Introduction to Postmodern Literary Theory Agenda Why study literary theory?

Introduction to Postmodern Literary Theory

Agenda

• 1. Why study literary theory?

• 2. Modernity, liberal humanism & the origin of English literature

• 3. Modernism vs. postmodernism

• 4. Literary theory

Agenda

• LITERARY THEORY

• New Criticism
• Archetypal / myth criticism
• Phenomenology & reader-reception theory
• Marxist / ideological
• Psychoanalytical
• Structuralism & semiotics
• Poststructuralism
• New Historicism
• Deconstruction theory
• Cultural materialism
• Feminism
• Queer theory
• Postcolonialism

Why Study Literary Theory?

• It’s about more than finding meaning in a text

• Current theories of language, knowledge and the self

• Reflects a recent revolution in the humanities

• A complete overhauling of long-accepted Western assumptions and biases

• Literature is power

• To help you become citizens of the postmodern world

Language & Truth

• People are the same everywhere

• There are universal laws and truths

• Knowledge is objective, independent of culture, gender, etc.

• Language is a man-made tool that refers to real things / truths

• I, the subject, speak language

• I have a discernible self

• The self is the center of existence

Liberal Humanism: View of Literature

• Good literature is of timeless significance.

• The literary text contains its own meaning within itself.

• The best way to study the text is to study the words on the page, without any predefined agenda for what one wants to find there.

• The text will reveal constants, universal truths, about human nature, because human nature itself is constant and unchanging.

Liberal Humanism: View of Literature

• A literary work is "sincere," meaning it is honest, true to experience and human nature, and thus can speak the truth about the human condition.

• What is valuable in literature is that it shows us our true nature, and the true nature of society, without preaching

• What critics do is interpret the text (based largely on the words on the page) so that the reader can get more out of reading the text.

History of English Literature

• 18th C England—standards of polite letters

• Industrial revolution created oppressed working class

• Role of literature was to uplift society

• Victorian period: scientific discovery & social change

• Dominance of religion began to erode (powerful ideological control of image, symbol, habit, ritual)

• The view was “England is sick and English literature must save it…to delight and instruct us, to save our souls and heal the state.”

History of English Literature

• Mathew Arnold—saw need to cultivate the middle class

• Not in universities, but in working men’s schools

• English was the poor man’s “classics”

• Goal—transmission and reinforcement of moral & social values

• Ideological control

• Royal Commission—“English is a suitable subject for women and second and third-rate men who became schoolmasters.”

Modernist Literature

• “Things fall apart, The centre cannot hold, Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

• --Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Modernist Literature

• Emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity

• Movement away from “objective” third-party narration

• Tendency toward reflexivity and self-consciousness

• Obsession with the psychology of self

• Rejection of traditional aesthetic theories

• Experimentation with language

What is Postmodernism?

• Continuation of modernist view

• Does not mourn loss of history, self, religion, center

• A term applied to all human sciences —anthropology, psychology, architecture, history, etc.

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