Modernism/ Postmodernism

‫الدكتور رشح باالحمر‬:

*when we talk about modermism we talk about the 18th
century because it's a rejection of the religion and
idealism that existed in the 19th century romantisim and
victorianism.
*something very important about this shift at the end of
the 19th century : the way that people dealt with truth
and the idea the concept of truth.
*the one who possesses truth is in power religion
because God knows everything.A God,it promises and
and tells these people represent religion whether the
church was whatever they would use, this kind of
knowledge and they would abuse their power so they
use this concept of truth and they Modify this
concept,and change it and They add to it ,because of the
power they have in these religious institutions not
religion ,people would use this rhetoric of her (haram)
and (Halal) and this is very powerful because those who
care about religion they want to follow these
instructions,so if the person who is in control of
delivering this kind of knowledge of uses that knowledge
and their power that would cause corruption and people
would be abused.Air societies, families, Father, mother
and societies. They would also manipulate their concept
of true. The father would say that that this is true and
this is not true. This is Accepted this is not accepted so
parents societies would control other people with this
kind of rhetoric. in these societies these are conservative
societies Even in the West, societies who would not
accept that the other sings about freedom and liberty,
try to present your own idea about God about religion
about facility about men,you would be rejected and You
could be imprisoned ,press people in the way that the
dress or the way that they look. So even in these liver site
liberal societies there is oppression.
*so the people would follow traditions and follow these
social norms or rules because they want to Be accepted if
they want to survive especially in the past because not
everyone had their ability to obtain knowledge specially
were very limited because the majority of people were
poor or they couldn't afford having education.
*These colonial countries, they wanted exceptance or
the approval of their people in order to go and invade
another country, because this would demand or need
People to wage wars ,only families are going to send
their children to go and fight in Africa, so they would
yeah trick them into plate and discussed with truth,
convinced that that we're having a religious war For
example, in Africa were spreading Christianity, or
spreading slap or Judaism ,we want to save women,from
certain societies.
*now people got fed up with these these ideas,
especially when They started to gain knowledge since
the beginning of the 19th century and or end of the 18th
century. People start to have more knowledge, especially
men, and women who were able to afford They had the
the family support or the husbands support ,And many
women either worked in science or wrote literature and
pin names These ideas were not accepted by the
masculine society or by this society in general, and there
were laws that supported this ,and also restrictions, so
this was very very important factors that lead people to
revolt against these traditions and these these laws.
*A life change and people started to depend on
materialism and and life became practical or needs to
become practical in order for people to survive and
because of science because of technology , many
inventions
* define the person whether he longs to the virtualized
you or the upper class or the middle class or the lower
class. Now these standards and these measurements of
criteria were not easy to define because the rich person
could be any person from the lower class could become
rich in the in this age because of industrial because of
these new versions and also because of that new liberal
ideas and could find Lead person or person who belongs
according to their portion into a certain cost but does not
have money..so the social structure changed along with
other Factors.
*Because women started to ask for their rights and the
past four equal duties at equal rights ,asking for basic
rights ，20th century this this these demands increase
escalated because this woman that was concerned with
with women started in the 19th century and 1848. This
this group or or movement called the woman's
right.Movement started earlier, but started to find a
recognition in the 20th century. It was not called
feminism This whole idea was not even used or know ,
*the Power was taken from from governments and from
government , from religious institutions, from societies,
from the teacher, from the husband, so there are laws
that would give children. For example, rights not to
follow their parents ,These laws would give women right
to bedient her father or her husband.
but this power was not complete and they couldn't
assert their power in in the workplace,that women they
gained rights, but they were not paid equally.
* if we don't have law ,we don't have religion ,do not
have restrictions, We would have chaos.so one of the
main features of the 20th century or the first half of the
20th century or the beginning of the modern age is This
kind of corruption crimes , prostitution , and other
problems, but cannot happen if the family structure was
strong.

Modernism: A revolutionary movement encompassing

all of the creative arts that had its roots in the 1890s and
lasted until World War Two or 1945, a transitional period
during which artists and writers sought to liberate
themselves from constraints and polite conventions we
associate with Victorianism.
*The peak of modernism was in the 20s(the peak of
materials that internationally recognized, which means
that most of the Ruled influenced by this movement and
they started to change their traditions, their lives, their
education ,their attitude)
*in this period The attitude towards religion changed,
The attitude towards the law changed;the low gave the
women Their abilities to choose and the law also
protected the women against the abuses of the society
or other things in life.(rejection of all authorities.)
Modernism exploded onto the international scene in the
aftermath of World War I, a traumatic transcontinental
event that physically devastated and psychologically
disillusioned the West in an entirely unprecedented way.
A wide variety of new and experimental techniques arose
in architecture, dance, literature, music, painting and
sculpture.
As a literary movement, modernism gained prominence
during and, especially, just after World War I; it
subsequently flourished in Europe and America
throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Modernist authors sought to break away from traditions
and conventions through experimentation with new
literary forms, devices, and styles. They incorporated the
new psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl
Jung into their works and paid particular attention to
language – both how it is used and how they believed it
could or ought to be used. Their works reflected the
pervasive sense of loss, disillusionment, and even
despair in the wake of the Great War, and World War
One,hence their emphasis on historical discontinuity and
the alienation of humanity.
*From sense of loss there is alienation( not belonging to
the group ).
Although modernist authors tended to perceive the
world as fragmented, many- such as T. S. Eliot and James
Joyce- believed they could help counter that
disintegration through their works. Such writers viewed
as a potentially integrating, restorative force, a remedy
for uncertainty of the modern world. To this end, even
while depicting disorder in their works, modernists also
injected order by creating patterns of allusion, symbol,
and myth. This rather exalted view of art fostered a
certain elitism among modernism.
*Allusion would not determine their choices and
marriage and an education and living and and
relationships with people
In literature, there was a rejection of traditional realism
(chronological plots, continuous narratives relayed by
omniscient narrators, ‘closed endings, etc.) in favor of
experimental forms of various kinds.

Some Characteristics of Modernism

• new insights from the emerging fields of psychology
and sociology
• anthropological studies of comparative religion
• a growing critique of British imperialism, and the rise of
independence movements in the colonies
• the increasing threat of fascism and doctrines of racial
superiority in Germany
• the escalation of warfare to a global level
• the extension of democracy, without discrimination as
to race or sex
• the increasing dissemination, impact, and influence of
non-white cultures
• the entrance of women into the broader work force,
and the development of social feminism
• the emergence of a new "city consciousness"
• new information technologies such as radio and cinema
• the rise of mass communication, and the growth of
newspapers and periodical literature
*children would reject the authority of parents.
Major characteristics of Modernism in Literature:
* A new emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity,
that is, on how we see rather than what we see.
* A movement (in novels) away from the apparent
objectivity provided by features as: omniscient external
narration, fixed narrative points of view and clear-cut
moral positions.
* A blurring of the distinctions between genres, so that
novels tend to become more lyrical and poetic, for
instance, and poems more documentary and prose-like.
*A new liking for fragmented forms, discontinuous
narrative, and random-seeming collages of disparate
materials.
* A tendency towards ‘reflexivity’, so that poems, plays
and novels raise issues concerning their own nature,
status, and roles. literature is reflexive , and their
purpose is to reflect mentality of the state mind of the
modern.
* in the 19th century Before the 20th century 1-
they depended on the third person, 2-they depended
writers on special narrative, In the traditional plot ,In the
transitional point, they start with equilibrium. The
exposition or debt reduction, and then we have a
conflict. 3-the literary genres/type of are clear ( when
you read a novel You know that this is a novel when you
read a play You know that this is a play )
but
in modernism In literature 1- The first person narrator to
and also the third person Objective narrator 2-They don't
follow a timeline of story element 3- these literary
genres are mixed (Sometimes we open a poem and we find a
story )
 4- there is an interest in presenting reality and there’s a
shift from describing things as they are to describing
thing as the writers see ,In this case the reader would need
to imagine what will happen because the narrator did not give
us the details , And this is, is connected to the open ending
stories
5-The writers would experiment with these techniques,
they would depend on fragmentation They would
represent the chaotic life that people experienced or
lived in this kind of literature.

Fragmentation ;is one of them which the writer would choose

pieces from different stories or different ideas would connect
them together.

**The writer and narrator in fiction and in narrative

would describe life as they see it not as it’s.
*the people point of view of this change:not everyone
was capable of accepting the new changes, for some
people, not everyone was happy, but but these changes
did take place and they became very effect and people
needed to deal with these things.that because of some
factors that happen at the beginning of the 20th century,
like , the war, the Great War, World War One, and that
force people to leave their houses and their farms and
their villages and their people and their families And
either participated in killing and murder and rape and
torture and destruction Or they witnessed these things,
So those who survive did not die when they went back
returned to their countries They were unable to adapt to
the society that they're lived in In some cases they were
not accepted this chang
*there were also unable to go back to the to the past.
The religion are they could not go back to God ,and They
cannot go back to their husbands.the traditional image
men let their families they couldn't go back to their
families, These people experience something that's
called sense of loss.
*The American Dream in America related to
1-the last generation (alienation)
2-existentialism(which is the appreciation of the human being, the
liberty and freedom of the person. Also they there should be a sense of
responsibility when people make choices)

*This kind of believe which is to believe in freedom and to responsible for

choices and to reject religion and reject restrictions is called existentialism
* what are the main features of existentialism? Dread
and anxiety
*With (which) the absence of religion in people’s life
people started to feel dread (‫قلق‬،‫فزع‬،‫ )رهبة‬and despair .
They believe also that there is no after life or if they died
and were good and loyal to good they would not go to
heaven. This cause many psychological problems, they
escaped their reality, and they suffer madness,their
societies Some of those commits suicide and this is a
form of escapism,how they escaped their reality ? 1-
some of them escaped through drugs or alcohol 2-
some of them escaped through writing and creating
their imaginary world
*the developed of transportation made it easier for
people to disappear and escape

Postmodernism: a term referring to certain radically

experimental works of literature and art produced after
World War II.

The postmodern era, with its potential or mass

destruction and its shocking history of genocide, has
evoked a continuing disillusionment similar to that
widely experienced during the Modern Period. Much of
postmodernist writing reveals and highlights the
alienation of individuals and the meaninglessness of
human existence. Postmodernists frequently stress that
human desperately (and ultimately unsuccessfully) cling
to illusions of security to conceal and forget the void over
which their lives are perched.
*after World War One People started to doubt that
there’s any goodness in humanity and they were shocked
with the consequences of this war and destruction that
happen in that time . They realized that human being are
capable of kind of evilness (they could use medicine and
technology Useing these resources in order to create
more weapons in order to destroy

And in the 20th century especially with the advancement

of technology and the science and the development of
weapons wars would result in the killing of millions of
people within a few days, months, years.

And shocked human being and they doubted any chance

that people would be good.

*The word post mean: after,but in philosophy,in criticism

and in literature they also use this word to refer to
against. So when they talk about postmodernism they
also talk about against modernism.
*When they talk about postmodernism they also talk
about against modernism and this it is an era to many
people that took place after the modernism but also it is
an era that appeared as a rejection or as a revolution
against the promises that were made by a modernism.

Some Characteristics of Postmodernism

• There is no absolute truth - Postmodernists believe that
the notion of truth is a contrived illusion, misused by
people and special interest groups to gain power over
others.
• Truth and error are synonymous - Facts,
postmodernists claim, are too limiting to determine
anything. Changing erratically, what is fact today can be
false tomorrow.
• Self-conceptualization and rationalization - Traditional
logic and objectivity are spurned by postmodernists.
Preferring to rely on opinions rather than embrace facts,
postmodernist spurn the scientific method.
• Traditional authority is false and corrupt -
Postmodernists speak out against the constraints of
religious morals and secular authority. They wage
intellectual revolution to voice their concerns about
traditional establishment. people start believe that the
governments were corrupt, their societies were corrupt ,People would
trick other people
• Ownership - They claim that collective ownership
would most fairly administrate goods and services.
• Disillusionment with modernism - Postmodernists
regret the unfulfilled promises of science, technology,
government, and religion.
• Morality is personal - Believing ethics to be relative,
postmodernists subject morality to personal opinion.
They define morality as each person’s private code of
ethics without the need to follow traditional values and
rules.
• Globalization – Many postmodernists claim that
national boundaries are a hindrance to human
communication. Nationalism, they believe, causes wars.
Therefore, postmodernists often propose
internationalism and uniting separate countries.
• All religions are valid - Valuing inclusive faiths,
postmodernists fall towards New Age religion. They
denounce the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ as being
the only way to God.
• Liberal ethics - Postmodernists defend the cause of
feminists and homosexuals.
*In terms of both movements attitudes towards art and
the value of art, They do not differentiate between good
and bad art.

Some differences between modernism and

postmodernism
Differences between modernism and postmodernism:
* Both give great prominence to fragmentation as a
feature of twentieth-century art and culture, but they do
so in different moods. The modernist feature it in such a
way as to register a deep nostalgia for an earlier age
when faith was full and authority intact. For the
postmodernist, by contrast, fragmentation is an
exhilarating, liberating phenomenon, symptomatic of our
escape from the claustrophobic embrace of fixed systems
of belief. In a word, the modernist laments
fragmentation while the postmodernist celebrates it.
* In terms of tone and attitude: an important aspect of
modernism is a fierce asceticism which found the over-
elaborate forms of the nineteenth century deeply
offensive and repulsive. By contrast, postmodernism
rejects the distinction between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ art
which was important in modernism, and believes in
excess, in gaudiness, and ‘bad taste’ mixture of qualities.
It disdains the modernist asceticism as elitist and
cheerfully mixes, in the same building, bits and pieces
from different architectural periods.
*These critics believe that in the modern age critics
(modernism)or people in general had the ability to
recognized what could good or bad or they did
differentiate between good art and bad art/high art and
low art. They would appreciate a text that does not use
obscene words or obscene images they consider as a
good art. But the literature that use these kind of
obscene images and language they were considered as
bad art.
*in the 20th century people rejected different types of
authorities , They reject the authority of the critic ,the
authority of the author, the authority of the reader in the
text, which means that they separated the author, the
writer of the text from the interpretation of the text
Whether it's a story or novel or or a poem (We cannot
connect the meaning of the text adept intention of the
author to the life of the author to the biography of the
author, to the psychological state of the authoralso the
reader is not important, which means that when you
understand, or you interpret them a text, you're not
allowed to involve. )

Russian Formalism/ New Criticism

Russian Formalism:
it is A school of literary criticism that originated during
World War I, that flourished in the 1920s in the former
Soviet Union, whose practitioners focused on the form
(rather than the content) of literary works.
*From this name we understand that is an approach of
reading that emerged in Russian and depend on the form
of the text from the word formalism.
* Russian formalists argued that literary language has a
special function: to reinvigorate (give new life to)
language and redeem it from the insipid (dull) and vapid
(not tasty) state into which it sinks under the weight of
everyday usage.
*They thus viewed literary language as fundamentally
different from everyday speech, which serves simply to
communicate information.
*They believed that literariness, by virtue of its capacity
to overturn common and expected patterns (of
grammar, of story line), could rejuvenate language. Using
language in novel ways could, according to these critics,
free readers to experience not only words, but even the
world, in an entirely new way.
*they do not care about meaning They realize that
there's no point in searching for the meaning, because
you would not be able to identify a truthful meaning ( They
don't care about the content, they don't care about the fee and they don't care
about the the main idea,They don't care about the meaning of the text, they just
care about the language, the style they would study the tone of voice , the the
relations between words and sentences, paragraphs,symbols, metaphors. ) They
believe that the text has the ability to remain own and to
survive as own without being connected to the writer or the
reader.
These Russian scholars (Roman Jakobson and others)
boldly declared the autonomy of literature and poetic
language, advocating a scientific approach to literary
interpretation.
Literature, they believed, should be investigated as its
own discipline, not merely as a platform for discussing
religious, political, sociological, or psychological ideas.
*When we talk about the form of the text we talk about the
language, style, the type or the genre of the text ( play or poem
or story. Also whether it is a tragedy or comedy or epic.
The language is important according to Russian formalism. So, a
group of writers led by Roman Jakobson and other of writers.
They believe that the language is important in literary text.
What important to these formalists is that the language that we
use is considered a normal language and ordinary language and
a boring language.

*And writers because they have special skills and abilities

to express ideas and to use language in special way in a
more sophisticated way.

*They believe that writers de familiarize language.

*They believe that the text is a concrete object.
*they believe that the language that we use in everyday
life is an ordinary language, is a boring language doesn't
have life, It's not interesting
*and the writers because writers do have, skills and
expressing their emotions and their ideas And they also
have a master or skill and using language,They would use
figures of speech They would also break the laws of of
structure or language or grammar.
*They believe that the text does have truth if the reader
of the critic is competent,( you in order to study, and be
able to criticize the text, you should have good
knowledge of of literature , of language)
Defamiliarization:
It is A term coined by the Russian Formalist Victor
Shklovsky. It is the process of making strange the familiar
or putting the old in new light or in a new sphere of
perception. Through poetic diction or word choice, a
poet “makes strange” the poetic line or word, slowing
down the act of perception, thereby forcing readers to
reexamine the word, line, image, or any other poetic
device.
In so doing, readers experience a small part of their
world in a new way by intensifying the act of perception.

New Criticism: ‫موجود اسم كل من االقل عىل واحد كتاب حفظ يجب‬
A loosely structured school of criticism that dominated
American literary criticism from the early 1930s to the
1960s. named after John Crowe Ransom’s 1941 book
The New Criticism, the theory is based on the view that a
work of art or a text is a concrete object that can be, like
a concrete object, analyzed to discover its meaning
independent of its author’s intention or the emotional
state or values of its author or reader. For New Critics, a
poem’s meaning must reside within its own structure. By
giving poem (text) a close reading, the New Critics
believe they can ascertain the text’s correct meaning.
Some of its important practitioners are Ransom, Rene
Wellek, W.K. Wimsatt, R.P. Blackmur, I.A. Richards,
Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Pen Warren.
* Louise Rosenblatt:
-A female critic she had an interesting idea about the
relationship between the reader and the text,
-She believed that without the reader there is no text,
the reader read the text if it wasn't real then the text
does not exist
-she believed that the writer is not important , after the
writer write the letter ,disappears from the text and an
interpretation that depends on the writer is not valid ,
but the reader place a more important role in the
interpretation.

-she believes that there is relationship and interaction

between the text and the reading ,The text would
influence the reader , Stimulate and Provoke the
emotions of the reader and The past memories of the
reader,the thought ,the idea of the reader At the same
time, the text would control these responses.(the reader starts
to interact and form an interpret. The text doesn’t allow the reader to freely
interpret, the reader can’t bring something new to the text. There is a response
from the reader because of the text’s influence.. )This is called transactional
experience : the text would provoke
The reader emotion but The text sets rules to limit the readers interpretation,
involvement in the text

-she depended on an experiment by I.A Richards ; *he

was a critic and philosopher and writer and professor , in
the 20s and 30s century,*and he was imported to the
new critics ,*he distributed Poems to his students And
did not write the name of the poets and any other
information and ask the students to interpret these
forms,and the student interpret these poems which(
different students provided different interpretations.). *
and He believed that we can't find the truth from
literature, we can find the idea but not truth and the
only way to find truth through science.*

-she said that because we have many readers, it is

normal that we have many interpretations,These
interpretations would depend on their gender of the
person ,the social class,education levels
-She called different type and functions of reading;
1- an efferent reading : which we would apply it to find
knowledge. (To gain knowledge)
2- the aesthetic reading :it brings pleasure and
entertainment (the same as Horace and Sydney).

-Because she was a woman People didn't care about her

ideas ,her ideas did not find resonance in the mainstream
critics (male critic ) . Her ideas will not heard not until the
60s and the 70s and 80s when other male critics started
to have interest in this kind of reading which is the
involvement of the reading in the text. (among other two
importent philosophers and critics and writers German
writers called Hans Vaihinger and Louise Rosenblatt

Hans :
*He is a German critic he came up with a term Horizen of
expectation between the reader and the text throughout
history.

*he believe that the reader is important ,His concern

wasn’t the interpretation meaning itself but how people
receive, respond to the text, their reaction in a special
age, period, and studied and compare them.
*his interest was to study the interpretations of the same
text within different periods of time.for example (Suffolk
Leaders The Orders of the king a plays for example
: first case : he study the way that the Greeks received their reaction to the test ,
The tools .
second case :he study the way that the roman, received the same text.
third case : compares the way that the Renaissance people perceived the same
play .
then he would compar these interpretations the way that the people interpreted
in greek and roman and modren age )he believed that every age have certain
rules and tools for interpretation

*heinterested in the development of the change in the

mind of the reader while reading the same text.(Comparing
the different expectations that the reader has during the process of
reading the same text.)

*Horizon of expectation he would study the way that

readers in history responded to the same text and
compared those interpretations.
* When we talk about the reader we refer to the psychology of
the reader, the memories of the reader, the state of mind, the
personal experience because we need an actual author to write
the text and actual reader(a person who go by the text and read it and
then interact with the text) to read the text.

*implied reader:someone who understands everything

in the text (embodies all theos predispositions)

* reception theory : is the theory that worked on related

to the reader(espousing a particular kind of reader
oriented criticism)
*reader oriented Criticism,: that they're concerned with
the reader (reader + text = meaning)
*The efferent reading: Is the reading that we perform in order to find
‫ا‬
information.‫وهيك نعمل شو ببي كتالوج جهاز أي مع يكون لما مثاال‬

*The aesthetic reading: Is the reading that we read in order to enjoy the text. We
are engaged in this type of reading we would experience the text, we will live with
the text…‫ بصفحة قرأ الدكتور‬٧٩

*we have two horizons of expectation ;

one by Hans Robert
and one by Wolfgang Iser
(‫*)الكتاب من قراءه الدكتور‬In the midst of New Criticism/ s rise to
dominance in the field of textual analysis a dominance that
would last for more than 30 years-one of its two early
pioneers, L.A. Richards (T.S. Eliot being the other) became inter-
ested in the reading process itself. Unlike many of his Formalist
friends who disavowed any relationship between a reader's
personal feelings and a text's interpretation, Richards set about
to investigate such a relationship.
Using a decidedly reader-response approach to textual
analysis, Richards distrib- uted to his classes at Cambridge
University copies of short poems of widely diverse aesthetic
and literary value, without citing their authors and titles and
with various editorial changes that updated spelling and
pronunciation. He then asked his students to record their free
responses to and evaluations of each of these short texts.
What surprised Richards was the wide variety of seemingly
incompatible and contradictory responses.
After collecting and analyzing these responses, published his
findings, along with his own interpretations of the short texts,
in Principles of Literary Criticism( 1925) . Underlying Richards's
text is his assumption that science, not poetry or any other
literary genre, leads to truth-that is, science's view of the world
is the correct one. Poems, on the other hand, can produce only
" pseudo-statementsabout the nature of reality. But such
pseudo-statements, declares Richards, are essential to the
overall psycholog- ical health of each individual. In fact,
according to Richards, human beings are basically bundles of
desires called appetencies. In order to achieve psychic health,
one must balance these desires by creating a personally accept-
able. vision of the world. Richards observes that religion was
once able to provide this vision but has now lost its
effectiveness to do so. Borrowing from the thoughts of the
nineteenth-century Matthew Arnold, Richards decrees that
poetry, above all other art forms, can best harmonize and
satisfy humankind's appetencies and thereby create a fulfilling
and intellectually acceptable worldview.

* ((‫الكتاب من قراءه الدكتور‬Louise M.Rosenblatt

In the 1930s, Louise M. Rosenblatt, literary theorist, author,

scholar, and pro- fessor of literacy, further developed Richards's
earlier assumptions concern- ing the contextual nature of the
reading process. In her text Literature as Exploration (1938) ,
Rosenblatt asserts that both the reader and the text must work
together to produce meaning. Unlike the New Critics, she shifts
the emphasis of textual analysis away from the text alone and
views the reader and the text as partners in the interpretative
process.For Rosenblatt, a text is not an autotelic artifact, and
there are no generic literary works or generic readers who
must master the Formalists' methodology with its
accompanying complex and often dense terminology in order
to gain the one and only correct interpretation of any text.
Instead, there are millions of potential individual readers of the
potential millions of individual texts. Readers bring their
individual personalities, their memories of past events, their
present concerns, their particular physical condition, and all of
their personhood to. the reading of a text. Disavowing New
Criticism's Affective Fallacy and other such tenets, Rosenblatt
asserts the validity of multiple interpretations of a text shaped
not only by the text but also by the reader.In the late 1930s,
however, Rosenblatt's ideas seemed revolutionary, too
abstract, and simply off the beaten, critical path. Although New
Criticism dominated literary practice for the next 30 years or
so, Rosenblatt continued to develop her ideas, publishing in
1978 The Reader, the Text, the Poem.This work became a
pivotal force in helping to cause a paradigm shift in the
teaching of literature by changing the focus from the text alone
to a reader's individual response to a text as a key element in
the interpretive process.
In this work , Rosenblatt clarifies her earlier ideas and presents
become one of the main critical positions held by many
theorists and practical critics today.
(this important)
According to Rosenblatt, the reading process involves both a
readerand a text ,The reader and the text participate in or
share a transactional experience: The text acts as a stimulus for
eliciting various past experiences, thoughts, and ideas from the
reader, those found in both our everyday existence and in past
reading experiences.
Simultaneously, the text shapes the reader's experiences by
functioning as a blueprint, selecting, limiting, and ordering
those ideas that best conform to the text,
Through this transactional experience, the reader and the text
produce a new creation; a poem. For Rosenblatt and many
other reader-oriented critics, a poem is defined as the result of
an event that takes place during the reading process, or what
Rosenblatt calls the " aesthetic transaction. " No longer
synonymous with the word text, a poem is created each time a
reader transacts with a text, whether that transaction is a first
reading or any one of countless rereadings of the same text.
For Rosenblatt, readers can and do read in one of two ways:
efferently or aesthetically. When we read for information-for
example, when we read the directions for heating a can of
soup-we are engaging in efferent reading (from the Latin
effere, " to carry away" ) . During this process, we are
interested only in newly gained information that we can " carry
away" from the text, not in the actual words as words
themselves. When we read efferently, we are motivated by
specific needs to acquire information. When we engage in
aesthetic reading, we experience the text. We note its every
word, its sounds, its patterns, and so on. In essence, we live
through the transactional experience of creating the poem, Of
primary importance is our engagement or our unique " lived-
through" experience with the text.

Hans Robert Jauss * ((‫الكتاب من قراءه الدكتور‬

Writing toward the end of the 1960s, the German critic Hans
Robert Jauss emphasizes that a text's social history must be
considered when interpreting the text. Unlike New Critical
scholars, Jauss declares that critics must examine how any
given text was accepted or received by its contemporary
readers. Espousing a particular kind of reader-oriented criticism
known as reception theory, Jauss asserts that readers from any
given historical period devise for themselves the criteria
whereby they will judge a text. Using the term horizons of
expectation to include all of a historical period's critical
vocabulary and assessment of a text, Jauss points out that how
any text is evaluated from one historical period to another (e.
g. , from the Age of Enlightenment to the Romantic period) ,
necessarily changes. For example, Alexander Pope's poetry was
heralded as the most nearly perfect poetry of its day because
heroic couplets and poetry that followed prescribed forms
were judged superior. During the Romantic period, however,
with its emphasis on content, not form, the critical reception of
Pope's poetry was not as great.
Wolfgang Iser The German phenomenologist Wolfgang Iser
borrowsand amends Jauss's ideas. Iser believes that any
object-for example, a stone, a house, or a poem-does not
achieve meaning until an active consciousness ecognizes or
registers this object. Thus, it is impossible to separate what is
known (i. e. , the object) from the mind that knows it (i. e. ,
human consciousness) . Using these phenomenological ideas as
the basis for his reader- oriented theory and practice, Iser
declares that the critic's job is not to dissect or explain the text
because as soon as a text is read, the object and the reader
(the perceiver) are essentially one. Instead, the critic's role is to
examine and explain the text's effect on the reader.Iser,
however, differentiates two kinds of readers. The first is the
implied eader, who " embodies all those predispositions
necessary for a literary. work to exercise its effect-
predispositions down, not by an empirica outside reality but by
the text itself. Consequently, the implied reader, has his or her
roots firmly planted in the structure of the text" ( Iser, 1978) . In
other words, the implied reader is the reader implied by the
text, one who is predisposed to appreciate the overall effects
of the text. the other hand, the actual reader is the person who
physically picks up the text and reads it. This reader, as
opposed to the implied reader, comes to the text shaped by
particular cultural and personal norms and prejudices. By
positing the implied reader, Iser affirms the necessity of
examining the text in the inter pretive process; at the same
time, by acknowledging the actual reader, Iser declares the
validity of an individual reader's response to the text
he talks about. The horizons of expectation, according to iser
:Similar to Jauss, Iser disavows the New Critical stance that a
text has one and only one correct meaning and asserts that a
text has many possible interpretations.

For Iser, texts, in and of themselves, do not possess meaning.

When a text is concretized (i. e. , the phenomenological
concept whereby the text registers in the reader's
consciousness) , the reader automatically views the text from
his or her personal worldview. However, because texts do not
the reader everything that needs to be known about a
character, a situation, a relationship, or other such textual
elements, readers must automati- cally fill in these " gaps, "
using their own knowledge base, grounded as it is in a
worldview. In addition, each reader creates his or her own
horizons of expectation about what will or may or should
happen next. (Note the variation in meaning Iser gives this
term compared with Jauss, who coined it. ) These horizons of
expectation frequently because at the center of all stories is
conflict or dramatic tension, often resulting in sudden loss,
pain, unexpected joy or fear, and at times great ful- fillment.
Such changes cause a reader to modify his or her horizons of
expec- tation to fitla text's particular situation..
(‫)الكتاب من قراءه الدكتور‬In making sense of the text, in filling in the
text's gaps, and in continu- ally adopting new horizons of
expectation, the reader uses his or her own value system,
personal and public experiences, and philosophical beliefs.
According to Iser, each reader makes" concrete" the text; each
concretization is, therefore, personal, allowing the new
creation-the text's meaning and effect on the reader-to be
unique.

For Iser, the reader is an active, player in the text's

interpretation, writing part of the text as the story is read and
concretized and, indispensably, becoming its coauthor.

* canon( the American or western canon): They were white

which means that they did not accept minorities and people
colors, These critics believed in the rejection of the reader and
the author and the interpret process.

Close Reading:
a term used by the New Critics for the kind of reader or
critic who applies the principles of New Criticism to arrive
at an interpretation. Implied in the term is a close and
detailed analysis of the text itself to derive its meaning
without historical, authorial, or cultural input.
Ontological critic:
A critic uses the assumptions of New Criticism and
believes that text is a concrete entity- like a painting,
vase, or a door luck- that can be analyzed to ascertain
meaning.
Extrinsic analysis:
The process of examining elements outside the text (e.g.,
historical events and biographies) to uncover the text’s
meaning.
Objective correlative:
A term coined by T.S. Eliot that refers to a set of objects,
a situation, a chain of events or reaction that can serve to
awaken in the reader the emotional response that the
author desires without being a direct statement of that
emotion.
Practical criticism (applied criticism):
Applies the theories ad tenets of theatrical criticism to a
particular work of art. In applied criticism, the critic
defines the standards of taste and explains, evaluates, or
justifies a particular text.
Intentional fallacy
A term used by New Critics to refer to what they believe
is the erroneous assumption that the interpretation of a
literary work can be equated to the author’s stated or
implied intentions or private meanings. Claiming such
external information to be irrelevant in ascertaining a
text’s meaning, New Critics base interpretation on the
text itself. The term was first used by W.K.Wimsatt and
Monroe C. Beardsley in “ The Intentional Fallacy” (1946).
Affective Fallacy:
A term used by New Critics to explain that a reader’s
emotional response to a text is neither important nor
equivalent to its interpretation.
Believing those who evaluate a work of art on the basis
of its emotional effect on its perceiver to be incorrect,
New Critics assert that the affective fallacy confuses what
a poem is (its meaning) and what it does.
The term was first introduced by W.K. Wimsatt and
Monroe C. Beardsley, who believed that a poem’s
meaning was determined solely from a close reading of a
text.
Absolutist critic: one who believes that there is one and
only one theory or set of principles a reader may use
when interpreting a text.
Relativistic critic: critic who uses various and even
contradictory theories in critiquing a work of art.
Theoretical criticism: type of criticism that formulates
the theories, principles, and tenets of the nature and
values of art.

Structuralism
• it's a school of reading literature,school of criticism
that is concerned with studying the language with
the style of the text ,
• they turned the study of literature into a
science(scientific way), and they believe that we
could find A meaning in the text ,
• they separated the the writer from that text and
also the reader from the text (Although some of
these structuralism studied the influence of the text
 on the reader, or they were concerned with the way
that the reader interpret that the text)
• This theory (Structuralism)did not last long At the
end of the 50s ,these critics and these theory
started to convert and change their ideas, Some of
those start to believe that word cannot only have
one meaning In literature, and it's not easy to find
truth. and it is impossible to turn the literature into
a science
• structuralist in general believed that the reader
cannot involve his emotions, personal motions or
memories or beliefs in the interpretation of the
text.
In the 50s of the 20th century A new method of reading
literature emerged that also depend on the language of
the literary text and like Russian formalism and new
critics a group of critics, philosophers and writers, they
believed that the author of the literary texts and the
reader are not important in the interpretive process and
the making of the meaning.
*instructions and they wanted to study literature in a
scientific way, and they depend on language
*At the beginning of the 20th century there was a
linguist called Pre-Saussurean,
(Saussure)
• he's a linguist and he studies language .
• and he was interested in the word and in the
relationship between the word and the meaning,.
• he's not the structuralist(But they depended on his
ideas and applied, many of these ideas in
Structuralism).
• He believed when we talk about the word or what
he called the sign signifier : which is composed of
two elements, First the the signifier, which is the the
the variable(A word like for example CAT) he made
like an equation above the signified,second The
signified is the concept of the image of the cat So if
we can imagine here the the word cat which is the
word or the sign equals the CAT the verbal. *So
there is a word and has a meaning . the signifier
 would be related to something which is called the
referent and this case is that signified.(the signifier
has One signified (it has one meaning) )
• * He believed that the relationship between the
word and the meaning is arbitrary. (means that
there is no innate connection between the word and
the meaning) but except in some cases (‫لها الت كلمات‬
‫ ) صوت‬like the word (hiss)sound of the snake ,knock,
• * he doesn't believe in complete opposites, he
believes in binary position ; which means
understanding the meaning of the word by
comparing it to other words and other things that
are related to the same family or the same gender or
same species.
• *he died before he wrote these ideas,before he
published them,After he died his colleagues
gathered the notes that he gave his students,and
they published these ideas. He turned language into
science
• *also he believe if the reader is a good reader,
completed reader, the reader would depend only on
 language would exclude the writer exclude the the
reader, and would find that meaning and the truth in
that text
• *dependent on Saussure ; we understand the
meaning of the the word through depending on
differences by comparing for example, a man to man
or a tiger to a cat and that way we know the
meaning
*(‫ )الكتاب من قراء الدكتور‬Saussure's
In the first decade of the 1900s, a Swiss philologist and
teacher named Ferdinand de Saussure( 1857-1913)
began questioning these long held ideas and, by so
doing, triggered a reformation in language study.
Through his research and innovative theories, Saussure
changed the direction and subject matter of linguistic
studies. His Course in General Linguistics, a compilation
of his 1906 to 1911 lecture notes published
posthumously by his students, is one of the seminal
works of modern linguistics and forms the basis
structuralist literary theory and practical criticism.
Through the efforts of this pioneer of modern linguistics,
nineteenth century philology evolved into the more
multifaceted science of twentieth-century linguistics.
*Saussure's Redefinition of a Word ‫الكتاب من‬
Having established that languages are systems that
operate according to verifiable rules and that they need
to be investigated both diachronically and
synchronically, Saussure then reexamined philology's
definition of a word. Rejecting the long-held belief that a
word is a symbol that equals a thing (its referent) ,
Saussure proposed that words are signs made up of two
parts: the signifier (a written or spoken mark) and a
signified (a concept):
Sign = Signifier
Signified
*(‫)الكتاب من قراء لدكتور‬
such a belief presupposes that the structure of literature
is similar to the structure of language. Like language, say
the structuralists, literature is a self-enclosed system of
rules that is composed of language. Literature, like
language, needs no outside referent except its own rule-
governed, but socially constrained, system,Before
structuralism, literary theorists discussed the literary
conventions-that is, the various genres or types of
literature, such as the novel, the short story, or poetry.

* morpheme:is the smallest part of a word that has

lexical or grammatical significance.
* the phoneme: is the smallest, meaningful (significant)
sound in a language.
* Emes :all languages are composed of basic units

Poststructuralism
in the end of the 50 is the beginning of 60s these critics
started to reject this this way of studying literature
(Structuralism) and they called this school of criticism
Poststructuralism .(post means against )
• they do depend on language like the structurlism,
but they interpreted the the relationship between
the word and the meaning in a different way,
• They use this same method or the same system of
signification ( which was provided by Saussure) sign
as symbols BUT they believe that The sign would be
composed of the signifier and signified , signifier
could have many signified ,so the signifier would
have many meanings, and the signified itself could
function as a Signifier (a sign that equals a signifier,
this one signifier would have multiple signifiers, and
every signified would have also multiple signifiers )
and they do not employ them only on literature,
These would include every detail in our lives.(for
example the traffic light: Red light means Stop
,Green light means go, yellow light means prepare )
• they believe that we cant find truth and cant find
one absolute meaning .
• they also Agreed with Saussure that they understand
the meaning of the word by depending on these
differences and they believe in the binary opposition
that there is no complete or there are no opposites
BUT there are these binary oppositions.
• And they believe that language betrays us and
doesn't reflect what we want to say.
 • they would use the expression deconstruction which
was provided by Jack Derrida the French philosopher
.
Jack Derrida
• He is critic and philosopher French who was born in
Algeria.
• he had some important ideas that would cause a
revolution in the way that they looked at the
Western civilization, he believed that the whole
Western civilization is built on a metaphysical lie
,which means that everything they read or they
learned about the West or the Western culture
civilization Is not true , for example : thier religions
(is susceptible to to doubt could be doubted),
science, history, their wars, their political system, all
these would be exposed to doubt ,would be
considered a lie.)
Roland Barth(La mort de)
• He was a structuralist and then turned into a post
structuralism deconstruction critic
 • He wrote an article called the Death of the
author,consider that the author as the creator of the
text , and then he dies and then the text would
belong to the reader (consider that the author as the
creator of the text and then the author would die like the
father who would possess some kind of any position could
be a house or it could be a car Could be money , and then
when the Father dies, this inheritance would go to the to
the sun.)

• he believes that the writer is not important in the

interpret process ,
• he Believe that the truth And the meaning that exist
would be impossible to determine and decide

Psychoanalytic criticism
Psychoanalytic criticism is a school of criticism that
interested in study ,analyze literature by depending on
the ideas and the theories of psychology.
In the 60s and the 70s was interested to literature or
school of criticism that depended on the theories and the
ideas of psychology
the psychology the science appeared earlier at the end of
the 18th century, beginning with the 19 century but this
theory,Was formed in the 60s, but depending on these
ideas and these Studies of psychology specially Freud and
Carl Jung they are considered the providers of this The
obvious period
• in Psychoanalytic criticism the author is involved in
interpretation the text and these critics study the
author in order to understand the characters,and
also the reader has some significance (they value the
author in the text when they study the text they
study the author. They understand the characters or
the attention of the text through understanding the
author also the reader. )

•
Freud :
• Freud is main figure of Psychoanalytic criticism and
also performed Psychoanalytic criticism on literature
 • Freud is development of the concept of conscious
,unconscious ,and something in between which
called preconscious or subconscious.
he believes that the brain or the human psyche is
composed of three parts:
1- the conscious part :is the part that represents
awareness,(responsible for things that we are aware, the
things that we do in purpose, things that we intentionally
do in order to achieve things or perform things.)
Experience in this life ,our relationships, our interactions,
our workis , our dreams..... considered a part of the
conscious,
2- the unconscious part :is like a container that will be
filled with all the desires that are removed from
consciousness, All these moments, desires, thoughts will
fill this container ,these forbidden desires or the desires
that we can not achieve never disappeared what we
want happen they move from conscious part from this
awareness to another part in the human psyche or
human mind. So these desires would be transferee will
be removed from the conscious part to another part
which call unconscious.
3- the preconscious or subconscious part :All these
moments, desires, thoughts will fill this container
unconscious part When it fills it start leaking out and
coming back to the conscious part, but not in the same
form, or in the same way.When the person want to hide
something it would transfer to unconscious and they
would move from the unconscious to subconscious when
they come out without unintentionally or control
because especially for the person who repress a lot of his
emotion desires ‫والوع الوع بي مدموجة بتكون يىل االحالم زي‬

• Freud is not very scientific in his research(his

methods were not scientific ), independent his ideas
and studies on mostly on his childhood experience
and Analysis and his interaction with people,
• According to Freud that there are ways for mention
forbidden desires or forgotten memories are by :
dreams and the slip of the tongue and sublimation.
dreams would be one of these methods or one of
these ways in which the repressed emotions will be
retrieved.slip of the tongue that a person would
commit mistak while speaking or while writing and
this mistake, according to Freud, could be
 intentional and unintentional which that means
sometimes you on purpose make that slip .(Those
memories and wishes are sent to the unconscious
part they would be retrieved through the
subconscious part then they could appear as a
dreams or as slips that the speaker or the writer
could make some mistakes while speaking or
writing.)
There is something call sublimation: It is a form of
subliming the self or raising the self in order to repress
forbidden desires.(For example:
If a woman has strong sexual relationships she would
repress them by becoming a nun.
Hypocrisy is something else people would pretend to be
moral or in sublime position, but in secret they would
commit such like lie, or steal. )

*People usually explain these mistakes in order to

understand the intention of the speaker.

*Also, the critics do this when they study literature, they

search for gaps, for mistakes. Here the mistakes might be
appear as images or words or symbols.

*The writer sometimes would mention or would commit

these mistakes intentionally which mean that the writer
would invite the reader to explore the meaning of the
text or the intention of the text or the author OR the
main message.

• Freud talks about: Id, Ego, superego..

Super ego: presents morality, presents
authority,(religion,socity) presents the conscious part.
People in the society would behave in a certain way they
would hide their forbidden emotions, desires,…because
they want to protect themselves.
The Id : which is the opposite side present the hidden
desires, the dark side of the human part.
*Id here is the unconscious part the place of all forbidden
and hidden desires and emotions.
*ID present the eagle part of the human part that cause
to person’s problems.
*Ego: It present the subconscious part, there is a kind of
balance between what it is conscious and what is
unconscious.(For example, if you want money or if you
have a desire to have money you should work)To some
people, this balance is pretense or hypocrisy or lies
(depending on all these things, this this kind of behavior Would give the
person chance to pursue these desires at the same time scap
punishment from the government or from the socity sometimes from
themselves. that's why we have People would hide or people would
steal and try to protect ourselves by not being exposed, They would
have relationships with people but they would hide them,they would
express their anger, but in symbolic way.)

• Freud believes that there is a connection between

the baby infant and his mother and this Baby is
physically and emotionally attached to their mother
And he would have a competition or struggling with
the other threats figure in his life And that will be
the father.( Female infant would have a connection
of the mother and because of the authority of the
father this baby female would change her interests
would of course be threatened and the interest
would be towards the father.(this is another idea that
similar to audible complex is Electra complex))

*The Phallic stage: it Explain the connection between the

infant boy and the mother And the mother and the infant
girl.
 • he believe in Electra complex : its myth mean some
female or woman would be attracted to older man
because they find their fathers in these men , (Carl
Jung who talked about the Electra complex )
*audible complex :the connection between infant ( very
young it could be two months or one month)that he
builds up towards the mother( with the mother) this kind
of affection or attraction, of course is physical and
emotional is called audible complex.
• many of Freud's ideas were refuted They were
rejected Because he wasn't very scientific or he
depended on observations or personal experiences
with childhood
*There is what we call repression: This very important
because these desires, these feelings, memories do not
disappear, but they are transferred to another place in
the mind and they appear in different ways throughout
the life of the person.
*another idea that similar to audible complex(the story
about a son who would kill his father and marry his mother.) is
Electra complex, but it is the female version. Female
infant would have a connection of the mother and
because of the authority of the father this baby female
would change her interests would of course be
threatened and the interest would be towards the father.
The electros also in a mythical story Greek story and
Freud relate this to a young female who was in love and
attracted to her father.he believed that at a very early
stage in a person's life( in infant)would develop this kind
of connection with his father or mother

*the Ways in which Freud and Carl Jung explained the

connection between the repression of these desires or
connections with the father or the mother, depending
on the gender of the infant is :
1-audible complex (male version)
2-Electra complex (female version)

* Carl also talk about archetypes ;

archetypes : are themes or motifs That everyone in this
world would share like death , a matration ,self denial
,self discovery, love, jealousy ,hatred,A youth
Jacque Lacan
 • Jacque Lacan who was French.
• He worked on the unconscious. These writers and
philosophers were influenced by Freud and the
division of the human psyche and conscious and
unconscious and preconscious.
• one of his ideas is Mirrors stage: He believes that
mirrors stage starts and admiration early in life when
anyone held a mirror for the baby the reaction of the
infant at the first time is that the baby scared. Then
the baby would develop a kind of love. For that
image in the baby. And there will be connection
between the infant and the image of the infant.
These mirrors stage will continue forever and that is why
we like to look into the mirrors.
• According to Lacan people are obsessed with their
images and their reflections in the mirrors.(there is
this relationship between the self, the person and
his image in the mirror. )from very young First, there
is confusion then There is fear then There is jealousy,
and then there is love to this image in the mirror
and that which is called narcissism that this love that
 people would form up create and develop for
themselves

He related this to the Narcissus this Greek myth that the

beautiful mythical male he is love with himself. He’s fond
of himself. He walks by pool and he sees the reflection of
himself, but he does not know that this is him. He notice
the beauty of that man in the pond he feels jealous when
he see the image of that reflection in the water and then
would jump into the water to kill that person and he
drawn and die.
There is another version that firstly he feels jealous of
the image that he see that image and then he fall in love
with this image and because he fall in love with this
person he want to jump and be with him and the result is
same.
He talk about narcissism that this love that people would
form up creat and develop for themselves