Reparative reading questions the practical imperative of historisation and contextualisation within the hermeneutics of suspicion, and points towards a less-stable, oscillating epistemology. Eve Sedgwick’s definition of reparative reading in Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading attempts to account for the oscillatory linguistic meanings and identities that transcend realistic temporality, relying on a self-reflexive mode of criticism as a means of tracing linguistic development. However, its strong argument against the influence of literary canon is also its weakness, as it appears to reject the paranoid influence of canonical, philosophical texts in modern literary practices, including her own. As such, Alexander Veselovsky’s strand of …show more content…
The ‘depressive state’ is a position that “inaugurates ethical possibility” (137) to epistemology. Paranoid reading relies on knowledge grounded by New Historicism in order to support its critical views on historical narrative, accepting that its ethical responsibility towards Lost Time is to always remain critical of present narratives. This reading blames its negative affect on history, and is not critical of the pessimism it perpetuates, while at the same time inflicting the temporally-imperative always onto the technique. Sedgwick remains critical of a reliance on historical fact in reading practices, but does not disavow them completely. She …show more content…
Her endorsement of both a self-critical and more holistic form of criticism on epistemology requires ethical imperatives that paranoid reading seems to either disregard or utilise in order to further its own cynical reading of texts. Even more so, Marx’s assumption on revolutionary movements against tradition materialises in reparative reading in “timidly conjur[ing] up the spirits of the past” (36). Reparative reading requires past trauma, as does paranoid reading, in identifying its positive affects, but it is ignorant in disavowing the other side of the good/bad dichotomy. This is particularly necessary when accounting for the various histories and traumas experienced on a global scale. While her argument on reparative reading indicates that it must be a weak and unstable theory, she inevitably reverts back to a strong argument that focuses on the negative, rather than the positive, affects of the hermeneutics of
Among its detractors, literary theory has a reputation for sinful ignorance of both literature and the outside world; literary critics either overemphasize the word at the expense of context (as in formalistic criticisms) or overemphasize context at the expense of the word (as in political and historical criticisms). However, deconstruction holds a particularly tenuous position among literary theories as a school that apparently commits both sins; while formalistically focusing on the words on the page, deconstruction subjects those words to unnatural abuse. Thus, deconstruction seems locked in the ivory tower, in the company of resentful New-Critical neighbors.
Through war and gender, Susan Griffin interplays between private tribulation and public tragedy. The excerpt, ‘Our Secret’, from her book,‘A Chorus of Stones’, helps to set information about the first atomic bombs. Griffin alternates between the information of the first atomic bombs and the struggles in the personal lives of regular people and major figures, such as, Heinrich Himmler and her own family. While reading ‘Our Secret’, the lessons of reading, writing, and thinking are iterated throughout the work. The structure and features of her work are foreign to many such as myself, because the use of this method has not been seen before. When many read ‘Our Secret’, it is the first time that they are encountering this type of writing method. It keeps the readers interested in what was being read the entire time. The alternations between the italicized sections and her story require the re-reading of the two portions allowing for better comprehension. To better understand her method of writing looking at the connections within the text is vitally important. Without these connections, between such things as the first atomic bombs, DNA/biology, Heinrich Himmler’s life, and many other topics, the reading may make no sense at all to the readers. It would seem to the readers, through their first time of reading it, that it just jumps from one topic to the next and that may begin to confuse the reader. The reader may have seen this type of method in another text before, and they would be able to understand a lot more than the readers who haven’t seen this type of writing method used before. Students gain a deeper understanding of the text when they recognize connections. These connections connect the reader to the characters being discu...
Deconstruction or poststructuralist is a type of literary criticism that took its roots in the 1960’s. Jacques Derrida gave birth to the theory when he set out to demonstrate that all language is associated with mental images that we produce due to previous experiences. This system of literary scrutiny interprets meaning as effects from variances between words rather than their indication to the things they represent. This philosophical theory strives to reveal subconscious inconsistencies in a composition by examining deeply beneath its apparent meaning. Derrida’s theory teaches that texts are unstable and queries about the beliefs of words to embody reality.
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 2011. Print.
Here, Marx’s theatrical interpretation of the historical process appears to be somewhat contradictory to his own theories of base and superstructure, teleological understanding of history, and historical materialism: In the view of the historical materialist, history never repeats, and both Napoleon’s acting and the peasant culture to support it belong to “superstructure.” Marx’s introduction of theatrical interpretation of history might be his theoretical compromise to the reality.
Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, and John R. Willingham. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 125-156.
Willbern, David. "Reading After Freud." Ed. G. Douglas Atkins and Laura Morrow. Contemporary Literary Theory. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989. 158-179.
Although there are numerous approaches employed in understanding literature, the psychoanalytic interpretation most significantly attempts to utilize the symbolic mysteries of a work. In exclusive contrast to the formal approach, which focuses entirely on the wording, the fascinating aspect of the psychoanalytic investigation is that it searches for a purpose beyond that which is strictly in the text. By insinuating the existence of innate and hidden motives, it allows for a broad range of abstract and creative possibilities. When applied to Perrault's, "Little Red Riding Hood," it appropriately suggests evidence toward underlying sexual motivations and tensions. Additionally, this analysis unfolds a constant interplay between forces of the human psyche.
Fetterly, Judith. “Reading About Reading: ‘A Jury of Her Peers’, ‘The Murders in the Morgue,’ and ‘The
Since his arrival in the mid-seventies, Martin Amis has been the enfant terrible of the British lit scene. Many critics consider him to be a masterful writer enginned by a banal, unoriginal mind, while others think he is simply one step ahead. The same critics would probably argue that style and technique supersedes feeling, sensibility and morality in Time's Arrow. Indeed, there are occasions when Amis' cleverness does undercut the moralism he is trying to convey, but that is not due to faulty morals, but to the extraordinary flair that he possesses. Even if you don't want to hear what Amis has to say about the holocaust, read this book - if nothing else, going through time backwards might just teach you the good parts of life that people tend to miss going forwards.
The “hermeneutic activity –the practice of close reading” (373) is what Love evaluates next. The practice of close reading became the framework of hermeneutics in the early 20th century and has been the foundation of text evaluation since then, no matter what different literary approaches and cultural changes were present, since “the richness of texts continues to serve as a carrier for an allegedly superannuated humanism”(373). Her own assertion regarding the interpretation of texts can be interpreted in sev...
Using phrases such as" innocent and childlike fantasies," Karl Marx unambiguously attacks the Hegelian philosophy preponderant during his time, citing in its concept of history an irrevocable divorce with reality. For Marx, history is exactly what it seems to be: a succession of human events in which ideas such as the division of labor, production, and revolution replace their immaterial Hegelian counterparts, if even such counterparts exist. In fact, Marx accuses the token historian of ignoring the fundamental aspects of actual human activity while instead concentrating upon non-actualized ideas at best and imaginary metaphysical concepts at worst.
Barry, Peter. "Psychoanalytic criticism." Beginning Theory: an Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rd ed. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009. 92-115. Print.
By considering such arguments, psychoanalysis can be said to have no ultra fundamental meaning when assessing an author’s work. For former advocate of this analysis, Frederic...
Literary criticism is used as a guideline to help analyze, deconstruct, interpret, or even evaluate literary works. Each type of criticism offers its own methods that help the reader to delve deeper into the text, revealing all of its innermost features. New Criticism portrays how a work is unified, Reader-Response Criticism establishes how the reader reacts to a work, Deconstructive Criticism demonstrates how a work falls apart, Historical Criticism illustrates how the history of the author and the author’s time period influence a text, and last of all, Psychological Criticism expresses how unconscious motivations drive the author in the creation of their work as well as how the reader’s motivations influence their own interpretation of the text (Lynn 139, 191). This creates a deep level of understanding of literature that simply cannot be gained through surface level reading. If not one criticism is beneficial to the reader, then taking all criticisms or a mixture of specific criticisms into consideration might be the best way to approach literary