SLM-19014-Eng - LITERARY THEORY

LITERARY THEORY
V SEMESTER
BA ENGLISH
CORE COURSE: ENG5 B08
2019 Admission onwards
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT
School of Distance Education
Calicut University- P.O,
Malappuram - 673635, Kerala.
19014
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT
Study Material
V SEMESTER
BA ENGLISH
CORE COURSE: ENG5 B08
LITERARY THEORY
Prepared by:
Smt. SWATHI ANILKUMAR V,
Assistant Professor of English,
Educos Arts and Science College,
Kuttiady, Kozhikode.
Scrutinized by:
Dr. MUHAMMED NOUFAL. K,
Asst. Professor,
Department of English,
CKGM Govt. College, Perambra, Kozhikkode.
DISCLAIMER
“The author shall be solely responsible for the
content and views expressed in this book”
Literary Theory 2
CONTENTS
1 Module 1 7
2 Module 2 13
3 Module 3 26
4 Module 4 39
5 Module 5 49
Literary Theory 3
Introduction to the Course
Literary Theory is an unavoidable discipline as

far as English literature is concerned. Today, we
regard Theory as equal as literature and gives an
equal space in higher education syllabus. This
course offers an overview of the development of
Literary Theory worldwide from its origin to the
present. This SLM will have five modules; First
module deals with the period before theory as it
developed as a distinct discipline. Second module
outlines the developed form of theory in the second
half of the 20th century. In the third module the
discussion is on the cultural perspectives regarding
theory with a special focus on Marxism, Cultural
Studies and Cultural Materialism. Fourth module
points out the Feminist aspects of Theory and Queer
studies. The last module talks about the Theory in
the postmodern period including Postcolonial
studies and Ecocriticism.
This paper covers every section in detail and
the reference books provided will help you to
understand the paper in detail. The aim of this
course is to make you knowledgeable in the field of
Theory that may help you to think critically about
the world that we live in. We wish you a happy
learning experience.
Literary Theory 4
Syllabus
 Module I: Liberal Humanism versus Theory.
1. Liberal Humanism: Dominant aspects of Liberal
humanism with examples.
2. Literary Theory: Dominant aspects of literary
theory with examples. Linguistic Turn – Critical turn –
Paradigm shift
 Module II: Structuralism, Poststructuralism
and Psychoanalysis.
1. Structuralism: Saussure - Sign, Signifier,
Signified – Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes –
Structuralist narratology.
2. Poststructuralism: Derrida, Logocentrism,
Aporia, Decentering.
3. Psychoanalytic Theory: Unconscious. Freud –
Id, Ego, Superego, Oedipus Complex. Lacan – Imaginary,
Symbolic, Real, Mirror Stage.
 Module III: Marxism, Cultural Studies,
Cultural Materialism and New Historicism.
1. Marxism: Base, Superstructure, Materialism,
ideology. The Frankfurt School – Culture industry.
Antonio Gramsci – The formation of the intellectuals,
Subaltern. Louis Althusser – Ideological State apparatus
and Interpellation.
2. Cultural Studies: Culturalism, New Left, CCCS,
Raymond Williams’ definition of Culture, Structure of
feeling, Stuart Hall and the ‘popular’, and the two
paradigms of Cultural Studies.
Literary Theory 5
3. Cultural Materialism & New Historicism:

Marxist framework of Culture and History,
Historiography, Foucauldian notion of Power, Difference
with Old Historicism, Stephen Greenblatt, Louis
Montrose.
 Module IV: Feminism and Queer Theory
1. Feminism: The three waves in feminism,
Gynocriticism, French Feminism - Ecriture feminine,
Sexual Politics, Marxist Feminism, Lesbian Feminism,
Backlash, Black Feminism, Dalit Feminism,
Postfeminism, Womanism.
2. Queer Theory: Social constructionism of gender and
sexuality, LGBTIQ, Transgender identity
 Module V: Postmodernism, Postcolonialism,
and Ecocriticism
1. Postcolonialism: Eurocentrism, Orientalism, Alterity,
Diaspora, Hybridity, Uncanny, Strategic Essentialism,
Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Critique of Nationalism.
2. Postmodernism: Critique of Enlightenment and
Universalism, Habermas’s notion of Modernity as an
Incomplete Project, Lyotard’s concept of incredulity
towards metanarratives, Baudrillard’s ideas of
Simulation, Simulacra and hyperreality, Brian McHale’s
concept of Postmodernist literatures.
3. Ecocriticism: Anthropocentrism, Shallow Ecology vs
Deep Ecology, Environmental Imagination, Ecofeminism
Literary Theory 6
Module 1
Liberal Humanism
An Introduction
It is a universally acknowledged fact that art and

literature transcend time. Either it is a poem, a novel, or
any kind of cultural artifact, we all accept the timeless
nature it possesses. As we see in John Keats's comparison
of the Grecian urn as a 'sylvan historian,' every art tells a
story that breaks its spatial and temporal limits that is
History. If a question is asked how on earth this happens,
we will have to go back to the notions of Matthew Arnold
where he stated, it is the culture, in which a particular art
form is produced, actually transcends history. And, the
minds which create such transcendental works are also of
greater importance. These ideas got developed in the later
decades, finding a way to formulate a canon for literature,
especially English literature. The Western philosophy
itself is, to an extent, centred on Human individuality and
underscores the vitality of human actions to frame an
excellent culture. This can be called the Liberal Humanist
perception.
Peter Barry denotes Liberal Humanism as the
'theory before theory' that outlines how English became
an academic subject, how the Western canon came into
being, what are its features and who were the prominent
writers. There emerged many critical ideologies and
theories to evaluate arts, whether a work of art satisfies
Literary Theory 7
the conditions to be a great work of art or not. Still,

aspects of Liberal Humanism in a text might not be
visible, so the critic hast to bring it 'to the surface by a
conscious effort of will.’ To sum up, it assumes that
Liberal Humanism is an umbrella term comprising the
development of literature up to New Criticism. Criticisms
of Plato and Aristotle also prepared the path for English
literature to grow with its multifaceted areas; hence the
period begins from Plato to New Criticism as a theory.
The establishment of Oxford and Cambridge
Universities in Britain was a milestone in the
development of English studies. Earlier, these institutions
worked principally on religious propaganda and they used
the English language as a tool for its growth even outside
the country. The next turn of English studies has
happened with the process of colonization in different
parts of the world. English became a superpower weapon
in those countries to convert many of them to Christianity.
Though the agenda was to spread religion, Englishmen
introduced English with a liberal colouring as it is
engaged with transcendental literature. Even the leaders
of colonized countries supported the growth of English as
a distinct discipline since it appeals to everyone
irrespective of any differences (caste, class, etc.) English
literature became a universal one through the conscious
effort on the part of the colonizers.
Literature needs thorough scrutinization to make
it worthy for the betterment of common people. So that
literary criticism is essential. The Western philosophy
believed in the necessity of criticism on a greater level.
As we have seen, Plato and Aristotle had inaugurated this
Literary Theory 8
even before centuries. But later, during the 1920s,

criticism arose as a particular branch of knowledge with
thinkers like I. A. Richards, William Empson, and F. R.
Leavis. Their efforts culminated in the birth of New
Criticism as we see it today.
Features of Liberal Humanist Reading
To find out the 'distilled essence' in English
literature, which means the Liberal Humanist aspects,
critics need to go through some procedures. Listed below
are some of them.
1. Keep an attitude towards literature. Remember that
good literature is any piece of writing that surpasses the
constraints of time and space
2. Better, fix the meaning of a text by reading it alone
because a well-written text imbibes its meaning in itself.
Socio-political understanding is not needed. Merely a
verbal analysis will work out.
3. Since human nature is unchangeable, its portrayal must
be relatable at any time in history. Things written about
them must also liberate them from that particular period.
4. Make sure that the literary piece does not show any
interest in any of the political propaganda but foregrounds
human values only because it will manipulate people with
a specialized design.
5. Confirm that the text follows an organic unity and is
written with 'sincerity.' Everything a text wants to convey
must be rendered implicitly using proper vocabulary.
Literary Theory 9
The rise of New Criticism in the Western curriculum saw

a drastic change in the attitudes concerning the evaluation
of literature. This inaugurated the era of theory in which
several other theories took part either as unison or as
opposition to the preceding one.
Literary Theory
The word theory came from a Greek word
'theoria' which means contemplation or speculation.
Literary theory is recognized as the systematized,
organized analysis of literary texts. Theory speculates
meaning of literary texts, firstly placing it on the
backdrops of any accepted conceptualization and
secondly reading it very closely with all possibilities.
Literary theory studies the production, distribution and
reception of meanings in literary texts, as well as the
author, reader and context of the texts. Sometimes theory
appears to be political also because it unsettles the
established meanings of a text.
New Criticism, the first among the theories,

sought to evaluate literary texts in a scientific way.
Subjective apprehensions of literary texts that made use
of the Liberal Humanist ideology couldn't resolve the real
tensions a text addressed. To fix it, a New critic I. A.
Richards proposed "close reading" in his works
Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical Criticism,
which means to understand a text by validating it on the
merits of its form. William Empson discussed the
multiple semantic possibilities a text holds. At the same
Literary Theory 10
time, Cleanth Brooks tried to figure out how poetic

devices and techniques could determine a genre in his
essays like “Language of Paradox”.
Other major exponents of New Criticism were

Wimsatt and Beardsley. They introduced terms like
‘intentional fallacy (reading a text by assuming the
author’s intentions) and affective fallacy’(reading a text
on behalf of a reader’s perspective) that persist in literary
criticism. Russian Formalism and Prague School of
Linguistics are a couple of similar movements that
emerged in Russia as a counter part to the Marxian
philosophy of considering a work of art as a weapon for
social reformation. Jan Mukarovsky and Roman
Jakobson were the most popular among them. Their
contributions of concepts like ‘literariness’ lead us to look
at the particular way of using language that can
‘defamiliarize’ an ordinary object with a celestial essence.
All these approaches share one thing in common: the
significance of form in which a text is written that is made
possible by using language in different ways. Thus, what
they preferred more was a formalistic analysis to a
contextual analysis of a text.
Linguistic Turn and Critical Turn
Following New Criticism, or rather extending its

scope, Structuralism came into being with the theories
drafted by the Swiss Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
Though this was a purely linguistic venture, critics like
Roland Barthes and others utilized it to understand
Literary Theory 11
literature better. Critics argued about the importance of

language as a 'system' for meaning generation in literary
texts. This particular attempt in criticism is termed as the
' Linguistic Turn'. Linguistic Turn was followed by
another one named the Critical Turn. Critical turn
advocates critical thinking regarding everything. After
Structuralism, movements like Post structuralism,
Postcolonialism, Marxism, etc., began to view a text by
adjusting its focus on the unpinning of concealed
meanings of texts. Re-readings on the verbal play,
contextual analysis, historiographic rendition, and
undermined literary texts' meanings were done through
these moves. This paradigm shift brought about a new
method of critical understanding of the world in which we
live.
Literary Theory 12
Module 2
Structuralism
Structuralism is an intellectual movement that

began in France in the 1950s and is first seen in the
anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and the literary critic
Roland Barthes. This movement has its roots in the Swiss
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's thinking though it got its
momentum during the 1960s and 1970s.
The central point of discussion of this movement
was the construction of meanings in different areas.
Owing to the ideas of Saussure, structuralists believed
that meaning is always an attribute of things, or meanings
are attributed to the things by the human mind. That
means no word has any inherent connection with the thing
it signifies. Structuralism is an explicit opposition to
mimetic criticism (the view that literature is primarily an
imitation of reality). The essence of this thought is the
belief that things cannot be understood in isolation - they
have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they
are part of (hence the term 'structuralism'). Structuralism
influenced many, and its reactions were immense. Post
Structuralism, deconstruction etc. were some of the later
outcomes.
Ferdinand de Saussure
Saussure was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and

philosopher. His main contribution to Structuralism was
Literary Theory 13
his theory of a two-tiered reality about language. The first

is the langue, the abstract layer of language, while the
second, the parole, refers to the actual speech or the
individual articulation of language that we hear in real
life. Saussure's most influential work, Course in General
Linguistics (1916) provides two modes of language study;
synchronic and diachronic, along with his seminal ideas
on Sign, Signifier, and the Signified.
According to Saussure the synchronic study of

language will give information about the use of language
at a given point of time, whereas Diachronic approach
studies the growth of language through different periods
in history. The beneficial part of these studies was that it
could make people think about how far language can
manipulate and be manipulated by society. With the help
of language, every system around us, even a single
person’s mind, gets operated.
Sign, Signifier, Signified
Saussure proposed that it is a system of signs that

expresses ideas and thereby creates meanings. He further
explains, a sign is a complex or combination of signifier
(symbol) and signified(referent). In short, human society
is built upon these numerous signs - simply words. And
the attributed meanings create life, though they are not
'real.' Saussure's ideas can be summarized as seen in the
following diagram
Literary Theory 14
Signifier
(Sound/ image)
Sign
Signified
(Concept)
Saussure then identifies three important notions to show

how this system works.
a) Meaning is Arbitrary - words and their possible
meanings have no one to one connection
b) Meaning is Relational - one word has its possible
meaning when it is adjoined with some other word
c) Language Constitutes Reality - traditionally, it is
believed language reflects reality, but Saussure found that
it is the language (words) that creates reality.
His findings were phenomenological since they
challenged many essential or fundamental thoughts
revolving around big and strong systems such as religion,
gender identity, history etc.
Claude Levi-Strauss and ‘Structuralist Anthropology’

Levi- Strauss was a French anthropologist and
ethnologist whose work was a key in developing the
theories of Structuralism. He applied the structuralist
outlook to the interpretation of myth. Myths are
Literary Theory 15
considered to be the building blocks behind each society.

The structuralist approach to anthropology elucidates the
idea that individual tale (the parole) from a cycle of myths
did not have a separate meaning but could only be
understood by considering its position in the whole cycle
(the langue). Moving from the particular to the general,
placing the individual work within a wider structural
context, is the typical Structuralist way of understanding
'meanings'. His concept of ‘bricolage’ explained that the
existing signs are used in a way they are not meant to be
used. This is what happens with myth and mythology. At
the same time modern western philosophy, including
structuralist thoughts, work in a far more scientific way
regarding meaning generation. Strauss's interpretation of
the Oedipus myth, fixing it in the larger context of Theban
tales, is a famous example of structuralist approach to
mythology.
Roland Barthes and the Transition phase
Roland Barthes was a significant figure in the
early phase of Structuralism, who applied the structuralist
method to the general field of modern culture. He worked
in many fields like literary theory, philosophy, semiotics,
etc. In his work Mythologies (1957) Barthes attempted a
detailed, anthropological study on modern France's
culture. The most crucial concern he held was to reveal
the significance of language in writing. Barthes's
"Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative" is
concerned with examining the correspondence between
the structure of a sentence and that of a larger narrative,
hence making ways to get hold of how structure
determines the system and vice versa.
Literary Theory 16
Structuralist thinkers, including Barthes, were not

interested in extracting the meaning from a given work or
text but rather worked to understand what are the implicit
systems like abstract codes and conventions that govern it
from inside to create meaning. Barthes’ transition from
being a Structuralist to a Poststructuralist by moulding
ideas like ‘the death of the author’ actually marks the
development of Structuralism to Poststructuralism.
Structuralist Narratology
Structuralist Narratology illustrates how a story’s
meaning develops from its overall structure (the langue)
rather than from each individual's single tale (the parole).
Major proponents who made detailed analyses on
narratology were Barthes and Tzvetan Todorov (Todorov
coined the term 'narratology'). Opposing the traditional
method of linear narrative, which is horizontal, Saussure
argues thata vertical axis is also there in a narrative that
needs thorough study to trace out the meaning. He defined
them as syntagmatic and paradigmatic studies,
respectively. The latter is the complex one where the
external factors of a work, such as codes and conventions,
take part. Basically, Structuralist methods tend to uncover
the 'binary oppositions' that determine a text. Binary
oppositions seemed to regulate the whole system or
structure according to Structuralism and both these
approaches made it possible to value a text under the light
of a system to which that particular text also belongs.
Peter Barry's Beginning Theory provides what a
Structuralist Critic does while reading a text.
1. They analyse prose narratives, relating the text to some
Literary Theory 17
larger containing structure (a particular genre, a network

of intertextual connections, universal narrative structure,
recurrent patterns or motifs, etc.)
2. Interpret the text with the underlying structure of the
language.
3. Apply the concept of systematic patterning and
structuring to the text.
Structuralist Narratology systematized the study of plot,
characters and symbols in a text to identify the play of
language that attributes meaning to it. A J Greimas, one
of the earliest practitioners of Structuralist Narratology,
used Saussure’s theories to make yet another branch of it,
called Structuralist Semiotics.
Post Structuralism
Post Structuralism is rather a philosophical
endeavour that shattered the proposed ideas of
Structuralism regarding meaning generation. The pioneer
of this new phase of literary criticism is Jacques Derrida,
who began to unpick the logic of Structuralism in 1966,
pointing out certain basic instabilities in the founding
concepts of 'structure' and 'binary oppositions.’ This path-
breaking movement questioned the fixities of a structure
upon which human life is concentrated by making it clear
that nothing can be 'scientific' as we see in Structuralism
or Marxism since humans are altogether subjective. In
terms of linguistic theory, the distinctive view of post-
structuralism is that the signifier (a written word, for
example) is not fixed to a particular signified (a concept),
and so all meanings are provisional.
Literary Theory 18
Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction

Derrida, a French philosopher, is best known for
developing a form of semiotic analysis known as
deconstruction. He questioned the assumptions of the
Western philosophical tradition and also, more broadly
Western culture. Regarding Derrida's view, the
complicated nature of Western Culture resulted from
‘binary oppositions. Derrida articulated his much-
acclaimed concept 'Deconstruction' as a counter drug, an
approach to find out the multiplicities of possible
meanings in a text. He affirms that a text and its words, in
itself, is protesting against the attempts to conclude a
single meaning to it. Hence a text is an open entity, not a
closed one. Derrida's1966 lecture 'Structure, Sign and
Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences' closely
analyses the 'rupture’ that occurred in our history, an
obvious turn against the 'centres' constituted by binary
oppositions.
The Deconstructive reading involves a journey
from one signifier to another signifier, not signified as
Saussure said. Derrida opined that if a signifier does not
really connect to a signified and the relation between the
two is arbitrary, meaning creation is not valid. He
concluded; it is difficult to assert meanings for a text.
Meanings are not static; they flow. Coming to an end or
conclusion becomes an uphill task if we take it for granted
that no words can direct us to any definite signified or
concept. Deconstructive reading will permit a reader to
take a text to any level with various possibilities. Though
Saussure is said to be the founder of Modern Linguistics
and Semiotics, Derrida observed a second problematic
Literary Theory 19
hint in his concepts; and that was Saussure's fondness for

'logocentrism'.
Another critic was Roland Barthes whose essay
“The Death of the Author” (1966) maintained the
argument of deconstruction by emphasizing that a text
becomes a reservoir of meanings the moment a reader
consumes the text's intentions.
Logocentrism and Phonocentrism

Derrida’s Of Grammatology responds in-depth to
what he calls Saussure's logocentric argument. Logos
means word/centre/reason that holds the essence of
something. According to Saussure, the spoken form alone
constitutes the object and, thereby, reality. Derrida
proposes, Saussure gave privilege to speech over writing
and he termed it Phonocentrism a manifestation of
Logocentrism. Logocentrism was alternately called
'metaphysics of presence' by Derrida. He criticizes this
idea by stating that it is impossible to constitute an object
without its appearance in the written image since the
speaker is absent. Simply, he means a word (sign) can be
manipulated if its script is not written correctly despite its
utterance in sound. Thus, he doubts how meanings can be
real. Derrida's readings find out that the whole European
canon is built upon such conflicts rooted in binaries. He
puts forth deconstructive reading to handle this problem.
Derrida coined another term ‘phallogocentrism’, a
portmanteau of phallocentrism (idea that phallus or male
sexual organ is the centre of the social world) and
logocentrism, to identify the privileging of masculine
gender in the construction of meaning. Logocentrism
Literary Theory 20
itself is a troublesome idea because it fixes a centre to

everything where no centre is valid since signifier and
signified are not connected. So, the logocentric world
prefers the masculine identity to feminine one.
Aporia
Aporia is an irresolvable internal contradiction or
logical disconnection in a text, argument, or theory. This
impasse occurs due to the working of binaries such as
man/woman, black/white, night/day etc. A text remains
unresolvable where neither of the term(of the binaries) is
privileged because both are necessary for each other's
existence. Because of this, none can be dismissed. This
situation is termed as ‘aporia’.
Decentring.
According to Liberal Humanism, the supreme
centre of the world is man and his cognitive activities.
This idea was smashed when Structuralism advocated that
humans are just part of a big structure/system that needs
a centre to hold it. In time Post Structuralism, through
Derrida, maintained the notion that nothing is permanent
and none of the things revolves around a centre (binaries).
Deconstructionist critics reduced the human subject to
one of the effects engendered by the differential play of
language. Decentring thus appeared an anti-humanistic
idea that began to interrogate each and every belief
system by reducing them to mere subjects.
Psycho-Analytic Theory
Principally, Psychoanalysis is a means of analysis
Literary Theory 21
and therapy for neuroses. The procedures of psycho-

analytic criticism were established by Sigmund Freud.
Later this theory applied in literary criticism in order to
understand how far a work of art can substitute the hidden
passions of the author or to understand the inner
psychological conflicts of the characters in that work.
Sigmund Freud
Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder
of psychoanalysis, who made history with his magnum
opus The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). His
contributions marked a new era in literary criticism.
Freud’s concepts like divisions of the human mind into
Conscious, Sub Conscious and Unconscious and the ideas
like Id, Ego and Super Ego began to be applied
extensively in literature too. Yet his exaggerated visions
on human sexuality in relation to human behaviour
happened to receive vehement attacks from some of the
later theoreticians.
Unconscious and Conscious
All of Freud's works depend upon the notion of
the unconscious, which is the part of the mind beyond
consciousness that strongly influences our actions. Freud
calls this sphere of the human mind the 'repository' of
suppressed feelings. Man's unrefined passions and
untamed desires get repressed here for fear of societal
norms on morality. On the other hand, there is a
Conscious sphere that is totally under the control of
standards and rules. And it is this sphere that makes all of
us behave "properly " in society.
Literary Theory 22
Id, Ego and Super Ego

Later in his career, Freud suggested a three-part, rather
than a two-part model of the psyche, dividing it into the
Id, Ego and Super-Ego. These three 'levels' of the
personality roughly correspond to unconscious,
consciousness, and conscience. He explained each of
them in detail as follows
Id - it is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that
contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden
memories
Ego - is the realistic part that mediates between the desires
of the id and the super-ego.
Super Ego - operates as a moral conscience or ideal
ego. This represents our conscience.
Ego
Super-
Ego
Id
Freud firmly believed that an artist represents his/her Id

(Unconscious - repressed - desires) through art. He made
studies on William Shakespeare and other writers as well
to delineate how far the characters on the stage may imply
the inner soul of the author. His observation on Hamlet
remains a milestone in the applied realm of
Literary Theory 23
psychoanalysis in literature.
Oedipus Complex: An Example

As we see in the play Hamlet, Hamlet, the prince
of Denmark, cannot avenge his father's murder though he
knew his own mother and uncle were the culprits. Freud
observes that Hamlet has an Oedipus complex, that is, a
repressed sexual desire for his own mother and a
consequent wish to kill his father. Thus, his uncle, who
married his mother, has merely done what Hamlet himself
secretly wished to do: hence the difficulty for him of
being the avenger. Freud associated Hamlet's condition
with its author Shakespeare and explained that
Shakespeare wrote the play immediately after his father's
death in 1601, bringing out his own inner feelings. This
radical finding came out in Interpretation of Dream and
got a wide range of response from both supporters and
opposers.
Jacques Lacan (1901-1981)
Lacan was a renowned French psychoanalyst and
is credited for his theories related to human mind
development. Substituting the psycho-sexual
development formulated by Freud, he suggested some
social aspects are also there, that determine a child's
growth, not only the physique. By Stating the three phases
of a child's mental growth, he was actually questioning
the orthodox psychoanalysis theories based totally on
Freudian thought.
Literary Theory 24
Three Phases of Child's Mental Development

Lacan identifies three stages, or 'orders' in
Lacanian terms, in making a child's psyche as the
Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real.
1. the Imaginary - It is the pre-linguistic stage
where the child sees himself reflected in the
mirror and considers himself a whole unity and
identifies himself with the mother. No
distinction is understood here. Lacan termed
this 'mirror stage' since it is all about self-
reflections.
2. the Symbolic - During this phase the child
acquires language and begins to understand
different social relations, that he is not one with
the mother or the primary desire of the mother
and that the father's law is supreme.
Distinctions are recognized here.
3. the Real - This is where the child's illusions
work out betwixt the Imaginary and the
Symbolic. This is more like the Unconscious.
Lacanian concepts are extensively used in Feminist
Criticism, whereby his association of unconscious
with language becomes a crucial point. Though
there are differences between Freudian and
Lacanian psychoanalysis apparently, it's known to
everyone that both stem from the same root, i.e.,
Freudian Unconscious.
Literary Theory 25
Module 3
Marxism
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two German

philosophers and economists, were the key founders of
this school of thought. They published a pamphlet
Communist Manifesto in 1848 that became the bible of
Communist and Marxist parties worldwide.
Marxism was primarily a materialist philosophy. Marx’s
Das Kapital (1867) was a foundational theoretical text in
which he stated the perpetual war of capitalism and the
working class.
The ultimate goal of Marxism was to bring about a
classless society. Marxist philosophy believes that the
world is progressive only because of the struggle for
power between different social classes. Marx famously
said that there are mainly two sections in a society: the
'haves' (one who has power and money) the 'have nots'
(those who have no money and power).The tug of war
between these two sections/classes marks histories and
hasten progress everywhere in the world.
Though Marxism appeared in the second half of the 19th
century, Marxist Literary Criticism became popular in the
20th century. As a theory, Marxist literary criticism pays
attention to the modes in which art and literature help
maintain power relations on account of the weaker
section.
Literary Theory 26
Base and Super Structure

Base and Super Structure refers to the relationship
between the economic or materialist conditions includes
material production and distribution (base) of a society
and the cultural products such as art, education, law,
religion, media, lifestyle (superstructure)etc. It suggests
that base determines and influences the superstructure. To
make it clear the materialistic state or condition of a
society forms the socio-cultural apparatus of that society.
Ideology
Ideology is alternately called 'false consciousness,' which
is invisible in society but acts very strongly. It is a system
of ideas, values and beliefs that we live by and use to
perceive the world. According to Marxism, ideology is
the factor that naturalizes economic inequality and
oppression. Ideology enables the dominant classes to
reinforce their power on the oppressed Thus, this is said
to be the popular system of the well-off people in a
society. As Marxist theorists put it, any literature can be
taken as a reflection of some of the ideologies exist in that
society. The task of Marxist Literary Criticism is to find
out those ideologies implicit in a cultural text.
Traditionally Marxism treats all art as ideological since it
is the superstructure to a certain extend produced and
maintained by capitalism.
The Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School was a school of social theory and
critical philosophy and was founded in 1923 in Germany
that tried to combine ideas of Freud and Marx. Some
Literary Theory 27
elements of Formalism were also incorporated regarding

the textual analysis. The primary aim of this school of
thought was to find a new way to understand the real
social problems of a society by analysing the omissions
in the 19th century Marxism. Walter Benjamin, Herbert
Marcuse, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were the
important figures of this movement. They addressed the
changed world's situations by placing Marxism and
Psychoanalysis side by side.
Culture Industry
The term was coined by the critical theorists Theodor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer and was presented as a
critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry:
Enlightenment as Mass Deception", of the book Dialectic
of Enlightenment (1947). A major objective of this mode
of criticism was to bring forth the cultural representations
in a text and identify how the economic condition of the
society is influencing it so as to give evidence of how the
dominant class ('haves') retain their power over the
working class ( 'have nots'). According to the critics,
culture was nothing but an industry where you can buy it
with money. It means, always and in all aspects, culture
is preserved and propagated through the 'haves'. Hence
the dominant culture of a society becomes that of the
upper class.
Antonio Gramsci and Prison Notebooks

Antonio Francesco Gramsci was an Italian Marxist
philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer and politician. He
got imprisoned for his ideas against the Fascist regime in
Italy. He wrote Prison Notebooks (a collection of essays
Literary Theory 28
about his prison life) to popularize his new socialist ideas

to the world when he was released. “The Formation of the
Intellectuals” is one of the popular essays in that
collection. In that essay, Gramsci said that the modern
intelligentsia was different from the previous one because
they were actually articulating a new system in society
through imposing 'hegemony’ through education and
media. This was rather a one-sided articulation that does
not include the proletarians. Thus, he envisioned a new
model of education that can be inclusive of all different
classes in a society.
Gramsci is credited with yet another concept that was
used widely in post-colonial studies, that is subaltern.
Literally, subaltern is a word in the military jargon to
identify a junior officer. He coined the term subaltern to
identify the cultural hegemony that excludes and
displaces specific people and social groups from the
socio-economic institutions of society in order to deny
their existence and voices in colonial politics.
Louis Althusser
Althusser was a French Marxist who is best known for his
concepts such as ideologica lstructures or State
ideological apparatuses and interpellation. He
distinguished between state power and state control to
show how the hegemony of the ruling class tames people
without complaining about it. Althusser viewed state
power as the evident one in the form of institutions like
law, court, prison etc., that use external forces. On the
other hand, state control is operated through groupings
such as political parties, schools, the media, churches, the
Literary Theory 29
family, and art (including literature). The second one

obtains silent consent from the people, while the first gets
applied without any pre granted consent. However, we are
not able to understand that we are being controlled
because we feel like we choose it (like education, media
etc.).
Althusser says we are made to feel that we are choosing
what we like, but we have no choice in reality. This is
executed by using a trick and that is interpellation.
Interpellation means the process by which we encounter
a culture's or ideology's values and internalize them. The
internalized values will regulate our actions
unconsciously. It helps the ruling class to disseminate its
interests effortlessly.
Cultural Studies
Culture always remains a problematic term since it
encompasses innumerable versions of it around the world.
Mathew Arnold's notions of culture as it is the "best" thing
ever thought in the world lead to questions like whose
culture and what culture he was talking about. Decades
later, as a cross-disciplinary enterprise, comprising
semiotics, Marxism, feminist theory, ethnography, post-
structuralism, postcolonialism, social theory, etc. Cultural
Studies emerged to examine the diverse manifestations of
culture in different fields of society. It also makes an
investigation into cultural practices that relate to more
comprehensive systems of power. Many theorists
observed that social, economic, and political forces and
power-structures control the production of cultural
materials, including literature. Therefore, literature must
Literary Theory 30
be viewed from a radical standpoint to recheck its

mightiness as a universal entity.
Precursors of modern cultural studies were Roland
Barthes’s Mythologies (1957), Raymond Williams'
famous work Culture and Society (1958) and Richard
Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy (1957). Radical thinking
of the neo-Marxist studies in the Western academia also
contributed to the development of Cultural Studies as a
distinct branch of knowledge. It repudiated the existing
Western canon seeing it as an embodiment of privileged
gender's- race's or class's notions. Disputes on " high
literature" and "high art" began to question why
minorities, for instance ethnic groups and postcolonial
writers, could never come to the mainstream literature.
Members of The New Left movement also sought to
revise some of the Marxian ideas like class struggle,
ideology, agency, etc., to map out the power relations that
play in it. Another proposed goal of Cultural studies was
to foreground the working-class culture among other
celebrated high cultures.
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)
Richard Hoggart along with Stuart Hall founded the
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS-1964),
a research centre at the University of Birmingham. This
academic centre gave space for discussion concerning
popular fiction, best-selling works, advertisings, films,
television programs, rock and rap music, etc. Until that
time, all of the aforesaid disciplines were looked at as
'low, but with CCCS talk over on these topics made it
open, and they started to be regarded as a subsection of
Literary Theory 31
'culture'.
Raymond William's definition of Culture

Raymond Williams was an eminent Welsh socialist writer
and critic. He was one among the New Left social
theorists who had done comprehensive studies on the
notion of ‘culture’. William's essay, titled "The Analysis
of Culture", offers a three-tier definition of culture as
follows.
Ideal - It refers to a state or process of human perfection
that has been carried out by works of universal validity
and possesses permanence. This definition resembles
Arnold's version of culture in a sense.
Documentary - Here, recorded human experiences in the
form of arts and literature are the subject of analysis. The
analysis is done by criticism aiming at the discovery of
'ideal' culture
Social– This part studies a particular way of culture to
clarify the implicit and explicit meanings and values of it.
This definition focuses on the social appearance of a
specific culture.
In fact, these three definitions project culture in three
distinct ways but still feed off one and the other.
Instead of Foucault's concept of 'discourse,' Williams
introduced the term 'structures of feeling' in his book
Preface to Film (1954) concerned with 'meanings and
values as they are lived and felt'. Structures of feeling
often oppose both explicit systems of values and beliefs
and the dominant ideologies in a society. In short, the term
Literary Theory 32
refers to the various ways of thinking that struggle to

emerge at any one particular time in history. When
generations change, structures of feelings also/must
change
Stuart Hall’s Encoding /Decoding
Stuart McPhail Hall was a Jamaican - British critic whose
"Encoding /Decoding in the Television Discourse "
stipulated a new mode of culture analysis. Hand in hand
with Hoggart, he supervised CCCS and published many
books that discuss culture and its assumptions. Yet he
principally looked over 'popular culture' since the 'high
culture’ undermined it '. Popular culture is generally
recognized as a set of practices, beliefs, and objects that
are dominant or prevalent in a society. It consists of
anything in a culture irrespective of its 'standard'.
In his essay "Notes on Deconstructing ' the popular”, Hall
defines popular culture in many ways by using the post-
structuralist method of deconstruction. He sceptically
observes the existing definitions and goes for a new one,
enclosing 'mass' (people) and 'working-class' culture. He
finds it difficult to separate the term popular from class
because, even if it is the culture of the oppressed class,
what actually determines it is, the dominant culture of the
dominant class of that society. Thus, for Hall, popular
culture seems to be a space of constant struggle and
conflict of classes.
Hall's another valuable finding in cultural studies was his
concept of 'two paradigms'. He discusses the two
paradigms in his work "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms"
which he termed as 'Culturalism' and 'Structuralism'.
Literary Theory 33
Culturalism is concentrated on 'experiences' that we gain

from our life when we live in accordance with a culture,
whereas the position of Structuralism claims experience
is itself merely an effect of culture. The former insists on
individuality while the latter insists individuality must be
accounted as part of the pre-existing conditions.
New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

Grabbing influence from the Marxist literary analysis,
New Historicism and Cultural Materialism dive into the
historical background of a text to understand what are the
political, social, and cultural intricacies that produce the
text in that specific context. Both value history as an
intrinsic part of literary texts and argues that it remains
absolutely inseparable from it. According to Marxism, as
we have seen above, a literary text is just another
‘cultural’ product in a society. A detailed examination is
needed here to get what does the text really want to
convey and for that, the socio-political contexts of the text
also must be examined.
History becomes the catalyst for both these schools of
thought because it is through history and its study,
anything can be realized regarding a text and its author.
Simultaneously both theories reject the autonomy of the
author and of the text. For them, ‘Historiography’
becomes the tool that makes this possible. While
“history” deals with the past, “historiography” deals with
the writings about the past. It can be defined as “the study
of the way history has been and is written — the history
of historical writing.” Historiography sheds light on how
history has been conceived and recorded by historians.
Literary Theory 34
Apart from that, historiography dwells in the study of the

development of history as an academic discipline through
the ages. This discipline is used extensively by New
Historicists and Cultural materialists to look into the
history of a literary text. Background information of a
text such as authorship, sourcing, interpretation, bias,
style, and audience are studied using historiography by
such theorists and thinkers.
1. New Historicism
The term 'new historicism' was coined by the American
critic Stephen Greenblatt whose book Renaissance Self-
Fashioning: from More to Shakespeare (1980). It is a
method based on the parallel reading of literary and non-
literary texts, usually of the same historical period.
Besides, it is also a critical approach that locates power
relations in society as they are reflected in literary and
other texts of the period. In this method, literary and non-
literary texts are given equal weight. The practitioners of
this concept reject the idea of literary foregrounding and
historical backgrounding of a particular text. Instead, they
propose that both (text and history) constantly inform or
interrogate each other. They consider history as a ‘co-
text’ that is used to analyze the text. Due to this, New
Historicism bears a drastic difference from that of Old
Historicism.
According to Old Historicists, a text must be examined on
the backdrops of certain sets of conservative mental
attitudes (of society, to the deity, to the created universe,
etc.) because the literary text is said to be a subversion of
the history or the perspectives of history. For them, a text
Literary Theory 35
documenting past actions represent a lived reality, that is

to say, a ‘history’ and an artwork of that period merely
reflects it.
New Historicism also accepts Derrida's view that there is
nothing outside the text, in the sense that everything about
the past is only available to us in textualized form. Thus,
a text does not represent truth but altogether creates a new
one through the play of language. Here New Historicism
finds that history is also a remade, recreated, and a
remodified entity in the form of language. So inherently,
it hasn’t any essential difference from a literary text. To
sum up, New Historicism probes into the ‘historicity of
the text and textuality of the history’.
Foucault and Greenblatt; Two visions of New
Historicism
Michael Foucault, one of the forerunners of New
Historicism, redefined the term discourse in a problematic
way to see how society is fed with different discourses. In
Foucauldian terms, a discourse is a social system where
knowledge is produced and circulated. Here Foucault
describes further that ‘knowledge’ creates ‘power.’
Knowledge, which is supposed to be an unnatural entity,
and power that works primarily by repression or
suppression are mutually connected and is operated
through different agencies. He uses these terms to signify
that power is constituted through accepted forms of
knowledge. Foucault was of the view that all of the
histories that we see today imbibe a certain amount of
power in them. But it is not visible overtly. Still, it
operates inside a text.
Literary Theory 36
Stephen Greenblatt is an American Shakespearean,

literary historian, and author. Greenblatt is one of the
founders of new historicism whose works like Renaissance
self-fashioning, Shakespearean negotiations, etc.,
suggested a new way of reading Shakespeare and his
period. He is also co-founder of the literary-cultural
journal Representations which often publishes articles by
new historicists. His essay titled ‘Shakespeare and the
Exorcists’ brings up a new perception by comparing King
Lear with Harsnett’s ‘Devil-Fiction’ to show how both
literature (text) and history (co-text) converse. Later he
used the term "cultural poetics" to denote the same
concept of New Historicism.
Louis Montrose’s contributions
Louis Montrose is yet another important figure in New
Historicism who, like Greenblatt, made studies on
Shakespeare and the Elizabethan age. His essay, “Shaping
Fantasies,” demonstrates how the pastoral form of the
sixteenth century as used by Edmund Spenser in The
Faerie Queene contributed to the creation of a particular
image of Queen Elizabeth I. This image of the queen
reinforced the subject-monarch relationship differently: it
showed the queen as an approachable and friendly soul.
Circulation (A crucial term in New Historicism); that is,
the circulation of power can be spotted in such literary
works.
2. Cultural Materialism
The term 'cultural materialism' was coined by the British
left-wing critic Raymond Williams and popularized by
Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield during the 1980s.
Literary Theory 37
They used it as a subtitle for their collected work Political

Shakespeare. Cultural Materialism was influenced by
Williams’ coinage of 'structures of feeling' that can be
substituted with Foucault’s ‘discourse’.
Cultural Materialists believe that the New Historicists
generate apolitical readings for a text; hence it goes for 'a
politicized form of historiography'; a Marxist orientation
towards New Historicism. Doing this will help a critic to
fence off the discarded or silenced historical aspects a
literary or non-literary text contain. As a highly
politicized attempt, Cultural Materialism keeps an eye on
using criticism to transform the social order by applying
“dissident reading” which interrogates the hidden
political agenda and power structures within a text.
Questions about the marginalized and exploited classes
are asked frequently in this mode of readings and, that
aims at bringing out the misrepresentations of them in
order to rectify it. Cultural materialists always seemed
cynical of the liberal humanist interpretations of texts.
Literary Theory 38
Module 4
Feminism and Queer Theory
Feminism an Outline
In the last decades of the 18th century, Feminist ideology
appeared as a distinctive thought that questioned the then
existing social conditions regarding women's rights.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of
Women (1792) is one of those notable books that
reminded women about their rights. An unforgettable
writer who evidently showed compassion for fellow
women was Virginia Woolf, whose classics like Mrs.
Dalloway and Orlando depicted many dynamic female
characters. Woolf was a critic as well and her critical
work, A Room of One’s Own (1929), demanded women
to get a single room to contemplate and produce artistic
creations.
The developed form of Feminist Criticism was reborn in
the post-1968 period. Many feminist academicians
started to investigate stereotyped representations of
female characters, which are mostly created by male
writers. Yet, writings of famous 19th century female
writers like Jane Austin and Charlotte Bronte also became
subjects for demystifying female identity. Sandra Gilbert
and Susan Gubar jointly wrote an anthology titled The
Madwoman in the Attic in 1979 (the title alludes to a
character in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre) which aims to
re-examine the existing literary phenomenon. The book
Literary Theory 39
opens with a highly polemical interrogation, “is a pen a

metaphorical penis?” that explicitly questions the male
domination in literary creations.
The later 1970s witnessed new woman-centred literary
histories seeking to trace an autonomous tradition of
women's literature. The critics called for écriture
feminine (feminine writing') in order to write about the
distinctly female 'experience' in literature.
Three Waves of Feminism

Though Feminism got its momentum as a whole during
the 1970s, there occurred many singular movements that
contributed to its growth. Its history can broadly be
divided into three and each includes different agendas
with regard to female Independency.
1. First Wave Feminism (19th and early 20th
centuries) - The First Wave was concerned with the
political and legal inequalities women had faced in
society, particularly the issues like women's suffrage and
property rights.
2. Second Wave Feminism (1960s–1980s) - “The
Personal is Political” was the slogan of this period, which
concentrated on the cultural inequalities, gender norms,
and the role of women in society. This period began to
assert the feminine self as an independent one with all
social privileges.
3. Third Wave Feminism (1990s–2000s)- This
move expanded the scope of Feminism beyond the
European countries. Here the focus was given to
Literary Theory 40
redefining the female-self, irrespective of geographical

variations.
Today, Feminism is considered a robust anti-foundational
movement since it bravely challenged many customs and
even could find a separate space of its own worldwide.
Gynocrticism
Gynocrticism (la gynocritique) is a term coined by Elaine
Showalter, an American literary critic, in her essay
"Towards a Feminist Poetics” (1979) that urged for a
separate and autonomous model of literary theory
exclusively for women. The program of gynocritics, she
says, "is to construct a female framework for the analysis
of women's literature " and thereby to make new models
from female experiences. Here, women become the
producer of literary texts instead of being passive readers
or inactive characters in the male-dominated literary
world. It took a deviation from the male constructed
literary history to construct a singular female tradition.
The primary aim of this move was to find out a new way
and ‘language’ for representing women where women
become the producers of their own literature.
French Feminism
Feminist thinkers were there in France from the time of
the French Revolution itself. These thinkers gave focus
on female representation in society, especially in political
affairs. British outcry for women's suffrage reverberated
in France also and it is this demand became a milestone
in French Feminism. In the second wave of Feminism, we
see several marvellous thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir,
Literary Theory 41
Helen Cixous etc. whose theories overtly questioned the

male authority over women.
Beauvoir's “The Second Sex” in 1949 announced women
to gain autonomy in all aspects, whereas Cixou's concept
écriture féminine, which she introduced in her essay "The
Laugh of Medusa" (1975), desperately urged to formulate
a new and special language for women to frame her story
without any error. Further expression of the notion of the
ecriture feminine is found in the writing of Julia Kristeva
in which she combined ideas like semiotics with it.
French Feminist ideologies travelled barrier-free and
influenced many. Parallelly, Feminism was making its
way out in the UK and the USA also.
Sexual Politics
Sexual Politics (1970) by Kate Millett, was one such
influential work in American Feminism. It is regarded as
a classic of radical feminism. In this book, she attacks
Freud's male-biased psychoanalytic theory as well as the
phallocentric writings of DH Lawrence, Norman Mailer,
Henry Miller and Jean Genet. Millet was also keen to
observe how the mechanism of society works on the
principles of male power.
Types of Feminism
1. Marxist Feminism
Marxist Feminism probes into issues such as how women
are exploited through and under capitalism, why women's
labour is uncompensated and on what account woman's
unpaid domestic labour and sex relations always remain
under strict constraints of society.
Literary Theory 42
2. Lesbian Feminism
Etymologically the word lesbian came from the name of
a Greek island, ‘Lesbos’, homeland to the 6th – century
BCE poet Sappho. She is considered to be one of the
earliest woman poets of the world who showed
compassions to women and wrote about them. As the
word suggests, this movement made women think about
her fellow women and focus on maintaining such
relationships. It is considered a logical result of
Feminism. The movement arose in the early 1970s out of
dissatisfaction with second-wave feminism and the gay
liberation movement. One of the most compelling forces
behind this movement was the growing discontent among
women regarding the normalization of heterosexuality.
Adrienne Rich’s essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and
Lesbian Existence” introduced a new term ‘lesbian
continuum ’which means lesbianism not only talks about
genital experience of two women but it also makes way
for one woman to identify herself with another one and
proclaimed that every woman has a potential to be a
lesbian. Lesbian relations were supported by many, only
to shatter the patriarchal reign over the women
community. Other activists like Chrys Ingraham, Eve
Kosofsky Sedgewick, etc. also pointed out the same
issues. Ingraham views heterosexuality as a ‘not normal’
practice, yet it came into being and passing from one
generation to the next only to entertain various marriage
industries to gain power and money. Moreover, it must be
noted that, these industries are also created and controlled
by patriarchy.
Literary Theory 43
3. Black Feminism
Black Feminism emerged as a resistance towards the race
discrimination inside Feminism. It suggested that
Feminism has been a white ideology since there were no
experience shared of a black woman. Black Feminism
seeks to empower and emancipate women not just in
relation to whites but also with regard to black men. They
held a predominant argument that black women had to
experience discrimination on two grounds: firstly,
because they are women, secondly because they are black
women. Through this movement, the critics tried to form
communities of black women to share similar
experiences.
4. Womanism
The term was coined in 1989 by scholar Kimberlé
Crenshaw to describe the intertwined impacts of racism
and sexism upon black women. One of the famous
African American writers Alice Walker defined
womanism as follows; "womanism is to feminism as
purple is to lavender" which means there is a narrow gap
between feminism and womanism. Womanism supports
the idea that the woman's culture is not an element of her
femininity but rather the lens through which her
femininity exists. Blackness is the lens here through
which her femininity is recognized.
5. Dalit Feminism
Gradually Feminist thoughts reached in the far east

countries also. In India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and
Sri Lanka Feminism began to appear in an unprecedented
Literary Theory 44
way. There arose a new perspective that included

questioning of caste and gender roles among the Dalit
population concerning feminism. This led to Dalit
Feminism.
Complications related to caste differences and inequality

started to get investigated through many of the
conferences and meetings in these lands to bring forth
untouchable, marginalized Dalit women to the
mainstream. Hitherto, Dalit women remained silent about
the violence imposed upon them because of their caste
identity. Organizations like the National Federation of
Dalit Women and the All-India Dalit Women's Forum
helped a lot to the growth of Dalit Feminism in India.
Meena Kandasamy, Gogu Shyamala, Joopaka Subhadra,
etc. are some of the prominent writers who share Dalit
Feminist ideologies through their works.
6. Post Feminism
Post Feminism bears a contrast with the existing Feminist

ideas by and large mainly due to the latter's fissures in
accomplishing its goals. Another aspect says that post
feminism emerged when the targeted aims of feminism
are achieved. Post feminism can be referred a critical way
of understanding the changed relations between
feminism, popular culture and femininity.
Queer Theory
In language the word queer means a ‘difference from
what is believed to be usual or normal’. In Queer Theory,
Literary Theory 45
it is often used to denote the combined area of gay and

lesbian studies and criticism. Still, the earlier
connotations of the term "queer" were derogatory in
nature because same-sex affairs seemed something
unnatural at that time. Homosexuality was equated with
criminality, and society always punished both with the
same measures because both were considered
impermissible by society. But today's world recognizes
these categories as natural and thus, the term nowadays
points towards the scholastic inquiries to gay and lesbian
lives. With such analysis, it tries to uncover the
misrepresentation of lesbian and gay (homosexual),
bisexual, and transgender communities (LGBT)
throughout history.
Judith Butler, an American philosopher, discusses the

building blocks of ‘gender performativity’ in her seminal
work Gender trouble (1990). What Butler was saying that
the identity a man or woman wears in a society is entirely
based upon the notion of heterosexuality. The discourse
on heterosexuality is that much stronger so that it can
influence everything that happens in a society. She
alludes the term taboo used by Freud to explain that
society is not built with incest prohibition but with the
prohibition of homosexuality. Then the real question
arises; what about the identity of a homosexual person?
Why isn’t their identity never gets accepted by society? It
is to these questions Queer theory tries to find an answer.
Literary Theory 46
LGBTQ
LGBT community enhanced the scope for sexual

minorities to get identified in society. A common variant
of this is LGBTQ that adds the letter Q that stands for
Queer. Stonewall riots in the USA, which was carried out
in1969, can be seen as an opening event for the entry of
LGBTQ to the political and academic discussions. The
riot was a series of spontaneous demonstrations by
members of the gay community against a police raid took
place in 1969. From there, they considered the possibility
of becoming a group of same taste and same experience
sharing people. Transgender Identity
The identity of transgender people was also a problematic

one for society since it possesses both female and male
sex qualities. Their gender identity or gender expression
is created when the recognition comes that their
behaviour differs from the sex that they were assigned at
birth. In earlier times, just like the homosexual
community, transgenders were also discarded the status
of being a living human. Instead, their depiction in
histories and epics projected them as excruciating and
supposed to get punishments for their distinct sexual
identity. For example, a character named Shikhandi
appears in the epic of Mahabharata, who is characterized
as a destructive transgender. Even in the advanced
society, transgenders could not find a place for their own
because the binary opposition regarding sexual identity
(woman and man) was that much strong and society
always tried to uphold the binaries for its convenience.
Literary Theory 47
The notion of ‘gender performativity put forward by

feminist, lesbian and gay theorists was a turning point in
the case of transgenders also. With this notion, society
was taught that gender is just a social construction and
sex is biological. Gender roles are ‘assigned’ by the
society. Living the life of a transgender is not a mistake
but it is just another way of living. Thus, they are actually
a ‘third gender’ besides female and male genders. Still, it
is a point to remember that they achieved a position like
this after a long struggle, and even now there are
misconceptions about their identity.
Literary Theory 48
Module 5
Post Colonialism
Post Colonialism concerns with the study of colonization,

decolonization and the neo colonizing process. Post
Structuralism and Post Modernism influenced this school
to analyse the so far hidden experiences regarding
colonial life. Post-Colonial critics attempted to critically
analyse the history, culture, literature and modes of
discourse of the former colonies of European imperial
powers. The prime focus was given to the experiences of
third world countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean
islands and South America. Texts that are either produced
in those countries or texts that are written about those
countries began to be revaluated by critics in their works.
Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Black
Skins White Masks (1967), Edward Said’s Orientalism
(1978) and Gayatri Chakaraborthy Spivak’s In Other
Words (1987) vehemently criticized the pre-designed
colonial agenda in literature. The Empire Writes Back
(1989) debates on how postcolonial texts constitute a
radical critique of Eurocentric notions of language and
literature.
They claimed that literature is not something that is

universal, as Liberal Humanism asserted once since it
does not comprise the life of the 'colonized' in a judicial
manner. However, the period literally begins with Said's
Literary Theory 49
arguments in his book Orientalism. He investigated how

the east was portrayed or rather had to be portrayed in
texts written about the east countries. Besides these
critics, writers of the third world countries like Aijaz
Ahmed, Homi Bhabha, Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie,
Arundhati Roy, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, etc. also contributed
much to the development of this school.
Eurocentrism and Orientalism
As the word indicates, Eurocentrism or Europe- centric is

a term used to demonstrate the ways in which European
cultural assumptions are constructed as normal, natural
and universal. This word was in use from the beginning
of the 20th century in various disciplines but got its fame
during the 1990s.
European imperialist powers facilitated Eurocentrism

through exploration, conquest and trade during the
colonial period. Later on, it was executed through other
media like education, religion, culture, race etc. The
proponents of this plan were conscious of positing
European ideas as superior to all other ideas. From there
onwards, the feeling of 'otherness' was inserted into the
minds of the colonized people.
Edward Said drew up the word 'orientalism,' which means
"a way of coming to terms with the orient that is based on
the orient’s special place in European - Western
experience." Simply it is the perspective about the
colonized countries/Eastern countries specifically that are
disseminated through a white man's / European's eyes.
Literary Theory 50
Said says that since this is a secondary vision of the East

there are many fissures and omissions as well as many
misconceptions that could create the 'other'. Thus, all of
the texts produced in the course of Colonisation must be
re-examined to understand it in a new but original way.
Alterity
The term was adopted by philosophers as an alternative
to 'otherness'. The meaning of the word alterity in old
Latin is ' the state of being other or different.’ The self-
identity of the colonizing subject (identity of imperial
culture) is inextricable from the alterity of colonized
others, but it is done through a process of 'othering,' as
Spivak puts it.
Diaspora
The voluntary or forcible movement of peoples from their
homelands into new regions is a central historical fact of
colonization. People started to get dislocated and
displaced during and after the colonial era. This resulted
in literature occasionally as a remembrance of the
nostalgic past or sometimes as something that needs to
get forgotten but cannot. Diaspora is the term used to
analyse how writers remember their homelands, how its
portrayal goes on in their works and finally how the
colonial ideologies are interwoven in it. Most often, the
remembering brings out the nostalgia of the writers about
their "imaginary homelands" as Rushdie terms it.
Sometimes this homeland becomes a " place of desire"
which cannot be regained, despite the possibility of
visiting the place.
Literary Theory 51
Hybridity
Hybridity commonly refers to the creation of new
transcultural forms or simply cross-cultural ‘exchange’
within the contact zone produced by colonization. The
migrants' efforts to combine the culture of origin and that
of the host country is termed as hybridization in Post-
colonial theory. Homi K Bhabha is often acknowledged
for using this term in Post-colonial Studies in relation to
show the outcomes after the colonization process.
However, hybridity has been widely criticized since it
usually neglects the imbalance and inequality of the
power relations it refers to.
Uncanny
Uncanny means the experience of something as strangely
familiar rather than simply mysterious. Sigmund Freud
popularized the term in his study of the human mind to
denote the strangeness in the ordinary. Another Psycho-
Analytic Critic, Lacan, explains it as a place where "we
do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure
from displeasure." The term was adopted to Post Colonial
theory with an aim to provide about the problematic
condition of the once colonized selves. In his Location of
Culture, Homi Bhabha explains the term in detail and
calls it the 'sameness in difference. ' He identifies the self
of the colonized as a split one and goes on addressing it
as the 'uncanny double. '
Strategic Essentialism
Strategic essentialism can be termed as the need to accept
an “essentialist” position temporarily, in order to be able
Literary Theory 52
to act. Gayatri Spivak, in her Subaltern Studies:

Deconstructing Historiography, points out the ineffective
efforts of the Post-colonial theorists to bring all the
diverse essentialisms (that is a feeling of togetherness
beneath a common idea) under one in order to achieve a
goal while there is hardly one to stick on. Spivak states
that Post-colonial critics actually do something similar;
hence, such criticism is more or less hypocritical.
Subaltern Studies
The Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) arose in the 1980s
and was interested in formulating narratives against the
existing model. Though Gramsci was the influential force
behind this group, they were very critical of Marxists'
views on Indian history, claiming that it never talked
about the other suppressed classes except for peasants.
Therefore, their focus was on non-elites — subalterns —
as agents of political and social change, especially in
South Asian countries. Major theorists of this theory were
Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Shahid Amin, Erik
Stoke etc. Later Spivak questioned this group in her
famous essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" asking them if
it is possible to raise the authentic voice of the Subalterns
against the oppressors.
Post-Colonial Critiques of Nationalism

1. Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community.”
Anderson was an Anglo-Irish political scientist who
famously declared that nation or the feeling of nation is
absolutely an imagined one (1983). He used the term
“imagined community” to show people from different
Literary Theory 53
corners of a territory feel that they are connected and

united in the name of a nation but surprisingly, they might
have not even met once in life! Such an ideology was a
disturbing one for countries like India, which sustains the
motto ‘unity in diversity.’ Postcolonial critiques find that
this commonality was rather a cultural one, not a political
one. Culture appears to be so complicated that it is
impossible to find a clear location for the word. In short,
the idea of nationalism remained a subject of discontent
among postcolonial critics.
2. Partha Chatterjee and nationalism
In his view, the very idea of nationalism was Western.
Anti-colonial and nationalist movements adopt the ideas
of modernity and sustained development and progress
from the West. Then the question comes, whose
essentialism is maintained and promoted through
nationalism? Is it of the colonized country or of the
Western colonizers?
3. Gayathri Spivak’s concept of ‘epistemic
violence.’
Spivak had already discussed the problem of being an
essential group in order to attain a particular goal. She
asks the subaltern population (once colonized by
Europeans) will it be possible to become a nationalist
group since the subaltern is mutated by the episteme
(knowledge system) of the Western. This epistemic
violence imposed by European colonial powers will make
it a tough task for the colonized community to get
together to achieve the task of resisting against them. The
concept of nationalism gets offended by post-colonial
Literary Theory 54
critiques by pointing out its disability to bring people

under a common name – a postcolonial nation- since a
nation does not exist.
Post Modernism
Thorough knowledge of Post Modernism can only be
achieved by detailing the features of Modernism in the
first place. 'Modernism' is the name given to the
movement which dominated the arts and culture of the
first half of the twentieth century. Twenty years from
1910 to 1930 was the period of high modernism and some
of the literary 'high priests' of the movement were T. S.
Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis,
Virginia Woolf, and others. This movement was an overt
rejection of traditional realism in favour of experimental
forms of various kinds. All of these writers practiced
fragmentation as a basis for their writings in order to
deviate from Victorian Realism. They spoke out the
absurdity of human life through characters such as
Stephen Dedalus (Ulysses), Clarissa Dalloway (Mrs.
Dalloway), etc. Even so, Modernist writers looked back
on the fragmented world with a lamenting mood. They
upheld nostalgic sentiments towards the lost beauty of the
past. They always hoped that a better future would
emerge.
After modernity, another new trend emerged across
philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism, marking
a departure from modernism and it is named Post
Modernism. Post Modernism was also a rejection of what
it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies
associated with modernism, its Enlightenment rationality
Literary Theory 55
and universal validity regarding arts and literature.

Criticizing the ideas of objective reality, morality, truth,
human nature, reason, science, language, and social
progress, Post Modernism marked a new era in human
history since civilization. Major philosophers such as
Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard came up with
theories that could challenge age-old beliefs, systems, and
ideologies to unfold its meaninglessness.
'Modernity- an Incomplete Project' by Juergen
Habermas (1980)
Juergen Habermas’s influential paper 'Modernity - an
Incomplete Project' gave an account of the ‘modern
project’ or rather the ‘Enlightenment project’ that shifted
its focus from the traditional methods and perceptions.
For Habermas modern period begins with the
Enlightenment era of mid-seventeenth to the mid-
eighteenth century. Enlightenment 'project' envisaged a
break with tradition, blind habit, and slavish obedience to
religious precepts and prohibitions so as to restate the
existing systems with the weapon of reason. He believed
this faith in reason and the possibility of progress
survived into the twentieth century. Derrida and Foucault
represented a similar refusal of Enlightenment
'modernity'. They attacked the ideals of reason, clarity,
truth, progress, and the like. In short, what he suggests is
that modernity is not finished but still works in different
attire and so Post Modernity is just a transfigured version
of modernity.
Literary Theory 56
Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition:

A Report on Knowledge (1979)
Lyotard was a well-known French Postmodern theorist
who raised questions about the accepted definitions of
postmodernism, precisely targeting Habermas. He
defined Postmodernism as “incredulity towards
metanarratives"; that is Postmodernism is not just an
annex of modernism as Habermas puts it, but in fact, it is
a withdrawal from it. He argues that Postmodern thinking
prepared a way for the so far unheard stories of different
groups. Lyotard gave preference for this plurality of small
narratives to the grand narratives of Modernism,
Marxism, etc. since these attempts to propagate
ideologies on a larger level. And Postmodern period
views the metanarratives as untrustworthy to an extent
because it gives only a partial side of truth.
Jean Baudrillard and Simulacra and Simulations
(1981)
Another major theorist of postmodernism is a French
writer Jean Baudrillard whose propositions are furnished
in his essay “Simulacra and Simulations.” Baudrillard is
often associated with what is known as 'the loss of the
real'. The influence of images from film, TV, and
advertising of the new age has led to an incapability to
realize the distinction between the real and imagined.
Most importantly, it is understood that signs do not reflect
reality but the other way round. Therefore, he questions
the validity of any of the things that are presented to us.
The difference between real and imagined gets blurred
and the result is a culture of 'hyperreality' (the inability of
Literary Theory 57
consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of

reality).
Baudrillard posits that the whole system (system includes
everything) becomes what he calls a simulacrum in the
postmodern period. A simulacrum is a representation or
imitation of someone or something. A simulacrum is a
fantasy that holds no connection with reality. It is just a
copy of the real. In his view, the process of simulation
takes place through four stages;
a. the sign represents a basic reality.
b. sign misrepresents or distorts the reality
c. sign disguises the fact that there is no
corresponding reality behind.
d. it bears no relation to any reality at all
To make it clear he uses the example of Disneyland of
Hollywood. He says Disneyland is a perfect mage of the
third stage simulation, which in turn creates the last stage.
Brian McHale and Post-Modernist Fictions (1987)
Brian McHale is an American critic who attempted to
assemble various modes of fiction under one common
title; Postmodern. McHale traces the development of
postmodern fiction by focusing on North American
metafiction, Latin American magic realism, the French
New Novel, concrete prose and science fiction. In his
opinion, Postmodern fictions show an ability to' thrust its
own ontological status into the foreground' and to ask
questions about the world (or worlds) in which we live.
Literary Theory 58
These interrogations bring about new worlds inside a text

that opens up a plurality in itself
Ecocriticism
This movement began in the US during the 1980s and the
prime discussion hub of it was the relationship between
literature and its physical environment. Cheryll Glotfelty
and Harold Fromm are the acknowledged beginners of
Ecocriticism in the US, while in the UK the credit of
being the beginner goes to Jonathan Bate. The UK found
its emergence only a decade after with an alternative title,
Green Studies. Still, Ecocriticism and Green studies are
usually used interchangeably to signify this particular
mode of analysis of a text by gathering data of the
background environment. Works of eminent
Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret
Fuller and Henry David Thoreau of America, and
Britain's Romantic writers were the important sources
behind such an approach to literary creations.
Anthropocentrism
Though the discussion extends to problems such as how
nature is perceived in literature, what are its moral and
physical nuances, the fundamental point of debate is how
the human conception of nature excludes the intrinsic
value of nature. Since literature and theory are purely man
creations, he tends to believe that nature is also something
that gets its identity when human utilizes it well.
Generally, Romantic poets and Transcendentalists set up
a world, a physical world indeed, that asserts its identity
only when human interventions grant the same. This is
absolutely a human-centred attitude or an
Literary Theory 59
'Anthropocentric' view. On the contrary, Ecocriticism

views nature as a whole entity with its potential to act in
its own way. Ecocritics thus denounce almost all of the
preceding literary contributions and theories that never
counted nature as an independent system.
Shallow Ecology and Deep Ecology
Shallow Ecology is yet another term to indicate schemes
drew up by Anthropocentric perception of the
environment. It holds the opinion that the environment
must be protected only for the benefit of human interests.
Contrary to this, Deep Ecology proposes an ideology not
only for all living things in nature but also for natural
resources. This thought makes room for non-human
beings on the earth as well. As stated by the critics, Deep
Ecology alone can stand out as a specific program solely
for nature and its resources like mountains and rivers. It
believes that Anthropocentrism alienated humans from
their natural environment and this caused the exploitation
of nature. Humans need to get to know more about the
ecological system on a more profound and emotional
level to recognize it is not nature that revolves around
man but vice versa.
Lawrence Buell and The Environmental Imagination
(1995)
The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature
Writing, and the Formation of American Culture, a study
of how literature represents the natural environment, is
one of the critical texts of Ecocriticism theory. The book
strives to locate the place of nature in the history of
western thought, specifically juxtaposing the human
Literary Theory 60
imagination of the environment and the environmental

actuality in the age of industrialization. Thoreau's Walden
serves as the touchstone for Buell's framework of nature-
culture dichotomy and provides a rethinking of our
literary and cultural reflections on nature.
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism argues that patriarchal visions always
subjugated women and nature through the
implementation of certain values and beliefs. The
unearthing of suppressed feelings of both women and
nature resembles a great extent. The comparison of
women with nature, ‘naturalization' of women's feelings
and concepts such as 'mother earth' attained new
definitions under Ecofeminist viewpoints. They
rephrased the 'mother earth' concept, probably a design of
patriarchy, and stated that it achieves two different
connotations;
a. It Naturalizes women
b. It Feminizes nature
Both simplified the process of suppression and
discrimination of women and nature since one takes after
the other. Ecofeminism seeks to shatter this oppression
caused by male society with its new modes of
interpretation of literature and other texts.
Literary Theory 61
REFERENCES
1. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin: Post-
Colonial Studies
2. Chris Baldick: Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary
terms
3. Hans Bertens: Literary Theory.
4. Jonathan Culler: Literary Theory: A Very Short
Introduction.
5. M H Abrams: A Glossary of Literary Terms
6. Margaret Drabble (Editor): The Oxford Companion to
English Literature-Sixth Edition
7. Peter Barry: Beginning Theory
8. Pramod K Nayar: Contemporary Literary and
Cultural Theory
9. Terry Eagleton: After Theory.
10. Terry Eagleton: Literary Theory: An Introduction.
WEB RESOURCES
1. https://literariness.org/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_theory
3. https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-
arts/language-linguistics-and-literary-terms/literature-
general/literary-criticism
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LITERARY THEORY

2019 Admission onwards

Introduction to the Course

Literary Theory is an unavoidable discipline as

3. Cultural Materialism & New Historicism:

It is a universally acknowledged fact that art and

the conditions to be a great work of art or not. Still,

even before centuries. But later, during the 1920s,

The rise of New Criticism in the Western curriculum saw

New Criticism, the first among the theories,

time, Cleanth Brooks tried to figure out how poetic

Other major exponents of New Criticism were

Linguistic Turn and Critical Turn

Following New Criticism, or rather extending its

literature better. Critics argued about the importance of

Structuralism is an intellectual movement that

Saussure was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and

his theory of a two-tiered reality about language. The first

According to Saussure the synchronic study of

Sign, Signifier, Signified

Saussure proposed that it is a system of signs that

Saussure then identifies three important notions to show

Claude Levi-Strauss and ‘Structuralist Anthropology’

considered to be the building blocks behind each society.

Structuralist thinkers, including Barthes, were not

larger containing structure (a particular genre, a network

Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction

hint in his concepts; and that was Saussure's fondness for

Logocentrism and Phonocentrism

itself is a troublesome idea because it fixes a centre to

and therapy for neuroses. The procedures of psycho-

Id, Ego and Super Ego

Freud firmly believed that an artist represents his/her Id

Oedipus Complex: An Example

Three Phases of Child's Mental Development

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two German

Base and Super Structure

elements of Formalism were also incorporated regarding

Antonio Gramsci and Prison Notebooks

about his prison life) to popularize his new socialist ideas

family, and art (including literature). The second one

be viewed from a radical standpoint to recheck its

Raymond William's definition of Culture

refers to the various ways of thinking that struggle to

Culturalism is concentrated on 'experiences' that we gain

New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

Apart from that, historiography dwells in the study of the

documenting past actions represent a lived reality, that is

Stephen Greenblatt is an American Shakespearean,

They used it as a subtitle for their collected work Political

Feminism and Queer Theory

opens with a highly polemical interrogation, “is a pen a

Three Waves of Feminism

redefining the female-self, irrespective of geographical

Helen Cixous etc. whose theories overtly questioned the

Gradually Feminist thoughts reached in the far east

way. There arose a new perspective that included

Complications related to caste differences and inequality

Post Feminism bears a contrast with the existing Feminist

it is often used to denote the combined area of gay and

Judith Butler, an American philosopher, discusses the

LGBT community enhanced the scope for sexual