Critical theory notes assignment

Great literature is innately sincere. That is not to say that the author’s intention can be seen as more or less sincere, but that the means of expression contained within the text (the choice of words and their arrangement) effectively closes the distance between language and what it represents. . As a corollary to 8, great literature shows more than it tells. Great literature does not overtly explain what it means, rather it creates the idea of a world within the text whose ultimate value is only implicitly accessible. 10.

Criticism cannot do more than serve as an intermediary between the text and the reader, should only assist in the interpretation of the text, and should avoid ‘ theorizing’ on the nature of the reading process, the possibility of political ramifications, or center on a single idea as a point of departure for reading the work in question. By Tamari-Duisenberg Practical Criticism ??+ close reading explaining their significance. ??+ New Criticism 19th Century ??+ critics begin looking at assuming the intent or purpose of the artist who created it.

The human infant, as s/he acquires speech, is inserting him/herself into a pre-existing symbolic order, and subjecting his/her passion to the controlling pressures of the verbal domain. Unconscious desire, for Lagan, is unstoppable and insatiable; its goals are perpetually in flight. The symbolic order of language through which this desire passes is one in which the human subject is endlessly divided, displaced, and reconstituted.

The principal aim of Lagan’s psychoanalysis is to allow he subject fully to inhabit the symbolic order, to heed the language of his/her desire, and to remain in process, uncompleted, unloosened, and direct deservingly towards a future. ” Freud viewed the unconscious as a repository of unwanted and unacknowledged material that the ego had either deferred or failed to process. The unconscious is likened to an attic or basement filled with anxieties, fears, unresolved conflicts, and unacceptable desires.

This, according to Lagan, marks the beginning of our entrance into a social order, complete with all its attendant rules and prohibitions, the authority behind which we associate with the gather. Logic, grammar, and virtually any codified structure aims at defining and regulating the world are contained within this Symbolic realm where we spend the majority of our conscious lives. As nihilistic abstruse as Lagan’s philosophy seems, it has its merits, especially as they apply to literary studies.

The aspects of Lagan’s philosophy that we may not wish to accept on a personal level may none the less facilitate 9/24/2014 Feminism, in its broadest definition, has been with us since the dawn of civilization, since the first moment we could recognize texts that reflected the reality of gender construction and, more importantly, the long standing trend of women’s subordination within social and cultural hierarchies that placed the male of the species at the top of the pecking order. He 19th and 20th centuries aimed at securing basic rights for a largely and unwarrantably disenfranchised female populace, including but not limited to suffrage movements, initiatives granting women governance over their own bodies (birth control, abortion, etc. ), equal pay legislation, and admission into military service. The word “ feminism” might also tempt us to envision militant protests, the bra- burning episodes of the sass, or an aberrant species of women’s rights movement whose primary mission is to denigrate and blame men for any and all of its social woes.

Lesbian and gay criticism traces its roots to feminist ideologies, and would be properly subsumed in contemporary contexts under the broader umbrella of gender studies. A body of common concerns animates lesbian feminism, gay male theory, and queer theory; each attempts to expose “ the centrality of gender as a fundamental category of historical analysis and understanding” and has its chief aim a reconsideration of heterogeneity gender constructions that otherwise reorganize or summarily disavow the presence of homosexual orientation in its broadest sense.

That is, lesbian and gay critics investigate both homosexual and homological patterns in literature as a means of calling into question our preconceived notions of same- sex interaction on multiple levels. At the same time, these critics interrogate heterosexuality as the privileged term in the heterosexual/homosexual binary, noting dominant culture’s insistence on heterosexual as the main culprit in the promotion of homophobia. Despite the commonalities, gay, lesbian, and queer theory models delineate separate emphases marked by different assumptions about the relationship between gender and sexuality.

A clear deficit becomes apparent as lesbian theory quite obviously leaves out the considerations of male homosexuality in its discourse on gender. This is somewhat paradoxical, especially when one considers the extent to which our social conditioning has lead us o associate the words “ homosexual” and “ gay’ with images of male same-sex relationships. To this end, gay male theory looks at ways in which texts provide evidence of male-to- male affinities that resist and overturn authoritative structures (linguistic, social, political, or otherwise) that would deny the very possibility of male homosexual engagement.

Gay male theory also notes, with arguable validity, the extent to which male homosexuality undergoes stronger persecution as it poses a greater threat to patriarchal heterosexual than its lesbian feminist peers. That is, the gay male radium upends patriarchal dominance by shirking its “ duty’ to maintain its privilege in the traditional male/female binary. Lesbianism arguably poses a similar threat, but to a lesser degree because its dissent emanates from a position that is, a priori, inferior. That the dominant male should abdicate his position in the heterosexual binary is significantly more problematic.