1. Show your acquaintance with gender perspective of literary criticism.
Ans. Gender perspective of evaluating a literary text examines how sexual identity influences the criterion and reception of literary works. Originally gender perspective is an offshoot of feminist movement. This criticism includes a number of approaches, including the so-called "Masculinist" approach recently advocated by the poet Robert Bly. A text can be analyzed both from feminist and masculinist perspectives. Gender perspective is a type of gender discrimination in the writer's judgment and his /her writing. The traditional gender role and the patriarchy system made many writers blind and so that they presented women as weak gender in their writing. But when feminist writers emerged, they started to present women as strong as men in their writing.
Traditional gender roles cast men as rational, strong. protective, and decisive; they cast women as emotional, weak, nurturing, and submission. These gender roles have been used very successfully to justify inequities, which still occur today, such as excluding women from equal access to leadership and decision making position, paying men higher wages than woman for doing the same job, and convincing women that they are not fit for careers in such areas as Mathematics and engineering. Many People today believe such inequities as a thing of the past because, over time, anti discriminatory laws have been passed in an effort to guarantee woman equal pay for equal work, Tyson (2015).
Feminist don't deny the biological differences between men and woman, in fact, many feminists celebrates those differences. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not. Tyson (2015) states that all feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by promoting woman's equality. Thus, all feminist activity can be seen as form of activism, although the word is usually applied to feminist activity that directly promotes social change through political activity such a public demonstrations, boycotts, voter education and registration, the provision of hotlines for rape victims and shelters for abused woman, and the like. Although frequently falsely portrayed in opposition for "family values", feminists continue to lead the struggle for better family politics such as nutrition and health care for mothers and children, parental leave, and high-quality, affordable day care.
Our gender plays a key role in forming our individual identity: both our self-perception and the way we relate to others. And our gender strongly influences how we are treated by other and by society as a whole as it is embodied in such institutions as the Medical profession, the law, the educational system and our culture's hiring and employment practices. Among other issues that figure prominently in gender studies are the following overlapping topics.
(a) patriarchal assumptions about gender and gender roles that continue to oppress women,
(b) alternative to the current way we conceptualize gender as either feminine or masculine,
(c) the relationship between sex and gender, and
(d) the relationship between sexuality and gender.
2. Does gender perspective seek for the coexistence of male and female? Give reason.
Ans. In literature Coexistence of both male and female as equal genders dismiss the conflict of feminist and masculinist. The text that gives equal role of male and female, does not discriminate them as superior and inferior and presents the theme that male and female are the two wheels of a cart is considered to be of coexistence of male and female.
Feminist criticism is a way of looking literary text from feminist point of view. This theory seeks to analyze and describe the way in which literature portrays the narrative of male domination by exploring the economic, social, political, and psychological forces embedded within literature. In the society, female are the victim of gender biasness, male authority and power prevalent. All over the world women are exploited, misbehaved, suppressed, and dominated by men. Women lack freedom, independence, equality, justice etc. They are seen as a means of sexual object and child producers. Their difficulties, hardship, and suffering are never listened by their counterparts. Any literary texts created are viewed from these women's status in feminist criticism. Feminist criticism came as a product of political feminism in the United States and Western Europe during the 1960s. Feminist gender theory is post modern in that it challenges the paradigms and intellectual premises of western thought, but also takes an activist stance by proposing frequent interrelations and alternative position meant to change the social order. This way of thinking and criticizing works can be said to have changed the way literary texts are viewed and studied. It's main concern is to find out how male dominated society affects the interpretation and creation of literature.
The goals of feminist criticism include both the development and discovery of female tradition of writing and rediscovering of old texts. This criticism interprets symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be ignored by the male point of view. Feminist critics resist sexism inherent in the majority of mainstream literature. They intend to analyze women writers and their writing from a female perspective and increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style. They have developed a variety of ways to unpack literature in order to understand its essence through a feminist lens.
Feminist critics generally agree that the oppression of women is a fact of life, that gender leaves its traces in literary texts and on literary history, and that feminist criticism plays a worthwhile part in the struggle to end oppression in the world outside of texts. Feminists are always engaged in an explicitly political enterprise always working to change existing power structures both inside and outside academia. The feminist reader is enlisted in the process of changing the gender relations which prevail in our society, and she regards the practice of reading as one of the sites in the straggle for change. The coexistence of male and female is the goal of feminist.
3. How does class perspective criticism give consciousness to the oppressed people to unite and fight?
Ans. Literature reflects the attitude, behavior, and life style of different social classes. Evaluating or analyzing literary text from the perspective of different classes is called class perspective. Different people in the society, from the past, have been enjoying the life style of different classes. The class division can be on the basic of economic, social prestige, cast, race, traditional belief, etc. criteria. Although the class division is not democratic, and clear cut at present, there are some classes of people that we still find in the society as a result the same literary text is judged and perceived differently by different people. Society progresses through the struggle between opposing forces. It is this struggle between opposing classes that result in social transformation. History progresses through this class straggle. Class struggle originates out of the exploitation of one class by another throughout history. White and black in America, upper cast and lower cast in Nepal, poor and rich in most of the countries, employers and employee in industrial sector, etc. are the forms of classes. Literary writers write poem, essay, stories, drama, and novel representing the pain and pleasure of these classes. Analyzing works from these perspectives to find whether the texts seek for the equal status and the rights of weak classes is the class perspective in literary criticism.
Class perspective criticism gives consciousness to the oppressed people to write and fight. It makes them understand that human value is killed in capitalism. It opposes structuralism which focuses on formal structure of literary text only. It focuses on content A good literature should oppose the exploitation of poor by the rich. Literature should be written to change the society by encouraging social revolution against upper class, rich people, and exploitation.
4. What do you mean by class perspective? How is a text analyzed through class perspective? Write your answer.
Ans. Evaluating or analyzing literary text from the perspective of different classes is called class perspective. Karl Marx's theory deals with class perspective. His theory is called Marxism. Marxism is a materialist philosophy which tried to interpret the world based on the concrete, natural world around us and the society we live in. It is opposed to idealist that influences and controls the material world. During the feudal period the tension was between the feudal lords and the peasants, and in the industrial age the struggle was between the capitalist class and the industrial working class. Classes have common interests. In a capitalist system the proletariat is always in conflict with the capitalist class. Such conflict can be seen in many literary texts. Frank Norris's story- A Deal in Wheat' reflects class conflict between influential speculators and wheat farmers. This story explores the pathos of farmers due to the controllers of market. The story 'Paul's Case' by Willa Cather deals with the struggle of a poor boy to fit in at home and in school of New York city. Flannery O' Conor's story "Everything that Rises Must Converge" also explores the theme of class conflict. The racial discrimination-black and white-racial class, by Julian's mother is seen in the story. Julian fails to end the racial class discrimination. Vassanji's story 'Leaving' can also be judged from class perspective. The story reflects the hardship of a poor mother to grow and educate her children.
Social classes create conflict in the society and it becomes the matter of literature for the writer. Class critics analyze social oppression and conflict. According to Marxists and to other scholars literature reflects those social institutions out of which it emerges and is itself a social institution with a particular ideological function Literature reflects class struggle and materialism: think how often the quest for wealth traditionally defines characters. Literature reflects an author's own class or analysis of class relations. Marxists view literature 'not as works created in accordance with timeless artistic criteria, but as 'product' of the economic and ideological determinants specific to that era'.
5. What elements do formalists seek in the literature? OR Describe formalistic perspective of literary criticism.
Ans. Formalism is a form or mode of literary criticism. It has dominated the American literary scene for most of the 20th century. This approach to literary criticism studies a text as a text and nothing more. Using formalism, a critic can show how the various parts of a work are welded together to make sense. Formalist criticism is evaluative in that it differentiates great work of art from poor work of art. Other kinds of criticism don't necessarily concern themselves with this distinction. Formalist criticism is decidedly a scientific approach to literary analysis focusing on facts amenable to verification. Formalist critics don't deny the historical, political situation of a work, they just believe works of art have the power to transcend by being organic whole-akin to a being with a life of its own.
Formalist critics believe that literature is a form of knowledge with intrinsic elements style, structure, tone, genre, imagery etc. They say what gives a literary work status as art, or as a great work of art, is how all of its elements work together to create the readers total experience. The appreciation of literature as an art requires close reading - a careful step-by-step analysis and explication of the text. An analysis may follow from question like, 'how do various elements work together to shape the effect on the readers ?' Formalist critics give importance to style, plot, theme, characters, and setting of the text. They claim that style and theme influence each other and can't be separated if meaning is to be retained. The inter dependence of style and theme in form and content makes a text' literary'. Extracting element in isolation such as theme, plot, setting, etc. may destroy a reader's aesthetic experience of the whole.
All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself. The interests of formalist critic are the elements of form-style, structure, tone, imagery, etc. that are found within the text. Their goal is to determine how such elements work together with the text's content to shape its effect upon readers.
For the formalist the proper province of criticism is the 'literariness' of a text. The critic is not concerned with the content of a work of literature as such with what it represents of human life and so-called reality. He is concerned with the literary devices employed in the work, and should seek a scientific account of their character and function. In formalism, we can see foreshadowed the kind of critical approaches later developed by the structuralists. It is concerned with the technical devices which differentiate literary language from ordinary utterance.
So, briefly, formalism refers to the style inquiry which focuses on feature of the literary text itself, to the exclusion of biographical, historical, or intellectual contexts. The form of a work of literature inherently a part of its content and that the attempt to separate the form from the content is fallacious. So content, theme, style, characters, and setting together make the literature.
6. Language is a matter of convention and arbitrary phenomenon in linguistic perspective. Explains in brief.
Ans. Linguistics, as a pure discipline, studies the language system. Here, linguistic perspective is the way to analyze literary texts from linguistic point of view or elements. The relationship between linguistics and literature is complex. Linguistics is a meta-language ie, a language about language, used practically for the analysis and description of literary texts. Literary criticism has sought to use linguistics enlisting its language and methodologies for the purposes of practical criticism and in order to attempt to gain an overview of literary textual phenomena of the literary text. Linguistics and linguistic models have occupied an important, but not dominant, place within literary criticism during the twentieth century. Green and LeBihan (2000) put that any literary text is by definition made of and by language, linguist. But many critics suggest that literature has a special status or so the obvious tools for analysis are the tools of the quality not accessible through the application of the meta-language of linguistics.
Saussure rejected theories of meaning based primarily on the relationship between words and extra linguistic objects and concepts. Language is system of arbitrarily allotted signs which operate only in relation to each other in the total system. Language is arbitrary. It means there is no inherent or logical relation or similarity between any given feature of language and its meaning. So for the same object 'dog' we can say Kukur in Nepali, Kutta in Hindi, Hund in German, etc. Moreover, there is nothing like in the word 'dog' and the word 'long' isn't as long as the word 'short'. That is entirely arbitrary, that there is no direct, necessary connection between the nature of things or ideas of language.
Linguistic criticism takes language as a set of conventional communicative signals used by humans for communication in a community. Language in this sense is a possession of a social group, an indispensable set of rules which permits its members to interact with each other to co-operate with each other: it is a social institution. Language exists in society; it is a means of nourishing and developing culture and establishing human relations. It is as a member of society that a human being acquires a language.
Conventions are agreed rules of language that we use. In a language, there is typical pattern of behavior like control of spelling, grammar and punctuation, linguistic criticism analyses these contentions of a literary text. Both continental and American linguistics have been applied to the analysis of distinctive uses of language in literary texts. De Saussure observed that a linguistic unit such as a word or sentence is a sign. This sign signifies a particular concept. He refers to the sign as signifier and the concept as signified. He believed that the study of a particular language system begins with the understanding of the basic unit, which is the 'sign (for convenience let us say 'word'). This concept of the sign is another of Saussure's seminal concept, he said that the sign has two sides:
Sign = signifier/signified = sound signal/concept = /pen/ / idea of pen
In this example, the sounds /pen/ only after being combined with the concept of the 'pen' in the mind, becomes the linguistic sign or concrete unit of language. Only the two-sided entity is linguistically real. Only the combination of the signifier and its signified is a linguistic entity. To conclude, the word in graphic or phonic form (written or spoken) is the signifier, the concept attached to the word is the signified. The sign unites the two. The inculcation of the concept within the triad of signification suggests that there is no natural or immediate relation between the words and the 'thing'. The association of signifier with the signified is arbitrary.
7. How do the text's formal elements, and the multiple meanings those elements produce, all work together to support the theme, or overall meaning of the work? Answer basing on new critics.
OR
"New criticism" is a contemporary approach to the analysis of literary texts". Illustrate your answer.
Ans. New criticism is an approach to evaluate literary texts. It emerged as a reaction to the older philosophical schools of the US North which focused on the history and meaning of individual words and their relation to foreign and ancient languages, and biography of the authors. New criticism felt that these approaches tended to distract from the text and its meaning and neglected its aesthetic qualities in favor of teaching about external factors. So, this approach directly deals with the text rather than external factors. This new approach views literary texts systematically and objectively.
New criticism emphasizes close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature function as a self contained, self referential aesthetic object. This criticism does not evaluate the background and histories of the text, but evaluates work based on the text itself. Since we are only dealing with the text, we would be doing whats called a close reading, which requires talking apart a text and looking at its individual elements, such as theme, setting, plot, and structure. Before 1920s, literary criticism took a largely historical path. To understand a text critics often looked to its historical background and the history of the language used in the text. But after 1929 with the introduction of practical criticism, people started reading and responding to the texts (poems) without knowing who the authors were.
New criticism aims at providing good sense of text without going back to the history of the text and its author. Studying a passage of prose or poetry in new criticism requires careful, exacting scrutiny of the passage itself. In the analysis of new criticism, formal elements such as rhyme, meter, plot, setting, and characterization are used to identify the theme of the text. For the best and most unified interpretation of the text, in addition to the theme of the text, new critics also look for metaphor, simile, irony, paradox, metonymy, etc. They believe that the structure and meaning of the text are intimately connected so that they should not be analyzed separately. For the sake of deep understanding of the text, they aim to exclude the reader's response, the author's intention, historical and cultural contexts, and moralistic bias from their analysis. This criticism offers a straight forward approach to the teaching of literature. It claims that the text itself carries its own value so we should not seek the authors background and reasons for writing a text.
8. What are the features of new criticism? Explain.
Ans. Some features of new criticism are below.
1. The Text itself (Text as only source of aesthetics)
New Criticism focuses our attention on the literary work as the sole source of evidence for interpreting it. The life and time of the author and the spirit of the age in which he or she lived do not provide the literary critic with information that can be used to analyze the text itself. For New Criticism, a literary work is a timeless, autonomous (self sufficient) verbal object. Readers and readings may change, but the literary text stays the same. So the interpretation must be made of the text itself.
2. Literary Language and Organic Unity
The form of literary language -the word choice and arrangement that create the aesthetic experience-is inseparable from its content, its meaning. Put more simply, how a literary text means is inseparable from that it means. For the form and meaning of a literary work, at least of a great literary work, develop together, like a complex living organism whose parts cannot be separated from the whole. And indeed, the work's organic unity-the working together of all the parts to make an inseparable whole is the criterion by which new critics judged the quality of literary work. For New criticism, the complexity of a text is created by the multiple and often conflicting meanings woven through it. And these meanings are a product primarily of four kinds of linguistic devices: paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension.
3. New criticism as intrinsic, objective criticism
New criticism asks us to look closely at the formal elements of the text to help us discover the theme of literary text and explain the way in which those formal elements establish it. New critics believe that the literary work itself provides the context within which we interpret and evaluate it. Because new critics believe their interpretations are based solely on the context created by the text and the language provided by the text, they call their critical practice intrinsic criticism, to denote that New criticism stays within the confines of the text itself. New critics also calls their approach objective criticism because their focus on each text's own formal elements ensures, they claim, that each text-each object being interpreted - will itself dictate how it will be interpreted.
4. The Single best interpretation
New critics believe that a single best, or most accurate, interpretation of each text can be discovered that best represents the text itself: that best explains what the text means and how the text produces that meaning, in other words, that, best explains its organic unity. Tyson (2000) puts, "in light of the scrupulous attention paid to textual details by the new critics, it is understandable that their method worked best on short poems and stories because the shorter the text, the more of its formal elements could be analyzed.""
9. Why is close reading important for new critics? What does it include?
Ans. Some of the textual features of new criticism, are the use of figures of speech, imagery, and symbolism. New criticism advocates for the close reading of text to get figurative, symbolic, and imaginary meaning. Close reading is related to the examination of the complex relationship between or text's formal elements and its theme. Because of New Criticism's belief that the literary text can be understood primarily by understanding its form, a clear understanding of the definition of specific formal elements is important. So, here the figurative language, images, symbols, etc. are discussed.
(a) Figure of Speech
Literature uses the special form of language that evidently differs from the language of day-to-day communication. It is deviated from the standard language since it violets the common grammatical rules. We find phonological graphological, lexical, grammatical, and semantic deviation in literature. The deviation is done through the use of figures of speech. Figurative language is language that has more than, or other then, a strictly literal meaning. Such language of text is analyzed while evaluating a text from new criticism perspective. For instance, "it's raining cats and dogs" is a figurative expression used to indicate that it's raining very heavily. If it were taken literally, than the phrase would mean of course, that actual cats and dogs were falling from the sky
(b) Imagery
An image consists of a word or words that refer to an object perceived by the senses or to sense perceptions themselves: colors, shapes, lighting, sounds, tastes, smells, textures, temperatures, and so on. Generally, imagery is visual, consisting of descriptions of objects, characters, or settings as they are seen by the eye. Although images always have internal meaning -a description of clouds means that the weather is cloudy- they can evoke an emotional atmosphere as well, for example, a description of clouds can be used to evoke sadness.
(c) Symbolism
A symbol is an image that has both literal and figurative meaning, a concrete universal such as the swamp in Earnest Hemingway's 'Big, Two-Hearted River' (1925). The swamp is a literal swamp. It's wet, it contains fish and other forms of aquatic life one needs boots and special equipment to fish in it -but it also 'stands for", or "figures" something else: the emotional problems the protagonist does not feel quite ready to face-public symbols are usually easy to spot. For example, spring is usually a symbol of rebirth or youth, autumn is usually a symbol of death or dying; a river is usually a symbol of life or journey. Thus a symbol has properties similar to those of the abstract idea it stands for. For example a river can symbolize life because both a river and life are fluid and forward moving, both have source and end point.
10. Introduce LGBTI in brief.
Ans. Those people who are not in power but oppressed sexually, economically and socially are considered to be the marginalized group and analyzing literary text from the perspective of such people is called the perspective of the margins. The perspective of the margins is discussed under Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersexual (LGBTI). The experience of gender and /or racial discrimination is an important factor in writer's life and is also important to know about the oppression suffered by LGBTI writers. Although LGBTI sexuality is still considered an uncomfortable topic of discussion and some people avoid addressing LGBTI issues, it is necessary to analyze in the literary text to support and to make aware of the marginalized people.
LGBTI stands for -Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersexual. All of the these criticisms are for the study of sexuality in literature. The man attracted to men or have sex with men are gays. The women who have sex with women are lesbians. Some people do have sex with both men and women, they are called bisexual. Changing one gender into another is called transgender. The state of having the features of both sexes or of having ambiguous sex, i.e. not unambiguously male or female is called intersexuality.
LGBTI are seen as marginalized people. Tyson (2015) writes, although LGBTI people in America have achieved significant gains towards equal treatment in the military, they still face discrimination in obtaining job and housing, in using public facilities, such as hotels and taverns; in area of family law such as the right to marry, retain custody of their children, adopt children or provide foster care, as victims of police harassment and violent hate crimes, and in AIDS- related discrimination.
LGBTI individuals who are members of racial minorities in America face a complex system of discrimination. The physical and emotional violence committed against young people who do not conform to conventional gender or sexual norms has greatly increased the school drop-out and suicide rates among the teens. In addition to the oppression they suffer in white heterosexist culture, they are sometimes heavily stigmatized in their own communities. There is the myth that LGBTI people are sick, evil, or both. Majority of the people in the society are heterosexual so LGBTI is not natural and accepted in most of the cases. LGBTI deserve minority and seek, the same protection as racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in America. LGBTI share in common the political, economic, social, and psychological oppression they suffer as members of a sexual minority. Many lesbians and gay men argue that oppression is one of the few experiences, if not the only one, they have in common and that, in most other ways, gay men and lesbians are polar opposites.
11. Describe post modern perspective of literary criticism.
Ans. Postmodernism is a term describing a wide range of changes in thinking beginning in the early 20th century. The concept of deconstruction, absurdism, nihilism, surrealism, plurality of meaning, sense of alienation, stream of consciousness technique, etc. comes in post modern literature. Deconstruction denotes a particular kind of practice in reading and thereby, a method of criticism and mode of analytical inquiry. Absurdism applies that the human condition in Post Modern time is essentially absurd and that this condition can be adequately represented only in works of literature that are themselves absurd. A human being is an isolated existent that is cast into an alien universe possessing no inherent truth, value, or meaning. Nihilism refers to a radical and extreme attitude, which denies all traditional moral and social values. Surrealism refers (in art and literature) the workings of unconscious mind and to synthesize these workings with the conscious mind. In Post Modern literature no meaning is ultimate or final. Plurality is found in meaning A text can have plurality of meaning depending on the context as a deconstructionist says. Modern man has a sense of alienation even in a crowd because of people lack faith and honesty. Postmodernism sees human experience as unstable, ambiguous, unfinished, fragmented, and discontinuous.
Postmodern texts are usually written in clear, everyday language, even though their structure can be quite complex. Postmodern texts tend not to engage in innocent, linear story-telling. Similarly to modern works, they draw attention to their status as fiction and the act of writing or reading. Unlike modernism thought, postmodern texts refer both to themselves and the external world.
Protagonists are often aware that they are in fiction. Postmodernism works by multiplication - multiple narrators, perspectives, or takes on the same story. This represents postmodern skepticism towards single, unitary, and totalizing narratives.
12. What do you mean by aesthetic reading? Ans. Evaluating or analyzing a text from reader's lenses and determining the meaning of it is considered to aesthetic reading perspective or criticism. Rosenblatt is the advocator of this reading According to him, aesthetic reading is a perspective that has acknowledged a relationship between human beings and their natural or social world and has challenged that meaning is not objective and held within the pages of a text but rather uncovered through human feeling, connections and experiences. The meanings of a text are the production or creation of the individual reader, hence that there is no one correct meaning for all readers either of the linguistic parts or of the artistic whole of a text. To derive the meaning of a text, there must be transaction between a reader and a text. Thus, aesthetic reading is an active process with an inner-oriented focus derived from readers and their personal movement-to-movement transactions with a particular place of literature. The reader must pay attention to bits and pieces brought forth such as attitudes, ideas, personalities. emotions, feeling, etc. to get the meaning and these connections and experiences are the essence of aesthetic reading.
13. Explain reader perspective as an approach to literary criticism.
Ans. This theory focuses on the validity of readers response to a text. This criticism claims that each interpretation is valid in the context from which a reader approaches a text. This type of criticism attempts to describe the internal working of the reader's mental processes. It recognizes reading as a creative act, a creative process. There are multiple approaches within the theoretical branch of reader response criticism. Lois Tyson gives five theories or approaches as -
a. Transactional reader-response theory: This theory involves a transaction between the texts inferred meaning and the individual interpretation by the readers influenced by their personal emotions and knowledge.
b. Effective stylistics: This theory believes that a text can only come into existence as it is read. A text cannot have meaning independent of the readers.
c. Subjective reader - response theory: This theory looks entirely to the reader's response for literary meaning as individual written responses to a text are then compared other individual interpretations to find continuity Of meaning.
d. Psychological reader -response theory: This theory believes that a reader's motivation heavily affects how they read and subsequently uses this reading to analyze the psychological response of the reader.
e. Social reader -response theory: This theory states that any individual interpretation of a text is created in an interpretative community of minds consisting of participants who share a specific reading and interpretation strategy.
Reader Response theory has two beliefs:
(a) that the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding to literature, and
(b) that readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text, rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature.
14. Ecological reading appeals for the prevent of good environment. Explain.
Ans. Ecology deals with the relationship of organisms with their environment and with each other. The concern for ecology and the hazard that the incessant exploitation of our environment poses on humanity has recently caught the attention of the writers. This sense of concern has given rise to a new branch of literary theory. ecological reading perspective. It is also called ecocriticism which is the study of representations of nature in literary works and of the relationship between literature and the environment. Ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to literacy studies. It studies literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze text that illustrate environmental concern's and examine the various ways literature beats the subject of nature. The global risks posed by our industrial and post-industrial societies made scholars to investigate the global ecological crisis through the intersection of literature. Ecological reading is concerned with the relationship between literature and environment or how man's relationship with his physical environment is reflected in literature.
Ecological literary critics portray that the relationship between man and nature is no just interdependent but also interrelated. By analogy, ecocriticism is concerned with the relationship between literature and environment or how man's relationship with the physical environment is reflected in literature.
15. How do you evaluate Oedipus complex from character perspective?
Ans. The character perspective in literary criticism deals with a work of literature primarily as an expression, in fictional form, of the state or mind of the character and the structure of personality of the individual author. The character perspective is understood as similar to psychoanalytical criticism.
Psychoanalytic critics hold the belief that great literature truthfully reflects life and is a realistic representation of human motivation and behavior. This criticism is related to human behaviors which are directed by the psychology of the individuals. Psychological critics may choose to focus on the creative process of the artist, the artist's motivation, or behaviour, or analyze fictional characters, motivations, and behaviors.
The Oedipus complex, a concept that is widely known and which is often used to explain family conflicts arrives out of enology with classical myth. It is used to explain how a sexualized and gendered subject comes to take his/her place in the world. This theory has been redefined and criticized more than any other Freudian concept. In the Theban tragedy of Oedipus, king Laius banishes his infant son Oedipus because of a prophecy that the son will kill the father. During a chance encounter, Oedipus kills his father without knowing Laius' identity, then marries his victim's wife Jocasta, without knowing that she is his mother. Oedipus's discovery of his gilt of parricide and incest causes him to blind himself and flee. According to the explanation offered by the theory of the Oedipus complex, the sexual development of boys and girls differs, although both begin by desiring the mother, their first love- object, who is seen as all powerful and capable of fulfilling the desires of the child. Eventually, the boy child beings to see the father as a sexual rival for the mother, but, being small and reactively helpless, he fears castration by the father as punishment for his unacceptable desires, and represses them, later to transfer them on to other women when he reaches puberty.
Oedipus complex is Freud's normalizing description of process of a subject taking up a sexualized identify, by transferring affections from the mother on to non-family members of the opposite sex. It culminates in the desire which is long cherished, to be given a child by her father as a present, to bear him a child. One has the impression that the Oedipus-complex is later gradually abandoned because this wish is never fulfilled.
16. What do you understand by the cultural perspective of literary criticism?
OR
How is literature as a reflection of particular cultural forms and practices?
Ans. Cultural perspective, refers to the way that individuals are shaped by their environments as well as social and cultural factions. A cultural perspective is viewing literature through the eyes of an individual's native environmental and social influence. Each culture possesses its own particular values, traditions, and ideas. Literature is a reflection of culture because it conveys the human knowledge, beliefs, and behavior. However, culture is a wider concept than literature. Our culture shapes the way we work and play and it makes a difference in how we view ourselves and others. It affects our value- what we consider right and wrong.
More precisely, a culture is a collection of interactive cultures, each of which is growing and changing, each of which is constituted at any given movement in time by the intersection of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, etc. contribute to the experience of its members. This criticism has the following features:
a. It tends to be more overtly political in its support of oppressed groups.
b. Because of its political orientation, it often draws on Marxist feminist, and other political theories in performing its analyses.
c. It is especially interested in popular culture.
Cultural criticism emerged to break boundary between 'low' and 'high' culture. Cultural critics want to make the term 'culture' refer to popular culture as well as to that culture we associate with the so-called classics. They want to dismantle the hierarchy that the distinction implies in high and low. When people hear 'culture' they think it is high culture. When they first hear cultural criticism they think it is formal, both in subject and style. But this is not truth. The goal of cultural criticism is to oppose this believe. Cultural critics believe that culture is the way of living which is equal to all. And literature is not a such thing that is read by only the people of low culture or high culture. Cultural critics want to get us away from thinking about certain works as the best' ones produced by a given culture and therefore as the novels that best represent American culture. They seek to be more descriptive and less evaluative, more interested in relating than rating cultural products and events. Cultural critics counter the prevalent notion that culture is some wholeness that had already been formed. They view that culture is interactive, alive, growing, and changing. They are likely to take on the institution of the universe, for that is where the world definitions of culture as high culture are defended.
17. Write a short note on the following:
a) Lesbian criticism
b) Gay criticism
c) Bisexual
d) Transgender and Intersexual
e) Identity of disable
Ans.
(a) Lesbian Criticism
Lesbian can be defined as a woman who has sex with another woman. In other words, a woman whose sexual desire is directed toward women is lesbian.. To promote solidarity among all women, some lesbian theories have suggested that a lesbian is a woman-identified woman. Being a woman- identified woman is not restricted to the sexual domain but consists of directing the bulk of one's attention and emotional energy to other women and having other women as, one's primary source of emotional sustenance and psychological support. In bonding with one another sexually and denying men access their bodies, lesbians deny patriarchy one of its most powerful tools: heterosexuality. Some lesbian are separatist. They disassociate themselves as much as possible from all men, including gay men and from heterosexual women as well. A lesbian critic argues that a writer known to have been a sexually active lesbian coded lesbian meaning in an apparently heterosexual narrative. Tyson (2015) says that lesbian critics also analyze the sexual politics of specific texts by examining, for example how lesbian characters or "masculine" women are portrayed in literature by and about lesbians.
(b) Gay Criticism
Gay criticism is related to the sexual relations between men or even just the sexual desire of one man for another. It is a homosexual desire of men. The kinds of analysis that tend to engage the attention of gay critics often fall under the heading of gay sensibility. Tyson (2015) puts that gay critics attempt to determine what might constitute a gay poetics or a way of writing that is uniquely gay; to establish a gay literary tradition, and to decide what writers and work belong to that tradition. Gay critics also examine how gay sensibility affects literary expression and studies the ways in which heterosexual texts can have a homoerotic dimension. They try to rediscover gay writers from the past whose work was underappreciated, distorted , or suppressed, including gay writers who have been presumed heterosexual. They try to determine the sexual politics of specific texts, analyzing, for example, how gay characters or 'feminine' men are portrayed in both gay and heterosexual texts. Finally gay critics identify and correct heterosexist interpretations of literature that fail to recognize or appreciate the gay sensibility informing specific literary works.
Gay criticism raises voice for the right of homosexual men. It looks at homosexual elements in literature. It takes homosexual natural as heterosexuality. It advocates that homosexual relation of men must be treated equally.
(c) Bisexual
Bisexual criticism is related to the sex of people both with men and women. Bisexuals are regarded unnatural by the society. Therefore the mainstream society insults or dominates or marginalizes them. The pain and sufferings of bisexual in the society are major themes. Bisexual literature includes works that feature bisexuality as the main plot point, as well as works with major bisexual characters. Much of bisexual literature focuses on highlighting bisexuality's presence in history, the specificity of bisexual experiences, and its existence as a viable form of sexual identification. The recent catalyst of gay right movements inspired a surge of more LGBT literature and bisexuality is slowly making a rise and becoming more visible in literature and individuals. Fanny Hill by John Cleland is an example of bisexuality in literature. In this novel, the titular character Fanny has exciting and satisfying sex with other women as well as with men.
(d) Transgender and Intersexual
Some of people are found to change their gender from one to another. Transgender literature is a collective term used to designate the literary production that addresses, has been written by or portrays people of diverse gender identity. Representations in literature of people that transition their gender have existed for millennia with the earliest instance probably being the book Metamorphoses, by the Roman poet Ovid. Transgender literature focuses on a range of themes, genres, and topics in literature written by, about and sometimes for transgender men, transgender women, and non- binary trans voices. Transgender critics want to end the discriminatory behavior to the transgender people. They suggest that we should take transgender as a natural process. Transgender should not suffer social injustice form society.
Intersexual perspective of literary criticism deals with the people having both sexes or having ambiguous sex. Intersexual critics identify and correct unambiguous sex interpretations of literature that fail to recognize or appreciate the intersexual sensitivity informing speech literary works. Intersexual people are regarded unnatural by the society. So, intersexual critics want freedom of intersexual people from unequal and biased judgment of the society.
(e) Disability: Identity of Disable
The disabled people make up approximately 15 percent of the world population and are among the most poor and disempowered group globally. Disabled people are able. differently. We read short stories, poems, memoirs, essays, and plays and these texts help us to historicize images of disability in literature. Sometimes we read text written by disabled people like the novel of Jhamak Kumari Ghimire in Nepali. Studying disability in literature helps us to explore what our culture decides is normal and asks us to consider what makes us human. Disability critics claim that literature both reflect and create cultural messages about ability and disability, normal and abnormal. They say that literature can help us understand the experience of the disability, as well as understand our own responses to disability in our own lives and in our culture. The society look disabled people differently than normal ones but the critics advocate that they should be taken as normal citizens and they are to be represented in literature as differently able instead of disabled ones.
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