Paper no.7. Literary Terms..

To Evaluate My Assignment,

Click Here..

Assignment of Literary Terms  ....

Name:Ekta Jayswal

Class: M.A.[SEM:2]

Roll No:10

Paper No.7:-Literary Theory and Criticism;

The 20th Western & Indian Poetics:2..

Enrollment No: PG2069108420180027

Batch:2017/19

Email Id: ektajayswal12@gmail.com

Submitted to:Dr. Dilip Barad

S.B.Gardi English Department [M.K.B.U.] 

Literary Terms...

Literary terms refer to the technique, style, and formatting used by writers and speakers to masterfully emphasize, embellish, or strengthen their compositions..

Let's discuss about four terms:-

1.Feminist Criticism
2.Psycho Analytical Criticism
3.Diaspora
4.Queer Theory

1) Feminist criticism:-

Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. ...

Feminist criticism is concerned with "The ways in which literature reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women". The theory about how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal  and this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing about women.

Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: Unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to under-represent the contribution of women writers.

Common Space in Feminist Theories:-

Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which women are oppressed.

In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values.

All of Western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world.

While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (scales of masculine and feminine).

All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.

Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not.

The history of feminist literary criticism is extensive, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in women's studies and gender studies by "third-wave" authors...

Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three waves of feminism:-

First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Second Wave Feminism  - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949) and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.

Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist (over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform".

Other Authors are:-

Jane Austen

Aphra Behn

Charlotte Bronte 

George Eliot

Thomas Hardy 

D.H.Lawrence

Mary Leapor

Thomas Middleton

Katherine Mansfield

Olive Schreiner

William Shakespeare 

John Webster

Virginina Woolf

We can find Feminist Approach in their writing...

2) Psychoanalytical Criticism:-

In psychoanalytical criticism, the motivations for much of our behavior (fears, desires, ambitions) lay hidden in our conscious and certain personality types of developed as a result of some childhood experience, good or bad..

Psychoanalytical criticism is famous with the work of Sigmund Freud which, in literary theory, concerns with the reason for human action. According to Freud that within human exists ‘the conscious’ and ‘the unconscious’ or in common terms called as the relation between the encompassed consciousness and the individual’s contact with the external world. This external world is referred as the world of dream which is unknowable since it occurs in our mind.

Dream itself according to Freud, consists of (1) manifest and (2) latent. 
Manifest is the dream itself, while the latent is the thought which is not knowable and seen consciously. The dream itself is a wish to be fulfilled. The distortion that converts the wish into obscure dream is called a dream work. And therefore a literary work is the manifestation of human’s dream work. In literary work, the dream work displace the unconscious material into manifest content of the dream which is called as metaphor, metonymy, or other figures represent the secret lies hidden in it. Therefore the work of literature is as the outward expression of an author’s unconscious mind.

The psychoanalytic criticism’s task is to review the unconscious of the characters in the literary work and to discover the author’s hidden fear, desire, and motivation. The characters in a literary work are much of the representation of the author’s unconscious; the fear, the desire, the disorder, etc. Psychoanalytic criticism applies a combination of psychoanalytic theory and knowledge about the author. According to psychoanalytic theory, traces of their unconscious desires or repressed wishes can be found in various forms. Symbols, defensive writing, or the choice of conflict in the story can all be analyzed by the critic to help them discover what drove the author to create such literary work.

Dealing with the manifestation of dream work into literature, Freud, explains that the process is called as condensation and displacement wherebythe mind disguises its wishes and fears in dream stories. In condensation several thoughts or persons may be condensed into a single manifestation or image in a dream story; in displacement, an anxiety, a wish, or a person may be displaced onto the image of another, with which or whom it is loosely connected through a string of associations that only an analyst can unravel.

3) Diaspora:-

A Diaspora a large group of people with a similar heritage or homeland who have since moved out to places all over the world.

The term Diaspora comes from an ancient Greek word meaning "to scatter about." And that's exactly what the people of a diaspora do — they scatter from their homeland to places across the globe, spreading their culture as they go. The Bible refers to the Diaspora of Jews exiled from Israel by the Babylonians. But the word is now also used more generally to describe any large migration of refugees, language, or culture.

Diaspora suggests a displacement from the homeland, circumstances or environmental location of origin and transfer in one or more nation states, territories or foreign countries. 

The term "diaspora" then has certain religious significance and pervaded medieval writings on the Jewish, to describe the plight of Jews living outside of Palestine . Another early historical reference is the Black African diaspora, beginning in the sixteenth century with the slave trade, forcibly exporting West African out of their native land and dispersing them into the "New World", parts of North America, South America , the Caribbean and elsewhere that slave labor was exploited through the middle passage. These early historical references reveal that diaspora is not always voluntary. 

The term "diaspora" used to describe the mass migration and displacement of the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in reference to independence to movements in formerly colonized areas, waves of refugees fleeing war-torn states and fluxes of economic migration.

Amitav Ghosh said that "I don't think migration signifies one thing. There are so many reasons why migrations take place - it could be economic, social, political or even related to education".

Many Indian writers have contributed to the rich tradition of English literary studies. Writers like Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K.Narayan ,were the ones who made Indian English literature recognized and all were subjects of the British rule in India. Writers like Nirad. C.Chaudhari chosen the English coasts because his views were not willingly accepted in India. Salman Rushdie's "imaginary homeland" encompasses the world over. Salman Rushdie, V.S Naipaul, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Seth have all made their names while residing abroad. 



4) Queer Theory:-

A definition of Queer is something odd or unusual,or is an offensive and derogatory term used to describe a homosexual.
Queer theory focuses on mismatches between Sex, Gender and Desire.Queer is something that is, not normal or abnormal, worthless, strange,feared, questionable,odd, unconventional..

Queer theory is often used to designate the combined area of gay and Lesbian studies,  together with the theoretical and critical writings about all modes of variance- such as cross-dressing, bisexuality, and transsexuality- from society’s formative model of sexual identity, orientations and activities.

Since the early 1990s , however, it has been adopted by gays and lesbians themselves as a noninvidious tern to identify a way of life and an area of scholarly inquiry.

But lesbians and gay studies began as ‘liberation movements’ for African American and feminist liberation during the anti –Vietnam war, anti- establishment, and counter cultural ferment of the late 1960s  and 1970s. since that time these studies have maintained a close relation to the activists who strive to achieve, for gays and lesbians, political, legal and economic right equal to those of the heterosexual majority.

A number of queer theorist , for example adopted the deconstructive mode of dismantling the key binary oppositions of Western culture, such as male/ female, heterosexual/ homosexual, and natural/ unnatural, by which a spectrum of diverse things id forced into only two categories, and in which the first category is assigned privilege, power and centrality. While the second is derogated, subordinated and marginalized. 

Later theorists such as Eve Sedgwick and Judith Butler undertook to invert the standard hierarchical oppositions by which homosexuality is marginalized and made unnatural,  by stressing the extent to which the ostensible normativity of heterosexuality is based on the suppression and denial of same sex desires and relationships.

Thank You... 😊



          

•