10 literary theory

7/30/2019 10 Literary Theory

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Literary Theory

Definition, Approaches, History,

Examples



Literary criticism as a systematic study

“It is clear that criticism cannot be asystematic study unless there is a quality inliterature which enables it to be so. We haveto adopt the hypothesis, then, that just asthere is an order of nature behind the naturalsciences, so literature is not a piled aggregate

of 'works' but an order of 'words'.” Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)



Vassilis Lambropoulos, David NealMiller , eds.Tw en tieth-Cen tury L i terary Theory :

An Introductory Anthology

http://www.sunypress.edu/p-861-twentieth-century-literary-theo.aspx http://books.google.com/books/about/20th_century_literary_criticism.html?id=WSMaAQAAIAAJ

David Lodge,20th c entu ry l i terary cr i t ic ism : a reader (1972)

http://www.sunypress.edu/p-861-twentieth-century-literary-theo.aspx

http://books.google.com/books/about/20th_century_literary_criticism.html?id=WSMaAQAAIAAJ

















Terry Eagleton,L iterary Theory : An Introduction(1983)

http://books.google.com/books?id=QNmFm4M_RXkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs _ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false ,http://books.google.com/books?id=6TZ2iVrS6MgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&=

Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, Peter Brooker,A reader 's g u ide to co ntem po rary l i terary theory (1985; 5 th edition 2005)

http://books.google.com/books?id=QNmFm4M_RXkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0


http://books.google.com/books?id=6TZ2iVrS6MgC&printsec=frontcover









From theories to Theory

English Literature as a disciplinewas designed and consolidated during the second half of the19th century

(it was a consequence of the coming of the nationaldimension into prominence)Canon construction, canon as a national narrativeHistorical, biographical, moral and rhetorical considerations

were blendedAs an academic discipline it started to develop in a way to meet

scientific criteria



From theories to TheoryNew Criticism

New Criticism was a movement in literary theory thatdominated American and had an impact on Englishliterary criticism in the middle decades of the 20thcentury.

Its chief critical strategy was close reading, particularlywhen discussing poetry, emphasizing that a work of literature functions as a self-contained, self referential

aesthetic object.




New Criticism developed in the 1920s-30s and peakedin the 1940s-50s. The movement is named after JohnCrowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism .

New Critics focused on the text of a work of literatureand tried to exclude the author's biography andintention, historical and cultural contexts, andmoralistic bias from their analysis.

Reader's response was not taken into account either.




New Critics often performed a "close reading" of thetext and believed the structure and meaning of the textwere intimately connected and should not be analyzed

separately.

The main aim of New Criticism was to make literarycriticism scientific.




In 1954, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsleypublished a classic and controversial New Criticalessay entitled "The Intentional Fallacy" , in which theyargued strongly against the relevance of an author'sintention, or "intended meaning" in the analysis of aliterary work. For Wimsatt and Beardsley, the words onthe page were all that mattered; importation of meanings from outside the text was consideredirrelevant, and potentially distracting.




In another essay, "The Affective Fallacy”, which servedas a kind of sister essay to "The Intentional Fallacy„ Wimsatt and Beardsley also discounted the reader'spersonal/emotional reaction to a literary work as a validmeans of analyzing a text.

This fallacy would later be repudiated by theorists fromthe reader-response school of literary theory.




The popularity of the New Criticism persisted throughthe Cold War years in both American high schools andcolleges, in part, because it offered a relativelystraightforward (and politically uncontroversial)

approach to teaching students how to read andunderstand poetry and fiction. To this end, CleanthBrooks and Robert Penn Warren publishedUnderstanding Poetry and Understanding Fiction

which both became standard pedagogical textbooks inAmerican high schools and colleges during the 1950s,60's, and 70's.




Studying a passage of prose or poetry in New Criticalstyle required careful, exacting scrutiny of the passageitself. Formal elements such as rhyme, meter, setting,characterization, and plot were used to identify the

theme of the text. In addition to the theme, the NewCritics also looked for paradox, ambiguity, irony, andtension to help establish the single best and mostunified interpretation of the text.

Such an approach has been criticized as constituting aconservative attempt to isolate the text and to shield itfrom external, political concerns such as those of race,class, and gender.




One of the most common grievances against the NewCriticism, is an objection to the idea of the text asautonomous; detractors react against a perceived antihistoricism, accusing the New Critics of divorcing

literature from its place in history.




Another objection comes from the reader-responseschool of theory, rightly claiming that the fundamentalclose reading technique is based on the assumption

that the subject and the object of study - the readerand the text - are stable and independent forms, ratherthan products of the unconscious process of signification.



From theories to TheoryI. A. Richards

I. A. Richards (1893 –1979) was an English literary critic.His books, especially Principles of Literary Criticism(1924) and Practical Criticism (1929) , proved to befounding influences for the New Criticism.

The concept of 'practical criticism' led in time to thepractices of close reading, what is often thought of asthe beginning of modern literary criticism. Richards isregularly considered one of the founders of thecontemporary study of literature in English.




In Practical Criticism he advocated an empirical studyof literary response. He removed authorial andcontextual information from thirteen poems, includingone by Longfellow and four by decidedly marginalpoets. Then he assigned their interpretation toundergraduates at Cambridge University in order toascertain the most likely impediments to an adequateresponse. This approach had a startling impact at thetime in demonstrating the depth and variety of misreadings to be expected of otherwise intelligentcollege students as well as the population at large.




The question arises, however, whether suchinterpretations are misreadings or relevant varieties of reading.




René Wellek and Austin Warren’sTheory of Literaturewas much ahead of its time when it first published in1949.

By the 1970s and 80s the term „study of literature” was getting to be substituted by the term „theory” and soon taken over by „Theory” with capital T.




Theory has a history and is categorized into schools,such as – roughly in the order of their appearance – Liberal Humanism, New Criticism, Formalism,

Structuralism, Marxist, Psychological Approach,Archetypal Approach, Myth Criticism, CulturalCriticism, Post-structuralism, Deconstruction, NewHistoricism, Reader’s Response Criticism,

Hermeneutic Approach, Phenomenological Criticism,Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, Feminism, GenderStudies, Queer Theory, Ecocriticism, etc.



Structuralism

Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Pragueand Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structurallinguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes

of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance inlinguistics, structuralism appeared in academia in thesecond half of the 20th century and grew to becomeone of the most popular approaches in academic fieldsconcerned with the analysis of language, culture, andsociety.



Marxist literary criticism

Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describingliterary criticism based on socialist and dialectictheories. Marxist criticism views literary works asreflections of the social institutions from which they

originate. According to Marxists, even literature itself isa social institution and has a specific ideologicalfunction, based on the background and ideology of theauthor .



Marxist literary criticism

The simplest goals of Marxist literary criticism caninclude an assessment of the political 'tendency' of aliterary work, determining whether its social content orits literary form are 'progressive'. It also includes

analyzing the class constructs demonstrated in theliterature .



Structuralism

The structuralist mode of reasoning has been appliedin a diverse range of fields, including anthropology,sociology, psychology, literary criticism, andarchitecture.

The most prominent thinkers associated withstructuralism include the linguist Roman Jakobson, theanthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the psychoanalystJacques Lacan, the philosopher and historian MichelFoucault, the philosopher and social commentatorJacques Derrida, and the literary critic Roland Barthes.



Structuralism

Proponents of structuralism would argue that aspecific domain of culture may be understood bymeans of a structure - modelled on language - that is

distinct both from the organizations of reality andthose of ideas or the imagination. In the 1970s,structuralism was criticized for its rigidity andahistoricism.



New Historicism

New Historicism is a school of literary theory,grounded in critical theory, that developed in the1980s, primarily through the work of the critic StephenGreenblatt.

New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand thework through its historical context and to understandcultural and intellectual history through literature,which documents the new discipline of the history of ideas.



Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a term introduced by Frenchphilosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 bookOf Grammatology .

Deconstruction refers to a process of exploring thecategories and concepts that history and tradition hasimposed on a word or a work. Deconstruction suggestsanalysis with high precision.



Deconstruction

In describing deconstruction, Derrida famouslyobserved that "there is nothing outside the text." Thatis to say, all of the references used to interpret a text

are themselves texts, even the "text" of reality as areader knows it. There is no truly objective, non-textualreference from which interpretation can begin.

Deconstruction, then, can be described as an effort tounderstand a text through its relationships to variouscontexts.



Post-structuralism

The post-structuralist movement may be broadlyunderstood as a body of distinct responses toStructuralism. Structuralism argued that human culturemay be understood by means of a structure - modeledafter structural linguistics - that is distinct both fromthe organizations of reality and the organization of ideas and imagination.



Post-structuralism

The post-structuralist approach includes the rejectionof the self-sufficiency of the structures thatstructuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary

oppositions that constitute those structures.



Reader-response criticism

Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theorythat focuses on the reader (or "audience") and his orher experience of a literary work, in contrast to otherschools and theories that focus attention primarily on

the author or the content and form of the work.

Although literary theory has long paid some attentionto the reader's role in creating the meaning andexperience of a literary work, modern reader-responsecriticism began in the 1960s and '70s, particularly inAmerica and Germany, in works by, Stanley Fish,Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, Roland Barthes,and others.



Reader-response criticism

An important predecessor was I. A. Richards, who in1929 analyzed a group of Cambridge undergraduates‘ misreadings.

Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as anactive agent who constitutes meaning to the workand completes its meaning through interpretation.

Reader-response criticism argues that literature shouldbe viewed as a performing art in which each readercreates his or her own, possibly unique, text-relatedperformance.



Reader-response criticismvs. New Criticism

It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the reader'srole in re-creating literary works is ignored. NewCriticism had emphasized that only that which is within

a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to theauthority or intention of the author, nor to thepsychology of the reader, was allowed in thediscussions of orthodox New Critics.



Psychoanalytic criticism

Psychoanalytic literary criticism refers to literarycriticism or literary theory which, in method, concept,or form, is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.

Psychoanalytic reading has been practiced since theearly development of psychoanalysis itself, and hasdeveloped into a heterogeneous interpretive tradition.



Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism is the study of literature and environmentfrom an interdisciplinary point of view where allsciences come together to analyze the environment

and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation.

Ecocriticism is an intentionally broad approach that is

known by a number of other designations, including"green (cultural) studies", "ecopoetics", and"environmental literary criticism".




Delia Da Sousa Correa and W. R. Owens: The

Handbook to Literary Research . 2nd ed. London:Routledge, 2010

Theory exerts an institutional pressure. Students of literature are supposed to understand that their variousprojects must demonstrate an awareness of Theory.

Theory is a dominant academic discourse, a body of knowledge that should be acquired and applied.




Theory is not a given field of knowledge with many‘schools’ which has to be sampled and picked from and applied, but is an institutional extrapolation from

an ongoing process of debating and thinking aboutliterature and criticism .



Theories

If so, can any work be analyzed by any method andcritical perspective

↕ ↕ ↕

Certain works are more suitable for an analysisaccording to a particular method or critical perspective



Robert Frost(1874-1963)

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queerTo stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the year .



Frost cont.

He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask if there is some mistake.The only other sound's the sweepOf easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep .But I have promises to keep,And miles to go before I sleep,And miles to go before I sleep.



Approaches

New CriticismMarxistCultural

PsychologicalArchetypalEcocriticism



William Blake(1757-1827)

The Chimney Sweeper

When my mother died I was very young,And my father sold me while yet my tongueCould scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,That curled like a lamb's back , was shaved: so I said,"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair ."

And so he was quiet; and that very night,As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, -That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.



Blake cont.

And by came an angel who had a bright key,And he opened the coffins and set them all free ;Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,And wash in a river , and shine in the sun .

Then naked and white , all their bags left behind,They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,He'd have God for his father, and never want joy .

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark ,And got with our bags and our brushes to work .Though the morning was cold , Tom was happy and warm ;So if all do their duty they need not fear harm .



Approaches

MarxismCulturalNew Historicism



Carol Ann Duffy(1955)

Sit at Peace

When they gave you them to shell and you saton the back-doorstep, opening the small green envelopeswith your thumb, minding the queues of peas , you weresitting at peace. Sit at peace, sit at peace , all summer.

When Muriel Purdy, embryonic cop, thwacked the backof your knees with a bamboo-cane, mouth open, soundlessin a cave of pain, you ran to your house,a greeting wean, to be kept in and told once again .

Nip was a dog. Fluff was a cat. They sat at peaceon a coloured- in mat, so why couldn’t you? Sometimes your questions were stray snipes over no- man’s land, bringing sharp hands and the order you had to obey . Sit –



Duffy, cont.

At – Peace ! Jigsaws you couldn’t door dull stampsdidn’t want to collect arrived with the frost.You would rather stand with your nose to the window, cloudingthe strange blue view with your restless breath.

But the day you fell from the Parachute Tree , they camefrom nowhere running, carried you in to a quiet roomyou were glad of. A long silent afternoon, dreamlike .A voice saying peace, sit at peace, sit at peace .



Approaches

CulturalPostmodernismFeminism

Gender



John Donne(1572-1631)

A Valediction: Of Weeping

Let me pour forth

My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,And by this mintage they are something worth.

For thus they bePregnant of thee ;

Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more ;When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore ;

So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.



Donne, cont.

On a round ballA workman, that hath copies by, can layAn Europe, Afric, and an Asia,And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.

So doth each tear.Which thee doth wear,

A globe , yea world, by that impression grow,Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflowThis world , by waters sent from thee , my heaven dissolvèd so.



Donne, cont.

O ! more than moon ,

Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere;Weep me not dead , in thine arms, but forbearTo teach the sea, what it may do too soon;

Let not the windExample find

To do me more harm than it purposeth :Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,

Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.



Approaches

New CriticismCultural CriticismPostcolonialism

Ch l T T



Charles Tennyson Turner(1808-1879)Letty’s Globe

When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,And her young artless words began to flow,

One day we gave the child a colour'd sphereOf the wide earth, that she might mark and know,

By tint and outline, all its sea and land.

She patted all the world; old empires peep'dBetween her baby fingers; her soft handWas welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd,And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss;

But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eyeOn our own isle, she raised a joyous cry--'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!'

And while she hid all England with a kiss,Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.

Ch l T T



Charles Tennyson Turner(1808-1879)Letty’s Globe

When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,And her young artless words began to flow,

One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere Of the wide earth , that she might mark and know ,

By tint and outline, all its sea and land .

She patted all the world ; old empires peep'dBetween her baby fingers; her soft hand Was welcome at all frontiers . How she leap'd,And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss ;

But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry -'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!'

And while she hid all England with a kiss ,Bright over Europe fell her golden hair .



Victorian Terrestrial Globes



Victorian Terrestrial Globe



Map of the British Empire, 1922



Map of the British Empire, 1886



Approaches

PostcolonialismGender

William Butler Yeats



William Butler Yeats(1865-1939)

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating stillAbove the staggering girl, her thighs caressedBy the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers pushThe feathered glory from her loosening thighs?And how can body, laid in that white rush,But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?



Yeats, cont.

A shudder in the loins engenders thereThe broken wall, the burning roof and towerAnd Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,So mastered by the brute blood of the air,Did she put on his knowledge with his powerBefore the indifferent beak could let her drop?



Approaches

New CriticismCultural StudiesPostcolonialFeministGender

Leda and the Swan. The work is probably an old copy after a painting of this



p y py p gsubject by Michelangelo which he made in 1530, in tempera, for the Duke of Ferrara, but which was sent instead to the King of France. National Gallery,London

Leda and the Swan. The work is probably an old copy after a painting of this



p y py p gsubject by Michelangelo which he made in 1530, in tempera, for the Duke of Ferrara, but which was sent instead to the King of France. National Gallery,London

Leda and the Swan Engraving after Michelangelo’s lost painting



Leda and the Swan. Engraving after Michelangelo s lost paintingby Cornelus Bos (1506-1564)British Museum, London



Critical approaches

Wilfred L. Guerin, Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C.Reesman, John R. Willingham:

A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature . 4thed.New York, Oxford: Oxford University Oress, 1999



M. H. Abrams,The Mirror and the Lamp:Romantic Theory and theCritical Tradition (1953)

Introduction: Orientation

of Critical Theories

The literary work examined



The literary work examined

in relation tothe worldthe audiencethe author

or examined in itself



The literary work in relation to:

UNIVERSE

WORK OF ART

AUTHOR AUDIENCE



The literary work in relation to:

Work of art – audienceWhat effect the work of art has / should have

Work of art – in itself:

What it is like (formal, structural analyses)



Mimetic theories

Mimesis and imitationrather: representation

Aristotle’s Poetics : dramatic plot as imitation of an actionColeridge: imitation of nature in being an organic unityRealistic imitation: recognizable

(it is like what the reader knows)Aristotle: imitation: an internal relation of form to content,

vs an external relation of copy and originalYou are aware of the resemblance of tragic action to human

behaviour and you are aware of the conventions of tragicdrama as different from other forms



Pragmatic theories

1970s: reader-response criticism, LiteraryPragmatics: reader’s contribution to text reading actualizes potential meaning

18th

century: art has to be useful"The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing ,“

(Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare)

Follows classical theory of rhetoric (= art of persuasion) 5 part process:

invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery



Expressive theories

Art as an expression of feelings:“For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow

of powerful feelings” William Wordsworth in

“Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1800) Art as an expression of the personal subconscious

Sigmund Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams”

(1900) → psychoanalytical criticism Art as an expression of the collective unconsciousC.G. Jung, archetypes, archetypal images



Objective theories

The work of art studied in itself, as a closedsystem: internal structure, form, internalconsistency - its "intrinsic" rather than

"extrinsic" qualities.art for art’s sake (l’art pour l’art) No one theory can explain all works

(The essay is an introduction to his book on theRomantics: The Mirror and the Lamp , 1953

M H Abrams “Orientation of critical



M.H. Abrams, Orientation of criticaltheories”

mimetic theories

objective theories

expressive theories pragmatic theories



textual criticism

The editorial art - establishing the text“The aim of a critical edition should be to presentthe text, so far as the available evidence permits,

in the form in which we may suppose that itwould have stood in a fair copy, made by theauthor himself, of the work as he finally intendedit.” W. W. Greg, The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare

(rev. edn. Oxford 1954)



authorial intention

A design or plan in the author's mind:“We argued that the design or intention of theauthor is neither available nor desirable as astandard for judging the success of a work of literary art, and it seems to us that this is aprinciple which goes deep into some differencesin the history of critical attitude .”

“The Intentional Fallacy” by W.K. Wimsatt and

Monroe C. Beardsley (1946) In: The Verbal Icon:studies in the meaning of poetry (also In: Lodge's 2Oth c. Literary Criticism )



impressionistic criticism

Recreate the poem while writing about the poem.“The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poemand its results (what it is and what it does) [...] It beginsby trying to derive the standard of criticism from thepsychological effects of the poem an ends inimpressionism and relativism. [...] Plato's feeding andwatering of the passions was an early example of affective theory, and Aristotle's countertheory of catharsis was another”

“The Affective Fallacy” by W.K. Wimsatt and MonroeC. Beardsley (1949) In: The Verbal Icon: studies in themeaning of poetry (also In: Lodge's 20th c. Literary Criticism)



value judgements

“Literary criticism has in the present day become aprofession, - but it has ceased to be an art. Its object isno longer that of proving that certain literary work isgood and other literary work is bad, in accordance withrules which the critic is able to define. English criticismat present rarely even pretends to go so far as this. Itattempts, in the first place, to tell the public whether abook be or be not be worth public attention; and, inthe second place, so to describe the purport of thework as to enable those who have not time orinclination for reading to feel that by a short cut theyhave become acquainted with its contents. Both thesepojects, if fairly well carried out, are salutary .”

Anthony Trollope, Autobiography (1883), ch. xiv



interpretation

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectupon art... The temptation to interpretMarienbad should be resisted. What matters

in Marienbad in the pure, untranslateable,sensuous immediacy of some of its images,and its vigorous if narrow solution to certain

problems of cinematic form... In place of ahermeneutics we need an erotics of art.”Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (1967)



deconstructing interpretations

We need to interpret interpretations more thanto interpret things.

(Montaigne)Quoted in Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and

Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” [1967], Writing and Difference, trans. AlanBass (London: Routledge Classics, 2001) page351-370: 351.



An example: gender studies

• Mimetic approach: the way the workrepresents gender issues in society

• Pragmatic approach: the way the work canhelp raising awareness and show alternativemodels of relating to gender issues

• Expressive approach: the way the author

expresses the experience of being a woman, aman, a human being of a specific gender

• Objective approach: e.g.,écriture féminine



(an aside about basic terms)

• female ≠ feminine ≠ feminist biological vs socio-cultural vs political

context and terminology

• feminism ≠ gender studies - political vs academic context and terminology,

- focus on women vs focus on gendered experienceof being human

• feminist literary criticism• gender studies in literature

Gender as performance



Judith Butler

Gender Trouble,1990

Bodies That Matter: On the

Discursive Limits of Sex , 1993

Another example:



Another example:adaptation theory

“My method has been to identify a text -based issuethat extends across a variety of media, find ways tostudy it comparatively, and then tease out thetheoretical implications from multiple textualexamples. At various times, therefore, I take on the

roles of formalist semiotician, poststructuralistdeconstructor, or feminist and postcolonialdemythifier;

d h



Linda Hutcheon

but at no time do I (at least consciously) try toimpose any of these theories on my examination of the texts or the general issues surrounding

adaptation. All these perspectives and others,however, do inevitably inform my theoretical frameof reference”

Hutcheon, Linda (2009-04- 04). “Preface” to ATheory of Adaptation . T & F Books US. Kindle

Edition.

Li d H h



Linda Hutcheon

… It is the very act of adaptation itself thatinterests me, not necessarily in any specificmedia or even genre.…

My working assumption is that commondenominators across media and genres can beas revealing as significant differences.

Li d H h



Linda Hutcheon

…. A Theory of Adaptation begins its study of adaptations as adaptations; that is, not only asautonomous works. Instead, they are

examined as deliberate, announced, andextended revisitations of prior works. Becausewe use the word adaptation to refer to both a

product and a process of creation andreception, this suggests to me the need for atheoretical perspective that is at once formaland "experiential."

Li d H h



Linda Hutcheon

…This book is not, however, a history of adaptation, though it is written with anawareness of the fact that adaptations can

and do have different functions in differentcultures at different times. A Theory of

Adaptation is quite simply what its title says it

is: one single attempt to think through someof the theoretical issues surrounding theubiquitous phenomenon of adaptation asadaptation.”



Linda Hutcheon

A Theory of Adaptation

Routledge, 2006

Th l f li i i i



The language of literary criticism

“A statement may be used for the sake of thereference, true or false, which it causes. This isthe scientific use of language. But it may alsobe used for the sake of the effects in emotionand attitude produced by the reference itoccasions. This is the emotive use of language .” I.A. Richards, “The two uses of

language” (ch. 34 from The Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) also in Lodge's 20thCentury Literary Criticism

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