Literary
Criticism and Theory—Part III
9.
Mathew Arnold: Study of Poetry
Snippets
1. Arnold’s most famous
piece of literary criticism is his essay “The Study of Poetry.” In this work,
Arnold is fundamentally concerned with poetry’s “high destiny;” he believes
that “mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life
for us, to console us, to sustain us” as science and philosophy will eventually
prove flimsy and unstable.
2. Arnold’s essay concerns
itself with articulating a “high standard” and “strict judgment” in order to
avoid the fallacy of valuing certain poems (and poets) too highly, and lays out
a method for discerning only the best and therefore “classic” poets (as
distinct from the description of writers of the ancient world). Arnold’s
classic poets include Milton, Shakespeare, Dante, and Homer; and the passages
he presents from each are intended to show how their poetry is timeless and
moving.
3. For Arnold, feeling
and sincerity are paramount, as is the seriousness of subject: “The superior
character of truth and seriousness, in the matter and substance of the best
poetry, is inseparable from the superiority of diction and movement marking its
style and manner.” An example of an indispensable poet who falls short of
Arnold’s “classic” designation is Geoffrey Chaucer, who, Arnold states,
ultimately lacks the “high seriousness” of classic poets.
4. At the root of
Arnold’s argument is his desire to illuminate and preserve the poets he
believes to be the touchstones of literature, and to ask questions about the
moral value of poetry that does not champion truth, beauty, valor, and clarity.
Arnold’s belief that poetry should both uplift and console drives the essay’s
logic and its conclusions.
5. The essay was
originally published as the introduction to T. H. Ward’s anthology, The English
Poets (1880). It appeared later in Essays in Criticism, Second Series.
6. Arnold terms poetry
as a criticism of life thereby refuting the accusation of Plato and says that
as time goes on man will continue to find comfort and solace in poetry.
7. Arnold says that
when one reads poetry he tends to estimate whether it is of the best form or
not. It happens in three ways- the real estimate, the historic estimate, and
the personal estimate. The real estimate is an unbiased viewpoint that takes
into account both the historical context and the creative faculty to judge the
worth of poetry. But the real estimate is often surpassed by the historic and
personal estimate. The historic estimate places the historical context above
the value of the art itself. The personal estimate on the other hand depends on
the personal taste, the likes and dislikes of the reader which affects his
judgment of poetry. Arnold says that both these estimates tend to be
fallacious.
8. Arnold here speaks
about the idea of imitation. He says that whatever one reads or knows keeps on
coming back to him. Thus if a poet wants to reach the high standards of the
classics he might consciously or unconsciously imitate them. This is also true
for critics who tend to revert to the historic and personal estimate instead of
an unbiased real estimate. The historic estimate affects the study of ancient
poets while the personal estimate affects the study of modern or contemporary
poets.
9. Arnold proposes the
‘touchstone’ method of analyzing poetry in order to determine whether it is of
a high standard or not. He borrows this method from Longinus who said in his
idea of the sublime that if a certain example of sublimity can please anyone
regardless of habits, tastes or age and can please at all times then it can be
considered as a true example of the sublime. This method was first suggested in
England by Addison who said that he would have a man read classical works which
have stood the test of time and place and also those modern works which find
high praise among contemporaries.
10. Then Arnold moves
on to speak about Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth but does not pass any judgement
on their poetry. Arnold believes that his estimate of these poets will be influenced
by his personal passion as they are closer to his age than the classics and
also because their writings are of a more personal nature.
11. Finally Arnold
speaks about the self-preservation of the classics. Any amount of good
literature will not be able to surpass the supremacy of the classics as they
have already stood the test of time and people will continue to enjoy them for
the ages to come. Arnold says that this is the result of the self preserving
nature of humanity. Human nature will remain the same throughout the ages and
those parts of the classics dealing with the subject will remain relevant at
all times thus preserving themselves from being lost in time.
Expected
Questions
1.
Which
of the following arrangements of Matthew Arnold’s critical works is in the
correct chronological sequence?
a. Preface to the
poems—On translating Homer--- Essays in Criticism (1st
series)—Culture and Anarchy--- Essays in Criticism (2nd series)
b. On Translating
Homer--- Culture and Anarchy--- Essays in Criticism (1st and 2nd
series), Preface to the poems.
c. Culture and
Anarchy--- Preface to Poems--- Essays in Criticism (1st and 2nd
series)--- On Translating Homer
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Works
in criticism: 1. Preface to the Poems (1853) 2. On translating Homer (1861) 3.
Essays in Criticism (1st series) (1865) 4. Culture and Anarchy
(1869) 5. Essays in criticism (2nd series) (1888).
2. The function of
Criticism is not merely “judgement in literature” but “a disinterested
endeavour to learn and propogate the best that is known and thought in the
world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and new ideas.” Who expressed
this opinion?
a. Ruskin
b. Carlyle
c. Arnold
d. I.A. Richards
Ans: C
Explanation:
He
gave importance to the propagation of best ideas for the promotion of culture.
The function of criticism is to prepare a congenial atmosphere for the
prevalence of best ideas. A poet must live in an atmosphere of best ideas.
3. In which essay
Arnold defines poetry as “a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for
such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty?”
a. Wordsworth
b. Shelley
c. The Study of poetry
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
The
greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to
life,-- to the question—how to live? A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is
a poetry of revolt against life, a poetry of indifference to moral ideas is a
poetry of indifference to life. In poetry, however, this criticism of life has
to be made comfortably to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.
4. “An excellent
action”, according to Arnold, must have :
a. High seriousness and
weight of meaning
b. Agony and ecstasy
c. An excitement of
human emotions
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
In the Preface(1853) he
asserts that “excellent action”, unfolded by “appropriate treatment” so that it
may afford joy, is the apt subject for poetic composition. A poet should deal
with “great actions, calculated powerfully and delightfully to affect what is
permanent in human soul.”
5. A critic commented
on Arnold’s contribution to criticism: “Aristotle shows us the critic in
relation to art. Arnold shows us the critic in relation to the public.
Aristotle dissects a work of art, Arnold dissects a critic.” Who made this
comment?
a. George Saintsbury
b. J.W.H. Atkins
c. David Daiches
d. Scott James
Ans: D
Explanation:
Rolfe
Arnold Scott-James (1878-1959) was a notable British journalist, editor and
literary critic in early twentieth-century literature. He is often cited as one
of the first people to use the word "modernism" in his 1908 book
Modernism and Romance, in which he writes, "there are characteristics of
modern life in general which can only be summed up, as Mr. Thomas Hardy and
others have summed them up, by the word, modernism".
10.
T.S. Eliot’s Tradition and Individual Talent
Snippets
1. ‘Tradition and the
Individual Talent’ (1919) sees Eliot defending the role of tradition in helping
new writers to be modern. This is one of the central paradoxes of Eliot’s
writing – indeed, of much modernism – that in order to move forward it often
looks to the past, even more directly and more pointedly than previous poets
had. This theory of tradition also highlights Eliot’s anti-Romanticism.
2. Unlike the Romantics’
idea of original creation and inspiration, Eliot’s concept of tradition
foregrounds how important older writers are to contemporary writers: Homer and
Dante are Eliot’s contemporaries because they inform his work as much as those
alive in the twentieth century do. James Joyce looked back to ancient Greek
myth (the story of Odysseus) for his novel set in modern Dublin, Ulysses
(1922). Ezra Pound often looked back to the troubadours and poets of the Middle
Ages. H. D.’s Imagist poetry was steeped in Greek references and ideas.
3. He goes on to argue
that a modern poet should write with the literature of all previous ages ‘in
his bones’, as though Homer and Shakespeare were his (or her) contemporaries:
‘This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the
temporal T. S. Eliot 2and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what
makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most
acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.’
4. In short, knowledge
of writers of the past makes contemporary writers both part of that tradition
and part of the contemporary scene. Eliot’s own poetry, for instance, is
simultaneously in the tradition of Homer and Dante and the work of a modern
poet, and it is because of his debt to Homer and Dante that he is both modern
and traditional.
5. Eliot’s essay goes
on to champion impersonality over personality. That is, the poet’s personality
does not matter, as it’s the poetry that s/he produces that is important. Famously,
he observes: ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from
emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from
personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know
what it means to want to escape from these things.’
6. We might also bear
in mind that Eliot knew that great poets often incorporated part of themselves
into their work – he would do it himself, so that, although it would be naive
to read The Waste Land as being ‘about’ Eliot’s failed marriage to his first
wife, we can nevertheless see aspects of his marriage informing the poem. And
in ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’, Eliot would acknowledge that the
poet of poets, Shakespeare, must have done such a thing: the Bard ‘was occupied
with the struggle – which alone constitutes life for a poet – to transmute his
personal and private agonies into something rich and strange, something
universal and impersonal’.
7. For Eliot, great
poets turn personal experience into impersonal poetry, but this nevertheless
means that their poetry often stems from the personal. It is the poet’s task to
transmute personal feelings into something more universal. Eliot is rather
vague about how a poet is to do this – leaving others to ponder it at length.
Expected
Questions
1. Which of the
following arrangement of T.S.Eliot’s critical works is in the correct
chronological order?
a. The Sacred Wood--- The
use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism--- Selected Essays--- On Poetry and the
Poets--- To Criticise and the Critic.
b. The Sacred Wood---On
Poetry and Poets--- To Criticise the Critic--- Selected Essays---The Use of
Poetry and the Use of Criticism
c. Selected Essays---
To Criticise the Critic--- The Sacred Wood--- On Poetry and Poets--- The Use of
Poetry and the Use of Criticism
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Eliot’s famous works are The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), The
Idea of A Christian Society (1939), Notes Towards the Definition of Culture
(1948), Selected Essays (Third edition 1951), On Poetry and Poet (1957), To
Criticise and the Critic (1966) and the Sacred Wood (1921).
2. In which essay of
T.S.Eliot the phrase “dissociation of sensibility” occurs?
a. Hamlet and his
problems.
b. The metaphysical
poets
c. Tradition and
Individual Talent
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
The
phrase occurs in Eliot’s essay entitled ‘The Metaphysical Poets’. He uses this
phrase to describe the characteristic fault of later seventeenth century
poetry.
3. In which essay of
T.S. Eliot the phrase, “objective correlative” occurs?
a. Hamlet and his
problems
b. The metaphysical
poets
c. Tradition and
Individual Talent
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Eliot
believes that since the poet cannot transfer his emotions on ideas from his own
mind directly to his readers, there must be some kind of mediation- “a set of
objects, a situation, chain of events which shall be the formula of that
particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in
sensory experience, the emotion is immediately evoked.” It is through
“objective correlative” that the transactions between the author and the reader
necessarily take place.
4. Who according to
Eliot, had developed “Unified Sensibility”?
a. The Elizabethans and
Jacobeans
b. The Neo-classicists
c. The Romantics
d. The Victorians
Ans: A
Explanation:
A
unified sensibility, according to Eliot, is the true product of a true
synthesis of the individual with the traditional, of feelings with thought and
of temporal with the eternal. The Elizabethans and Jacobeans had developed a
unifying sensibility.
5. Which among the
following is the manifesto of Eliot’s Criticism?
a. Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads
b. Preface to the
Fables
c. Preface to
Shakespeare
d. Tradition and
Individual Talent
Ans: D
Explanation:
Eliot’s
essay ‘Tradition and Individual Talent’, first published in Times Literary
Supplement in 1919, may be regarded as an unofficial manifesto of Eliot’s
critical creed. This essay illustrates Eliot’s faith in classicism and
tradition.
6. Tradition in Eliot’s
view means:
a. Imitating the poets
of the past
b. Heredity
c. Handling down of the
past
d. Historic sense
Ans: D
Explanation:
Tradition
is not imitating the ways of the ancients blindly. Tradition can only be
obtained by those who have the historical sense which involves a perception
“not only of the pastness of the past, but also of its presence”.
7. Historic sense
involves a perception of -----
a. History
b. The pastness of the
past and also its presentness
c. A sense of the
historical incidents
d. The past
Ans: B
Explanation:
As in question 6.
8. Tradition implies___
a. A recognition of the
continuity of literature
b. A critical judgment
as to which of the writers of the past continue to be
significant in the
present
c. A knowledge of these
significant writers obtained through great labour
d. All the above.
Ans: D
Explanation:
Tradition
is the means by which the vitality of the past enriches the life of the
present. In brief, the sense of tradition implies: 1. Recognition of the continuity
of literature, 2. A critical judgement as to which of the writers of the past
continue to be significant in the present; and 3. A knowledge of these writers
through painstaking effort.
9. “The existing
monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which
is modified by the
introduction of the new work or art among them” whose
pronouncement is this?
a. Coleridge
b. William Wordsworth
c. T. S. Eliot
d. Aristotle
Ans: C
Explanation:
T.S.
Eliot is the greatest and most influential critic of the modern age. He is like
Dryden because most of his criticism is written in the form of prefaces to his
works with the purpose of justifying his own poetic creations.
10. In which of the
following critical essays does the analogy of the catalyst
occurs?
a. Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads
b. Preface to the
Fables
c. Preface to
Shakespeare
d. Tradition and
Individual Talent
Ans: D
Explanation:
Eliot’s
essay Tradition and Individual Talent, first published in Times Literary
Supplement in 1919, may be regarded as an unofficial manifesto of Eliot’s
critical creed. This essay illustrates Eliot’s faith in classicism and
tradition.
11.
Cleanth Brookes, The Language of Paradox
Snippets
1. Cleanth Brooks, an
eminent New Critic, advocates the centrality of paradox as a way of
understanding and interpreting poetry, in his best-known works, The Language of
Paradox, The Well Wrought Urn (1947) and Poetry and the Tradition” (1939).
Brooks helped to formulate formalist criticism by emphasizing “the interior
life of a poem” and codifying the principles of close reading.
2. In the Language of
Paradox, Brooks establishes the crucial role of paradox-by demonstrating that
paradox is “the language appropriate and inevitable to poetry”. This is because
referential language is incapable of representing the specific message of a
poet and the poet must “make up his language as he goes,” since words are
mutable and, meaning shifts when words are placed in relation to one another.
3. Brooks illustrates
the working of paradox by analysing ‘Lines Composed upon Westminster Bridge’,
in which the speaker is able to appreciate the beauty of industrialised London
just as he would appreciate any natural phenomena, as he views London as a part
of nature, having been built by man, who himself is a part of nature, and who
attributes his spark of life to the city.
4. Brooks ends his
essay with a reading of John Donne’s poem The Canonization, which uses paradox
as its underlying metaphor. In describing the speaker’s physical love as
saintly, and the two lovers as appropriate candidates for canonization, Donne
seems to parody both love and religion, but in fact it combines in a complex
conceit. Brooks also points to secondary paradoxes in the poem: the
simultaneous duality and singleness of love, and the double and contradictory
meanings of “die” in Metaphysical poetry (both sexual union and literal death).
He contends that these several meanings are impossible to convey at the right depth
and emotion in any language but that of paradox.
Expected
Questions
1. Who wrote, ‘The Well
Wrought Urn’(1947) and the Modern Poetry and Tradition ( 1939)?
a. Cleanth Brookes
b. T.S.Eliot
c. I.A.Richards
4. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Cleanth Brookes was an
American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions
to New Criticism in the mid-20th century and for revolutionizing the teaching
of poetry in American higher education. His best-known works, The Well Wrought
Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (1947) and Modern Poetry and the
Tradition (1939), argue for the centrality of ambiguity and paradox as a way of
understanding poetry. With his writing, Brooks helped to formulate formalist
criticism, emphasizing "the interior life of a poem" and codifying
the principles of close reading.
2. It is the anomalous
juxtaposition of incongruous ideas for the sake of striking exposition or
unexpected insight. Which literary device is this?
a. Irony
b. Paradox
c. Metaphor
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
It
functions as a method of literary composition and analysis which involves
examining apparently contradictory statements and drawing conclusions either to
reconcile them or to explain their presence.
3. Cleanth Brookes, an active
member of the New Critical movement, outlines the use of reading poems
through____ as a method of critical interpretation.
a. Paradox
b. Analysis
c. Close reading
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Paradox in poetry means
that tension at the surface of a verse can lead to apparent contradictions and
hypocrisies.
4. Brookes ends his
essay with a reading of John Donne’s poem “The Canonization”, which uses a
paradox as its underlying _____.
a. Similie
b. Irony
c. Metaphor
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
Using
a charged religious term to describe the speaker’s physical love as saintly,
Donne effectively argues that in rejecting the material world and withdrawing
to a world of each other, the two lovers are appropriate candidates for
canonization. This seems to parody both love and religion, but in fact it
combines them, pairing unlikely circumstances and demonstrating their resulting
complex meaning.
5. Who wrote the essay,
“The Critical Monism of Cleanth Brooks”, which argues strongly against Brook’s
centrality of paradox?
a. I.A. Richards
b. R.S. Crane
c. Salisbury
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
Brooks
believes that the very structure of poetry is paradox, and ignores the other
subtleties of imagination and power that poets bring to their poems.
12.
Northrop Frye "Archetypes of Literature"
Snippets
1. ‘Archetypal Literary
criticism’ is concerned to analyzing a text in concern to the myths and
archetypes that could be in the text in the form of description, symbols,
images, allusions, references, characteristic traits, etc. This type of
criticism appeared in the literary field in 1934 with the publication of Maud
Bodkin’s ‘Archetypal Patterns in Poetry’.
2. Archetypal Criticism
enjoyed the greatest popularity during the 1940s and 1950s. The main
contributor to its popularity back then was Northrop Frye, a Canadian literary
critic. The field has not seen much evolution since then and is not much in
practice at present. However, it forms an important inclusion in the tradition
of literary criticism.
3. Frye shows no
concern to the origin of the archetypes. All he states is that the archetypes
make the concepts of the universe better understandable for the human beings.
The archetypes develop in accordance to ‘human needs and concerns’ which makes
them proper for human life.
4. Frye has identified
two major categories – comedic, further subdivided into comedy and romance;
and, tragic, further subdivided into tragedy and satire.
5. He has also
identified a connection between various seasons and the different literary
genres. For instance, he associates comedy to the season of spring, tragedy to
autumn, satire with winter and romance to summer. He has also identified logic
for this association. Comedy is basically about the birth and revival of the
hero as spring is symbolic of victory over winter. Tragedy is associated to the
downfall of the protagonist as autumn suggests the demise of the seasonal
calendar. Satire depends on mockery and is concerned to insignificance of the
hero. That is why it has been associated to winter, which symbolizes the
absence of productivity. Similarly, summer refers to conclusion of the seasonal
calendar as romance usually ends with an achievement, most commonly in the form
of marriage.
6. Frye also advocates
a difference in the way a symbol is interpreted in connection with different
genres. In the schema that he suggests for this purpose, he identifies five
different spheres, namely, human, animal, vegetation, mineral and water. While
humans in comedic work for fulfillment of wishes, in tragic it acts in a
tyrannical way leading to isolation and downfall. Animals are gentle and
pastoral in comedic while predatory in tragic. Vegetation is represented by the
formations like gardens, parks and flowers in case of comic; in case of tragic,
it is present in form of wild forest or barren land. Cities, temples, precious
stones, etc. represent the mineral sphere in comedic which is represented by
deserts, ruins and the likes in case of tragic. While the sphere of water is present
in the form of rivers in comedic, it appears as floods, seas, etc. So, the same spheres are to be interpreted in
different ways and to the different effects in case of the comedic and the
tragic works, respectively.
7. Frye accepts his
schema to be simplistic. He also understands that there are some neutral
archetypes as well which could not be identified as clearly to either of the
tragic and the comedic. However, he has made the concept quite clear to make
the analysis of the archetypes clearer in accordance to the genre under
consideration.
Expected
Questions
1. Who defined
archetype as a symbol or image ?
a. Cleanth Brooks
b. I.A. Richards
c. Northrop Frye
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
Northrop
Fyre working in the field of literature defined an archetype as a symbol,
usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as
an element of one’s literary experience as a whole.
2. Based on Northrop
Frye, comedy is aligned with ____ because the genre of comedy is characterized
by the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection.
a. Winter
b. Spring
c. Autumn
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
Spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness.
3. Which is the
culmination of life in the seasonal calendar according to Northrop Frye?
a. Summer
b. Winter
c. Autumn
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Romance and summer are paired together because summer is the culmination of
life in the seasonal calendar; and the romance genre culminates with some sort
of triumph, usually a marriage.
4. Which is the dying
stage of the seasonal calendar in the opinion of Northrop Frye?
a. Winter
b. Autumn
c. Summer
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
Autumn is the dying stage of the seasonal calendar, which parallels the tragedy
genre because it is known for the “fall” or demise of the protagonist.
5. Which is metonymised
with winter?
a. Comedy
b. Satire
c. Tragedy
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
Satire is metonymised with winter on the grounds that satire is a dark genre.
It is noted for its darkness, dissolution, the return of chaos, and the defeat
of the heroic figure.
13.
Lionel Trilling "Freud and Literature"
Snippets
1. Trilling was an
American literary critic and teacher who brought psychological, sociological,
and philosophical methods and insights into criticism. His critical writings
include studies of Matthew Arnold (1939) and E.M. Forster (1943), as well as
collections of literary essays: The Liberal Imagination (1950), Beyond Culture:
Essays on Literature and Learning (1965).
2. Trilling’s "FREUD AND LITERATURE" (1940) is an
extract from his The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society.
3. Trilling believes
that Freudian psychology offers a systematic account of the human mind.
Psychoanalytical theory
had a great impact on literature. But “the effect of Freud on literature has
been no greater than the effect of literature on Freud”.
4. Next Trilling speaks
about the influences on Freud— Schopenhauer and Nietzsche anticipated his
ideas. But Freud did not read their works. It is nothing but the zeitgeist (the
direction of thought of that era).
5. Trilling speaks
about the influence Freud had on literature. Kafka explored Freudian concepts
of guilt and punishment. Joyce and Thomas Mann looked at the rational side of
Freud who was “committed to the night side of life”. Freud believed that the
aim of psychoanalysis is to consider ‘the night side of life’. It is to make
the ego more independent of the superego, to widen its field of vision and so
to extend the field of vision and to extend the organization of the id.
6. Freud considered art
as one of the charms of life. He speaks with admiration about the artists.
Writers understood the motives of men. Yet sometimes he speaks with contempt
about art. Art is substitute gratification – an illusion in contrast to
reality. But unlike other illusions art is harmless and beneficent that ‘it
does not seek to be anything but an illusion’.
7. Freud tried to show that
poetry is indigenous to the very constitution of the mind. Mind is seen as a
poetry-making organ. Poetry is seen as a
method of thought though unreliable and ineffective for conquering reality. The
mind in one of its parts could work without logic. The unconscious mind works
without any logic.
8. Freud says that in
psychic life there is a repetition compulsion that goes beyond the pleasure
principle. This traumatic neurosis is an attempt to mythridatize (another term
from medical science, where a patient is administered small doses of poison.
Ultimately, the dosage is increased and he becomes immune to poison). The
nightmare that a person sees is an attempt to overcome a bad situation. By
repeating it he is making a new effort to control it.
9. Freud says that in
human pride is the ultimate cause of human wretchedness. Freud’s man has more
dignity than any other system can give. He is an inextricable tangle of culture
and biology. He is not simply good; there is a hell within him that is waiting
to engulf the whole civilization. For everything he gains, he pays in equal
coin.
Expected
Questions
1. Who wrote the
essays, The Liberal Imagination (1950), Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature
and Learning (1965) ?
a. Freud
b. Coleridge
c. Lionel Trilling
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
His critical writings include studies of Matthew Arnold (1939) and E.M. Forster
(1943), as well as collections of literary essays: The Liberal Imagination
(1950), Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning (1965).
2. Who praised Lionel
Trilling as the last great critic?
a. Nathan Glick
b. T.S. Eliot
c. Mathew Arnold
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Nathan Glick writing in the Atlantic Magazine (July 2000) praised Trilling as
‘the Last Great Critic’.
3. Who believed that the
great modern writers -- D. H. Lawrence and Franz Kafka, Yeats and Eliot, Joyce
and Proust, Mann and Conrad –offered a subversive attitude towards the basic
tenets of liberal democracy?
a. Mathew Arnold
b. Nathan Glick
c. Lionel Trilling
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
In their works he found the abyss of terrors and mysteries.
4. Trilling’s “FREUD
AND LITERATURE" (1940) is an extract from his
a. Studies of Matthew
Arnold (1939) and E.M. Forster (1943)
b. The Liberal Imagination
(1950)
c. Beyond Culture:
Essays on Literature and Learning (1965)
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
Trilling’s “FREUD AND LITERATURE" (1940) is an extract from his The
Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society.
5. “The poets and
philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered was the
scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied”. Who said it?
a. Lionel Trilling
b. Matthew Arnold
c. Sigmund Freud
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation: When Freud’s
70th birthday was celebrated, one of the speakers in the meeting described him
as “the discoverer of the unconscious”. Freud corrected the speaker and stated:
“The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I
discovered was the scientific method by which the unconscious can be studied”.
14.
Viktor Shklovsky "Art as Technique"
Snippets
1. Russian Formalism
was a literary movement in Russia that started in 1915, where literary scholars
like Victor Shklovsky, Andrei Bely, and Potebnya had multiple theoretical
aesthetics to how literature can be interpreted. In Victor Shklovsky’s article,
Art As Technique, Shklovsky re-interprets Potebnya’s perspective about
literature from reality and fantasy.
2. In Victor
Shklovsky’s article, Art As Technique, Shklovsky argues, “Art is thinking in
images.” Shklovsky’s purpose in arguing this interpretation is because he
generalizes art to broaden its viewer’s horizons of how it can be interpreted.
Art, from Shklovsky’s perspective, is a broad subject and can lead to multiple
accusations.
3. When analyzing art
to images, Shklovsky is basically describing a typical work of art to symbolize
something abstract. The way Shklovsky’s argument is a re-interpretation of
fantasy and reality, is that when producing a work of art, you are transforming
fantasy into a reality. The reason why art and literature from Shklovsky’s
perspective can have multiple accusations, is because when Shklovsky says; “Art
is thinking in images,” he is stating that art can be approached from various
perspectives.
4. In his well-read
essay “Art as Technique” (which is also known as “Art as Device”), Shklovsky
argues that literariness is simply the product of a particular use of language
– it is our language of the everyday defamiliarized. That is to say,
literariness is the result of working language so that it “makes strange” or
interrupts our habituated or automatic perception of the word. By interrupting
our automatic perception of the word in this way, the reader is forced to make
extra effort in determining the meaning of the text and in so doing, Shklovsky
argues, our wonder of the world is re-enlivened.
5. So, the writer’s job
is to recover “the sensation of life” – that is, to render the world unusual or
unfamiliar to the extent that the reader experiences the world anew. To return
to his own example, it is to make the reader experience the artfulness of the
stone rather than simply regard the stone as object. If one could sum up
defamiliarization in a single sentence then, it might look something like this
– defamiliarization is a technique by which the author can re-enliven the
naturally inquisitive and literally awesome gaze of the child in the reader.
6. Perhaps the most important implication of
thinking of the literary in this way is that literature itself can never again
settle down. Clearly, those literary devices which once unsettled the reader
will at some point become naturalized, just as the repetition of an inspiring
metaphor means that it will eventually become a worn cliché. If literariness is
a product of “making strange” then literature will always have to search out
new ways of defamiliarizing the reading experience. Understood like this, literary
history becomes the domain of discontinuities and interruptions rather than the
smooth “progression” that some of the more conservative critics would advocate.
Expected
Questions
1. Who founded the OPOYAS Society for the study of
poetic languages?
a. Boris Pasternak
b. Andrei Bely
c. Potebnya
d. Victor Shklovsky
Ans: D
Explanation:
In 1916, Victor Shklovsky founded OPOYAZ (Obshchestvo izucheniya POeticheskogo
YAZyka—Society for the Study of Poetic Language), one of the two groups (with
the Moscow Linguistic Circle) that developed the critical theories and
techniques of Russian Formalism.
2. Who wrote the essay,
‘Art as a technique’?
a. Victor Shklovsky
b. Andrei Bely
c. Potebnya
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
"Art as Technique" (also translated as "Art as Device") comprised
the first chapter of his seminal Theory of Prose, first published in 1925.
3. Who developed the
concept of defamiliarization?
a. Boris Pasternak
b. Leo Tolstoy
c. Victor Shklovsky
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation: He argued
for the need to turn something that has become over-familiar, like a cliché in
the literary canon, into something revitalized.
4. “The purpose of art
is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are
known. The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms
difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the
process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art
is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not
important”. Who said it?
a. Victor Shklovsky
b. Leo Tolstoy
c. Victor Hugo
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Shklovsky's work pushes Russian Formalism towards understanding literary
activity as integral parts of social practice, an idea that becomes important
in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Russian and Prague School scholars of
semiotics.
5. Who wrote the
collection of essays ‘Literature and Cinematography’ published in 1923?
a. Boris Pasternak
b. Andrei Bely
c. Potebnya
d. Victor Shklovsky
Ans: D
Explanation:
Shklovsky was one of the very early serious writers on film. A collection of
his essays and articles on film was published in 1923 (Literature and
Cinematography, first English edition 2008). He was a close friend of director
Sergei Eisenstein and published an extensive critical assessment of his life
and works.
15.
Raymond Williams "Realism and the Contemporary Novel"
Snippets
1. The essay ‘Realism
and Contemporary Novel’ is taken from his “The Long Revolution” where he talked
about the three revolutions in European society.
a. The Democratic
Revolution b. The Industrial Revolution c. The Cultural Revolution. Further, he
mentions these revolutions as incomplete and is continuously happening in the
history of Europe. As a Marxist, he initiates his essay with the discussion on
the historical aspect of English critical tradition of a century from 1859 to
1956.
2. His aims to write
the Essay are: a. to discuss the existing variations in realism b. the ways in
which the modern novel has developed c. to discuss the new realism.
3. He stresses on “an
ordinary, contemporary, everyday reality opposed to romantic or legendary
subjects.” He mentions from sociological reality to psychological during the
span of the 20 century. By using the Russian terms like Narodnost, Tipichimost,
Idieanot and Partisonst, he illustrates the social realism in novels. According
to him, the novelist presents realism as noraodnost. .. the technical effect as
an expression of spirit opposite to formalist. It rejects an ordinary technical
meaning of realism where as the term Idieanot and Partinost, the terms to refer
to the Ideological content and Partison affiliations to such realism. Thus they
suggested the development of the ideological or revolutionary attitudes already
described. Finally he uses the term “Tipichimost’ as typical characters in a
typical situation.
4. Raymond Williams
intended to present his ideas on or about realism in a novel. He says novel is
not only a form of literature; it includes most form of writing. He says, “Now
the novel is not so much a literary form but a whole literature in itself, with
its wide boundaries, there is room for almost every kind of cotemporary writing.
It is such a form that can include all the forms of literature.
5. There are two
divisions of the social novel 1. The descriptive novel. 2. The formula Novel. The
Descriptive Social novel or documentary deals with a particular society or community.
He says, “If we want to know about life in a town, or in a university or on a
merchant-ship, or in a patrol in Burma this is the book.” Further he adds, “Of
all current kinds of novel, this kind at its best is apparently nearest to what
I am calling the realist novel.” Formula Novel is a novel with “a particular
pattern, is abstracted from the sum off
social experience and a society is created from this pattern.” As we find, the
novels like “A Brave New World’ ‘Nineteen Eight Four’ are powerful social
fiction in which a pattern taken from contemporary society is materialized in
another time or place.
6. Like the social
novel, we have two divisions of novel as (1) Personal Documentary Novel (2)
Personal Formula Novel. Personal Formula Novel is a type of novel that deals
with a certain kind of personal relationship. In order to distinguish personal
documentary novel from a social documentary novel, he says in the social
descript novel there is a lack of dimension but in a different direction.” Here
the society is an aspect of the character. He emphasizes upon society and the people
of that society through the discussion of novels-realist novel. William calls
the personal formula novel as “the fiction of special pleading” He illustrate
James Joyce’s’ – “Portrait of the Artist as a young Man’ to exemplify this kind
of novel where the vision of the world is seen through one character. Human
individuals are created from the sum of experiences.
Expected
Questions
1. Who wrote the
‘Culture and Society’ (1958) and the ‘Long Revolution’ ( 1961)?
a. Lionel Trilling
b. Raymond Williams
c. James Joyce
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
Raymond Williams (1921-1988), was a Welsh cultural critic, who was a major
forerunner of contemporary Cultural Studies. Books such as Culture and Society
1780-1950 (1958) and The Long Revolution (1961) served to map out much that is
now taken as the basic subject area of cultural studies, as well as doing much
to shape the understanding of culture that informs those studies.
2. Which is the book by
Raymond Williams is an exercise in literary history, but explores literature by
relating books and authors to the broader historical and social development of
ideas, and to culture as a ‘whole way of life’, ‘a mode of interpreting all our
common experiences’?
a. The Long Revolution
b. Television:
Technology and Cultural Form
c. Culture and Society
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
Culture is therefore not the culture of elite, but a culture that is embedded
in everyday experience and activity. The culture that Williams is interested in
is the culture that emerges as a complex criticism of industrial capitalism.
3. Which book by
Raymond Williams is an analysis of culture as a way of life?
a. The Long Revolution
b. Television:
Technology and Cultural Form
c. Culture and Society
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
The Long Revolution takes further the analysis of culture as a way of life. The
revolution is that brought about by ‘the progress and interaction of democracy
and industry, and by the extension of communications’ and the analysis concerns
the way in which this affects all aspects of everyday life
4. Which is the key
term introduced by Raymond Williams?
a. Culture
b. Culture and Society
c. Revolution
d. Structures of
feeling
Ans: D
Explanation:
A
key term introduced by Williams is that of ‘structures of feeling’: the lived
experience of a particular moment in society and in history.
5. From whom did
Williams borrow the term, “overdetermination”?
a. James Joyce
b. Althusser
c. Lionel Trilling
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
Williams borrowed from Althusser an important concept, “overdetermination”— the
factors that determine a cultural practice. He defined “determination” as being
“may be experienced individually but which are always social acts, indeed
specific social formations”. He also suggests that social factors are
internalised by individuals, and that there are multiple social forces that
determine the nature and content of a cultural practice (what is termed as
“overdetermination”).
16.
Jacques Derrida ''Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourses of Human
Sciences"
Snippets
1. Derrida’s Structure,
Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, is a paper he presented
at the John Hopkins University in 1966 which launched post structuralism into
literary theory.
2. In this essay,
Derrida attempts to characterize certain features of the history of Western
metaphysics; as issuing from the fundamental concepts of “structure” and
“centre”.
3. It announces an
“event” — in effect, a complex series of historical movements, whereby these
central notions were challenged, which Derrida explicates using the work of
Levi Strauss. The “event” or the ‘rupture” in the history of thought
metaphorically refers to the series of deconstructions pioneered by thinkers
like Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger.
4. It suggests the ways
in which current and future modes of thought the language might deploy and
adapt Strauss’ insights in articulating their own relations to metaphysics.
5. According to
Derrida, the concept of structure that has dominated Western science and
philosophy has always referred to a “centre… or a point of presence, a fixed
origin. The function of such a centre has been to organise the structure and to
limit the free play of terms and concepts within it.” The centre, says Derrida,
is “the point where any substitution or permutation of elements or terms is no
longer possible.”
6. Analysing Strauss’
mythological studies, Derrida points out the weaknesses of the epistemological
search for unity of a structure. Derrida criticizes structuralism as it becomes
the critique of itself, and cites Strauss’ work The Raw and the Cooked where
Strauss uses the concept of a “reference myth,” the Bororo myth, which is
supposedly the centre of the structure of his mythology. However, Derrida
observes that the Bororo myth deserves no more than any other myth the
privilege of being a reference. Then, he surmises that the Bororo myth was
favoured by Strauss not because of its special character but rather by its
irregular position in the midst of a group of myths.
7. In his discussion of
the origins of the critique of a centre, Derrida also notes that words are. but
mere signifiers void of any real content. The sign does not have a presence.
Language could no longer demand for a unifying centre; the centre becomes an
impossibility not just because of the breadth of the reality that it tries to
signify, but also because of language’s characteristic “freeplay”. Signs are
polysemic and their signification is unlimited or undefined, as it is the
inherent nature of language to defy pre-defined signification. These ideas
introduced in Structure, Sign and Play became the founding principles of
poststructuralism and postmodernism, and were later taken up by other
theorists.
Expected
Questions
1. Derrida’s Structure,
Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences, a paper he presented at
the John Hopkins University in 1966, launched _____into literary theory.
a. Post structuralism
b. Structuralism
c. Deconstruction
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Post-structuralism
is associated with the works of a series of mid-20th-century French and
continental philosophers and critical theorists who came to international
prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. The term is defined by its relationship to
its predecessor, Structuralism, an intellectual movement developed in Europe
from the early to mid-20th century which argues that human culture may be
understood by means of a structure—modeled on language (i.e., Structural
Linguistics)—that differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas—a
"third order" that mediates between the two.
2. According to Derrida
which is a metaphysical contest?
a. Play
b. Structure
c. Sign
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
Sign is a metaphysical concept. Meaning is arbitrary. Meaning is never present
in the sign, it is always postponed.
3. Who wrote the work,
“Of Grammatology”?
a. Trilling
b. Raymond Williams
c. Derrida
d. None of the above
Ans: C
Explanation:
Of
Grammatology is a 1967 book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida that has been
called a foundational text for deconstructive criticism. The book discusses
writers such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Étienne Condillac, Louis Hjelmslev, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl,
Roman Jakobson, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, André Leroi-Gourhan, and William
Warburton. The English translation by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was first
published in 1976.
4. Which term did
Derrida borrow from Levi Strauss?
a. Deconstruction
b. Post structuralism
c. Bricolage
d. None of these
Ans: C
Explanation:
Derrida
highlights Lévi-Strauss's use of the term bricolage, the activity of a bricoleur.
"The bricoleur, says Lévi-Strauss, is someone who uses 'the means at
hand,' that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those
which are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to
the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and
error to adapt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears
necessary."
5. Which book of Levi
Strauss did Derrida quote in his essay?
a. The Raw and the
Cooked
b. From Honey to Ashes
c. The Naked Man
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
In Derrida's words, "structural discourse on myths—mythological
discourse—must itself be mythopomorphic". Lévi-Strauss explicitly
describes a limit to totalization (and at the same time the endlessness of 'supplementarity').
Thus Lévi-Strauss, for Derrida, recognizes the structurality of mythical
structure and gestures towards its freeplay.
17.
Elaine Showalter "Towards a Feminist Poetics"
Snippets
1. Showalter is
concerned by stereotypes of feminism that see feminist critics as being
‘obsessed with the phallus’ and ‘obsessed with destroying male artists’.
Showalter wonders if such stereotypes emerge from the fact that feminism lacks
a fully articulated theory.
2. One of the problems
of the feminist critique is that it is male–orientated. If we study stereotypes
of women, the sexism of male critics, and the limited roles women play in
literary history, we are not learning what women have felt and experienced, but
only what men thought women should be. The critique also has a tendency to
naturalize women’s victimization by making it the inevitable and obsessive
topic of discussion.
3. Showalter coined the
term 'gynocritics' to describe literary criticism based in a feminine
perspective. Gynocritics aims to understand the specificity of women’s writing
not as a product of sexism but as a fundamental aspect of female reality. Its
prime concern is to see ‘woman as producer of textual meaning, with the history
themes, genres, and structures of literature by women’. Its ‘subjects include
the psychodynamics of female creativity. It studies linguistics and the problem
of a female language in literary text. It reviews the trajectory of the
individual or collective female literary career. It proposes ‘to construct a
female framework for the analysis of women’s literature, to develop new models
based on women’s experience’. Its study ‘focuses on the newly visible world of
female culture’; ‘hypotheses of a female sub–culture’; ‘the occupations,
interactions, and consciousness of women’. It projects how ‘feminine values
penetrate and undermine the masculine systems that contain them’.
4. Showalter then
provides an exemplary feminist critique of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of
Casterbridge to demonstrate that “one of the problems of the feminist critique
is that it is male-oriented,” meaning
that, in some sense, every feminist critique, even when criticizing patriarchy,
is focused toward the male. As an alternative, Showalter presents gynocritics
as a way “to construct a female framework for the analysis of women’s
literature, to develop new models based on the study of female experience,
rather than to adapt to male models and theories.”
5. From these
experiences, Showalter then begins a rough sketch of some of the elements that
have characterized women’s writing: awakening, suffering, unhappiness, and
matrophobia, among others. She concludes with her classification of women’s
writing into three phases that “establish[es] the continuity of the female
tradition from decade to decade, rather than from Great Woman to Great Woman.” Thus,
Showalter traces the history of women's literature, suggesting that it can be
divided into three phases.
6. Showalter sees the
first phases taking place from roughly 1840 to 1880; she calls this “the
Feminine phase” and declares that it is characterized by “women [writing] in an
effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture… The
distinguishing sign of this period is the male pseudonym… [which] exerts an
irregular pressure on the narrative, affecting tone, diction, structure, and
characterization.”
7. The second, Feminist
phase follows from 1880 to 1920, wherein “women are historically enabled to
reject the accommodating postures of femininity and to use literature to
dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood.” This phase is characterized by
“Amazon Utopias,” visions of perfect, female-led societies of the future. This
phase was characterized by women’s writing that protested against male standards
and values, and advocated women’s rights and values, including a demand for
autonomy.
8. The Female phase
(1920— ) is one of self-discovery. Showalter says, “women reject both imitation
and protest—two forms of dependency—and turn instead to female experience as
the source of an autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of culture to
the forms and techniques of literature”. Significantly, Showalter does not
offer a characteristic sign or figure for the Female phase, suggesting a
welcome diversity of experience that is too broad to be encompassed in a single
image.
Expected
Questions
1. Who is the author of
the essay “Towards Feminist Poetics”?
a. Elaine Showalter
b. Margaret Fuller
c. Virginia Woolf
d. Simon de Beauvoir
Ans: A
Explanation:
Showalter coined the term 'gynocritics' to describe literary criticism based in
a feminine perspective. Probably the best description Showalter gives of
gynocritics is in Towards a Feminist Poetics.
2. Elaine Showalter
divided the history of women’s literature into -----
phases
a. Two
b. Three
c. Four
d. Five
Ans: B
Explanation:
Showalter traces the history of women's literature, suggesting that it can be
divided into three phases: The feminine phase, the feminist phase and the
female phase.
3. Which among the
following are the major phases of feminist criticism?
a. The feminine
b. The female
c. The feminist
d. All the above
Ans: D
Explanation:
Answer
as in question 2.
4. The feminist
critique deals with women as ----
a. Reader
b. Writer
c. Daughters of patriarchy
d. None of the above
Ans: A
Explanation:
She
states that as a reader, woman studies the texts created by male writers. She presents the belief that as a reader,
female could change the established idea of a given text. This analysis
undertaken by female is what she calls feminist critique.
5. Gyno-criticism deals
with women as -----
a. Reader
b. Writer
c. Daughters of
patriarchy
d. None of the above
Ans: B
Explanation:
When feminist criticism is studied in concern to woman as writer, Showalter terms
it as ‘Gynocriticism’. This is the concept that analyzes themes, genres and
structures created by women. Woman, here, is considered as the producer of a
literary text as well as its meaning.
18.
Michel Foucault "What's an Author"
Snippets
1. Foucault’s
"What Is an Author?" was originally delivered as a lecture in 1969,
two years after the first English publication of Barthes’ famous essay
"Death of the Author, 1967)". Although never explicitly stated, it’s
quite obvious Foucault is directly responding to and criticizing Barthes’
thesis as evidenced by the following statement early in the essay: “A certain
number of notions that are intended to replace the privileged position of the
author actually seem to preserve that privilege and suppress the real meaning
of his disappearance.”
2. Both Barthes and
Foucault agree the "Author” is an unnatural, historical phenomenon that
has unfortunately obtained mythological, heroic status. And both aim to
contradict and complicate this status. However, their methods are drastically
different. If "Death of the Author" actively attempts to kill the
Author from the position of full-frontal attack, then "What is an
Author?" casually submits to the inevitability of this death and opts
instead to further problematize the foundational definitions underlying author
and text.
3. After positing the
classificatory problems associated with an author’s proper name, Foucault
introduces the concept of the “author function” and describes its primary
characteristics:
a. The "author
function" is connected to the legal system. The law insists on holding
individuals accountable for subversive or transgressive communications, hence
the need for an “author.”
b. The "author
function" varies according to field and discipline. Anonymity in
scientific discourses, for example, is more acceptable than in literary
discourses where an author is always demanded in order to situation meaning
within the text.
c. The "author
function" is carried out through "complex operations" and
"is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a discourse to its
producer".
d. An
"author" doesn't necessarily connote a specific individual; several
narrators, selves and subjects confuse and complicate the designation between
author and individual.
4. Foucault then makes
a distinction of an "author function" and how it relates to an
individual work versus an entire discourse. Authors who operate in the latter
category are what he calls "founders of discursivity" and operate in
the unique position of the "transdiscursive". These are authors like
Freud and Marx who "...are unique in that they are not just the authors of
their own works. They have produced something else: the possibilities and the
rules for the formation of other texts."
5. By the end of
"What is an Author?" it becomes clear that Foucault is interested in
exhaustively complicating the notion of what it means to be an author through
the articulation of “author” alongside its many historical and discursive
formations rather than, like Barthes, singling out a generic “Author” to
attack.
Expected
Questions
1. “It is not enough,
however, to repeat the empty affirmation that the author has disappeared. For
the same reason, it is not enough to keep repeating that God and man have died
a common death. Instead, we must locate the space left empty by the author’s
disappearance, follow the distribution of gaps and breaches, and watch for the
openings this disappearance uncovers”. Who said it?
a. Michel Baktin
b. Virginia Woolf
c. Foucault
d. None of the above.
Ans: C
Explanation:
“Writing”
for Foucault was like “Text” for Barthes and thus, writing possesses the “right
to kill” the author, to be the author’s murderer. Writing cancels out signs of
particular individuality so that, ironically, the sign of the writer is the
singularity of absence. The writer has the role of the dead person involved in
a game of writing.
2. Foucault pointed to
exceptions to his assertion that the author is an ideological construct and
made note of transdiscursive writers. Which among the following is a
trasdiscursive writer?
a. Raymond Williams
b. Lionel Trilling
c. Leo Tolstoy
d. Karl Marx
Ans: D
Explanation:
Foucault pointed to exceptions to his assertion that the author is an
ideological construct and made note of transdiscursive writers, such as Karl
Marx and Sigmund Freud and Ann Radcliffe, all of whom established paradigms or
what Foucault called “discursive instaurations.” These are rare figures in the
field of writing who created a genre that spawned writing in their particular area.
3. Whose seminal work
is ‘The Death of the Author’?
a. Barthes
b. Foucault
c. Freud
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Foucault’s attack on the author is much more powerful than that of Barthes.
Barthes kept within the boundaries of literary theory in his essay “The Death
of the Author” and merely wanted to activate the reader. Foucault, however,
seemed to view the author as being implicated in a system of thought that was
mired in personification and personalization that got in the way of the preferred
object of study: the discourse. Foucault wrote that the author was an
“ideological” figure that is linked to a cult of personality.
4. Who wrote: Mental
Illness and Psychology (1954) Madness and Civilization (1961) The Birth of the
Clinic (1963) Death and the Labyrinth (1963) The Order of Things (1966) This is
Not a Pipe (1968) The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) Discipline and Punish
(1975) The History of Sexuality (1976–1984)?
a. Foucault
b. Barthes
c. Lionel Trilling
d. Freud
Ans: A
Explanation:
Paul-Michel Foucault (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984), generally known as
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, social theorist,
and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship
between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control
through societal institutions. Though often cited as a post-structuralist and
postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels, preferring to present his
thought as a critical history of modernity. His thought has influenced
academics, especially those working in sociology, cultural studies, literary
theory and critical theory. Activist groups have also found his theories
compelling.
5. "What matter
who is speaking, someone said, what matter who is speaking." From whom did
Foucault borrow this notion?
a. Freud
b. Barthes
c. LionelTrilling
d. Samuel Beckett
Ans: D
Explanation:
Samuel Barclay Beckett; (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish
avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in
Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French.
19.
Jacques Lacan "The Insistence of the Letter of the Consciousness"
Snippets
1. Jaques Lacan is a
French psychoanalyst whose works have had an extraordinary influence on many
aspects of recent literary theories. He is one of the most influential
theorists of the 1970’s and 1980’s. Lacan is influenced by Frued and Saussure.
He interprets Freud by combining post-structuralist theories and
psychoanalysis. Lacan provides a radical rereading and rewriting of the texts
of Freud.
2. According to him,
human psyche is divided into infinite number of psychic structures. Some of the
psychic structures may be analogous and the psychic structures respond
identically to identical psychic situations. It is called stimulus or impulse
in classical psychology. Lacan’s importance is in his theory about acquisition
of language.
3. Lacan divides his
essay into three parts. They are “The meaning of the Letter”, “Letter in the
unconscious”, and “ Being the Letter and the Other”. In the first section,
Lacan treats the unconscious as a language. According to him, the unconscious
is structured like a language. This does not mean that the unconscious is
language but that the unconscious is like a language. The unconscious is
considered as the seat of instincts, but this has to be rethought. Lacan also
analyses the importance of the “Letter” in the unconscious. He says that “Letter”
is the minimal unit of a language and speech is possible only by using these
letters. Every individual makes use of language to make speech. Language has
existed before the individual makes an entry into it. So it is said that the
relationship of the unconscious with the letter has great significance.
4. Man is a slave of
language. The communication takes place in the universal moment of which he
takes birth. The culture and tradition can also be changed through language.
The use of language is one of the peculiarity of human societies and this can
be made clear by the trinary (Threefold conception of human condition) nature,
society and culture. Lacan here shows how language and unconscious are related
to each other.
5. Lacan formulates a
formula of linguistic science: S/s signifier over the signified, “over”
corresponding to the line separating the two levels. Lacan here questions the
formulation S/s of the signifier and signified of Ferdinand de Saussure. This
formula of sign was given by Saussure in his ‘Course de linguistique Generale’.
6. Lacan claims that
signifier is more important than signified. Next he introduces the concept of
Metonomy and Metaphor. Lacan calls sign a pyramid having two slopes: metanomy
and metaphor. In metanomy one thing represents anything by means of the part
standing for the whole. In metaphor one thing stands for the other or one word
can be replaced by another word.
7. In the second
section of the essay he changes the attention from the conscious self to the
unconscious as “the kernel of our being”. Here Lacan rewrites Freud’s project.
The structure of the language is used to interpret the dreams so that the
structure of the unconscious and the structure of a dream can be related.
8. In the third section
Lacan explains three phases in the evolution of human psyche. They are the
Omlette stage, (Birth to approximately six months), the Mirror stage (six
months to eighteen months) and the Symbolic stage (after 18 months up to
death).
Expected
Questions
1. In which age does
the child think that it is an inseparable part of his mother?
a. Omlette stage
b. Mirror stage
c. Symbolic stage
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
In
the omltte stage child thinks that it is an inseparable part of its mother.
There is no distinction between self and the other (between child and mother)
in this stage. It is a fluid state. The child has no individuality at this
stage and its individuality depends on its mother and the child has no
maturity. Lacan says that language is always absent at this stage.
2. In which stage based
on Lacan, the child develops maturity?
a. Omlette stage
b. Mirror stage
c. Symbolic stage
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
In the mirror stage the child begins to develop maturity. Then the child
realizes the authority, power and force of language and desires for its
acquisition. He then begins to connect ideas to object, emotions and to
situations. This shows the sign of maturity. Lacan says that in this period the
child will see itself in a mirror. It will look at its reflection and then will
realize itself as a unified being separate from its mother and the rest of the
world. When the child sees an image in the mirror, it thinks that image is “Me”
but “it is only an image not the child” and it will create an ego the thing
that says “I”.
3. In which stage does
the child connects ideas, emotions, situations and objects symbolically?
a. Symbolic stage
b. Mirror stage
c. Omlette stage
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
In
third stage the child connects ideas, emotions, situations and objects
symbolically. So images and objects are symbolically related to ideas. It is
also a mature stage of human psyche. Lacan says that there is symbolic order
for language. The symbolic order is Phallus. So language is a male-centred
entity. This nature of language is called Phallocentrism. Lacan believes that
men are more proficient than women in the use of language, for language is
phallocentric. Women have lack of phallus and this consciousness retards her
exercise of language.
4. Who analyses the
unconscious through a linguistic methodology and considers the unconscious as structured
system like language?
a. Freud
b. Foucault
c. Barthes
d. Lacan
Ans: D
Explanation:
Lacan
analyses the unconscious through a linguistic methodology and considers the
unconscious as structured system like language. His procedure is to recast
Freud’s key concept and mechanism into linguistic mode, viewing human mind not
as preexistent but as constituted by language.
5. In which work of
Lacan, would we get the central pillar of Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory?
a. The Ecritus
b. Feminine Sexuality
c. The Psychoses
d. "The Insistence
of the Letter of the Consciousness"
Ans: D
Explanation:
According
to him, human psyche is divided into infinite number of psychic structures.
Some of the psychic structures may be analogous and the psychic structures
respond identically to identical psychic situations. It is called stimulus or
impulse in classical psychology. Lacan’s importance is in his theory about
acquisition of language.
20.
Sharankumar Limbala "Dalit Literature and Aesthetics" (from Towards
an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature )
Snippets
1. Savarna critics are
of the opinion that Dalit Literature must be evaluated strictly as Litertaure
as that is how the reader is going to perceive it. Criticism of Dalit texts
must not give room to any extra literary traditions and it should be performed
on the basis of universal theories and literary criterias. Limbale is opposed
to this view of the Savarna critics as he feels that middle class criticism can
never do justice to Dalit Literature which is the literature of the oppressed
and the discriminated factions of the society.
2. A major debate which
comes up while discussing Dalit literature is centered around the monopoly of
Dalit Writers when it comes to penning Dalit Literature. The Savarna critics
such as Kavi Anil and Vidyadhar Pundalik are of the opinion that Dalit
Literature can be written be anyone through the power of imagination that can
envision the suffering of the Dalits and give it literary expression. Limbale
opines that it is impossible for a non-Dalit to write Dalit Literature as this
Literature is the product of Dalit consciousness that is shaped by the lived
experiences of Dalit, peppered by their pain, suffering and feeling of
rebellion and anger. A non Dalit cannot possibly imagine all of this and be
able to write an authentic account on the Dalits.
3. Since Dalit
Literature is unique in its insistence of social upliftment and the realistic
portrayal of Dalit experiences of pain and suffering along with voicing Dalit
rebellion; as opposed to emphasis on beauty and pleasure, one must develop different
artistic standards for of evaluation for such literature.
4. The crux of what is
being said here lies in the fact that Dalit literature is not subject to fair
and objective criticism. Criticism of any form of literature is necessary and
in fact acts as a catalyst for improvement in the future output of that genre.
But the criticism of Dalit literature is either adulatory or negative. In the
case of being adulatory( falsely positive), the Dalit writers are praised more
out of sympathy than actual admiration of their work. In the case of negative
criticism, the Dalit writers are critiqued subjective to feelings of animosity
and non-appreciation. Neutral criticism of Dalit literature never takes place
and is one of the prime reasons behind its impeded critical growth.
5. The aesthetics of
Dalit literature is also discussed by Limbale in the essay wherein it is
suggested that Dalit literature being a revolutionary form of literature does
not adhere to traditional principles of aesthetics.
6. Due to belonging to
the lower caste, Dalit literature is often accused of arousing feelings of
pain, suffering and anger in the reader whereas non-revolutionary literature
arouses feelings such as happiness and delight. Overall Dalit literature is
painted in a negative picture when it comes to aesthetic evaluation as it is
accused of portraying only grief and sufferings.
Expected
Questions
1. Who wrote the work,
Akkarmashi?
a. Sharan Kumar Limbale
b. Valmiki
c. Janhavi Chadha
d. None of these
Ans: A
Explanation:
Sharankumar Limbale is a Marathi language author, poet and literary critic. He
has penned more than 40 books, but is best known for his autobiographical novel
Akkarmashi.
2. Who comments that
the traditional values of Satyam, Shivam and Sundaram, are not applicable in
context of Dalit aesthetics as they are fabrications used to exploit common
people?
a. Janhavi Chadha
b. Sharan Kumar Limbale
c. Mukarjee
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation: Limbale
comments that the traditional values of Satyam, Shivam and Sundaram, are not
applicable in context of Dalit aesthetics as they are fabrications used to
exploit common people. This aesthetic trinity only benefits the upper caste and
has been formulated to suppress the lower ones.
3. The theme of
Akkarmashi is _____
a. Prosperity of the
society
b. The painful
experience
c. Romance
d. None of these
Ans: B
Explanation:
The title means being illegitimately born. In this text the narrator is the son
of a Dalit woman who was lured by a rich landlord and later deserted. The text
shows the painful experience of growing up in a society in which sexual
exploitation and casteism are prevelant, tinged through and through with the
Dalit consciousness of the writer.
_____
