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Description
Flashcards by Lisza Neumeier, updated more than 1 year ago
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Created by Lisza Neumeier
over 7 years ago
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| Question | Answer |
| Approaching a text with a certain literary theory, it is like.. | ..looking through a certain pair of lenses ... shining a light on literature with a spotlight ...using a filter |
| Approach | in life: Approach: action or idea that helps you deal with a problem or situation (very down to earth) in literary uses: Approach: if we talk about the time machine and look at it with an historical approach to find out about it |
| theory what does it want to explain? | theory (greek: theorein-observe, look at, ..): model of reality; meant to explain reality, used to try to explain or interpret; established and formalized; uses terminology.. |
| Method/methodology | set of activities that is used within the discipline and is used to achieve some kind of outcome (eg. close reading and wide reading are methods)-you do sth, rather than learn sth. often theory and method go together: eg. Poststructuralism |
| School | people working on one theory or one discipline eg. Prague School |
| epistemology/epistemological | theory of knowledge; how we can know what knowledge/truth is/are; umbrella concept for a lot of theories that we’re looking at |
| empirical vs. hermeneutic definitions! | empirical: collecting data, … → proof! hermeneutical approach/epistemology: way of understanding by interpretation (to understand texts and life/ interpret signs/symbols); consequence of reasoning, of arguing, of logic → contrast pair: empirical vs. hermeneutic |
| Constructivism | based on the believe that people construct the world around them on the basis of knowledge structures (how do we make sense of the world?) -way that reality is understood is very fundamental for literary studies -language is a way of constructing reality (constructing a world); also in connecting with political language -not sth that is only for literary text or sth; about how meaning is generated as such (when thinking about right or wrong, constructivism might help with opening up to think about ‘truth’ as such) |
| mimesis/mimetic | refers to the true representation of reality/true copy of the world (very much in contrast with constructivism) eg. a good work of art used to be the best if it’s like the real world → not the case anymore (modern art..) eg. OITNB: criticism that it’s not realistic → mimetic approach (sth that is set in our contemporary time should also be mimetic is very important for people) with certain genres you obviously can’t judge mimetic things but they still do (eg. Harry potter) |
| didacticism/didactic | for a very long time people thought that literature is there to teach (moral value, ..)and delight -literature needs to carry proper values even though there are works that don’t -for mainstream media: didacticism is not so important but eg. children’s books: a lot of criticism from Catholic Church against things like Harry Potter |
| eg. Pemberly extract | -forum that treats characters if they were really living eg. Does Darcy deserve Lizzy? --> very mimetic approach!! fan fiction would also fall in that category |
| What do we need literary theory for? | -Literary theory helps us focus on certain aspects of a text and relate them to the world eg. having a gender relation while reading a text, helps us to relate them to the world -idea of analyzing a narrative situation in the first place: looking at text with structure |
| Where do they come from? | linguistics, philosophy, history, psychoanalysis, .. and therefore can be applied to more than texts (also cultural studies) |
| How can literary theory be defined: | thinking about meaning (through a certain perspective) |
| Can I analyze literary texts without literary theory? | You can without being aware that you’re applying a certain theoretical position. (You might not know about the theory. But you’ll be interested in a certain topic..) You can’t really analyze a text without a literary theory. eg. if you think that gender studies is not interesting for you, you analyze the language because you think it’s the most important for you (already important) |
| Do I have to choose a literary theory and stick with it whatever I do? Term for that? | -no! if you mix them, most of the time you’ll have a good outcome =eclecticism (mixture of theoretical approach) you pick out one for your purposes but then you pick another one for another purpose while analyzing the text |
| Are modern approaches better than old ones? | -not necessarily sometimes lit. theories are also subject to fashion, but even the older approaches have left some trace of the modern ways of approaching literature (eg. Psychoanalysis not the latest theory, but it has become revised, extended) -sometimes the old concepts move from one area to another |
| Are literary theories subject to fashion? | Yes, they are sometimes, but in an academic sense. (difficult to judge what the latest trend ist in theoretical developments) thirty yrs ago people said that feminism is going to go away quicky → certainly not in literary studies (certainly not just a fashion in literary studies) recently trend in sociology, ethics,... difficult to judge while it’s still going on but sth to keep an eye on |
| paradigm in this context | word that we use when we talk about big changes in theoretical approaches |
| What’s the role of ideology in theory? | first we need to define what ideology means! broad: a set of beliefs/principles/values a person/community has and holds -important because it’s on the bottom of a lot: not only political, also what kind of clothes you wear, music you listen to, … therefore also at the basis of literary theory ideological and political convictions: influence the theory that you will be likely to use when analyzing a text (eg. if you’re very right-wing, you’ll not use a post-colonial or feminist approach) very close to definition of culture → ideology and culture very closely connected also important in forming the bases of a number of literary theories |
| Can I use any theory for any text? | -almost sometimes you can try but you’ll find out that sometimes it’s not that useful eg. gender theory good for almost everything because you can almost always look at men-women relations |
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