Dr. Sachin Ketkar
Reader, Dept of English
The MS University of Baroda,
MASTER OF ARTS PART TWO, PAPER VIII
Modern Criticism & Theory: Structuralism to New Historicism
Required Reading
2006 to 2009
Unit 5& 6. Poststructuralist Theory and Deconstruction:
Unit 8. Reader Response and New Historicism:
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSSION
Poststructuralist
Theory and Deconstruction (Unit 5 and 6)
Jacques Derrida
“Structure, Sign and Play in the
Discourse of the Human Sciences”
1) Discuss how Derrida demonstrates that two absolutely
irreconcilable interpretations of interpretation, of structure, of sign and of
play share the domain of social sciences in an extremely problematic fashion.
2) How does Derrida expose the metaphysical underpinnings
of the structuralist project which claimed to be critical of metaphysics? What
are implications of this deconstruction for the new status of discourse of the
human sciences?
3) Why does Derrida select the texts of Levi-Strauss for
deconstructive reading? What does this reading reveal regarding the `critique
of language and thus critical language in the social sciences?’
4) Comment on Derrida’s deployment of the terms like
`supplement’, `free-play’, `differance’ and `trace’ in his essay.
5) How does Derrida demonstrate that Levi Strauss
retreats from full radical implications of his insights into the terms like
`scandal’, `bricolage’ and `free play’?
6) What do you think are the implications of Derrida’s
proposition that `language bears within itself the necessity of its own
critique’ for the language of contemporary literary theory?
Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?”
1) What according to Michel Foucault are the four chief
characteristics of the author function? What is the theoretical and political
significance of these observations?
2) How does Foucault establish that the idea of author
which is traditionally perceived as an eternal and invariable category is in
fact historical and variable function of discourse?
Jean- Francois Lyotard, “Answering the Question: What
is Postmodernism?”
1) Elaborate on Lyotard’s distinction between the modern
and the post modern and explain his proposition that ` A work can become modern
if only it is post modern’ in the light of this distinction.
2) Discuss Lyotard’s defense of the avant-garde
postmodernism against attacks from various quarters.
Paul de Man, ` the Resistance to Theory’
1) How according to Paul De Man does literature involve,
` voiding, rather than the affirmation, of aesthetic categories’?
2) How does De Man show that `the real debate of literary
theory is not with its polemical opponents but rather with its own
methodological assumption and possibilities’?
3) Comment on Paul De Man’s observations that the
resistance to theory is, ` built-in constituent of its own discourse’, ` is a
resistance to the use of language about language’, ` is a resistance to the
rhetorical or tropological dimension of language’, and `is a resistance to
reading’.
4) Explicate De Man’s demonstration that rhetoric, `by
its actively negative relationship to grammar and logic undoes the claims of
the trivium (and by extension, of language) to
be an epistemologically stable construct’.
General Questions about Post structuralism and Deconstruction
(Unit 5 and 6)
Answer
the following questions on the basis of your reading of the prescribed reading:
1).
Elaborate the various meanings of the prefix `post’ in the terms
`poststructuralism’ and `postmodernism’.
2)
Consider poststructuralism as radical skepticism
regarding the relationship between language and meaning, language and `reality
.What are the implications of this skepticism? How does this skepticism subvert
the `commonsensical’ and `seemingly natural’ understanding of categories like
author, text, self and so on?
3)
How does the poststructuralist critique invariably turns out to be
auto-critical and self reflexive?
Reader
Response and New Historicism (Unit
8)
1) Why and how does Stanley Fish argue that it is the
structure of the reader’s experience rather than any structures available on
the page that should be the object of description?
2) Discuss Stanley Fish’s notion of Interpretative
Communities.
Wolfgang Iser, “Reading Process: A Phenomenological
Approach”
1) How does Iser show that the convergence between the
reader and the text brings literary work into existence? What according to him
is the reward for reading literature?
2) How does Iser describe the `dialectical structure’ of
reading in phenomenological terms?
Georges Poulet, “Phenomenology of
1) Compare Poulet’s phenomenological account of reading
process with that of Iser. What are similarities and differences in these two
accounts?
2) Discuss Poulet’s remark that literary criticism seems
`to oscillate between two possibilities- a union without comprehension and a
comprehension without union.’
3) How does Poulet describe ` a critical method having as
guiding principle the relation between subject and
object’? What difficulties does he encounter?
Stephen Greenblatt, “Resonance and Wonder”, “Towards a
Poetics of Culture’
1) New Historical approaches or contemporary critical
approaches have to find ways of resolving the dialectic between what Greenblatt
terms as `resonance’ and `wonder’. Discuss.
2) How does Greenblatt distinguish his own
approach/practice of studying literature from the traditional historicist
approaches?
3) Discuss the use and import of the terms, `negotiation’,
and `exchange’ in Greenblatt’s critical praxis.
4) Discuss the relationship between `new historicism’,
`Marxism’ and post-structuralism as elaborated by Greenblatt in his essay `
Towards a Poetics of Culture’.
General Questions about Reader-Response and New Historicism (Unit 8)
Answer
the following questions based on your reading of the prescribed reading:
1) Compare and contrast Iser’s, Poulet’s and Fish’s
versions of the Reader-Response approaches.
2) Can you consider more contemporary critical approaches
to literary studies like New Historicism as attempts to `apply’ the theoretical
ferment in the field in the past four decades?
Some General Questions regarding Theory
1) Consider `theory’ as a radical critique of the
traditional commonsensical ways of thinking about categories which were taken
for granted as natural and self evident like the autonomous and coherent human
self, meaning, language, text, author and so on.
2) ` Theory is reflexive, thinking about thinking,
enquiry into the categories we use in making sense of things, in literature and
in other discursive practices’ –Jonathan Culler. Discuss the importance of this
theoretical self reflexivity in practice of literary criticism.
3) `We have eaten the apple of knowledge and must live
with the consequences. Literary criticism can no longer be taught and practiced
as if its methods, aims and institutional forms were innocent or theoretical
assumptions and ideological implications.’ David Lodge. Discuss.
4) “In our era, criticism is not merely a library of
secondary aids to the understanding and appreciation of literary texts, but
also a rapidly increasing body of knowledge in its own rights’ David Lodge.
Discuss.
5) In what ways do you think has the study of `theory’
affected your own thinking about culture, literature, study of literature and
yourself?
6) Do you think `theory’ has any `use’ to us as Indian
students of literature from a culture very different from the one that has
produced `theory’? Give reasons for your answer.