english 300 new criticism: emerged in the 1930s, partly as a response to the emphasis upon...
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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: [email protected]
Phone: 438-7596
Office: Stevenson Hall, 333-D
Hours: 8:30-9:30 TR
http://www.english.ilstu.edu/strickland/300/