Paper no.:- 7(Literary Theory & Criticism ).
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qName:- Lalji. G. Baraiya.
qCourse.:- M.A.-1 , Sem-2.
qYear:- 2019-’20.
qRoll no.:- 21.
qEnrollment no.:-2069108420190001.
qG-mail Id.:- laljibaraiya789@gmail.com.
qPaper no.:- 7(Literary Theory & Criticism ).
qTopic:- Selected Term. ( Total Words:- 3,034)
q Submitted to:- Smt. S.B.Gardi.Dep.of Engllish Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.
Selected Literary Terms
·
Modernism:
M. H.
Abrams in his book ‘A Glossary of Literary Terms’ writes that modernism is a
term wildly used to find out new feature, new style of writing, new form of
literature, new concepts and subjects of the contemporary time especially after
world war-I time. The word itself suggests that it is related with the current phenomena
and especially in the late 19th century covering the early 20th century.
It covers the western society and its culture. The reasons behind Modernism are
the development of modern industrial growth of cities, rapid growth of cities
and the horror of world war-I. We can say that Modernism is one kind of revolt
against the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious
faith, philosophy, social organization, activities of daily life, and even the
sciences, were becoming ill-fitted to their tasks and outdated in the new
economic, social, and political environment of an emerging fully industrialized
world. We can see that chronologically modernism comes after the Victorian
age. So, we can see some effect of Victorian age upon literature of modern
time. During this time people were unhappy with the time because they think
that now there is no God means there is no more any hope. In other words we can
say that this was the time of self-consciousness. Many people say that this was
the time of rethinking, relearning, and reshaping.
Self-consciousness,
self-reference was the characteristics of Modernism. Apart from literature many
other disciplines like music, painting has also started modernism.
· Post-modernism:
In the
very simple words post-modernism is anti-modernism. It gives antithesis of
modernism. Its main focus is on the time after world war-II. It is a late 20th century
movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from
modernism. This term is also related with deconstruction and
post-structuralism. Post-modernism is an approach which includes different kind
of interpretations from different aspects like culture, literature, art,
philosophy, history, economy, architecture, fiction and literary criticism.
Because it is the opposite of modernism we can many things totally different
from modernism. And because of this movement many other genres also exist.
Like absurd, antihero, anti-novel, Beat writers, concrete poetry,
metaftction. We can say that during this time people celebrate the world
without the God. Here we will not find a kind of hope which was present during
modernism time.
· New criticism:
New
criticism is a new branch of studying the text. The movement derived in
considerable part from elements in I. A. Richards' ‘Principles of Literary
Criticism (1924)’ and ‘Practical Criticism (1929)’ and from the
critical essays of T. S. Eliot. According to Mathew Arnold’s touchstone method
is a comparative method of criticism. According to this method, in order to
judge a poet's work properly, a critic should compare it to passages taken from
works of great masters of poetry, and that these passages should be applied as
touchstones to other poetry. Even a single line or selected quotation will
serve the purpose. If the other work moves us in the same way as these lines
and expressions do, then it is really a great work, otherwise not. It opposed the prevailing interest of scholars, critics, and teachers
of that era in the biographies of authors, the social context of literature,
and literary history by insisting that the proper concern of literary criticism
is not with the external circumstances or effects or historical position of a
work, but with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an independent
entity. In very simple words we can say that it tries to read the given words
only without any outer help, without knowing the name of the author, the
background of the author and even without the title of the particular work of
art. It is very easy to apply new criticism in a short form of creative art
like short stories, poems etc. but it little bit difficult to apply new
criticism on the novel form of creative art.
· Diaspora:
Diaspora
is word come out with the feelings that something is missing. Diaspora is
basically a Greek word which means “Scattered Dispersion”. This word also
refers to the minority group in the society. This word is used for those people
who were forced to leave their homeland and they have to settle down in the
other land. The term diaspora carries a sense of displacement for those people
who were cut-down from their roots and they still hope that one day they will
be in their homeland. Mainly this word was used for the people who were
non-Americans and after living in America they feel that they are rootless now.
“Most discussions of diaspora were firmly rooted in a conceptual ‘homeland’;
they were concerned with a paradigmatic case, or a small number of core cases.
The paradigmatic case was, of course, the Jewish diaspora; some dictionary
definitions of diaspora, until recently, did not simply illustrate but defined
the word with reference to that case.” These are some lines noted by Rogers
Brubaker for the word diaspora. He noted that most of the diaspora books were
from the Jewish writers. Here we can say that there are many type of diaspora.
With the developing time the critics found many kind of
diaspora.
· Post-colonial:
With the word ‘post-colonialism’ the
relationship between colonizer and colonized comes. In a way it is the
indication of inequality in the society. Post-colonial angle is the way of
looking towards the earth with the racial imbalance, inequality. Post-colonial
study has opened many other studies also. Post-colonial study is the study of
superiority and inferiority. So, my superiority depends upon other’s
inferiority so I have to invent inferiority. If there is no one like inferior
then I have to create superiority. The two examples of post colonialism are the
Bollywood movies are ‘Laggan’ and ‘Rang de Basanti’. If we observe these movies
then we come to know about this movie that in these movies it is depicted that
the hero needs a white person to know about the other culture and especially
their culture or our in their way. Critical theory of post colonialism
presents, explains, and illustrates the ideology and the praxis of
neocolonialism, with examples drawn from the humanities-history and political
science, philosophy, and Marxist theory, sociology, anthropology, and human
geography; the cinema, religion, and theology: feminism, linguistics, and
post-colonial literature, of which the anti-conquest narrative genre presents
the stories of colonial subjugation of the subaltern man and woman.
· Feminist Criticism:
Feminist
criticism is the study of female in the male dominated society. The feminist
study starts with the third wave authors. They challenged the role of female in
the society and the inequality of gender in the society. Its history has been
broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth century women authors such
as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller. The best example of the gender inequality
is the name of George Eliot’s name itself. She was forced to carry the name of
male, because during those time women were not allowed to write or even read
the books. It was the time during which the role of women was within the four
walls. Among many feminist writers the one of the notable name is Elaine
Showalter’s name. She has given the theory of gyno-criticism. She gave the
theory in which she says that as a woman her body of writing is important not
the body of the writer. She also talks about the female’ psyche and her mental
condition as a reader and writer also. 1979.) A much more radical critical mode
was launched in France by Simone de Beauvoir's ‘The Second Sex’ (1949), a
wide-ranging critique of the cultural identification of women as merely the
negative object, or "Other," to man as the dominating
"Subject" who is assumed to represent humanity in general; the book
dealt also with "the great collective myths" of women in the works of
many male writers.
· New Historicism:
New
historicism is a different view point to look towards the creative work of art.
There is slight difference between the old historicism and new historicism. New
historicism goes to deeper meaning of the time. They again and again revisit
the work of art with the different references, different viewpoints and
different ideas. What is most distinctive in the new mode of historical study
is mainly the result of concepts and practices of literary analysis and
interpretation that have been assimilated from various recent post structural
theorists. Michel Foucault's view that the discourse of an era,
instead of reflecting preexisting entities and orders, brings into being the
concepts, oppositions, and hierarchies of which it speaks; that these elements
are both products and propagators of "power," or social forces; and
that as a result, the particular discursive formations of an era determine what
is at the time accounted "knowledge" and "truth," as well
as what is considered to be humanly normal as against what is considered to be
criminal, or insane, or sexually deviant. Through this approach the critics
tried to say that every human action is actually the effect of a network of
material practices. And the other argument is that a critical method and a
language adequate to describe culture under capitalism participate in the
economy they describe.
· Eco-criticism:
Eco
criticism is the study of literature and environment from the different point
of view through which the critics tried to analyze the environment and
brainstorm possible solutions for the correction through different point of
view. Another early Eco-critical text, Joseph Meeker’s ‘The Comedy of Survival’
(1974), proposed a version of an argument that was later to dominate
eco-criticism and environmental philosophy that environmental crisis is caused
primarily by a cultural tradition in the West of separation of culture from
nature, and elevation of the former to moral predominance. In the mid-1980s
scholars began to work collectively to establish eco-criticism as a genre, primarily
through the work of the Western Literature Association in which the revaluation
of the nature writing as a non-fictional literary genre could function. In
short, Eco-criticism is the genre through which the critics tried to study the
nature as well as the nature of the work of art also. Simon Estok noted in 2001
that “eco-criticism has distinguished itself, debates notwithstanding, firstly
by the ethical stand it takes, its commitment to the natural world as an
important thing rather than simply as an object of thematic study, and,
secondly, by its commitment to making connections.”
· Queer theory:
Queer
theory is the theory is the study of LGBT people in the society. Queer theory
is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early
1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women’s studies. Queer
Theory is often used to designate the combined area of gay and lesbian
studies and criticism, as well as theoretical and critical writings concerning
all modes of variance. The term "queer" was originally derogatory,
used to stigmatize male and female same-sex love as deviant and unnatural;
since the early 1990s, however, it has been increasingly adopted by gays and
lesbians themselves as a non-invidious term to identify a way of life and an
area for scholarly inquiry.
Both lesbian studies and gay studies began as
"liberation movements"— in parallel with the movements
for African-American and feminist liberation—during the
anti-Vietnam War, anti-establishment, and counter-cultural ferment of the late
1960s and 1970s. It was the demand of the time that lesbian and gay people have
to raise their voice and that is why this point of view comes out as an import
theory.
· Structuralism:
Structuralism
is the theory of studying the structure of the novels or any creative work of
art. As summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn Structuralism is “the belief
that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their
interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local
variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract
culture.” In the very simple words structuralism is the arrangements of the
incidents of the story. We can arrange the different kinds of story with
different point of view. And through this we can also reaches to the different
viewpoints. The term appeared in the works of French anthropologist Claude
Levi-Strauss and gave rise in France to the “structuralist movement”. The
origins of structuralism connect with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on
linguistics along with the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow schools. In
brief, de Saussure’s structural linguistics propounded three related concepts.
· Alamkara School:
The
earliest and most sustained school, it studies literary language and assumes
that the locus of literariness is in the figures of speech, in the mode of
figurative expression, in the grammatical accuracy and pleasantness of sound.
It doesn’t mean that the word doesn’t carry the meaning of that sentence but in
fact structural taxonomies of different figures of speech are models of how
meaning is cognized and how it is to be extracting from the text. Bhamaha
(Kavyalamkara) talks of the pleasure of multiplicity of meaning inherent in
certain alamkaras such as arthantara nyasa (2.71), vibhavana (2.77), and
samasokti (2.79). Bhamaha was the first alamkarika poetician and in his book in
chapter no 2 and 3 he describes 35 figures of speech. Many other critics also
continue this tradition and they were Dandin, Udbhata, Rudrata and Vamana. And
the final critic came who mingled the different theories and he was
Anandavardhana; alamkara was sought to be integrated with dhvani and rasa. They
all were the Sanskrit critics. Alamkara is used for beautifying the language.
Many critics said that we can use figure of speech (Alamkara) but it must be
used in limited way otherwise it may happen that the work of art will lose its
charm.
· Riti School:
Riti is
the theory of language of literature. The word Riti was first used by Bharata’s
‘Natyasastra’ itself under the republic of vrtti. But it was Vamana who first
developed it into a theory of ‘Visista Padaracana riti’. In the very simple
words formation of or arrangement of marked inflected constructions is riti.
Two other words are used for riti are Marga and Vrtti. Later, around ninth
century AD Anandavardhana distinguished this styles on the basis of the use of
particular kinds of compounds. The Gunas have their potential being in
this permanent source which Vamana regarded as the Atman of the Kavya and
called it ‘Riti.’ Hence the thesis “Riti is the Soul of a Kavya.” ‘Riti roatmaa Kaavyasya Sareerasyeva’. Riti
is to the Kavya what Atman is to the Sarira. It is necessary here to study the
etymology of the terms Atman and Riti in order to realise the significance of
Vamana’s conception of the Soul of a Kavya. The word Atman is believed to have
been derived from the root ‘At’ meaning to move constantly or from the root
‘An’ meaning to live, or perhaps from both. The term Riti is derived from the
root ‘Ri’ meaning to move. The identity of Riti with Atman becomes complete
when we take Dandin’s metaphor of Gunas as Pranas. Just as the Atman is
the Karana Sarira of a person, Riti is the Karana Sarira of
a Kavya. The natural beauty or Sobha of a Kavya depends on the Gunas of its
Soul which is Riti.
·
Vakrokti
School:
In the whole range of Sanskrit
poetics, the term vakrokti took altogether a new significance and the highest
position as the all-pervading poetic concept in Kuntaka's Vakroktijivita.
Presenting the major schools of Sanskrit poetics, the book gives general
definition of vakrokti and its multi-dimensional implications. Vakrokti means
the hidden meaning of the work of art. The writer outs the message in the
hidden way that at the first glance we will not be able to find the meaning of
the poem or the sentence or any creative work of art.it is also a theory of
language of literature. It claims that the characteristic property of literary
language is its ‘markedness’. Kuntaka made Vakrokti a full-fledged theory of
literariness.Vakrokti literally means deviant or marked expression. kuntaka's
theory of vakrokti and makes its critical analysis in relation to various
literary concepts-alankara, svabhavokti, rasavadalankara, marga and rasa.
Finally, it deals with the striking similarities between dhvani and vakrokti,
and brings out the fundamental aspects of practical criticism as showed by
kuntaka.
· Dhavani School:
Next only to the rasa theory in importance, the dhavani theory of
anandavardhana considers suggestion, the indirectly evoked meaning as the
characteristic property of literary discourse, the determinant that separates
it from other rational discourses. Dhavani becomes an embracing principle that
explains the structure and function of the other major elements of literature-
the aesthetic effect (rasa), the figural mode and devices (alamkara), the
stylistic values (riti) and excellences and defects (guna-dosa). In
‘Dhvayyaloka’, Anandavardhana has presented a structural analysis of indirect
literary meaning. He has classified different kinds of suggestion and defined
them by identifying the nature of suggestion in each. According to V. S.
Seturamn Dhavani means “That kind of poetry, where in the meaning renders
itself secondary or the word renders its meaning secondary and suggests the
implied meaning is designated by the learned as ‘Dhavani’ or ‘suggestive
poetry’.”
· Auchitya School:
We
can say that Kshemendra is the founder of Auchitya School. The other
nearest meaning of this word is ‘Perfect’ or we can also say that ‘Complete’.
It is true that the nature functions itself but only we human beings tried to
make perfect or tried to add perfection in all most all the things. In
literature, Auchitya plays a vital role. If Auchitya is missing in the work of
art then that work of art will not be able to create that much effect. And for
that it is compulsory that the meaning or we can say that the words used by the
author must be conventional. The theory of property or appropriateness
claims that in all aspect of literary composition. There is the possibility of
a perfect, the, most appropriate choice of subject, of ideas, of words, of
devices as such, it has affinities with Longinus’s theory of the sublime.
· Work cited:-
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