zkouška - otázky

jections to his criticism: it is excessively schematic, it neglects the historical, particular, verbally unique aspects of literary artefacts, and that archetypal criticism is neither verifiable nor falsifiable.
It is impossible to learn literature, one can lean criticism of literature.
. . . first step is to recognise and get id of meaningless criticism: that is, talking about literature in a way that cannot help to build up a systematic structure of knowledge.




17

Postmodern literary theory

Paul de Man: (1919-1983)
Born in Belgium and educated in Europe. He taught in North American universities
School of deconstruction. Inspired by Jacques Derrida and his philosophical works.
Key Idea: emptiness of existence and necessity to be connected with certain idea; idea of significance (sense) in meaning; text doesn't carry meaning, which would be there as result of author’s creative process, the meaning is created in the process of reading, not writing; He writes essays The Theory - tied to show that effort pin down (vyhmátnout) the meaning in a language (text) is inevitable and impossible.
We all try to express some kind of true through language - we’re unable to do it - (when we express idea or feeling in words it fall apart, certain thing fail to be expressed in words). Why do words fail us? ( It's the fact that language is rhetorical medium, chain of metaphors, figurative component - connotation (figurative meaning); rhetoric (figurative meanings) constantly undermine the immediate grammatical meaning and logic of sentence.
Paul de Man: critics are people who achieved insight for the text during deconstructing the text; language of critics reflects ideas of critic himself not the text;

Barbara Johnson:
A method of reading and theory of language that seeks to subvert, dismantle, and destroy any notion that a text or signifying system has any boundaries, margins, coherence, unity, determinate meaning, truth, or identity. Unlike structuralism, which privileges structure over event, deconstruction insists on the paradox of structure and event.
Associated with the writings of Jacques Derrida, deconstruction is, in Barbara Johnson's phrase, "a careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text," and because there is no outside the text, once one is inside the text one is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
To deconstruct text doesn't mean to destroy it but take the text apart, going back to process through which it was created. In this process one understands “how author did it”; a text doesn't carry only one meaning, it's result of your context (text contains many meanings); deconstructive reading - analyzes specificity of text with critical difference from itself; it differs the meaning; there's no guaranteed essential meaning;

There's no meaning at all in the text, nothing but language ( deconstruction
x





18

Reception theory (reader’s response)
Movement based on phenomenology.

Wolfgang Iser: *1926
Professor at University of Constants in Germany
He shifts from structuralism to poststucturalism;
Text as potential site for the proliferation of plurality of meanings (potenciál, který vzniká teprve v okamžiku četby).
Reception theory (reader response) - scepticism about objectivity of the text; reading gives us a chance to formulate unformulated. According to reader-response criticism, the reader is a producer rather than a consumer of meanings Reception aesthetics examines how readers realize the potentials of a text. Reception history examines how readings change over the course of time
The text is indeterminate (neurčitý), reader is stimulated to construct your meanings; it's the reader who creates the meaning (not the author);
Reader is the challenge to critics and formalists; a text has no real existence until it is read; meanings are only potential; reader completes meaning by reading; every text caries several levels of reading; is the text itself a cause for interpretation? is our interpretation of text already potential in the text?; některé texty ano - close text, open text - free answer - U. Eco;
Indeterminacy - the way in which gaps or blanks in literary texts stimulate the reader to construct meanings which would not otherwise come into existence.
The work is more than the text, for the text only takes on life when it is realized, and furthermore the realization is by no means independent of the individual disposition of the reader - though this in turn is acted upon by the different patterns of the text. The convergence of text and reader brings the literary work into existence, and this convergence can never be precisely pinpointed, but must always remain virtual, as it is not to be identified either with the reality of the text or with the individual disposition of the reader.



















19

Feminist literary criticism

Elain Showalter (1941)
Professor of English at Princeton
Women’s Lib (eration movement) - is there difference between male and female writing?
Yes: women perceive world differently
No: there's only good and bad writing
In 1970s feminist criticism reached blind alley.
The initial effort of feminist critics was to revise orthodox “male” literary history, exposing sexual stereotyping in canonical texts and reinterpreting or reviving the work of women writes (snaha revidovat kánon - respektive jej doplnit o zapomenuté ženské autorky). In “Feminist criticism in the wilderness” she finds feminist criticism no more unified, but more adventurous in assimilating and engaging with theory: “it now appears that what looked like a theoretical impasse was actually an evolutionary phase”.
Disadvantages: Feminist turns literary criticism into a political battlefield and overlooks the merits of works they consider "patriarchal." When arguing for a distinct feminine writing style, they tend to relegate women's literature to a ghetto status. This in turn prevents female literature from being naturally included in the literary cannon. The feminist approach is often too theoretical.
20
universe
AUTHOR
EGO
SUPEREGO
ID
WORK OF ART


Historical survey of lit. theories
Using 2 metaphors of mind: the “mirror” (reflector=reflection= odrážeč, comparing the mind to a reflector, human mind reflect the reality) and the “lamp” (source of light, comparing the mind to a projector of the human mind) – according to M.H. Abrams
Mimetic theories=lit. is a mirror, from antiquity until 19th century (romantism) the human mind is a mirror – it reflects reality, hotograph in words

Non-mimetic theories=lit. is as a lamp, it reflects no longer, but it illuminates reality, the reader understand the world better thanks to lit., lit. is a kind of light, using metaphors, oxymoron etc. in lit. – language as a tool which shows us the universe in a different way, a poem is a kind of light which illuminates reality
Antithetical – protichůdný
Projector – vysílač Xreflector-odrážeč
Perceive-snímat
The mirror – thinking form Plato and Aristotle
The lamp – from the beginning of romantism until today
Ancient- starověký X antique-starý
Ramification- větvení
The history of theories of arts is 2500 years old
Before 2500years lit. criticism was a part of some other discipline – e.g. philosophy, history..
For lit. theory and poems it is used different language – it took a long time to explore lit. criticism
Formulation of lit. depends on the theory which is used insight of 1 particular book, novel etc. differs according to the insight of a critic (e.g. Marxists, psychologist…)
Different texts demand different approaches (e.g. formalistic theory is good for poetry)
Every theory is limited
The statements depend on the theory that we are using at the moment
There are no right and no wrong answers as in mathematics, ther is nomodel
A good kind of lit. has its own criteria of validity
There is a high number of valid theories
With new novels and texts appear new theories
Lit. theories don’t agree even in basic questions (what lit. is…)
The terms are different, if they are identical, they mean sth. else
As a result is is hard to see where they agree or disagree or what are the points of issues

P3
Hermeneutic circle
Subject,topic
Artist audience
text

topic, artist, text and audience are not isolated, they have their context




diagram
ideas

universe

espressive work pragmatic
artist audience
objective

renaissance, classicism – pragmatic
romanticism – expressive (=how artist expresses himself in the text)
objective –studies only text

Mimetic theories of Antiquity – Plato, Aristotle
(ask how ask how well the work of literature accords with the real world? Does it show how people really act?)
-both Plato and Aristotle try to understand how a literary text reflects the reality and universe

Plato – in his philosophy he introduces the concept of the world of ideas=the perfect world (the perfect concept of love, beauty, humanity..)
-everything what we can observe and experience in our world is only a reflection of this perfect world of ideas – perfection of the ideas immaterial world
-this leads us in the Middle Ages to a very interesting discussion between realists and nominalists where during a large part of Middle Ages philosophers and philologists discuss whether ideas exist really in some world of ideas as Plato thought or whether there are only in our mind, whether it is just abstract concept in the human mind and in fact things in a real existence are the only things that exist

William Occam – theory that the perfection is only in the world of ideas – he is nominalist
-the victory on nominalists is the victory of individualism
-it is a very important invent in the history

Plato – art is a “shadow of a shadow”. For Plato art is only imitation or reflection of the world of ideas
-the poet is considered from the point of view of Platonic philosophy as less important for other people than politicians, craftsmen, moralists
-artists imitate a thing of appearance not of essence – this results in the conclusion that a work of art has a low status in the order of existence
-everyone can join to the imitation of ideas
- he also says the poetry is bad – effects on poetry are bad, because it only creates illusion, not the truth
- the Socratic dialogues contain no proper theory
-there is no theory of art by Plato=art is not able to complete with law or morality
-poetry is nothing than rhetoric, p. is pure rhetoric – defines and analyses linguistic

Aristotle
-beauty is everywhere in reality, every individuality is unique, nothing is perfect
-student of Plato
-he advocates the value of poetry it doesn’t use rhetoric-poetry represents the way how to clear human spirit – catharsis – poesy insides pity and fear – then cools then down (Freytags) – lit. clears human being from bad emotions
-poetics help us to understand function of poetic means (tropes and figures) and all linguistic acts
-lit. – presentation of life in linguistic

The Middle Ages, Renaissance and Classicism
-again assimilated rhetoric and poetry
-rhetoric is the art of eloquence
-poetry is the higher instance of eloquence
-poetry is the higher instance of eloquence than rhetoric with the aim to teach and delight
Middle Ages – lit. wants to teach
Renais. –to teach and to delight
Classic.- to delight

19th century
– rhetoric was pushed apart of the field of poetry– it was considered as something that has not much to do with poetry – rhetoric fell into disfavour

the end of 20th century
(it was in base the same as Aristotle but it was changed and enlarged) – attention to rhetoric, as a field to study about a potent ional discourse

in Middle Ages Aristotle’s thoughts were copied, there wasn’t anything new
Renaissance – it is closed to pragmatic theories (but an aspect of mimesis is still there) form the text – to the audience
-until 18th century mimesis is a great part of lit. (building stone)
-the difference between mimesis in Antiquity and in Reaiss.:
Antiquity – the object of mimesis is action
Renaiss. – not only action, but also inner life of characters (the man is mortal but he has his own free will under the influence of Christianity)

Aristotle
-the author of the book “Poetics” – he si the founder of poetics
-defines poetry as mimesis (=imitation) of universe
-there is no world of ideas for him
-arts are distinguished from anything else in the world by the imitating character
-he doesn’t compare craftsmen with artist, because they function in a different way, they don’t create new things, but they process the contact with the world
-Aristotle is the first who distinguished poetry from other kinds of art by using language
-the poetics specifies the object, manner and means of imitation (of mimesis)
-he analyses the genres themselves – plot, characters, theme, material, subject-matter
-he differentiates genres (epics, drama, lyrics)
-he put the basis of lit. theory, provided all critic terminology
-he said that humans incline to imitate
-the main emphasis in Aristotle is on the relationship between nature and work



Differences

Plato
-didn’t like the poets – deceptive and fault rhetoric – it causes deceptive expectation in a reader
Poetic=deceptive use of rhetoric-it causes unrealistic expectation inside people’s mind

Aristotle
-promotes + advocates the value of poetry
-he says that poetry has its own value
-poetry is based on mimesis (the art of imitation)
poetry represents the way how to clear the human spirit emotions that are dislocated – catharsis: it cause regret (pity) – then it calms it down again

Pragmatic theories
(from 15th/16th/17th century→18th)
-Renesaince is close to them, mimesis
-relationship between the audience and text
-under the influence of empirical science artists created experiments (to create sth. like a truth, sth. like reality, kind of photo)
-in Renaissance and Classicism English critics discussed the media (= nástroje) of imitation:
Sir Phillip Sydney – „Apology of poetry“ (renais.) = „Obrana básnictví“
→to achieve certain effect on audience
„poetry is a more propriet instrument of imitation than philosophy“ (discourse of philosophy)
Philosophical ideas are more understandable through a poem; philosophy is often too difficult

-prag. theories – the purpose of poetry is too create some effect on the audience; these effects are to teach and delight, cheer up
-the genres are discussed and appreciated – how well they affect the audience – moral, social, entertaining effect
-renaissance critic had moral aim before all, emotions and delight were auxiliary
-since John Drydon (=classic.) until the 18th century the focus was the same (also pragmatic), but not the moral aim but to delight → pleasure is the main aim
-under the influence of classical French tragedy → 3 units of style (one place, one day or time and one style – e.g. pure comedy, or pure tragedy), nothing mixed
-pragm. theories lasted very long time (200 years)

Expressive theories
(18th -19th century) – appearance of romanticism
-T.Hobbes and J.Locke – the attention shifts to the author – he has natural creativity, is spontaneous, natural genius
-W.Wordsworth + T.Colleridge – „Lyrical Ballads“ (1798) = collection of poetry
-in the prologue we can find the theoretical programme of romantic lit. criticism:
W.W.: „Poetry is the spontaneousoverflow of powerful feelings.“
-almost all romantics formulated poetry as the overflow and projection of feelings of the poet - he is able to transform the feelings
-lit. is no longer understood as a mirror, but as a lamp → sth. goes out
-there is a shift from the external to the internal
-poetry is defined as an imaginative process which modifies and symphasises the images, thoughts and feelings of the poet
-the poet takes all his experience from the external world
-the primary source ans subject-matter are atributes (=vlastnosti) and actings of the poet´s mind, he percieves the world around, distinguishes the material, connects it with his imagination
-question of lit. criticism is not „is it a reflection of reality?“ but the new question is: „IS IT GENUINE?“ (=opravdové)
John Stuart Mill – Poetry is the expression of uttering forth of feeling.“
-the hierarchy is from epics to lyrics
-epics was a description of morality
-Mill thought that there´s nothing from reality (everything is from author´s mind)
-poetry must be true not to the universe, but to the human emotions
-poetry embodies itself in symbols, metaphers and emotions
Look for an objective correlate (in figures, metaphors, tropes…)
-the audience is reduced to minimum
-the evolution is complete from the mimetic poet, through the pragmatic poet to the poet expressing his work → to the objective theories
Objective theories
– 20th century
-the work is regarded in isolation from all the external points of reference as self-sufficient (=soběstačný) entity (audience is ignorated)
-obj. theories investigate only text
-an extreme of this is „l´art pour l´art“ = I learn because I want to know
Immanuel Kant: „Work is a value of itself”
E.A.Poe: considered on a poem per ce (samu o sobě)
T. S .Eliot: considered poetry as a poetry and not sth.else
Mellach: a poem should be, not to mean
Fallacy - an intentional fallacy (=záměrný klam)
-affective fallacy (=klam účinku)
There was discussed the relationship between the author´s work and the audience
It was a new critic school in the USA

MODERNISM

=Hulme,Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Forster
end of the 19.century, mainly between 2 world wars
continues after the 2.nd World War
intelectual period in Europe
optimism: in the 19.century there was a beginning of scientific research, movement in philosophy
pesimism: signals that future won´t be so bright, pesimism in AS world
a lot of new things appeared:
a.Darwin – Theory of evolution – ancestors of human beings are monkeys – conflict between religion and the opinion that man is nothing but a part of essence
b.Einstein: Theory of relativity – everything is relative – velues are relative too, they are not absolute
c.Planck: Quantal theory - time doesn´t flow lineary
d.2 Poles of theories : Marxism x Einstein
e.Shopenhauer: Life is just a blind will for living (Život je jen slepá vůle k žití)
f.Nietzsche: God is dead, theory of „superman“ (nadčlověk) – sceptical about religion, later abused
In philosophy: left wing: Marx, Engels x Shoppenhauer, Nietzsche (=scepticism)

The 1st World War
a big shock -the first universal conflict
total destruction of traditional values
suffering, inability to communicate
complete loss of faith – people are sceptical about religion

Imagism: movement in USA – important for the rise of Modernism

Modernism abandoned all traditional values in literature and arts
In art: cubism, impressionalism -when you look closely at the picture
Poets in fragmentic (zlomkovití) and relative way
Modernism = its basi cis the refusal of Romanticism and administration od Clasicism (=background to modernism)

T.E.Hulm:
brings a comparision between Romanticism and Classicism
In his essay he denounced (odsoudil) Romanticism and his attention is focused on classicism, he requests the poets and prose authors to take inspiration in classicism
Romanticism is basically the tradition of 18th and 19th century, victorian poetry - late 19th century
Romanticism is the movement which precedes victorian poetry and victorian prose being really a second stage of romanticism
He favours classic. As the model rot modernist literature
He is also creative artist of imagist group

IMAGISM
is a modernist movement in the USA, imagists are very important for modernism because they request the poet to create an image in words rather than discuss an idea in their poem
To create images in words means that we have to use many metaphors and other poetic means of expression
In his essay „Romanticism and Classicism“ he maintains that after 100 years of romanticism (from the end of 18th century until the end of 19th century) it is time for a classical revival



Romanticism:
philosophically and politically based as a left-wing moement, democratic, revolutionary, popular
Believes in a goodness of man, man is essentially good, but : man is good, but the society corrupts him, he was born pure, good
Philosophy based on J.J.Rousseau
Man is infinite reservoir of possibilities, you must give him a chance and than the man will develop his positive sides

Classicism:
right-wing, elitist, conservative, in various aspects
Sceptical about a goodness of man, because classicism is based on religious teaching of the original sin(=prvotní hřích)
Man is limited and fixed, he is not free
man= animal whose nature is absolutely konstant, you can not hope any improvement and it is only by repression (útisk) that you can present man from doing things
Darwin – idea of continuous evolution
De Vries – evololution in jumps, in steps
Hulme advocates (doporučuje)for the free verse - it is also a jump in evolution for him / we need new form
He compares the importace of free verse in modernism to the importace of blank verse in Reinaissance
He says:“ We shall not get any new bloom (rozkvět) of verse until we get a new technique.“
He calls the romant. poetry as moaning and roaring
He wants the poetry to be bright rather than damped, he wants the poetry to have a zest (říz)
He compares: fantasy (představivost) – romanticism x fancy (předst