Introduction to Postmodern Literary Theory Agenda Why study literary theory?

Reception Theory

• WOLFGANG ISER (1926-)

• The Act of Reading (1978)
• We bring assumptions to each reading, based upon language codes and traditions
• Good literature forces reader into a new critical awareness of customary codes
• Often violates or transgresses our normative ways of seeing
• The whole point of reading is to bring us into deeper self-consciousness

Phenomenology / Reception Theory

• E.D. HIRSCH (1928- )

• Validity in Interpretation

• Literary meaning is absolute and immutable, resistant to historical change
• Believes in author’s intention
• But significances vary throughout history (interpretations)
• Critic must reconstruct ways of seeing that would have governed the author’s meaning at the time of writing

Hermeneutics

• HANS-GEORGE GADAMER (Truth and Method)

• All interpretations are situational and constrained by the historically relative criteria of a particular culture; impossible to know the text “as it is.”
• All interpretations consist in a dialogue between the present and the past
• We “listen” with passive Heideggerian passivity for the answer
• Must reconstruct the question
• Interpretation is a matter of “coming home” to the past

Hermeneutics

• HANS-GEORGE GADAMER (Truth and Method)

• Assumes there is a single mainstream tradition which all valid works participate in and that history is an unbroken continuum
• Tradition is home
• Rationale for high German tradition; its own classics and national pride
• FLAW: fails to recognize the problem of ideology; that history is not a dialogue but a monologue between the powerful and powerless
• A theory based upon tradition and classics; does not allow for atraditional literature

Phenomenology / Reception Theory

• KEY POINTS:

• “Meaning” begins with the reader (not author or text)
• We must open ourselves up to the phenomena of the text
• Reading is a “spiritual” experience that can lead us to a deeper sense of consciousness and awareness
• Reading enables us to connect with “history, essences, and traditions”
• We are co-partners with the author
• We participate in the reading process through the social construction of language, which precedes us

Phenomenology / Reception Theory

• STANLEY FISH (American)

• A novel is all the assorted accounts of the novel that have been given or will be given by readers and reviewers
• Does not mean all interpretations are valid (relativism)
• Readers are members of interpretative communities that have communal and conventional beliefs

Pre-Structuralism

• NORTHROP FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)

• Literature formed an objective system that could be analyzed “scientifically”
• Laws = archetypes, myths, genres are basic structures (universal patterns)
• Four narrative categories:
• Comic Spring
• Romantic Summer
• Tragic Autumn
• Ironic Winter

Pre-Structuralism

• NORTHROP FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)

• All these patterns spring from the COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS to reveal universal archetypes
• Myth Hero is superior
• Romance Superior in degree
• Tragedy and epic Superior in degree but not to others
• Comedy and realism Equal to rest of us
• Satire and irony Inferior

Archetypal Criticism

• NORTHROP FRYE, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)

• Tragedy About human isolation
• Comedy Human integration
• Three recurrent patterns of symbolism:
• Apocalyptic
• Demonic
• Analogical

Archetypal Criticism

• JOSEPH CAMPBELL (1904-87)

Archetypal Criticism

• JOSEPH CAMPBELL (1904-87)

Archetypal Criticism

• JOSEPH CAMPBELL (1904-87)

Ferdinand de Sausurre (1857-1913)

• Course in General Linguistics (1916)

• General structures by which language, myths and literatures work

• Language is a system of signs

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