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Literary Theory and
Methodology
Session Five: Marxist Criticism
Agenda
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Jakobson’s model of communication
Test
Marxist Criticism: Some Key Concepts
Examples
Jakobson’s Six Factors of
Verbal Communication
context
Addresser
message
contact
code
addressee
Jakobson’s Six Functions
of Verbal Communication
Referential
Emotive
poetic
phatic
metalingual
conative
Mimetic criticism
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The literary work of art is a mirror.
– It imitates, or reflects, or represents
reality, or life, or the world.
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Prescribes the kinds of things a literary
work ought to mirror.
Marxist criticism
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
What is being / ought to be reflected?
The nature of reflection
Base and superstructure
Class struggle
History as a dialectic process
Ideology
Hegemony
1. What is being / ought to
be reflected?
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Realism vs. Modernism
Society vs. The individual
2. The nature of reflection
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How is reality being reflected?
Is literature passive or active?
3. Base and
superstructure
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Base: socio-economic relations
between classes
Superstructure: ideology, politics,
religion, philosophy, literature (?)
4. Class struggle
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Capitalists vs. workers
The means of production are
privatized while the process of
production is socialized
5. History as a dialectic
process
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Dialectics and dialectical materialism
Dynamic relationships of
interconnectedness between the
classes
The internal tensions and
contradictions between and among the
classes
6. Ideology
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= superstructure
A set of ideas, norms, and values that
form a distortion of reality (opposed to
science)
False consciousness; hidden and
illusory assumptions that naturalise
our ways of making sense of and
dealing with the world
Terry Eagleton, Ideology:
An Introduction
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The general material process of production of ideas, beliefs
and values in social life
Ideas and beliefs (whether true or false) which symbolize the
conditions and life-experiences of a specific, socially
significant group or class
The promotion and legitimation of the interests of such social
groups in the face of opposing interests
Such promotion and legitimation when carried out by a
dominant social power
Ideas and beliefs which help to legitimatethe interests of a
ruling group or class specifically by distortion and
dissimulation
Similar false and deceptive beliefs which arise not from the
interests of a dominant class but from the structure of society
as a whole
7. Hegemony
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The way a (small) class of people nonviolently maintains power over another
(larger) class
An Example: Graham
Greene, ”I Spy”