Ulysses James Joyce

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CríticaAnglosajona
2007-2008
Prof. J. A. Álvarez Amorós
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http//www.ua.es/personal/jalvarez
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Lesson 1 Literature, Literary Criticism, and
Philology Some Key Notions

• Philology and Filología the same word but quite
  different meanings in English and Spanish
• In English, it denotes the diachronic study of
  language, especially the historical stages of the
  language like Old English, Middle English, Early
  Modern English, etc. Philology is more or less
  the same as historical linguistics.
• In Spanish, the meaning of this term is
  considerably wider. Filología means the study
  of a culture, both from the linguistic and
  literary points of view, by means of the analysis
  and interpretation of its texts, whether oral or
  written. As can be seen, the Spanish meaning
  encompasses the English one.

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Lesson 1 Literature, Literary Criticism, and
Philology Some Key Notions
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Lesson 1 Literature, Literary Criticism, and
Philology Some Key Notions

• Two sets of relationships can be established as a
  result of the division made in the general body
  of Philology in the Spanish sense of the term
• One between literary history, on the one hand,
  and literary theory and criticism, on the other.
  Literary studies were established as a heavily
  historical and scholarly discipline. For this
  reason, the development of literary studies
  throughout the 20th century can be seen as a
  sustained effort on the part of literary
  criticism to achieve an independent status from
  literary history, as well as a distinctive set of
  objects and methods (see Wellek and Warren,
  Theory of Literature, and R. S. Crane, History
  versus Criticism in the Study of Literature).
• Another between literature, on the one hand, and
  literary theory and criticism, on the other.
  Literature is the primary object of study of all
  literary studies this study is carried out by
  means of the instruments provided by literary
  theory and criticism but if we wish to study how
  these instruments developed over the centuries,
  literary theory and criticism become sencondary
  objects of study or metaobjects.

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Lesson 1 Literature, Literary Criticism, and
Philology Some Key Notions

• Literary theory and criticism enjoy thus a dual
  status within the framework just described
• They can be considered instruments when they are
  used to gain new insights into the literary work
  of art.
• They can also be objects of study in themselves
  when we focus on their history, their
  relationships with other disciplines, etc.
• In short, they constitute an object of study
  when we teach the students how literary texts
  have been studied and interpreted over the
  centuries, but they become an instrument when we
  teach the student how he himself can study and
  interpret them.

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Lesson 1 Literature, Literary Criticism, and
Philology Some Key Notions
Crítica Anglosajona
Critical Writings
Literary works
8
Lesson 1 Literature, Literary Criticism, and
Philology Some Key Notions

• The meaning of the term literature has changed
  dramatically over the centuries in such a way
  that our contemporary idea of it dates back to
  the 19th century only. It has suffered what one
  could call conceptual narrowing, a gradual
  process of specialisation that has led it to
  denote a progressively more limited area of
  meaning.
• One could point out three broad stages in this
  process of evolution
• From classical times, literature meant anything
  in print, whatever is written or printed, written
  or printed matter.
• Later, the meaning of literature became
  narrower it came to denote writings having
  excellence of form or expression and expressing
  ideas of permanent or universal interest.
• From the 19th century onwards, the term
  literature acquires its modern sense. Two new
  conditions (a) imagination and fictionality (b)
  aesthetic worth.

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Lesson 1 Literature, Literary Criticism, and
Philology Some Key Notions
(B) Literature writings with excellence of
formand expressing fundamental ideas
(A) Literature anything in print
(C) Literature writings based on imagination
and fictionality, and endowed with aesthetic worth
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Lesson 1 Literature, Literary Criticism, and
Philology Some Key Notions

• This very narrow idea of literature is
  predominant nowadays and, as always, there are
  positions for and against it
• Wellek believes that this narrowing down of the
  concept of literature was highly beneficial,
  because it paved the way for the establishment of
  a literary science with clear limits and methods,
  a move which would have been impossible if the
  identification of literature with culture or
  civilization had continued. (That is to say, if
  the literary text had continued to be identified
  with any distinguished or intellectually
  outstanding text.)
• Hirsch, on the contrary, deplores the inclusion
  of literature in the realm of art mainly on
  educational grounds (see his article What Isnt
  Literature?). Many works which were deemed
  literary in the 19th century are no longer
  studied (mainly essays). In his view, this
  entails an unwanted impoverishment of general
  culture.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• However, the empirical existence of a phenomenon
  called literature, with clear limits and
  descriptible features, has been in doubt for some
  decades now, and, as could be expected, there are
  two opposed views on this matter
• First, we have those who believe that the
  phenomenon called literature exists objectively,
  it can be described and defined, being
  literariness the objective quality shared by all
  literary texts, whatever this quality might be
  found to be. The Russian formalists, for
  instance, spoke of a differentia specifica that
  discriminates the literary language from the
  non-literary one, and this difference could be
  described and studied following methods generally
  claimed to be scientific. This position will be
  labelled the specific view of literature. As a
  set reading illustrating this view, I propose
  Hirschs essay What Isnt Literature?, though,
  from widely diverging angles, it is quite
  widespread among formalist circles (see for
  instance Jakobsons celebrated Linguistics and
  Poetics).

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• Second, we have those who disagree with the
  common-sense belief in the existence of
  literature as a special and objectively definable
  use/variety of language. They generally believe
  that the effort to keep literature separated from
  other linguistic practices is but an attempt to
  perpetuate it as a specialised, arcane,
  forbidding field, inaccessible to ideological
  analysis and so the preserve of a social elite.
  They propose to use the same tools for the
  analysis of literature as for the analysis of,
  say, the daily press and struggle to deconstruct
  conventions and stereotypes generated around the
  idea of literature. This position will be called
  the non-specific view of literature, because its
  supporters do not believe in the specific,
  objective existence of the literary phenomenon.
  The set reading advocating this position is Roger
  Fowlers encyclopaedia article Literature.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• The specific conception of literature is
  organized by means of two oppositions which
  progressively cover a narrower field
• The fundamental opposition is that between
  literature and non-literature as can be seen, it
  is essential if literature has to be
  differentiated from other linguistic uses.
• Another opposition occurs between the
  stereotypical notions of good literature and bad
  literature or subliterature and the criteria used
  to define it are intensely evaluative.
• Confusion between these two oppositions should be
  avoided for a piece of writing to be literature
  is different from being good literature.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
The opposition between literature and
non-literature which is basic to any discussion
of the problem of literary specificity can be
examined from four angles each of them
highlighting a different function of the literary
phenomenon and giving rise to a distinct theory
to account for its existence.These four angles
are the mimetic, the pragmatic, the expressive,
and the objective (M. H. Abrams,The Mirror and
the Lamp).Each of these four approaches focuses
on one component of the phenomenon called
literary work respectively, the represented
world, the reader, the author, and the literary
work itself but throughout history it can be
easily seen that there are periods emphasising
the study of one of these components to the
detriment of the others and thus they can be
taken as points of reference to establish the
history of Western literary theory.
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
Author Literary Reader Work
Represented World
16
Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• The mimetic function of literature is the
  capacity it has to represent a real or invented
  world, whether verisimilar or non-verisimilar

• When the pragmatic function predominates, there
  emerges a notion of literature which seems
  explicitly framed to condition the response of
  readers and serve as a convenient vehicle of
  ideologies.

• The expressive function takes over at the
  beginning of the 19th century with the advent of
  Romanticism. Literature is no longer viewed as a
  reflection of the surrounding world, but rather
  as a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
  as William Wordsworth defined it in the 1800
  preface to the Lyrical Ballads.
• Poetry is no longer imitation of an external
  reality but of an internal one made up of
  feelings, emotions, memories, etc. The external
  world still may feature in the poem, but rather
  as the stimulus or pretext for representing the
  poets inner life.
• The poet as a mirror vs. the poet as a lamp.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• The objective function of literature gained
  ground in the 20th century owing mainly to the
  formalist schools. Its basic tenet is that the
  literary work is an autotelic whole, whose
  purpose is not to imitate a reality, influence
  the reader, or express the author's feelings, but
  rather parade itself in its internal complexity
  as a verbal artifact.
• The objective approach regards the work of art in
  isolation from its author, reader or represented
  world, analyses it as a self-sufficient entity
  constituted by its parts in their internal
  relations, and sets out to judge it solely by
  criteria intrinsic to its own mode of being.

Literaywork
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
A transitional model of literature formulated
within the specific conception of this
phenomenon. It discriminate literary texts from
non-literary texts considering the presence and
intensity of a set of features. According to this
model, there is no feature whose presence or
absence, in itself, will absolutely give or deny
literariness to a particular work.
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• Literature is thus a linguistic and textual
  phenomenon
• Literature is not a transparent vehicle and so
  that the only thing the critic can do is
  investigate the represented world
• Literature is textual, and this has serious
  methodological consequences
• Apart from being linguistic and textual, one
  must say that literature is a privileged
  phenomenon its capacity to call attention
  towards itself, to capture the attention of the
  ordinary reader as well as the study and the
  analysis of the critic or specialised reader.
• This privilege is not arbitrary. There are many
  reasons justifying it, which can be classified
  three branches of semiotics in order to
  systematise them. These branches are semantics,
  syntactics, and pragmatics. (See Charles W.
  Morris, "Foundations of the Theory of Signs.")
  Curiously enough, they are almost equivalent to
  the four different approaches or views of
  literature as proposed by Abrams above. The
  correspondences are as follows

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• These three branches of semiotics should not be
  confused with Abramss approach studied before,
  though there are many similarities
• Semantics (the relationships established by
  signs with their referents) Abramss
  mimetic approach.
• Syntactics (the relationships established by
  signs with othersigns) Abramss objective
  approach.
• Pragmatics (the relationships established by
  signs with their users speakers and listeners,
  authors and readers and with their context of
  use) Abrams pragmatic function and also
  closely related with expressive function.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
The semantic features distinguishing literature
from non-literary utterances reside in the very
special nature of the literary referent, which
does not pre-exist the literary work itself but
rather is created in the process of composition.
Therefore, the universe represented by a literary
work cannot be empirically verified with
reference to reality and has to be accepted as
it is, being fictionality one of its most
distinctive features. Even historical novels or
literary texts based on real events have a
large fictional component. If this were
absolutely eliminated, literature would give way
to chronicle and the aesthetic intention would be
replaced by the informative intention. Thus
reading a literary work demands from the reader a
complex and dual attitude he must consider any
piece of information as simultaneously true and
false true in the fictional world created in the
process of composition false, or at least
irrelevant, in the real world.
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
The syntactic features lie in the peculiar
internal organization of the literary work, which
can be seen at all levels, whether semantic,
lexical, morphosyntactic, or phonological. Many
proposals have been made mainly by formalist
critics in order to explain this peculiar
organization. Possibly, the most famous one is by
Roman Jakobson. For him, language fulfils several
functions emotive, conative, referential, fatic,
metalinguistic, and poetic. When language fulfils
the poetic function, it means that it focuses on
the message itself (Abramss objective
approach). This happens when the principle of
equivalence, whose domain is the Saussurean axis
of selection or paradigmatic axis, is projected
onto the axis of combination or syntagmatic axis,
and so formal motivation is thrust upon
utterances that otherwise would be ordinary
messages. Such projection creates sound
correlations (rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, etc.),
morphosyntactic ones (paronomasia, anaphora,
etc.), and semantic and lexical ones (metaphors,
images, etc.). Equivalence becomes thus a
resource of the sequence.
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
Code(metalinguistic) Channel(fatic) Addressor
Message
Addressee (emotive)
(poetic)
(conative) Referent(referential)
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
Axis of selection EQUIVALENCE
The A This That . . . .
dog cat bird horse . . . .
barks mews twits neighs . . . .
here there on thebranch in thestable . . . .
Axis ofcombination SEQUENCE
The horse neighs
in the stable
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• The consideration of the pragmatic features in
  the definition of the sources of privilege of the
  literary phenomenon is just a welcome consequence
  of the gradual widening of the object of study of
  linguistics and the growing interest in the
  pragmatic context of literary communication. Two
  facts are peculiar of the literary phenomenon
• The existence of an asymmetric and unilateral
  communication context which inhibits the
  existence of dialogical feedback.
• Additionally, the literary phenomenon conceived
  of as a speech act shares many of the
  properties of games because its referent is a
  fictional world. The speech act by means of which
  one composes a fictional narrative is completely
  parasitic, it imitates a real speech act, but
  lacks illocutive force. We participate in a game
  of make-believe quite similar to ordinary play.
• This lack of illocutionary force is also
  responsible for the absence of immediate utility
  from the literary work.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
Thus, for the specifists, literature is a
privileged linguistic and textual phenomenon,
whose privilege lies in its capacity to commands
the readers attention independently of the kind
of world it denotes. This privilege is based on
social consensus which, far from being arbitrary,
is motivated by semantic reasons (the creation of
a fictional world), syntactic reasons (the
transformation of language into an opaque medium
endowed with aesthetic properties), and pragmatic
reasons (the absence of illocutionary force from
the literary speech act).
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
If literariness depends on three types of reasons
and if none of them is absolute but just gradual
and relative, it is obvious that the model I have
dealt with is transitional, i.e. there is no
precise point at which a text abruptly becames,
or ceases to be, literary. There are rather
infinite combinations which contribute to
organizing the canon of any national literature
from the nucleus in which only undoubtedly
literary works can be lodged, all of them
scoring very high on all three types of reasons
to the periphery. This is precisely the
theoretical and conceptual bases of a
transitional model of literature.
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• The opposition between good literature and bad
  literature or subliterature. I have said
  before that separate consideration of (a)
  literary status and (b) questions of quality or
  public appreciation, i.e. canonicity, was
  essential to grasp the nature of the literary
  phenomenon. Thus literature can be defined
  according to a transitional model irrespective of
  whether it is considered a part of the canon or
  not.
• Wellek agrees to this separation when he says
  that classification as art should be
  distinguished from evaluation (Theory of
  Literature, p. 26). Thus literature ? good
  literature. To define literature before good
  literature seems essential.
• Paffard, on the other hand, mixes both criteria
  and says to ask whether a piece of writing is
  literature is to ask whether it is good
  (Thinking about English, p. 64). Thus literature
  good literature. I do not suuport this view
  since, confusing criteria do not appear to be the
  best way to pinpoint the true nature of the
  literary phenomenon.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
Therefore, there are two sets of reasons to
explain why a given literary work is lodged on
the periphery of a literary canon. Very different
reasons, but the same final effect expulsion
from the canon and, consequently, absence from
university syllabuses, etc. First, because it
is not contemplated as one-hundred-per-cent
literature, i.e. because the combination of
semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic features is
insufficient for instance, Dr. Johnsons
literary criticism, or Henry Jamess Prefaces to
the New York edition of his novels and tales.
Second, because it is looked upon as bad
literature or subliterature for instance, Agatha
Christies detective yarns or Arthur Conan
Doyles Sherlock Holmes stories.
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• The distinction between good literature and
  bad literature has been conceived of in
  different ways. Two will be mentioned here, one
  more personal than the other
• One is Eliots statement in Essays Ancient and
  Modern to the effect that in an age like our
  own . . . it is the more necessary . . . to
  scrutinize works of imagination, with explicit
  ethical and theological standards. The
  greatness of literature cannot be determined
  solely by literary standards though we must
  remember that whether it is literature or not can
  be determined only by literary standards
  (p. 93).
• Here Eliot establishes a duality between artness
  and greatness, which is quite similar to the
  relationship existing between our pairs
  literature/non-literature and good
  literature/bad literature.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• Another is the idea of durability that is
  inextricably linked to the notion of classicism.
  According to this idea, good literature is that
  which tolerates the passage of time, and remains
  thematically, ideologically, and formally in
  force, because it subjugates the readers of all
  times and ages. Two very weak points
• ? There are works of low literary reputation
  which have attracted and still attract the
  attention of large sections of the reading
  public. From this follows the idea that simple
  durability cannot be equated with literary
  greatness.
• ? The idea of durability is not so simple and
  innocent as it might seem. It is a highly
  artificial construct. According to Marxist
  criticism, literary works surviving the passage
  of time are not those endowed with literary
  greatness, but rather those upkeeping the
  ideology and social codes of the economic elite.
  For other critics and theorists, however, the
  idea of literary excellence is not imposed from
  without, but rather resides in the intrinsic
  formal qualities of the work in question.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
The role of scepticism in the emergence of the
non-specific conception of literature the
excessive recurrence of common-sense definitions
of this phenomenon like the following
one famous books . . . distinguished by
excellence of form or expression, which persist
at a personal . . . level when a work is not
exhausted at first reading but provides an
increasingly rewarding experience the more often
it is returned to (Paffard, Thinking about
English, pp. 63, 65-66, and 66, respectively)
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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• The advocates of the non-specificity of
  literature set off from the premiss that the
  application of theory creates the object of
  study, not the converse. In our case, this means
  that literary theory creates literature, and thus
  literature will be one thing or another according
  to the theoretical views applied to its study.
  Two non-specific views
• ----------------- Roger Fowlers position
  ---------------
• My position is that Literature cannot be
  assumed to exist (Fowler, Literature, p. 10).
• I assume that linguistic-stylistic theories of
  the arch-formalistic Jakobsonian kind, which
  attempt to set off literature as a special
  non-referential, non-interpersonal, and
  non-metalinguistic mode of writing, are nothing
  but naive contributions to the bourgeois
  conspiracy to make literature inaccessible to
  ideological analysis and thus inaccessible to
  readers outside the traditional cultural elite,
  and must therefore be rejected (Fowler,
  Literature as Social Discourse, pp. 124-25).

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon

• ---------------- Richard Ohmanns position
  -----------------
• The arbitrariness of social consensus about the
  quality of literature in a 1978 essay called
  The Social Definition of Literature, Richard
  Ohmann explains how a famous novel is
  manufactured in the United States.
• First, it is necessary that immediately upon
  publication or, at most, within two weeks of
  publication, a small group of influential
  individuals should buy it and recommend its
  reading this circumstance, of almost random
  nature, triggers an immensely important economic
  process that culminates in the sale of the rights
  of the novel to a film studio
• To diminish the level of randomness of the first
  step, publishers try to place favourable reviews
  in influential journals such as the Times Book
  Reviews by means of shameless manoeuvres most of
  the time.

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Lesson 2 Specific vs. Non-Specific Views of the
Literary Phenomenon
Conclusion Of course, if these or analogous
procedures have been applied to to the literature
of different ages, we find that the canon of
English literature has been formed under the
pressure of social and ideological interests and
not in accordance with the intrinsic' qualities
of the literary work.
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Lesson 3 The Role and Nature of Literary Theory
and Criticism

• As I said earlier, the analysis of literature as
  the primary object of literary studies is carried
  out by means of instruments such as literary
  theory and criticism which, in turn, become
  secondary objects of study when they come to be
  taught, say, historically.
• Literary criticism can be defined as the
  explanation, interpretation, assessment, or, in
  general, study of the literary text as a
  privileged linguistic and textual phenomenon
  whether from an extrinsic or intrinsic point of
  view and whatever the methodological or
  scientific aspirations of the whole process,
  provided it is a function of the privileged
  nature of the literary work which I have
  discussed earlier.

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Lesson 3 The Role and Nature of Literary Theory
and Criticism

• This emphasis on the privileged status of the
  literary work excludes other approaches to
  literature that cannot be considered literary
  criticism
• Textual criticism instrumental branch of
  literary studies which purports to trace back and
  determine the original form of manuscripts.
  Little to do with literature as a privileged
  phenomenon, since it can also operate to
  determine the original form of any other kind of
  document.
• Positivistic criticism criticism as practiced
  by Hippolyte Taine, who considered the literary
  work as a historical document to gain insights
  into la race, le milieu ou le moment (the
  race, the environment, or the moment). In my
  view, genuine literary criticism only occurs when
  it focuses on a literary work as a literary work
  rather than as evidence for historical
  scholarship.
• It is obvious, however, that this restrictions on
  literary criticism only operate from the point of
  view of a specific conception of literature,
  which considers this phenomenon as a special use
  of language.

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Lesson 3 The Role and Nature of Literary Theory
and Criticism

• Literary criticism can be looked at from
  extrinsic or intrinsic perspectives
• If literary criticims focuses on the author,
  then we have literary biography, psychoanalytic
  criticism, or, in Abramss terms, an expressive
  approach to, or perspective on, literature.
• If literary criticism concentrates on the
  reader, then we have reception aesthetics,
  sociology of literature, or pragmatic approaches
  (Abramss term).
• If literary criticism pays particular attention
  to the world or referent expressed by the text,
  then we have Marxist, historical, or social
  criticism, philosophical or ethical criticism, or
  mimetic criticism in Abramss terms.
• If, on the other hand, the critic focuses on the
  work itself qua linguistic artifact, then we have
  intrinsic approaches to literature, which Abrams
  calls objective Russian formalism, stylistics,
  narratology, Rhetoric, structuralism, etc.

39
Lesson 3 The Role and Nature of Literary Theory
and Criticism
Literary theory can also operate either from an
extrinsic or an intrinsic perspective. It takes
up the form of a general reflection upon the
nature of the literary phenomenon, but it does
not focus on the elucidation of individual works.
It is obvious, however, that both literary theory
and literary criticism are interdependent
activities one cannot theorise or generalise
about the literary phenomenon unless one looks at
concrete works to abstract their features
conversely, it is impossible to do literary
criticism without a priori theoretical principles.