LIT CRIT
Karl Marx
LIT CRIT
Base vs. Superstructure
- Base in Marxism refers to economic base. Superstructure, according to Marx and
- Proponent of Marxism
- Marx’s was influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
Marxist Criticism
- The Marxist theory combines philosophy, sociology, and economic theory to assert that society is fundamentally created in relation to its economic structure.
- Concerned with class differences, economic, and otherwise, and the implications and complications of the capitalism.
The Material Dialectic
- Belief system that maintains that what causes historical change is “the material realities of the economic base of society, rather than the ideological superstructure of politics, law, philosophy, religion, and art that is built upon that economic base.”
- Marx asserts that "...stable societies develop sites of resistance: contradictions build into the social system that ultimately lead to social revolution and the development of a new society upon the old"
- This cycle of contradiction, tension, and revolution must continue: there will always be conflict between the upper, middle, and lower (working) classes and this conflict will be reflected in literature and other forms of expression - art, music, movies, etc.
The Revolution
- Continuing conflict between the classes leads to upheaval and revolution by oppressed peoples, forming the groundwork for a new order of society and economics (where capitalism is abolished).
- According to Marx, the revolution will be led by the working class under the guidance of intellectuals.
- Once the elite and middle class are overthrown, the intellectuals will compose an equal society where everyone owns everything.
Communism
- is the system of government based on public ownership of property. It is closely aligned with the ideas of Marxism
Sociology
- the study of society and social issues.
Engels, emerges from this base and consists of law, politics, philosophy, religion, art.
Historical materialism
- the Marxist approach to history that holds the view that social change (superstructure) takes place in relation to the economic base.
Dialectical materialism
- the combination of dialectics (philosophy) and materialism that forms the theoretical foundation of Marxism. It examines the nature of things from the framework of materialism.
Bourgeoisie (or bourgeois)
- a member of the middle class with materialist and conventional values.
Proletariat
- members of the working class.
Ideology
- the shared beliefs and values held in an unquestioning manner by a culture. It governs what that culture deems to be normative and valuable. For Marxists, ideology is determined by economics. A rough approximation: "tell me how much money you have and I'll tell you how you think."
Hegemony
- coined by the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, this "refers to the pervasive system of assumptions, meanings, and values -- the web of ideologies, in other words, that shapes the way things look, what they mean, and therefore what reality is for the majority of people within a given culture"
Reification
- often used to describe the way in which people are turned into commodities useful in market exchange. For example, some would argue that the media's obsession with tragedy (e.g., the deaths of Jon Benet Ramsay, Princiess Diana, John F. Kennedy Jr., the Mamasapano Massacre) make commodities out of grieving people. The media expresses sympathy but economically thrives on these events through ratings boost.
Patriarchy
- a system of government and social organization in which men are dominant and hold positions of power.
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Dr. Jose P. Rizal
● Birth: June 19, 1861, Calamba, Laguna
● Death: December 30, 1896, Bagumbayan, Manila
● Full Name: José Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda
● Pseudonyms: Laong-Laan and Dimasalang
● Parents: Teodora Alonso Realonda (mother) and Francisco Mercado (father)
● Spouse: Josephine Bracken (m. 1896–1896)
● Puppy and First Love: Segunda Katigbak
● Greatest Love: Leonor Rivera
El Filibusterismo
- Second book, the first is Noli Me Tangere
- The Reign of Greed
- considered as the work of the head and a book of thought
- contains 34 chapters
- dedicated to the three martyred priests of Cavite Mutiny – the GOMBURZA (Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora
- first written in Calamba, then in London, then in Brussels where Rizal finished writing
- first published in Ghent, Belgium and was financed by Valentin Ventura
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THE 12 ARCHETYPES
The Innocent
● The promise of the Innocent is that life need not be hard.
● The Innocent is the spontaneous, trusting child that, while a bit dependent, has the optimism to take the journey.
● The Innocent, fearing abandonment, seeks safety. Their greatest strength is the trust and optimism that endears them to others and so gain help and support on their quest.
● Their main danger is that they may be blind to their obvious weaknesses or perhaps deny them. They can also become dependent on others to fulfill their heroic tasks.
The Orphan
● The Orphan understands that everyone matters, just as they are.
● It reveals a deep structure influenced by the wounded or orphaned child that expects very little from life, but that teaches us with empathy, realism, and street smarts.
● The Orphan, fearing exploitation, seeks to regain the comfort of the womb and neonatal safety in the arms of loving parents.
● A hazard is that they will fall into the victim mentality and so never achieve a heroic position.
The Warrior
● When everything seems lost the Warrior rides over the hill and saves the day.
● This archetype helps us set and achieve goals, overcome obstacles, and persist in difficult times, although it also tends to see others as enemies and to think in either/or terms.
● The Warrior is relatively simple in their thought patterns, seeking simply to win whatever confronts them, including the dragons that live inside the mind and their underlying fear of weakness.
The Caregiver
● The Caregiver is an altruist, moved by compassion, generosity, and selflessness to help others.
● Caregivers first seek to help others, which they do with compassion and generosity.
● A risk they take is that in their pursuit to help others they may end up being harmed themselves.
● They dislike selfishness, especially in themselves, and fear what it might make them.
The Seeker
● The Seeker leaves the known to discover and explore the unknown. This inner rugged individual braves loneliness and isolation to seek out new paths.
The Lover
● The Lover archetype governs all kinds of love—from parental love, to friendship, to spiritual love—but we know it best in romance.
The Destroyer
● The Destroyer embodies repressed rage about structures that no longer serve life even when these structures still are supported by society or by our conscious choices.
The Creator
● The Creator archetype fosters all imaginative endeavors, from the highest art to the smallest innovation in lifestyle or work.
The Ruler
● The Ruler archetype inspires us to take responsibility for our own lives, in our fields of endeavor, and in the society at large.
● If he/she overcomes the temptation to dominate others, the developed Ruler creates environments that invite in the gifts and perspectives of all concerned.
The Magician
● The Magician archetype searches out the fundamental laws of science and/or metaphysics to understand how to transform situations, influence people, and make visions into realities.
The Sage
● The Sage archetype seeks the truths that will set us free. Especially if the Sage overcomes the temptation of dogma, it can help us become wise, to see the world and ourselves objectively, and to course-correct based on objective analyses of the results of our actions and choices.
The Fool or Jester
● The Fool/Jester archetype urges us to enjoy the process of our lives. Although the Fool/Jester can be prone to
● laziness and dissipation, the positive Fool/Jester invites us all out to play--showing us how to turn our work, our
● interactions with others, and even the most mundane tasks into FUN.
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Sigmund Freud - Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in the psyche, through dialogue between patient and psychoanalyst, and the distinctive theory of mind and human agency derived from it.
Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses.
Freudian Theory
The Unconsciousness is composed of:
● Id - "...the location of the drives" or libido; seeks pleasure, avoids pain
● Ego - "...one of the major defenses against the power of the drives..." and home of the defenses listed above; balances id and super-ego
● Superego - the area of the unconscious that houses judgment (of self and others) and "...which begins to form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex;" strives for perfection
Carl Jung - Jungian Psychoanalytic Theory
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religious studies.
Components of psyche include:
● Self - the regulating center of the psyche; what makes us individuals
● Ego - as in Freud’s theory, the decision-making component of the self
● Shadow - the opposite of the ego, often contains qualities the ego denies, but possesses (can cause projection, transference, and neuroses)
● Animus/anima - the masculine image in a woman’s psyche/ the feminine image in man’s psyche (develops through stages from generally negative to accepting as equals)
● Persona (mask) - how one presents self to the world; not necessarily deceptive
Carl Jung defined 12 archetypes that symbolize basic human motivations, as well as drive our desires and goals.
Lewis Carrol - Alice in Wonderland
● Birth: January 27, 1832, Daresbury, United Kingdom
● Death: January 14, 1898, Guildford, United Kingdom
● Full Name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
● an English author, poet, mathematician, and photographer
● noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy
● most works are classified under literary nonsense (a type of fiction that often defies common sense and creates an entirely new world through the manipulation of language)
Notable Works of Lewis Carrol
➢ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
➢ Through the Looking-Glass
➢ Jabberwocky
➢ The Hunting of the Snark
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Formalism - The Wedding Dance
Formalists focus on literary elements such as plot, character, setting, diction, imagery, structure, and point of view.
Formalists treat each work as its own distinct piece, free from its environment, era, and even author.
Formalism is a reaction to "...forms of 'extrinsic' criticism that viewed the text as either the product of social and historical forces or a document making an ethical statement"
Formalists assume that the keys to understanding a text exist within "the text itself," and thus focus a great deal on form
Amador Daguio - The Wedding Dance
● Birth: January 8, 1912 – Laoag, Ilocos Norte
● Death: April 26, 1966
● Parents: Sixto Daguio and Magdalena Taguinod Daguio
● Spouse: Estela Fermin Daguio
● Was mentored in English by Tom Inglis Moore
Notable Works of Amador Daguio
➢ Hudhud hi Aliguyon (a translation of an Ifugao harvest song, Stanford, 1952)
➢ The Flaming Lyre (a collection of poems, Craftsman House, 1959)
➢ The Thrilling Poetical Jousts of Balagtasan (1960)
➢ Bataan Harvest (war poems, A.S Florentino, 1973)
➢ The Woman Who Looked Out the Window (a collection of short stories, A.S Florentino, 1973)
➢ The Fall of Bataan and Corregidor (1975)
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Moral Criticism is basically concerned with the rights and wrongs of values, ethics or norms people uphold, what is good and bad about what people do, or the rights and wrongs of the conditions people face.
Dramatic Constructions is what goes into a play or a piece of literature to make it successful.
Plato believed that art was a mediocre reproduction of nature. If art teaches no ethics, then it’s damaging to its audience, and for Plato this damaged his Republic.
- The Republic
Aristotle believed that Poetry and rhetoric as a productive science. There is a basic guidelines to achieve certain objectives.
Typical Thought…
Moral critics ask what the moral value of the work is and accept it or reject it based upon its compatibility with their moral code or beliefs.
Dramatic constructionists ask if the work meets criteria by which it should be judged (how effective it is in achieving certain objectives).
Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy or La Divina Comedia
● Known as the greatest literary genius of Italy.
● Born in Florence
● In loved with Beatrice Portinari
● After the death of Beatrice, he entered the intense philosophy study.
About The Divine Comedy
- A journey to Inferno, Purgatoryo, and Paradiso
- 100 chapters
- 34 chapters for the Inferno
- 33 chapters both Purgatorio and Paradiso
1. Dante found himself lost in the dark.
2. A poet named Virgil approached him.
3. The Gate of Hell. Virgil explained that confined here are those who are neither good or evil.
4. The River Acheron
THE 9 CIRCLES OF HELL
1st Circle - The Limbo
● Lived a virtuous life but not been baptized.
● Dante saw Plato, Aristotle, Socrates
● King Minos “Infernal Judge” - Guards the second gate.
2nd Circle - The Lust
● Punishment: Forever in Violent Storm
● Dante saw Helen of Troy and Paris
3rd Circle - The Gluttony
● Excessive eating
● Punsihment: Lie down in the mud
● Cerberus (multi-headed dogs)
● Constant fall of snow and haild, water is stagnant.
4th Circle - The Greed
● Punishment: Eternal pushing boulders
5h Circle - The Anger
● The River Styx
● Punishment: Forever attacking one another
● The City of Dis
● The sins of “Malice,” most hated by God.
6th Circle - The Heresy
● They denied the existence of God
● Punsihment: Flaming Graves
7th Circle - The Violence
● Guarded by Minotaur
● Violence against Neighbors (Immersed in the boiling blood)
● Violence against Self (The woods of suicide, souls are encased in thorny trees)
● Violence against God (lain over burning sand or run in circles)
● Centaurs shot arrows to those who will scape.
8th Circle of Hell - The Fraud
● Guilty of deliberate evil.
● Each sin has corresponding punishments
● Dante and Virgil lowered to the pit of 9th circle, they found Antaeus and Nimrod, the giants.
9th Circle - The treachery
● Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca
● Caina (betrayed their family) - The Frozen lake
● Antenora (betrayed their country)
● Ptolomea (betrayed their guests) - tears pierce their eyes
● Judecca (traitors to their Lords) - The Lair of Lucifer - Found the body of Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot after their betrayal to Christ
They emerge from Hell on Easter morning just before sunrise.
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Literary Movements
- Are groupings of writers who share similar aims, years of publication, and a base of operations.
1. Metaphysical Movement
➢ Mostly 17th century English poetic mode
➢ Exhibit introspective meditations on love, death, God, and human frailty.
➢ Much more realistic
➢ Famous for its difficulty and obscurity
➢ Wit, irony, and paradox is paramount
➢ Wit is often seen in the pairing of dissimilar objects into the service of a clever, ironic analogy or paradoxical conceit.
➢ Elaborate stylistic maneuvers (ornamental conceits, dazzling rhymes) are pulled off with ease.
➢ Huge shifts in scale (i.e.: ants to plants).
➢ Formal tendencies to talk about deep philosophical issues.
Notable Writers:
a. John Dunne
b. George Herbert
c. Andrew Marvell
2. Augustan Movement
➢ Rhymed, heroic-couplet satire
➢ iambic pentameter
➢ They translated Greek and Roman epics into English using heroic couplets, and wrote their own original work based on classical forms
➢ Wit, irony, paradox, and brevity – satire
➢ Can be quite long but observations can be quite pithy (sharp).
➢ Ongoing subject is human frailty but the tone is often mocking.
➢ Poets were likely to dress absurdly mundane plots (cutting of a noble maiden’s hair), in the outward appearance of heroic epic poetry, for comic effect.
➢ Current events figure into these poems, either allegorically or directly.
Notable Writers:
a. John Dryden
b. John Gray
c. Alexander Pope
d. Jonathan Swift
3. Romantic Movement
➢ Mostly a 19th century English and American poetic mode
➢ Specifically emphasizes poems written in the “real language” of men and about common life.
➢ Emotional and enthusiastic in its embracing of the large, impressive forces of nature and the infinite resources of the human imagination.
➢ Natural imagery redeems the imagination of the individual stuck in the crowded, industrial torment of the city.
➢ Human imagination empowers the individual to escape for society’s strictures, established authority, and even from fear of death.
➢ The sublime (impressively big, obscure, or scary) is the main descriptive mode, rather than the “merely beautiful.”
➢ Transcendence (wholeness, divine existence, perfection) is the ultimate goal of all the romantic poets.
Notable Writers:
a. William Wordsworth
b. Percy Shelley
c. John Keats
d. Sir Walter Scott
e. Victor Hugo
f. Ralph Waldo Emerson
g. Walt Whitman
h. Nathaniel Hawthorne
i. Henry David Thoreau
4. Symbolist Movement
➢ The link between romanticism and modernism.
➢ Yearn for transcendence – but more decadent and sensual.
➢ Seem obscure in the beginning but contain deep symbols and intuitive associations.
➢ Deal with the crepuscular (dusk and dawn), and with the time between waking and sleep.
➢ Dreams or dream states figure prominently in many of the symbolist art
➢ Dream experiences afford humans the best opportunity to explore the relationships between states
➢ Synesthesia (using one sense to describe another) proved to be a favorite mode.
➢ The French symbolists were adept at using words with three or four simultaneous meanings, creating a resonance among groups of these words.
➢ Poets drawn to the properties of music – attempted to create the same effects in their poems by concentrating on simultaneous effects (like harmony) and by choose mellifluous words meant to inspire a kind of languor in the reader.
➢ Associated with the “Art for Art’s sake” movement that placed aesthetics and form above political relevance.
Notable Writers:
a. Oscar Wilde
b. W.B. Yeats
c. Arthur Symons
d. T.S. Eliot
5. Modernist Movement
➢ 20th century revolutionary force
➢ Questioned what came before
➢ Willingness to experiment with new forms
➢ Much more daring than the symbolists
➢ Allusions
➢ Reduce the human experience to fragments
➢ Influenced by cubism (the reduction and fragmentation of natural forms into abstract, often
geometric structures usually rendered as a set of discrete planes)
➢ They tried to see the world from as many points of view as possible at the same time.
➢ Concerned with how an individual relates to their environment or how the environment helps to create the individual.
➢ Efface individuality – focus on machines or other inanimate objects rather than nature or humans.
Notable Writers:
a. Wallace Stevens
b. Hilda Doolittle
c. William Carlos Williams
d. Marianne Moore
e. E.E. Cummings
f. James Joyce
g. Virginia Woolf
h. William Faulkner
i. Kate Chopin
6. Harlem Renaissance Movement
➢ Created in the first half of the 20th century, after World War I, during the movement of African Americans to northern industrial cities (called the Great Migration).
➢ Directly related to African American concerns and issue of the time.
➢ Many rely on repetitive structure similar to blues lyrics or on fragmented structure similar to jazz improvisations.
➢ Several of the poets consciously sought new American idioms alongside other African American artists such as blues singer Bessie Smith.
➢ Other poets combined European forms like the sonnet with a content and tone more related to African American concerns.
Notable Writers:
a. Paul Laurence Dubar
b. Langston Hughes
c. Claude McKay
d. Countee Cullen
e. Ralph Ellison
f. Richard Wright
7. Postmodernist Movement
➢ Developed in the second half of the 20th century
➢ Share some of the concerns and motivations of modernists, they often take these principles to a much different end.
➢ The label “Postmodern” is often rejected by the majority of artists labeled as such.
➢ Smaller contingents (sub-movements) of writers exist, often in conflict with the postmodern groups, but produced in the same time period
➢ Parody, irony, and narrative instability often inform the tone.
➢ Allusions are just as likely to be made to popular culture as they are to classical learning.
➢ Strictly binary concepts (hot and cold; black and white) often collapse.
➢ Ideas that spread across a spectrum predominate.
➢ There is no real center. (IE: The internet is a postmodern invention!)
➢ The surface is often more interesting to postmodern artists than any ideas of depth.
Notable Writers:
a. Thomas Berger
b. Richard Brautigan
c. Don DeLillo
d. William Gaddis
e. Vladimir Nabokov
f. Thomas Pynchon
8. The Beat Movement
➢ Post-World War II phenomenon
➢ Used different settings over the years to practice their brand of hallucinogenic, visionary, antiestablishment art.
➢ Quite good mythologizing themselves and shared a sense of personal frankness with the confessional poets and a sense of interdisciplinary energy with the New York school.
➢ Buddhism was important to many members.
➢ Deep connection to nature.
➢ Tone could be: satirical, angry, and ranting as well as tender and meditative.
➢ “First thought, best thought!” – aesthetic ideal
➢ Politics directly informs many of the poems, either through specific reference to members of the government or specific references to issues important to them.
Notable Writers:
a. Lawrence Ferlinghetti
b. Allen Ginsberg
c. Gregory Corso
d. Gary Snyder
e. William Burroughs
9. Confessional Movement
➢ Took the personal pronouns (I, me, my) seriously and explored intimate content.
➢ Love affairs, suicidal thoughts, fears of failure, ambivalent or downright violent opinions about family members, and other autobiographically sensitive material moved to the front and center.
➢ They “pried open” their innermost thoughts and opened them for all the world to see, even if it meant sharing one’s troubled feelings or mental health issues.
➢ Revealed the doubts and anxieties of suburban America.
➢ Invested a great deal of time and effort into their craft, constructing verse that paid careful attention to rewritten prosody (the science or study of poetic meters and versification).
Notable Writers:
a. John Berryman
b. Anne Sexton
c. Robert Lowell
d. Sylvia Plath
10. New York School Movement
➢ Saw themselves as fellow travelers of the abstract expressionist school of painters.
➢ Many wrote art criticism.
➢ Their aesthetic mode overlapped with Beat spontaneity and with the confessional-poet frankness,
but was much more ironic, and more interested in the surreal combination of high art and popular art allusions.
➢ Often saw themselves as helping the reader see
the world in new and different ways.
➢ Wanted to jar the audience’s senses by juxtaposing uncommon objects.
➢ Reveled in the combination of the serious and the silly, the profound and the absurd, the highly formal and the relentlessly casual.
Notable Writers:
a. Barbara Guest
b. Kenneth Koch
c. John Ashbery
d. Frank O’Hara
11. Black Arts Movement
➢ Often associated with members of the Black Power movement who grew frustrated with the pace of the changes enacted by the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
➢ Often politically charged, even aggressive, challenges to the white establishments
Notable Writers:
a. Gwendolyn Brooks
b. Sonia Sanchez
c. Amiri Baraka
d. Ntozake Shange
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Literary Periods
- are spans of time for literature that shares intellectual, linguistic, religious, and artistic influences.
A. The Classical Period (1200 BCE – 455 CE)
1. Homeric or Heroic Period
➢ Greek legends were passed along orally
➢ Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey
➢ chaotic period of warrior-princes, wandering sea-traders, and fierce pirates
2. Classical Greek Period
➢ Greek playwrights, writers, and philosophers include Gorgias, Aesop, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, and Sophocles
➢ known as the Golden Age of Greece
➢ sophisticated era of the polis, or individual city-states and early democracy
➢ origin of the world’s finest poetry, art, drama, architecture, and philosophy (Athens)
3. Classical Roman Period
➢ start of the Roman power as given rise by the Greek culture
➢ playwrights include Plautus and Terence
➢ from republic to dictatorship under Julius Ceasar and to monarchial empire under Augustus Ceasar
➢ known as the Roman Imperial period
➢ writers include Horace, Ovid, and Virgil
➢ philosophers include Marcus Aurelius and Lucretius
➢ rhetoricians include Cicero and Quintilian
4. Patristic Period
➢ includes Christian writers such as Saint Augustine, Tertullian, Saint Cyprian, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Jerome
➢ period where the Bible was first compiled by Saint Jerome
➢ Christianity spreads across Europe
➢ Roman Empire suffered dying convulsions
➢ attack of barbarians in Rome until its downfall
B. The Medieval Period (455 CE – 1485 CE)
1. The Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Period
➢ Dark Ages of Literature
➢ fall of Rome that led to the settlement of Franks, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Goths in European ruins
➢ Angles, Saxons, and Jutes migrated to Britain displacing native Celts into Scotland, Ireland, and Wales
➢ old English poems – Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer
➢ emergence of the Carolingian Renaissance
➢ texts include medieval grammars and encyclopedias
➢ settlement of Viking sagas
2. The Middle English Period
➢ end of Anglo-Saxon hierarchy and the emergence of Twelfth Century Renaissance
➢ French chivalric romances and French fables spread un popularity
➢ production of great scholastic and theological works
3. Late or High Medieval Period
➢ Middle English writings of Goeffrey Chaucer – Gawain and Peal Poet
➢ French writers – Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, and Christine de Pisan
C. The Renaissance and Reformation Period
(1485 CE – 1660 CE)
1. Early Tudor Period
➢ Henry Tudor rose to throne
➢ emergence of Protestantism when Marthin Luther split with Rome
➢ rise of Edmund Spenser
2. Elizabethan Period
➢ Queen Elizabeth assumed the throne
➢ mars the early works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, and Sydney
3. Jacobean Period
➢ later works of Shakespeare: Aemilia Lanyer, Ben Jonson, and John Donne
4. Caroline Period
➢ emergence of John Milton, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, the “Sons of Ben”
➢ reign of Charles I and his cavaliers
5. Commonwealth/Puritan Period
➢ continuation of Milton’s career
➢ other writers – Andrew Marvell and Sir Thomas Browne
D. The Enlightenment or Neoclassical Period (1660 CE – 1790 CE) – increased influence of classical literature; increased reverence for logic and disdain for superstition; rise of deism – intellectual backlash against earlier Puritanism, and America’s revolution against England
1. Restoration Period
➢ British king’s restoration of throne after Puritan domination
➢ influence of French and classics in poetry and drama
➢ writers – Sir William Temple, John Dryden, John Locke, and Samuel Pepys
2. Augustan Period
➢ marked by the imitation of Virgil and Horace’s literature in English letters
➢ writers – Addison, Steele, Swift, Alexander Pope, and Voltaire
3. Age of Johnson
➢ marks the transition towards romanticism
➢ writers – Samuel Johnson, Boswell, and Edward Gibbon – neoclassical tendencies
➢ writers – Robert Burns, Thomas Gray, Cowper, and Crabbe – movement away neoclassical
ideals
➢ colonial period in America – Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine
E. The Romantic Period (1790 CE – 1830 CE)
1. Romantic Poets – wrote about nature, imagination, and individuality
➢ writers – Coleridge, Blake, Keats, and Shelley
2. Transcendental Periods – in America
3. Gothic Writings – overlap Romantic and Victorian periods; precursor of horror themes
➢ writers – Radcliffe, Lewis, Poe, Hawthorne VI.
F. The Victorian Period and the 19th Century
(1832 CE – 1901 CE)
• includes sentimental novels
• writers – Elizabeth Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, and Charles Dickens
• emergence of the pre-Raphaelites
• intellectual movements of aestheticism and decadence
G. The Modern Period (1914 – 1945)
• writers – Yeats, Heaney, Thomas, Auden, Woolf, and Owen
• the Jazz Age
• emergence of Harlem Renaissance
• rise of black writers
H. The Postmodern Period (1945 – onwards)
• use of metafiction and fragmented poetry
• multiculturalism led to increasing canonization of non-Caucasian writers
• writers – T.S. Eliot, Morrison, Shaw
• emergence of magic realists and surrealist writers
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NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF LITERARY CRITICISM
● Criticism comes from the Greek word
kritiki which means “judgment.”
● Literary criticism is the exercise of judgment on works of literature. It is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature.
● It is not as simple as it appears because we have a host of conflicting views, theories, and definitions.
Principles of Literary Criticism
- Every literary work has three elements: matter, manner, and capacity to please (aesthetic pleasure).
● Principle of Truth
● Principle of Symmetry
● Principle of Idealization
Types of Literary Criticism
1. Legislative criticism aims the critic to teach writers how to write and laid down cannons, rules, and formula of literary composition.
2. Judicial criticism seeks to pronounce judgment on works of literature on the basis of certain rules – which are often derived from Greek and Latin masters; no possible evaluation
3. Theoretical criticism deals with literary aesthetics
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4. Evaluative criticism concerned with the assessment or evaluation of the worth and the significance of art.
5. Historical criticism views a work of literature against the background of age in which it was written; examines a work with reference to social milieu and thus seeks to account for shortcomings and excellencies; examines a work with reference to other works in the same genre and determines its importance and place
6. Biographical criticism considers writers family background, ancestry, personal circumstances, friends, profession, occupation, etc. and also the character, temperament, ideas, and beliefs of the writer
7. Comparative criticism seeks to evaluate a work by comparing it to other works of similar nature, whether in the same or in other language; expects critics to have thorough knowledge not only of one literature but a number of literatures
8. Descriptive criticism is the analysis of work, aims, methods, and effects; begins with self-justification – discussion of own works and defeating against hostile attach
9. Impressionistic criticism seeks merely to record personal response; record of the critic’s own responses, application of aesthetic beauty, untrammeled by rules and regulation; critic does not evaluate or work nor does call it good or bad – he simply conveys how he has enjoyed
10. Textual or ontological criticism focuses on structure, diction, language, image meter, tone, or theme of the text
11. Psychological criticism provides critics with precise terminology of the psychology of texts and allows him to discuss in a creative process
12. Sociologic and Marxist criticism – examines literary texts with reference to social milieu of its author, keeping in mind writer’s responsibility to society
13. Archetypal criticism deals with the unconscious, not of the writer or his imagine characters, but of human race; also called tutonic, mythological, or ritualistic criticism; tries to examine literature with the hope of discovering the existence of mythological pattern
Phases of Literary Criticism
1. Hellenic Phase
● follows a creative activity
● important critics were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
● starting point of the study of poetics
2. Hellenistic Phase
● decline of Athenian culture
● small contribution in preserving, classifying, and conducting research
3. Greco-Roman Phase
● Rome was the capital
● aims of equality and excellence as well as originality
● criticism largely consists of elaboration, interpretation, and application of rules
● Horace, Quintillion, and Longinus were notable critics
4. Dark Middle Ages Phase
● literature became sensuous and pagan
● Dante is the only ray of hope
5. Renaissance Phase
● western movement of literary masterpieces of antiquity
● end of medievalism and renewal of zest for life and enjoyment of beauty are hallmarks
● emulation of examples of ancient Greece and Rome
● Ben Johnson is the most prominent icon
6. Neo-Classical Phase
● emergence of classicism as a point of view
● notable figures were Dryden, Pope, Addison, and Dr. Johnson
7. Romantic Phase
● emergence of German idealism
● hollow rules were discarded
● notable figures were Wordsworth and Coleridge
8. Victorian Phase
● mood and individualism resulted in many excesses and absurdities
● impressionist and expressive
● Matthew Arnold is the leading critic
9. Modern Age Phase
● correction of the faults of impressionism by appealing to tradition and authority
● turns to psychological schools
● notable figure was T.S. Eliot