Feminist Criticism

Feminist Criticism

The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

Examines ways in which

literature reinforces

加强

or undermines

破坏

the oppression

压迫

of

women

Economically

Socially

Politically

Psychologically

Therefore,

feminism

’

s

goal

is

to

change

these

degrading

可耻的

views

of

women

so

that

all

women will realize they are not a

“

non-significant Other

”

and will realize that each woman is a

valuable person possessing

控制

the same privileges and rights as every man.

(1)

The

basic

view

is

that Western

civilization

is

pervasively

patriarchal

家族的

(ruled

by

the

father)

—

that is, it is male-centered and controlled, and is organized and conducted

管理

in such a

way as to subordinate

使

居下位

women to men in all cultural domains.

From

the

Hebrew

Bible

and

Greek

philosophic

writings

to

the

present,

the

female

tends

to

be

defined by negative reference

提及

to the male as the human norm, hence as an Other, or kind of

non-man, by her lack of the identifying male organ, of

male powers, and of the

male character

traits that are presumed, in the patriarchal view, to have achieved the most important scientific and

technical inventions and the major works of civilization and culture.

Women themselves are taught, in the process of being socialized, to internalize the reigning

统治

的

patriarchal

ideology

(that is, the conscious and unconscious presuppositions

假想

about male

superiority), and so are conditioned to derogate

贬损

their own sex and to cooperate in their own

s ubordination

从属关系

.

(3)

The

further

claim

is

that

this

patriarchal

(or

or

ideology

pervades those writings which have been traditionally considered great literature, and which until

recently have been written mainly by men for men. Such works, lacking autonomous female role

models, and implicitly addressed to male readers, either leave the woman reader an alien outsider

or else solicit her to identify against herself by taking up the position of the male subject and so

assuming male values and ways of perceiving, feeling, and acting.

A

number

of

feminists

have

concentrated,

not

on

the

woman

as

reader,

but

on

what

Elaine

Showalter

calls

g ynocriticism

—

that

is,

a

criticism

which

concerns

itself

with

developing

a

specifically

female

framework

for

dealing

with

works

written

by

women,

including

Elaine

Showalter's

A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bront?

to Lessing

(1977);

and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar

’

s

The Madwoman in the Attic

(1979).

New Criticism

Abrams’

Quaternity of Critical Approaches to Literature

Scientific Approaches

?

Russian Formalism

?

Anglo-American New Criticism

?

Czech Structuralism

?

French Structuralism

?

Post Structuralism

New Criticism

1

This

term,

set

current

by

the

publication

of

John

Crowe

Ransom's

The

New

Criticism

in

1941,

came to be applied to a theory and practice that was prominent in American literary criticism until

late in the 1960s. The movement derived in considerable part from elements in I. A Richard

’

s

Principles of Literary Criticism

(1924) and

Practical Criticism

(1929) and from the critical essays

of T. S. Eliot.

It

opposed

反对

the

prevailing

interest

of

scholars,

critics,

and

teachers

of

that

era

in

the

biographies

传记

of authors, the social context of literature, and literary history by insisting that

the

proper

concern

of

literary

criticism

is

not

with

the

external

circumstances

or

effects

or

historical position of a work, but with a detailed consideration of the work itself as an independent

entity.

Common ideas

1)

A poem, it is held, should be treated as such

—

in Eliot's words,

as poetry and not

another

thing

—

and

should

therefore

be

regarded

as

an

independent

and

self-sufficient

verbal

object. The first law of criticism, John Crowe Ransom said,

the nature of the object

own sake.

New Critics warn the reader against critical practices which divert attention from the text itself.

Because of this critical focus on the literary work in isolation from its attendant circumstances and

effects, the New Criticism is often classified as a type of critical

formalism.

2)

The principles of the New Criticism are basically verbal. That is, literature is conceived to be a

special kind of language whose attributes are defined by systematic opposition to the language of

science

and

of

practical

and

logical

discourse,

and

the

explicative

procedure

is

to

analyze

the

meanings and interactions of words,

figures of speech,

and

symbols.

The

emphasis

is

on

the

“

organic

unity,

”

有机整体

in

a

successful

literary

work,

of

overall

structure

and

verbal

meanings,

and

we

are

warned

against

separating

the

two

by

what

Cleanth

Brooks has called

“

the heresy of paraphrase.

”

意释误说

3)

The distinctive procedure of a New Critic is

explication,

or

close reading:

the detailed analysis

of

the

complex

interrelations

and

ambiguities

(multiple

meanings)

of

the

verbal

and

figurative

components within a work.

Explication

de

texte

(stressing

all

kinds

of

information

relevant

to

the

full

understanding

of

a

word or passage) has long been a formal procedure for teaching literature in French schools, but

the kind of explicative analyses of verbal interactions characteristic of the New Criticism derives

from such books as I. A. Richards'

Practical Criticism

(1929) and William Empson's

Seven Types

of Ambiguity

(1930).

4)

The distinction between literary

genres,

although acknowledged, does not play an essential role

in the New Criticism. The essential components of any work of literature, whether lyric, narrative,

or dramatic, are conceived to be words, images, and symbols rather than character, thought, and

plot.

These linguistic elements, whatever the genre, are often said to be organized around a central and

humanly

significant

theme,

and

to

manifest

high

literary

value

to

the

degree

that

they

manifest

“

tension ,

”

张力

“

irony,

”

反讽

and

“

paradox

”

悖论

in

achieving

a

“

reconciliation

of

diverse

impulses

”

or an

“

equilibrium of opposed forces.

”

不同力量的平衡

The form of a work, whether or not it has characters and plot, is said to be primarily a

meanings,

which

evolve

into

an

integral

and

freestanding

unity

mainly

through

a

play

and

2

counterplay of

The revolutionary thrust of the mode had lost much of its force by the 1960s, when it gave way to

various newer theories of criticism, but it has left a deep and enduring mark on the criticism and

teaching

of

literature,

in

its

primary

emphasis

on

the

individual

work

and

in

the

variety

and

subtlety of the devices that it made available for analyzing its internal relations.

Tension

became a common descriptive and evaluative word in the criticism of the 1930s and later,

especially after Allen Tate, who

proposed it as a term to be made by

“

lopping the prefixes off the

logical terms extension and intension.

”

In technical logic the

“

intension

< br>”

内涵

of a word is the set

of abstract attributes which must be possessed by any object to which the word can be literally

applied, and the

extension

”

外延

of a word is the class of concrete objects to which the word

applies.

?

The meaning of good poetry, according to Tate,

all the extension and intension that we can find in it.

On

the Limits of Poetry,

1948.) It would seem that by this statement Tate meant that a good

poem incorporates both the abstract and the concrete, the general idea and the particular

image, in an integral whole.

Paradox

悖论

?

A paradox is a statement which seems on its face to be logically contradictory or absurd,

yet

turns

out

to

be

interpretable

in

a

way

that

makes

good

sense.

An

instance

is

the

conclusion to John Donne's sonnet

?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

?

And death shall be no more;

Death, thou shalt die.

?

?

Paradox was a prominent concern of many

New Critics,

who extended the term from its

limited

application

to

a

type

of

figurative

language

so

as

to

make

it

encompass

all

surprising

deviations

背离

from,

or

qualifications

修正

of,

common

perceptions

or

commonplace opinions.

Intentional Fallacy

意图谬见

?

The term was proposed by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley in

Fallacy

literary

work

by

reference

to

evidence,

outside

the

text

itself,

for

the

intention

—

the

design and purposes

—

of its author.

?

They asserted that an author's intended aims and meanings in writing a literary work

—

whether these are asserted by the author or

merely inferred from our knowledge of the

author's

life

and

opinions

—

are

irrelevant

to

the

literary

critic,

because

the

meaning,

structure,

and

value

of

a

text

are

inherent

within

the

finished,

freestanding,

and

public

work of literature itself.

Affective Fallacy

感受谬见

In

an

essay

published

in

1946,

W.

K.

Wimsatt

and

Monroe

C.

Beardsley

defined

the

affective

fallacy as the error of

evaluating a poem by its effects

—

especially its emotional effects

—

upon

the reader. As a result of this fallacy

tends to disappear,

Criticism of New Criticism

3