Senin, 26 April 2010
How To Analyze Plot
1. Take notes and summarize the plot. What happens in the story? Outline in chronological order where the tension and the stakes rise.
2. Determine what the plot is about. Who are the characters in the story and what do they want or desire? What motivates them? How do they achieve their goals?
3. Take note of the conflicts in the story. Conflicts are two opposing forces fighting over the same thing. If the main character wants something, what are the conflicts she encounters that prevent her from getting it? Conflicts can appear as another character, an inanimate object or a force of nature, such a blizzard or a hurricane. Conflicts can also be internal, such as a character's fear of flight.
4. Determine how the conflicts in the story push the plot forward. For instance, a character wants to travel back home for the holidays, but his plane has been grounded because of fog. How does this conflict force the character to respond? What does he do to achieve his goal of returning home? Take note of how these conflicts are resolved and how effective a climax this creates. Determine the author's intent in terms of how she resolves the conflicts in the story and what that says about the plot's meaning.
5. Determine how the plot relates to the general themes in the story. For instance, if the plot is about a man who survives the Alaskan wild, is the author trying to say something about nature or man's relationship to nature? If the theme is about nature's indifference to man, in what ways does the plot support this theme?
How To Analyze Theme
Every piece of literature has a theme, which is the general point the author means to make in the piece. Well-written pieces of literature embed these themes in a number of different ways, using character, plot, metaphor, etc. A good reader analyzes these different elements to uncover the theme. In order to analyze themes in literature, it is important to be a close reader and to pay attention to how all the elements in the piece point to its themes.
1. Read the piece of literature. Take notes. Pay attention to recurring elements, such as repetitive phrases, symbols, metaphors, etc. For instance, if a white dove appears throughout the text, jot that down in a notebook or underline passages. Also take note of the context in which the dove appears.
2. Look over your notes or underlined passages. What stands out the most? Check off certain elements that have been highlighted the most. What are these elements? Determine how these elements work within the entire context of the piece. For instance, how does the white dove relate to the character or the plot?
3. Look at the characters. What type of characters are they? What do they want? Love? Money? Power? Why do the characters want what they want? For instance, the girl who wants money might have grown up poor. Or the character who wants power might be an egomaniac. Determine what the author's intent is in creating such characters and what she wants to say about them through the context of the piece.
4. Look at the plot. What obstacles do the characters encounter in the plot? For instance, if the main character is a poor young man who wants to buy a gift for his girlfriend, how does he go about getting it? What obstacles he faces are due to his flaws? What are the obstacles that are beyond his control? Societal? Generational? Political? How does the character confront these obstacles?
5. Determine how all these elements work in the piece. What is the author's intent? For instance, in the story of the young kid who wants to buy his girlfriend a gift, the author might be writing about how consumerism has defined every element of human life. Or, the author also might be making a statement.
1. Read the piece of literature. Take notes. Pay attention to recurring elements, such as repetitive phrases, symbols, metaphors, etc. For instance, if a white dove appears throughout the text, jot that down in a notebook or underline passages. Also take note of the context in which the dove appears.
2. Look over your notes or underlined passages. What stands out the most? Check off certain elements that have been highlighted the most. What are these elements? Determine how these elements work within the entire context of the piece. For instance, how does the white dove relate to the character or the plot?
3. Look at the characters. What type of characters are they? What do they want? Love? Money? Power? Why do the characters want what they want? For instance, the girl who wants money might have grown up poor. Or the character who wants power might be an egomaniac. Determine what the author's intent is in creating such characters and what she wants to say about them through the context of the piece.
4. Look at the plot. What obstacles do the characters encounter in the plot? For instance, if the main character is a poor young man who wants to buy a gift for his girlfriend, how does he go about getting it? What obstacles he faces are due to his flaws? What are the obstacles that are beyond his control? Societal? Generational? Political? How does the character confront these obstacles?
5. Determine how all these elements work in the piece. What is the author's intent? For instance, in the story of the young kid who wants to buy his girlfriend a gift, the author might be writing about how consumerism has defined every element of human life. Or, the author also might be making a statement.
Kamis, 22 April 2010
CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE
Described below are nine common critical approaches to the literature.
You will have essay assignments that use several of these. See your Short Guide textbook for additional information.
Formalist Criticism: This form of criticism emphasizes the form of the work, with "form" meaning the genre or type of work. This approach regards literature as "a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms."1 All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself. From the stance of the formalist critic you will look at such elements of a work as form-style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.-that are found within the text. Your primary goal as a formalist critic is to determine how such elements work together with the text's content to shape its effects upon readers.
Biographical Criticism: This approach "begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author's life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work." Biographical critics contend that by understanding the life and experiences of a writer readers can better understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to take the biographical facts of a writer's life too far in criticizing the works of that writer. As a biographical critic your task is to explicate the text by using insights gained from knowing details about the author's life. The focus is still on the text, but in light of biography--not the other way around.
Psychological Criticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon both literature and literary criticism. It is akin to biographical criticism as it looks at the author--this time from a psychoanalytic stance. Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include Sigmund Freud, whose "psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression" as well as expanding our understanding of how "language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires"; and Carl Jung, whose theories about the unconscious are also a key foundation of mythological criticism (see below). Psychological criticism has a number of approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three approaches:
1. An investigation of "the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how does it relate to normal mental functions?"
2. The psychological study of a particular artist, usually noting how an author's biographical circumstances affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior.
3. The analysis of fictional characters using the language and methods of psychology.
Historical Criticism: This approach "seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it-a context that necessarily includes the artist's biography and milieu." A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers. Another focus may be how the times in which a writer lived influenced him or her. Was he or she in step or working against the popular culture of the day? is one question you might ask. Again your focus from a historical perspective is on the work: how is the work better understood through the lens of historical context.
Sociological Criticism: One type of historical critisim is this approach which "examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received," exploring the relationships between the artist and society. Sometimes it examines the artist's society to better understand the author's literary works; other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the literature itself. One influential type of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism, which focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature. Because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status quo, it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that "can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the principles of class struggle more clearly." Nonetheless, Marxist criticism "can illuminate political and economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook." Indeed, Marxist criticism sees history centered on a struggle between socioecenomic classes; therefore it sees literature as a result or at least coming about from the context of the struggle.
Gender Criticism: This approach "examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works." Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches, including the so-called "masculinist" approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. It also takes in lesbian and gay criticism. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature "full of examined 'male-produced' assumptions." Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combatting such attitudes-by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare's play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include "analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text" and "examin[ing] how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality." From a feminist vantage point you might assume that because the experiences of the sexes differ, their values and ideas differ, and therefore the way men write and read texts and the way women write and read texts also differs.
Mythological Criticism or Archetypal Criticism: This approach emphasizes "the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works." Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological criticism "explores the artist's common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs." One key concept in mythlogical criticism is the archetype, "a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response," which entered literary criticism from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a "`collective unconscious,' a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person's conscious mind"-often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, archetypes according to Jung "trigger the collective unconscious." Another critic, Northrop Frye, defined archetype in a more limited way as "a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one's literary experience as a whole." Regardless of the definition of archetype they use, mythological critics tend to view literary works in the broader context of works sharing a similar pattern.
Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that "literature" exists not as an artifact upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader. It attempts "to describe what happens in the reader's mind while interpreting a text" and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process. According to reader-response critics, literary texts do not "contain" a meaning; meanings derive only from the act of individual readings. Hence, two different readers may derive completely different interpretations of the same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads a work years later may find the work shockingly different. It helps to borrow from biographical and historical criticism and understand the context from which the text came and compare to your situation. The characters and worlds we find in literature are more often than not very different from ourselves in significant ways; how we as readers make connections, appreciate or challenge a work has much to do with our response, that is to say, our bringing our own experiences to the text to bridge the gap. What assumptions and values do you as a reader have? What assumptions and values might the author have had? Reader-response criticism, then, emphasizes how "religious, cultural, and social values affect readings; it also overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with different assumptions." Though this approach rejects the notion that a single "correct" reading exists for a literary work, it does not consider all readings permissible: "Each text creates limits to its possible interpretations."
Deconstructionist Criticism: This approach "rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately represent reality." Deconstructionist critics regard language as a fundamentally unstable medium-the words "tree" or "dog," for instance, undoubtedly conjure up different mental images for different people-and therefore, because literature is made up of words, literature possesses no fixed, single meaning. It is oppositional to Formalist criticism. According to critic Paul de Man, deconstructionists insist on "the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual signs [i.e., words] coincide with what is signified." As a result, deconstructionist critics tend to emphasize not what is being said but how language is used in a text. The methods of this approach tend to resemble those of formalist criticism, but whereas formalists' primary goal is to locate unity within a text, "how the diverse elements of a text cohere into meaning," deconstructionists try to show how the text "deconstructs," "how it can be broken down ... into mutually irreconcilable positions." Other goals of deconstructionists include (1) challenging the notion of authors' "ownership" of texts they create (and their ability to control the meaning of their texts) and (2) focusing on how language is used to achieve power, as when they try to understand how a some interpretations of a literary work come to be regarded as "truth." So this approach has some in common with Sociological criticism in that it holds that a text is constructed within a social context.
1. Quotations are from X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia's Literature: An Introductionto Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Sixth Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995). 1790-1818.
Additional Sources:
Barnet, Sylvan and William Cain. A Short Guide to Writing About Literature, 9th ed. New York: Longman, 2003.
Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature, 7th ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1996.
John B. Padgett. Critical Approaches to Literature.Handout. U of Mississippi. 2003.
http://www.charlesyoungs.com/english12honors/criticalapproachestoliterature.html.
You will have essay assignments that use several of these. See your Short Guide textbook for additional information.
Formalist Criticism: This form of criticism emphasizes the form of the work, with "form" meaning the genre or type of work. This approach regards literature as "a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms."1 All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself. From the stance of the formalist critic you will look at such elements of a work as form-style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.-that are found within the text. Your primary goal as a formalist critic is to determine how such elements work together with the text's content to shape its effects upon readers.
Biographical Criticism: This approach "begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author's life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work." Biographical critics contend that by understanding the life and experiences of a writer readers can better understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to take the biographical facts of a writer's life too far in criticizing the works of that writer. As a biographical critic your task is to explicate the text by using insights gained from knowing details about the author's life. The focus is still on the text, but in light of biography--not the other way around.
Psychological Criticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon both literature and literary criticism. It is akin to biographical criticism as it looks at the author--this time from a psychoanalytic stance. Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include Sigmund Freud, whose "psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression" as well as expanding our understanding of how "language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires"; and Carl Jung, whose theories about the unconscious are also a key foundation of mythological criticism (see below). Psychological criticism has a number of approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three approaches:
1. An investigation of "the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how does it relate to normal mental functions?"
2. The psychological study of a particular artist, usually noting how an author's biographical circumstances affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior.
3. The analysis of fictional characters using the language and methods of psychology.
Historical Criticism: This approach "seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it-a context that necessarily includes the artist's biography and milieu." A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers. Another focus may be how the times in which a writer lived influenced him or her. Was he or she in step or working against the popular culture of the day? is one question you might ask. Again your focus from a historical perspective is on the work: how is the work better understood through the lens of historical context.
Sociological Criticism: One type of historical critisim is this approach which "examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received," exploring the relationships between the artist and society. Sometimes it examines the artist's society to better understand the author's literary works; other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the literature itself. One influential type of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism, which focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature. Because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status quo, it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that "can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the principles of class struggle more clearly." Nonetheless, Marxist criticism "can illuminate political and economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook." Indeed, Marxist criticism sees history centered on a struggle between socioecenomic classes; therefore it sees literature as a result or at least coming about from the context of the struggle.
Gender Criticism: This approach "examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works." Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches, including the so-called "masculinist" approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. It also takes in lesbian and gay criticism. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature "full of examined 'male-produced' assumptions." Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combatting such attitudes-by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare's play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include "analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text" and "examin[ing] how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality." From a feminist vantage point you might assume that because the experiences of the sexes differ, their values and ideas differ, and therefore the way men write and read texts and the way women write and read texts also differs.
Mythological Criticism or Archetypal Criticism: This approach emphasizes "the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works." Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological criticism "explores the artist's common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs." One key concept in mythlogical criticism is the archetype, "a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response," which entered literary criticism from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a "`collective unconscious,' a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person's conscious mind"-often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, archetypes according to Jung "trigger the collective unconscious." Another critic, Northrop Frye, defined archetype in a more limited way as "a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one's literary experience as a whole." Regardless of the definition of archetype they use, mythological critics tend to view literary works in the broader context of works sharing a similar pattern.
Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that "literature" exists not as an artifact upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader. It attempts "to describe what happens in the reader's mind while interpreting a text" and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process. According to reader-response critics, literary texts do not "contain" a meaning; meanings derive only from the act of individual readings. Hence, two different readers may derive completely different interpretations of the same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads a work years later may find the work shockingly different. It helps to borrow from biographical and historical criticism and understand the context from which the text came and compare to your situation. The characters and worlds we find in literature are more often than not very different from ourselves in significant ways; how we as readers make connections, appreciate or challenge a work has much to do with our response, that is to say, our bringing our own experiences to the text to bridge the gap. What assumptions and values do you as a reader have? What assumptions and values might the author have had? Reader-response criticism, then, emphasizes how "religious, cultural, and social values affect readings; it also overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with different assumptions." Though this approach rejects the notion that a single "correct" reading exists for a literary work, it does not consider all readings permissible: "Each text creates limits to its possible interpretations."
Deconstructionist Criticism: This approach "rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately represent reality." Deconstructionist critics regard language as a fundamentally unstable medium-the words "tree" or "dog," for instance, undoubtedly conjure up different mental images for different people-and therefore, because literature is made up of words, literature possesses no fixed, single meaning. It is oppositional to Formalist criticism. According to critic Paul de Man, deconstructionists insist on "the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual signs [i.e., words] coincide with what is signified." As a result, deconstructionist critics tend to emphasize not what is being said but how language is used in a text. The methods of this approach tend to resemble those of formalist criticism, but whereas formalists' primary goal is to locate unity within a text, "how the diverse elements of a text cohere into meaning," deconstructionists try to show how the text "deconstructs," "how it can be broken down ... into mutually irreconcilable positions." Other goals of deconstructionists include (1) challenging the notion of authors' "ownership" of texts they create (and their ability to control the meaning of their texts) and (2) focusing on how language is used to achieve power, as when they try to understand how a some interpretations of a literary work come to be regarded as "truth." So this approach has some in common with Sociological criticism in that it holds that a text is constructed within a social context.
1. Quotations are from X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia's Literature: An Introductionto Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Sixth Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995). 1790-1818.
Additional Sources:
Barnet, Sylvan and William Cain. A Short Guide to Writing About Literature, 9th ed. New York: Longman, 2003.
Harmon, William and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature, 7th ed. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1996.
John B. Padgett. Critical Approaches to Literature.Handout. U of Mississippi. 2003.
http://www.charlesyoungs.com/english12honors/criticalapproachestoliterature.html.
New Criticism
New Criticism was a dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the mid twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Its adherents were emphatic in their advocacy of close reading and attention to texts themselves, and their rejection of criticism based on extra-textual sources, especially biography.
HISTORY
New Criticism is a type of formalist literary criticism that developed in the 1920s-30s and peaked in the 1940s-50s. The movement is named after John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism. New Critics treat a work of literature as if it were self-contained. They do not consider the reader's response, author's intention, or historical and cultural contexts. New Critics perform a close reading of the text, and believe the structure and meaning of the text should not be examined separately. New Critics especially appreciate the use of literary devices in a text. The New Criticism has sometimes been called an objective approach to literature, similar to the approach students in public schools are taught to take.
The notion of ambiguity is an important concept within New Criticism; several prominent New Critics have been enamored above all else with the way that a text can display multiple simultaneous meanings. In the 1930s, I. A. Richards borrowed Sigmund Freud's term "overdetermination" (which Louis Althusser would later revive in Marxist political theory) to refer to the multiple meanings which he believed were always simultaneously present in language. To Richards, claiming that a work has "One And Only One True Meaning" is an act of superstition (The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 39).
In 1954, William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley published an essay entitled "The intentional fallacy", in which they argued strongly against any discussion of an author's intention, or "intended meaning." For Wimsatt and Beardsley, the words on the page were all that mattered; importation of meanings from outside the text was quite irrelevant, and potentially distracting. This became a central tenet of the second generation of New Criticism.
On the other side of the page, so to speak, Wimsatt proposed an "affective fallacy", discounting the reader's peculiar reaction (or violence of reaction) as a valid measure of a text ("what it is" vs. "what it does"). This has wide-ranging implications, going back to the catharsis and cathexis of the Ancient Greeks, but also serves to exclude trivial but deeply affective advertisements and propaganda from the artistic canon.
Taken together, these fallacies might compel one to refer to a text and its functioning as an autonomous entity, intimate with but independent of both author and reader. This reflects the earlier attitude of Russian formalism and its attempt to describe poetry in mechanistic and then organic terms. (Both schools of thought might be said to anticipate the 21st century interest in electronic artificial intelligence, and perhaps lead researchers in that field to underestimate the difficulty of that undertaking.)
Studying a passage of prose or poetry in New Critical style requires careful, exacting scrutiny of the passage itself. 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 New Critics also looked for paradox, ambiguity, irony, and tension to help establish the single best interpretation of the text. Such an approach may be criticized as constituting a conservative attempt to isolate the text as a solid, immutable entity, shielded from any external influences such as those of race, class, and gender. On the other hand, the New Critical emphasis on irony and the search for contradiction and tension in language so central to New Criticism may suggest the politics of suspicion and mistrust of authority, one that persisted throughout the cold war years within New Criticism's popularity.
The Southern Agrarians, for instance, enfolded New Criticism's emphasis on irony into their anti-authoritarianism and criticism of the emerging culture of spending, consumption, and progress but — in the view of such writers as Robert Penn Warren — authoritarian populism early in the 20th century. Perhaps because of its usefulness as an unassuming but concise tool of political critique, New Criticism persisted through the Cold War years and immanent reading or close reading is now a fundamental tool of literary criticism, even underpinning poststructuralism with its associated radical criticisms of political culture. New Critical reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general, paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they are read. They look at, for example, imagery, metaphor, rhythm, meter, etc.
Besides the names mentioned above, other prominent New Critical figures include the following:
Not all the thoughts and works stemming from these individuals fall within the New Critical camp. For example, Eliot’s relationship with New Criticism was rather complicated. In 1956, he claimed that he failed to see any school of criticism which can be said to derive from himself, referring to the New Criticism as “the lemon-squeezer school of criticism." He never understood the ways that the New Critics had come to interpret The Waste Land, noting in "Thoughts after Lambeth" (1931), "When I wrote a poem called The Waste Land some of the more approving critics said that I had expressed the ‘disillusionment of a generation,’ which is nonsense. I may have expressed for them their own illusion of being disillusioned, but that did not form part of my intention." Of course, Eliot's commentary would be largely irrelevant to a New Critic's close reading of his work. (Furthermore — and in the first place — New Criticism ought to take a dim view of socio-historic contextualization embodied in phrases like "disillusionment of a generation".)
Empson, too, attempted to distance himself from the New Criticism, and was particularly critical of Wimsatt. His last book, Using Biography, was largely an attempt to refute the doctrine of the "intentional fallacy".
WORK
- Eliot's essays, such as "Tradition and the Individual Talent", provide some of the foundational texts for New Criticism, although Eliot himself had a more ambiguous relationship with the school, as evidenced in later works such as The Frontiers of Criticism.
- Ransom's 1941 essay "The New Criticism," from which the movement received its name. (Note that this essay was not the first work published that can be identified as existing within the field of "New Criticism" — rather, it was the article that gave the movement, including earlier documents, its current identity.)
- Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity and Some Versions of Pastoral are among the preeminent New Critical works. Their broad taxonomic ambition, in both cases, ranges over a good portion of the literary canon in an attempt to define a literary device or trope.
- Richards's Practical Criticism is one of the most "theoretical" works of the New Criticism; that is, it is a reflection on critical method.
- Wimsatt and Beardsley concisely defined the two anathemas of the New Criticism in their well-known essays "The Intentional Fallacy" and "The Affective Fallacy."
- Brooks's The Well-Wrought Urn is among the best-known examples of New Critical poetry explication, the essay "The Heresy of Paraphrase" frequently cited for its discussion of paradox in literature.
CRITICISM
One of the most common grievances, iterated in numerous ways, is an objection to the idea of the text as autonomous; detractors react against a perceived anti-historicism, accusing the New Critics of divorcing literature from its place in history by emphasizing the text as autonomous. New Criticism is frequently seen as “uninterested in the human meaning, the social function and effect of literature” and as “unhistorical,” for “it isolates the work of art from its past and its context.”[1] To the same ends, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the attention paid by New Criticism “to the ‘words on the page,’ rather than to the contexts which produced and surrounded them.”[2]
The New York Intellectuals was a contemporary intellectual movement who emphasized instead the socio-political role of texts, in contrast to New Critics.
Robert Scholes argues that the New Critics fail, unlike the formalists, to work on identifying the criteria of the prosaic and poetic rather than specific instances of prose or poems; that they emphasize the works over the idea of textuality.[2] Similarly, Northrop Frye argues that the study of literature should focus on literary and mythological systems, rather than individual texts.[2]
Another common critique of the New Criticism is how ill-adapted the method is to certain types of writing. Russell Reising, for example, argues that the New Criticism devalues literature that is representational or realist.[2] Likewise, Scholes accuses the methodology as denying any text of "cognitive quality" - that is, "denying that literature can offer any form of knowledge."[2]
Jonathan Culler’s argument illustrates a shift to a critique of the interpretive process itself. Culler writes that close reading fails not only to analyze the literary system, but in so doing, it regards reading as “natural and unproblematic.”[2] In the same vein, critic Terence Hawkes writes that the fundamental close reading technique is based on the assumption that “the subject and the object of study—the reader and the text—are stable and independent forms, rather than products of the unconscious process of signification, an assumption which he identifies as the "ideology of liberal humanism,” which is attributed to the New Critics who are “accused of attempting to disguise the interests at work in their critical processes.”[2] For Hawkes, ideally, a critic ought to be considered to “[create] the finished work by his reading of it, and [not to] remain simply an inert consumer of a ‘ready-made’ product.”[2]
Yet another objection to the New Criticism is that it is thought to aim at making criticism scientific, or at least “bringing literary study to a condition rivaling that of science.”[1] This charge may go hand in hand with another, in which “the New Criticism is being dismissed as a mere pedagogical device, a version of the French explication de texte, useful at most for American college students who must learn to read and to read poetry in particular.”[1]
Batas
aku memandang pagi tanpa cahaya, gelapnya berujar bahwa mendung mengikutinya
aku akan melepas untaian rantai itu jika aku mampu
akan aku pisahkan pagi dari mendung
duduk dan aku mengambil nafas dalam
di bawah rindang pohon tanpa belukar
satu-satunya pohon tempat aku dapat tertidur
tenang, itu yang pohon ini tawarkan
aku berteriak lantang melepas semua marah yang tersimpan dalam ratusan hari
satu dahan turun seolah ingin memelukku
tetesan embun dari daunnya seperti tangisan
dia merasakan apa yang aku rasakan
bualan siang mengecoh warna warni kelambu kusam
toh aku masih pulas tertidur
pagi yang datang selalu menusuk dengan cercaan
bosan aku menatap aspal tanpa kerikil tapi begitu curang
aku berdiri menatap ke jendela kecil di dinding kayu kamar
jauh di sana ada apakah?
kenapa kakiku terasa berat untuk melangkah
mencari tahu, semua tentang warna ribuan pelangi
apakah aku harus diam, terbujur kaku di sini?
apakah memang ini jalanku?
tidur dalam hampa di sudut kosong?
aku lelah...
Ibu, aku lelah...
Rabu, 21 April 2010
Pulang
Aku rindu pulang, menatap dan mencium keriput wajah emak. Aku rindu pulang, menghentak kaki di pekarangan rumah bersama bapak. Aku rindu kepulan asap dari gelas yang penuh dengan hangat tea manis. Yang emak tidak pernah lupa buat untukku setiap pagi sejak aku di taman kanak-kanak, sampai saat ini aku jadi perantau
Pulang, aku ingin pulang, sekedar melepas penat rantau. Bukan ingin ditimang. Aku ingin pagi yang lain, aku ingin pagi yang bersahabat. Aku ingin jarak yang jauh antara pagi dan petang. Kapan waktu itu datang?
Sekumpulan awan yang berjalan bearak ke barat seolah melambai, “ayo, marilah ikut, aku ke barat ke tempat engkau tinggal”. Ah, seandainya aku bersayap, aku bisa pergi kapanpun aku mau. Aku merasa sendiri di pulau kecil yang ramai ini, suara laut bukan hal luar biasa lagi, aku rindu suara adzan yang aku dengar sejak kecil
Sahabat, bukan berarti aku tidak memandang kalian. Sahabat, bukan berarti aku ingin menjauh. Aku hanya lelah dengan semua perjalanan ini. Dan, kadang bahkan tidak tahu di mana aku. Bajuku semakin usang, tidak lagi secerah saat pertama kali aku memakainya. Putih yang mulai pudar, bau matahari menjadi teman benang.
Seandainya memang masih jauh masa itu, aku akan menunggu
Sekarang aku hanya ingin diam, menikmati semua manis dan semua perih yang terkadang mengungkung
Aku tidak ingin beranjak, bukan berarti kita tidak sejalan kawan, aku lelah. Lihat, daun pun mengangguk,
mereka mengerti dan mereka ingin menghiburku dengan tarian mereka yagn tidak pernah berubah
Pulang, aku ingin pulang, sekedar melepas penat rantau. Bukan ingin ditimang. Aku ingin pagi yang lain, aku ingin pagi yang bersahabat. Aku ingin jarak yang jauh antara pagi dan petang. Kapan waktu itu datang?
Sekumpulan awan yang berjalan bearak ke barat seolah melambai, “ayo, marilah ikut, aku ke barat ke tempat engkau tinggal”. Ah, seandainya aku bersayap, aku bisa pergi kapanpun aku mau. Aku merasa sendiri di pulau kecil yang ramai ini, suara laut bukan hal luar biasa lagi, aku rindu suara adzan yang aku dengar sejak kecil
Sahabat, bukan berarti aku tidak memandang kalian. Sahabat, bukan berarti aku ingin menjauh. Aku hanya lelah dengan semua perjalanan ini. Dan, kadang bahkan tidak tahu di mana aku. Bajuku semakin usang, tidak lagi secerah saat pertama kali aku memakainya. Putih yang mulai pudar, bau matahari menjadi teman benang.
Seandainya memang masih jauh masa itu, aku akan menunggu
Sekarang aku hanya ingin diam, menikmati semua manis dan semua perih yang terkadang mengungkung
Aku tidak ingin beranjak, bukan berarti kita tidak sejalan kawan, aku lelah. Lihat, daun pun mengangguk,
mereka mengerti dan mereka ingin menghiburku dengan tarian mereka yagn tidak pernah berubah
Jumat, 16 April 2010
Kuta Utara 5.20 pagi
Aku bukan orang kuat
Aku bukan orang yang mampu menahan langit
Aku bukan orang yang menengadahkan wajah ke langit dan menantangnya
Aku orang yang tunduk pada DIA yang mencipta
Aku lemah, kekuatanku ada padaNYA
dan hanya padaNYA aku berserah
Kakiku tidak cukup kuat untuk melangkah tanpa DIA
Kakiku lemah jika aku tidak bersandar padaNYA
Aku lemah tanpaNYA
Aku, hanya inlah aku
Yang kadang sulit kalian tebak
Aku berubah tanpa arah
Aku, inilah aku berserak seperti untaian cerita malam
Aku rindu pagi
Menggenggam padang gemulai indah
Aku rindu malam
Memeluk damai mimpi
Aku rindu wajah tenang
Menghampiri, menggenggam tanganku, berujar
"kamu sempurna bagiku, meskipun tidak bagi mereka"
Aku bukan orang yang mampu menahan langit
Aku bukan orang yang menengadahkan wajah ke langit dan menantangnya
Aku orang yang tunduk pada DIA yang mencipta
Aku lemah, kekuatanku ada padaNYA
dan hanya padaNYA aku berserah
Kakiku tidak cukup kuat untuk melangkah tanpa DIA
Kakiku lemah jika aku tidak bersandar padaNYA
Aku lemah tanpaNYA
Aku, hanya inlah aku
Yang kadang sulit kalian tebak
Aku berubah tanpa arah
Aku, inilah aku berserak seperti untaian cerita malam
Aku rindu pagi
Menggenggam padang gemulai indah
Aku rindu malam
Memeluk damai mimpi
Aku rindu wajah tenang
Menghampiri, menggenggam tanganku, berujar
"kamu sempurna bagiku, meskipun tidak bagi mereka"
Kamis, 15 April 2010
Kotak dalam Balai Kraton
Impianku begitu besar, aku ingin menceritakan dunia. Aku memang pemimpi, tapi aku tahuaku adalah pemimpi yang tahu kapan harus bangun dan mewujudkan mimpiku. Sekarang, mungkin aku hanya
bocah di pinggir jalan yang punya mimpi. Memandang ke atas, memicingkan mata karena sinar matahari, kemudian dia tersenyum karena melihat dirinya dalam sebuah pesawat.
Katakan, apa yang ingin kau genggam? Bumi inipun akan kau genggam jika kekuatan hatimu tak pernah padam sampai pada saatnya. Dunia memandang apa yang kau pakai, tapi langit tahu isi otak dan hatimu. Saat itu juga aku berjalan menyusuri sore kota, menatap indah yang akan aku miliki. "Bahagia bukanlah bentukan atau buatan, bahagia adalah tanggung jawabku atas diriku sendiri".
Entah apa yang aku tulis, mungkin terjadi pergunjingan dalam hatimu, tapi biarkan saja itu, karena tulisan ini juga berasal dari batinku yang berperang. Kecamuknya tidak mau berhenti. Tulisan ini bukan tentang belas kasihan, tapi tentang satu nafas bocah perempatan lampu merah yang mencari hidup.
Dan tiba-tiba aku tersenyum saat mengingat kraton ini. Singgasana tak berpengganti. Syair sang raja selalu sama, derita punggawa, tetap. Amarah kadang melesak, menusuk dalam kabut "iya". Semua tatapan tua menjawab "kemana kami mau lari?".
Kraton tanpa patih, tanpa menteri, tanpa penasehat. Jikalupun ada, mereka hanya hiasan, tidak lebih. Selain daripada itu hanyalah pion. Kisahnya melekat ke negeri seberang, sungguh hebat, tapi sayang tak bermartabat.
Ingin aku menghunus pedang yang aku tajamkan dengan potongan hati dan air mata, tapi untuk apa, toh semua itu fana. Dan semua tertunduk di hamparan emas lantai kraton, tapi semua lapar. Tersenyum, itulah yang menjadi kekuatan.
Pergilah jika sudah waktunya, kata mereka. Itu benar, tidak ada yang salah dengan itu. Tapi perang Bharatayudha
belumlah mulai. Duduklah, diam, lakukan yang perlu, kerjakan apa yang penting, dan tanpa sadar kamu telah
membuat keajaiban. Bocah penjual koran itu muncul di sini, di babat tanah kawitan, entah kenapa aku menyebutnya
demikian. Tidak diperhitungkan, memang. Tapi nafasnya seperti sembrani. Itu yang sang raja harus tahu.
Propaganda, pembunuhan cipta, jangan kamu takuti. Aku tidak takut, karena pandanganku jauh ke negeri seberang.
Aku teringat dua orang temanku dalam kotak kami. Aku ingin berkata, mungkin kalian menjerit tertahan karena kenyataan lain, hati kalian
berontak, tapi tenanglah, ada kalanya langit mendung dan ada kalanya badai menjadi teman. Yang paling indah adalah
saat langit menjadi cerah.
Aku, inilah aku yang selalu mendukung kalian, sekalipun aku hanya penulis bodoh tanpa arah, tak tertebak.
bocah di pinggir jalan yang punya mimpi. Memandang ke atas, memicingkan mata karena sinar matahari, kemudian dia tersenyum karena melihat dirinya dalam sebuah pesawat.
Katakan, apa yang ingin kau genggam? Bumi inipun akan kau genggam jika kekuatan hatimu tak pernah padam sampai pada saatnya. Dunia memandang apa yang kau pakai, tapi langit tahu isi otak dan hatimu. Saat itu juga aku berjalan menyusuri sore kota, menatap indah yang akan aku miliki. "Bahagia bukanlah bentukan atau buatan, bahagia adalah tanggung jawabku atas diriku sendiri".
Entah apa yang aku tulis, mungkin terjadi pergunjingan dalam hatimu, tapi biarkan saja itu, karena tulisan ini juga berasal dari batinku yang berperang. Kecamuknya tidak mau berhenti. Tulisan ini bukan tentang belas kasihan, tapi tentang satu nafas bocah perempatan lampu merah yang mencari hidup.
Dan tiba-tiba aku tersenyum saat mengingat kraton ini. Singgasana tak berpengganti. Syair sang raja selalu sama, derita punggawa, tetap. Amarah kadang melesak, menusuk dalam kabut "iya". Semua tatapan tua menjawab "kemana kami mau lari?".
Kraton tanpa patih, tanpa menteri, tanpa penasehat. Jikalupun ada, mereka hanya hiasan, tidak lebih. Selain daripada itu hanyalah pion. Kisahnya melekat ke negeri seberang, sungguh hebat, tapi sayang tak bermartabat.
Ingin aku menghunus pedang yang aku tajamkan dengan potongan hati dan air mata, tapi untuk apa, toh semua itu fana. Dan semua tertunduk di hamparan emas lantai kraton, tapi semua lapar. Tersenyum, itulah yang menjadi kekuatan.
Pergilah jika sudah waktunya, kata mereka. Itu benar, tidak ada yang salah dengan itu. Tapi perang Bharatayudha
belumlah mulai. Duduklah, diam, lakukan yang perlu, kerjakan apa yang penting, dan tanpa sadar kamu telah
membuat keajaiban. Bocah penjual koran itu muncul di sini, di babat tanah kawitan, entah kenapa aku menyebutnya
demikian. Tidak diperhitungkan, memang. Tapi nafasnya seperti sembrani. Itu yang sang raja harus tahu.
Propaganda, pembunuhan cipta, jangan kamu takuti. Aku tidak takut, karena pandanganku jauh ke negeri seberang.
Aku teringat dua orang temanku dalam kotak kami. Aku ingin berkata, mungkin kalian menjerit tertahan karena kenyataan lain, hati kalian
berontak, tapi tenanglah, ada kalanya langit mendung dan ada kalanya badai menjadi teman. Yang paling indah adalah
saat langit menjadi cerah.
Aku, inilah aku yang selalu mendukung kalian, sekalipun aku hanya penulis bodoh tanpa arah, tak tertebak.
When the sun goes down
Aku menatap hari tanpa warna. Matahari terdiam, entah apa dalam benaknya. Mungkin dia lelah memberikan sinarnya. Aku masih berdiri di pinggir jurang, bukan dalamnya jurang itu yang aku takuti, tapi kesendirianku berdiri di situ.
Aku menelan semua perih, aku menerima semua itu, namun aku tidak pernah tahu sampai kapan. Dan, aku memilih untuk menderita dengan penuh kasih. Panggil aku naif, ucapkan bodoh di depanku, aku akan tetap. Bukan kesempurnaan yang ada pada diriku, aku hanyalah aku yang berbalut kulit yang terbakar malam. Senja menyeruak masuk dan memamerkan taringnya, menghimpitku dengan langkah lantang, selantang suara malam mendendangkan sepi. Hentikan pergunjingan dalam otakku, aku lelah, aku tidak ingin berpikir lagi. Pikiranku melemahkan tulangku. Semua hanya tentang yang akan hilang, biarpun indah pada waktu terbitnya, indah pada waktu mekarnya. Sungguh dunia gelap saat matahari melangkah.
Berdiri di atas menara, aku memandang lepas, dimana warna memadukan dirinya dengan suara dalam waktuku. Mulutku terbuka, "aku tidak akan berhenti". Aku lelah melarikan diri dari setiap barisan perih yang menghadangku, aku akan menyeruak masuk sampai mendapatkan tawa yang ada di belakang barisan itu, dan itulah yang akan menjadi milikku. Matahari.
Aku menelan semua perih, aku menerima semua itu, namun aku tidak pernah tahu sampai kapan. Dan, aku memilih untuk menderita dengan penuh kasih. Panggil aku naif, ucapkan bodoh di depanku, aku akan tetap. Bukan kesempurnaan yang ada pada diriku, aku hanyalah aku yang berbalut kulit yang terbakar malam. Senja menyeruak masuk dan memamerkan taringnya, menghimpitku dengan langkah lantang, selantang suara malam mendendangkan sepi. Hentikan pergunjingan dalam otakku, aku lelah, aku tidak ingin berpikir lagi. Pikiranku melemahkan tulangku. Semua hanya tentang yang akan hilang, biarpun indah pada waktu terbitnya, indah pada waktu mekarnya. Sungguh dunia gelap saat matahari melangkah.
Berdiri di atas menara, aku memandang lepas, dimana warna memadukan dirinya dengan suara dalam waktuku. Mulutku terbuka, "aku tidak akan berhenti". Aku lelah melarikan diri dari setiap barisan perih yang menghadangku, aku akan menyeruak masuk sampai mendapatkan tawa yang ada di belakang barisan itu, dan itulah yang akan menjadi milikku. Matahari.
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