Reading Literature summary exam 2
- Matthew Arnold foresaw a crucial, semi-religious role for poetry because it has the
power to interpret life, a sense from which we can draw comfort and strength
- The classics and the ideal of culture that they embody are timeless for Arnold
- The view of the individual is central to liberalism
- Liberalism assumes that all of us are essentially free and that we have – at least to
some extent – created ourselves on the basis of our individual experiences
- In the realistic novels of the mid-nineteenth century, characters excape being defined
by their social and economic situation because they are essentially free
- The canon that T.S. Elliot set out to construe in the 1920s would dominate virtually all
English and American discussions of literature until the 1970s
- For Eliot, poetry was profoundly impersonal
- Eliot objects to highly emotional outpourings and personal confidences because they
tend to focus our attention on the poet rather than the poetry
- Wit = ironic perception of things -> a quality Eliot required of all poetry
- Eliot proclaimed his own poetic practice as the norm
- Practical criticism focuses upon the text and the text alone
- F. R. Leavis begins to discuss content as relatively independent of form while for the
New Critics form and content were interwoven
- Leavis argued that literary criticism provided in the best imaginable basis for
criticizing contemporary culture
- The New Critics exclude both the poet and the reader from their approach to poetry.
As a result, they focus more on the actual form of literary works than their English
counterparts
not interested in form for its own sake, but in form as contributing to a text’s
meaning
- 1797: Mary Shelley is born to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft -> radical
philosophers
- Wollstonecraft was also a strong feminist, wrote ‘the Vindication of the Rights of
Woman’
- 1814: Mary elopes with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley -> he abandoned his pregnant wife
- The couple travel to the continent and become friends with John Keats and Lord
Byron
- They have four children, three of which die at young age
- Percy dies in a sailing accident in 1822
- Mary writes Frankenstein at the age of 18
- Frankenstein is set in the late 18th century, which was an age of upheaval:
The American Revolutionary War
The French Revolution
The United Irishmen Rebellion
The Act of Union
- Agitation for political equality, civil freedom, universal rights
- The Enlightenment -> scientific experimentation
, - Literary contexts:
The Romantic Period (c. 1800 – 1850)
o Inspired by ideals and ideas of revolution
o Forceful expressions of individual feelings
o Imagination over reason
The Gothic
o A return to the supernatural vs the increasingly demystified natural
phenomena
o The sublime: awe and terror
- Textual contexts for Frankenstein:
The year without a summer because of a volcanic eruption, so Mary Shelley and
friends were mostly stuck in the house, this led to a ghost story contest
1818: anonymous publication of Frankenstein, people assumed it was written by
Percy Shelley -> this 1818 text was partially edited by Percy though
1831 text contains substantial changes by Mary Shelley herself
Mary’s original manuscript has also survived
- Liberal Humanism:
Matthew Arnold:
o Literature is the most important alternative for religion in providing
meaning
o Literature offers authentic and profound reflections on life
o Literature is ‘the best that has been thought and said in the world’
Traditional Criticism is based on various liberalist assumptions:
o Human beings are free subjects
o Human nature and the human condition are universal
o True culture is timeless
- 1920s-1950s: Practical Criticism (UK) New Criticism (USA)
Avoiding the intentional and affective fallacies
Reflections on the importance of ‘great’ literature
Focus on the text: close reading for form and meaning
Implicit marginalization of texts that are not written by ‘dead white men’ and of
cultural/societal politics
- Theoretical approached recognise that there is no absolute neutrality or objectivity in
either producing, reading or analysing a text
- The function of literary theory:
Foregrounding ‘ideologies’
Revealing (political, cultural, social, etc.) assumptions
Questioning authorship, criteria of value, contexts of writing or reading and the
definition of ‘literature’
- The formalists were primarily oriented towards the form of literature
- They wanted to know how literature works, how it achieves its defamiliarizing effects
- Whereas practical and new criticism focused on the individual meaning of texts,
formalism sought to discover general laws
- In 1925 Boris Tomashevski juxtaposed two concepts:
Fabula: straightforward accout of something. Tells us what actually happened
- Matthew Arnold foresaw a crucial, semi-religious role for poetry because it has the
power to interpret life, a sense from which we can draw comfort and strength
- The classics and the ideal of culture that they embody are timeless for Arnold
- The view of the individual is central to liberalism
- Liberalism assumes that all of us are essentially free and that we have – at least to
some extent – created ourselves on the basis of our individual experiences
- In the realistic novels of the mid-nineteenth century, characters excape being defined
by their social and economic situation because they are essentially free
- The canon that T.S. Elliot set out to construe in the 1920s would dominate virtually all
English and American discussions of literature until the 1970s
- For Eliot, poetry was profoundly impersonal
- Eliot objects to highly emotional outpourings and personal confidences because they
tend to focus our attention on the poet rather than the poetry
- Wit = ironic perception of things -> a quality Eliot required of all poetry
- Eliot proclaimed his own poetic practice as the norm
- Practical criticism focuses upon the text and the text alone
- F. R. Leavis begins to discuss content as relatively independent of form while for the
New Critics form and content were interwoven
- Leavis argued that literary criticism provided in the best imaginable basis for
criticizing contemporary culture
- The New Critics exclude both the poet and the reader from their approach to poetry.
As a result, they focus more on the actual form of literary works than their English
counterparts
not interested in form for its own sake, but in form as contributing to a text’s
meaning
- 1797: Mary Shelley is born to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft -> radical
philosophers
- Wollstonecraft was also a strong feminist, wrote ‘the Vindication of the Rights of
Woman’
- 1814: Mary elopes with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley -> he abandoned his pregnant wife
- The couple travel to the continent and become friends with John Keats and Lord
Byron
- They have four children, three of which die at young age
- Percy dies in a sailing accident in 1822
- Mary writes Frankenstein at the age of 18
- Frankenstein is set in the late 18th century, which was an age of upheaval:
The American Revolutionary War
The French Revolution
The United Irishmen Rebellion
The Act of Union
- Agitation for political equality, civil freedom, universal rights
- The Enlightenment -> scientific experimentation
, - Literary contexts:
The Romantic Period (c. 1800 – 1850)
o Inspired by ideals and ideas of revolution
o Forceful expressions of individual feelings
o Imagination over reason
The Gothic
o A return to the supernatural vs the increasingly demystified natural
phenomena
o The sublime: awe and terror
- Textual contexts for Frankenstein:
The year without a summer because of a volcanic eruption, so Mary Shelley and
friends were mostly stuck in the house, this led to a ghost story contest
1818: anonymous publication of Frankenstein, people assumed it was written by
Percy Shelley -> this 1818 text was partially edited by Percy though
1831 text contains substantial changes by Mary Shelley herself
Mary’s original manuscript has also survived
- Liberal Humanism:
Matthew Arnold:
o Literature is the most important alternative for religion in providing
meaning
o Literature offers authentic and profound reflections on life
o Literature is ‘the best that has been thought and said in the world’
Traditional Criticism is based on various liberalist assumptions:
o Human beings are free subjects
o Human nature and the human condition are universal
o True culture is timeless
- 1920s-1950s: Practical Criticism (UK) New Criticism (USA)
Avoiding the intentional and affective fallacies
Reflections on the importance of ‘great’ literature
Focus on the text: close reading for form and meaning
Implicit marginalization of texts that are not written by ‘dead white men’ and of
cultural/societal politics
- Theoretical approached recognise that there is no absolute neutrality or objectivity in
either producing, reading or analysing a text
- The function of literary theory:
Foregrounding ‘ideologies’
Revealing (political, cultural, social, etc.) assumptions
Questioning authorship, criteria of value, contexts of writing or reading and the
definition of ‘literature’
- The formalists were primarily oriented towards the form of literature
- They wanted to know how literature works, how it achieves its defamiliarizing effects
- Whereas practical and new criticism focused on the individual meaning of texts,
formalism sought to discover general laws
- In 1925 Boris Tomashevski juxtaposed two concepts:
Fabula: straightforward accout of something. Tells us what actually happened
