Literary Theory & Criticism

         A Glossary of Literary Terms

  

New Criticism:

            The majority remarkable movement in 20^th century criticism .Which effected a total alteration , as it were of the control of English studies goes by the name of New Criticism .The new emphasis that was given to criticism earned the title ‘new’ for it .T.S.Eliot wielded a grand deal of influence among his generation .When his The Sacred Wood came out, it  progress a trend in criticism, generally descriptive then, which came to be called New Criticism. It different a prevailing interest of scholars ,critics and teachers of that era in the biographies of authors , in the social context of literature, and in literary history by insisting that the right concern of literary criticism is not with the external circumstance or effects or historical position of a work, but with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an independent entity. New Criticism had become an established in American college and even in high schools . New Criticism had to fight solid against a hostile atmosphere that prevailed in academic institutions and exposed the weakness in applying biology, psychology , economics or sociology to literary studies .

                  New Criticism balmy the readers against critical practices which distract attention from the poem itself .In analyzing and evaluating a particular work, they eschew reference to the biography and temperament and personal experience of the author, to the social condition at the time of its creation, or to its psychological and moral effects on the readers, they also tend minimize recourse to the place of the work in literary forms and subject matter. Because of its focus on the literary work in isolated from its attendant circumstances and effects  , the New Criticism is often classified as a type of critical formalism.

            The New Critics continue that their interpretations are based entirely on the context and the language of the text . Hence , their critical practice goes by the name ‘intrinsic criticism’ .This means that their criticism exists inside the confines of the text .every other methods are called ‘extrinsic’ , because they go outside the text for the tools they want to interpret the text. New Criticism also focusing  on the text. They have contributed extremely to the widening of the audience for reading poetry. Mostly New Criticism is founded on the premise that the text is an auto telic art fact   .It is complete and wholesome in itself , and it exists for its own sake .Its connection with the world beyond itself is not of much interest to the New Critic .

             The hostility to New criticism is most effectively and memorably expressed by Geoffrey Hartman in his essay,’ Beyond Formalism’ in these words ,

“There is good reason why many in this country as wellas Europe, have voiced a suspicion of Anglo-Saxon formalism.”

             Every one said and ended, the New Criticism have much to advance literary criticism, and the understanding of literary form. Walter Sutton succinctly sums up the contribution of New Criticism in the following words:

  “Their sophistication, intelligence and information sensibilities are apparent in many excellent and stimulating essay. When achievements are sets against limitation , one is impressed by the thought of what the New Criticism might have accomplished with a less hermetic theory.”

Modernism and Post modernism:

                The term modernism is usually used to identity new and distinctive features in the subjects , forms , concept, and styles of literature .The specific features signified by ‘mordenism’ differ with the user , but many critics agree that it involves a deliberate and radical break with some of the tradition bases not only of western art , but of western culture in general. central intellectual precursors of modernism , in this sense , are thinkers who had questioned the certainties that had supported traditional modes of social organization , religion and morality and also traditional ways of conceiving the human self thinkers such as Freud and James G.Frazer, whose twelve volume ‘The Golden Bough’stressed’ the connection between central Christian tenets and pegan , often barbaric , myth and rituals .

              In 1922 alone was signalized by the appearance of such monuments of modernist improvement as James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ .Virginia Woolf’s ‘Jacob’s Room’, T.S.Eliot’s ‘The West Land’ .Major works of modernist fiction , follow Joyce’s ‘Ulysses and his even more radical Finnegan Wake subvert the basic conventions of earlier prose fiction by breaking up the narrative continuity, departing from the standard ways of representing characters, and violating the traditional syntax and lucidity of narrative language by the use of stream of consciousness and other inventive modes of narration. Among other European and American writers who are central reprentatives of modernism are the novelist Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka , Dorothy Richardson and W B Yeats , Marianne Moore  and Bertolt Brecht .

          Modernism ‘s well-known feature is the phenomenon called the avant-garde ,that is a small , self conscious group of artists and authors who intentionally carry out, in Erza Pound’s phrase, “make it new”. Avant- garde artist signify themselves as ‘alienated’ from the established order, against which they assert their own autonomy , a prominent aim is to shock the sensibilities of the conservative reader and to challenge the norms and pieties of the dominant bourgeois culture .Renyo Poggioli, The Theory of the Avant-garde so its distinctive culture formation , the avant- garde .

          Post modernism applied to the literature and art in the 1950s and 1960s, when the effect on Western morale of the first world war were greatly exacerbated by the  experience of Nazi totalitarianism and mass extermination .Postmodernism involves not only a continuance , sometimes carried to an extreme, of the counter traditional experiments of modernism, but also varied attempts to break away from modernist forms which had , certainly , become in their turn conventional , as well as to overthrow the elitism of modernist ‘high art’ by recourse for models to the ‘mass culture’ in film, television , newspaper cartoons and popular music. The work of postmodern literature by Samuel Beckett, roland barthes,   other blend literary genres culture and stylists levels, the serious and the playful, that they oppose classification according to traditional literary rubric.

           Postmodernists consider that the world is no longer governed by traditional authorities that is, by governments , organizations of science and education , religious institutions etc. Instead , they argue that multinational capitalism , cyber technology, media, consumerism, and globalization are the working forces of the world today .Postmodernists in literature and the arts has parallels with the movement known as post structuralism in linguistic and literary theory, post structuralists undertake to undermine the foundations of language in order to demonstrate that its seeming meaningfulness dissipates, for a rigorous inquirer, into a play of conflicting indeterminacies or else undertake to show that all forms of culture discussion are manifestations of the reigning ideology , or of the relations and construction of power, in contemporary society .Some postmodernist developments in literature, Beat writers, new novel, performance poetry.

Postcolonial:

            Postcolonialism is the political and cultural study of societies free from colonial rule. The effort has obvious relevance to the tradition work of history, but because of the strangeness of the colonial situation , postcolonialism also bears upon common issues of race, class, education, the west and capitalism. Colonialism was not just a simple suppression and exploitation of native peoples. Though motivated by economic motives, colonialism also entailed impressive the colonists’ language and culture upon the local populace.  Postcolonial studies sometimes also encompass aspects of British literature in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, viewed through a perspective that reveals the ways in which the social and economic life represents in that literature was tacitly underwritten by colonial development.

              The negative response of the “master narrative” of Western imperialism in which the colonial others is not only subordinated and marginalized, but in effect deleted as a culture agency and its replacement by a counter narrative in which the colonial culture fight their way back into a word history written by Europeans. A main part in the postcolonial outline is to disestablish Eurocentric norms of literary and artistic values, and to expand the literary canon to include colonial and postcolonial writers .Postcolonial scholarship also studies forms of imperialism other than European , with the domination of some southern-hemisphere groups or nations by other southern-hemisphere group or nations .this rethinking of empire has brought the United State into focus as an object postcolonial nation. In current scholars in postcolonial studies have turned their notice to identities in a globalized world where large group of people have, for various reason , left their homelands , producing diasporas, population flow and émigré groups .Here Modernity at Large : Cultural Dimension of globalization . Ania Loomba provides an indication of the field in Postcolonialism .

            Finally in this way  , postcolonialism focuses on the text, but has a great ambition to convey the experience through the eyes of the colonized individual , not the eyes of the colonizer . To postcolonial critics ,this is a last act of liberation from the colonizer .

      

Diaspora:

  The term Diaspora means home sickness. Most early on thought of Diaspora were confidently fixed in a conceptual ‘home land’. They were worried with a paradigmatic case or a small number of care cases. The paradigmatic case was, of course, the Jewish Diaspora and some dictionary definitions of Diaspora until newly did not simply illustrate but defined the word with respect to that case.

         The first development of the use of the phrase extended it to other similar cases, such as the American and Greek Diasporas. More recently, it has been useful to emigrant groups that go on their connection in their homeland from overseas, such as the category of long-distance nationalists identified by Benedict Anderson. Brubaker notes that Albanians, Hindu, Indian, Irish, Kashmiri, Kurds, Tamils, Palestinians have been conceptualized as Diasporas in this sense. Furthermore and social migrants who maintain affectional and socialites with a homeland” have also been described as Diasporas.

Feminist Criticism:

          Feminist criticism was not inaugurated, but after long struggle for the credit of Women’s cultural roles and achievement , and for Women’s social and political rights, clear by such books as John Stuart Mill’s ‘The Subjection of Women, and the American Margaret fuller’s ‘ Woman in the 19^th century .Greatly of feminist literary criticism continues in our time to be organized with the movement by political Feminist for social , legal and cultural freedom and equality . When reading as a woman and responding to the way woman is presented in literature . In a world for all time give response of male and condition of woman is not good .As writer and as critic  woman present her ideas in her own way, but the problems of female language .feminist criticism may be concerned with the history , themes, genres and structures of literature by woman .

               In American, modern feminist criticism was inaugurated by Mary Ellmann’s skillful and witty discussion , in ‘Thinking about Women ‘ and also the offensive stereotypes of women in literature written by men, and also about alternative and subversive sign that happen in some writing by women .Modern feminist criticism in America, England, France and other countries is not a unitary theory or procedure .The basic view is that Western civilization is pervasively Patriarchal that is , it is male centered and controlled , and is organized and conducted in such a way as to inferior women to men in all cultural domains familial, religious, political , economic , social, legal and artistic .The more claim is that this patriarchal ideology pervades those writing which have been traditionally measured great literature, and which until recently have been written mainly by men for men. Typically, the most highly regarded literary works focus on male protagonist like , Hamlet , Tom Jones, Ulysses, Frankenstein etc. These males, the female characters , when they play a role , are marginal and subordinate, and either as opposite and subservient to ,or in conflict to desires and enterprises .

            Though many feminist critic have decried the literature written by men for its description of women as marginal and subservient to men’s interests and emotional needs and fears  some of them have also indentified male writers who in their view, have managed to rise above the sexual prejudices of their time satisfactorily to  understand and represent the cultural pressures that have shaped the characters of women and forced upon them their negative or subsidiary social roles .

    Psychoanalytical criticism:

             Psychological literary criticism has come to be Psychoanalytic Criticism, whose basis and measures were established by Freud. Freud had developed the dynamic form of psychology that called ‘Psychoanalysis’ as a method for the analysis and therapy of neuroses, but soon extended it to account for many developments and practices in the history of civilization, including conflict, mythology and  religion as well as literature and the other arts .Psychological criticism deals with a work of literature primarily as an expression, in an indirect and fictional form , of the condition of mind and the structure of personality of the individual author .Here also present unconscious , according to Freud, “are residual trace of prior stage of psychosexual development , from earliest infancy onward, which have been outgrown , but remain as ‘fixations’ in the unconscious of the adult” .In 1920 Freud ‘s theory was elaborated and developed but not very altered, by later developments in his theory of mental structures and processes .There development of three function the Id , the Superego and the ego. Freudian critics, in a form suggested by Freud’s later writing , on the role of ‘ego psychology’ in elaborating the manifest content and artistic from of a work , intentionally manage to mediate between the conflicting demands of the id , the superego, and the limits imposed by realism.

New historicism:

         New historicisms attend primarily to the historical and culture conditions of its production, its meanings, its effects and also of its later critical interpretations and evaluations. This is earlier kind of literary scholarship , for the views and practices of the new historicists differ markedly from those of earlier scholars who had adverted to social and intellectual history as a ‘background’ against which to set a work of literature as an independent entity, or had viewed literature as a ‘reflection’ of the worldview characteristics of a period. New historicists conceive of a literary text as ‘situated ‘ within the totality of the institutions, social practices and discourse that constitute the culture of a particular time and place and with which the literary text interacts as both a product and a producer of cultural codes.

             Louis Montrose described the new historicism as “a reciprocal concern with the historicity of texts and the textuality of history.” That is, history is conceived to be not a set of fixed, objective facts but, like the literature with which it interacts a text that itself needs to be interpreted .A number of historicists claim also that these cultural and ideological representations in texts serve mainly to reproduce and propagate the complex power structures of domination and subordination which characterize a given society.

              New historicists maintain the distinction between literary and nonliterary works, as well as between major and lesser works of literary artistry. As Stephen Greenblatt has said,” Major works of art remain centrally important , but they are jostled now by an array of other texts and images” .

Ecocriticism:

            Ecocriticism shortened form of ‘ecology’ the science that investigates of all forms of plant and animal life with all other with physical habitats. Here critical writing find out the relation between literature and the biological and physical environment. This literary form was basically initiated in England by Gilbert transparent ’s extremely popular ‘Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne’ his close and affectionate observations of wildlife and the natural setting in a particular area of rural England .The middle 19^th century Thoreau and other writers in America and England were pay thought to the threats to the environment by urbanization and industrialization.

            In the 20^th century the  warning by scientist and conservationists improved , two particularly important books were Aldo leopold’s ‘A sand County Almanac’ its attention to the ominous poverty of the environment  and Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring ‘ , concerning the devastation inflicted by newly developed chemical pesticides on wildlife , both on land and in water .Finally than wild spread concern that the earth was in an environmental crisis ,brought on by the industrial and chemical pollution of the ‘biosphere’ and explosion of the human population that exposed to exceed the capacity of the earth to maintain it.

           In this environment of critics that Ecocriticism was inaugurated. It had become quickly growing field of literary study with his  own group, its own journal. Many Ecocriticism writings maintain to be oriented toward heightening their readers’ consciousness and even toward provocative them to social and political action, but other movement directed toward achieving social and political justice. Some environmental critics continue that the ecological crisis by the rejection , in the West, of the Judeo –Christian religion and culture with its anthropocentric view that human beings, because they possess souls. There are many anthologies of nature writing, representative recent ones are ‘The Norton Book of Nature Writing’, John Elder , ‘literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook .The Romantic period of the early 19^th century was the turning point in the long Western tradition of human transcendence and control over nature.

Queer Theory:

              Queer theory is frequently combined area of gay and lesbian studies , with the theoretical writing about all modes of difference as cross dressing and transsexuality from society’s normative model of sexual identity and activities .The term “queer” was firstly derogatory , used to stigmatize male and female same sex love as deviant and unnatural, it has been adopted by gays and lesbians themselves as a noninvidious term to recognize a way of life and area for scholarly inquiry. Teresa de Jagose, ‘Queer Theory :Lesbian and gay Sexualities.

               A numeral example of queer theorists, adopted the deconstructive mode of dismantling the key binary oppositions of Western culture, such as male or female, natural or unnatural and heterosexual or homosexual. Later theorists such as Eve Sedgwick and Judith Butler undertook to invert the standard hierarchical opposition by which homosexuality is marginalized and made unnatural , which the supposed normatively of heterosexuality is based on the suppression and same sex want and relationships . Queer reading has become the term for interpretive activities that undertake to subvert. For queer theory now devoted a lot of magazine in the field also has been established curriculum of the humanities and social science. Karla Jay and Joanne Glasgow, eds., Lesbian Text and Contexts: Radical Revisions.

Structuralism:

         Structuralism is certain developments in linguistics and anthropology. This style of criticism is part of French Structuralism, inaugurated in the 1950s by the cultural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, who analyzed on the form of Saussure’s linguistics model, he examined the customs and conventions of some culture with a view of arriving at the grammar culture .Structuralism cuts across the traditional corrective areas within and between the humanities by responsibility to provide an objective account of all social and cultural practices. The primary attention of the structuralism like that of Saussure is not in the culture parole but in language. That is not any particular culture as it provides the structure  and rules of the universal system .

            Literary studies , Structuralism criticism conceives to be second order signifying system that uses the first order structural system of language as it medium. Structuralist  critics apply a selection of linguistic concept  to the analysis of literary text, there difference between phonemic and morphemic. Structuralism is in opposition to mimetic criticism and to expressive criticism, so the view that literature is a mode of communication between author and readers.

           In the view of structuralism , literary work becomes a text , that is  a mode of writing constituted by a play of domestic elements according to specifically literature conventions and codes. The structuralism enterprise , in the exact form and complete pretensions and other modes of post structural theories, which subverted the scientific claims of structuralism . The theory of structuralist that was based on the linguistics of Saussure a theory that Barthes applied not only to literature but also to decoding, by reference to an original signifying system , many aspects of popular culture. Structuralist premises and procedures, continue to be deployed in a number of current enterprise and particularly in the semiotic analysis of cultural phenomena, in stylistic and in the formal structures that in their combination and constitute the plots in novels .In poetry  narrative prose, is Jonathan Culler, structuralist poetics : also Robert Scholes, Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction.

Alankara School:

          Sanskrit is a extremely scientific language. It is brilliant with musical and rhythmic elements, in its sound pattern .It is also overcome of diversities arising from the mono-syllabic meaning  , meaning of the stem and suffix, multi meaning of words etc .All these modes and varieties of ornamental of sound and sense have been careful define and analyzed .

          The term ‘alankar , in Sanskrit stands for the principle of poetic beauty itself, in which sense of this general meaning , the entire science of criticism is so named Alankarashastra .Alankar in a limited sense also mean any trope or figure of speech that adorns a literary composition. There is feature treatment of such figure of speech from Bharata, the author of Natyashastra to Mammata concerning their definition , classification and number, different between the outstanding that are with poetic beauty and figure of speech, as also the situation of figure in the theories of rasa .

          The earliest works to deal with the figure in the encyclopedic   Natyasasta. In this treatise the beautiful speech patterns the Vachikbhinaya, one of the four abhinayas , which understand the entire field of ancient Sanskrit drama .In the Natyasastra only four figures Upama (simile), Rupak (metaphor), Dipaka(illuminator), Yamaka (rhyme) .A arrangement of figure that has been accepted by all alankarikas of those based on sound and sense. In essential we understand alankar present with point for all semantic examination. A correct appreciation of the position of early theorists in regard to alankar is necessary to understand their idea of shabda and artha which forms the starting point for all semantic analysis.

     Riti School:

            Riti is a theory of language of literature. It first time appear in Bharata’s Natyasastra , developed it into a theory , as the theory of visista padaracana riti .In the riti also attached other words like marga and vrtti .later on Anandavardhana famous style on the basis of the use of particular kinds of compounds .Mammata designates the different modes as vrttis .Here also present unusual theorist and categories like, in theorist Dandin , Vamana and Kuntaka at the side of in categories vaidarbhi, gaudiya, pancali etc.

               Riti is connect with, themes, achieve on the hearers and sentiment .Viswanatha considers proper group of language as riti words and pharases have to be correctly selected and organized in poetry and this is necessary for rasa and bhavas .Style of riti is outstanding .But riti is much more than just diction .Essentially it is a theory that handles the psychophonetic suitability of language for speaker .

Vakroti School:

       Vakroti claims that the characteristic property of literary language is its markedness . It deviates in particular ways from ordinary language in its form and in its creation of meaning Kuntaka made vakrokti a occupied fledge theory of literariness .His meaning of vakrokti is both meaning and meaning marked by artistic revolve of speech.

        Vakroti classified in six way, syallables or their arrangement , in inflected forms of substantives , in the base substantives in topic or sections, in sentences, in figure of speech. The three margas , style , sukumara, vicitra and madhyama, as plans of expression are to be treated as example vakrokti. Here also defined class of vakroti, splendor, sweetness, perspicuity, grace, classically. The principle of vakroti has a affinities with modern formalist theories of literature which measured the language of literature .

Dhvani School:

             The term dhvani is suggested by the grammarian’s principle of ‘sphota’ . which means it bears .The words and their sense that are capable of manifesting the suggested sense are able  called dhvani. Thus, indicative words and senses are called dhvani. The further activity of the speaker involved in imparting to the sounds produced by him in a manner or shape such as fast, slow etc is called dhvani.

             From the first verse of the Dhvanyaloka it is quite clear that the theory of dhvani had a long course of growth in as much as it was given a due consideration by his predecessors and it existed even at the time of Anadavardhana himself in various forms, handed down , as he asserts in endless tradition although it may not have been explained as Abhinavagupta, adds in his gloss, in particular books .This implies without doubt that the school excited from a very early time, but it goes the credit if Anandavardhana to ore sent it in a systematic and scientific form .

         The theory of dhavni marks a major turn in the onward journey of literary movement , which proclaims dhvani as the essence of poetry and vyanjana as the middle of literary creation and communication .The emergence of the theory of suggestion therefore , constitutes a major event in the Sanskrit literary criticism. It modify the course of the literary current from outward to the inner . It is in this sense that Anandavardhana declares his school as different from the famous system , which has not effort to demonstrate traditional authorize behind the idea of suggestion. The significance of Anandavardhana ‘s typology of verbal suggestion needs to be set out clearly. If we are able to explain how indirect meanings arise thoroughly, we are able to maintain that all probable meaning are natural in the text all that the reader does is to develop this system of verbal symbolism to create a particular meaning.

            There are two main divisions of dhvani the one where the expressed sense being stultified suggests some ideas and is called ‘avivakshitavachta’ and the other where the expressed sense, thought intentionally  to convey some ideas as leading to something else, suggests some other ideas. It is termed as ‘vivakashitanya paravachya’. The ‘avivakshitavachta’ type of dhvani may be illustrated by the following

         “   Only three type of men can pluck the golden flowers

     Of this earth, viz , the brave , the learned and the parasites “.