06.10.

2022
LITERARY THEORY
Lecture 1
A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY THOUGHT:
1. the subject of literary theory;
2. literary theory vs literary criticism;
3. ancient sources of literary theory (Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics).
Literary theory:
1. Essence and functions of literary creativity.
2. A branch of literary studies.
3. to scientifically comprehend, generalize the patterns and features of the
development of artistic creativity, development and systematization of
literary concepts.
The term “theory” from the Greek “theoria” (the word 'theory' derives from the
Greek 'theorein', which means 'to look at') alerts us to the partial nature of
theoretical approaches to literature. “Theoria” (“watching”) indicates a view or
perspective of the Greek stage.
Literary theory is the ideas and methods we use to interpret and analyze literature
from a variety of perspectives.
It opens up the possibilities of what literature can MEAN to the reader.
It is a toolbox for explaining and interpreting literary texts.
Theory is a way of thinking:
1. Deductive (the theorist begins with a general idea and then investigates
individual instances of it (literary texts) in order to prove its validity)
2. Inductive (the study of individual instances leads to the formation of general
ideas based on them)
In deduction, knowledge is built up through generalizations that test the limits of
what can be included in general categories. Deductive reasoning, particularly in
literary analysis, assumes the possibility of alternative viewpoints and thus requires
the power of persuasion to make an argument based on a general idea, because
other general ideas could account equally well for the same individual texts.
Despite this openness to alternatives, the thought process in literary theory remains
the same in large part because we are always moving from general principles to
particular instances, from general ideas to individual texts.
Distinctions:
 1. Descriptive or prescriptive? (how things are or how they should be)
2. Literature-specific? (“top-down” and “bottom-up” theories)
3. Butcher or biologist? (extrinsic or intrinsic)
Literary Theory is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of
literature.
 description of the underlying principles (tools) by which we attempt to
understand literature;
 formulates the relationship between author and work;
 develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary study, both
from the standpoint of the biography of the author and an analysis of their
thematic presence within texts;
 offers varying approaches for understanding the role of historical context in
interpretation as well as the relevance of linguistic and unconscious elements
of the text;
 Literary theorists trace the history and evolution of the different genres –
narrative, dramatic, lyric – in addition to the more recent emergence of the
novel and the short story, while also investigating the importance of content
and formal elements of literary structure.
 develops the methods of literary research and the methodology how to apply
scientific methods into interpretation of literary phenomena.
Literary Theory vs Literary Criticism
Literary Criticism Literary Theory
 Derives from the Greek word  Derives from the Greek
krinein = to judge “theoria”=to look at, watch
 Object of investigation: a literary  Object of investigation: the way
work or a group of LWs we might think about a LW or a
group of LWs
Literary Criticism is the practice of judging and commenting on the qualities and
character of literary works. During the process of criticism, a person may use
literary theory to support the judging and commenting of the literary works.
Literary theory is the ideas and methods we use to interpret and analyze literature
from a variety of perspectives.
Plato The Republic:
 Man and Poetry are untrustworthy (imitation is like a bed: Plato tells
of Socrates's metaphor of the three beds: one bed exists as an idea made by
God (the Platonic ideal); one is made by the carpenter, in imitation of God's
idea; one is made by the artist in imitation of the carpenter's).
 Literature can mislead the seeker of truth.
Aristotle Poetics
 Imitation is a noble action.
 Katharsis (purification of feelings/tragedy).
 Inductive treatment of the elements of poetry: plot, character, diction,
thought, spectacle, song.
 Forms of art depend on object, medium, manner of imitation.
Аn English major vs a casual reader

We use literary theory to help us uncover and make sense of those subtle, below-
the surface effects of language.
Antiquity (Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas)
Plato
a. Intellectual biographer of Socrates (along with Xenophon, and others whose
works survive only in fragments).
b. Socrates adopted from earlier Greek philosophers the distinction between
sensation and thought as knowing faculties.
c. By means of sensation we cognize sensibles—things that are obvious or
manifest.
d. But manifest things are not intelligible or coherent in themselves.
e. It is clear that there are non-sensible things, such as justice.
f. In order to comprehend the causes and principles of things, we must investigate
non‐sensible things by means of the intellect using logic.
g. The causes and principles of things thus reside in the realm of the intelligible,
and in fact are eternal patterns of things, called the Forms or the Ideas. Substance,
or basic reality, belongs only to the gods and the Forms (and possibly souls).
h. Of the intelligibles, Socrates was mainly interested in investigating the “virtues,”
human attributes that are good by definition, such as justice, knowledge, and
beauty — things we would call ideals.
i. Socrates was also a utopian — he was interested in formulating an ideal
constitution for a city — one that if instituted would make the city just, and
therefore happy.
j. According to Socrates, the self is the soul and is immortal. He saw his
philosophical inquiry into the nature of virtue as having practical implications for
the moral improvement of humanity and as being the most important activity of
human life.
Aristotle
a. Aristotle was a student of Plato in his philosophical school, the Academy.
b. He rejected the theory of Forms, along with the division of things into the
intelligible and sensible realms.
c. However, he retained the distinction between sensation and thought as knowing
faculties.
d. Aristotle was the first to classify the sciences. Before Plato and Aristotle,
mathematics and astronomy were recognizably distinct from philosophy, but not
physics, biology, or psychology.
e. For Aristotle, philosophy was divided into logic, ethics, physics (including
biology and psychology) and first philosophy or theology, which later became
known as metaphysics.
f. First philosophy was the science of first principles and causes, or the science of
being qua being. It was “theology,” because the first principle of all things is God,
a pure intellect by whose power the universe remains in motion.
g. Aristotle believed there were three basic elements—earth, fire, and the celestial
substance. Each has its proper place and state of motion. The universe was
spherical, and the proper places and states of motion were as follows: earth at the
center at rest, fire at the periphery at rest, and the celestial substance over all, in
circular motion. Based on this theory he thought that the Earth was at the center of
the universe.
h. Aristotle thought that the universe and the daily rotation of the Heaven (we
think of it as the daily rotation of the earth) were everlasting—they never began
and would never end. This is a thesis that in the Middle Ages was called “the
eternity of the world.” He thought the celestial things like stars were everlasting
and imperishable.
i. God is necessary in his system to move the Heaven everlastingly.
j. Aristotle also formulated an ethics based on the twin concepts of intellectual
and moral virtue. The human good is happiness, which is activity in accordance
with virtue in a complete life. Intellectual virtue is divided into theoretical and
practical. Practical intellectual virtue, or practical wisdom, is the intellectual ability
to achieve happiness. (However, perfect happiness is beyond the reach of mortals.)
Moral virtue is habitual feeling and acting in harmony with practical wisdom.
k. Aristotle thought Scorates’ ideal constitution, as set forth in the Republic, was
unworkable and not in harmony with human nature, and formulated his own
political philosphy.
l. According to Aristotle’s political philosophy, just as for Socrates, the purpose
of the state is to bring happiness to its citizens or residents.
m. Aristotle recognizes several good kinds of constitution, and several bad ones
corresponding to them.
Overview of Medieval British Literature
In medieval England (12th–15th century), the ascendancy of Norman-French
culture in the post-Conquest era, followed by the re-emergence of native English
works – by such authors as Chaucer, Langland, and Malory, and numerous
anonymous authors, – marked the Middle English period of English literature.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, more lay people were literate, and the Paston
Letters form one of the first records of one family's ordinary lives. These, together
with a growing number of financial and legal records, sermons, chronicles, poems,
and charters, form the basis of modern historical knowledge of the period.
Although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued to be written until 1154, with the
arrival of a Norman ruling class at the end of the 11th century, the ascendancy of
Norman-French in cultural life began, and it was not until the 13th century that
English literature regained its strength. Prose was concerned chiefly with popular
devotional use, but verse emerged typically in the metrical chronicles, such as
Layamon's Brut, and the numerous romances based on the stories of Charlemagne,
the legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, and the classical episodes of Troy,
derived from Homer's Iliad (c. 700 BC).
First of the great English poets was Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury
Tales (c. 1387), whose early work reflected the formality of the predominant
French influence, but later the realism of Renaissance Italy. Of purely native
inspiration was the medieval alliterative poem Piers Plowman (1367–86) by
William Langland, and the anonymous Pearl, Patience, and Gawayne and the
Grene Knight. Chaucer remained unmatched in the period, although the poet John
Skelton was one of Chaucer's more original successors; the first secular morality
play in English, Magnyfycence (1516), was written by Skelton. More successful
were the anonymous authors of songs and carols, and of the ballads, which often
formed a complete cycle, such as those concerned with the outlaw Robin Hood.
Many stories were carried by travelling minstrels. Drama flourished in the form of
mystery plays and morality plays. Prose reached new heights in the 15th century
with Thomas Malory's retelling of the Arthurian legends in Le Morte d'Arthur (c.
1470).
The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European
intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the
rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in art, architecture,
philosophy, literature, music, science, technology, politics, religion, and other
aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist
method in study, and searched for realism and human emotion in art.[21]
Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic
libraries the Latin literary, historical, and oratorical texts of antiquity, while the
Fall of Constantinople (1453) generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing
precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen into obscurity in
the West. It is in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance
scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the
12th century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural
sciences, philosophy, and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts.
In the revival of neoplatonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity;
quite the contrary, many of the greatest works of the Renaissance were devoted to
it, and the Church patronized many works of Renaissance art. However, a subtle
shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected
in many other areas of cultural life.[22] In addition, many Greek Christian works,
including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to
Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late
antiquity. This new engagement with Greek Christian works, and particularly the
return to the original Greek of the New Testament promoted by humanists Lorenzo
Valla and Erasmus, would help pave the way for the Reformation.
Well after the first artistic return to classicism had been exemplified in the
sculpture of Nicola Pisano, Florentine painters led by Masaccio strove to portray
the human form realistically, developing techniques to render perspective and light
more naturally. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought
to describe political life as it really was, that is to understand it rationally. A
critical contribution to Italian Renaissance humanism, Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola wrote the famous text De hominis dignitate (Oration on the Dignity of
Man, 1486), which consists of a series of theses on philosophy, natural thought,
faith, and magic defended against any opponent on the grounds of reason. In
addition to studying classical Latin and Greek, Renaissance authors also began
increasingly to use vernacular languages; combined with the introduction of the
printing press, this would allow many more people access to books, especially the
Bible.[23]
In all, the Renaissance could be viewed as an attempt by intellectuals to study and
improve the secular and worldly, both through the revival of ideas from antiquity,
and through novel approaches to thought. Some scholars, such as Rodney Stark,
[24] play down the Renaissance in favor of the earlier innovations of the Italian
city-states in the High Middle Ages, which married responsive government,
Christianity and the birth of capitalism. This analysis argues that, whereas the great
European states (France and Spain) were absolute monarchies, and others were
under direct Church control, the independent city-republics of Italy took over the
principles of capitalism invented on monastic estates and set off a vast
unprecedented Commercial Revolution that preceded and financed the
Renaissance.
Literature of Ancient India
The literature of the researcher of India is myths, legends, hymns to the gods,
epics, philosophical treatises, parables and fairy tales at different levels - Vedic,
Sanskrit, Pa'li, Tamil. It originated and different beliefs – Hinduism, Buddhism and
Jainism.
In Indian literary texts, they do not belong to any genre, legends, traditions, and
stories of events are combined depending on the flow, the ideas of India are not
great historiography. Since ancient times, the Indians were not interested in the
historical approach to the admirers - they valued only the spiritual side of life.
From what has already been said, it is clear that the central place in ancient Indian
culture belongs to the monuments of ancient literature. The oldest of them - the
Vedas - were not only the later parts, but were subsequently transmitted mainly
from teacher to student orally. The great attention that has been given to the
significant transmission and interpretation of the sacred Vedic texts includes,
ultimately, such special disciplines as phontics and ethics. On this basis, ancient
Indian linguistics subsequently developed.
Along with Vedic registration and epic tradition. In their final form, the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana became the public encyclopedia of Hinduism and
an inexhaustible treasure trove of images for poets and artists who consider time.
The epic, one might say, still exists in oral form, achieved by the realization of
illiterate Indians and turns out to be a huge case for their worldview.
Ancient India gave the world a teaching - Buddhism.
The core of Buddhist literature is the Buddhist canon "Tipi'taka" (Three Baskets) -
a collection of different types of nature. The basis of the Typitics of the followers
of the Buddha's corollary, who transmitted the principle of the teaching.
The most used part of the Buddhist canon is the Su'ttapitaka (collection of texts),
which consists of five collections. It outlines the foundations of Buddhism - the
doctrine of dharma and nirvana, the basic concepts of Buddhist philosophy, the
Buddhist ideal.
The heyday of ancient Indian culture in the first centuries of the Christian era of
culture in the development of the highest light genres. The Panchatantra collection
of fables was of great importance. his individual stories are strung one on top of
the other, skillfully inserted into a common frame. The short stories of the
Panchatantra and the very way of constructing a literary work of a work in the
Middle Ages influenced most of the literature ("Thousand and One Nights",
"Decameron", etc.)
Chinese characters are called hieroglyphs.
By the XVI - XI centuries. BC. include the first written monuments - primitive
hieroglyphic divinatory inscriptions on the shoulder blades of an ox or a ram. One
of the myths says that the first signs of writing were inscribed on the shell of a
turtle that floated to the surface of the river.
Tao and literature
The main concept of Chinese culture is “Tao” (literally translated “road”, “way”).
The ancient Chinese considered the heart to be the main organ of perception. It is
the heart that comprehends Tao. The written word is born in the heart, with the
help of which communion with the divine takes place. In other words, the Tao
"passed" through the heart reveals itself in literature. It is the mastery of writing
that distinguishes a cultured person from a barbarian.
"Book of Songs"
The ancient Chinese traced the origins of belles lettres to the Shi Ching - the Book
of Songs, which includes 305 poetic texts; tradition refers them to the XI-VII
centuries. BC. The poems of "Shi jing" are basically truly folk, artless poetry
dedicated to labor rituals, wedding ceremonies, feasts, there are songs created on
historical and heroic subjects. Also, the "book of songs" was divided into sections,
for example, "Morals of the Kingdoms" - local folk songs, "Hymns" - temple
songs.
Chinese literature and philosophy is based on two teachings - Confucianism and
Taoism.
The first name in the history of Chinese poetry that has survived to this day is Qu
Yuan. He is considered the founder of sao - "songs of sorrow".
Real fiction appears when poets realize that the word is not only meaning, but also
beauty. In the time of the poet Cao Pi, such an idea was already formed. He
believed that poetry "requires embellishment". Tsu Ji is the author of the poem
"Ode to the Graceful Word," Cao Pi echoed.
Modern literary theory
Modern literary theory is defined as a literary movement that started in the late
1920s and 1930s and originated in reaction to traditional criticism that new critics
saw as largely concerned with matters extraneous to the text, e.g., with the
biography or psychology of the author or the work's relationship to literary history.
As for the current literary theories, they are as follows:
1. New Criticism proposes that a work of literary art should be regarded as
autonomous, and so should not be judged by reference to considerations beyond
itself. Major figures are I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot et al.
2. Archetypal/Myth Criticism is based largely on the works of C. G. Jung
(YOONG) and Joseph Campbell (and myth itself). These critics view the genres
and individual plot patterns of literature, including highly sophisticated and
realistic works, as recurrences of certain archetypes and essential mythic formulae.
3. Psychoanalytic Criticism may focus on the writer's psyche, the study of the
creative process, the study of psychological types and principles present within
works of literature, or the effects of literature upon its readers. In addition to Freud
and Lacan, major figure include Jane Gallop, Elizabeth Wright, and Frederick
Hoffman.
4. Marxism is a sociological approach to literature that viewed works of
literature or art as the products of historical forces that can be analyzed by looking
at the material conditions in which they were formed. Apart from Karl Marx, its
renowned representatives are Raymond Williams, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor
Adorno.
5. Postcolonialism refers to "a collection of theoretical and critical strategies
used to examine the culture (literature, politics, history, and so forth) of former
colonies of the European empires, and their relation to the rest of the world".
Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempt both to
resurrect their culture and to combat preconceptions about their culture.Major
figures include Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Jamaica Kincaid, and Buchi
Emecheta.
6. Existentialism views each person as an isolated being who is cast into an
alien universe, and conceives the world as possessing no inherent human truth,
value, or meaning. The major representatives include Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert
Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Jaspers etc.
7. Hermeneuticus sees interpretation as a circular process whereby valid
interpretation can be achieved by a sustained, mutually qualifying interplay
between our progressive sense of the whole and our retrospective understanding of
its component parts.
8. 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.
9. New Historism highlights its opposition to the old historical-biographical
criticism prevalent before the advent of New Criticism; views history skeptically
(historical narrative is inherently subjective), but also more broadly; history
includes all of the cultural, social, political, anthropological discourses at work in
any given age, and these various "texts" are unranked - any text may yield
information valuable in understanding a particular milieu.
10. Reader-response Theory may be traced initially to I. A. Richards and Louise
Rosenblatt. The idea of a "correct" reading, though difficult to attain, was always
the goal of the "educated" reader (armed, of course, with appropriate aesthetic
apparatus). For Stanley Fish the reader's ability to understand a text is also subject
a reader's particular "interpretive community." To simplify, a reader brings certain
assumptions to a text based on the interpretive strategies he/she has learned in a
particular interpretive community. For Fish, the interpretive community serves
somewhat to "police" readings and thus prohibit outlandish interpretations. In
contrast, Wolfgang Iser argued that the reading process is always subjective. In
The Implied Reader, Iser sees reading as a dialectical process between the reader
and text. For Hans-Robert Jauss, a reader's aesthetic experience is always bound by
time and historical determinants.
13.10.2022
Step 3.
Literature is a means of knowing the world, it helps us understand “what is good
and what is bad”, points to the origins of universal human conflicts. Literature
helps us to see the inner beauty of a person, learn to understand and appreciate it.
Literature is a powerful source of education of the spirit and personality.
What is the literature?