CRITICA LITERARIA ANGLO-NORTEAMERICANA

1. Introduction

Ideas —> you have ideology.

- Critica Literaria is culture

- The opinion (+ arguments in favor of your opinion) —> expresses the facts, your
opinion, the justification
- EVALUATION —> comes first
- Our personal opinion stands out first as the best and right opinion
- Evaluation comes first when we want to argue —> IT CANNOT BE YOUR MAIN
POINT IN YOUR CRITIC

1.1. DEFINITION
Literary criticism is a practical thing —>to express your opinion on the text.
- Evaluative: set of beliefs/opinions that serve as basis of personal appreciation —> we
use it first naturally —> it comes first (it is not justifiable) —> we do not ask why
- Theoretical: need to explain why you liked it —> it comes from the idea you have of
what literature should be. —> Literary Theory
- Analytical: text analysis (a deep dive into the text)
- Historiographical: the study of literature (& its interpretation) —> what courses of
literature have been teaching us our whole lives —> like El Quijote in Spanish
literature.

1.2. PERSONAL EVALUATION

1. Expressive of a measure of quality (defining artefact as good or bad)
2. Basic response (likes/ dislikes. Emotional)
3. Pre-conceptions —> associated with the beauty of the text
*literary pieces are not meant to inspire enjoyment —> they are a task to
prove that you are able to create a deep trail of thoughts
4. Responses are conditioned by artifact
5. Personal opinions are mistaken as an absolute truth. —> it is a problem when it
comes from an authority —> then you are not expected to disagree
6. Accepted as absolute (authoritative) if the subject has authority
(to justify you use theory)
7. Personal evaluation cannot be used or accepted in literary criticism
- Evaluative reviews are quite common. We call them reviews and are not accepted as
a critic.

1.3. EARLIER APPROACHES

1. Romantic —> Aesthetic evaluation (1840-1850s) Walter Pater
a. Art must represent beauty —> it has to portrait beauty in order to be a
work of art.
b. Beauty must lead to emotion.
c. The emotion has to be positive
2. Victorian period (Matthew Arnold)
a. Literature was here to the improvement of the soul (to make you a better
person)
 b. Intellectual approach searching for morals and norms of behavior (e.g.:
Oliver Twist) —> producing negative morals only to then reject them
c. Works that are not a work of values are not art
3. Moral evaluation (F.R. Leavis)
a. Split literature into two halves depending on good and bad moral values.
(Basing evaluation on authoritative precedence)
b. When Ulysses was published and a few times later censored —> became
very popular in France due to Baudelaire’s influence.
c. Authority should prevail —> everyone else had to agree with Leavis (if
not, their opinion would not be accepted)

1.4. LITERARY THEORY

o Ideological grounds of criticism: it is based on what you think the function of

literature should be
▪ Concerning one’s view of the world —> HOW I SEE THINGS
▪ Values beyond the literary:
• Values that relate to cultural theory (gender, class, etc…)
• Depending on your identity and role in society
▪ Ideology is personal but something we share with others
o Characteristics:
▪ Relative permanent (we define ideas as something permanent)
▪ You wouldn’t want to betray your ideology (but we accept authority
and sometimes we challenge our ideas)
▪ Most literary theories do not last more than one generation
▪ Literary theory chooses to discard eclecticism (you cannot combine
theories)
▪ Each text may require the application of one specific approach
▪ Personal ideas —> they influence the approach to literary texts for
critical purposes.
▪ Close relationship with the theory of literature.

1.5. FORMATION OF CRITICAL SCHOOLS

- A school: a community of scholars sharing similar critical perspectives

- Causes of critical variation —> there are many schools

o Chronological: changes in literary taste lead to formation of new critical
schools
o Synchronic: Different interests and values — systems lead to different
understandings of the nature and function of literature
- The eternal debate: what comes first the theory or the practice?
- How many critical schools are there? —> in the past there were a few but in the
present there are a lot due to the different interpretations (there are not coincidences
with literary theory and practice)
▪ TIMELINE OF LITERARY THEORY
 • It is important that in the theory, the author explains (implicitly
or explicitly) his/her critical position
1. Modern critical schools
a. Mid 20th century
b. They express positivist or essentialism
c. View points —> they express certainty of literature
d. Based on the assumption of truth.
e. Modern Schools: Structuralism, Freudian Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Second-
Wave Feminism
2. Post Modern critical approach
a. Relativistic viewpoint > question stablished ones.
i. Base the view of the world on the questioning of uncertainty
b. Appear in the second half of the 20th century (they are still active today)
c. Postmodern Schools: Deconstruction & Poststructuralism, Lacanian
Psychoanalysis, New Historicism, Queer Theory

1.6. CRITICAL SCHOOLS

- Formal-structural schools
o Structuralism (1960s-1970s)
▪ Format of literary texts
▪ The way we read texts —> DECODING
▪ How texts are made
o Poststructuralism
▪ Deconstruction (1970s-1990s)
• Focus on interpretation
• Good to find how meaning is subjective
▪ Postmodernism (1970s – today)
• Focus on questioning established values
• Good to see the blurred separation between fiction and reality
- Psychoanalytical Schools
o Freudian Psychoanalysis (1900-1970s)
▪ Focus on developmental sexual models
▪ Good to analyze characters and poetic symbols
o Jungian Psychoanalysis (1930s-1960s)
▪ Focus on archetypal psychological models
▪ Good to analyze character archetypes
o Lacanian Psychoanalysis (1960s – today)
▪ Focus on unfixedness in meaning
▪ Good to analyze neurosis in literature and interpretation
o Trauma Theory (1990s-today)
▪ Focus on trauma and trauma therapy
▪ God to analyze traumatized characters and traumatic situations in
literature
- Schools interested in Class and Power
o Marxism (1900-1970s)
▪ Focus on economic structure and forces
▪ Good to analyze literature as expressive of social inequality
o Post-Marxist (1980s – today)
▪ Postmodern Marxism
• Focus on expressions of institutional power
• Focus on modes of repression
▪ Cultural Materialism
• Focus on possibilities of dissidence
▪ New Historicism
• Focus on containment oof dissidence
• All good for study of literature as response to institutional
power
- Schools interested in Gender
o Feminism (1900-1970s)
▪ Focus on marginalization of women
▪ Promoting equality in difference
▪ Good for analysis of female characters and men-women relations
o Gay and Lesbian Studies (1980s – today)
▪ Focus on marginalization of gays and lesbians
▪ Promoting visibilization and naturalization
▪ Good for analysis of gay and lesbian characters and stylistic codes
o Queer Theory (1990 – today)
▪ Focus on non-binary definitions of gender
▪ Good for analysis of non-normative gender identity in literature
o Masculinity Studies (1990s – today)
▪ Focus on definition of male identity
▪ Good for analysis of male characters

2. Forms and Structure

2.1. Precedents
o Young people got rid of authority in order to express themselves.
o The emergence was in different countries all at the same time (teaching
methods were similar)
2.2. RUSSIAN FORMALISM
o Comes from Russia (early 20th century) —> there was a revolutionary context
—> people thought they needed a change
o Parallel to emergence of modernist trends (Russian Futurism) —> challenged
the Victorian ideals
o Tolstoy & Dostoyevsky —> reject 19th century classicism
o Related to machinism —> machines represent the future (formal dynamicism)
(Futurist Manifesto)

- Formalist Proposals
o Rejection of academic historicism (author-oriented) and subjectivity (critic-
oriented)
o Important focus on the poetic text
▪ No longer needed to focus on the author (not learn about the author)
▪ Could be done by anyone
o Develop a methodology that is as effective as scientific (“Scientific method”)
o Analysis of formal aspects (structure of the text) and functional aspects —>
literariness —> what makes a text literary?
o Definition of formal defamiliarization (ostranenia in Russian) as the
constituent of poetic discourse
o Literature must challenge your expectations
o Literature transforms the natural order of languages

- Formalist critics
o Boris Eichenbaum, “Theory of the Formal Method” (1926)
▪ A revision of the major contributions of Formalist critics
▪ A general summary of Formalist methodology
o Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale (1928)
▪ Study folk tales and found common patterns in structure
▪ Characters are now defined by function
• The role defines the character
 • Claimed there are only 7 types of characters —> Propp’s
Character Typology

▪ Organization in 31 Narrative Units

• Organized in four spheres.
• Bring down the plot of a novel in formalist units.
• 1st Sphere: Introduction: The situation and main characters are
introduced

• 2nd Sphere: Departure: The main story starts and extends to the
departure of the hero on the main quest

• 3rd Sphere: Donor Sequence & Resolution: The hero is tested

by the Donor and obtains the magical agent that will help him
defeat the Villain.

• 4th Sphere: The Hero’s return: The hero returns home but must
pass some final tests to be acknowledged as the true hero
2.3. NEW CRITICISM
- Founded by I.A. Richards
- Rejection of aesthetic appreciation in the teaching of literature
- Rejection of evaluative assessments of art
o Perpetuation of authority sources (they are often subjective)
o Lead to misleading (if carried out spontaneously)
o Evidence collected among students and presented in Practical Criticism
(1929).
- Continued by New Critics
o Developed in 1930s – 1950s > they made literature more approachable.
▪ Theoretical
• John Crowe Ransom, The New Criticism (1941)
• W.K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon (1954)
▪ Practical:
• Cleanth Brooks, The Well-Wrought Urn (1945)
• Cleanth Brooks & Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry
(1938)
o Main Proposals:
▪ Autonomy of text for expression of meaning
▪ Rejection of authorial influence in reader’s assessment of meaning
(Wimsatt and Beardsley’s Intentional Fallacy)
▪ Wimsatt and Beardsley’s Emotional Facility: takes away and
complicates the relationship with literary texts → Poetry should be
based on reality (COLD APPROACH TO LITERATURE) > Enhance
 the contemplation of reality. (Irrelevance of reader’s and author’s
emotions for academic criticism)
▪ Projection of emotion of reality on to objective correlative → T.S. Eliot
→ was a critic also. > The way of implying emotion without
expressing emotion => Suggests emotion. —> LITERATURE
EXPRESSES REAUTY
▪ Promotion of close reading → detailed analysis of rhetorical resources
(analysis of meaning and information of the text) —> mainly metaphor
and symbol
▪ Themaric coherence→ finding elements that give unity particularly
through formal resources.

3. Structuralist linguistics
- Main source → Ferdinand de Saussure's, Course in General Linguistics (1916)
- B. Main concepts:
o General theory of communication
▪ Signs: combination of form & content
• Form (signifier) → visible / audible part
• Content (sngnified) → abstract universals
▪ Linguistic signs: arbitrary yet fixed by consensus
▪ Systems: sets of functional paradigmatic/ syntagmatic relations
* agree on a slice of the universal (they are the same concept)
▪ The signs are arbitrary, yet, they are fixed
▪ We use the same systems to put the signs together through syntacmatic
/ paradigmatic relations.
▪ Paradigmatic —> opposition/contrast
▪ Syntacmatic —> order
o We based a connection based on opposition —> binary systems
▪ The neutral term —> inclusive (unmarked) —> (man=humankind)
▪ Exclusive (marked) term —> (woman)

- Structuralism comes in the mid 20th century.

- General context:
o Developed mainly in France (1950s-1970s)
o Coincides with revolutionary unrest (May ’68) —> carried out by students
(emblem for future revolution) feed up by the ways of teaching. —> strive
between capitalism (old traditions) and communism.
o Seeking new, more meaningful perspectives
- Became a wholistic understanding —> was a new way of seeing things (not only
applicable to linguistics but to everything) (created a methodology —> defied
social/behavioral patterns (most of its members were anthropologists) —> patrilineal/
matrilineal societies => works of art are also definable (human artifacts)
- Structuralists defined literature by a signifier: as if it was language (linguistic tool)
o Texts can be analyzed on phonological, grammatical or lexical features.
o Figuratively: as if they were equivalent to linguistic structure.
- The main distinguishing feature between poetic and non-poetic language is linguistic
deviation: the way it uses language to transform it into something different.
- Poetic language breaks with conventional grammar rules (ex. Hyperbaton) —>
syntactically (ex. Metaphor) —> semantically
 - Textual coherence is provided by creating patterns throughout repetition and the
introducing the variation.
- Language has functions
- Roman Jakobson —> communicative model —> literary texts need attention in the
text only
- Referential function —> poetic ideas
- Poetic function —> the way it is organized and what it means.
- Contextual relations and diachronicy are irrelevant
- Analysis of poetry
o Focus on linguistic patterns —>
▪ rhythm and rhyme, alliteration (PHONOLOGICAL)
▪ SYNTACTIC/FUNCTIONAL
▪ LEXICAL: Figurative (metonymy, metaphor)
o Patterns are definable through repetition and variation
o Units organized in relational patterns: oppositional, causal, temporal,
inclusive.
o The Semiotic Turn (improvement) —> foregrounds how signs functions in
different cultural/ social contexts. —> by doing this we can focus on the
significance (relation between sign and context)
o Significance is provided by a connotative meaning —> evaluative layer that
comes from association of other words.
o Foregrounding connotative meaning —> as supplementary to denotative
meaning and as the expression of cultural values.
o Foregrounding significance of sign in context

Narratology
- Main contributors:
o Algirdas Greimas, Semantique Structurale (1966)
o Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du Decameron (1969)
o Gerard Genette, Figures, I-III (1967-70; transl. Narrative Discourse)
o Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction (1983)

- Main goals:
o Analysis of structural constituents of narrative:
▪ Event structure (plot): the manner in which events are organized in a
story
▪ Characterization: characters are defined by functionality
▪ Narrative voice: perspective adopted by the narrator’s report of the
event
o Definition of recurrent typology for all structural constituents
▪ V. Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (1928)
▪ Claude Bremond, “La logique des possibles narratifs” (1966)
▪ J. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art
and Popular Culture (1977)
o Each text is different > each text has each own grammar.
▪ Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du Decameron (1969)
- Characterization:
o Definable according to functional (semanto-syntactic) roles —> Greimas’
actants (the basic structure of every text)
▪ Active Subject vs. Passive Object
 ▪ Sender/Giver vs Receiver
▪ Helper vs Opponent
o Characterization is definable by at least one role.
▪ Through duplication > one role at the beginning / another role at the
end.
▪ Through temporary transformation: A passive actant may on occasion
assume an active role throughout the narrative sequence.
- Event structure:
o Definable by hierarchical structural units —> Todorov
o Teleological function of events —> sequence of event oriented to a closure
(disrupt/restore order)
▪ Digression (we do not know where it goes)
- Natural Narrative Model:
o Analysis of all narrative developed by linguists through stories told by African
Americans.
- Sources
- Narrative frame (defines the story as a story through the use of markers)
o Abstract —> announces beginning of narrative discourse
o Coda —> a sentence that indicates the end of the story
- Orientation (descriptive frame)
o Defined by an occurrence on the narrative frame
o It is a functional description
o PLACE AND TIME OF EVENTS
o DESCRIBES THE CHARACTERS
o Describes the initial situation
o Describes the atmosphere
o To define generic definition —> the attitude you might have towards the text
changes
o Present conflict —> as action or situation
o Complication (event structure)
▪ Not a description but a sequence of events (things begin to happen)
▪ Conflict-solving actions
▪ Conflict-complicating actions
▪ Conflict-ending action —> CLIMAX
- Resolution (return to situation —> aftermath) —> describes new relations among
characters
- Evaluative frame —> evidence of narrator’s pov
o Explicit evaluative commentaries
o Implicit (connotative) evaluation

Narrative Voice (Genette’s model)

- Everything we say is marked by an attitudinal topic
- Deconstruct the narrator’s story —> unreliable source
o Decomposes the narrative (everything collapses because the story is based on
the narrator)
o The narrator is a reliable source and we do not question them.
- According to participation in events:
o Heterodiegetic —> Narrator does not participate (third-person/ second-person
narrator)
 o Homodiegetic —> more subjective (1st person) (becomes involved in the
story)
- Focalization
o Regarding the amount of information they can provide
▪ Zero-focalization (knows everything)
▪ “Camera-eye narrator”/ external focalization: what anyone in the story
could tell you
o Regarding the source of perception
▪ Internal focalization —> source of perception (can enter the minds of
characters)
▪ External focalization: focus perception is narrator’s only.

Structuralism and literary production

- Joint promotion
o Awareness of the format of literature encouraged breaking with formal
conventions
o Experimental narrative vs conventional formats (abstract literature)
o Focus on functionality rather than on correspondence with the real world
(Fictionality is more important than reality)
o Objective heterodiegetic voices preferred over subjective homodiegetic
▪ Expression of emotions to be minimized
▪ Digressions and narratorial comments
- Revaluation of old and modern classics
o In the renaissance: John Donne (metaphysical poetry)
▪ He wanted to challenge the readers
▪ Not a classic until the mid 20th century.
o 18th century: Tristam Shandy
o 20th century: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett
- Emergence of “formalist” literary and film trends:
o Fiction: Nouveau Roman and experimental fiction
▪ Cortázar, Rayuela: each chapter tells a story (not in chronological
order) —> readers have to reconstruct the story
o Film: Nouvelle vague & New Wave cinema
- Structuralism was very strict on the sense that only the text is valuable

POSTRUCTURALISM

Started among structuralists in France during the 1970s and then spread throughout
the US and Western Europe. (Translated into English)

- General attitude
o Reject the function that we should only focus on the text
o Questioning the only one way to decode a text
o Redefine relation with structuralism
▪ Expanding structuralist thought (e.g., Semiotics)
▪ Rebelling against structuralism (e.g., Deconstruction and
Postmodernism)
- Deconstruction
o Consists in deconstructing
o Developed in France
 o Jacques Derrida
o Adopted then by American critics from Yale University (1970s-early 1980s)
- Basic standpoints
o Structuralist definitions (everything needs to be redefined)
o Reading needs to be replaced by interpretation
o Communication must be understood as failure
- Key concepts:
o Not fixed relationship between signified and signifier (meaning it is not pre-
given, it is given after)
▪ Also happens historically (by relations established by each sign with
all others it has come in contact with)
▪ Deferral> after syntactic sequence has been read
▪ All words are, sort to say, metaphors
o Every word contains traces of all other words it has come in contact with
o Full comprehension of all traces is impossible and therefore partial (and
leading to Indeterminacy and Undecidability)
o Binary oppositions are not neutral or natural
▪ Binaries is based on privileging one signified over another
▪ Thee “unmarked” or “neutral” unit is typically identified as “normal”
and “inclusive” (e.g., day)
▪ The “marked” unit is typically identified as “abnormal” and
“exclusive” (e.g., night)
o Signified privileging is defined according to cultural values
▪ “day” is associated with life (activity, productivity), hence has positive
connotations.
▪ “Night” is associated with death, hence is charged with negative
connotations— and confers its charge to the signifiers it is typically
attached to.
o Western culture is logocentric, i.e., has been based on privileging certain
concepts that supposedly define our culture (e.g, reason, masculinity, freedom
— and daytime)
o But these privileged concepts are naturally unstable
o Meaning structures are in flux
▪ Binary oppositions aim to create a structural “centre” on the privileged
item
▪ Centering calls for the marginalization (or negation) of the other item
in the oppositional pair (e.g.: if daytime is real life (i.e., productive)
then nightlife is not life — or not socially (or morally) acceptable.
▪ Yet, for the privileged item to retain its status (and meaning), the
marginalized item cannot be eliminated (e.g.: day is meaningless
without night)
▪ By its recall, the marginalized item questions the centrality (or
exclusivity) of the privileged one
▪ Hence meaning is permanently (but often not perceptibly) unstable
o Language cannot be the means to apprehend reality
▪ Language escapes human control
• Meaning does not derive from the intention of the speaker but
from the nature of language itself
• Comprehension of language (and reality) is impaired by the
fluctuating relationship between signifier and signified.
 ▪ Speakers can only produce fictions of reality
• Human discourse is based on what we think reality is
• Comprehension is based on what we think we understand
• Discourse as intended and discourse as comprehended rarely
coincide — and have no direct bearing on reality
• Communication is based on the false assumption that we
control language (logocentric fallacy)
▪ Reality as expressed institutionally is fictitious and needs to be
deconstructed

- Meaning and the reading process:

o Concerning the roles of the author
▪ Not significant as source of information on text (“dead” for reading
purposes: Barthes)
▪ An (often) unwitting transmitter of (unstable) logocentric thought
▪ Under specific conditions, a deliberate subverted of logocentric
thought
• By questioning/ interrogating certain concepts
• By challenging (deconstructing) established forms or formats
(and exposing their inconsistency)
o Concerning the roles of the critic
▪ The critic as a reader/interpreter
• Not limited by need to decode single meaning in text (hence,
granted freedom of interpretation)
• But validity of reading is undermined by the fact that his/hers is
a personal interpretation
• And personal interpretation must not be considered as an
opportunity for free interpretation
▪ The critic as an archaeologist
• Unearths lexical traces
• Provides information of those traces to others
▪ The critic as notary of indeterminacy
• Of the structures of textual meaning
• Of the critic’s own interpretation
▪ The critic as subversive interpreter
• By showing how unstable textual meaning is
• By exposing the ways in which logocentrism seeks to be
imposed
- Deconstruction and the Arts:
o Promoting works that challenge fixed literary models
o Promoting works that challenge fixed perceptions of reality
o Reviving artistic traditions based on the distortion of “reality”

POSTMODERNISM
- A philosophical and artistic movement that reacts against Modernism & what it
represents
o The figure of the individual artistic genius
o The appeal to reason and traditional humanism
o Dependence on universal abstract values (truth, certainty, objectivism)
- A general branch of thought that reacts against Structuralism (it includes
Deconstruction)
- A line of thought within Poststructuralism that continues & reelaborates Derridean
philosophy
- It was developed mainly in France and the Us since the 1970s
- Precursors:
o Ihab Hasan’s The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern
Literature (1971)
▪ On the precedents within Modernism
▪ On the failure to communicate the inexpressible (and the prevalence of
silence in literatuea)
▪ In the replacement of old (pre-modernist & modernist) values with new
ones
o Journal of Postmodern Literature and Culture (1972)
- Main contributors:
o Jean Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (1979)
▪ On metanarratives or grand narratives
• A set of abstract ideas that is supposed to offer a
comprehensive explanation of historical experience or
knowledge— and is transmitted as/through a story
o Democracy & Individual Freedom
o Capitalism & Free Market Economy
o Religion
o Scientific Progress
• A tool used in modern societies to give the impression of order
and control
▪ On postmodern distrust of metanarratives
• They are based on questionable/unreliable value sets of ideas
(cf Derrida)
• They can be used by power structures to impose one single
mode of discourse
• They are replaced by micronarratives (petits recits) in
postmodern societies
▪ On social flux
• Each social group seeks to persuade others by means of
narratives concerning their own truth.
• Social complexity and variety prevents the predominance of
one micronarrative and the exclusion of the rest.
o Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)
▪ On the role of advertising industry in global societies
• Advertising has created an excess of signs excess contributes to
the effacement of reality.
• What we perceive is not reality but the signs that represent it
(the simulacra)
▪ On simulacrum as replacement of the real
• If a place, the fictional place in which we live a simulated
reality
• If reality, a simulated reality (ie. Reality as represented by its
“façade”
 ▪ On hyperreality:
• A false perception of reality
• Simulacra not perceived as representations
▪ On consumerism and the uses of hyperreality
• Advertising induces us to consume goods
o For the benefit of producing companies
o For the enhancement of consumer’s satisfaction
• Consumer satisfaction induces need to remain immersed in
world of goods offered to us
• Consumers are induced to believe that hyperreality is the real
thing
▪ On the use of hyperreality for ideological/political purposes
• Hyperreality is transmitted mainly by the media
o Through information (newspapers, tv)
o Via entertainment (films, videogames)
• We are offered hyperreality so they we do not see reality as it
truly is
• We are kept contented and satisfied because we think we live
the reality we want
▪ On the confusion between reality and hyperreality:
• When perceiving the unexpected we believe it is fictional, not
real.
• We react to it as if it were a simulation (i.e. a spectacle)
- Postmodernist literary criticism
o Main interests:
▪ The relation between fiction & reality
• How (modernist) texts uphold metanarratives and support
hyperreality
• How postmodern texts can challenge established perceptions
o Regarding the world: exposing the foundations of
metanarratives.
o Regarding individual identity: destabilizing character
representations and the connections between reader and
character
▪ The promotion of intertextuality
• In order to break the boundaries between texts (e.g, through
pastiche, verbal allusions, or parody)
• Expose the interrelatedness of literary texts (cf with
Deconstructive “traces”)
• Re-write former texts & give them new meaning
o Linda Hutcheon
▪ On how postmodern fiction can unsettle metanarratives
• Questioning the uniqueness and originality of texts
• Blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction (e.g., in
metafiction)
• Reviewing values originally expressed in preceding texts
▪ On the use of intertextuality and parody
• To unsettle the object of parody
 • Yet also as a tribute to the original object (and values it
transmits)
▪ On how rewriting can involve re-evaluation