Mt Kenya University

P.O. Box 342-01000 Thika

Email: info@mku.ac.ke
Web: www.mku.ac.ke

DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES

COURSE CODE: BLA3115

COURSE TITLE : BASICS IN

LITERARY THEORY
BLA3115: BASICS IN LITERARY THEORIES
Contact hours: 42
Credit hours: 3
Pre requisite: None
Purpose
This course introduces students to historical background and the emergence of literary theory.
Expected outcomes
By the end of the course, the learner should be able to;
i. Define and explain the nature of literary theory
ii. Explain the various classifications of theory.
iii. Explain the historical background and the emergence of literary theory.
iv. Differentiate between literary criticism and literary theory.
v. Explain the influences of socio-historical of literary theory.
vi. Apply the literary theories on given literary texts

Course content
This course guides students to the study of historical background and emergence of literary
theory. The course equips the student with knowledge on the nature and purpose of literary
theory and literary criticism. Various approaches and guidelines on the study of literature like
New Criticism, Formalism, Marxism, Structuralism among others will be looked into in relation
to the analysis of specific Literary texts.

Course outline

Week 1
Chapter one: Introduction to the nature of theory in literature
 Definition of literary theory
 Nature of literary theory

Week 2
Chapter two: Classification of literary theories
 Mimetic theories
 Pragmatic theories
 Expressive theories
 Objective theories

Week 3
Chapter three:
 The purpose of literary theory and literary criticism

Week 4
Chapter four: Literary Theory, Literary Criticism and Literary History
 Definitions
 Differences and similarities between literary theory and literary criticism
Week 5
Chapter five: Beginning and Growth of Literary Theory
 An overview of the beginning, growth and development of literary theory
Week 6
Chapter six: Critical approaches in the study of Literature
 Beginning growth and development of critical approaches in the study of literature

Week 7
Chapter 7: Classical Theories
Plato: The Republic
Aristotle: On Poetics

Week 8
Chapter Eight:
Formalism

Week 9
Chapter:
Structuralism

Week 10
Chapter:
Marxism

Week 11
Chapter 11
New Criticism

Week 12
Chapter 12
Psychoanalysis

Week 13
Chapter 13
Feminism

SOME OF THE RECOMMENDED TEXTS:

Achebe Chinua (2008) Reprint Arrow Of God

Conrad Joseph () Heart of Darkness

Kasigwa N.B (1991) Anthology of East Africa Plays. Nairobi:Longhorn.

Kibera Ngumi (1997) The Grapevine Stories. Design Focus Books

.
Ritcher, David H. ed (1989) the Critical Tradition

Sembene Ousmane () God’s Bits of Wood

Thorpe, James. (1967) Relations to literary Study: Essays on interdisciplinary contributions.NY

MLA of America

Wa Thiong’o Ngugi () Petals of Blood

()A Grain of Wheat
Welleck Rene and Warren, Austin N.Y Bedford/St. Martin’s (1942) Theory of literature NY A
harvest / HBJ Book
CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

In this lesson, we shall look at the definition (s) of literary theory and its nature.

1.0 OBJECTIVES

By the end of this lesson, the learner should be able to:

1. Define literary theory
2. Explain the nature of literary theory

1.2 DEFINITIONS OF LITERARY THEORY

Literary Theory

“Literary theory” is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of literature.
By literary theory we refer not to the meaning of a work of literature but to the theories that
reveal what literature can mean. Literary theory is a description of the underlying principles, one
might say the tools, by which we attempt to understand literature. All literary interpretation
draws on a basis in theory but can serve as a justification for very different kinds of critical
activity. It is literary theory that formulates the relationship between author and work; literary
theory develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary study, both from the
standpoint of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts.
Literary theory offers varying approaches for understanding the role of historical context in
interpretation as well as the relevance of linguistic and unconscious elements of the text. Literary
theorists trace the history and evolution of the different genres—narrative, dramatic, lyric—in
addition to the emergence of the novel and the short story, while also investigating the
importance of formal elements of literary structure. Lastly, literary theory has sought to explain
the degree to which the text is more the product of a culture than an individual author and in turn
how those texts help to create the culture.

“Literary theory,” sometimes designated “critical theory,” or “theory,” and now undergoing a
transformation into “cultural theory” within the discipline of literary studies, can be understood
as the set of concepts and intellectual assumptions on which rests the work of explaining or
interpreting literary texts. Literary theory refers to any principles derived from internal analysis
of literary texts or from knowledge external to the text that can be applied in multiple
interpretive situations. All critical practice regarding literature depends on an underlying
structure of ideas in at least two ways: theory provides a rationale for what constitutes the
subject matter of criticism—”the literary”—and the specific aims of critical practice—the act of
interpretation itself. For example, to speak of the “unity” of Oedipus the King explicitly invokes
Aristotle’s theoretical statements on poetics. To argue, as does Chinua Achebe, that Joseph
Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness fails to grant full humanity to the Africans it depicts is a
perspective informed by a postcolonial literary theory that presupposes a history of
exploitation and racism. The structure of ideas that enables criticism of a literary work may or
may not be acknowledged by the critic, and the status of literary theory within the academic
discipline of literary studies continues to evolve.

Literary criticism is the description, analysis, interpretation and evaluation of literary texts.
Description involves a general portrayal of the content and form of the work. Analysis includes
the interrogation of the purpose and effect of specific features of the work. Interpretation is
part of analysis and description as it seeks to elucidate the work. Finally evaluation comes from
the foregoing activities as judgement of the work in terms of quality and significance, this
includes the comparison between the work and others of the same nature.

It follows that to engage in criticism, one has to have an idea

1.3 Activity

1. Define the term literary theory

2. Briefly explain the nature of literary theory

3. How does the study of Literary theory impact on the study of literary works?

CHAPTER TWO

2.0 INTRODUCTION

In this lesson, the focus shall be on the classification of theories in its broader sense.

2.1 OBJECTIVE
i. By the end of this lesson the learner should be able to classify the literary theories
into the four broad categories with specific illustrations for each classification.
2.1 CLASSIFICATION OF LITERARY THEORIES
As already discussed in the previous lesson, theory can be defined as a set of
considerations in regard to a value already established which will be judged in their
practical applications. There is a very great diversity in the theories and it becomes very
difficult sometimes to identify the area of agreement or disagreement in the theories.
However as diverse as the theories are, there are four co-ordinates of art criticism:
i. The work i.e the artist’s product
ii. The artist i.e the producer of the work
iii. Nature (universe) i.e the nature of the work / subject matter
iv. The audience i.e listeners/spectators/readers to whom the work is addressed.
It is in this same framework that M.H. Abrahams has come up with the following
classification of theories in his essay ‘Orientation of Criticaal Theories’:

a) Mimetic theories
b) Pragmatic theories
c) Expressive theories
d) Objective theories

a)Mimetic Theories
Under this category falls the very first aesthetic theories also referred to as classical
theories. They deal with the concept of art as an imitation. The poet is no different
from other artists because he imitates and in fact is thrice removed from reality.
Socrates defined the painter (artist) as the imitator of that of which they make. Plato
and Aristotle’s ideas greatly contribute to this category of theories. Plato described
poets as mad men only inspired but lacking in wisdom. Aristotle developed this
further as he disagreed with Socrates and Plato on certain issues. He distinguished
poetry from other works of art and also differentiated types of poetry e.g epic and
drama, tragedy and comedy. However later theorists differed to a certain extent with
this type of theory and argued that art is an imitation, but an imitation which is only
instrumental towards producing effects upon an audience since drama is the mirror of
life. This argument gave rise to pragmatic theories.

b) Pragmatic Theories
The fundamental believe is that poetry had a purpose i.e to achieve certain effects on
an audience. According to Sydney, poetry imitates to please and pleases as a means
to the ultimate end to teaching. The main emphasis is on the audience/ reader. Thus a
work of art is a means to an end; an instrument to get something done and tends to
judge its value according to its success in achieving that aim. A work of art like a
poem evokes certain effects on an audience/ reader. The effect required was varied.
According to Matthew Arnold, the moral effect was the terminal aim. The Marxist
theorists see a connection between literary and social phenomenon, therefore art
should be an effective instrument in the class struggle. Other theories like feminism,
post-colonial discourse and the reader response theory that stress on the audience
(reader) fall under this category.
 C) Expressive Theory
Here the artist takes prominence because poetry according to people like Wordswoth,
is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. According to other critics, it is the
utterance or projection of the thoughts and the feelings of the poet. In this case the
artist produces both artistic product and the criteria for judging the work. The
paramount purpose of poetry is the impulse within the poet of feelings and desires
seeking expression or compulsion of the creative imagination. In this case the
criterion for art is:
a) is it genuine or sincere?
b) Does it match the intention, the feeling and the actual state of mind of the artist
while composing?
An example of these theories is the romanticism theory where art has nothing to do
with the outer reality. It is about the inner reality. The artist seeks to portray reality as
it is but to show his own response to the outer reality. The artist here is a unique
individual.
d) Objective theory
A work of art is treated in isolation; as a self sufficient entity. Art for art’s sake is the
focus. The autonomy of a work of art is the focus. The autonomy of the work of art is
seen as existing for its own sake. In this classification are theories like Fedinard de
Saussure’s Structuralism theory that deals with the signifier and the signified; one that
centers on language for interpretation of the text. The belief is that language is made
up words i.e verbal sign having two sides. The signifier and the signified and the
relationship is arbitrary. Formalism is another theory derived from structuralism. Its
central idea is defamiliarization i.e making strange; what prompts us into a new
saying. The focus is upon the medium rather than the message of literary artefacts.
Art is thinking in images.

2.3Activity
1. Outline the four coordinates of art criticism.
2. Identify the four broad categories of theories
3. Briefly discuss each of this category

CHAPTER THREE AND FOUR

2.0 Introduction
In these lessons, literary theory, literary criticism and literary history concepts shall be
compared and contrasted. The purpose of literary theory and literary criticism shall also be
handled.

3.1Objectives
By the end of the lesson (s) the learner should be able to:
 i) To compare and contrast literary theory, literary history and literary criticism
ii) To explain the purpose of literary theory and literary criticism.
3.2 literary theory literary history and literary criticism
(i) Literary Theory
It involves the study of the principles of literature, poetry etc. Under literary theory we can
illustrate from the classical Literary critic Aristotle’s poetry, what he says is tragedy, what it
entails or achieves. He gives guidelines on which he beliefs tragedy has to operate.
Literary theories cannot be made in a vacuum. It is hard to arrive at the principles in a vacuum
e.g. Aristotle’s theory formulation of tragedy relies on actual text. The formulation must take
into account the existing art. The literary theoretician relies on the existing text hence to be
objective is a vain attempt. E.g. Aristotle did not take into account the tragic form in the African
context because he was not aware of it. Hence his theory is subjective. One has to use a text to
theorize.

(ii) Literary criticism

Fundamental thing to remember is that it involves the evaluation about concrete literary works of
art. These works of art can be studied independently, collectively, isolation etc. e.g. look at
Petals of Blood independently or as a result of past works of Ngugi like A Grain of Wheat.Before
one gets into the text itself, there is a pretext i.e. previous interpretation of literature. There are
sediment reading habits, that exist in ones mind and hence one has expectations/ideas/evaluating
facts. So literary criticism is not static it is dynamic.
Essentially literary criticism is about evaluation/ interpretation. When interpreting its re-writing
using a specific master-code.
A literary critic is that specialized person in interpreting a text e.g. David Cook criticizes Ngugi’s
work.

Relationship between literary theory & criticism

The tendency to combine the two is unavoidable.
- Literary theories are enhanced when they are applied to more and more texts.
- Many critics start with the recitation of a theoretical pronouncement.
- It’s hard to interpret a literary text without being conversant with literary principles.

Literary history
It is concerned with the dynamics in literature. It sees the discipline of literature in an evolving
sense (evolution). To tell about the patterns that have happened in literature, one has to use a
text. Thus the need for chronological approach for literary movements. There have been attempts
to separate literary history, theory and criticism, but this is quite unattainable. It is difficult to get
neutral facts in literary movements.
In literary history one tries to create a pretext literature because one has to choose the text to use.
There is judgment because some writers tend to borrow from other writers e.g. Ngugi borrowed
from Joseph Conrad in A Grain of Wheat and so there is criticism on how characters have been
formulated. It can be argued that literary history has its own criteria. We try to understand past
ages or happenings by studying past events from the view of what is happening currently.
The intention of an author is the proper intention of history but this is not always true e.g.
Chinua’s Things Fall Apart his intention was to come into atonement with the colonial. So a
novel should be looked at regardless of what the author says – interpret it to our own knowledge
and ignore critical analysis by other critics. A novel consists more than what the author says
about it.
Literary history cannot ignore the importance of literary criticism and theory. A literary critic
must be aware of literary history in order to make comments about trends, originality and
borrowing.
3.3 Purpose of Literary Theory and Literary Criticism
As already argued, theories involve the study of the principles of literature. Theories cannot be
made in a vacuum. There is need for a "text" in order to arrive at the principles. The literary
theoretician relies on existing text, hence literary theory is subjective and any attempt to be
objective is in vain.
Literature has many definitions like: it is a work of art about the way of life of a people it
is a n art by which expression is achieved in language; literature is an arrangement of words in
pleasurable patterns to express in words some special aspects of our human experience.
Literature relates both logical, factual world and to the extra-logical, intuitive aspects of life.

There are two aspects that we cannot isolate when looking at the place of theory in literature:
literary criticism and literary history. Literary criticism involves the evaluation about a concrete
literary works of art. These works of art can be studied independently, collectively or in
isolation. Essentially literary criticism is about evaluation and interpretation. When interpreting,
it is re-writing using a specific master-code. Hence creativity. There exists a relationship
between literary theory and literary criticism. Literary theories are enhanced when they are
applied to more and more texts. Many critics start with the recitation of a theoretical
pronouncement. It is difficult to interpret a literary text without being conversant with literary
principles.

Literary history is concerned in an evolving sense (evolution). In order to tell about the patterns
that have happened in literature, one has to use a "text". There is need for chronological approach
for literary movements. Some writers tend to borrow from others; we also try to understand past
ages from current happenings. Hence a literary critic must be aware of literary history in order to
make comments about trends, originality and borrowing. Although literary history is vital in
literature and theories, new criticism insists that literature is independent of history and
biography, sees literature as a form of knowledge capable of in-built ambiguity and irony. But
one of its proponents, T.S-Eliot, says that tradition is not inherited, but a writer has an historical
sense. A writer is traditional and conscious of his place in time.
Theories, therefore give guidelines for understanding and appreciating of works of art.
Through theories, the term historical sense was coined. This line of thought argues that an artist
does not create in isolation. He is influenced by the environment prevalent in his time - the
pastness of the past e.g, Shakespeare for example was influenced in his writing by the barbarity
of his time. Dryden says "To judge rightly of the author, we must transport ourselves to his
contemporaries, and what were his means of supplying them...." Bishop Hurd feels that we
should use the historical sense to judge whether the writer was fully successful in what he set out
to do and what his age expected of him. H feels that a Gothic cathedral must be judged on the
principles of bothoive architecture and not regarded as an unsuccessful Greek temple. These
views are commonly used today when scholars want to draw our attention to, for example,
rhetoric held by seventeenth century poets or maybe a certain usage of satire. This helps us to see
the methods and objectives of the poets for what they really are. Mathew Arnold believes that
one must see the object in itself as it really is, before beginning to assess its value.,

Theory trains our consciousness of society. Theorizing literature teaches us social sensitivity;
how to respond to the public needs. For example, Marxism theory is concerned with the
economic class structure - the bourgeois verses the proletariat. Texts that have taken the marxist
stand tend to portray the suffering masses and how they try to overcome their problems by
revolting against the bourgeois class. This is evident in Ngugi wa Thiongo's Petals of Blood and
Sembene Ousmane's God' Bits of wood and many other texts with the same theme of oppression
of the masses.

Through theories, we are able to evaluate a literary text based on certain expectations. They help
us pinpoint facts and arrive at conclusions. We may look at the usage of language in a text and
for what purpose, like imageries. In structuralism, Fedinard De Saussure looks at language as the
'signifer' and the 'signified'. The 'signifier being the work and the 'signified' being the mental
concept. The two are arbitrary. He also looks at 'langue' (rules, codes, conventions - the system
of forms) and 'parole ' (the actual speech patterns or acts made possible by the langue). This
particular theory can be applied to oral 'texts' where the language used signifies varied meanings
like the proverbs and riddles.

Theorizing encourages critical democracy. Through the application of theories in a text, one can
give a critique of a text from various angles. This usage of theories has led to the emergence of
the comparative method as a device for establishing degrees of excellence. Comparison is an
important tool for literary analysis because a purely normative criticism cannot be effective. This
comparative method involves bringing together the work in question with other works, showing
the same sort of thing better or worse done elsewhere and by showing this, the reader is helped to
see how excellence is achieved.
Comparison can be used to bring out the characteristic/ qualities of each writer (the trend ). For
example in Micere Mugo's Visions of Africa, it is possible to work out the trend of Ngugi's works
thereby enhancing our appreciation and interpretation of his works. Contrast between the style of
two poets does not only serve to show how different they are but also draw attention to the
individualizing features of each other and hence we are able to appreciate and understand that
individuality.
Out of the pragmatic theory emerged rules on how best to achieve the greatest effect on the
audience. These rules were based on the required effects or on works that had a great effect on
the audience. These rules, when outlined serve to equally guide the artist in making, and the
critic in judging any future, For example rules for judging plays and general drama
performances, how to write "best sellers " etc.

Theories also give guidelines to writers as well, who according to T.S Eliot, are the greatest
critics. Theories give us guidelines in our appreciation, interpretation, and analysis of work; and
in turn this gives artists direction in relation to what to create. They have shaped the activities of
creative artists by opening his senses to a new group.

Formalism came up with the term defamiliarization (making strange). This is transfering the
usual perception of an object into the sphere of a new perception (to make a unique semantic
modification). This has given us the term novelty (newness) which is a vital ingredient of art, for
like T.S. Eliot says "without novelty, there would be repetition and art would therefore be
lacking. Hence theory has enhanced creativity.

Theories have also given the important concepts like form and content and importance of the
structure to the meaning of the work. Roman Jakobson identified terms like metaphor and
metonyms in his attempt to understand the term literariness.

Another contribution of theory to literature is the bio-critical approach. This gives us the
principle of relating an author's life to his work. The approach interprets the works with reference
to the life and which draws from the psychology of the author who gives clues for the
interpretation and appreciation of what he has written for interpretation and if not assessment of
a work biographical knowledge is often useful and sometimes most valuable for example George
Lamming's In The Castle of My Skin - what factors have influenced his life and hence his
writings. This applies for most autobiographical works. Their appreciation and interpretation
relies a lot on the author's life e.g. Michael Anthony's works like A year in San Fernando and
V.S. Naipul's works like Miguel Street.

Theory also encourages opposition. This is because mostly one theory opposes another or the
emergence of a new theory will be based on opposition to the ideas of the existing theories.
Blackmur in his essay “The Status of Theory” says in life, we do what we can and what we must.
In literature and the artland sometimes in our day dreams and what we call our thoughts we make
a kind of rival creation always, one way or another and in our greater creations, we alter that
actual life in the sense that we alter what we think about it, acknowledge about it, what we see in
it, and what we do about it in our private selves where most of our time is spent.

Theories, therefore give us the guiding principles in literature. Even the traditional theories are
important because in one way or the other, they have contributed to the development of more
recent theories. However in using them, we should know the possibilities and limitations of each
and better still use them as guidelines in developing our own theories. We should put to use
discriminations which is a by - product of literary theory and a vital ingredient for any student of
literature.
In conclusion, theories have a place in literature that without their existence, there will be a very
wide gap in society and in literature as a field of study (a discipline). Theories enable us to derive
meaning from a text and criticize a work of art logically and with an open mind. They give us the
appropriate language to use in analysing a literary piece of work. Texts generate theories
consciously and unconsciously. The consciousness of the reader identifies them.

3.4 Activity
i) define the terms literary theory, literary criticism and literary history
ii) Compare and contrast literary theory, literary history and literary criticism
iii) Discuss the purpose of literary theory and literary criticism in the field of literature.

CHAPTER EIGHT

4.1Introduction

This lesson will analyze the views of classical theories as presented in Plato’s and Aristotle’s
ideas in the field of literary theory and criticism.

4.2 Objectives

By the end of this lesson the learner should be able to:

i) Discuss the ancient Greek philosophers and development of artistic expression i.e Plato’s
and Aristotle’s perspetives
ii) Discuss Longinus and the concept of sublime
iii) Horace and his concept of art as a talent/creativity and perfection .
iv) Examine carthasis in literature and psychology.

PLATO: THE REPUBLIC

There was a lot of violence in Greek politics during his time. His teacher and friend Socrates was
assassinated in 427BC and hence had to look for a solution to the problem then. To solve this he
set up an institution of Research & Teaching called the “Academy”. The thought / wanted to be
the one to solve the problem of ruling. He argued that the ills in society could be corrected if
Kenya became pail and pails became kings. Plato wanted to push forward a philosophical
aristocracy. He has been accused of being on one side of philosophers only.
The Republic is a literature how to rule society
The platonic theory of poetry is extracted from Plato’s philosophical view. Plato’s point of
departure is society. He evaluated literature/poetry as to what he saw was right with society. He
was out to depict ideal situation, he subordinates the nature of literature to the concerns of
Philosophy, Religion and Politics.
In performance of a creative writer, he did not see inspiration as coming from the writer but
from external inspiration i.e. divine powers. For him the reality aid man was not true but inspired
by divine power – it is the gods who are speakers through writers. He failed to portray objective
reality.
Plato thought poetry was beyond human understanding. Not all can understand poetry, but those
who understand have to be divinely inspired. Since all men are not equal, no definite principles
to evaluate poetry.
In the republic, the poet is seen by Plato as an unconscious artist, but he is only an imitator
imitating the world we live. He does not create but imitates what he sees.
He argues that the artist is three times removed from reality. The reality is not of a perfected state
of what ought to be. The reality was viewed as being not ideal. He argues that literature can
never represent truth.
Other than divine, one could judge / interpret poetry of well educated/ versed in philosophy&
this was to be the ruling class. He viewed good poetry as that which could uphold the ruling
aristocracy. This was poetry to praise and not question the gods aristocrats and all brave men.
Poetry was to serve the function of maintaining / preserve the status of the ruling class/ ideal
class. The other literature that was not good (questioned) had to be answered / banned. Mothers /
nurses were to teach children only studies about brave people.
Plato advocated for “Noble lies” in literature. This is because he knew that there are times to
question the activities of gods, brave and fearing . Here he thought that poetry had to tell lies in
order to maintain the statusquo. He wanted to use poets to mystify the quality of the citizens. He
was advocating for a static poetry – detached from imposed reality, no reflection of changes.
Plato was concerned about the effect of poetry on people’s emotions. In looking at tragedy in
poetry, he says tragedy is a major medium for telling lies. It arouses strong emotions on people
(audience). This was going to lead people to believe certain things and it could subvert the social
sides. He acknowledges the persuasive power of literature so he calls for censorship of literature.
His ideas give springboard to view literature.

ARISTOTLE: ON POETICS
Ref. King Oedipus+ Oedipus Rex
Ola Rotimi – The Gods are not to blame
Aristotle was a democrat – he supported what was happening in the city states. His study is in
poetics – when he uses poetry he also refers to the other forms like drama etc. in study of poetry
he talks about the lyrical, tragedy, drama, epic forms. Much of his work was on tragedy and his
work was drawn between tragedy and other forms to give an essence of tragedy; he used
comparisons.
Tragedy did have something in common with other forms –despite its uniqueness it did share
with other literary forms e.g.
(i) All these forms use language as their medium
(ii) All these forms are emesis (all art in an imitation of men & their actions and we enjoy life
experiences that we share).
He identified peculiar aspects in tragedy events
(i) Thought of tragedy as a living organism – it is something that continues to grow and
eventually changes with time.
NB: Plato’s view of art is static while for Aristotle is dynamic.
He appeals more as a literary theoretician because of his main concern about technique – how to
go about creation of literary work. He pays attention to the creation of the action. He is
concerned with the art of tragedy. He wants to know how tragedy operates and the parts that
must exist in a literary work.
He describes tragedy as an entity made up of several parts;
- Plot (ordered arrangement of events/thoughts)
- Characters
- Diction
- Song
- Thought
- Spectacle
He felt that all these have to exist in a tragic play. The parts are independent of one another but
they all must exist as they join together to bring tragedy.
He views art as imitation of action – action is not only the events/deeds. Its action in the sense of
motivation (strive to do something). In order to define the action of a character, is the thought
and what he does i.e. the motive (that motivating factor). Action is not a physical event but a
motive. Action is the whole motive from beginning to end. Here there is rational purpose implied
– men have rational in their actions. Rational in that the particular motive is applied as the single
determinant. Aristotle attached the operator importance to plot.

The plot
Crucial to the formation of tragedy, this is the enclosed arrangement of events / thoughts. It had
to entail the orderly arrangement to achieve tragedy – the incidents are harmonized to gain the
ultimate effect in the end. As far as the incident is concerned each part must be necessary to the
whole.
The plot has to have the beginning, middle and end. The beginning in that not proceeded by
anything else and must have that which comes after it. The middle needs proceeded events and
something to come after it to make sense. The end is one with something before it but ultimate
in concluding already discussed events. Each of these parts must be of reasonable length so that
the incident can be easily maintained in memory.
Tragedy must have a harmony between incident: the three parts of plot & the character. Plot is
marked by harmony between events, ideas and characters. The reality in tragedy comes from the
harmony.
He argued that tragedy must be autonomous and complete by its own nature (beginning, middle
& end) e.g. in Things Fall Apart Ikemefuna’s death is credible in that particular instance and yet
its moving because he is innocent. Death by itself is not tragic, but the instances and the
credibility that go with it are important. Whatever happens in a literary piece of work must be
believable / credible or should be a convincing impossibility that it could happen. From this point
Aristotle argues that tragedy by its very nature is truthful.
Aristotle’s work on poetry discerns Plato’s view that poetry is not truthful i.e thrice removed
from reality.
Though both saw poetry has an imitation, for Aristotle it is removed from the world but it is
possible to happen while according to Plato it is thrice removed from reality.

The functions of tragedy according to Aristotle.

Aristotle starts from nature of tragedy while Plato starts from functions. Then later Aristotle
moves to functions;
1) Aristotle felt that catharsis was the tool function of tragedy. Catharsis is the arousing of
emotions of Pity and fear.
2) The two emotions, fear and pity, can be due to the events taking place but more
importantly, can be aroused by the arrangement of the events. The plot should be
constructed in such a way so that anyone who hears the incident is gripped by the fear
and pity even if he has not read or watched the incidents. Harmatia (tragic flow)
contributes to tragedy. Even within the character, these have to be certain events. He felt
that there was nothing wrong for the emotions to be aroused. It is human to have the
emotions. They have to be credible to one seeing himself in the predicament. The
emotions according to him are not destructive. Once we have the emotions and expending
them we as human beings become more emotionally stable or sublime. But Plato argued
that these emotions were too strong and could subvert the social status. Because the
emotions help people to be stable gain state of mind so there is no need to sensor such
literature.
Both Plato and Aristotle agreed that literature has a socio function. Negative for Plato and
positive for Aristotle which rises out of the very nature of literature. He (Aristotle)
demonstrated that literature is beautiful and pleasurable. He argues that those events that are
bad create pleasure ultimately in literature. This is a sense of relieve. Literature is also
truthful and valuable and it is necessary as it serves man in his own way.

conclusion
Literature strives to portray reality but we cannot have reality in writing.
Theories are necessary in literature because we need a tool to help make sense so they are
instruments used to make sense of a literary text. There is relationship between reality and
fiction.

When Plato says that poets are liars, he means that literature is subversive – its credible. He
detests poetry because the poet captures the emotions of the audience which sways them
away.

Art can be used as an instrument of control – the conquest effect. So Plato prefers philosophy.
He is talking at a time when writing is taking over from orality. Time of reflection of orality, one
gets absorbed in writing and one decodes the signs. Plato says that poetic orality does not allow
people to express themselves but it sways them.

Aristotle talks the form in literature and dismisses Plato. He says that Literature is a reality in
life and can be felt. When he talks about Literature and tragedy, he is trying to say that it is
emotional. He says that they (emotions) are forms which are instilled to people to get response.
He means that reason and emotion can be held together. Thus the force of emotion has a lot of
reason/ logic.

LESSON FIVE , SIX AND SEVEN

4.0 Introduction.
In this lesson, we will look at the beginning, growth and development of literary theories and the
critical approaches used in the study of literature.

Objectives
By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:
i) Trace the beginning, growth and development of literary theories
ii) Analyze the critical approaches used in the study of literature

4.1GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY THEORY

Literary theory and the formal practice of literary interpretation runs a parallel but less well
known course with the history of philosophy and is evident in the historical record at least as far
back as Plato. The Cratylus contains a Plato’s meditation on the relationship of words and the
things to which they refer. Plato’s skepticism about signification, i.e., that words bear no
etymological relationship to their meanings but are arbitrarily “imposed,” becomes a central
concern in the twentieth century to both “Structuralism” and “Poststructuralism.” However, a
persistent belief in “reference,” the notion that words and images refer to an objective reality, has
provided epistemological (that is, having to do with theories of knowledge) support for theories
of literary representation throughout most of Western history. Until the nineteenth century, Art,
in Shakespeare’s phrase, held “a mirror up to nature” and faithfully recorded an objectively real
world independent of the observer.

Modern literary theory gradually emerges in Europe during the nineteenth century. In one of the
earliest developments of literary theory, German “higher criticism” subjected biblical texts to a
radical historicizing that broke with traditional scriptural interpretation. “Higher,” or “source
criticism,” analyzed biblical tales in light of comparable narratives from other cultures, an
approach that anticipated some of the method and spirit of twentieth century theory, particularly
“Structuralism” and “New Historicism.” In France, the eminent literary critic Charles Augustin
Saint Beuve maintained that a work of literature could be explained entirely in terms of
biography, while novelist Marcel Proust devoted his life to refuting Saint Beuve in a massive
narrative in which he contended that the details of the life of the artist are utterly transformed in
the work of art. (This dispute was taken up anew by the French theorist Roland Barthes in his
famous declaration of the “Death of the Author.” See “Structuralism” and “Post structuralism.”)
Perhaps the greatest nineteenth century influence on literary theory came from the deep
epistemological suspicion of Friedrich Nietzsche: that facts are not facts until they have been
interpreted. Nietzsche’s critique of knowledge has had a profound impact on literary studies and
helped usher in an era of intense literary theorizing that has yet to pass.

Attention to the etymology of the term “theory,” from the Greek “theoria,” alerts us to the partial
nature of theoretical approaches to literature. “Theoria” indicates a view or perspective of the
Greek stage. This is precisely what literary theory offers, though specific theories often claim to
present a complete system for understanding literature. The current state of theory is such that
there are many overlapping areas of influence, and older schools of theory, though no longer
enjoying their previous eminence, continue to exert an influence on the whole. The once widely-
held conviction (an implicit theory) that literature is a repository of all that is meaningful and
ennobling in the human experience, a view championed by the Leavis School in Britain, may no
longer be acknowledged by name but remains an essential justification for the current structure
of American universities and liberal arts curricula. The moment of “Deconstruction” may have
passed, but its emphasis on the indeterminacy of signs (that we are unable to establish
exclusively what a word means when used in a given situation) and thus of texts, remains
significant. Many critics may not embrace the label “feminist,” but the premise that gender is a
social construct, one of theoretical feminisms distinguishing insights, is now axiomatic in a
number of theoretical perspectives.

While literary theory has always implied or directly expressed a conception of the world outside
the text, in the twentieth century three movements—”Marxist theory” of the Frankfurt School,
“Feminism,” and “Postmodernism”—have opened the field of literary studies into a broader area
of inquiry. Marxist approaches to literature require an understanding of the primary economic
and social bases of culture since Marxist aesthetic theory sees the work of art as a product,
directly or indirectly, of the base structure of society. Feminist thought and practice analyzes the
production of literature and literary representation within the framework that includes all social
and cultural formations as they pertain to the role of women in history. Postmodern thought
consists of both aesthetic and epistemological strands. Postmodernism in art has included a move
toward non-referential, non-linear, abstract forms; a heightened degree of self-referentiality; and
the collapse of categories and conventions that had traditionally governed art. Postmodern
thought has led to the serious questioning of the so-called metanarratives of history, science,
philosophy, and economic and sexual reproduction. Under postmodernity, all knowledge comes
to be seen as “constructed” within historical self-contained systems of understanding. Marxist,
feminist, and postmodern thought have brought about the incorporation of all human discourses
(that is, interlocking fields of language and knowledge) as a subject matter for analysis by the
literary theorist. Using the various poststructuralist and postmodern theories that often draw on
disciplines other than the literary—linguistic, anthropological, psychoanalytic, and
philosophical—for their primary insights, literary theory has become an interdisciplinary body of
cultural theory. Taking as its premise that human societies and knowledge consist of texts in one
form or another, cultural theory (for better or worse) is now applied to the varieties of texts,
ambitiously undertaking to become the preeminent model of inquiry into the human condition.

Literary theory is a site of theories: some theories, like “Queer Theory,” are “in;” other literary
theories, like “Deconstruction,” are “out” but continue to exert an influence on the field.
“Traditional literary criticism,” “New Criticism,” and “Structuralism” are alike in that they held
to the view that the study of literature has an objective body of knowledge under its scrutiny. The
other schools of literary theory, to varying degrees, embrace a postmodern view of language and
reality that calls into serious question the objective referent of literary studies. The following
categories are certainly not exhaustive, nor are they mutually exclusive, but they represent the
major trends in literary theory of this century.

4.2. Traditional Literary Criticism

Academic literary criticism prior to the rise of “New Criticism” in the United States tended to
practice traditional literary history: tracking influence, establishing the canon of major writers in
the literary periods, and clarifying historical context and allusions within the text. Literary
biography was and still is an important interpretive method in and out of the academy; versions
of moral criticism, not unlike the Leavis School in Britain, and aesthetic (e.g. genre studies)
criticism were also generally influential literary practices. Perhaps the key unifying feature of
traditional literary criticism was the consensus within the academy as to the both the literary
canon (that is, the books all educated persons should read) and the aims and purposes of
literature. What literature was, and why we read literature, and what we read, were questions that
subsequent movements in literary theory were to raise.

4.3. Formalism and New Criticism

Formalism is, as the name implies, an interpretive approach that emphasizes literary form and the
study of literary devices within the text. The work of the Formalists had a general impact on later
developments in Structuralism and other theories of narrative. Formalism, like Structuralism,
sought to place the study of literature on a scientific basis through objective analysis of the
motifs, devices, techniques, and other “functions” that comprise the literary work. The
Formalists placed great importance on the literariness of texts, those qualities that distinguished
the literary from other kinds of writing. Neither author nor context was essential for the
Formalists; it was the narrative that spoke, the “hero-function,” for example, that had meaning.
Form was the content. A plot device or narrative strategy was examined for how it functioned
and compared to how it had functioned in other literary works. Of the Russian Formalist critics,
Roman Jakobson and Viktor Shklovsky are probably the most well known.

The Formalist adage that the purpose of literature was “to make the stones stonier” nicely
expresses their notion of literariness. “Formalism” is perhaps best known is Shklovsky’s concept
of “defamiliarization.” The routine of ordinary experience, Shklovsky contended, rendered
invisible the uniqueness and particularity of the objects of existence. Literary language, partly by
calling attention to itself as language, estranged the reader from the familiar and made fresh the
experience of daily life.

4.4 NEW CRITICISM

The “New Criticism,” so designated as to indicate a break with traditional methods, was a
product of the American university in the 1930s and 40s. “New Criticism” stressed close reading
of the text itself, much like the French pedagogical precept “explication du texte.” As a strategy
of reading, “New Criticism” viewed the work of literature as an aesthetic object independent of
historical context and as a unified whole that reflected the unified sensibility of the artist. T.S.
Eliot, though not explicitly associated with the movement, expressed a similar critical-aesthetic
philosophy in his essays on John Donne and the metaphysical poets, writers who Eliot believed
experienced a complete integration of thought and feeling. New Critics like Cleanth Brooks,
John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren and W.K. Wimsatt placed a similar focus on the
metaphysical poets and poetry in general, a genre well suited to New Critical practice. “New
Criticism” aimed at bringing a greater intellectual rigor to literary studies, confining itself to
careful scrutiny of the text alone and the formal structures of paradox, ambiguity, irony, and
metaphor, among others. “New Criticism” was fired by the conviction that their readings of
poetry would yield a humanizing influence on readers and thus counter the alienating tendencies
of modern, industrial life. “New Criticism” in this regard bears an affinity to the Southern
Agrarian movement whose manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand, contained essays by two New Critics,
Ransom and Warren. Perhaps the enduring legacy of “New Criticism” can be found in the
college classroom, in which the verbal texture of the poem on the page remains a primary object
of literary study.

4.5. Marxism and Critical Theory

Marxist literary theories tend to focus on the representation of class conflict as well as the
reinforcement of class distinctions through the medium of literature. Marxist theorists use
traditional techniques of literary analysis but subordinate aesthetic concerns to the final social
and political meanings of literature. Marxist theorist often champion authors sympathetic to the
working classes and authors whose work challenges economic equalities found in capitalist
societies. In keeping with the totalizing spirit of Marxism, literary theories arising from the
Marxist paradigm have not only sought new ways of understanding the relationship between
economic production and literature, but all cultural production as well. Marxist analyses of
society and history have had a profound effect on literary theory and practical criticism, most
notably in the development of “New Historicism” and “Cultural Materialism.”

The Hungarian theorist Georg Lukacs contributed to an understanding of the relationship

between historical materialism and literary form, in particular with realism and the historical
novel. Walter Benjamin broke new ground in his work in his study of aesthetics and the
reproduction of the work of art. The Frankfurt School of philosophers, including most notably
Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse—after their emigration to the United
States—played a key role in introducing Marxist assessments of culture into the mainstream of
American academic life. These thinkers became associated with what is known as “Critical
theory,” one of the constituent components of which was a critique of the instrumental use of
reason in advanced capitalist culture. “Critical theory” held to a distinction between the high
cultural heritage of Europe and the mass culture produced by capitalist societies as an instrument
of domination. “Critical theory” sees in the structure of mass cultural forms—jazz, Hollywood
film, advertising—a replication of the structure of the factory and the workplace. Creativity and
cultural production in advanced capitalist societies were always already co-opted by the
entertainment needs of an economic system that requires sensory stimulation and recognizable
cliché and suppressed the tendency for sustained deliberation.

The major Marxist influences on literary theory since the Frankfurt School have been Raymond
Williams and Terry Eagleton in Great Britain and Frank Lentricchia and Fredric Jameson in the
United States. Williams is associated with the New Left political movement in Great Britain and
the development of “Cultural Materialism” and the Cultural Studies Movement, originating in
the 1960s at Birmingham University’s Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Eagleton is
known both as a Marxist theorist and as a popularizer of theory by means of his widely read
overview, Literary Theory. Lentricchia likewise became influential through his account of trends
in theory, After the New Criticism. Jameson is a more diverse theorist, known both for his impact
on Marxist theories of culture and for his position as one of the leading figures in theoretical
postmodernism. Jameson’s work on consumer culture, architecture, film, literature and other
areas, typifies the collapse of disciplinary boundaries taking place in the realm of Marxist and
postmodern cultural theory. Jameson’s work investigates the way the structural features of late
capitalism—particularly the transformation of all culture into commodity form—are now deeply
embedded in all of our ways of communicating.

4.6. Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Like the “New Criticism,” “Structuralism” sought to bring to literary studies a set of objective
criteria for analysis and a new intellectual rigor. “Structuralism” can be viewed as an extension
of “Formalism” in that that both “Structuralism” and “Formalism” devoted their attention to
matters of literary form (i.e. structure) rather than social or historical content; and that both
bodies of thought were intended to put the study of literature on a scientific, objective basis.
“Structuralism” relied initially on the ideas of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. Like
Plato, Saussure regarded the signifier (words, marks, symbols) as arbitrary and unrelated to the
concept, the signified, to which it referred. Within the way a particular society uses language and
signs, meaning was constituted by a system of “differences” between units of the language.
Particular meanings were of less interest than the underlying structures of signification that made
meaning itself possible, often expressed as an emphasis on “langue” rather than “parole.”
“Structuralism” was to be a metalanguage, a language about languages, used to decode actual
languages, or systems of signification. The work of the “Formalist” Roman Jakobson contributed
to “Structuralist” thought, and the more prominent Structuralists included Claude Levi-Strauss in
anthropology, Tzvetan Todorov, A.J. Greimas, Gerard Genette, and Barthes.

The philosopher Roland Barthes proved to be a key figure on the divide between “Structuralism”
and “Poststructuralism.” “Poststructuralism” is less unified as a theoretical movement than its
precursor; indeed, the work of its advocates known by the term “Deconstruction” calls into
question the possibility of the coherence of discourse, or the capacity for language to
communicate. “Deconstruction,” Semiotic theory (a study of signs with close connections to
“Structuralism,” “Reader response theory” in America (“Reception theory” in Europe), and
“Gender theory” informed by the psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva are areas of
inquiry that can be located under the banner of “Poststructuralism.” If signifier and signified are
both cultural concepts, as they are in “Poststructuralism,” reference to an empirically certifiable
reality is no longer guaranteed by language. “Deconstruction” argues that this loss of reference
causes an endless deferral of meaning, a system of differences between units of language that has
no resting place or final signifier that would enable the other signifiers to hold their meaning.
The most important theorist of “Deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida, has asserted, “There is no
getting outside text,” indicating a kind of free play of signification in which no fixed, stable
meaning is possible. “Poststructuralism” in America was originally identified with a group of
Yale academics, the Yale School of “Deconstruction:” J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartmann, and
Paul de Man. Other tendencies in the moment after “Deconstruction” that share some of the
intellectual tendencies of “Poststructuralism” would included the “Reader response” theories of
Stanley Fish, Jane Tompkins, and Wolfgang Iser.

Lacanian psychoanalysis, an updating of the work of Sigmund Freud, extends “Postructuralism”

to the human subject with further consequences for literary theory. According to Lacan, the
fixed, stable self is a Romantic fiction; like the text in “Deconstruction,” the self is a decentered
mass of traces left by our encounter with signs, visual symbols, language, etc. For Lacan, the self
is constituted by language, a language that is never one’s own, always another’s, always already
in use. Barthes applies these currents of thought in his famous declaration of the “death” of the
Author: “writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin” while also applying a
similar “Poststructuralist” view to the Reader: “the reader is without history, biography,
psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by
which the written text is constituted.”

Michel Foucault is another philosopher, like Barthes, whose ideas inform much of
poststructuralist literary theory. Foucault played a critical role in the development of the
postmodern perspective that knowledge is constructed in concrete historical situations in the
form of discourse; knowledge is not communicated by discourse but is discourse itself, can only
be encountered textually. Following Nietzsche, Foucault performs what he calls “genealogies,”
attempts at deconstructing the unacknowledged operation of power and knowledge to reveal the
ideologies that make domination of one group by another seem “natural.” Foucaldian
investigations of discourse and power were to provide much of the intellectual impetus for a new
way of looking at history and doing textual studies that came to be known as the “New
Historicism.”

5.7 New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

“New Historicism,” a term coined by Stephen Greenblatt, designates a body of theoretical and
interpretive practices that began largely with the study of early modern literature in the United
States. “New Historicism” in America had been somewhat anticipated by the theorists of
“Cultural Materialism” in Britain, which, in the words of their leading advocate, Raymond
Williams describes “the analysis of all forms of signification, including quite centrally writing,
within the actual means and conditions of their production.” Both “New Historicism” and
“Cultural Materialism” seek to understand literary texts historically and reject the formalizing
influence of previous literary studies, including “New Criticism,” “Structuralism” and
“Deconstruction,” all of which in varying ways privilege the literary text and place only
secondary emphasis on historical and social context. According to “New Historicism,” the
circulation of literary and non-literary texts produces relations of social power within a culture.
New Historicist thought differs from traditional historicism in literary studies in several crucial
ways. Rejecting traditional historicism’s premise of neutral inquiry, “New Historicism” accepts
the necessity of making historical value judgments. According to “New Historicism,” we can
only know the textual history of the past because it is “embedded,” a key term, in the textuality
of the present and its concerns. Text and context are less clearly distinct in New Historicist
practice. Traditional separations of literary and non-literary texts, “great” literature and popular
literature, are also fundamentally challenged. For the “New Historicist,” all acts of expression are
embedded in the material conditions of a culture. Texts are examined with an eye for how they
reveal the economic and social realities, especially as they produce ideology and represent power
or subversion. Like much of the emergent European social history of the 1980s, “New
Historicism” takes particular interest in representations of marginal/marginalized groups and
non-normative behaviors—witchcraft, cross-dressing, peasant revolts, and exorcisms—as
exemplary of the need for power to represent subversive alternatives, the Other, to legitimize
itself.

Louis Montrose, another major innovator and exponent of “New Historicism,” describes a
fundamental axiom of the movement as an intellectual belief in “the textuality of history and the
historicity of texts.” “New Historicism” draws on the work of Levi-Strauss, in particular his
notion of culture as a “self-regulating system.” The Foucaldian premise that power is ubiquitous
and cannot be equated with state or economic power and Gramsci’s conception of “hegemony,”
i.e., that domination is often achieved through culturally-orchestrated consent rather than force,
are critical underpinnings to the “New Historicist” perspective. The translation of the work of
Mikhail Bakhtin on carnival coincided with the rise of the “New Historicism” and “Cultural
Materialism” and left a legacy in work of other theorists of influence like Peter Stallybrass and
Jonathan Dollimore. In its period of ascendancy during the 1980s, “New Historicism” drew
criticism from the political left for its depiction of counter-cultural expression as always co-opted
by the dominant discourses. Equally, “New Historicism’s” lack of emphasis on “literariness” and
formal literary concerns brought disdain from traditional literary scholars. However, “New
Historicism” continues to exercise a major influence in the humanities and in the extended
conception of literary studies.

4.8 Ethnic Studies and Postcolonial Criticism

“Ethnic Studies,” sometimes referred to as “Minority Studies,” has an obvious historical

relationship with “Postcolonial Criticism” in that Euro-American imperialism and colonization in
the last four centuries, whether external (empire) or internal (slavery) has been directed at
recognizable ethnic groups: African and African-American, Chinese, the subaltern peoples of
India, Irish, Latino, Native American, and Philipino, among others. “Ethnic Studies” concerns
itself generally with art and literature produced by identifiable ethnic groups either marginalized
or in a subordinate position to a dominant culture. “Postcolonial Criticism” investigates the
relationships between colonizers and colonized in the period post-colonization. Though the two
fields are increasingly finding points of intersection—the work of bell hooks, for example—and
are both activist intellectual enterprises, “Ethnic Studies and “Postcolonial Criticism” have
significant differences in their history and ideas.

“Ethnic Studies” has had a considerable impact on literary studies in the United States and
Britain. In W.E.B. Dubois, we find an early attempt to theorize the position of African-
Americans within dominant white culture through his concept of “double consciousness,” a dual
identity including both “American” and “Negro.” Dubois and theorists after him seek an
understanding of how that double experience both creates identity and reveals itself in culture.
Afro-Caribbean and African writers—Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe—have made
significant early contributions to the theory and practice of ethnic criticism that explores the
traditions, sometimes suppressed or underground, of ethnic literary activity while providing a
critique of representations of ethnic identity as found within the majority culture. Ethnic and
minority literary theory emphasizes the relationship of cultural identity to individual identity in
historical circumstances of overt racial oppression. More recently, scholars and writers such as
Henry Louis Gates, Toni Morrison, and Kwame Anthony Appiah have brought attention to the
problems inherent in applying theoretical models derived from Euro-centric paradigms (that is,
structures of thought) to minority works of literature while at the same time exploring new
interpretive strategies for understanding the vernacular (common speech) traditions of racial
groups that have been historically marginalized by dominant cultures.

Though not the first writer to explore the historical condition of postcolonialism, the Palestinian
literary theorist Edward Said’s book Orientalism is generally regarded as having inaugurated the
field of explicitly “Postcolonial Criticism” in the West. Said argues that the concept of “the
Orient” was produced by the “imaginative geography” of Western scholarship and has been
instrumental in the colonization and domination of non-Western societies. “Postcolonial” theory
reverses the historical center/margin direction of cultural inquiry: critiques of the metropolis and
capital now emanate from the former colonies. Moreover, theorists like Homi K. Bhabha have
questioned the binary thought that produces the dichotomies—center/margin, white/black, and
colonizer/colonized—by which colonial practices are justified. The work of Gayatri C. Spivak
has focused attention on the question of who speaks for the colonial “Other” and the relation of
the ownership of discourse and representation to the development of the postcolonial
subjectivity. Like feminist and ethnic theory, “Postcolonial Criticism” pursues not merely the
inclusion of the marginalized literature of colonial peoples into the dominant canon and
discourse. “Postcolonial Criticism” offers a fundamental critique of the ideology of colonial
domination and at the same time seeks to undo the “imaginative geography” of Orientalist
thought that produced conceptual as well as economic divides between West and East, civilized
and uncivilized, First and Third Worlds. In this respect, “Postcolonial Criticism” is activist and
adversarial in its basic aims. Postcolonial theory has brought fresh perspectives to the role of
colonial peoples—their wealth, labor, and culture—in the development of modern European
nation states. While “Postcolonial Criticism” emerged in the historical moment following the
collapse of the modern colonial empires, the increasing globalization of culture, including the
neo-colonialism of multinational capitalism, suggests a continued relevance for this field of
inquiry.
4.8. Gender Studies and Queer Theory

Gender theory came to the forefront of the theoretical scene first as feminist theory but has
subsequently come to include the investigation of all gender and sexual categories and identities.
Feminist gender theory followed slightly behind the reemergence of political feminism in the
United States and Western Europe during the 1960s. Political feminism of the so-called “second
wave” had as its emphasis practical concerns with the rights of women in contemporary
societies, women’s identity, and the representation of women in media and culture. These causes
converged with early literary feminist practice, characterized by Elaine Showalter as
“gynocriticism,” which emphasized the study and canonical inclusion of works by female
authors as well as the depiction of women in male-authored canonical texts.

Feminist gender theory is postmodern in that it challenges the paradigms and intellectual
premises of western thought, but also takes an activist stance by proposing frequent interventions
and alternative epistemological positions meant to change the social order. In the context of
postmodernism, gender theorists, led by the work of Judith Butler, initially viewed the category
of “gender” as a human construct enacted by a vast repetition of social performance. The
biological distinction between man and woman eventually came under the same scrutiny by
theorists who reached a similar conclusion: the sexual categories are products of culture and as
such help create social reality rather than simply reflect it. Gender theory achieved a wide
readership and acquired much its initial theoretical rigor through the work of a group of French
feminist theorists that included Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, and Julia
Kristeva, who while Bulgarian rather than French, made her mark writing in French. French
feminist thought is based on the assumption that the Western philosophical tradition represses
the experience of women in the structure of its ideas. As an important consequence of this
systematic intellectual repression and exclusion, women’s lives and bodies in historical societies
are subject to repression as well. In the creative/critical work of Cixous, we find the history of
Western thought depicted as binary oppositions: “speech/writing; Nature/Art, Nature/History,
Nature/Mind, Passion/Action.” For Cixous, and for Irigaray as well, these binaries are less a
function of any objective reality they describe than the male-dominated discourse of the Western
tradition that produced them. Their work beyond the descriptive stage becomes an intervention in
the history of theoretical discourse, an attempt to alter the existing categories and systems of
thought that found Western rationality. French feminism, and perhaps all feminism after
Beauvoir, has been in conversation with the psychoanalytic revision of Freud in the work of
Jacques Lacan. Kristeva’s work draws heavily on Lacan. Two concepts from Kristeva—the
“semiotic” and “abjection”—have had a significant influence on literary theory. Kristeva’s
“semiotic” refers to the gaps, silences, spaces, and bodily presence within the language/symbol
system of a culture in which there might be a space for a women’s language, different in kind as
it would be from male-dominated discourse.

Masculine gender theory as a separate enterprise has focused largely on social, literary, and
historical accounts of the construction of male gender identities. Such work generally lacks
feminisms’ activist stance and tends to serve primarily as an indictment rather than a validation
of male gender practices and masculinity. The so-called “Men’s Movement,” inspired by the
work of Robert Bly among others, was more practical than theoretical and has had only limited
impact on gender discourse. The impetus for the “Men’s Movement” came largely as a response
to the critique of masculinity and male domination that runs throughout feminism and the
upheaval of the 1960s, a period of crisis in American social ideology that has required a
reconsideration of gender roles. Having long served as the de facto “subject” of Western thought,
male identity and masculine gender theory awaits serious investigation as a particular, and no
longer universally representative, field of inquiry.

Much of what theoretical energy of masculine gender theory currently possesses comes from its
ambiguous relationship with the field of “Queer theory.” “Queer theory” is not synonymous with
gender theory, nor even with the overlapping fields of gay and lesbian studies, but does share
many of their concerns with normative definitions of man, woman, and sexuality. “Queer theory”
questions the fixed categories of sexual identity and the cognitive paradigms generated by
normative (that is, what is considered “normal”) sexual ideology. To “queer” becomes an act by
which stable boundaries of sexual identity are transgressed, reversed, mimicked, or otherwise
critiqued. “Queering” can be enacted on behalf of all non-normative sexualities and identities as
well, all that is considered by the dominant paradigms of culture to be alien, strange, unfamiliar,
transgressive, odd—in short, queer. Michel Foucault’s work on sexuality anticipates and informs
the Queer theoretical movement in a role similar to the way his writing on power and discourse
prepared the ground for “New Historicism.” Judith Butler contends that heterosexual identity
long held to be a normative ground of sexuality is actually produced by the suppression of
homoerotic possibility. Eve Sedgwick is another pioneering theorist of “Queer theory,” and like
Butler, Sedgwick maintains that the dominance of heterosexual culture conceals the extensive
presence of homosocial relations. For Sedgwick, the standard histories of western societies are
presented in exclusively in terms of heterosexual identity: “Inheritance, Marriage, Dynasty,
Family, Domesticity, Population,” and thus conceiving of homosexual identity within this
framework is already problematic.

4.10. Cultural Studies

Much of the intellectual legacy of “New Historicism” and “Cultural Materialism” can now be
felt in the “Cultural Studies” movement in departments of literature, a movement not identifiable
in terms of a single theoretical school, but one that embraces a wide array of perspectives—
media studies, social criticism, anthropology, and literary theory—as they apply to the general
study of culture. “Cultural Studies” arose quite self-consciously in the 1980s to provide a means
of analysis of the rapidly expanding global culture industry that includes entertainment,
advertising, publishing, television, film, computers and the Internet. “Cultural Studies” brings
scrutiny not only to these varied categories of culture, and not only to the decreasing margins of
difference between these realms of expression, but just as importantly to the politics and
ideology that make contemporary culture possible. “Cultural Studies” became notorious in the
1990s for its emphasis on pop music icons and music video in place of canonical literature, and
extends the ideas of the Frankfurt School on the transition from a truly popular culture to mass
culture in late capitalist societies, emphasizing the significance of the patterns of consumption of
cultural artifacts. “Cultural Studies” has been interdisciplinary, even antidisciplinary, from its
inception; indeed, “Cultural Studies” can be understood as a set of sometimes conflicting
methods and approaches applied to a questioning of current cultural categories. Stuart Hall,
Meaghan Morris, Tony Bennett and Simon During are some of the important advocates of a
“Cultural Studies” that seeks to displace the traditional model of literary studies.
 Review questions
i) Briefly trace the beginning, growth and development of literary theories
ii) Give an analysis of any four critical approaches used in the study of literature
CHAPTER NINE
INTRODUCTION
Objectives
By the end of the lesson the learner should be able to:
i. Briefly explain the tenents of given literary theories
ii. Carry out a critical analysis of a literary text using given literary theories

Introduction
In this lesson we will discuss the tenents of various literary theories and apply the same theories
in the analysis of literary texts.

Marxism as in “petals of blood” by ngugi was thiongo

Marxism; The idea was bought up by Karl Marx who was a philosopher. According to him,
Marxism is a system of class struggle in the society or a social gratification. He said that one day,
the poor who are the “many” in society, will come together and force their rich counterparts to
share resource equally and they will even overthrow the government and then form a government
made up of all in the society.
Marxism is evident in ‘Petal of Blood’. The author fully illustrates the struggle made by
African during the colonial periods and when the Europeans have gone and Africans themselves
are controlling and holding key positions in their government. “Karega’s father and his two
wives had left Limuru and moved into the Rift valley in the 20s. they had lived as squatters on
different European farms providing free labour in return for grazing and cultivation rights on the
settle’s land”……”they would clear it and after a yea hey would be driven off and shown another
virgin lands to clear for the European landlord”. Africans are struggling to catch up with their
brothers who had gained in the post – colonial government. A class struggle is seen when,
Karega’s Brothers Ezekiel takes advantage of his fellow Africans’ submissiveness to the lord.
“He was, despite his rations, especially successful in attracting faithful labour on his farm. They
nearly all had one thing in common: submission to the lord. They called him brother Ezekiel, our
brother in Christ”. Those who behaved in a manner likely to demand wages on the farm could be
dismissed. “One of them attempted to organize workers into a branch of the plantation Workers
Union that operated on European farm. He too was instantly dismissed. He was then denounced
in a church sermon.” So wonderful that religion (praise and signing to the lord) can be used to
blind people, so that they can not realize or be able to air their demands.
Nderi was Reira, the Mp of Ilmong vanished to the city after being elected to represent
the people. The water project is no more. He never came even when drought stuck his area. This
eventually makes the people of Ilmong to stage a delegation to the city where they can be able to
meet their member of parliament and to find a solution for misfortune. 1 is inhuman that the Mp
is busy doing business deals leaving his people unattended to. The few chosen to meet him in his
office at 2nd floor of Iqbbal Iqlood Building in then market street (Wanja, Munira, Karega and
Abdulla) He says “I am soy parliament wok has been so heavy, I have not had a minute to
myself, but I was planning to come for a whole week or so and tour the constituency and get to
know the people.”
Wanja is exploited by Kimeria who is thi neighbor sexually. He however disagreed with
the marriage when Wanja become pregnant. “I only teased you about your being pregnant”.
Poverty is what led her to engage in prostitution. On the night during their journey to the city
Wanja, Karega, Njuguna and Abdulla are rounded by several men. They were locked in a room.
Kimeria asks to have sex with Wanja so that he can release them to join those at the gate for
continuation of their work. “—I could lift their telephone and have you all arrested and charged
with the offence of trespassing in Blue Hill - - - I shall not let you go until you have lain, legs
spread on that bed”. The situation leaves Wanja dilemma. She either refuse to have sex they be
detained as Joseph dies helpless o she accepts and they be released to join others and seek the
way forward to treat Joseph.
Marxism has awakened the people. Due to the existence of the gap between the rich and
the poor. they have formed Kiama – Kamune cultural Organization (KKCO) with the intention
of uniting the people and then liberate them from oppression. “Every group talked about the
danger of to the groups. They are grabbing everything……they have taken all the white
highlands ….. the other communities want to reap where they never planted…. No free things in
Kenya”. A dream does not come true. Africans had a hope that once the whites are gone they
could enjoy the benefits of equality among themselves but this is very far from reality. A few in
the society are seen to own almost and demand almost everything, leaving others in extreme
poverty, hence enmity is growing among the rich and the poor.
Foreigners age also treating Africans badly. Tourists are paying young girls money and
then going to bed with them….. This is what happens when you turn tourism into a national
religion and build it shrines of worship all over the country”. Wanja when taken by a Germany
tourist to his residence house ….” Beside me I saw or rather feel the presence of a dog staring at
me with huge green eyes. This is the way the rich can take advantage of thei money and exploit
the weak in society. Also a story is told of a girl the German was looking for from Kabete who
happened to be taken to Germany and was mistreated. Although some of them wee concerned to
an extent they sent this fellow to Kenya and gather evidence to be used against the man who
mistreated her in court for refusing to take care of the baby left behind. “He was a Mtalii from
Gemany and he had come to the county on a special mission. He was looking for a certain girl
from Kabete. She had been taken to Germany by another German with the promise of manage.”
Jomo, who once worked in a shoe factory near his home went on strike and the other
workers. This is due to the fact that they are mistreated by those supervising them. They are also
paid poorly despite the fact that they are working in poor conditions. “When Jomo of the black
people was arrested in the night. He left us a message and mission. I will hold the donkey’s head,
he told us: will you, my children, endue the kicks?. Yes yes, I said. And readied my for my
sword”.
When Joseph becomes ill on the way to the city. The delegation from Ilmong requests a
few of them to seek help from the nearby homes. When they enters a European woman’s
compound she does not listen to them but says “… no vacancies, hakuna kazi, and ordered them
off the premises without waiting for an explanation”. Also in the next compound, they explains
their situation to Reverend Jerrod who late instead of attending to their hunger, thirst and the ill
boy, he reads a scripture and prays for them. “As for the child who is ill, I have already offered
prayers for him Go ye now in peace and trust in the Lord……the bible is then clearly against a
life of idleness and begging”.
Chi, Munira’s friend after becoming rich he makes a base or permanent residence in the
city. When Munira went looking for him he encounters with a woman who surprised with his
funny appearance faints. “ ”…..he dared not wait for the consequences …..ran as fast as he
could make is legs cay him. Then a gunshot is head in the sky
.” …..and all knew without being told that Munira was involved in yet another disaster .
despite a fact that Munia and Chui had a common past, the future seems different due elements
of poverty and wealth, and now they cannot meet feely due the gap between the poor and the
rich. “….we were expelled from Siriana together……a comrade ………in ……protest, you
know”
Abdulla, Munira and Karega are arrested and accused as organizes of events at the
Jeevanjee Gardens. “suddenly a stone flew and hit Nderi on the nose” a show that they were not
pleased with the Mp’s address. The Mp ran to central police station and the police came with him
to the scene of event. “a riot squad and seined police car came to the scene….you are wanted at
the police station to another a few questions”. They were detained at the city central police
station for a night. At court they pleaded not guilty in acting in a manner likely to cause a breach
of the peace and the lawyer saved them. In court the lawyer gives details of the whole delegation,
their mission as it was necessited by misfortunes back at Ilmong. “He described Ilmong with
such phrases as a ‘deserted homestead’, ‘a forgotten village’. As the magistrate listened. “In
acquitting them, the magistrate agreed with the lawyer’s description of the thee men as the Good
Samaritans and this thrilled and warmed their heat”. This is a clear oppression against them from
Nderi was Riera because of their struggle for the weak in society and he even calls them
foreigners who have teamed within enemies to eliminate him.
Those with money in the society are oppressing their fellows o the poor. This is evident
when they form groups in the name of bankers so as to lend money to people at a higher rate so
that failure to repay their properties are auctioned. This faces people like Nyakinyua. “KANUA
KANENE & CO, values and surveyors, Auctioneers. Land, Estate & management Agents.
Acting on instructions given to us by Wilson, Shah, Muragi & Omolo Advocates on behalf of
their clients, African Economic Bank, charged with power of sale as conferred upon them. We
shall sell by public auction …..all that piece of land situated in New Ilmong…….properly of Ms.
Nyakinyua….”
Though hard work and struggle, Wanja has achieved status of those higher in the
hierarchy. Those on top like Nderi have vowed to ensure that those exposing their weakness are
eliminated. The lawyer who defended and really gave on helping hand to the delegation from
Ilmong ids finally killed mysteriously “……the lawyer had been murdered. He had been taken
from a big hotel and taken a mole o so from the blue Hills and he was shot and left for the hyenas
to eat”.
 Munira is accused for organizing a strike. He is arrested and detained. The hated between
the rich and the poor has forced the poor to plan the killing of those taking advantage of their
status to oppress them. Kimeria, Chui and Mzigo are killed though an act of arsonist at Wanja’s
place. Munira and Abdulla wee behind the killing.
Political parties are formed to fight for the right of the Africans. Kikuyu Central
Associations (KCA) and Kenya African Union (KAU) are formed. Workers and peasants ae
demonstrating to seize power and then overthrow the ruling class at their place of work and fight
against exploitation”
“Petals of Blood” is greatly influenced by the culture of the author’s society. All the
songs are in Kikuyu language. The text can be a source of catalytic changes in the society for it
enlightens the poor to stand up and fight for their rights and even try to grab power from the rich
who are only few in the society. Also the text has clearly displayed that majority action is what
can only bring change in the society and even enlighten the whole community.

CHAPTER TEN Feminism

Feminism according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, refers to the belief and aim that
women should have same rights and opportunities as men. In literary terms, feminism refers to a
general term for a number of critical issues that seek a distinction of human beings, that is, it
seeks to give a difference of female experience from male experience. Western feminism refers
to a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing and defending
political, economic, and social rights for women. Many feminist critics delve much on how the
patriarchal social structures have exploited and discriminated women in their literary texts. A
feminist advocates for the rights of women.

As we read between the lines of Margaret Ogolla’s “The River and the Source”, we see the
feminism theory unfolding through the characters such as; Akoko, Awiti, also known as
Elizabeth, Wandia and Veronica. Akoko, the first daughter of the great chief Gogni is portrayed
as very hardworking. She works tirelessly in the farm and she is also able to gather a reasonable
number of cattle in her homestead even before and after the death of her husband, Chief Owuor
Kembo. On page 32 of the text, we see Akoko telling the villagers that, “…the wealth I have
created in this home is more than double the number paid for me.”

After the death of her husband, Chief Owuor Kembo, Akoko strives to protect her wealth from
her gluttonous in-law, Otieno who had already taken the chiefdom stool. She walks for five days
to seek for help from the D.O in Kisuma. Akoko later wins the cases. This instance tries to
encourage women to ever be brave and never to give up on the plans they may put forward.

After the death of her husband, we are told that Akoko faced a lot of opposition especially from
the current chief, her in-law, Chief Otieno Kenbo. On page 66 of the text, we see that, “…she felt
the weight of injustice that women have felt since time immemorial in the male dominated
world”. Despite all those challenges, Akoko fights, a widow as she was, through the help of
“serikal” and finally she is able to restore her wealth as well as the chiefdom stool. Through the
character Akoko, Margret Ogolla portrays how women should strives for their rights in this male
dominated world.

Similarly, Awiti who was baptized Elizabeth, Nyabera’s daughter, is also portrayed as a pointer
among women. Single parent as she was brought up, she is so intelligent at school. She receives
several awards including a scholarship into a teacher training college. She throws a mutual
competition among the opposite sex counterparts, the boys at her school. Awiti’s intelligence is
also shown when she sat for her examinations. We are told that out of eleven students who sat
for examinations, only five passed, and among them, Awiti was the best. Her score was rated the
highest ever. We are told that no PhD holder ever had such sweet sense of victory as that
barefoot African girl.

In line with the same, Veronica, Awiti and Mark’s daughter, took after her mother’s intelligence,
Awiti. Vera was very bright at school and won many trophies. Despite being a woman, studies
and advances her studies in Electrical Engineering, a male-believed course, at the University of
Nairobi. On contrary of what is believed of a woman, Vera decides not to get married. Margret
Ogolla as well portrays the fate of Vera’s twin sister, Becky, who decided to get married.
Through these female characters, Ogolla empowers women to strive for their rights and even
acquire more qualities men counterparts.

Wandia, Aoro’s girlfriend, is another woman who is very brilliant. Her brilliance is portrayed at
the Medical School. Despite being a lady, Wandia is able top her male dominated group. She
also advances her studies and even secures a scholarship for PhD in America. Wandia becomes
the first lady professor in Africa thereafter.

The theory of feminism is also portrayed in Ngugi Wa’ Thiong’s “Petals of Blood”. Ngugi does
this through characters such as Wanja. Though she is a barmaid, Wanja is very hardworking.
When Wanja is employed at Abdullah’s shop, she is able to reshape the shop and even expand its
bar. Wanja exhibits a high level of passion on her work. As the storyline unfolds, Wanja is on the
frontline in leading the villagers to city to advocate for their starvation in the village, to their
Member of Parliament, MP. Despite being raped on the way by Kimeria, because she tried to ask
for assistance, she hardly gives up. She moves to accomplish her mission in the city. Wanja
finally plans to separate herself from the men who had exploited her in life.

In a nutshell, the feminist point of focus is to protect, empower and encourage women in the
societies. This issue is advocated in various ways as discussed above.
Sample exam questions

MOUNT KENYA UNIVERSITY

COURSE CODE: 311

COURSE TITLE: BASICS IN LITERARY THEORY

INSTRUCTIONS

Answer question one and any other two

Question One

a) Define the following terms (5 marks)

i. Literature
ii. Literary theory
iii. Literary criticism
iv. Literary history
v. Catharsis

b) Outline the purpose of literary theory (10 marks)

c) Trace the development of literary theory ( 15 marks)

Question two

Compare and contrast Plato’s and Aristotle’s ideas (20marks)

Question three

Discuss Horace’s and Longinus contribution to literary theory and literary criticism (20
marks)

Question four

With reference to a literary text of your choice, carry out an analysis of the same using
either Psychoanalysis or Marxism approaches (20 marks)\

Question five

Explore the tenets of Feminism and show how Feminism is applicable in a literary text of
your choice.(20marks)