00142--Post-structuralism [The Death of the Author/Roland Barthes/Jacques Derrida/Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences]

            Post-structuralism emerged in France in the late 1960.  The two figures most closely associated with this emergence are Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida.  Barthes's work around this time began to shift in character and move from a structuralist phast to a post-structuralist phase.  The essay 'The Death of the Author' by Barthes shows his change of phase from structuralism to post- structuralism.  In that essay he announces the death of the author, which is a rhetorical way of assisting the independence of the literary and its immunity to the possibility of being unified or limited by any notion of what the author might have intended, or 'crafted' into the work.  Instead the essay makes a declaration of radical textual independence: the work is not determined by intention or context.  Rather the text is free by its very nature of all restraints.

            The early phase of post- structuralism seems to license and revel in the endless free play of meanings and the escape from all forms of textual authority.  Later there is an inevitable shift from his textual permissiveness to the more disciplined and austere textual republicanism.  According to Barbara Johnson, deconstruction is not a hedonistic abandonment of all restraint, but a disciplined identification and dismantling of the sources of textual power.

            The second key figure in the development of post- structuralism in the late 1960s is the philosopher Jocques Derrida.  Indeed, the starting point of post- structuralism may be, taken as his 1966 lecture, 'Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences'.  In this paper Derrida sees in modern times a particular intellectual 'event' which constitutes a radical break from part ways of though, loosely associating this break with the philosophy of Nietzche and Heidegger and the psychoanalysis of Freud the event concerns the (decentring) of our intellectual universe.

            Prior to this event the existence of a norm or centre in all things was taken for granted: thus 'man', as the Renaissance Slogan had it, was the measure of all other things in the universe:  White Western norms of  dress,  behaviour, architecture, intellectual out look, and so on, provided a firm centre against which deviations, aberrations, variations could be detected and identified as 'Other' and marginal.  In the twentieth century, however, these centres were destroyed or eroded; sometimes this was caused by historical events - such as the way the First World War destroyed the illusion of steady material progress, or the way the Holocaust destroyed the notion of Europe as the source and centre of human civilisation; sometimes it happened because of scientific discoveries - such as the way the notion of relativity destroyed the ideas of time and space as fixed and central absolutes, and sometimes, finally, it was caused by intellectual or artistic revolutions - such as the way modernism in the arts in the first thirty years of the century rejected such central absolutes as harmony in music, chronological sequence in narrative, and the representation of the visual world in art.

            In the resulting universe there are no absolute or fixed points, so that the universe we live in is 'decentred' or inherently relativistic.  Instead of movement or deviation from a known centre, all we have is 'free play' (or play' as the title of the essay has it).  In the lecture Derrida embraces this decentred universe of free plays as liberating, just as Barthes in "The Death of the Author" celebrates the demise of the author as ushering in an era of joyous freedom.  The consequences of this new decentred universe are impossible to credit but we must enedeavour not to be among 'those who....turn their eyes away in the face of the as yet unnamable which is proclaiming itself' (Newto p.154).  This powerful often apocalyptic tone of post structuralist writing.

            If we have the courage, the implication is, we will enter this new Nietzcheque universe, where there are no guaranteed facts, only interpretations, none of which has the stamp of authority upon it, since there is no longer any authoritative centre to which to appeal for validation of our interpretations.

00141--Distinctions between structuralism and post-structuralism

a)        Origins

"        Structuralism derives ultimately from linguistics.  Linguistics is a discipline which has always been inherently confident about the possibility of establishing objective knowledge.  It believes that if we observe accurately, collect data systematically, and make logical deductions then we can reach reliable conclusions about language and the world.  Structuralism inherits this confidently scientific outlook:  it too believes in method, system and reason as being able to establish reliable truths.

 "       By contrast, post-structuralism derives ultimately from philosophy.  Philosophy is a discipline which has always tended to emphasise the difficulty of achieving secure knowledge about things.  This point of view is encapsulated in Nietzsche's famous remark 'there are no facts, only interpretations:  Philosophy is, so to speak, sceptical by nature and usually undercuts and questions commonsensical notions and assumptions.  Its procedures often begin by calling into question what is usually taken for granted.  Post structuralism inherits this habit of scepticism, and intensifies it.  It regards any confidence in scientific method as naive, and even derives a certain masochistic intellectual pleasure from knowing for certain that we can't know anything for certain (fully conscious of the irony and paradox which doing this entils.

2)        Ione and style

"        Structuralist writing tends towards abstraction and generalisation:  it aims for a detached, 'scientific coolness' of tone.  Given its derivation from linguistic science, this is what we would expect.  An essay like Roland Barthes's 1966 pice 'Introduction to the structural Analysis of Narrative' is typical of this tone and treatment, with its discrete steps in an orderly exposition, complete with diagrams.  The style is neutral and anonymous, as is typical of scientific writing.

"        Post-structrualist writing, by contrast, tends to be much more emotive.  Often the tone is urgent and euphoric, and the style flamboyant and self-consciously showy. Titles may well contain puns and allysions, and often the central line of the argument is based on a pun or a word - play of some kind.

3)        Attitude to Language

"        Structuralists accept that the world is constructed through language, in the sense that we so not have access to reality other than through the linguistic medium.  All the same, all the same, it decides to live with that fact and continue to use language to think and perceive with.  After all language is an orderly system, not a chaotic one, so realising our dependence upon it need not induce intellectual despair.

"        By contrast, post-structuralism is much more fundamentalist and believe reality itself is textual.  Post-structuralism develops the idea that any knowledge is attainable through language.   

4)        Project (the fundamental aims)

"        Structuralism, firstly, questions our way of structuring and categorising reality, and prompts us to break free of habitual modes of perception or categorisation, but it believes that we can thereby attain a more reliable view of things.

"        Post-structuralism is much more fundamental:  It distrusts the very notion of reason, and the idea of human being as an independent entity, preferring the notion of the 'dissolved' or 'constructed' subject, whereby what we may think of as the individual is really a product of social and linguistic forces - that is, not an essence at all, merely a 'tissue of textualities'.

00140--What does a structuralist do with the text?

            The most basic difference between liberal humanist and structuralist reading is that the structuralist's comments on structure, symbol, and design, become paramount, and are the main focus of the commentary while the emphasis on any wider moral significance, and indeed on interpretation itself in the broad sense, is very much reduced.  So instead of going straight into the content, in the liberal humanist manner, the structuralist presents a series of parallels, echoes, reflections, patters and contrasts so that the narrative becomes highly schematised, is translated in fact, into what we might call a verbal diagram.  What we are looking for, and where we expect to find it, can be indicated as in the diagram below.  We are looking for the factors listed on the left, and we expect to find them in the parts of the tale listed on the right.

            Parallels                                                         Plot

            Echoes                                                           Structure

            Reflections/Repetitions         in                  Character/Motive

            Contrasts                                                       Situation/circumstance

            Patterns                                                          Language/Imagery

00139--S/Z by Barthes. 5 codes identified by Barthes in S/Z are:

Roland Barthes

            Barthes book S/Z was published in  1970.  The  book is above Balazac's thirty page story 'Sarrasine'.  Barthes's method of analysis is to divide the story into 561 'lexies' or units of meaning, which he then classifies using five 'codes', seeing there as the basic underlying structures of all narratives.

            The five codes identified by Barthes in S/Z are:

1)        The proairetic code - This provides indications of actions.  ('The ship sailed at midnight'  they began again', etc)

2)        The hermeneutic code - This code poses questions or enigmas which provide narrative suspense.  (For instance the sentence 'He' knocked on a certain door in the neighbourhood of Pell street' makes the reader wonder who lived there, what kind of neighbourhood it was, and so on).

3)        The cultural code - This code contains references beyond the text to what is regarded as common knowledge.  (For example, the sentence 'Agent Agentis was the kind of man who sometimes arrives at work in odd socks' evokes a pre-existing image in the reader's mind of the kind of man this is - a stereotype of bungling incompetence perhaps contrasting that with the image of brisk efficiency contained in the notion of an 'agent'.

4)        The semic code -  This is also called the connotative code.  It is linked to theme, and this code when organized around a particular proper name constitutes a 'character'. 

5)        The symbolic code - This code is also linked to theme, but on a larger scale, so to speak.  It consists of contrasts and pairings related to the most basic binary polarities male and female, night and day, good and evil, life and art, and so on.  There are the structures of contrasted elements which structuralists see as fundamental to the human way of perceiving and organising reality.

00138--What structrualist critics do?

1)        They analyse (mainly) prose narratives, relating to text to some larger containing structure, such as:

        a)  the conventions of a particular literary genre, or

       b)  a network of inter textual connections, or

      c)  a projected model of an underlying universal narrative structure, or

      d)  a notion of narrative as a complex of recurrent patterns or motifs.

2)        They internet literature in terms of a range of underlying parallels with the structures of language, as described by modern linguistics,.

3)        They apply the concept of systematic patterning and structuring to the whole field of western culture, and across cultures, treating as 'systems of signs' anything from Ancient Greek Myths to brands of soap powder.

00137--Structuralism.

            Structuralism is an intellectual movement which began in France in the 1950s and is first seen in the work of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and the literary critic Roland Barthes.  It is difficult to define structuralism in a 'bottom line' proposition.  The essence of Structuralism is the belief that things can not be understood in isolation-they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are part of.  Hence the term structuralism.  Structuralism was imported into Britain mainly in the 1970s.

            The structure in question here are those imposed by our way of perceiving the world and organising experience, rather than objective entities already existing in the external world.  It follows from this that meaning or significance isn't a kind of core or essence inside things: rather, meaning is always outside.  Meaning is always an attribute of things, in the literal sense that meanings are attributed to the things by the human mind, not contained within them.

            Take a poem titled 'Good Morrow' by Donne.  Our immediate reaction as structuralists would probably be to insist that it can only be understood if we first have a clear notion of the genre which it paradies and subverts.  Any single poem is an example of a particular genre.  A poem to its genre is like a phrase spoken in English to the English language as a structure with all its rules, its conventions, and so on.  Donne's poem belong to the genre called alba or 'dawn song', a poetic form dating from the twelfth century in which lovers lament the approach of daybreak because it means that they must part.

            In order to understand alba one should know the notion of the concept of courtly love, and then again the structure of 'poetry' as a whole in which 'Good Morrow' is a part of.  Thus the structrualist 'approach' to the poem is actually taking us away from the very poem, into large and comparatively abstract questions of genre, history, and philosophy rather than closer and closer to it.

            In the structuralist approach to literature there is a constant movement away from the interpretation of the individual literary work and a parallel drive towards understanding the larger, abstract structures that contain them.  These structures are usually abstract such as the notion of the literary or poetic, or the number of narrative itself.  

00136--The common bedrock for critical theory.

Applicable to different approaches in critical theory.

                        For Theory:

            Politics is pervasive

            language is constitutive

            Truth is provisional

            meaning is contingent and

            Human nature is a myth

            Many of the notions which we would usually regard as the basic 'givens' of our existence (including our gender identity, our individual selfhood, and the notion of literature itself) are actually fluid and unstable things, rather than fixed and reliable essence.  Instead of being solidly 'there in the real world of fact and experience, they are socially constructed, that is, dependent on social and political forces and on shifting ways of seeing and thinking.  Hence, no overarching fixed truths' can ever be established.  The results of all forms of intellectual enquiry are provisional only.

            Every practical procedure (for instance literary criticism) presupposes a theoretical perspective of some kind.  To deny this is to place our own theoretical position beyond scrutiny as something which is 'common sense' or 'simply given'.  The problem with this view is that it tends to discredit one's own project along with all the rest, introducing a 'relativism' which disables argument and cuts the ground  from under any kind of commitment.

            Language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what we see.  Thus all reality is constructed through language, so that nothing is simply 'there' in an unproblematical way-everything is a linguistic/textual construct.  In literature as in all writing, there is never the possibility establishing fixed and definite meanings: rather, it is characteristic of language to generate infinite webs of meaning so that all texts are necessarily self contradictory, as the process of deconstructions will reveal.

            There is no final court of appeal court of appeal in there matters, since literary texts, once they exist, are viewed by the theorist as independent linguistic structures whose authors are always 'dead' or 'absent'.

135--"If the pen is a metaphorical penis, from what organ can females generate texts"? Explain.

            This was a question raised by the 19^th century male theorists to silence those who argued for women's writing.  In the male centred western culture, the author is considered as a father.  For him, the pen is an instrument of generative power like the penis.  Out of this prejudiced concept, they argue that women lack the power and instrument for literary creation.  The argument goes like this:  The author is the father of a text.  No woman can be a father so a woman cannot be an author.

            Feminists respond to this conclusion by rejecting the fundamental analogy of the Author/Father.  On the other hand women generate texts from the brain, they would say.  It can also be the word processor, with its microchips, inputs and outputs.  And the whole thing seems like a metaphorical womb.  Instead of the image of literary paternity, images of literary maternity predominated the 18^th 19^th centuries.  They started to view the author more as a mother than as a father.  Showalter says that by analogy, the process of literary creation is more similar to gestation, labour and delivery than insemination.  Showalter rewrites the earlier question like this:

            "If to write is metaphorically to give birth, from what organ can males generate texts"?

00134--Describe the three national variants in Feminist Literary criticism as presented by Showalter.

            In the 1980's women's writing asserted itself as the central project of feminist literary study through hundreds of essays and research papers.  In the 1970s, French Feminist theories had certain differences of opinion with the American feminist movements and theories.  Differences were mainly regarding the method of study.  But now, they are solved.  The new French feminism have much in common with radical American feminist theories.  The concept of ecriture feminine, is a significant theoretical formulation in French feminist criticism today.  Showalter comments "ecriture feminine is a hope for the future". 

            The three major national variants in feminist criticism Showalter talks about are:

a)         English Feminist Criticism which is essentially Marxist.  In the analysis of women issues, it stresses oppression.

b)        French Feminist Criticism.  This is essentially Psychoanalytic.  In its methods of reading and theory, French Feminist Criticism stress Repression. 

c)         American Feminist criticism.  This school is essentially Textual.  In the analysis of women's issues American Feminist Criticism stresses Expression.

            With all there differences, the three variants have still become gynocrtic.  Theories of women's writing presently make use of four models of difference.  The are:  Biological, linguistic, psychoanalytic and cultural.  Each model represents a school of gynocentric feminist criticism.  Each has its own favourite texts, styles and methods.

00133--Briefly explain the term Gender studies.

            Gender studies is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry increasingly prominent since the second half of the 1980s.  It arose from and is closely tied to women's studies and also gay, lesbian, and men's studies.  Starting with the premise that the gender of an individual does not flow naturally or inevitably from her or is anatomical sex, gender studies analyses the way gender identity is constructed in literature and in society, for both women and men.  Conventional Women's studies focused exclusively on women and women's writing.

            Gender studies turns away from this exclusive focus on women and women's writing, and examines the way "masculinity" and "femininity" come to have certain meanings at a particular place and time.  It stresses the necessary inter-relatedness of there meanings what is considered typically masculine in a given society depends in part on being different from what is feminine, and that is feminine or not being masculine.   Gender studies also points out that what is considered gender-neutral or "universal" is often, in fact, implicitly male and exclusive of the female.  Ironically, some feminists have worried that gender studies itself, by rejecting the polemical, compensatory attention to woman characteristic of women's studies, may run the risk of slipping back into a bias that favours men.

00132--Explain the term Gynocrtics.

            There are two distinct modes of feminist criticism.  The first mode is concerned with women as reader and this is termed Feminist critique.  The second mode is concerned with women as writer and hence called Gynocrtics.

            The term is introduced by Elaine Showalter in her essay "Toward a Feminist Poetics" published in 1979 and later elaborated in "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness", 1981.  Gynocritics focuses on images, themes, plots, and genres, on individual authors and patterns of influence among women, in an effort to identify what is specifically characteristic of women's writing and to construct "a female framework for the analysis of women's literature".  Associated primarily with Anglo American feminist criticism of the late 1970s, gynocrtics seeks to recover the unknown, and to re-read the known, writing by women in order to 'map the territory' of a female literary tradition.

            Showalter called Gynocritics the "second phase" of feminist criticism, because it succeeded and built upon an earlier phase of "feminist critique", which has focused on women as the writers of male texts.

00131--Explain Concept of Feminist Critique.

            There are two distinct modes of feminist criticism.  The first mode is concerned with women as a reader, and this is termed Feminist Critique.  The second mode is concerned with women as writer and hence called Gyno-critics.

            Feminist critique is a historically grounded enquiry which probes the ideological assumptions of literature.  It is political and polemical and has affiliations to Marxism.  The subjects of study are mainly the image of women in literature, omissions and misconceptions of them.  According to Elaine Showalter, Feminist Critique is an interpretation of texts from a feminist perspective to expose diche's, stereotypes, and negative images of women.  Generally focusing on male literary and theoretical  texts, it also calls attention to the gaps in a literary history that has largely excluded writing by women.  This approach dominated feminist criticism when it first emerged in the 1970s and is strongly linked to the decades political agendas; Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1970), for example ties the mistreatment of women in fiction by Henry Miller and others to the oppression of women in a patriarchal society.  As early as 1975, Carolyn Heilbrun and Catherine Stimpson associated such readings with the "righteous, angry" first stages of feminist criticism.  Showalter would go on to suggest that by continuing to emphasize writing by men, the strategy of feminist criticism remained dependent "on existing models" of interpretation.  It did, however, lay the foundation for what she identified as the second, "gynocritical" phase of feminist criticism, focusing on women as writers with values, methods, and traditions of their own.  It has also led to more fully elaborated theories of women as readers, and continues to be an important tool in exposing the operation of sexism in culture and society.

00130--Why does Showalter say that feminist criticism is the Wilderness now?

Audio Books

            The term wilderness literally means 'a large areas of land that has never been developed or used for growing crops because it is difficult to live there'.  In history, Wilderness is the woodland region, south of the Rapidan River.  It was the scene of a Civil War between the armies of Grant and Lee in 
May, 1864.  It was Carolyin Heilbrun and Catherine Stimpson, who observed that Feminist Criticism is in the Wilderness now.  The reason is that it has branched out into diverse groups and attitudes, and they cannot reach a monolithic perspective.  Originally it was Mathew Arnold who predicted that literary critics might perish in the wilderness before they reach the promised land.  To the present comment from some critics that Feminist criticism is the wilderness is clearly answered by Showalter.  She says that feminist criticism is in good company because at present, all criticism is in the wilderness.

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            Feminist criticism too lacks a systematic and unified theoretical basis.  Different thinkers interpret and explain it differently.  Black critics protest the silence of feminist criticism about black and third world women writers.  They demand a Black feminist aesthetic.  Marxist feminists want to focus on class along with gender.  Literary historians want to uncover the lost tradition.  Post structuralists want to synthesise a new critical mode that is both textual and feminist.  Psycho analytic critics prefer to talk about women's relationship to language and signification.

00129--How does Elaine Showalter explain the absence of a systematic Feminist theory?

Showlter

            Elaine Showalter views the absence of systematic Feminist theory as something quite natural and positive.  In a culture which is dominated by patriarchy, such situation is not unexpected.  One major obstacle was this: for many feminists, the observations and view points they put forward were really "an expressive and dynamic enterprise" of theirs.  It was rather a part of their being and not just a mechanic academic out pouring.  These women were unwilling to limit or bound there expressions within the constraints of a theory.  Naturally they resisted such moves.  Hence these feminists wished to escape from the leading schools of critical thought dominated by male centered theories and theorists.  The cases of Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and Marxism were similar.

            All these debates were at the alto of masculine discourse.  Another thing is that scientific criticism (Structuralist, Post-structuralist or Deconstructionist) tried to become objective while Feminist criticism stressed the authority of subjective experience.  These feminists preferred to agree with Virginia Woolf.  It is "unpleasant to be locked out.... it is worse perhaps to be locked in".  In other words, it is unpleasant to have no systematic theory....it is worse to be locked in the chambers of masculine theories.  

00128--What has Abrams to tell Hills Miller Who is a deconstructive angel.

            Abrams says that as a deconstructive angel Hillis Miller is not serious, as in Hegel's sense of the term, that is, he does not entirely and consistently commit himself to the consequences of his premises.  He is a double agent who plays the game of language by two very different sets of rules.  One of the games he  plays is that of a deconstructive critic of literary texts.  The other is the game he will play in a minute or two when he steps out of his grapho centric premises and begins to talk.  Abrams makes a prediction as to what Miller is going to do in the symposium.  He will have determinate things to say and will masterfully exploit the resources of language to express there things clearly and forcibly.  He will present things without any theoretical difficulties.  People who have read and admired his recent writings will be surprised and delighted by peculiarities of what he says.  Abrams says that before presenting his speech Miller works his speech in the form of writing.  He delivers it and then again publishes for the public.  This substitution of written from by speech will certainly make a difference.  Each of his readers will be able to reconvert the black-on-blanks back to speech, which he will hear in his mind's ear; he will perceive the words not simply as marks nor as sounds, but as already invested with meaning.

00127--In what ways, does post structuralism differ from structuralism?

            Structuralism is a way of thinking about the world which is predominantly concerned with the perceptions and description of structures.  At its simplest, structuralism claims that the nature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself, and in fact is determined by all the other elements involved in that situation.  The full significance of any entity cannot be perceived unless and until it is integrated into the structure of which it forms a part.  Structuralists believe that all human activity is constructed.  It is not natural or "essential".  Consequently, it is the systems of organization that are important.

            Post-structuralism may be understood as a critical response to the basic assumptions of structuralism.  Structuralism studies the underlying structure inherent in cultural products (such as tests), and utilizes analytical concepts from linguistics, psychology, anthropology and other fields to understand and interpret those structures.  Although the structuralist movement fostered critical inquiry into these structures, it emphasized logical and scientific results.  Many structrualists sought to integrate their work pre-existing bodies of knowledge.  This was observed in the work of Ferdinand De Saussure in linguistics, Claude Levi-Strauss in anthropology, and many early 20^th century psychologists.

            The general assumptions of post-structuralism derive from the critique of structuralist premises.  Specifically, post-structuralism holds that the study of underlying structures is itself culturally conditioned and therefore subject to myriad biases and misinterpretations.  To understand an object (e.g. open of the many meanings of a text), it is necessary to study both the object  itself, and the systems of knowledge which were coordinated to produce the object.  In this way, post structuralism positions itself as a study of how knowledge is produced.

  

00126--What is Abram's basic difference of opinion with Deconstruction? OR How doe Abrams disagree with Derrida?

MH Abram

            Structuralism proved that meaning evolves out of differences from other signs in a semantic chain.  Post structuralists too it to its extreme and claimed that this chain is endless.  hence the final meaning is impossible.  The process of finding difference is always deferred as well.  Derrida coined the portmanteau  term Differance.  The term suggests to differ' and 'to defer'.  Deconstructionists hold that communicating through language is rather impossible.  In "The Deconstructive Angel", Abrams defend the ability of traditional historical criticism to discover what literary works might have meant to their contemporaries.  They can also grasp what they mean today.  To prove this, he compares his own interpretation to those of other interpretations.  These combined approximations will "confirm the 'objectivity' of his own interpretation".  Abrams admits the ambiguity of literary language, sharing the ideas of Barthes.  Abram is comfortable with linguistic theories that see language as pluralistic or ambiguous.  But he cannot agree with the violent claims of Deconstruction.  To quote him:  "deconstruction goes beyond the limits of pluralism, by making impossible anything that we would account as literary and cultural history".

00125--Give and account of Derrida's notion of 'the sign'.

            Derrida brings to a text the knowledge that the marks on a page are not random markings, but signs.  A sign has a dual aspect as signifier and signified, signal and concept, or mark-with-meaning.  To account for significance, Derrida turns to a highly specialized and elaborate use of Saussure's notion that the identity either of the sound or of the signification of a sign does not consist in a positive attribute, but in a negative (or relational) attribute-that is, its "difference" or differentiality, from other sounds and other significations within a particular linguistic system.  This notion of difference is readily available to Derrida, because inspection of the printed pages shows that some marks and sets of mark repeat each other, but that others differ from each other.  In Derrida's theory 'difference' itself supplements the static element of a text and it can be taken as to mean 'negativity'.  'Difference puts into motion the incessant play of signification that goes on within the seeming immobility of the marks on the printed page.

            Derrida calls what is distinctive in the signification of a sign "trace".  This means what "appears" or "disappears".

00124--What was the crucial issue raised by Hillis Miller in his review of Abram's book "National Supernaturalism"?

            Abrams agreed with Wayne Booth that pluralism is not only valid, but necessary to our understanding of literary and cultural history.  The brining  together of different points of view is the only way to achieve a vision in depth.  Abrams also said that Miller's radical statement, in his review, of the principles of what he calls deconstructive interpretation goes beyond the limits of pluralism, by making impossible anything that we would account as literary and cultural history.  But Miller considered "National Supernaturalism" as an example "in the grand tradition of modern humanistic scholarship, the tradition of Curtius, Anerbackm Lovejoy, C.S. Lewis" and made it clear that what was at stake is the validity of the premises procedures of the entire body of traditional inquiries in the human sciences.  Abrams thought that it was a matter important enough to warrant their discussion.  The  following are the essentials of the premises that he shares with traditional historians of western culture, which Miller questions.

(1)       The basic materials of history are written texts and the authors who wrote these tests exploited the possibilities and norms of their inherited language to say something determinate, and assumed that competent readers  world be able to understand what they said.

(2)       The historian for the most part interprets not only the passages that he cites mean now, but also what their writers meant when they wrote them.  His interpretation approximates what the author meant. 

(3)       The historian presents his interpretation to the public in the expectation that the expert reader's interpretation of passage will approximate his own and so confirm the "objectivity" of his interpretation. 

00123--Write a note on New Criticism.

            During the nineteen-thirties there emerged in America a group of critics who came to be known as the founders of the so-called New criticism.  Its pioneer was John Crowe Ransome.  Other critics who belonged to this new concept in literary criticism were Robert Graves, William Empson, Kenneth Burke, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren.  George Watson says:  "In the American New Critics, contempt for late nineteenth-century values is general, not only for historical criticism and its accompanying pedantries, but for agnostic enlightenment, democratic optimism, industrialism, ands such international \ideals and Marxism.  It is a frankly reactionary movement, and the word 'New' must always have held for it an air of pleasing paradox".  In the late nineteen-thirties a general attack on historical criticism was fiercely mounted.  The New Critics condemned poetry for its use for any other purpose beyond itself.  It should not be studied for any other purpose whether historical or moralistic.  These critics declared that if poetry is worth reading at all, it is worth reading as poetry only, not for any purpose beyond it.

            The detailed explanation of the basic doctrines of the New Criticism appeared as late as 1946-49 in two articles published in then 'Sewanee Review' by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley.  The articles were entitled "The International Fallacy' and "The Affective Fallacy".  Two of the assumptions of romantic criticism are held up to the light in these articles and pronounced fallacious:  "The design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art".  Their slogan was 'Poetry for poetry only, and not another thing'.  However, some of the New Critics were a little tolerant too.  They said:  "We must accord to critics the right of the free choice as between different basic methods". 

00122--Write a note on the Moralist Critic of the Mid Twentieth Century.

            There emerged a School of Moralist Critics in the mid-twentieth assumed century.   George Watson says: "Most English Critics before  Arnold and Ruskin assumed that  all good poetry is morally edifying, and that it is always a writer's duty to make the world better.  But there is a tradition in twentieth century criticism stemming from Arnold which is distinct from all previous moral theories of literature.  The difference may be simply stated:  Johnson like other Renaissance and eighteenth-century critics took it for granted that everyone is more or less agreed about the difference between right and wrong, and that the moral duty of the poet lies simply in observing a recognized code.  Justice is a virtue independent of time and place.  Modern moralism by contrast, is more often aganostic, exploratory, and self-consciously elitist.  Its toe is more often embittered.  Its very dogmatism is based upon the uncertainty of its dogma and the difficult of finding an audience".

            John Middleton proclaimed that criticism depended on values a delineation of what is good for man.  Geroge Orwell and F.R. Leavis offer and unusually pure example of critical moralism.  The cast school of Shakespearean criticism inspire by Wilson Knight has enthusiastically interpreted dramatic characters as if they were typical philosophers.  The critic's business is to assert what the morally best poems are.

            The moralists are the prophetic figures in modern criticism.  They must readily excite discipleship.  Their influence may even extend to matters of conduct; in some cares the critical interest is a late extension of some wider moral purpose.  George Orwall may be taken us a model of model of modern English moralist.  Raymon Williams's culture and society and its sequel The Long Revolution are both scholarly and prophetic.  Hoggart belongs to the tradition of Arnold.  Thus we see that moralism is as common today as ever before, but it is less sharp than in the past.

00121--Write a note on William Empson as a Critic.

            William Empson is primarily remembered for his famous critical work seven Types of Ambiguity.  This is his first and most influential work.  It appeared in 1930, and again, heavily revised and enlarged,  in 1947.  There have been only three books of criticism since, and two very slim volumes of neo-Metaphical verse largely written in the thirties.  There are only two chief pre-occupations of the New Criticism-Verbal and structural.  The Seven Types represents rising 'stages of advancing logical disorder'.  The ambiguities merge from the use of words.

            With his second critical book, some versions of pastorals, his interest shifts to the total meaning of whole works, with many evidences of powerful Marxist and Freudian influence.  Empson himself admits that his Marxism in the thirties and later was more serious than his writings reveal.  The some versions assumed the class- analysis of society and the ideal status of the 'proletariat', though the frankly admits that the book is 'not solid piece of Sociology'.  He say that pastorals is one of the conventions out of which 'ambiguity' emerges because it consists in 'simple people expressing strong feeling in learned and fashionable language.

            With his third book, The structure of Complex words (1951)  Empson returns to verbal analysis of an even more rigorous  kind than that of 'seven types'.   He says, "I think a critic should have an insight into the mind of his author, and I don't approve of the attack on "The Fallacy of Internationalism."

            Of all the English critics, he is the most variously ingenious and the readiest to make new ventures. His mind sparks off original ideas with frightening rapidity.

00120--Discuss Henry James as a critic.

            Henry James was pre-eminently a critic of the novel.  There was a lot of systematic criticism of poetry before him, but practically no systematic criticism of the novel was there before him.  He was himself a great novelist, and therefore he knew what problems normally come before a novelist, and how to overcome them.  Therefore he stands out as the first great critic of the art of novel writing.  His criticism is contained in a series of eighteen prefaces and a large number of his note-books.  They were all collected in a  book-form under the title The Art of the Novel published in 1934.  His object in his criticism was ambitious and clear; it was to create from nothing an English tradition in the criticism of the novel.  No such systematic criticism of the art of novel existed before it.

            James's criticism falls into three stages.  In the first stage almost all his criticism is about contemporary authors, English, American and French.  Secondly, there is the magnificent central phase that open with a manifesto-like the Art of Fiction.  Thirdly, there are the prefaces of 1907- a, composed in a single confined period of preparation for the collected edition of his works.  They are nearly a total statement of his views on the novel.  James holds that without a properly connected and artistically developed form, the novels are merely 'fluid puddings'.  Life, for Emerson, is not just an untidy system, it is a moral imperative.  James's heroes make their bid for life and meet defeat at the end, and yet they are justified in their attempt.  James developed the technique we now call 'the central intelligence'.  The extent of revolution that James brought in the criticism of the novel is difficult to overstate.

00119--What are the criteria of good literary criticism according to F.R. Leavis?

            F.R. Leavis does not adhere to any prescribed 'Rules' or the 'Principles' coming down from the ancients for judging the value of a literary work.  For him the 'Literary work' formulates its own criteria for its evaluation.  Its value must be sought in the work itself, in 'the words on the page'.  When this is done, balanced juedgement will automatically follow.  In this respect the reader's own literary and aesthetic sense has to play a great role.  The reader must be trained from the very beginning that he should not be led away by propaganda or mass media.  He must apply his own 'sensitive and scrupulous use of intelligence'.  Then 'even if he is wrong, he has forwarded the business of criticism - he has exposed himself as openly as possible to correction; for what criticism undertakes is the profitable discussion of literature".  F.R. Leavis also believes in intelligent discrimination among good, bad or ordinary authors and their works.

            It is not worthwhile evaluating every author as the historians does.  he recommends the evaluation of only those authors and their works  which qualify for 'the great tradition' in each genre.  This view is in conformity with the view of Longinus who recommends that only those works should be studied and evaluated which are 'truly beautiful and sublime' and 'which always please and please all'.  He recommends the close study and evaluation of the text for the work itself.  The critic must be self-reliant, free from all prejudices and biases in his approach to any individual author.  The American critics belonging to the so-called 'School of New Criticism' also follow Leavis's method of "Textual analysis and evaluation'.

00118--What is the function of criticism according to F.R. Leavis?

            Great literature is the store-house and preserves of the highest moral, cultural, ideological and aesthetic values and traditions of mankind.  The really good and serious literature of the present is a continuation and development of the really good and serious literature of the past.  Therefore really great literature combines the highest moral and cultural values of the past with those of the present and thus paves the way to the future.  Then comes the function of the critic.  The primary function of the critic is first to disengage the really good and great literature from the weaker one, and then to analyse the highest and best moral and cultural values contained in the great literature.  His function is to explain and disseminate those great qualities of literature to the masses.

            The critic has to see what is still alive of the literature of the past, and further to explain the modifications made in it by the present ideologies.  The critic  has to judge a work 'as in itself it really is.'  He has not to worry about outside norms, rules or theories of art.   He should be concerned with the work in front of him as complete in itself.  He has to explore, bring out and present the best thoughts contained in it without considering whether the artist has applied the established literary rules and theories or not.  He has not to take into consideration any extraneous information.  He has not to take into consideration or give weightage to any established reputation.  No matter if the established reputation of an author is disturbed.  The critic has to remain detached in evaluating a work of literatures infront of him.  Leavis says, "the business of the critic is to perceive for himself, to make the finest and sharpest relevant discriminations, and to state his findings as responsibly clearly and forcibly as possible".

00117--What was F.R. Leavis's Concept of Literature and its function?

            Literature for F.R. Leavis, is not merely an aesthetically written work of art designed to give pleasure to the reader.  It is not simply a document of language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.  According to Leavis, it is 'the storehouse of recorded values:  It is the writer's exploration of the cultural tradition of his age.  It is a record of all that the age habitually thinks, feels, and acts upon.  Literature keeps the healthy moral and cultural traditions alive.

            Great literature does something more too-it enriches a nation's cultural heritage and traditions in several ways.  Great literature age after age from the literary tradition of a nation.  It is in literature that the best of the nation's culture, both of the past and the present, is kept alive and communicated to the future.  It appeals to and elevates not only the smaller section of educated people but also refines the masses.    It exercises a pervasive influence upon feeling, thought, culture and standard of living.  In brief, literature is not just an aesthetic experience but a faithful record of the author's most profound interest in life.  Leavis says, "Aesthetic is a term the literacy critic would do well to deny himself.  Opposed to moral, it certainly doesn't generate light". 

            Leavis also says that literature is higher than history even in preserving the culture of the past.  History only maintains the record of the past; literature infuses life into it.  Literature re-lives the life and culture of the past for us.  Leavis calls it 'the exploratory-creative use of words upon experience.

00116--"The reign of the author has also been that of the critic" Explain.

            The task of the learned, scholastic critic was to reveal the meaning of the text and to help the poor readers in grasping that single meaning.  In order to unearth this single meaning, there should be a single meaning as such.  The same pre supposition keeps the author as an institution.  The author keeps the secret meaning in his heart.  The shrewd critic finds it out.  The author declares that the critic is right and lands his attempts.  Barthes attacks the concept of such a critic through these words:

            Hence there is no surprise in the fact that, historically, the reign of the Author has also been that of the critic, nor again in the fact that criticism (be it new) is today undermined along with the author.

00115--How does literature become anti theological?

            All theological attitudes pre suppose a pre-decided, finite and monolithic answer to all questions.  Literature is no more ready to agree with such an arbitrary concept.  Post structuralism argues that there are so many meanings than the one 'intended by the author.  In the multiplicity of writing, there is nothing to be deciphered; everything is to be disentangled.

            The space of writing is to be ranged over not to be pierced.  Writing posits meaning endlessly; simultaneously meaning evaporates endlessly.  This results in a systematic exemption of meaning.  The task of offering a single, finite and fixed meaning is that of religion.  Literature refuses to offer this kind of a single, finite and fixed meaning and thus literature becomes an anti theological activity.