Literary Criticism:

Text and Context

Outline

• Starting questions• Text and Context or Extrinsic and Intri

nsic Approaches; • Poems as Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5• New Criticism• Some other examples: Last Supper, V

enuses

Starting Questions: Which of the following questions do you ask of a

literary work? • Is Darcy (in Pride and Prejudice) proud?

Will Elizabeth and Darcy have a happy life after they get married?

• Who was the Dark Lady addressed within Shakespeare’s sonnets from 127 to 152? Who is Lucy of Wordsworth’s Lucy poems?

• What do the ironies in “My Last Duchess” mean? Is it a dramatic monologue? How is it an example of dramatic monologue?

• What are the representative works of Victorian England?

Starting Questions: Which of the following questions do you ask of a

literary work?

• Do I like The Great Gatsby? Is it meaningful to me? Is it more meaningful if Gatsby is a real person?

• What is Paradise Lost’s publishing history? Are there different manuscripts?

• What kind of person is Hardy? What does he look like? Is he a vegetarian? What is his racial, class background and his sexual orientation.

yellow -intrinsic, brown-extrinsic; red –

questions with problematic assumptions.

• Is Darcy (in Pride and Prejudice) proud? Will Elizabeth and Darcy have a happy life after they get married?

• Who was the Dark Lady addressed within Shakespeare’s sonnets from 127 to 152? Who is Lucy of Wordsworth’s Lucy poems?

• What do the ironies in “My Last Duchess” mean? Is it a dramatic monologue? How is it an example of dramatic monologue?

• What are the representative works of Victorian England?

yellow -intrinsic, brown-extrinsic; red – questions with problematic assumptions.

• Do I like The Great Gatsby? Is it a great literary work? Is it better than Forrest Gump? How is it related to Forrest Gump? Is Gatsby is a real person?

• What is Paradise Lost’s publishing history? Are there different manuscripts?

• What kind of person is Hardy? What does he look like? Is he a vegetarian? What is his racial, class background and his sexual orientation?

Dark Lady"If snow be white, why then her breasts are du

n; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

“ (Sonnet 130)• Penelope Rich, a powerful courtesan. (source

) • A black whore. (source) Anne Vavasor• Attributing Sonnets 1-126 to a young man an

d Sonnets 127-152 to a dark lady is somewhat problematical, since in many of the poems the gender of the person addressed is not at all clear (although sometimes it is). (source)

Text and Context or Extrinsic and Intrinsic Approaches

• Intrinsic Approach: New Criticism, Close Reading

• Extrinsic Approach: placing the text in a certain context.

社會、歷史Political Unconscious

社會機構

印刷、出版者／ 行銷者

作者／父母

讀者

The Unconscious

Text // Self

How to position a text in its contexts?

Postcolonialism Context: Imperialism and Colonialism

Poststructuralism Context: Social Discourses (Languages) and Capitalism

Our course’s approaches

Text(New Criticism)

Author

Structuralism Context: language, signs

Reader

History & Society

Our course’s approaches

•

閱讀、了解

欣賞

分析、詮釋

文學批評

理論化

What is it about? Do you like it? Why?

What does it mean? And how?

How are its meanings produced?

What else does it mean from a certain perspective or in some context(s)?

由賞析到批評理論 : a Hermeneutic Circle

Text & Context: Example I“When We Two Parted” Byron 1813

• Meaning? • Pattern: What phrases are repeated? What

parts are changed? • Repetition: In silence and tears, coldness (chi

ll), name (shame, fame)

Long, know, secret (silence, too . . . to tell) • Change: tense (past departure, prsent realiz

ation, future hatred)

Context: Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb• . . . became lovers and, through much of April and May 1

812, shocked London with their affair. • But such passion never lasts. Byron was a victim of his

own contradictory personality - he loved to pursue women but, once captured, he longed to leave them. Paradoxically, he could not rest easy without their complete adoration.

• Byron had wooed her passionately for two months and then ignored her.

• 1812 He also told her to go to Ireland [to join her husband] for both their sakes. She did so however unwillingly; but this was the effective end of their relationship. But they continued to write, perhaps because he feared another hysterical outburst.

• 1813 He tried to avoid her at all cost. http://englishhistory.net/byron/lclamb.html

Text & Context: Example II“Neutral Tones”• What does the title mean? What images & m

etaphors are used? Pattern?• Connotation: Tone: color quality and speakin

g style Is the speaker’s tone neutral? white, ash, gray, • metaphors: riddles, words (played to and fr

o), ominous bird, dead smile. • Pattern: Is the last stanza a present condensa

tion of the previous experience? (chidden curst, gray tree, eyes, smile fa

ce)

Text & Context: Example II“Neutral Tones”

• Pattern (2):variation of sentence length (the 2nd and 3rd longer). Alternation of long vowels and short vowels and explosives

• Tone: bitter

Text & Context: Example II“Neutral Tones” in Context

• Compared with “When We Two Parted”

• Poems about being deceived by male poets;

• Both show their bitterness and obsession by the love over a period of time.

Text & Context: Example III“The Going”

• Meaning? – ‘The going” close your term here, up

and be gone; great going; vanishing; Compared to “morning harden upon the wall, ”

– Me: sick, a dead man held on end, undone

• Pattern? Repetition & Variation: – Why . . . – “me”

Text & Context: Example III“The Going” in Context 1

• Of the first of a sequence called Poems 1912-13. Hardy gave the whole sequence a Latin epigraph Veteris vestigia fammae, which means ‘Traces of an ancient flame’. They were written in the months after the death of his wife, Emma, who died on 27 Nov. 1912. (Hardy was 72 then.) p. 155-

• Source: Texts and Contexts: introducing literature and language study. Adrian B

eard. NY: Routledge, 2001

Text & Context: Example III“The Going” in Context 1• Hardy and Emma were antagonistic; possib

le reasons: religious, class, sex, rivalry (she envied his fame) or Hardy’s disloyalty (he loved several beautiful and aristocratic women with literary aspiration).

• Emma suffered from unpleasant illness for quite a while and her death was not unexpected. Right after her death, Hardy’s lover, Florence Dugdale, moves in to live with him.

Text & Context: Example III“The Going” in Context 1• Emma copied a great deal of Hardy’s manu

script for him. But her work and her authorship were mostly repressed.

• One of Emma’s diary entries was “What I think of my Husband,” which was burned up by Hardy.

• Dugdale’s name, on the other hand, was frequently used by Hardy to express his opinions in essays or letters. After Hardy’s death, she published his biography, which was later found out to be written by Hardy.

Text & Context: Example III“The Going” in Context 2

• Compared with Wordsworth’s “A Slumber did my Spirit Seal” – – Wordsworth’s poem shows a gradual pr

ocess of acceptance of death; – Hardy’s shows a self-centered feeling of

guilt and regret.

Text & Context: Example III“The Going” in Context 3

• Compared with Christina Rossetti’s poems

1. “After Death”: Her treatment of love;

“The Going”2. “Bourne”: Her use of death as a way

of self-preservation. “A Slumber”

Text & Context: Christina Rossetti Example IV –paintings of D. G. Rossetti

“Song” in Context --Romantized• 當我死去的時候　親愛　你別為我唱悲傷的歌

我墳上不必安插薔薇　也無須濃蔭的柏樹 讓蓋著我的青青的草　淋著雨也沾著露珠 假如你願意請記著我　要是你甘心忘了我

• 在悠久的昏幕中遺忘　陽光不升起也不消翳 我也許　也許我還記得你 我也許把你忘記 啦 ... 我在見不到地面的清蔭　覺不到雨露的甜蜜 我再聽不到夜鶯的歌喉　在黑夜裡頭傾吐悲啼 在悠久的墳墓中迷惘　陽光不升起也不消翳 我也許　也許我還記得你　我也許把你忘記

• 歌 ( 電影『閃亮的日子』插曲 ) 作詞：徐志摩 / 羅大佑　作曲：羅大佑

Example IV

Example V: “Convergence of the Twain” (1912)

Facts: The Titanic luxury sea-liner sank after colliding with an iceberg on April 15, 1912, during its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, with a loss of 1500 of some 2200 on board.

Meaning? Important Poetic elements? Pattern (repetition, tension, contradictions) of the poem?

Example V: “Convergence of the Twain” (1912)

1. Conflict between human vanity and the cold decay underwater; between human ambition and God’s will.

2. Present tense (I-V) and Past tense (VI - X); the last two lines –present tense, why?

3. Metaphor; ship and iceberg compared to mates destined for each other.

4. Form and the position of verb.

“Convergence of the Twain” in context: the ship Titanic

-- “floating palace.” -- she could remain afloat with any

three of the first five compartments flooded, and even with the first four full. Such features prompted the periodical The Shipbuilder to deem Titanic "practically unsinkable.“

“Convergence” in context: the ship Titanic –human errors and conspiracies? -- The ship was part-owned by the American

millionaire J. P. Morgan. Just before the departure, he cancelled his reservation on the ship, claiming ill-health. 54 others cancelled reservation.

--The ship look-outs, who were watching for icebergs, had no binoculars. . . .Ice-berg warnings ignored by one called “Phillips” several times.

http://www.rmstitanic.net/titanic/history/history05.html

Passengers on the ship Titanic

337 first-class passengers (mainly Americans), 271 second-class (mainly British); 712 third class (nearly all of whom were immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Armenia, Russia, China and the Lebanon; 123 Lebanese passengers were drowned).

First Class had the largest percentage of survivors, then Second Class, then Third Class respectively. 

New Criticism on Poetry (text 44 - 45)

• 1. Pay close attention to the text’s diction its meanings (connotation and denotation) and even its etymological roots.

• 2. Study the poetic elements closely. e.g. 詩律（ prosody ）、比喻語言（明喻、暗喻、

擬人法、頓呼法）• 3. Search for structure and patterns; e.g. op

positions in the text (paradox, ambiguity, irony)

• 4. From Parts to an Organic Wholeness

Different Kinds of Contexts

-- Author’s context or socio-historical context

-- Reader’s context (different views, ours or the other critics’);

-- the text’s context (publication/reception history; influences, parodies and adaptations, e.g. “Song”)

More poems on death

• Representations of Death in Poetry• http://library.thinkquest.org/16665/ar

t2.htm

Other examples: Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper

• http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/l/leonardo/painting/z_other/lastsupp.html

Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper

• http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/504271_christ.html

Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper (during restoration)

• http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/504271_christ.html

Last Supper by Aubrey Hallis

• ©1996 Aubrey Hallis

The Last Pancake Breakfast ©2000 Dick Detzner

• http://www.wrongdimensionboy.com/aub/

Similarities

• Both pictures have Captain Crunch as Judas, both have Snap, Crackle and Pop, The Trix Rabbit, Tony The Tiger, Lucky The Leprachaun and the Quaker Oats Man. Both have Aunt Jemimah, although Aubrey's painting has her as the Christ figure while Detzner's has Mrs. Butterworth in that role.

• Plagiarism? Sacrilegious?

Another one

•

Venus in Context

•

• Barbarians' Venus, Paul Klee

• Black Venus

Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face)• Artist: Barbara Kruger • Date: 1981-83

Barbara Kruger: writings on her photo work• YOUR GAZE HITS THE SIDE OF MY

FACE; • YOU MAKE HISTORY WHEN YOU DO BUSINESS; • YOU INVEST IN THE DIVINITY OF THE

MASTERPEICE; • WHEN I HEAR THE WORD CULTURE,

I TAKE OUT MY CHECKBOOK.

•

http://www.ellensplace.net/marilyn.html

Marilyn Monroe

Other Monroe’s

•