Modern Critical Theories

By prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

Modern Critical Theories.

1. Structuralism:

Structuralism was a literary theory which is based on "a system of ideas used in the study of language, literature, art, anthropology and sociology that emphasizes the importance of the basic structure and relationship of that particular subject. It is primarily concerned with understanding how language works as a system of meaning production. How does language function as a kind of meaning machine. It is a 20th century intellectual approach. Ferdinand desassure was the founder of structuralism. According to De Saussure, Every language has different signs and these signs are composite of Signifier and signified. These Signs give the meaning to the text. We cannot study Text in Isolation.He gave the concept of Langue and parole. Langue is the grammar rules, system and structure of the language. 

Parole is the act of utterances.

2. Post structuralism::

It is a late 20th century approach in philosophy and literary criticism. It is opposition to the structuralism. Jacques derrida and Michael Foucault are the founder of post structuralism. It denies the existence of universal principles which create meanings and coherence. It rejects the theory of Ferdinand Desaussure of Signifier and Signified. It examines the other sources of meanings I.e reader, cultural norms and other literature etc. Here readers replace the author. It is simultaneously rejection of Structuralism. Here no meaning and sign are stable. There is nothing outside the text.

3. Russian Formalism:

Russian Formalism was developed in 1910 in Russia .its official beginning was marked by an establishment of two organization, the moscow linguistic circle and the society for the study of poetic language (OPOYAZ).

For formalists,literary criticism is separate from other forms of analysis.it focuses on how language works. Formalists study how literature works not what literature is about. They were primarily interested in the way the literary text achieve their effects and in establishing a scientific bases for study of literature. I can say that Formalism is a critical approach that analyse , interprete and evaluate the inherent features of a text. These Features include not only grammar and syntax but also literary devices such as meter and figure of speech. 

In the first half of the 20th century , Russian and Czech literary theorists worked to develop a theory of literariness: what made literary text different from , for instance, govt reports, newspapers articles etc. Formalist says that literature distinguishes itself from non literary language because it employs a range of devices that have a defamiliarization effect. Here we can study text in isolation. There is nothing extra textual. The text is the most authentic itself. We pay utmost attention on the forms of the text. We focus on language and study linguistic devices in order to get maximum meaning of the text.

4. Reader Response Criticism:

Reader response criticism analyzes the reader's role in the production of the meaning. the text itself has no meanings until it is read by a reader. Here reader is a producer rather than a consumer of meanings.

It is a school of criticism which emerged in 1970,focused on finding meaning in the act of reading itself and examining the ways individual readers or community of readers experience texts.

Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work. It argues that a text has no meaning before a reader experiences and—reads—it.

Practitioners: I-A-Richards, Louise Rosenblatt ,Walter Gibson ,Norman Holland .

5. Psychoanalytical Criticism: 

Sigmund Freud developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, which argued that personality is formed through conflicts among three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego.

This theory works on the psychology. It adopts the methods of reading employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts,like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author ,that a leterary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. Psychoanalysis attempts to understand the workings and source of unconscious desires, needs, anxieties and behaviour of writers,readers and specific cultural phenomena. They want to understand human behavioural patterns and cultural behaviour patterns. Through the scope of a psychoanalytic lens, humans are described as having sexual and aggressive drives. Psychoanalytic theorists believe that human behavior is deterministic. It is governed by irrational forces, and the unconscious, as well as instinctual and biological drives. Due to this deterministic nature, psychoanalytic theorists do not believe in free will.

Practitioner:Sigmund Freud ,Ernest Jones .

6. Deconstruction:

Deconstruction is a philosophical critical approach to textual analysis that is m0st closely related with the work of Jacques Derrida. He gives the concept of binary opposition. The deconstructive method is used to show that the meaning of a literary text is not fixed or stable. Jacques derrida says that all communication is characterized by uncertainity because there is no definitive link between a signifier(a word)and signified(object). once a text is written it ceases to have a meaning until a reader reads it. There is no solid meaning to the text. There is no possibility of absolute truth.

I can Say Deconstruction is an approach to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. Derrida's approach consisted of conducting readings of texts with an ear to what runs counter to the intended meaning or structural unity of a particular text.

7. Feminism:

The concept of feminism in general has been concerned to an analysis of the trend of male domination of the society ; the general attitude of male towards female, the ways of improving the condition of women. In literature, It emerged in 1960. It was the movement in favour of women.

''Jane Austin ,Francis Burney ,Virginia Woolf, George Eliot " were the famous Feminist writers. Feminism is a belief that women should have equal rights to men.

First wave: kate millet was concerned mainly to the treatment of women at the hands of male.

Marry ellman's:thinking about women.

Kate millet:sexual politics. feminine(1840-80) in which women wrote in an effort to equal the intellectual achievements of the male culture and internalized its assumptions about female nature.the distinguishing sign of this period is the male pseudonym.women chose male pseudonyms as a way of coping with a double literary standard.

2nd phase:feminist(1880-1920)in which women protest male values,advocate separatist 'sisterhoods'.they used literature to dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood.

It shows the direct analysis of women to literature.female writers and their significanc was studied. It is Also called gynocriticism.

Elaine showalter:a literature of their own(1920).

3rd wave:female (1920) in which women create 'female writing' in self-discovery.

8.New historicism:

New Historicism is a literary theory based on the idea that literature should be studied and interpret within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic. It is based on literary criticism of stwephan Greenblatt and influenced by the philosophy of michwael Foucault , new historicism acknowledges not only that a work of literature is influenced by its author's times and circumstances but that the critic's response to that work is also influenced by his environment,beliefs and prejudice. It examines both how the writer's times affected the work and how the work reflects the writer's times.

New historicists don't just want to appreciate literature through history,they want to know history better through literature.

New Historicism is a form of literary theory whose goal is to understand intellectual history through literature, and literature through its cultural context, which follows the 1950s field of history of ideas and refers to itself as a form of "Cultural Poetics"

9.Post colonialism:

Post Colonialism is the critical analysis of history, culture, literature and modes of discourse, specific to the former colonies of engwland, Spain ,France and other European colonial powers. It focuses on third world countries of Africa ,Asia ,Australia and New Zealand . Post colonial literatures are a result of the interaction between imperial culture and the complex of indigenous cultural practices. It is also used to analyse the texts and other cultural discourses that emerged after the end of the colonial period.

It rejects the master-narrative of western imperialism.

It concerns with the formation of the colonial and post colonial subject.

Post-colonialism is simply a lens through which we study literature that is set in colonized countries or deals with post-colonial issues.

Edward Said, Homi k Bhabbha, Chinua Achebe and Joseph Conrad are the Few post colonial writers.

10. Modernism:

Modernism is a period in literary history which started around the early 1900s and continued until the early 1940s. Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are thought to be the mother and father of the movement. According to M.H.Abrams; The term modernism is widely used to identify new and distinative features in the subjects, forms, concepts and style of literature and other art in the early decades of the present century.

T.S.Eliot is considered as one of the most important modernist poet. His two prominent poems where eliot shows his modern orientations are The love song of J.alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land.

Modernism is the rejection of traditional 19th century norms and earlier contentions and represented by orientation towards fragmentation, free verse, allusions and victorian and romantic writing..

11. Post modernism:

A late 20th century style and concept in the arts, architecture and criticism which represents a departure from modernism and is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media ,and a general distrust of theories. Postmodern literature is literature characterized by reliance on narrative techniques such as fragmentation, paradox, and the unreliable narrator; and is often defined as a style or a trend which emerged in the post–World War II era.

Jean Boudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Richard Rorty, Fredrick Jameson are the few famous post-modernists.