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THE FOLLOWING TIPS COULD BE HELPFUL Some Recurrent Ideas in Critical Theory According to Peter Barry: 1. Many of the notions we regard as ‘givens’ of our existence (gender identity, individual selfhood and the notion of literature itself) are actually fluid and unstable things - not fixed and reliable essences. There is no such thing as a fixed and reliable truth. 2. All thinking and enquiry is determined by prior ideological commitments. The notion of disinterested inquiry is untenable. 3. Language itself contains limits and pre-determines what we see. All reality is constructed through language. Everything is a linguistic/textual construct. 4. Definitive readings are an illusion. It is characteristic of language to generate infinite webs of meaning so that all texts are necessarily selfcontradictory. 5. Theorists distrust ‘totalising’ notions. The concept of a great book is to be distrusted. Likewise is the concept of a human nature as a generalised norm. This could be Eurocentric or androcentric in fact. In summary there are 5 main points: 1. Politics is pervasive 2. Language is constitutive 3. Truth is provisional 4. Meaning is contingent 5. Human nature is a myth This is the basic frame of mind which theory embodies. It’s likely that a concept you are having difficulty with will turn out to be version of one of these positions. What Post-Structuralist Critics Do From Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009) THE FOLLOWING TIPS COULD BE HELPFUL 1. They read the text against itself to expose the ‘textual subconscious’ meanings expressed which may be contrary to the surface meaning. 2. They show that the text is characterised by disunity rather than unity. 3. They concentrate on a single passage and analyse it so intensively that it becomes impossible to sustain a ‘univocal’ reading and the language explodes into multiplicities of meaning. 4. They look for breaks and shifts in the text (fault lines) and see these as what is repressed or glossed over. What Marxist Critics Do The main tenet of Marxist criticism is that the nature of literature is influenced by the social and political circumstances in which it is produced. But will they take a ‘determinist’ position and argue literature is the passive product of socio-economic forces or will they adopt a ‘liberal’ line seeing socio-economic influences as more distant and subtle? 1. Marxists make a distinction between the overt (surface) and covert (hidden) content of a text then relate the covert content to Marxist themes such as class struggle. 2. They relate the context of a work to the social-class status of the author, assuming the author is unaware of what precisely they are revealing in the text. 3. They explain the nature of a literary genre in terms of the social period which ‘produced’ it. eg. The rise of the novel in 18th century relates to expansion of middle classes during that period. 4. They relate literary work to the social assumptions of the time in which it is ‘consumed’, eg. in cultural materialism. 5. They ‘politicise’ literary form, claiming the forms are determined by political circumstance. Eg. Literary realism carries an implicit validation of conservative social structures. Form and metrical intricacies of the sonnet and iambic pentameter are a counterpart of social stability, decorum and order. What Freudian Psychoanalytic Critics Do 1. They give central importance to the distinction between the conscious and unconscious mind (overt content and covert content of a text). They privilege the latter as ‘what the text is really about and disentangle the two. 2. They pay attention to unconscious motives and feelings (of the author or characters) From Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009) THE FOLLOWING TIPS COULD BE HELPFUL 3. They demonstrate the presence of classic psychoanalytic symptoms, conditions or phases in a literary work: e.g. the oral, anal and phallic stages of emotional development in infants. 4. They make large-scale applications of psychoanalytic concepts to literary history and literature (eg Oedipus Complex) 5. They identify a ‘psychic’ context for the literary work, at the expense of the social or historical context. They privilege the individual ‘psycho-drama’ above the ‘social drama’ of class conflict. Conflicts between generations or siblings - or competing desires within the same individual - loom larger than conflict between social classes. What Feminist Critics Do 1. Rethink the canon, uncover and rediscover texts written by women 2. Revalue women’s experience 3. Examine representations of women in literature 4. Challenge representations of women as ‘Other’, as ‘lack’, as part of ‘nature’. 5. Examine power relations with a view to breaking them down, seeing reading as a political act, showing the extent of patriarchy 6. Scrutinize the role of language in making what is social and constructed seem transparent and ‘natural’ 7. Question whether men and women are ‘essentially’ different because of biology or if these differences are socially constructed 8. Explore whether there is a female language - ecriture feminine 9. Re-read psychoanalysis and issues of female and male identity 10. Question popular notion of ‘Death of the author’. Is the experience of the writer (eg. black/lesbian not central) 11. Expose the ideological base of supposedly neutral or mainstream literary interpretations. From Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009)