Literature and History (2):

the Use of History in Literary Criticism

Literary History, New Criticism and New Historicism

Q & A (1)Your questions (groups 1 & 2)? Last week’s focus: Historical methods not just used by historians and fiction

writers. They are ways of

knowing/representing our past. History has never been so prevalent and yet so easily forgotten as it is nowadays.

Q & A (1)What are the historical methods used by historiography and/or historical novel/film and how can they be critiqued? credibility (‘facts & evidence,’ authoritative & neutral tone and the past tense); subjective selection embodiment (witness account, the use of narrative and other techniques) subjective (biased) and eliminating gaps totalization (generalizations of a period, a people or a society) excluding and erasing individual differences and exceptions.

Outline

Literary History – another example of traditional historicism New Criticism e.g. Sonnet 29 New Historicism & Foucault

Literary History p. 104 – periodization 歷史斷代 segmenting the flow of history into some big chu

nks. (classification as a way of knowing the past, but . . . )

homogenizing and totalization (one period is seen to have a set of characteristics)

(e.g. p. 108-109; 111; Neo-Classical poetry, Romantic Poetry, Victorian Novel and Poetry 唐詩、宋詞、元曲、明小說 )

Aren’t there exceptions to these generalizations?e.g. Jane Austin, 19th century ‘poetess’ Forming a Canon 典律

Q & A (2)

How is the reading of “Rip Van Winkle” related to what we discussed?

1. A new critical reading (close analysis of form and content to produce a unified meaning)

2. The story is apparently a fantasy out of time and space (and apparently similar to many time/space travel stories).

3. It uses historical methods (as frames). 4. It is involved in contemporary history in a

contradictory way.

Two different views of a literary work

1. A work: Autonomous, unified in meaning; the meaning remains stable and can be transmitted through time and space; New Criticism or Formalism

2. A text: textualized, interacting with the other texts around it in the historical context(s) it is written and read. New Historicism & Post-structuralism

New Criticism: Major Views

A poem is autonomous, with an ontological status.

Intentional Fallacy, Affective Fallacy

Poetry offers a different kind of truth (poetic truth) than science.

Heresy of Paraphrase ( 詩不可以被翻譯 )

New Criticism: Major Views

Organic unity – with the parts interrelated and

forming a wholeness; -- “Form is content; content is

form.”

Parts Denotations, connotations

and etymological roots AllusionsProsodyRelationships

Among the various elements

Whole

Themes

pattern, tension, ambiguities,

paradox, contradictions

New Criticism: Methodology --

Poetry

Sonnet 29

What is the central meaning? How is the “I” presented? How is it supported by the poetic techniques in the poem? Pattern: Variation or repetition? Is there tension formed and solved? Are there paradoxes, ambiguities, etc.?

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least: Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee,--and then my state Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

Sonnet 29

Sonnet 29 – a new critical reading

central meaning – The speaker transcends his state of depression by thinking of his lover. “I” –the speaker (or any man); ‘thee’ his lover Tension (or transition): “Yet” 3rd quartrain. Ambiguities

– “thy sweet love remember'd “ in the mind (of an artist) but not owned;

-- “state”

1. All in one sentence, to suggest the fast change of the speaker’s state.

2.“I” deeply buried in the first two quartrain. 3. The second quartrain: circular or awk syntax, r

epetition of ‘like’

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least:

Sonnet 29 –analyzed—syntax//meaning

3rd quartrain: smooth syntax, rythmic (iambic) and mellifluous sounds suggesting the rise of his state.

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee,--and then my state Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate;

Sonnet 29 –analyzed—syntax//meaning

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least: Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee,--and then my state Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.

Sonnet 29 –analyzed -- rimes

musical

Sonnet 29 – ambiguities?

Ambiguities – “thy sweet love remember'd “ not pres

ent? Nor reciprocated? --(textbook p. 114-15) “state” – mental stat

e but not social state. -- John Barrrel “The narrator can find no wo

rds to assert the transcendent power of true love which cannot be interpreted as making a request for a couple of quid 一磅金幣 ” (qtd Taylor 71)

New Criticism Historicized: The theories after New Criticism: Five Main Points

Politics is pervasive (implying power relations), 任何事情都是政治的， Language is constructive (but not reflective) of reality, 語言為建構， Truth is provisional (or contingent, no universal, non-changing truth), 真理是臨時建構， Meaning is contingent (context is important determinant of meanings), 意義是因時／地制定的， Universal human nature is a myth 人性的普遍性是虛構的 .Do you agree?

New Criticism New Historicism

History is brought back to literary studies and literature de-centered. Both are in a network of text. The assumptions of history – influenced by Michel Foucault.

New Historicism: principles (textbook) 115

Every expressive act (speech or text) is embedded in a network of material practices (production of texts or other types of productions); participate in the economy they describe. Language as context: Every act of unmasking, critiquing, and opposition uses the tools it condemns and risks falling prey to the practice it exposes; Literature de-centered: That literary and non-literary texts circulate inseparably; Truth is provisional; human nature, a myth. No discourse,. . . gives access to unchanging truths, nor expresses inalterable human nature

New Historicism: methods (textbook) chap II p. 246

Investigates three areas of concern: 1. the life of the author; 2. the social rules found within a text;3. a reflection of a work’s historical situation

in the text. Avoiding sweeping generalization of a text or a historical period, a new historicist pays close attention to the conflicts and the apparently insignificant details in history as well as the text.

New Historicism: examples

p. 123 – an anecdote is used to interpret Twelfth Night. The prefaces to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, as well as contemporary literary reviews and capitalist system, are used to explain his views on poetry.

Michel Foucault (1926 - 1984)

Discourse, Power and Subjectivity

Image source

Foucault (1): Outline

Discourse1. Definition2. “What is an Author?”3. Power and Knowledge

(Truth) ‘effective history’

Power Discipline & Punish

Discourse ( 論述 ): DefinitionDiscourse is "a group of statements which provide a language for talking about ...a particular topic at a particular historical moment."Discursive formation over time --three major procedures:

Definition & Prohibition defining statements & Rules about the “sayable” and “thinkable”Division and rejection; subject positions; exclusion of other statements Opposition between false and true Authority/Power of knowledge (Truth)

Discursive practices (material practices) within institutions.

Stop and Think: Discourse, “Truth” & Power

What discourse, or its “the regime of truth,” makes the following statements valid?

Neurosis is a mental illness. Masturbation causes sexual impotence. Yellow is beautiful. 一個孩子恰恰好，兩個不嫌多

How is ‘author’ related to discourses?

What is an Author?

The author is not a creator of his own work. He is a ‘label’ put on a group of work by and related to him.

The author function: providing to ‘his’ discoursea. Value, b. Coherence,c. Stylistic unity, d. a historical figure

Literary Discourse: implications

No fixed boundaries between literature and other social practices; The author is not the creator of his work. He serves as a label to put on a group of works related to him. (e.g. Wordsworth discourse) Defining some subject positions (of the author, the reader, etc.) (to be discussed more later)

Power and Knowledge/Truth

power – both repressive, controlling and prod

uctive -- not just top-down; it circulates, worki

ng in multiple direction like “capillary 血管 movement.”

-- producing “Truth” – with a discursive formation sustaining a regime of truth.

Power and Knowledge/Truth (2)

Since truth is provisionally produced by power in its system, Foucault argues for production of ‘effective history’ (117) e.g. the operation of power in a hospital –exertion of power through spatial arrangement, the doctor’s examination, the posters, pamphlets, the different examination room, registration system, pharmacy, insurance co., etc.

Discipline and Punish

Main purpose -- not so much the “birth of the prison” as “disciplinary technology”

Or the carceral ( 監獄的 ) forms of discipline which exercise over individual a perpetual series of observation and modes of control of conduct.

Discipline and Punish (2) B. Penopticon

A circular building with the central control tower control internalized.

References

Miller, Peter. Domination & Power. Routledge: 12/01/1987.