How to Read Texts_ A Student Guide to Critical Approaches and Skills-[Bloomsbury Academic (2013)] by Neil McCaw

Notebook of quotes

I began reading How to Read Texts: A Student Guide to Critical Approaches and Skills about six weeks ago, and finished re-re-reviewing my collection of underlining this morning. As an amateur reader, I found the book very useful. 

Introduction: Reading for pleasure and reading for marks: from childhood to university

[....]use your current knowledge and reading skills and a fine- tuned understanding of how your reading has evolved from its earliest stages, as the basis for how you move forward.

[....]reflex reading (the more commonplace, uninhibited, un- self- conscious type of reading wherein the only goal is satisfaction and pleasure)

[....]each chapter is about uncovering, developing and broadening your reading as a creative, imaginative pursuit; 

[....]intention is to show you (through both critical and creative work) that what you’ve been doing so far is only part of the story.

[....]help you harness your reading pleasure, what D. H. Lawrence rather beautifully calls the ‘tremulations on the ether’ that ‘make the whole man alive tremble’,  in an academic context.

[....]Readers are not active players in the construction of meaning but rather individuals accessing a world of knowledge.

[....]education systems embody the idea that, in the words of Terry Eagleton, ‘seriousness is one thing and pleasure another’.

[....]school- readers become increasingly driven by a supposed need to say the right thing about texts, to know what the ‘important’ elements are, and to use the correct terms and vocabulary.

[....] [reaching] university level…. it can often seem to students as if reading has almost nothing in common with the activity they engaged in as a child.

[....]it is important to remember that reading can be enjoyable, pleasurable, and fundamentally creative, whilst also being a means to an end (critical commentaries, essays, dissertations etc.).

[....]There are ways of thinking about texts of all kinds that are perceptive, academic, and imaginative. The best readers do not just have an ability to utilize relevant methodologies, or apply buzzwords and terminologies, they are also inventive and insightful….

[‘what?’ questions]

[....]do not always and necessarily begin with ‘what?’ (‘ Describe…’ / ‘Is there…?’ / ‘Which…?’ and ‘Explain…’ are common alternatives), but in all cases they are united by a focus on the basic features of each text:

   – what is happening?– what is being said/ shown?– what language means– what the text is about?– what sort of text it isl

– what is the historical context?– what ideas are apparent?– what meanings are evident?

– ‘What are the boy’s thoughts and feelings in these lines?’ 16– ‘What evidence is there that…?’ 17– ‘Which of the following best describes what happens…?’

– ‘What is the main strategy the author uses in the story?’ 19– ‘Show how both of these aspects of his character are conveyed to the reader’ 

– ‘How does the writer present feelings…?’

‘how?’ category of questions is that which looks at the means through which texts achieve their effects.

[....]emphasis on language and language devices and how they operate, but more broadly the focus is on the nature of representation.

[....]readers can talk about vocabulary, symbolism, imagery, metaphor, figurative devices, diction, tone etc., as they advance from thinking about ‘what?’ is happening to a more subtle, detailed examination of the ways in which this comes about through the text as a medium.

[....] texts becomes a matter of decoding and deciphering them as forms of communication.

[....]ever- more sophisticated forms of ‘how?’ questioning:

– ‘How does the critic’s description apply…?’ ‘Compare how information and attitudes about spiders are conveyed by the speakers in the two texts.’ 24– ‘Show how the writer’s mood of disillusionment is conveyed…’ 

[....]primary focus on language, form, point- of- view, and structure etc.

[....]what is really being assessed is how the reader responds to how the text functions and answers are supposed to demonstrate a sophisticated appreciation of its nuances:

university courses

[....]‘what?’ and ‘how?’ stages of reading are taken for granted as part of a wider, broader, deeper investigation of every text. From now on the focus will be on ‘why?’:

[....]‘why?’ category of questions looks beyond the ‘what?’ and the ‘how?’ of a text whilst drawing on both:

– ‘why has the author chosen to represent their subject matter in such a way?’– ‘why are particular images and symbols used?’– ‘why does the text use certain forms of language?’

[....]These are about trying to establish an overarching interpretation of each text, thinking about ‘why?’ its surface features and underlying meanings are significant in light of a wide variety of ideological, cultural, historical and philosophical contexts.

‘Compare how….

[....]  ‘Why is

– ‘Show how the writer’s mood of disillusionment is conveyed…’ would become something closer to– ‘Why is the mood of disillusionment significant in terms of what the text says about its historical era?’

   [....]   be interpreted in relation to broader cultural features/ factors, requiring wider contextual research.

   [....]  – ‘ “Dr Faustus is a play that questions Elizabethan ideas of humanity.” Discuss.’ This sort of discursive question requires the student to move systematically through all three stages of reading, from the ‘what?’ (… is going on in the text?… is being described? are the main themes of the play? etc.) to the ‘how?’ (… are these represented?… characterized?… conjured up? etc.) to the by now centrally important ‘why?’ (… does the play depict its key themes in such a fashion?… is this representation significant?… are these issues relevant?)

 [....]  ‘why?’ stage most characterizes university- level work, interpreting the significance of each text against the backdrop of an ever- increasing amount (hopefully!) of historical, cultural, social, political, literary, biographical and philosophical knowledge.

[....]  ‘Why?’ questions

‘To what extent…?’

‘How far…?’

Examine…’

Analyse…’ etc.

[....]  distinction between the ‘what?’/‘ how?’/‘ why?’ categories of question is not always so clear- cut.

[....]  each category predominates at different stages of study, when readers move on to the next level of questioning they do not entirely leave the previous one behind;

[....]  reading texts can involve oscillating back and forth   

[....]  some forms of text readers might need to work on the ‘what?’/‘ how?’ elements simultaneously

[....]  implied forms of ‘why?’ questioning in some secondary- school level work: ‘why?’ touching on broader issues to do with authors/ readers/ culture/ history/ philosophy etc.

[....]  ‘why?’ questions becoming a more taxing matter of textual excavation and exploration….

How to Read Texts attempts to combine creative and critical work in the development of reading skills, and to show how the two help and inform each other.

[....]  influential critics and writers have always thought that this is how things work best.

[....]  T. S. Eliot was convinced that ‘probably, indeed, the larger part of the labour of an author in composing his work is critical labour.’

[....]  complementary, significantly and necessarily so.

[....]  creative practice is not possible at all without a strong critical sense

[....]  groundbreaking examples of interpretation, always emerge from a creative spirit, powered by creative energy as readers/ critics unpick and unravel texts in new ways.

‘text’

[....]  is not a value judgement,

the term ‘text’

[....]  focusing on a wider variety of material than simply the classics, the so- called ‘greats’ of literary history, and instead examining ways of interpreting a range of cultural texts; not only written works (novels, poems, plays and non- fictional prose), but also film, television, visual art and photography.

[....]  ‘literacy’ can no longer be just a matter of reading conventional books full of words.

How to Read Texts will deploy the same method (the ‘what?’/‘ how?’/‘ why?’ stages of interpretation) for all forms of text, asking the same questions of each:

tone,

[....]  diction

[....]  symbolism

[....]  dialogue

[....]  Using the OED (or any other suitably- detailed dictionary of your choice)

 The power of reading texts

[....]  ‘reading’ as a fundamentally creative examination of texts of all kinds then readers themselves become enormously significant in the process of deciphering and defining meaning, bringing into play what the critic Wolfgang Iser calls their ‘kaleidoscope of perspectives, preintentions, [and] recollections’. 40

[....]   The power of reading texts  

pleasurable and fun and exciting, but also (paradoxically) weighty and important.

1 What type of reader are you right now?

 The undergraduate questionnaire  736

everyone doubts themselves in this way at one point or another; but as long as you pay close attention to each text, and can support your interpretations with evidence, you won’t go too far wrong.

2 Reading creatively

 Why are we talking about creativity in a book about reading?  

help you find an original critical voice;

 Why are we talking about creativity in a book about reading?  

understanding and developing your own creative thinking will make you a more dynamic reader.

 Why are we talking about creativity in a book about reading?  

there is no rigid separation between the critical self and the creative self,

 Why are we talking about creativity in a book about reading?  

there is in a necessary, inevitable relationship between these two aspects of the human personality.

fictocritics

[....]  have combined imaginative writing and literary criticism, linking textual features such as formal conventions, characterization and plot to a consideration of cutting- edge critical issues and debates.

[....]  critical writing within literary/ cultural history that explicitly debates the boundary between ‘being creative’ and ‘being critical’:

   For Johnson, criticism is inferior because it contains nothing that is in itself original; it is viewed as a parasite feeding off the texts of great authors. The view was shared by Johnson’s contemporary, Alexander Pope

[....]  The innate creative power of a writer can only achieve its full potential if they are able to apply themselves critically to their task: selecting the most effective language, understanding the rules of form, and editing texts into a coherent shape.

art:

[....]  The successful application of any art is a delightful spectacle, but the theory too is interesting; and though there is a great deal of the latter without the former I suspect there has never been a genuine success that has not had a latent core of conviction. Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere.

   Wilde’s criticism is ‘in itself an art… really creative in the highest sense of the word… both creative and independent’ (p. 965).

   Critical readings are literally original because they are new and result from pre- existing materials (texts produced by others)– it doesn’t even matter if these other texts are of ‘the finest materials’ (p. 966) or not. For him it is just as possible to produce a masterpiece of critical reading based on a text that is poorly written and constructed as it is to produce something extraordinary that examines one of the ‘great’ texts of the literary canon.

Critical writing

[....]  just as able to stimulate and excite its reader/ viewer as a favourite novel or most cherished poem or the most noteworthy film or TV programme.

[....]  strong sense of being confronted with imagination and insight, just as fiction or poetry or drama can.

[....]  stir your thoughts and force you to consider things in new ways.

[....]  signifiers (the clothes themselves) and signifieds (what these clothes say about people).

[....]  incorporating imagination and individuality into how we answer the familiar ‘what?’/‘ how?’/‘ why?’ questions of each text.

[....]  what Barthes calls ‘writerly’ reading:

   your own creative practice (commonly labelled within the study of Creative Writing as ‘reading as a writer’)

   readers are encouraged to creatively interpret texts in an original, individual way.

   ‘writerly’ allow the reader freedom of interpretation– standing in opposition to the ‘readerly’ texts that are seen as more restrictive and controlling, more set in their own meanings, offering less opportunity for the reader to creatively imagine them.

[....]  Barthes favours ‘writerly’ texts because he sees it as the aim of the text ‘to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer’ (p. 4) of meaning.

[....]  passive readers are ‘plunged into a kind of idleness… intransitive… in short, serious left with no more than the poor freedom either to accept or reject the text: reading is nothing more than a referendum’ (p. 4).

[....]  meaning is permanently up for grabs,

[....]  For [Barthes], it is a matter of whether the text allows creativity of interpretation, whether it allows the reader to play; thus he lauds experimental works by writers such as Joyce for the ways in which they invite creative participation. However, he overlooks the fact that the complications and slipperiness of language and meaning are always present, no matter what the text, even if this varies in extent.

   The key thing to remember, as Wolfgang Iser notes, is that within reading ‘the opportunity is given to us to bring into play our own faculty for establishing connections– for filling in the gaps left by the text itself;’

[....]  meaning is (to a greater or lesser extent) fluid, whatever the text, and as such there is always a creative potential to how we might interpret it.

[....]  many apparently creative works also display a profound critical dimension.

[....]  the authority of the author must always be questioned.

Starting with the ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ questions

[....]  the ‘what?’ of Poe’s story [“The Tell-Tale Heart”] soon blurs with the question of ‘how?’ it is told,

[....]  through its point- of- view that Poe achieves what might be called the psychotic immediacy of the story,

[....]  question as to ‘why?’ the story is presented in its particular form

[....]  ‘why?’ Poe’s tale is significant

[....]  central to understanding this complexity

[....]  depiction of the heart as the cornerstone of the narrative.

[....]  Neurosis about the all- seeing eye of the old man could indeed be rooted in intimate knowledge of the nature of the narrator’s desire,

[....]  nagging beat of the disembodied heart a symbol of a secret life that lives on, demanding to be revealed.

Creativity in reading

[....]  can also be about engaging creatively with texts in a more practical sense.

[....]  re-reading known as textual intervention.

[....]  Textual intervention is where a reader enhances their reading of a text through altering or extending it

[....]  ‘the best way to understand how a text works… is to change it: to play around with it, to intervene in it in some way (large or small), and then to try to account for the exact effect of what you have done’

[....]  multi- layered  process:

[....]  intervention is effectively one of adaptation, wherein the reader/ writer produces a ‘version, variation, interpretation, continuation, transformation, imitation, pastiche, parody, forgery, travesty, transposition, revaluation, revision, rewriting, [or] echo’ 

3 Reading texts closely

[....]  in truth many New Critics were far less restrictive in their outlook than has often been acknowledged. Ransom’s objection to psychology and moralism, for instance, comes in a book that also examines how key critics (I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot and Yvor Winters) look outside the text as part of reading, and which respectively praises the work of ‘the psychological critic’, ‘the historical critic’ and ‘the logical critic’. Further, when Ransom discusses the work of Richards he delineates the five ‘contexts’ of poetry (physiological, psychological, biological- psychological, biological- logical and aesthetic), and does not reject any of these. He seems particularly tolerant of approaches that look at poems in relation to the neural and intellectual responses they engender and which thus facilitate a consideration of the ways in which texts negotiate between readers and societies. 10 Ultimately he celebrates T. S. Eliot precisely because of his use of external materials and knowledge in his reading: ‘it is Eliot who uses his historical studies for the sake of literary understanding, and therefore might be called a historical critic’ (p. 139).

[....]  ‘Eliot has nothing like a formula ready in advance; he looks at the poem against its nearest background to see what sort of criticism it needs; he comes up presently with a set of judgements which are comparative in the first instance, but critical in the end’

[....]  layered approach to reading moving from the ‘how?’ questions (which by implication contain answers to ‘what?’ a text is about) to then consider ‘why?’ each text exists in its particular form (i.e. what message it entails). The latter will in many instances touch upon questions relating to the author, the reader, and the connections between the text and its backgrounds, illustrating how a close- reading method, ‘concentrating on the poem itself as a construct, with its own organization and its own logic’ (The New Criticism, p. x), can sit reasonably comfortably alongside an appreciation of the text as part of numerous contexts: ‘[ poems]… do not grow like cabbages, nor are they put together by computers… They are written by human beings… [and] remain mere potentialities until they are realized by some reader’

[....]  within so- called ‘literary’ texts. Stylistics tries to show that ‘literary’ does not equal ‘special’; each text is dissected as a structure utilizing specialized (scientific) terms drawn from the science of linguistics.

[....]  No elements of the text are (it is claimed) beyond clear scientific definition, although one of the problematic aspects of Stylistics is that despite its claims to the contrary it does in fact interpret texts as much as it simply analyses them scientifically.

[....]  The espoused intention behind this narrow focus is to prevent any blurring between literary study and other disciplines such as history, psychology, anthropology and sociology. It is a fundamental conviction of Russian Formalism that ‘literature’ is distinctly different from other forms of text and other aspects of culture. Consequently, the focus is on ‘poetic language’, even though there is an acknowledgement that texts are the product of authors and that once the text (the ‘machine’) has been created it has a certain autonomy of its own.

[....]  Russian- Formalist approach to reading has major political implications.

  [....]  arguing that the language used in literary texts (as art) has an identity and character of its own. Key, in this discussion, is the concept of defamiliarization (ostraneniye), which suggests that poetic language is to be recognized for its ability to defamiliarize the reader, to show old things in new ways, casting fresh light on the world and human experience.

[....]  idea of defamiliarization is, however, in tension with the Russian Formalist focus on the text- in- itself.

[....]  contrast the poetic and the unpoetic, and this means moving beyond the boundaries of the text as an isolated entity.

[....]  The reader only recognizes the defamiliarization inherent in the use of this phrase if they understand the poem’s context, with the identification of poetic language entirely reliant on reference to the literary and linguistic world beyond the text itself.

[....]  There is an assumption in many accounts of the development of twentieth- century criticism that close reading is something that critics ‘got over’ on their way towards more sophisticated, often more politically- aware approaches to reading.

[....]  many of the philosophical- critical approaches of the later- twentieth century have also been reliant on a broad ‘close reading’ method themselves, even if their aims and objectives are somewhat different from (for example) the Practical and New Critics.

   Deconstruction

[....]  ways in which meaning is ‘constructed’ in texts, and in particular with the key role language has within this process.

[....]  emphasis on unpicking the ideas, assumptions, prejudices and ideologies, either hidden or explicit, within texts.

 [....]    denies coherent senses of meaning and truth,

[....]  by its very nature, arguing itself out of existence.

 [....]    approach to texts inherent within deconstructive readings is not at all dissimilar to that utilized by the close readers that have been discussed so far in this chapter.

[....]  concentration on ‘the text’,

[....]  key difference,is the way the method is used;

[....]  close readers of the earlier- twentieth century looked for structures and patterns and coherent relationships between different aspects of each text,

[....]  deconstructionists tend to look for the opposite: imbalances, oddities, incongruities, fissures and aporias

aporias

1. an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory.
   "the celebrated aporia whereby a Cretan declares all Cretans to be liars"

[....]  all the moments when the text is unsuccessful in establishing coherent meaning, when it contradicts itself, when there are gaps and tensions between form and content.

[....]  celebration of the impossibility of fixed meaning and representation, founded in a recognition of the imperfect nature of language.

[....]  uncovering the meaning of the text through an examination of how it operates

[....]  focus on textual detail and an understanding of the workings of language

[....]  become closely familiar with the text

[....]  less speculative

[....]  close reading/ formalism might be less speculative, but it might also be seen (perhaps consequently) as less insightful as well; for it is the speculation, the hypothesizing, the (potentially) endless expansion of each text into different areas and histories (what Wolfgang Iser calls the ‘inexhaustibility of the text’ 14) that (one might argue) helps to make reading a dynamic process.

[....]  formalist search for the ‘right’ meaning is far from inclusive, being too often dependent on a reader’s level of education and the extent to which they have had access to the ‘wisdom’ of critics and guidance as to the ‘correct’ way of reading.

[....]  ‘the lemon- squeezer school of criticism’ (defined by T. S. Eliot as the desire to ‘extract, squeeze, tease, press every drop of meaning out of it that one can’ 15) has tended to be less rather than more inclusive, and it will remain so for as long as the insistent focus is on uncovering the single ‘truth’ of each work….

4 Reading biography, authors and readers

[....]  Practical and New Critics established methods of reading that resisted what they called the intentional fallacy,

[....]  other critical approaches that were emerging were much more interested in the role of the author.

[....]  Freud’s ‘Creative Writers and Day- Dreaming’ (1907)

   [....]  texts as the product of authorial anxieties and tensions, linked to psychosexual development: ‘a happy person never phantasies [sic], only an unsatisfied one.

[....]  every single phantasy is the fulfilment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality.’

[....]  all texts as (in one sense or another) autobiographical,

[....]  every child at play behaves like a creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather, re- arranges the things of his world in a new way which pleases him?’

[....]  (largely subconsciously)

[....]  where should frame of reference begin and end?

[....]  ask yourself whether any reader, regardless of the amount of research they have done, entirely understands the mind of another person?

[....]  telling us what they were trying to do, is this evidence always to be taken at face value?

[....]  oversimplifying the reading of a text into a quarry for biographical detail.

[....]  viewed as little more than a symptom of a biographical narrative

Theories of authorship

[....]  Many close-reading methods have downplayed the role of the author in determining meaning.

[....]  Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’.... this essay can be difficult to come to terms with.

  [....] philosophical

[....] complex,

[....]    language is sophisticated

 [....]   ideas confound

[....]    broad argument, that tracing texts back to a [....]  ‘point of origin’ (author/ director/ artist etc.) is unfeasible… ‘the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author’.

[....]  idea of the author (on whom ‘ordinary culture is tyrannically centred’ (p. 114))

[....]  His idea is to move past the explanation of the text ‘always sought in the man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end… the voice of a single person, the author “confiding” in us’

[....]  language has a life of its own, that it ‘performs’ (p. 115) meaning divorced from what the author intended.

[....]  texts carry with them no innate meanings, meaning only emerges when the reader creates it:

  [....]  reader the key element in the author- reader- text relationship, transforming the text ‘in such a way that at all its levels the author is absent’

[....]  ‘intentional fallacy’ is to be escaped so that texts can be freed up for fresh interpretation: ‘we know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the Author- God) but a multi- dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash’ (p. 116).

[....]  ‘once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile.

[....]  Once this delimiting presence has gone then reading can be a process of imagination, excitement, and creativity.

Theorizing readers

[....]  a greater focus is placed on the role of the reader in the creation of meaning. ‘The reader’ becomes subject to the same level and type of interest as ‘the author’, with their biography, psychology, class position, gender, ethnicity etc. all potential areas of attention.

[....]  Wolfgang Iser: ‘the manner in which the reader experiences the text will reflect his own disposition, and in this respect the… text acts as a kind of mirror’.

Reader- response criticism

[....]  fundamentally questioning the idea that ‘the text’ has a fixed meaning waiting to be uncovered.

[....]  Some ‘reader- response’ critics looks at real readers as individual( istic) interpreters of texts, driven by their own psychology and life experience, or else at groups or communities of these actual readers and their shared assumptions and inferences;

[....]  how each text addresses a certain type of hypothetical reader/ audience, what Iser identifies as the implied reader who is imagined to be the audience.

[....]  ‘implied reader’ is shorthand for the particular combination of attitudes, beliefs and knowledge assumed by each text in order for it to be interpreted effectively:

The focus of Reader- response criticism

[....]  ‘text’ comes into being when there is a reader interpreting it: ‘meaning is a transitive phenomenon.’

[....]  key is to understand the influences and assumptions that bring the text to life,

[....]  interaction ‘between the culturally activated text and the culturally activated reader, an interaction structured by the material, social, ideological, and institutional relationships in which both text and readers are inescapably inscribed’

[....]  thrust of reader- response criticism as a whole is towards an understanding of the extent and nature of every kind of influence that shapes each act of reading.

[....]  cultural background (of both reader and text) is focal in the formation and shaping of meaning, as texts do ‘not lie innocently in the world but are themselves constituted by an interpretive act, even if, as is often the case, that act is unacknowledged’.

 fundamentally concerned with the nature of interpretation.

[....]  Whether it is viewed as a social, cultural, psychological or ideological act, reading is always both hermeneutical and phenomenological:

Hermeneutics,

 [....]  science of interpretation;

Phenomenology,

 [....]  analysing the structure of conscious subjective experience.

The assumptions of Reader- response criticism

 [....]  no fixed meanings;

 [....]  not about uncovering the single ‘truth’

 [....]  To read is to collaborate in a process rather like a performance

Texts

 [....]  reliant on a reader to enact them

[....]  individual and collective responses shed light on texts as well as the readers themselves and the cultures to which they belong

Reading

 [....]  creative expression

 means of examining texts at a range of levels (intellectual/ emotional/ psychological/ cultural etc.).

[....]  Readers create

Reception theory

 [....]  establishing a basis for looking at the similarities and dissimilarities between cultures at different points in time.

[....]  begin with a particular reading of a specific text, produced at a given time,

[....]  trace the reception/ readership of this text at other historical moment

[....]  Eliot’s reception of Shakespeare’s work has shaped the wider understanding of the plays, their themes and overarching concerns, and their use of language, and the influence of his essays has been felt ever since. As a consequence, it is not in the least unreasonable to suggest that ‘the influence of T. S. Eliot on Shakespeare’ has been very significant indeed

5 Reading genre and literary/ cultural history

• Chapter summary

• Types of context

• Authorial biography

• Genre and 

• Political and social history

[....]  The key is to always begin with your own initial reading. Don’t start with a pre-established agenda, closing your eyes to everything that doesn’t fit a narrowly defined set of parameters – just read on your own terms (allowing, obviously, for your own innate preconceptions and bias as a reader).

[....]  ‘what?’ stage of reading remains of crucial importance even at university-level; it encourages you to start with your own experience of the text and what you draw from this.

[....]  which contexts will be most appropriate in your subsequent interpretative process

[....]  resist the temptation to select a particular context regardless of the text’s own particular features.

[....]  applying a pre-conceived context to a text will produce unconvincing speculations.

[....]  ‘what?’ is happening

[....]  ‘how?’ language is used

[....]  ‘why?’

Genre

[....]  shared characteristics.

[....]  common codes and conventions shared by different text

[....]  not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition of the minds among which they have been produced.

(Shelley) 

Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957)

[....]  narratological approach focuses on the inner workings of what he sees as the four main genres of literature – comedy, tragedy, romance and satir

[....]  to this day there is no consensus about whether genre is a matter of form or style or tone or purpose or indeed subject matter, with critical readings of texts producing great variations as to how texts are grouped together, disagreements about where genre boundaries lie, and contradictions in how each text is interpreted.

[....]  genre criticism downplays or overlooks historical change

 [....]  static analysis,

[....]  focus largely on continuities across historical periods rather than differences between them.

[....]  risks ignoring the individual characteristics of each text in a quest to ‘place’ it within a broader structure of fixed categories

[....]   Using genre  

shifting nature of these genre categories

[....]  Aristotle,

  [....]  must always represent things in one of three ways: either as they were or are, or as they are said to be or seem to be, or as they ought to be’.

[....]  audience

   [....]  moving them through the ‘means of pity and fear’ (p. 39) and inciting an emotional outpouring or ‘catharsis’.

[....]  There is no room for detachment or aloofness, for poets have to ‘aim at giving either profit or delight, or at combining the giving of pleasure with some useful precepts for life’ (p. 90).

[....]  Longinus

  [....]  ‘sublimity consists in a certain excellence and distinction in expression … it is from this source alone that the greatest poets and historians have acquired their pre-eminence and won for themselves an eternity of fame’.5

   [....]  ‘elevated language’

  [....]  ‘to entrance

   [....]  ‘transports us with wonder

   [....]  writing that causes proud exaltation and a sense of vaunting joy, as though we had ourselves produced what we had heard’

[....]  vigour of nature

[....]  ‘poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union, under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things’

[....]  ‘Literature’ is in this sense a combination of ‘new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure’ arranged ‘according to a certain rhythm and order’ (p. 293).

  [....]  Eliot, for one, defines literature as a combination of tradition and originality.

[....]  influenced by the best work of the writers of the past, whilst at the same time offering their own unique contribution to literary history

[....]  our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else … Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously.14

[....]  a ‘continual surrender’ of the self, of a ‘continual self-sacrifice … [a] continual extinction of personality’ (p. 28).

[....]  an escape from emotion;

[....]  an escape from personality’

[....]  For Leavis, as with the Practical and New Critics, ‘literary’ texts are those that combine artistic structure and coherence with an ability to ‘teach’ readers about life and human nature.

[....]  a ‘canon’ of novels that are artistically important but which are also morally serious.

[....]  beneficial social impact, improving the morals, feelings and intellect of readers

[....]  a ‘great’ writer does not merely copy the past but rather adapts conventions and builds on expectations, leaving a legacy for those who will follow

[....]  combination of artistic skill and her prevailing moral dimension

[....]  ‘Literature’ up to now By the time of the later twentieth century

[....]  One of the major features of these new approaches was a fundamental questioning of terms such as ‘literature’, and the assumptions and values that lay behind them.

[....]  ideas of genre can change significantly over time. The category of ‘prose’, for instance, seems to evolve almost on a daily basis: the novel, the short story, creative non-fiction, metafiction, flash fiction, etc. etc., and as a consequence the boundaries between what might seem to be distinct, coherent categories become increasingly blurred.

[....]  category confusion in contemporary cultures is unlike anything that has gone before, with ever-increasing fusions of style that should make us question whether reading in terms of genre is worthwhile at all.

[....]  reading genre

   [....]  useful critical exercise just as long as:

(a) readers do not downplay the particularity of each text;

(b) readers do not pretend that all texts fit coherent categorizations just because saying otherwise is inconvenient

(c) readers clearly define what they mean when they use the term – is it a matter of form (poetry, the novel etc.), of tone or style (comedy, romance etc.), or an identifier of purpose or subject matter (nineteenth-century industrial society, Elizabethan etiquette etc.)?

[....]  (a) Genre as form

  define ‘genre’ as ‘form’ or ‘medium’

[....]  readers are thus required to be more precise in defining the nature of their subject matter if genre is to be a useful critical term

[....]  Prose can be considered

   point-of-view

  tone,

   diction,

  vocabulary,

   symbolism

   archetypes,

  setting

   dialogue,

  imagery,

tense,

characterization,

grammar,

plot,

story,

allegory

[....]  Poetry

• form,

• imagery,

• mood,

• figurative language

[....]  Television

• atmosphere,

• pacing,

• setting,

• dialogue

• action

[....]  Film

• themes,

• symbolism,

• subtext

• story,

• plot

• point-of-view

[....]  Visual art

•    foreground and background

• viewpoint,

[....]  Photography

•  content

• texture,

Thinking about … using new vocabularies

[....]  making reference to SIX of the terms listed above, one from EACH of the genre categories.

[....]  particular vocabulary that can be used in discussing each different genre.

(b) Genre as style

[....]  genre as ‘style’ takes the reader even closer to the heart of the question as to ‘how?’ each text functions, the moods it conjures up and the impact it has.

[....]  genre as a way of telling a story

[....]  style of delivery or construction

[....]  in terms of tragedy, comedy, farce, realism, naturalism, and minimalism

[....]  highlight common features of delivery across a range of texts

[....]  providing the basis for looking at how stylistic boundaries are transcended and how styles become combined and blended.

Genre as purpose/subject matter

[....]  genre as a ‘purpose’

[....]  tends to place more of a focus on ‘why?’ a text might be significant.

[....]  shared themes and issues, such as romance, science fiction, crime/detection, the Western etc

[....]  genres can be templates

[....]  follow or dissent from.

[....]  typical of a postmodern

[....]  ‘pastiche, imitation and the mixing of already established styles and practices’

[....]  paying homage

[....]  seeking out comedic value

[....]  stressing irony

[....]  genre be used to facilitate insightful readings of texts, readings that draw attention to both familiar elements and also uniqueness.

[....]  ‘convention’ and ‘invention’

[....]  imitate and innovate.

[....]  Readers draw on their own personal ‘back catalogue’ of texts as its reference point.

[....]  links that grew out of what I knew, what I had read, but they would be very different to those imagined by a reader schooled in Eliot, Thackeray, Gaskell and Dickens. And this is what makes being a contemporary reader so exciting.

[....]  Our culture is so textually dense that we should, as a result, be able to see connections between genres that are of unparalleled scope and diversity.

[....]  reading a text in terms of its  is not just a matter of genre.

[....]  a text’s place within  provides the reader with a number of other texts (not just forms of text) to compare and contrast.

[....]  Eliot: tradition relies on a ‘historical sense’ of what has been written/produced in the past

[....]  the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order’.

[....]  his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists’

[....]   must ‘develop or procure the consciousness of the past and … should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career’

[....]  Eliot anticipates what modern critics call: (allusive) relationship between esp. literary texts.

[....]  Knowing our cultural ‘tradition’ enables a reader to comprehend

[....]   is the inevitable connection between all texts, and between all readers and all texts, to the extent that every individual work is part of a sophisticated web of influences and interpreters.

[....]  direct quotation of, or allusion to, one text within another;

[....]  a more subtle cross-referencing between texts (e. g. in a subtitle, preface, epigraph etc.)

[....]  where one text comments on another text without actually mentioning it

[....]  the grafting of one text onto another without commentary or direct citation;

[....]   a silent, perhaps subliminal relationship between texts, often at the level of genre;

[....]  can be deliberate or unconscious

[....]  implicit or explicit

[....]  vary in degree of influence

[....]  they are entirely reliant on the particular knowledge of readers if they are to be understood and appreciated.

[....]  not a straightforward matter of decoding single, fixed meanings; relationships between texts work in a multiplicity of ways, demonstrating that, as Michel Foucault has noted, ‘the frontiers of a book are never clear-cut.’

[....]  unclear (and perhaps unimportant) where each text begins and ends.

[....]  in a world of ever-widening popular cultures, when our sense of a ‘text’ is broader than ever before

[....]  multifaceted interaction of texts of an almost limitless number of kinds, forms and subject matters means that  is a matter not just of the link between one high-cultural work and another, shaped and determined by the author, and interpreted by a literary-competent ‘informed reader’ whose mind acts a ‘repository of [all] the (potential) responses a given text might call out’.

[....]  creative, partial interlinking of texts of all shapes and sizes in an almost infinite number of ways.

[....]  Our contemporary ‘tradition’ thus expanded out of all proportion; it can no longer be restricted to a core of favoured works and be rooted in an assumption that whether someone understands intertextual relationships is dependent on the literature they have read at whichever university they attended.

[....]  Contemporary cultures are so textually dense to comprehend all possible intertextual allusions and connections is unfeasible; indeed, not noticing links, and overlooking interrelations is more likely from now on to be the usual state of being.

[....]  looking at adaptation (and ) these days must recognize that the very nature of the process has fundamentally changed: films are novelized, computer games are cinemized, and popular cultural texts (The Simpsons is a wonderful example of this) absorb and digest allusions and references to other works with an insatiable appetite.

[....]  more intertextual our culture becomes the harder it is for us to keep up with the subtle references and allusions to other texts, passing by (as they often do) in the blink of an eye.

7 Reading philosophically; or, critical theory

Managing secondary reading

[....]  If you have produced an initial draft/outline of your essay, based on your own reading of the texts and your own definition of key terms/issues, your further research will be much more manageable. For, as you work through your secondary reading taking notes as you go you will have a clearer sense of what relates directly or indirectly to the question at hand and what does not. If you go about your secondary research without such an outline in mind you end up taking either too few or else far too many notes because you aren’t really sure what you are looking for.

Establishing your own voice

[....]  If you write your essay in the order I have outlined – beginning with your own ideas/words and then supplementing them with the ideas/words of others, there is a much better chance that (1) your own critical voice will come to the fore; and (2) a clear line of argument will emerge.

[....]  If, you do all of your secondary reading first and then try to fit yourself in between this there is a strong chance your own point-of-view will get lost under a patchwork quilt of secondary material.

[....]  do not try and say everything that could ever be said about the theory you are using

[....]  identify two or three key concepts or ideas and apply these in your reading.

[....]  carry out your own initial reading, from which themes/areas of central importance emerge; identify a critical framework for these themes/areas, perhaps drawing on philosophical/theoretical material along the way; and then return to the primary text and re-read it in the light of the critical framework you have outlined for yourself.

[....]  begin with your own reading of the text, before applying the theory, and try and demonstrate the limitations (as well as strengths) of this particular approach. It is ultimately, as always, a question of establishing your own readerly voice alongside those of others.

[....]  Once your own line of argument has been supplemented with research  you need an introduction and a conclusion to your essay

[....]  introduction is supposed to set out the scope of the essay; it defines key terms, marks out the territory, and informs the reader about what is to follow.

[conclusion]

[....]  try and use the conclusion to place the essay within its broader context of ideas and research; in the case of the question at hand, explain how what has been said about Dickens’s ‘The Signal-Man’ and Victorian society and culture relates to what might be said about other fictions of the period and what they have to say on the subject

[....]  a conclusion will be confident, strident, and self-assured.

[....]  the conclusion is the last thing you will say to your reader – so don’t end with a damp squib.

[....]  consider reading in a variety of guises and to give you opportunities to make  creative-critical decisions of your own. This is because the most sensitive readers decide for themselves which approach is most appropriate at any given time (or in relation to any given text), based on their own knowledge and understanding. They have a strong grasp of how their own way of reading relates to that of others, and they can be imaginative and inventive in the way they draw on different ideas and concepts whilst avoiding the trap of simply and slavishly following the path carved out by someone else. This makes their reading truly creative, constructing something new from a patchwork of influences, attitudes and beliefs. Reading should always be, in this sense, a glorious opportunity waiting to be grasped…

Jay

20 October -10 December 2023