english 300 new criticism: emerged in the 1930s, partly as a response to the emphasis upon...

English 300

New Criticism:

Emerged in the 1930s, partly as a response to the emphasis upon memorization and historical-biographical details of the historical approach

English 300

New Criticism:

Emerged in the 1930s, partly as a response to the emphasis upon memorization and historical-biographical details of the historical approach

Realized Babbitt’s “culture camp” ideals

English 300

New Criticism:

Emerged in the 1930s, partly as a response to the emphasis upon memorization and historical-biographical details of the historical approach

Realized Babbitt’s “culture camp” ideals

Corresponded to the “Fugitive” movement in literature and criticism

Fugitive Manifesto: I’ll Take My Stand: The South and Agrarian Culture (1930)

English 300

New Criticism:

Emerged in the 1930s, partly as a response to the emphasis upon memorization and historical-biographical details of the historical approach

Realized Babbitt’s “culture camp” ideals

Corresponded to the “Fugitive” movement in literature and criticism

Fugitive Manifesto: I’ll Take My Stand: The South and Agrarian Culture (1930)

John Crowe Ransom, The New Criticism (1941)

Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry (1938)Understanding Fiction (1943)

English 300

New Criticism:

Radically ahistorical

Ostensibly apolitical

In its theoretical statements, New Criticism asserted that all literary value inhered in the text itself—therefore, details pertaining to the following considerations were irrelevant:

the author’s life and intentions

the social and historical contexts of the texts production and reception

the reader’s background and concerns

English 300

New Criticism:

Key theoretical statements:

W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy”

W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, “The Affective Fallacy”

English 300

Structuralism and Myth Criticism:

Roman Jakobsen Drew on the Structural linguistics of Ferdinand de SaussureWas a member of the Moscow Linguistics Circle

Northrop FryeDrew on the theories of Karl JungSaw literary patterns corresponding to climate seasons

Roland BarthesExtended Jakobsen’s structuralist theories to popular culture as well as literature

English 300

Poststructuralism

Jacques DerridaCritiqued the “metaphysics of presence” in Western philosophical tradition

Michel FoucaultConcept of “micro-histories”Argued that meaning is contingent, and discursively produced

Madness and Civilization The Birth of the ClinicThe Archaeology of Knowledge

English 300

In the western philosophical tradition since Plato, “truth” is seen as absolute

Derrida’s critique suggests that we can only recognize the “+” sign because we are

aware of the possibility of its opposite—something that is not “plus”

English 300

English 300

This doesn’t even have to be something that is opposed to the positive presence—simple absence of the present is the “not-present”

English 300

This doesn’t even have to be something that is opposed to the positive presence—simple absence of the present is the “not-present.” Derrida’s argument suggests that in order for us to recognize and value the positive term—the “good,” the “real,” the “natural,” etc.—there has to be the possibility of something else to which it can be compared.

Hence:

Good Man Nature Black

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Evil Woman Society White

All of these oppositions, he argues, are historically and socially contingent.

English 300

English 300: Senior Seminar

Professor: Ron Strickland

Email: rlstrick@ilstu.edu

Phone: 438-7596

Office: Stevenson Hall, 333-D

Hours: 8:30-9:30 TR

http://www.english.ilstu.edu/strickland/300/