English 200A

HISTORICAL CRITICISM--I

Introduction

1.) Keesey says on p. 12 that it's often "difficult to use specific pieces of biographical info to explain the meaning of a lit. work." What about a writer's life; how is it important to the interpretive process?

2.) What does he mean when he says on p. 13 that poems are not like other documents?

3.) What about the issue of our readings being guided by period standards (p. 14)? Should we criticize Melville for not being a feminist; Sherwood Anderson for using the "N" word in "I Want to Know Why"; or praising Margaret Atwood's "Rape Fantasies" for being written by a woman but a weaker story if written by a man?

4.) What about the student who couldn't understand particular cultural or historical details?

E. D. Hirsch

1.) Why should we study the "older tradition" esp. In order to maintain the "vitality of literature" (18)?

2.) Hirsch says that a critic can construe a poem "wrongly" and that criticism must be founded on "A self-critical construction of textual meaning...on objective interpretation" (18). What does that mean?

3.) He speaks of the speaker or author's "subjective act is formally necessary to verbal meaning..." (19)? What does that mean and how can we determine this?

4.) Do you agree w/ Hirsch's conclusion on p. 20 that "the meaning of [of the Wordsworth passage] is essentially ambiguous"?

5.) What do you think of his 4 steps for verification of a reading (p. 24: legitimacy, correspondence, generic appropriateness, & plausibility or coherence)?

Watson

1.) What do you think about his assertion on p. 32 about poetic pedigrees fallen in oblivion? [good, common sense; no argument]

2.) What do you think of his final assertion that "[hist crit] commonly forbids explanations that run counter to what the poet could have thought or felt"?

FORMAL CRITICISM--II

1.) What are the primary principles underlying this approach?

2.) Keesey proposes the use of the term "objective criticism." What does he mean by this?

3.) He next proposes the term "formal criticism"; what does he mean by this?

4.) What is K's point about formalism and mimesis?

Irony as Principle of Structure, Brooks

1.) What is Brook's pt when he talks about poets just telling us what they want to say rather than going thru all the obscurity of poetry (85)?

2.) Explain I. A. Richards notion of the theory of "poetry of synthesis" (86).

3.) What is Brooks suggesting with his title about irony?

4.) Brooks insists early in the essay that "context endows the particular word or image or statement w/ significance" (85). Yet when discussion the Randall Jarrell poem he mentions Pontius Pilot, the book of Matthew in the Bible and the notion of a multiplicity of meanings?

"The Relevant Context of a Literary Text," Ellis

1.) Ellis's remarks about the nature of literature on p. 92 recall some of Eagleton's in his introduction. What constitutes literature for Ellis?

2.) Summarize Ellis's argument opposing the idea that the more we know [about a literary work] the better . . ." (94).

3.) Interpret what you think Ellis means by the "whole society for which it is a literary text" (95).

4.) How does Ellis account for "the literary tradition"(97)?

5.) How is this essay relevant to the formalist approach?

READER RESPONSE--III

1.) I. A. Richards, who is often thought to be a precursor to New Criticism, is mentioned in this context; why?

2.) What does Keesey suggest is the point of any criticism?

3.) Both Eagleton & Keesey mention phenomenology; what is this?

4.) What is the idea behind the reader response approach?

"Readers & the Concept of the Implied Reader," Iser

1.) Who does Iser say is the "hypothetical reader"?

2.) Who then is the ideal reader and how does this figure differ from the hypothetical reader?

3.) What is the point of mentioning the 3 other reader response theorists?

4.) Who is the implied reader?

5.) He speaks of the reader's role as a "textual structure" and a structured act"; what is his pt?

"The Miller's Wife...," Holland

1.) What is Holland's thesis, the governing idea behind this essay?

2.) What is the pt w/ the lima bean diagram?

3.) How does Holland answer the frequently asked question about every reading simply being a totally subjective experience?

4.) How does he answer the question about misreadings of a work?

MIMETIC CRITICISM--IV

"Introduction"

1.) What is mimetic criticism?

2.) Is there such a thing as a true mimetic art?

"The Uses of Psychology," Bernard Paris

1.) On p. 217 Paris says that "Not all approaches are equally valid: the most satisfying kind of criticism is that which is somehow congruent w/ the work & which is faithful to the distribution of interests in the work itself." Explain and compare with Nuttall's objections that poetic lang is never purely formal.

2.) On p. 218 he writes, "One of the basic problems of the novel as a genre is that it attempts to integrate impulses which are disparate & often in conflict. The problematic existential portrayal of reality defies, by its very nature, authorial attempts at analysis & judgment." Do you agree?

3.) On p. 219 he states that "if we come to novels expecting moral wisdom & coherent teleological structures we are usually going to be disappointed. . . . the mimetic impulse that dominates most novels often works against total integration & thematic adequacy." What do you think?

4.) What do you make of the assertion on p. 222 that the "function of criticism is to talk about what the artist knows, and to do that it must speak in the language of science and philosophy rather than the language of art."

"Beyond the Net: Feminist Criticism as a Moral Criticism," Josephine Donovan

1.) What does she mean with her discussion of the "authenticity of female characters" (p. 225)?

2.) What is she getting at when discussing Bergman and Allen and complaining that women characters fulfill only "superficial aesthetic purposes" (227)?

3.) Move to the ¶ at the bottom of p. 227; how do you interpret the comment that we should not identify w/ a char's suffering when that suffering "breaks the boundaries of appropriateness w/in the moral context of the work?"

4.) How do you respond to her claim on p. 230: "All moral criticism of lit is based on the assumption that lit affects us, that it changes our attitudes & our behavior; in other words it assumes that lit can precipitate action, harmful or otherwise, in the ‘real' world."

INTERTEXTUAL CRITICISM--V

Introduction

1.) What is "intertextual criticism and how does it differ from other approaches we've seen?

2.) What does Keesey mean when he says on p. 268 that "all poems are to some degree ‘mock' forms"?

3.) How does Keesey define or describe structuralism? (274f)

"Critical Path," Northrop Frye

1.) What is the basis for Frye's attempt at critical correction? (280)

2.) What specifically are the problems he sees with all forms of extraliterary criticism?

3.) What does Frye mean by the term "archetype"?

4.) What is his point about history and historical criticism?

5.) Now that he's created a hermetic world of lit, what does Frye suggest we do w/ history, biography, psychology, etc., in other words all the extraliterary concerns?

6.) Explain Frye's reformulation of Schiller's two responses to lit--naive and sentimental? (285)

"Structuralism & Lit," Jonathan Culler

1.) How does Culler define structuralism?

2.) What is the point of his contrasting New Criticism and structuralism?

3.) As a structuralist, Culler appears to attempt the very thing Eagleton found impossible--to define lit. How does Culler define lit?

4.) After discussing the process of naturalization, Culler discusses two kinds of codes which aid in this process of naturalization--the semic code and the symbolic code. Explain these and their importance.

"From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse," Mikhail Bakhtin (ditto) PDF copy available here

1.) What is parody to Bakhtin?

2.) What is his point about polyglossia; what does this mean and how does it relate to parody?

3.) What is his point about literary styles becoming "diaolgized"?

4.) Having said all this, what does it have to do w/ the novel as a genre?

POSTSTRUCTURALISM--VI

"Introduction," Keesey

1.) How does Keesey describe Derrida's philosophical point of view?

2.) What does all this have to do w/ notions of empiricism?

3.) In spite of their deep affinities w/ the structuralists, the deconstructionists have fundamental differences w/ them. What are these differences?

"Structure, Sign, & Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Derrida

1.) What is the point of the opening ¶s & the idea of center?

2.) What does he mean when he says on p. 355 that "there is no transcendental or privileged signified" and that this conception should be extended to the "word sign itself"?

3.) What is his point on p. 357 when he says that "language bears w/in itself the necessity of its own critique"?

4.) What is the point of the discussion of bricolage on p. 358?

5.) What is the point of the discussion on freeplay on p. 391?

"Semiology and Rhetoric," de Man

1.) What is the occasion for the writing of this essay?

2.) What is the point of the Archie Bunker reference? (368)

3.) What does he demonstrate with the analysis of Yeats? (369)

4.) What is the point with the extended treatment of the Proust passage?

5.) What is de Man's ultimate point?

"What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable?," Fish (ditto) PDF copy available here

1.) What is the point of the consideration of different interpretation of Blake's "Tyger"? [406f]

2.) What is the point of the reader response approach to Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"? (409)

3.) So where does all this lead Fish; what's the point?

4.) Why does he pick on Stephen Booth and his reasonable introduction to his study of Shakespearean sonnets?

HISTORICAL CRITICISM II--VII

Introduction

1.) What ideas of assumptions does this diverse group share? [410]

2.) How is Foucault significant in this context? [411]

3.) Who are the New Historicists?

4.) Who are the culture critics and what is their concern? [412]

5.) What are the shortcomings or objections to this approach? [414]

"Literature & History," Eagleton

1.) What is Marxist criticism? [420]

2.) What is art in this context? [421]

3.) What is the point of the discussion of Eliot's The Waste land? [424]

4.) What is the relationship b/w literature and ideology? [425]

"Literature, History, Politics," Belsey

1.) What is the point of using the exam and paper topics early in the essay? [428]

2.) Why does she discuss structuralism and deconstructionism in this context? [429]

3.) What is the point of discussing Foucault's study of Pierre Rivière? [430]

4.) What is she getting at w/ the discussion of Lawrence Stone's The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800? [431]

5.) What is she suggesting when discussing Literature" [473]

6.) What, finally, is she proposing as an alternative to tradition and current methods of reading and analysis? [473]

"Culture," Greenblatt

1.) What is culture? [437]

2.) What is the relationship b/w culture and literature? [438]

3.) What is the point of the discussion of Spenser and Dickens? [439]

PDF copy of MLA Quick Reference Guide here.

Journals with Continuous Pagination here.

Critical Theory Outlines here.

"Hills" Essays: Historical; Formalist; Feminist; Structuralist; Intertextual