’s mind, thus
providing some context for the character’s mental flow of description and commentary.
“Kew Gardens” was published privately in 1919 and then more widely in 1921 in the collection “Monday
or Tuesday”; it was originally illustrated by Virginia's sister, Vanessa Bell. Its visual organization has been
described as analogous to a post-impressionist painting. (Techniques: zooming in/out, poetic prose,
impressionist writing, and innovative narrative techniques).
In "Kew Gardens," the narrator follows different visitors to the gardens, giving the reader brief snapshots
of their lives through small descriptions as they reach the same flowerbed. The story begins with a
description of the oval-shaped flowerbed. Woolf mixes the colours of the petals of the flowers, floating to
the ground, with the seemingly random movements of the visitors, which she likens to the apparently
irregular movements of butterflies.

Postmodernism: A reaction to modernism or merely the movement that followed it, postmodernism
remains a controversial concept. As a term, it tends to refer to an intellectual, artistic, or cultural outlook
or practice that is suspicious of hierarchy and objective knowledge.It embraces complexity, contradiction,
ambiguity, and diversity. The term is often used to refer to changes, developments and tendencies which
have taken place (and are taking place) in literature, art, music, architecture, fashion, technology,
philosophy, etc. since the 1940s or 1950s.
Modernism is the movement in visual arts, music, and literature which rejected the old Victorian standards
of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean.
While postmodernism shares some similarities with modernism, it differs from it in its attitude toward a lot
of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and
history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse) but presents that
fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Postmodernism does
not lament the idea of fragmentation or incoherence but rather celebrates that.
The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can give meaning to it and let's just play with
nonsense. Thus, postmodern art and thought favours reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and
discontinuity, ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the restructured, decentred, dehumanized
subject.
Postmodern literature’s elements, trends, andperspectives: Post-modernity is characterized by scepticism
and rejection, particularly of cultural progress, and even more so, the implementation of metanarratives.
Metanarrative: It is used to mean a theory that tries to give a totalizing, comprehensive account to various
historical events, experiences, and social, cultural phenomena based upon the appeal to universal truth or
universal values. Marxism, Freudianism, Capitalism, and the Enlightenment would be examples of
metanarratives in that every event in life and history is seen through one of these lenses. Hinduism,
Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are also metanarratives as they all try to explain various events
in history and the contemporary world.
Much more than being a genre or a typology, postmodernism can be approached as an attitude that is
reactionary, especially towards the ideas and ideals perpetuated in the modernist movement.
The Modern and the Postmodern: Contrasting Tendencies
The tendency to see things in seemingly obvious, binary, contrasting categories is usually associated with
modernism. The tendency to dissolve binary categories and expose their arbitrary cultural co-dependency
is associated with postmodernism but for educational purposes, the table has been done in such a way.
Modernism/Modernity Postmodernism/Post modernity
Master Narratives and metanarratives of history, Suspicion and rejection of Master Narratives for
culture and national history and culture;
identity as accepted before WWII (American- local narratives, ironic deconstruction of master
European myths of narratives: counter-
Progress). Myths of cultural and ethnic origin Myths of origin.
accepted as received. "Progress" seen as a failed Master Narrative
Progress accepted as a driving force behind history.
Faith in, and myths of, social and cultural unity, Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear bases
hierarchies of social- for
Class and ethnic/national values, seemingly clear Social/national/ ethnic unity.
bases for unity.
Sense of unified, centred self; "individualism," Sense of fragmentation and decentred self; multiple,
unified identity. conflicting
Identities.
The idea of "the family" as the central unit of social Alternative family units, alternatives to middle-class
order: a model of theMiddle-class, nuclear family. marriage model,
Heterosexual norms. Multiple identities for couplings and child rising.
Polysexuality,
exposure of repressed homosexual and homosocial
realities in
Cultures.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control. Subverted order, loss of centralized control,
 fragmentation.
Faith in the "real" beyond media, language, symbols, Hyper-reality, image saturation, simulacra seem
and more powerful than
Representations; the authenticity of "originals." The "real"; images and texts with no prior "original".
"As seen on TV" and "as seen on MTV" are more
powerful than
Unmediated experience.
The dichotomy of high and low culture (official vs. Disruption of the dominance of high culture by
popular culture). popular culture.
Imposed consensus that high or official culture is Mixing of popular and high cultures, new valuation
normative and of pop culture,
Authoritative, the ground of value and Hybrid cultural forms cancel "high"/"low" categories.
discrimination.
Knowledge mastery attempts to embrace a totality. Navigation through information overload,
Quest for information management;
Interdisciplinary harmony. Fragmented, partial knowledge; just-in-time
Paradigms: The Library and The Encyclopaedia. knowledge.
Paradigms: The Web.
Sense of clear generic boundaries and wholeness Hybridity, promiscuous genres, recombinant culture,
(art, music, and Intertextuality,
Literature). Pastiche.
Clear dichotomy between organic and inorganic, Cyborgian mixing of organic and inorganic, human
human and and machine and
Machine. Electronic.
Phallic ordering of sexual difference, unified Androgyny, queer sexual identities, polymorphous
sexualities, sexuality, mass
Exclusion/bracketing of pornography. marketing of pornography, porn style mixing with
mainstream
Images.

Postmodern literatureis a form of literature which is marked, both stylistically and ideologically, by a
reliance on such literary conventions as fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators, often unrealistic and
downright impossible plots, games, parody, paranoia, dark humour and authorial self-
reference.Postmodern authors celebrate multiple meanings in their works, postmodern literature also
often rejects the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' forms of art and literature, as well as the distinctions
between different genres and forms of writing.
Works such as John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse” (1968), Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” (1966),
and John Fowles’ “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1969) helped the movement to attain recognition in
literary criticism.
 Some stylistic techniques that are often used in postmodern literature include:
 Fragmentation: (one of the most prominent elements of postmodern texts) it refers to thebreakdown
of plot, character, theme, and setting. The plot, for instance, is not presented in a realistic or chronological
fashion.Take for instance Sandra Cisneros' “The House on Mango Street” (1984), which is told through a
series of memories orvignettes rather than through the traditional narrative structure expected from a
coming-of-age novel.
 Intertextuality: The acknowledgment of previous literary works within another literary work.
Postmodernism is all about the connections between texts, including the various ways in which one text
references another (or many others). There are all kinds of techniques that authors can use in order to
highlight these links, including pastiche, parody, quotes, and direct references, as well as subtler nods to
other material.
 Pastiche: The taking of various ideas from previous writings and literary styles and pasting them
together to make new styles. Alluding to the act of piecing things together, as in the case of a collage,
pastiche is a postmodern aesthetic that actively encourages creative artists to raid the past in order to set
up a sense of dialogue between it and the present.
 Maximalism: Where minimalism is all about making things neat, tidy, and low key, maximalism goes
against the grain by embracing excess. Postmodernism definitely does not stick to traditional ideas about
plotting and narrative structure, which means authors are more likely to take diversions and explore other
themes and subplots that tickle their fancy. Disorganized, lengthy, highly detailed writing.
 Magical Realism: The introduction of fantastic or impossible elements into a narrative that seems real
or normal. Magical realist novels may include dreams taking place during normal life, the return of
previously deceased characters, extremely complicated plots, wild shifts in time, and myths and fairy tales
becoming part of the narrative. Many critics argue that magical realism has its roots in the works of Jorge
Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.
 Paranoia: Postmodernism grew out of a mid-late 20th-century setting in which technology,
consumerism, and the media were all growing at an insane rate. As the world entered a new era of mass
communication and technology, writers started tapping into the theme of technology going into overdrive
and people being left powerless under its reign. The idea that you are being controlled, that your life is not
your own, is especially horrific for postmodernists, who were all about personal freedom and, frankly,
chaos.
 Metafiction: Many postmodern authors feature metafiction in their writing, i.e., writing about writing,
an attempt to make the reader aware of its fictionality, and, sometimes, the presence of the author.
Historiographic metafiction: The term is used for works of fiction which combine the literary devices of
metafiction with historical fiction and that often contain frequent allusions to other artistic, historical and
literary texts in order to show the extent to which works of both literature and historiography are
dependent on the history of discourse. Works such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The General in his
Labyrinth” (1989) often confound linear historical narrative through the liberal use of anachronism,
temporal distortion, and multiple endings. Such methods are used to challenge the authority of official
histories or are provoked by scepticism as to the possibility of any kind of historical truth.
Metafiction is a literary device used to self-consciously and systematically draw attention to a work's status
as an artefact. It poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and
self-reflection. It differs from realist fiction, which employs all kinds of techniques (linear narrative, cause,
and effect, detailed description, rich characters, and dialogue, etc.) to encourage readers to feel that what
they are reading corresponds with reality. Metafiction, by contrast, obliges its readers to consider first and
foremost its own artifice.
Storytellers have a lot of different reasons for wanting to explore metafiction. Some of them are simply
interested in making the reader step away from the story a little to think critically about everything he has
been told. Others create metafiction as a way to explore the actual process of creation in a potentially fun
and revealing way while simultaneously telling a story. Certain readers dislike metafiction. Some of them
feel it is somewhat pretentious, and they may feel like the author is insulting them by purposefully taking
them out of their suspension of disbelief. Others simply find that it disrupts the flow of a story and makes
fiction less enjoyable. On the other end of the spectrum, those who like metafiction are often very fond of
it, and may actively seek out works where metafictional techniques are employed.
 Some metafictional devices/strategies/techniques include:
 A story about a writer who creates a story.
 A novel where the narrator intentionally exposes him or herself as the author of the story.
 A book in which the book itself seeks interaction with the reader (change parts, comment, etc.).
 An author intruding to comment on the writing or directly addressing the reader.
 Narrative footnotes which continue the story while commenting on it.
 A story in which the characters are aware that they are in a story.
 Self-reflexive images like mirrors, mazes, glass, doubleness, doppelgangers (an apparition or double of a
 Living person), etc.
 Frame-breaking and Chinese box structures (a story within a story).
 Multiple narrators, multiple points of view, multiple endings.

Postmodern authors
MARGARET ATWOOD: She was born in 1939 and raised in Ontario and Quebec; she has published more
than thirty acclaims novels and collection of poems, essays, and stories. An important critic, she has helped
define contemporary Canadian literature and has a distinguished reputation among feminist writers in
North America. Her novels include "Surfacing" (1972), "The handmaid’s tale" (1986), "Alias Grace" (1996)
and some others.
RAYMOND CARVER (1938-1988) was a short-story writer credited with revitalizing the form in the United
States during the 1970s and '80s. Some of his trademarks when writing includes alcohol, poverty and
ordinary people in ordinary but desperate situations. Carver, who also taught writing and wrote poetry,
has been called a "minimalist" because of his spare and realistic fiction. Carver's style has also been
described as "dirty realism" which focused on sadness and loss in the everyday lives of ordinary people—
often lower-middle class or isolated and marginalized people. He died in 1988 at the age of fifty from lung
cancer. (“Your dog dies”, “what we talk when we talk about love-popular mechanics”)

“Your dog dies” it isn't distinguished by any memorable phrase-making or use of poetic devices. The most
memorable thing about it is the total detachment of the main character from any relationship with those
around him. The persona is utterly self-absorbed. He exhibits no emotional bond with the dog, or his
daughter or the screaming woman. Feeling "bad" about something is artificial emotion, really just another
form of self-absorption. It's a devastating characterization. He does get absorbed in his writing. The point
of the wife screaming is the point of the poem. This is not a poem about a dying dog; it is a poem about
how a man gets caught up in himself and in his passion for writing. Just as his sympathy for his daughter is
transformed by his desire and love for the poem, the relationship with the screaming wife has been
transformed into hiding and writing, and the tragedy is that he recognizes that it is killing them. This poem
is not puppy dog dying sad; it is the end of a marriage, the world collapsed tragically.

JOHN BARTH (born May 27, 1930) is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the
postmodernist and metafictional quality of his work. Barth was a professor at The Pennsylvania State
University from 1953 to 1965. During the "American high Sixties," he moved to teach at University at
Buffalo, The State University of New York from 1965 to 1973. In that period he came to know "the
remarkable short fiction" of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges, which inspired his collection Lost in the
Funhouse. He then taught at Boston University (visiting professor, 1972–73) and Johns Hopkins University
(1973–95) before retiring in 1995.
Styles, approaches and artistic criteria:
Barth's work is characterized by a historical awareness of literary tradition and by the practice of rewriting
typically of postmodernism. In Barth's postmodern sensibility, parody is a central device."
Barth's fiction continues to maintain a precarious balance between postmodern self-consciousness and
wordplay and the sympathetic characterization and "page-turning" plotting commonly associated with
more traditional genres and subgenres of classic and contemporary storytelling.
“Lost in the Funhouse” is a short story collection by American author John Barth. The postmodern stories
are extremely self-conscious and self-reflexive and are considered to exemplify metafiction. The book
appeared the year after the publication of Barth's essay “The Literature of Exhaustion”, in which Barth said
that the traditional modes of realistic fiction had been used up, but thatthisexhaustionitselfcould be used
toinspire a new generation ofwriters,citing Nabokov, Beckett, and especially Borges as exemplars of this
new approach. Lost in the Funhouse took these ideas to an extreme, for which it was both praised and
condemned by critics.

PAUL AUSTER: He is an American author and director whose writing blends absurdism, existentialism,
crime, fiction, and the search for identity and personal meaning. Auster gained renown for a series of three
loosely connected detective stories published collectively as “The New York Trilogy”. He uses the detective
form to address existential issues and questions for identity, space, language, and literature, creating his
own distinctively postmodern form in the process.
 Recurrent themes in Paul Auster’s work:
 Coincidence.
 Identity and existentialism.
 A sense of imminent disaster.
 An obsessive writer as a central character or narrator.
 Loss of language and the ability to understand.
 Loss of money having a lot, but losing it little by little.
 Depiction of daily and ordinary life.
 Failure.
 Absence of a father.
 Metafiction, writing and story-telling, Intertextuality.
“The New York Trilogy”: The issues Auster’s characters deal with are the classical problems of post-
modernist criticism: The relationship of a text with reality, the impact of an author’s meaning to the world
through his writing, writing is a great responsibility or just a game, through writing an author engage with
the world or escape from it?. “The New York Trilogy” is ambiguous and open-ended; the stories also seem
closed and claustrophobic. The book invites the reader to approach it from different angles but also works
as a straightforward story-telling.
“City of glass from the New York Trilogy”: This novel is about a detective-fiction writer who descends into
madness as he involves in a case. It explores layers of identity and reality, from Paul Auster the writer of
the novel of the unnamed “author” who reports the events as reality to Paul Auster the writer, a character
in the story, to “Paul Auster the detective” who may or may not exist in the novel to Peter Stillman the
younger, to Peter Stillman the elder, and finally to Daniel Quinn, protagonist. “City of glass” has an
intertextual relationship with Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Not only does the protagonist Daniel Quinn shares
his initials with the knight, but “Paul Auster the writer is writing an article about the authorship of Don
Quixote.
Unit 03
Minority literature: it is an umbrella term for movements in literature toward the end of the twentieth
century which are represented by marginalized gender groups (women, gays, and lesbians) and ethnic
groups (African-Americans, Chicanos, and Chicanas, etc.). This literature which gained considerable
importance over the last few decades sometimes return to more traditional narrative techniques and
genres often privileging socio-political messages over academic playfulness.
 Ethnic studies: (ethnicity NOT race)a term which designates the interdisciplinary study of specific racial
or ethnic minority groups, including African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. The
establishment of ethnic studies departments were motivated by what activists perceived as mainstream
academia’s persistent Eurocentrism and marginalization of the histories of non-white Americans.
African-American studies: An interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of culture, history,
politics, and sociology of African-Americans. Many university programswere implemented during the
1960s and the 1970s in the wake of the civil rights movement and rising of Black Nationalism, in response
to the demands of black students for better inclusion in mainstream American life, and for education more
relevant for their needs. The programs’ aim was to enhance the understanding of black experience in order
to help transform the social condition of African-Americans.
 Queer Theory: A broadly poststructuralist and avowedly radical approach to gender and sexuality. The
queer theory became so named in the early 1990s particularly to the writings of Michael Foucault (1926-
84). Many (but by no means all) queer theorists are gay and lesbian, though queerness has to come to be
associated with all non-normative gendered and sexual experience, including bisexuality, polyamory, and
transgenderism. The queer theory does not work towards the inclusion of excluded groups within
dominant notions of normality, but rather to help envisage circumstances where sexuality and gender can
be lived in less restrictive and more creative ways. Judith Butler’s influential concept of Performativity
understands gender and sexuality as established through repeated social and linguistic performances.
Queer readings identify anxieties relating to gender and sexuality which unsettle a text.
Multiculturalism:
the term refers to a broad range of intellectual and political movements initiated by various ethnic and
religious minorities, feminists, and gays during the last two or three decades during the 20 th c. (All of
these were in their own way opposed to the American or European self-image of homogeneity as
based allegedly on Enlightenment rationality, Anglo Saxon Christianity, the Judeo- Christian tradition or
The Greco-Roman Classical heritage). All demanded both political and legal recognition of their unique
identities and their potential to contribute to the larger political and cultural process.
 There are various views of what multicultural can mean:
Multiracial (negative): The emphasis is on differences in people’s ‘colour’, hair texture and physical build.
Race is the core term here, a concept that is still heavy with nineteenth-century notions of fixed human
physiological types, particularly the mistaken belief that different peoples have fundamentally different
physical and mental capacities. The term racism has a negative effect.
Multi-ethnic: The emphasis is on people’s social organization and cultural practices (dress, marriage
customs, etc) rather than their physiological make-up. Ethnicity avoids the biological determinism of the
term ‘race’ and recognizes the fact that people can be born into a certain group but that they may
subsequently take up the cultural practices of another group. Ethnicity is a term which is positively valued.
Ethnocentrism, conversely, is negatively charged because it refers to the tendency to privilege one culture
before others, which thereby become ignored.
Cultural differences of all kinds: include differences of class, rank, caste, sexuality, gender, occupation,
region, age, dis/ability, etc, as well as race and ethnicity. This extended sense of multiculturalism has the
great advantage that it does not concentrate upon one cultural difference to the potential exclusion of
others. It recognizes cultural differences to be plural and complexly interrelated. Multiculturalism is a term
that can be used in a superficial, merely expedient way.

The English Studies Book: An introduction to language, literature, and culture. (Rob Pope).
Feminismis a politically (because it introduces some change) motivated movement dedicated to personal
and social change. Feminists challenge the traditional power of men (patriarchy) and revalue and celebrate
the roles of women. Language and literature are not treated separately but recognized as part of a larger
and deeply contentious cultural project. In these respects, feminism both influences and is influenced by
Marxist and postcolonial approaches.
Feminism, Gender, and sexuality: (many feminisms, not only one)
 Socialist Feminist (configured with Marxism and cultural materialism).
 Black feminist and women of Colour (Postcolonial or multicultural agendas).
 Radical separatist feminist: (aligned with the lesbian movement)
 Bourgeois or liberal feminist: concerned with selected ‘images’ or relatively privileged women, but not
with the representation of working-class women and women of colour or with lesbian and gay politics as
such.
Gender and sexuality: Studying them entails investigating not only the cultural constructions of women
and men but also the shifting relations and changing evaluations of heterosexuality and homosexuality in
general. These approaches have much common as well as some disputed ground. Both were initially
concerned with ‘images of women’, extending latterly to ‘images of men’ and ‘gays’. Critics and scholars
set about recovering and re-valuing previously marginalized traditions or suppressed works by women,
gays and/or lesbians themselves.
 Some major figures and movements:
 Sex: refers to our physiological make-up and those biological differences which determine us as female
or male, differences of chromosomes, genitals, hormones.
 Gender: refers to our social make-up and those culturally constructed differences which distinguish us
as feminine or masculine: differences of dress, social role, expectations, etc.
Gender stereotypes show up many people expectations of what is to be a girl/woman or a boy/man. They
also reinforce dominant notions of how women and men speak and write, and what subjects or areas of
life they speak and write about. For example, In terms of genres, stereotypically, men like war stories and
perhaps pornography, whereas women like romances and perhaps domestic soap-operas. Clearly, these
stereotypes do not correspond to observable patterns. They by no means apply to all men and women. Nor
do they apply to all historical periods and cultures, or to all parts of nominally ‘the same’ society. Gender
differences are therefore always inflected with other multicultural differences of period, class, caste,
nation, religion, age and familiar role.
Sexuality refers to sexual orientation and the play of desire across a wide range of objects, subject
positions, and practices.

Feminist criticism (Lois Tyson) examines the ways in which literature (And other cultural productions)
reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women.
Traditional gender roles: traditional gender roles cast men as rational, strong, protective, and decisive;
they cast women as emotional (irrational), weak and submissive. These gender roles have been used very
successfully to justify inequities such as excluding women from equal access to leadership and decision-
making positions, paying men higher wages than women for doing the same job, and convincing women
that they are not fit for careers in such areas as mathematics and engineering.
A patriarchal person is a person who has internalized the norms and values of patriarchy. Patriarchy
continually exerts forces that undermine women’s self-confidence and assertiveness. Then, point to the
absence of these qualities as proof that women are naturally, and therefore, correctly, self-effacing and
submissive. Patriarchal gender roles are destructive for women as well for men. For example, because
traditional gender roles dictate that men are supposed to be strong, they are not supposed to cry because
crying is considered a sign of weakness.
Patriarchal ideology suggests that there are only two identities a woman can have. If she accepts her
traditional gender role and obeys the patriarchal rules, she is a ‘good girl’; if she does not, she is a ‘bad girl’.
These two roles view women only in terms of how they relate to the patriarchal order. But it is patriarchy
that will do the defining because both roles are projections of patriarchal male desire. (‘Good or bad girls’
notions vary according to the time and place in which they live).
According to patriarchal ideology, ‘bad girls’ violate patriarchal sexual norms in some way: they’re sexually
forward in appearance or behaviour, or they have multiple sexual partners. Men sleep with ‘bad girls’, but
they do not marry them. The role of a wife is only appropriate for a properly submissive ‘good girl’. The
‘good girl’ is rewarded for her behaviour by being place on a pedestal by patriarchal culture. The problem
with pedestals is that they are small and leave a woman very little room to do anything but fulfil the
prescribed role. For another thing, pedestals are shaky. One can easily fall off a pedestal, and when a
woman does, she is often punished. She suffers self-recrimination for her inadequacy or ‘unnaturalness’.
Patriarchy objectifies both ‘bad girls’ and ‘good girls’. That is, like objects, women exist, according to
patriarchy, to be used without consideration of their own perspectives, feelings, or opinions.
Feminist premises:
 Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, physically, socially, and psychological,
patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so.
 In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is the other: she is marginalized, defined only by her
difference from male norms and values.
 All western civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the biblical portrayal of
Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world.
 While biology determines sex, culture determines gender.
 All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has its ultimate goal to change the
world by promoting gender equality.
 Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production
and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not.

Historical background: Waves of feminism:

 First Wave Feminism: (the late 1700s- early 1900s) writers like Mary Wollstonecraft highlight the
inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the
women’s suffrage movement, which leads to national Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the
nineteenth amendment.
 Second Wave Feminism: (the early 1960s- late 1970s) building on more equal working conditions
necessary in America during the World War II, movements such as “The National Organization for
Women” (NOW). Writers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for
the dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.
 Third Wave feminism (the early 1990s- 2000s) resisting the perceived essentialist ideologies and a
white, heterosexual, middle-class focus of second-wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-
structural and contemporary gender and race theories to expand on marginalized population’s
experiences.
 Fourth Wave feminism (-2010’s- present): It is the resurgence of interest in feminism that began around
2012 and is associated with the use of social media and technology. The focus of the fourth wave is justice
for women and also opposition to sexual harassment and violence against women. It is defined “by
technology” and is characterized by the use of social networking to challenge misogyny and further gender
quality. Issues that fourth- wave feminists focus on include street and workplace harassment, campus
sexual assault and rape culture. Some examples of these campaigns include “the Everyday Sexism project”,
“niunamenos”, “yes all women” and the “me too movement”.

 Multicultural feminism: While all women are subjects to patriarchal oppression, each woman’s specific
needs, desires, and problems are greatly shaped by her race, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation,
educational experience, religion, and nationality. Patriarchy operates differently in different countries.
Furthermore, even within the borders of a single country, cultural differences affect women’s experience
of patriarchy. For example, the experience of patriarchy for women of colour is inseparable from their
experience of racism. Lesbian’s experience of patriarchy is inseparable from her experience of
heterosexism. Poor women’s experience of patriarchy is inseparable from their experience of classicism.
Therefore, the promotion ofsisterhood- psychological and political bonding among women based on the
recognition of common experiences and goals- must include respect for and attention to individual
differences among women as well as equitable distribution of power among various cultural groups within
feminist leadership.
 African American Feminist has been especially helpful in revealing the political and theoretical
limitations inherent white mainstream feminists’ neglected of cultural experience different from their own.
Black feminists have analyzed the ways in which gender oppression can not be understood apart from
racial expression. The logic was circular and deadly: a woman whose racial or economic situation forced
her into hard labour and made her the victim of sexual predators was defined as unwomanly and therefore
unworthy of protection from those who exploited her. This view was held by men (white and black), and by
white women as well. Black women could expect neither gender solidarity from white women nor racial
solidarity from black men.
Gender studies and queer theory: (Gender(s), power, and marginalization).
Gender studies and queer theory explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized populations in
literature and culture. A primary concern in gender studies and queer theory is the manner in which
gender and sexuality are discussed. Therefore, a critic working in gender studies and queer theory might
even be uncomfortable with the binary established by many feminist scholars between masculine and
feminine. Many critics working with gender and queer theory are interested in the breakdown of binaries
such as male and female, the in-betweens.

Chicano literature (the 1960s): It is the literature written by Mexican Americans in The United States and
can be written in English, Spanish, or even a combination of the two.The rise of this literature took place in
the late 1960s, as part of the Chicano movement and the increasing awareness of the presence and
cultural contributions of people of Mexican descendent in the U.S. Chicano literature’s creative
articulations of a unique identity transverses borders and cultures.
The word Chicano refers to ‘people of Mexican ancestry who have resided permanently in the United
States for an extended period. Chicanos can be native-born citizens or Mexican-born immigrants who have
adapted to life in the United States” (RaymundParedes). The term adds political sensibility and asserted
self-awareness of a cultural identity that can not be separated from social and material struggles for
equality and inclusion. The term includes a feminine form.
Themes: Chicano Literature tends to focus on themes of identity, discrimination, culture, and history, with
an emphasis on validating the Mexican experience or Chicano culture in the United States. It is often
associated with the social and cultural claims of the Chicano movement. Writing is a vehicle for Chicanos
to express and represent themselves, and also often a voice of social critique and protest. Other themes
include the experience of migration, the situation of living between two languages, and the border: the
ways in which Chicanos are on both sides or cross the border.
Sandra Cisneros: She is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel “The house on Mango
Street” (1984). Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions,
which she attributes to growing up in a context of cultural Hybridity and economic inequality.
(Cisneros grew up as the only daughter in a family of six brothers, which made her feel isolated, and the
constant migration of her family between Mexico and the USA instilled her with the sense of
unhomeliness. Cisneros’ work deals with the formation of Chicana identity, facing misogynist attitudes, and
experiencing poverty. For her insightful social critique and powerful prose style, Cisneros has achieved
recognition worldwide and her novel is taught in American classrooms as a coming-of-age novel.
Construction of femininity and female sexuality: The lives of all Cisneros’ female characters are affected
by how femininity and female sexuality are defined within the patriarchal value system and they must
struggle to rework these definitions. She shows how Chicanas, like women of many other ethnicities,
internalize patriarchal norms starting at a young age, through informal education by family members and
popular culture. Traditional female roles, such as childrearing, cooking, and attracting male attention are
understood by Cisneros’ characters to be their biological destiny. However, when they reach adolescence
and womanhood, they must reconcile their expectations about love and sex with their own experiences of
disillusionment, confusion, and anguish.
Construction of Chicana identity: The challenges Cisneros’ characters faced on account of their gender can
not be understood in isolation from their culture. Through her works, Cisneros conveys the experiences of
Chicanas confronting the “deeply rooted patriarchal values” of Mexican culture, through interactions not
only with Mexican fathers but the whole community which applies pressure upon them to conform to a
narrow definition of womanhood and a subservient position to men.
The House on Mango Street (1984): It is a coming-of-age novel by a Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros. It
deals with Esperanza Cordero, a young Latino girl, and her life growing up in Chicago with Chicanos and
Puerto Ricans.
Major themes include her quest for a better life and the importance of her promise to come back for “the
ones she left behind”.
The novel is made up of vignettes; these can be as short as two or three paragraphs long and sometimes
contain certain internal rhymes. Esperanza narrates these vignettes, which are not like poems and not
quite full stories, in first person present tense.
The novel also includes the stories of many Esperanza’s neighbours, giving a picture of the neighbourhood
and the many influences that surrendered her. Esperanza is searching for her identity. She is many things:
she comes from a poor family, she is a female adolescent, and she is Mexican. She sorts out all of these
parts of herself through her writing, and she discovers that despite all the things that define her, what is
the most important part of her identity is her ability to write.
Unit 03-Literary Texts
Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-2004): She was an American scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and
queer theory. She based her best-known book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, on her life
growing up on the Mexico-Texas border and incorporates her lifelong feelings of social and cultural
marginalization into her work. She also developed theories about the marginal, in-between, and mixed
cultures that develop along borders.
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987): this book examines the condition of women in Chicano
and Latino culture and discusses several critical issues related to Chicana experiences: heteronormativity,
colonialism, and male dominance. The book is divided into half essay and poetry. The term borderlands,
according to Anzaldúa, refers to the geographical area that is most susceptible to la mezcla (hybridity),
neither fully of Mexico nor fully of the United States. She also uses this term to identify a growing
population that becomes a part of both worlds.

Maurice Kilwein Guevara: Poet, playwright, and actor Guevara was born in Colombia, and raised in
Pittsburgh. Guevara’s poems often use overlapping voices and languages to explore the tensions and
simultaneities that complicate the lives of immigrants in mid-America. Poem: “Doña Josefina
councelsDoña Concepción before entering Sears (1996)” (multiculturalism).

Langston Hughes (1901-1967): He was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and
columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was an innovator of thenew literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes
is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He famously wrote about the period
that “The negro was in vogue”, which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in Vogue”. Poem: “I,
Too (1926)”: First-person narration representing all African-Americans (multiculturalism-African American
Studies).

Maya Angelou (1928-2014): American poet, memoirist, activist and actress whose several volumes of
autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression. As a civil rights activist, she
worked for Martin Luther King and Malcon X. Although her writing is shaped by her experiences as an
African-American, the topics and issues Angelou deal with remain universal. Poem: “Still I rise (1978)”: We
can connect it with African-American Feminist criticism. (Multiculturalism).

Benjamin Zephaniah: He is blessed with a verbal musicality inspired by his Caribbean heritage. In 2008 he
appeared in The Times list of top 50 post-war writers. Zephaniah’s work addresses global issues such as
racism, animal cruelty and social justice, through rich humour, drawing on rap and dub rhythms he makes
his poetry accessible to children and popular in school. His work is often described as ‘Dub poetry’, a form
of oral performance poetry that is sometimes staged to music and which typically draws on the rhythms of
reggae and the rhetoric of Rastafarism. Poem: “Man to man (1992)” (feminist criticism-gender roles).

Danez Smith: He is a black, queer American poet. He is the co-author of the poetry collection “(Insert) Boy”
which won the Lambda Literary Award for gay poetry. Poems: “Alternate names for black boys” (Racial
profile) - “Differences”.

Denice Frohman: She is an award-winning poet and educator whose work explores the intersections of
race, gender, sexuality, and the “in-betweness” that exists in us all. Her poem “Dear straight people” went
viral over 1.5 million YouTube views. She has performed and taught poetry across the country and is part
of the spoken word duo, Sister Outsider. Poem: “Dear Straight People”: (It is an open letter to
heteronormative society. Her poem highlights the micro and macro aggressions that queer people have to
deal with. She shows the scenarios in which straight privilege causes harm to the queer community. What
can be taken away from this poem is the idea that Love and authenticity are worth more than the cost of
assimilating to society’s preferences).

Speculative Fiction
Speculative Fiction: It is a broad category of narrative fiction that includes elements, settings and
characters created out of imagination and speculation rather than based on reality and everyday life. It
includes the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, alternative history and magic realism. It typically
has elements that do not exist in real life or are inexplicable through science. The term also embraces
works that do not fit neatly into the separate genres. Examples of speculative fiction may run the range
from outright weird to superhero fiction: “The call of Cthulu” by H.P. Lovecraft or “The Metamorphosis” by
Kafka.

Three Major Genres:

1. Science Fiction (sci-fi, SF): It is a term that applies to those narratives in which an explicit attempt is
made to make plausible the fictional world by reference to known or imagined scientific principles, or to a
projected advance in technology, or to a drastic change in society. These include space exploration, time
travel, ecological change, alien visitation or the familiar human world transformed by new technology.
Some SF stories are concerned with utopian visions, while others are dystopian or apocalyptic. SF provides
escapism from reality, but equally imagines scenarios which provoke serious questions about what is o be
a human, the nature of reality, perception and power.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is often considered a precursor of SF, but the basing of fictional worlds
on explicit and coherently developed scientific principles did not occur until later in the 19 th C., in such
writings as Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth and H.G. Wells’ The War of Worlds. Some
contemporary writers of SF are Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Ballard and Lessing.

2. Fantasy: It concentrates on anything that an author can imagine outside of reality. Imaginary elements
such as magic, the supernatural, alternate worlds, monsters, fairies, magical creatures, mythological
heroes, etc. These fantasy, magical or supernatural elements serve as the foundation of the plot, setting,
characterization, or storyline in general. Fantasy is as old as the fictional utopias, and its satiric forms have
an important precursor in the extraordinary countries portrayed in Swift’s Gulliver’s travels (1726). Some
contemporary writers of fantasy are Tolkien (The Hobbit, the lord of the rings), Martin (a song of ice and
fire series).
One fantasy subgenre is medieval fantasy (medievalist in nature, focused on topics such as King Arthur and
his Knights, royal court, sorcery, magic, etc.)

3. Horror: This genre main purpose is to develop and atmosphere of horror creating the feeling of fear,
dread, repulsion, and terror in the audience. Horror Literature has its roots in religion, folklore, and history.
Focusing on topics, fears, and curiosities that have continuously bothered humans. Horror feed on
audience’s deepest terrors by putting life’s most frightening things such as death, evil, supernatural
powers, creatures, the afterlife, witchcraft – at the centre of attention.
 Name of the sub-
Description Example
genre
Epic/High Stories that are set in an imaginary world and/or epic in nature;
The lord of rings.
Fantasy meaning they feature a hero on some type of epic.
It incorporates darker and frightening themes of fantasy. It also Coraline and the
Dark fantasy combines elements of horror and fantasy having a dark Sandman by Neil
atmosphere, or a sense of horror. Gailman.
Its style combines the artistic pleasures of romantic literature with
Dracula, Allan Poe’s
Gothic Horror the frightening elements of horror, making it terrifying and
stories.
seductive in a pleasing way.
A mixed genre which combines elements of both SF and Fantasy. A
science fantasy world contains elements which violate the scientific
Science fantasy laws of the real world. Nevertheless, the world of science fantasy is Nimona
logical and often supplied with science-like explanations of these
violations.
The events take place partially or entirely within “the virtual reality”
Cyberpunk formed by computers, in which the characters may be either The matrix
human, cybernetic or artificial intelligence.
(perfect) Takes place in a highly desirable society, often presented
Utopia Ecotopia
as advanced, happy, intelligent or even problem-free.
Takes place in a highly undesirable society, often plagued with strict
Dystopia The hunger games
control, violence, chaos, brainwashing, etc.
Focusing on historical events as if they happened in a different way
Alternate History Fatherland
and their implications on the present.
(A subgenre of speculative fiction)The earth’s civilization is
Apocalyptic/post- collapsing or has collapsed. It focuses on a group of survivors
The road by McCarthy
apocalyptic during/after a massive disaster. It may be climatic, natural, and
man-made.
It encompasses the ghost story and other tales of the macabre. It is H.P. Lovecraft and
Weird fiction distinguished from horror and fantasy in its blending of some Edgar Allan Poe’s
supernatural, mythical, or even scientific motifs. stories.
It relies heavily on supernatural or paranormal elements to drive
the story like ghosts, monsters, aliens, zombies and so on. The main
Supernatural Stephen King and Edgar
source of terror is the human reaction to being faced with the
horror Allan Poe’s stories
unknown, usually in the midst of a serious conflict such as a
possession, an invasion, etc.
Centres on superheroes and their fight against evil forces such as
The Avengers,
Superhero supervillains. Typically incorporates elements of SF and/or fantasy,
Superman
and may be a subgenre of them.

What is speculative fiction?

It is the fiction in which the author speculates upon the results of changing what is real or possible, not
how a character would react to a certain event in real life, etc. Speculative fiction is any fiction in which the
“laws” of that world (explicit or implied) are different than ours. This fiction takes our existing world and
changes it by asking “What if...” This opens up the three major genres to include others as well, such as
alternate history, weird tales, dystopian, apocalyptic, time travel, superhero, etc. It also excludes SF and
horror that does not speculate (horror without supernatural elements, or SF based on current technology).
MOVEMENT AUTHOR TITLE COMMENTARY
Wilfred Owen
War Poetry Futility It is a poem about how useless are wars.
(1893-1918)
Siegfried
Does it It is an ironic poem. It is related to the physical and mental
Sassoon
matter? consequences of wars.
(1886-1967)
Tony McNally
It is a poem related to the traumatic stress disorder that
(1963-) PTSD
soldiers suffer after war.
Malvinas war
Gustavo Caso
Rosendi El último It is a poem about how much war can affect a person until
(1962-) enemigo. the point he commits suicide.
MalvinasWar
Ezra Pound In a station It refers to people in the metro. It rhymes but does not
Imagism
(1885-1972) of the metro have meter.
Alba It is about two lovers that go away in the dawn.
It does not have meter and rhyme. The basic idea is that
The Garret
money cannot guarantee happiness.
H.D. Hilda
The poem is focused only in the image of the sea
Doolittle Oread
crashing the earth. (Free verse)
(1886-1961)
The persona is talking with his/her reflection in the water
The Pool
of the pool.
William
It appears to be a piece of found poetrybecause the
Carlos This is just to
poems of this author are cantered on every day
Williams say
circumstances.
(1883-1963)
William Butler
When you
Modernism Yeats (1865- It is about unrequited love.
are old.
1939)
The Stolen
It is related to the representation of innocence.
Child
The Second It is related of how the world was after WWI. Also it is
Coming considered to be an apocalyptic poem.
This short story focuses on a young Irish woman, who
plans to leave her abusive father and poverty-stricken
James Joyce Eveline
existence in Ireland, and seek out a new, better life for
herself and her lover Frank in Buenos Aires.
It is a short story that goes straight from zero to super
Odour of depressing at lightning speed. It follows the story of the
D.H.
Lawrence
Chrysanthe Bates family on what initially appears to be a typical and
mums relatively boring evening in their lives…but quickly turns
into so much more.
It is a short story from the collection “Mondays and
Tuesdays”. The author used innovative techniques such
Virginia Woolf Kew Garden
as: Zooming in/out, panoramic view, etc. It is about four
couples that belong to different social classes.
Post Margaret Happy
It is an experimental story that challenges the reader.
Modernism Atwood Endings
It is about the total detachment of the main character
Raymond Your dog from any relationship with those around him. This poem
Carver dies is not puppy dog dying sad; it is the end of a marriage, the
world collapsed tragically.
Popular It is a minimalistic poem that minimizes the death of a
Mechanics baby.
 It is a self-referential story that explains us how
John Barth Title
metafiction works.
It is from the Ney York Trilogy. It is about a detective-
fiction writer who descends into madness as he involves
in a case. The author uses a detective form to address
Paul Auster City of Glass
existential issues and questions for identity, space,
language, and literature, creating his own distinctively
postmodern form in the process.
The house It is a coming-of-age novel. It deals with a young Chicana
Chicano Sandra
on Mango girl called Esperanza Cordero who is searching for her
Literature Cisneros
street identity.
Borderlands/ This book examines the condition of women in Chicano
Chicano Gloria La frontera: and Latino culture and discusses several critical issues
Literature Anzaldúa The new related to Chicana experiences: heteronormativity,
Mestiza colonialism, and male dominance.
“Doña
Josefina
Councels
Maurice
Doña This poem explores the tensions and simultaneities that
Ethnic studies Kilwein
Concepcion complicate the lives of immigrants in Mid-America.
Guevara
Before
entering
Sears”
This poem demonstrates a desire for equality through
perseverance while disapproving the idea
African-
Langston that patriotism is limited by race.The author writes from
American “I, too”
Hughes the perspective of an inferior servant to a domineering
Studies
white family that send him away to the kitchen whenever
company arrives.
The poem is written in first person speaker 'I' where the 'I'
African- “The negro stand for all the African-American people and their
Langston
American speaks of collective voices for the freedom. This poem is also taken
Hughes
Studies rivers” as the adoring acceptance of the poet’s own race and its
root.
African- It is a reminder of the abuse of power by those who sit in
American Maya government, the judiciary, in the military and in the police
“Still I Rise”
(feminist Angelou force. For members of the public, for society, it sends a
criticism) clear, repeated message of hope.
Feminist Benjamin “Man to This poem exposes the traditional patriarchal gender roles
Criticism Zephaniah man” and criticizes them.
African– “Alternate
This poem highlights many black people’s difficulties. For
American Danez Smith names for
example, racism and racial profile.
Studies black boys”
It is about two boys that are together but they suffer
Queer studies Danez Smith “Differences” discrimination by homophobic people. The persona taking
the role of two men.
Her poem highlights the micro and macro aggressions
that queer people have to deal with. She shows the
“Dear
Denice scenarios in which straight privilege causes harm to the
Queer studies straight
Frohman queer community. The main idea is that Love and
people”
authenticity are worth more than the cost of assimilating to
society’s preferences
It is a horror, gothic horror short story.This story also
Horror/Gothic Edgar Allan The cask of
shows us tragedy as a result of betrayal, madness and
horror Poe Amontillado
revenge since one of the characters wants retribution.
Fantasy/ Ken Liu The paper It is a fantasy/magic realism short story about a bi-racial
magic realism Menagerie boy named Jack, who has a white dad and a Chinese
mom, who immigrated to America. This story is about
 migration, culture, identity, discrimination and family.
SF It is a science fiction and speculative short story.Story of
Story of your
Speculative Ted Chiang Your Life" is about the power and value of communication,
life
fiction alien’s arrival and how someone deals with the inevitable.
Dark fantasy It is a Dark fantasy Weird fiction and Supernatural horror
Weird fiction H. P. The call of graphic novel written by H. P. Lovecraft and illustrated by
Supernatural Lovecraft Cthulhu John Coulthart. Its main themes are monsters in the earth
horror and the inability to escape from destiny.
Science
fantasy/ Nimona is a science/ medieval fantasy and Science fiction
Noelle
Medieval Nimona webcomic. Nimona is about friendship, morality, secrecy,
Stevenson
fantasy/ trauma and maturity.
Science fiction