S. B. Gardi DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
M.K.BHAVNAGAR University
Written by: Gohil. Devikaba. J
Roll no.: 05
Course No.:07
Course Name: Literary Theory & Criticism
Enrollment No. : Pg14101015
Selected
Literary Terms
Modernism:
M.
H. Abrams in his book ‘A Glossary of Literary Terms’ writes that modernism is a
term wildly used to find out new feature, new style of writing, new form of
literature, new concepts and subjects of the contemporary time especially after
world war-I time.
The word itself suggests that it is related with the current phenomena
and especially in the late 19th century covering the early 20th
century. It covers the western society and its culture. The reasons behind
Modernism are the development of modern industrial growth of cities, rapid
growth of cities and the horror of world war-I. We can say that Modernism is
one kind of revolt against the traditional forms of art, architecture,
literature, religious faith, philosophy, social organization, activities of
daily life, and even the sciences, were becoming ill-fitted to their tasks and
outdated in the new economic, social, and political environment of an emerging
fully industrialized world.
We can see that chronologically modernism comes after the Victorian age. So, we
can see some effect of Victorian age upon literature of modern time. During
this time people were unhappy with the time because they think that now there
is no God means there is no more any hope. In other words we can say that this
was the time of self-consciousness. Many people say that this was the time of
rethinking, relearning, and reshaping.
Self-consciousness, self-reference was
the characteristics of Modernism. Apart from literature many other disciplines
like music, painting has also started modernism.
Post-modernism:
In
the very simple words post-modernism is anti-modernism. It gives antithesis of
modernism. Its main focus is on the time after world war-II. It is a late 20th
century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure
from modernism. This term is also related with deconstruction and
post-structuralism. Post-modernism is an approach which includes different kind
of interpretations from different aspects like culture, literature, art,
philosophy, history, economy, architecture, fiction and literary criticism.
Because it is the opposite of modernism we can many things totally different
from modernism. And because of this movement many other genres also exist. Like
absurd,
antihero, anti-novel, Beat writers, concrete poetry, metaftction. We can say that
during this time people celebrate the world without the God. Here we will not
find a kind of hope which was present during modernism time.
New criticism:
New criticism is a new branch of studying the text. The movement derived in considerable part from
elements in I. A. Richards' ‘Principles
of Literary Criticism (1924)’ and ‘Practical Criticism (1929)’ and from the critical essays of T.
S. Eliot. According to Mathew Arnold’s touchstone method is a comparative
method of criticism. According to this method, in order to judge a poet's work
properly, a critic should compare it to passages taken from works of great
masters of poetry, and that these passages should be applied as touchstones to
other poetry. Even a single line or selected quotation will serve the purpose.
If the other work moves us in the same way as these lines and expressions do,
then it is really a great work, otherwise not. It
opposed the prevailing interest of scholars, critics, and teachers of that era
in the biographies of authors, the social context of literature, and literary
history by insisting that the proper concern of literary criticism is not with
the external circumstances or effects or historical position of a work, but
with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an independent entity. In
very simple words we can say that it tries to read the given words only without
any outer help, without knowing the name of the author, the background of the
author and even without the title of the particular work of art. It is very
easy to apply new criticism in a short form of creative art like short stories,
poems etc. but it little bit difficult to apply new criticism on the novel form
of creative art.
Diaspora:
Diaspora
is word come out with the feelings that something is missing. Diaspora is
basically a Greek word which means “Scattered Dispersion”. This word also
refers to the minority group in the society. This word is used for those people
who were forced to leave their homeland and they have to settle down in the
other land. The term diaspora carries a sense of displacement for those people
who were cut-down from their roots and they still hope that one day they will
be in their homeland. Mainly this word was used for the people who were
non-Americans and after living in America they feel that they are rootless now.
“Most discussions of diaspora were firmly rooted in a conceptual ‘homeland’;
they were concerned with a paradigmatic case, or a small number of core cases.
The paradigmatic case was, of course, the Jewish diaspora; some dictionary
definitions of diaspora, until recently, did not simply illustrate but defined
the word with reference to that case.” These are some lines noted by Rogers
Brubaker for the word diaspora. He noted that most of the diaspora books were
from the Jewish writers. Here we can say that there are many type of diaspora.
With the developing time the critics found many kind of diaspora.
Post-colonial:
With
the word ‘post-colonialism’ the relationship between colonizer and colonized
comes. In a way it is the indication of inequality in the society. Post-colonial
angle is the way of looking towards the earth with the racial imbalance, inequality.
Post-colonial study has opened many other studies also. Post-colonial study is
the study of superiority and inferiority. So, my superiority depends upon
other’s inferiority so I have to invent inferiority. If there is no one like
inferior then I have to create superiority. The two examples of post
colonialism are the Bollywood movies are ‘Laggan’ and ‘Rang de Basanti’. If we
observe these movies then we come to know about this movie that in these movies
it is depicted that the hero needs a white person to know about the other
culture and especially their culture or our in their way. Critical theory of
post colonialism presents, explains, and illustrates the ideology and the
praxis of neocolonialism, with examples drawn from the humanities-history and
political science, philosophy, and Marxist theory, sociology, anthropology, and
human geography; the cinema, religion, and theology: feminism, linguistics, and
post-colonial literature, of which the anti-conquest narrative genre presents
the stories of colonial subjugation of the subaltern man and woman.
Feminist
Criticism:
Feminist
criticism is the study of female in the male dominated society. The feminist
study starts with the third wave authors. They challenged the role of female in
the society and the inequality of gender in the society. Its history has been
broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth century women authors such
as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller. The best example of the gender inequality
is the name of George Eliot’s name itself. She was forced to carry the name of
male, because during those time women were not allowed to write or even read
the books. It was the time during which the role of women was within the four
walls. Among many feminist writers the one of the notable name is Elaine
Showalter’s name. She has given the theory of gyno-criticism. She gave the
theory in which she says that as a woman her body of writing is important not
the body of the writer. She also talks about the female’ psyche and her mental
condition as a reader and writer also. 1979.) A much more radical critical mode
was launched in France by Simone de Beauvoir's ‘The Second Sex’ (1949), a wide-ranging critique of the cultural
identification of women as merely the negative object, or "Other," to
man as the dominating "Subject" who is assumed to represent humanity
in general; the book dealt also with "the great collective myths" of women
in the works of many male writers.
Psychoanalytical
Criticism:
This
approach emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Basically in
this approach the critics say that the author’s mental condition and his/her
background is reflects in the work of art. M. H. Abrams in his book ‘A Glossary
of Literary Terms’ give some common elements to understand the work of art
through this view point. (1) Reference to the author's personality in order to
explain and interpret a literary work; (2) reference to literary works in order
to establish, biographically, the personality of the author; and (3) the mode
of reading a literary work specifically in order to experience the distinctive
subjectivity, or consciousness, of its author. Psychoanalytical approach is
connected with the Freudian theory. It is true that this is a scientific
approach to see towards the different kind of people, but this theory we can
also apply in literature also. In other words, the objects of psychoanalytic
literary criticism, at its very simplest, can be the psychoanalysis of the
author or of a particularly interesting character in a given work. Critics may
view the fictional characters such as a psychological case study, attempting to
identify such Freudian concepts as Oedipus complex, Freudian slips Id, ego and
superego and so on and demonstrate how they influenced the thoughts and
behaviors of fictional characters.
New
Historicism:
New
historicism is a different view point to look towards the creative work of art.
There is slight difference between the old historicism and new historicism. New
historicism goes to deeper meaning of the time. They again and again revisit
the work of art with the different references, different viewpoints and
different ideas. What is most distinctive in the new mode of historical study
is mainly the result of concepts and practices of literary analysis and
interpretation that have been assimilated from various recent post structural
theorists. Michel Foucault's view that the discourse of an era, instead of reflecting preexisting entities
and orders, brings into being the concepts, oppositions, and hierarchies of
which it speaks; that these elements are both products and propagators of
"power," or social forces; and that as a result, the particular
discursive formations of an era determine what is at the time accounted
"knowledge" and "truth," as well as what is considered to
be humanly normal as against what is considered to be criminal, or insane, or
sexually deviant. Through this approach the critics tried to say that every
human action is actually the effect of a network of material practices. And the
other argument is that a critical method and a language adequate to describe
culture under capitalism participate in the economy they describe.
Eco-criticism:
Eco
criticism is the study of literature and environment from the different point
of view through which the critics tried to analyze the environment and
brainstorm possible solutions for the correction through different point of
view. Another early Eco-critical text, Joseph Meeker’s ‘The Comedy of Survival’
(1974), proposed a version of an argument that was later to dominate
eco-criticism and environmental philosophy that environmental crisis is caused
primarily by a cultural tradition in the West of separation of culture from
nature, and elevation of the former to moral predominance. In the mid-1980s
scholars began to work collectively to establish eco-criticism as a genre,
primarily through the work of the Western Literature Association in which the
revaluation of the nature writing as a non-fictional literary genre could
function. In short, Eco-criticism is the genre through which the critics tried
to study the nature as well as the nature of the work of art also. Simon Estok
noted in 2001 that “eco-criticism has distinguished itself, debates
notwithstanding, firstly by the ethical stand it takes, its commitment to the
natural world as an important thing rather than simply as an object of thematic
study, and, secondly, by its commitment to making connections.”
Queer theory:
Queer
theory is the theory is the study of LGBT people in the society. Queer theory
is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early
1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women’s studies. Queer Theory is often used to
designate the combined area of gay and lesbian studies and criticism, as well
as theoretical and critical writings concerning all modes of variance. The term
"queer" was originally derogatory, used to stigmatize male and female
same-sex love as deviant and unnatural; since the early 1990s, however, it has
been increasingly adopted by gays and lesbians themselves as a non-invidious
term to identify a way of life and an area for scholarly inquiry.
Both
lesbian studies and gay studies began as "liberation
movements"— in parallel with the movements for African-American and feminist
liberation—during the anti-Vietnam War, anti-establishment, and counter-cultural
ferment of the late 1960s and 1970s. It was the demand of the time that lesbian
and gay people have to raise their voice and that is why this point of view comes
out as an import theory.
Structuralism:
Structuralism
is the theory of studying the structure of the novels or any creative work of
art. As summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn Structuralism is “the belief
that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their
interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local
variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract
culture.” In the very simple words structuralism is the arrangements of the
incidents of the story. We can arrange the different kinds of story with
different point of view. And through this we can also reaches to the different
viewpoints. The term appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude
Levi-Strauss and gave rise in France to the “structuralist movement”. The origins
of structuralism connect with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics
along with the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow schools. In brief, de
Saussure’s structural linguistics propounded three related concepts.
Alamkara
School:
The
earliest and most sustained school, it studies literary language and assumes
that the locus of literariness is in the figures of speech, in the mode of
figurative expression, in the grammatical accuracy and pleasantness of sound.
It doesn’t mean that the word doesn’t carry the meaning of that sentence but in
fact structural taxonomies of different figures of speech are models of how
meaning is cognized and how it is to be extracting from the text. Bhamaha
(Kavyalamkara) talks of the pleasure of multiplicity of meaning inherent in
certain alamkaras such as arthantara nyasa (2.71), vibhavana (2.77), and
samasokti (2.79). Bhamaha was the first alamkarika poetician and in his book in
chapter no 2 and 3 he describes 35 figures of speech. Many other critics also
continue this tradition and they were Dandin, Udbhata, Rudrata and Vamana. And
the final critic came who mingled the different theories and he was
Anandavardhana; alamkara was sought to be integrated with dhvani and rasa. They
all were the Sanskrit critics. Alamkara is used for beautifying the language.
Many critics said that we can use figure of speech (Alamkara) but it must be
used in limited way otherwise it may happen that the work of art will lose its
charm.
Riti School:
Riti is the
theory of language of literature. The word Riti was first used by Bharata’s
‘Natyasastra’ itself under the republic of vrtti. But it was Vamana who first
developed it into a theory of ‘Visista Padaracana riti’. In the very simple
words formation of or arrangement of marked inflected constructions is riti.
Two other words are used for riti are Marga and Vrtti. Later, around ninth
century AD Anandavardhana distinguished this styles on the basis of the use of
particular kinds of compounds. The Gunas have their potential being in this permanent
source which Vamana regarded as the Atman of the Kavya and called it ‘Riti.’
Hence the thesis “Riti is the Soul of a Kavya.” ‘Riti
roatmaa Kaavyasya Sareerasyeva’. Riti is to
the Kavya what Atman is to the Sarira. It is necessary here to study the
etymology of the terms Atman and Riti in order to realise the significance of
Vamana’s conception of the Soul of a Kavya. The word Atman is believed to have
been derived from the root ‘At’ meaning to move constantly or from the root
‘An’ meaning to live, or perhaps from both. The term Riti is derived from the
root ‘Ri’ meaning to move. The identity of Riti with Atman becomes complete
when we take Dandin’s metaphor of Gunas as Pranas. Just as the Atman is the Karana Sarira of a person, Riti is
the Karana Sarira of a Kavya.
The natural beauty or Sobha of a Kavya depends on the Gunas of its Soul which
is Riti.
Vakrokti School:
In
the whole range of Sanskrit poetics, the term vakrokti took altogether a new
significance and the highest position as the all-pervading poetic concept in
Kuntaka's Vakroktijivita. Presenting the major schools of Sanskrit poetics, the
book gives general definition of vakrokti and its multi-dimensional
implications. Vakrokti means the hidden meaning of the work of art. The writer
outs the message in the hidden way that at the first glance we will not be able
to find the meaning of the poem or the sentence or any creative work of art.it
is also a theory of language of literature. It claims that the characteristic
property of literary language is its ‘markedness’. Kuntaka made Vakrokti a
full-fledged theory of literariness.Vakrokti literally means deviant or marked
expression. kuntaka's theory of vakrokti and makes its critical analysis in
relation to various literary concepts-alankara, svabhavokti, rasavadalankara,
marga and rasa. Finally, it deals with the striking similarities between dhvani
and vakrokti, and brings out the fundamental aspects of practical criticism as
showed by kuntaka.
Dhavani School:
Next
only to the rasa theory in importance, the dhavani theory of anandavardhana
considers suggestion, the indirectly evoked meaning as the characteristic
property of literary discourse, the determinant that separates it from other
rational discourses. Dhavani becomes an embracing principle that explains the
structure and function of the other major elements of literature- the aesthetic
effect (rasa), the figural mode and devices (alamkara), the stylistic values
(riti) and excellences and defects (guna-dosa). In ‘Dhvayyaloka’, Anandavardhana
has presented a structural analysis of indirect literary meaning. He has
classified different kinds of suggestion and defined them by identifying the
nature of suggestion in each. According to V. S. Seturamn Dhavani means “That
kind of poetry, where in the meaning renders itself secondary or the word
renders its meaning secondary and suggests the implied meaning is designated by
the learned as ‘Dhavani’ or ‘suggestive poetry’.”
Auchitya
School:
We can say that Kshemendra is the founder of Auchitya School. The other nearest
meaning of this word is ‘Perfect’ or we can also say that ‘Complete’. It is
true that the nature functions itself but only we human beings tried to make
perfect or tried to add perfection in all most all the things. In literature,
Auchitya plays a vital role. If Auchitya is missing in the work of art then
that work of art will not be able to create that much effect. And for that it
is compulsory that the meaning or we can say that the words used by the author
must be conventional. The theory of property or appropriateness claims that in all
aspect of literary composition. There is the possibility of a perfect, the,
most appropriate choice of subject, of ideas, of words, of devices as such, it
has affinities with Longinus’s theory of the sublime.
