Literary Criticism Conclusion New Beginnings z What is

Literary Criticism: Conclusion & New Beginnings z What is Literary Criticism? z Critical Perspectives = 1. Finding different Contexts z An Example: “A Slumber did my Spirit Seal” z Critical Perspectives = 2. Being engaged in some critical issues. z Beginnings. . .

Literary Criticism Appreciation Analysis from a certain perspective Understanding Interpretation Understanding can never be presupposition-less. Understanding must involve using some framework(s) or perspectives--conscious or

Literary Criticism The Course Literary Criticism tries to make you aware of or use different perspectives and frameworks to look at a literary text, yourself and your world.

由賞析到批評理論: a Hermeneutic Circle 閱讀、了解 What is it about? Do you like it? Why? 欣賞 分析、詮釋 文學批評 理論化 How are its meanings produced? What does it mean? And how? What else does it mean from a certain perspective or in some context(s)?

How to position a text in its contexts? 社會、歷史 Political Unconscious 社會機構 印刷、出版者／ 行銷者 Text // Self 作者／父母 讀者 The Unconscious

How to position a text in its linguistic contexts? Semiotics: Jakobson’s six factors in speech Context/Soceity, History = Intertexts Message Addresser Author Contact Code/ Signifier Text Addressee Reader Signs Signification process

How to position a Althusser’s idea of text in its social formation contexts? z Relative autonomy; mediation (媒介); overdetermination 文學史；文類 文學 文學 作 作 品 品 ISA 書 作者／讀者 學 院 局 行銷 文學生產方式； 生產關係； 主要意識形態 Superstructure Base

How to position a Romantic Discourse text in its discursive an example contexts? z French Revolution Angel and Whore binaries as in Traditional Lit. Blake Wordsworth Keats Shelley Coleridge 1. The Poet’s Imagination & Emotion but not reason; 2. Human nature// Nature Byron 3. Treatment of Peasants & Women Organicism: Pre-Raphaelite Lawrence; New Paintings

Wordsworthian Discourse z rise of capitalism: book market W's prefaces and Wordsworth’s Poems: Literary Reviews against supplementary essays: Lyrical Ballads 1. W’s language set up his poetry as (1798; 1802; 1815) -- of the lower classes an independent discipline, etc. 2. W’s subject matter: passion Coleridge's glosses, -- Need of money; Shelley's defense -- Cut out Coleridge’s part Keats' letters to “suit the common taste”;

A slumber did my spirit seal (New Crit: Pattern/Tension made with sounds, syntax, tense, verse form, repetition, etc. ) A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Biographical studies z. Lucy Poems: Composed in Germany; most of them written in the winter of 1798 -99 z. Lucy’s identity: ya creation of the poet's imagination. y. Wordsworth's feeling of affection for his sister. Coleridge wrote of this poem in a letter of April 1799: "Some months ago Wordsworth transmitted to me a most sublime Epitaph. . . whether it had any reality, I cannot say. --Most probably, in some gloomier moment he had fancied the moment in which his Sister might die. "

Psychoanalytic Studies z 1. Wordsworth’s desire to be both dead and alive (to re-live his mother’s death). z 2. The "Lucy" poems have been described as an attempt by Wordsworth to "kill" his improper feelings for his sister. y. In 1802, Wordsworth married his childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy did not attend the ceremony; she was crying on her bed.

Textual Studies z. Part of “The "Lucy Poems" as most modern editors treat them. z. Wordsworth himself never printed them together in any editions of his poetry. Modern editors ought to reconsider their practice.

Marxist Approach: Lucy as a peasant girl? z. The time of his writing: a legacy of 900 pounds; need to attract his readers. z. The 1802 Preface: about describing the rustics--can "surpass the original" occasionally, and that the object of his description is not actually individual persons, but "general and operative truth" (256 -57).

Deconstruction: I/She/Thing Undecidability z. I z A Slumber my spirit sealed =dead z No human fears= inhuman, all-knowing z [her death] z She = a thing? =dead; non-human Rolled. . . • Earthly years • Motion; Force • Hears, Sees With rocks, and stones, and trees.

Critical Perspectives 2: Critical Issues z What is a text/self composed of? z How do we read a text or ourselves in relation to the surrounding signs, ideologies, discourse, economic relations as well as the other kinds of power relations? z What are the implications in the use of the words “self, ” “character, ” “subject” and “subject position”?

Critical Perspectives 2 -2: Critical Issues Related z Language: "[S]igns are arbitrary, conventional, & differential. " binary opposition transcendental signified deconstruction, diff rance & signification z myth ideology discourse Orientalism or cultural imperialism z Social formations (economic determinism or discursive formation? ) z postcolonial writings

End of the course = Beginnings. . . of Critical Thinking z. For further studies: y. Be ready for facing frustrations in reading difficult primary texts; get a dictionary, handbook or Chinese articles to help; z. For further thinking: y Methodologies? Keep on reading critically. y Keep the key words/issues in mind as you read and/or think. Always try to relate, contextualize and map. y Raise critical questions about the text, about ourselves and our society.