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LITERARY
STUDIES
Preface-------------------------------------------------------3
Acknowledgement-------------------------------------------7
3. Critical Methods----------------------------------------70
5. Conclusion----------------------------------------------90
Bibliography------------------------------------------------92
Index--------------------------------------------------------89
2
Preface
3
Literary Studies, as a course, is intended, therefore, to
introduce us to the fundamental issues in the history of ideas,
to critical approaches to issues, to develop our perception and
sense of judgement –in fact, to make us able to see things
from various perspectives without losing our sense of
judgement. It will also prepare us to face higher and deeper
critical theories like semiotics, pragmatism, phenomenology,
historicism, cultural studies, ethnic studies, gender studies,
feminism, deconstruction, structuralism, post-structuralism,
modernism and post-modernism as we go up the ladder of
academic pursuit in literary studies.
Aside from acquainting the new seeker after knowledge
with the history of ideas and critical theories, literary studies
also initiates the seeker to text appreciation. The seeker is
expected to know the principles required in literary
appreciation; he is expected to know how the various
components of the text interact logically: how the writer
functions also as reader; how the reader functions as writer in
reading; how the text embodies both objective and subjective
realities – a platform of the phenomena of the mind in its quest
to turn information into knowledge and channel the knowledge
to change.
When a writer is writing, s/he is also reading his/her work;
in other words, s/he responds to his writing in the process of
reading it –that is, a situation of discourse is created during the
process of writing and reading. The reader or critic, for his or
her part, is engaged in the process of rewriting while reading
the text created by a writer. He or she comes across ideas in
the text that he or she would write differently were he or she
to be the writer of the text. He or she even sees some other
4
horizons missed by the writer in the process of writing. He or
she sometimes sees grammatical errors in the writer’s work.
The rewritten text exists in his or her subconscious however.
But the text itself becomes a meeting point between the writer
and the reader –it becomes a platform for both their objective
and subjective realities. This builds up to knowledge as the
reader responds to the writer in the text and appropriates
information which is turned into knowledge. It must not be
forgotten, however, that the act of reading itself could be
twofold –that is, it could be leisurely or pragmatic: The
untrained reader, who is reading a book, may acknowledge the
fact that s/he is reading or have just read a good work. S/he
may not be aware of the devices that lend literariness to a
work of art. However, a trained reader or critic reading the
work may get captivated by the writers’ use of language. The
beauty and force of the writer’s language may urge the reader
to read on. He or she follows the development of the text and
reads on patiently and assiduously. He or she gets immersed in
the world of the text. If he or she is reading the text for its
own sake and reading it closely, he or she may begin to be
conscious of the science of the text in the writer’s use of
imagery, satire, irony, metaphor, simile, paradox, oxymoron,
euphemism, personification, alliteration, assonance, pun,
metonym, rhetorical question, climax as well as the
syntactic/semantic/lexical structures of the text in trying to
create high literature. He/she studies how the plot of the work
is structured –that is, whether the story line is sequential or
disjointed. If he/she is using stylistic methods, he/she uses
either content format or linguistic format, which pays attention
to deictic words, that is, words whose functions are to point
5
out or specify something –words like definite articles –the and
demonstrative pronouns –this, that, these, those. But if the
reader is desirous of making his/her knowledge functional, s/he
studies the text in its various contexts and locates his/her role
in social change through the texts –in other words, s/he is not
so interested in the linguistic approach to literary studies as
s/he is interested in the functional approach which involves the
application of Marxist critical theory, psychoanalysis and so
forth.
In all, the book will take the reader through the Old English
Period, which is the Chapter One, up to the Post-modern
Period, a sub-chapter of Chapter One.
In Chapter Two, it will treat the literary devices and their
meaning; chapter three will examine the critical theories, while
chapter four will make the reader aware of the practical
implication for literature.
6
Acknowledgment
7
1
9
and priests reissued those texts and implied that their themes
were Christian or reflected Christian views of the world and the
struggle over good and evil. Some of these Old English texts,
mostly epic poems have survived as volumes till date. They
are: the Beowulf Manuscript, Junius Manuscript, Vercelli Books
and Exerter Books.
10
1.1 Middle English Period in Literature (1066-1510)
The Anglo-Saxon rule lasted till about 1066 AD, when the
Norman Army under the command of William the Bastard
invaded Britain, captured it and began to rule it. The Normans
were originally from Normandy in France. By conquering
Britain, Williams was later called the conqueror. Before the
invasions of Normans, English was the language of England.
Latin was spoken there too, but it remained the language with
which the clergy conducted worships and study. The feudal
system in place before the Norman invasion had a native
Aristocracy, which spoke English. The ordinary citizens spoke
English too. But the Clergy spoke Latin. In other words,
England was bilingual; but, Norman Conquest made England
trilingual. The English Aristocracy was replaced by the Norman
aristocracy, while the Norman episcopate displaced the English
Clergy. By the time William the Conqueror died in 1087, he left
England with a ruling class that spoke French as well as a
Clergy that still retained Latin. Lower class still spoke English
One of the major writers of the Middle English Period was
known as Richard Rolle. He had come to characterize the ideal
of the age. He dropped out of school at 18 because he
discovered that life in the world was full of vanity; as such he
went into hermitage –he had to exclude himself from the
contamination of the world. Therefore, while in recluse, he
wrote the following books: Ego Dominio, The Commandment
and The Form of Living. In the books he tried to instruct man
on the essence of life.
Life of reclusion was characteristic of religious minded
people during the Middle English Period. During this period,
great value was placed on the life of contemplation and so
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spiritually enlightened people withdrew themselves from
society in order to contemplate the real essence of life. Value
was also placed on religious devotion.
There were three major categories of writing during the
Middle English Period in Literature. They are, Religious writing,
Courtly love and Arthurian Romances.
1. Religious writings were mostly literatures that sought to
explain the Godly essence to man. It was mostly
instructive. And the examples of religious writings are
Richard Rolle’s Ego Dominio, The Commandment and The
Form of Living.
2. Courtly Love texts are mostly epic poems that
demonstrated manly or Knightly Heroism, not in the art
of war but in the art of love –sexual love of an elevated
type.
3. Arthurian Romances represented writing that also dealt
on love topics.
The major writers of the period quite apart from Richard
Rolle were Hoccleve, John Gower, William Langland, Julian
Norwich, The Gawain Poet and of course Geoffrey Chaucer.
Each of these writers depicted in his poem or prose the
social realities of his or her time, be it about life in the King’s
court, or about the havoc wreaked by the Black Death in
England. Black Death was a plague or disease that ravaged the
population of England in the fourteenth century.
William Langland especially captured the havoc of the
plague in his poem entitled, The Vision of Pier Plowman.
However, of all these writers, the one that dominated the
literary life of the Middle English Period in Literature was
Geoffrey Chaucer. Apart from writing Troilus and Criseyde, he
12
also wrote and was famous for The Canterbury Tales. The Tales
consisted of the following:
The Knight’s Tale
The squire’s Tale
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
The Merchant’s Tale
The Franklin’s Tale
The Miller’s Tale, etc.
All these are narrative poems in that they told stories; they
also always rhymed in an iambic pentameter form at the each
ending.
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1.2 Renaissance and Reformation Period in Literature (1510 -
1620)
This period in literature was a period of great changes. Henry
VIII, the reigning king at the time, had enforced the use of
English Language and encouraged the spread of English culture
upon ascension to the throne. This move was, however,
resisted by Scotland, which insisted on its autonomy from
Great Britain and allegiance to France. Henry VIII declared war
on Scotland and defeated it in Flodden in 1513.
The inability of Henry VIII’s wife to bear him a son, who
would be the eventual heir, made Henry VIII to want to divorce
her. In matters that concerned the holy wedlock, the head of
Christendom, who was the Pope, at the time, was always
informed. During this period, the Church was superior to the
state and Rome was the official headquarters of the entire
Christendom. The Pope refused to endorse the divorce being
that it was against Christian principles. However, King Henry
VIII went ahead and divorced his wife. The Pope had to ex-
communicate him from Christendom. This action by the pope
angered the King so much that he, through the act of
parliament declared England’s independence from papal Rome.
The independence from papal Rome marked the beginning of
Reformation in England. In order to ensure that papal influence
was greatly reduced, King Henry VIII went ahead and
disbanded about 800 Monasteries.
Just as institutional changes were going on in England
through reform by Henry VIII, there were also changes or
rebirth going on in literary, political and philosophical thoughts.
Renaissance we must know means rebirth. Many intellectuals
of that period, especially John Skelton did particularly feel that
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works written in Chaucerian language were awkward (see
Sanders, 1996: 86). People yearned after classical traditions of
Rome and Greece; and there was a growing need to make
education more practical and scientific. Therefore, a group of
scholars, writers and educators known today as renaissance
humanists devoted themselves to this task.
In England some scholars and writers had to travel as far
as Italy to study humanism by learning from the great
humanists of that time. One of such early travelers to Italy to
be trained in humanistic principles was Robert Flemmyng and
then Thomas Linacre (1460-1524). Linacre was a student
under the great Italian humanist called Politan. After Linacre,
the next to travel to study under Politan was William Grocyn.
Thomas More and John Colet were students under William
Grocyn. When Grocyn returned to England, he delivered the
first public lecture on Greek at Oxford (see Johnson, 2000: 43-
44).
As can be seen, these men penetrated the universities
and began thus to initiate great changes in the spirit of
Renaissance Humanism, which insisted that literature or texts
must represent the greatest values and ideal; as such its
criticism must avoid looking at texts on their face values. In
critiquing a text, they asked questions about its origins, its
credentials, its authenticity as well as the objectivity of its
contents (Johnson, 2000: 44). This critical approach to textual
issues was to prove fatal to the unity of the Church once
renaissance humanist began to apply their method to sacred
texts too. It was not until 1497 that John Colet evolved a
different approach in the critique of sacred text. His approach
was different from the scholastic approach which seemed to
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always want to pull down. His approach was greatly praised
and thought to represent a historical approach (2000: 45).
Some of the major writers of the renaissance period were
Thomas Thyme, who produced the new edition of Canterbury
Tales or Chaucer, John Skelton, who wrote a critique on The
Art of Poesie, Edward Spencer, who wrote the Fairy Queen, Sir
Philip Sydney, who wrote the Defense of Poesie, Thomas
Nashe, who experimented with his fictions, The Unfortunate
Traveler (1594) and Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the
Divell (1592), Thomas Moore who wrote Utopia and above all
William Shakespeare who seemed to be the greatest of them
all with his dramas.
Humanists sought the best for human life on earth. They
devoted their time and energy to human needs, interests and
values. They also approached issues regarding humanity
rationally, objectively and pragmatically.
There are various types of humanism –literary,
renaissance, western cultural, philosophical, Christian, modern
secular and religious humanism.
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1.3 Revolution and Restoration Period in Literature (1620-
1690)
There were great revolutionary changes in England during the
reign of James 1. While Henry Vlll sought to make his State
independent of papal Rome, and stronger than the Church,
King James 1 sought to establish the unified Church of
England.
The fact that many a man sought to sing his praise made
King James think that his reign was ordained by God: there
was a theatre performance by one of the great writers of the
period in which it seemed news about the anointment of
earthly kings by God came from the new world discovered in
the moon. The theatre performance even symbolized for King
James 1 that indeed God anointed earthly kings.
In his bid to establish a unified Church of England, he
enacted religious policies that most English people found
antagonistic. One of these policies was the integrated union of
the Church with the state, with the King as the head. The
appointment of Bishops was also to be his prerogative.
There were, however, some group of men, who felt that
the spiritual essence of the Church was drifting away under
King James1 and who felt that the doctrines of the Established
Church were contrary to true Christian principles as outlaid in
the Bible. Moreover, they opposed his policies, including his
idea of the Established Church of England. These men were
known as the Puritans.
Their opposition to the King’s policies regarding the Church
as well as their belief in the ideal Christian principles, made
them enemies of the state; as such they faced great
17
persecution. They decided to leave England to a place they
would call New England, where they would be free to worship
the way they wanted. Their first destination upon arrival to
New England was Plymouth Plantation in Virginia. They were
burning with fervour to practice to the letter what was in the
Bible. Because of the extreme nature of the King’s policies,
these men replied in word and deed with equal extremity.
Therefore, it could rightly be said that extremity marked the
politics and literature of that period, hence revolution and
restoration.
The Puritans, however, did not agree in their search for
the original pattern of the ideal Christian principles with regard
to the Church in that apostolic age when people were burning
with passion for religion. They broke down into different
doctrinal groups: the Calvinists, Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, Arminians and the Quakers, who to some
extent could be termed transcendentalists.
The Calvinists were mostly Puritans devoted to the ideas of
John Calvin, a Swiss, who himself had adopted the Augustian
Theology or Theory. The Calvinists believed that man was not
able to save himself since the fall of Adam; that means, he
could not will not to sin. They also believed in the doctrine of
irresistible grace –which means that man is solely dependent
on the grace of God for salvation. They believed too in the
doctrine of predestination –which means that man’s fate was
already pre-destined at birth.
All these doctrines were contained in the book written by
John Calvin called The Institute. He expounded on the
Theology of St. Augustine in the book.
18
The Presbyterians shared almost the same doctrines with
the Calvinists, only that, unlike the Calvinists, they believed
that the Church should be governed by a series of
representative assembly.
The Congregationalists for their part did not believe in the
theory of the Unified Church; however, they believed in the
doctrine of the elect –that means one was chosen by God
through predestination and as such only God could call the
elect not otherwise.
The Arminians, who were adherents to the doctrines of
Arminus, a Dutch Puritan, rejected the principle of
predestination. They also rejected the doctrine of limited
atonement –that means, they rejected the Calvinist belief that
Christ died only for the elect and therefore by implication, they
also rejected the doctrine of the elect. They also rejected the
doctrine of irresistible grace by claiming that the Grace of God
was for all regardless of faith or religious inclinations. However,
they believed that life on earth was a testing ground for
humanity and that humanity was capable of good and evil; but
that man could redeem himself by casting off the sin incurred
by Adam.
The Quakers, like the Arminians, rejected all the doctrines
of the Calvinists; but they, for their part, believed that only
those who permitted the always available love and light of God
to flow through them could achieve salvation –in other words,
salvation was open to all.
King James 1 achieved the unification of the Church with
the State and succeeded in establishing the unified Church of
England, but without the Catholic Scotland. His son King
Charles 1 tried to force Catholic Scotland into the unified
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Church of England with terrible consequences. Most Puritans
did not support the King. The King declared war on Scotland
against the majority opinion of the parliament that was
dominated by Puritans. Through act of Parliament, the
Parliament declared war on the State. The Parliament led by
General Cromwell defeated King Charles 1 and his lieutenants,
who were mostly Bishops. In fact Bishop William Laud led the
King’s Army. Upon the defeat of the State by the parliamentary
army, the actions of the King and his general, Bishop William
Laud were found treasonable. They were, therefore sentenced
to death. William Laud was executed in January 1645, while
King Charles was executed in 1648.
Revolution and Restoration period in Literature cannot be
discussed without the contributions of major writers and
thinkers of that period. These thinkers and writers were John
Donne, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, John Milton, John
Bunyan and John Dryden.
20
knowledge, regardless of the fact whether the knowledge in
question was in the arts/humanities or sciences/natural
sciences. Once knowledge was applicable, it was scientific
knowledge for Bacon.
He had argued that too much knowledge was not able to
lead to atheism or make the mind swell; the mind for him was
very elastic and as such capable of containing all knowledge.
True knowledge, he had argued, could not lead man astray, as
many thought it would, owing to the fact that it was thought
that man was driven out of paradise for the over-cultivation of
the intellect. What could lead man astray was negative
knowledge. He believed that the mind of man contained the
spirit of God, which was like a lamp; and if man’s mind was
like a light, being that it contained the spirit of God, real
knowledge in man must of necessity radiate light, which itself
is of God. Being an advocate for knowledge he had once said
that ‘reading maketh a man; but writing maketh a real man’.
He was credited to be the father of scientific method.
21
Catholics faced great persecution in the Anglican England; and
so when John Donne’s brother, Henry, was arrested, he was
sent to jail. He caught fever in prison and died in 1593. His
death affected Donne so much that he questioned his faith. He
spent 8 years in Cambridge and another 8 years in Oxford but
could not graduate: he had refused to take the oath of
Supremacy, which was required at the time of Catholics. He
later was admitted to study law in 1592 as a member of the
Thavies Inn as well as a member of the Lincoln Inn.
His brother’s death in 1593 made him become sober and
melancholic. He began thereafter to write poems. His first set
of poems was Satire 1, Satire 2, Satire 3, Satire 4, etc.
He joined a naval expedition group to Cadize and Azores.
However, when he returned to England in 1598, he was
appointed private secretary to Lord Egerton. He went ahead to
marry Lady Egerton’s niece, Anne Moore, secretly. Her father,
Sir George Moore did not like the union and so he had John
Donne sent to prison. He also made John to lose his post as
private secretary to Lord Egerton. Things took a difficult turn
for Donne and his family. It was during the period of his
suffering in the wilderness of life that he wrote his Divine
Poems. He also wrote Meditations and Good Friday, Riding
Westward.
At forty, he wrote two critical works, Pseudo Martyr and
Ignatius his Conclave, which was very critical of the catholic
faith. With these books, he publicly denounced his faith as a
catholic.
In 1615, he joined the Anglican ministry and became the
royal chaplain later the same year. He preached his first
Sermon in 1625 when King Charles 1 first ascended the throne.
22
Before his death in 1631, he preached a sermon many thought
was funeral sermon titled Death Duvel; and the last poem he
wrote before he died was called Hymn to God my God in my
Sickness.
23
civilised relationship among men. He expressed these thoughts
in his book entitled LEVIATHAN. In other words, that central
authority would be in the form of a big giant monster, a
Leviathan, which regulates people’s behaviour and guaranty’s
civil order.
However, when General Cromwell leader of the
Commonwealth died in 1658, there was disorder in the
commonwealth, making the Monarchy to be restored to
Charles 11, the son of Charles 1. Once the monarchy was
restored, Hobbes began to argue again that the central
authority in question should be the Royal authority now under
Charles 11.
24
(e) John Milton (1603-1674)
26
1.4 The Age of Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Literature
(1690-1780)
18th Century is known as the age of Newtonian influence
because Sir Isaac Newton, through his theory of the
symmetrical and mechanical order in the universe as well as
the uniformity of the planetary systems, gave his heirs a
theoretical framework on which additional theories were based.
In his essay, Principia and Opticks, he demonstrated
that there was a glorious order that pervaded the Universe. He
argued that the order did not arise from the simple laws of
nature, nor did it arise from the uniformity in the planetary
system: the order, he argued, was the handiwork of a very
intelligent and kind creator. He insisted that these intelligible
laws observable in nature could be proved mathematically and
through physics.
Most thinkers and philosophers, who were heirs to the
theory of order by Isaac Newton, tried to apply it in their
theories of Religion, Politics, and Aesthetics or Arts. They also
thought that since it was a kind and intelligent Creator that
bequeathed this order on the Universe, the great was related,
therefore, to the less; the cosmic to the terrestrial, the divine
to the human.
27
In his essay, Concerning Human Understanding,
John Locke argued that the human mind could be compared to
a blank board or white board –a Tabula Rassa; that all
materials of reason and knowledge are gained through
experience. The mind, he argued, admitted experience like a
Camera Obscura: ideas pass through the aperture of human
mind to the brain or royal presence –royal presence because
the human being is made up of body, soul and spirit. The spirit
in the human person carries therefore the spark of the
benevolent and intelligent creator.
In book III of Concerning Human Understanding, Locke
dealt on Language. He believed that language was or is a
creation of society in that people consented among themselves
that certain words in language have to be signs, not of things
but of ideas, to communicate certain meanings authoritatively.
These meanings could be in every-day language usage or in
philosophical discourses; therefore, he argued that language
was a creation of society, whose members agreed that certain
words must stand for certain ideas. In order words, common
language usage or even mutual consent provides an acceptable
authority for regulating the use of words in conversations or
even in philosophical discussions.
John Locke also made some contributions to Government
in his Two Treatises of Government published to coincide
with the success of the glorious Revolution, which ushered in a
Commonwealth of a republican nature. The major arguments in
the book are that civil societies are bonded with their self
interest, that there was need for individual and personal
liberty, and that there was also need for individual property
right and that government existed on trust: therefore,
28
members of society who felt that government was derailing
could withdraw that trust and that once that was done,
government would cease to exist. Here he was indirectly
talking about the right to vote people into government or to
vote them out of government. John Locke also suggested, in
the essay, a government headed by a ceremonial Monarchy
and an elected government. He also advocated for a mixed
constitution of Monarchy, Oligarchy and Democracy (see
Sander, 1996: 274).
29
derived from a reasoned observation of the order in nature and
it leads to what he called sociable morality. This morality, he
argued, was enough to extinguish any form of tyranny in man
as well as unhealthy passions and misanthropy; (4)he also
believed humankind was essentially good and that (5) human
destiny lay in finding the correspondence between individual
spirit and God and that finally (6) Contemplation of the
Universe was the only means which could establish the sound
belief in God and that such sound belief in a blessed order was
strong enough to negate the godless confusion of atheism and
the sinful world of orthodox Christianity (see Sanders, 1996:
275).
Sociable Morality in this context is the capacity to
associate or deal with fellow human beings, maintaining high
moral principles in the association, by not appropriating
unjustly from them.
However, the Dutch thinker Bernard de Mandeville (1670-
1733) did not believe in-to-to, Shaftsbury’s argument. He
published a book or essay A Search into the Nature of Society
to prove that man did not possess the ultimate sociable
morality characteristics that Shaftsbury attributed to man. He
compared the activities of men and women in society to the
activities of bees in their hive. He tried to prove that bees in
their hive struggled to take from nature or even from
themselves to build a strong beehive. He argued that
humankind, just like bees, were acquisitive in nature. He,
however, opined that this acquisitiveness was of benefit to the
public, because it enhances prosperity and promotes
commercial activities in society.
30
John Locke, Shaftsbury and Bernard de Mandeville
differed in three major ways:
31
associated with a liberal minded oligarchy as opposed to royal
autocracy (see Sanders, 1996: 276).
32
In his writings, he exposed the subtle ambiguities of life;
he always tried to show the opposite side of things, to bring to
the fore the alternative voice. This was his way of thinking for
himself and proving that there was something else apart from
the order in the universe.
In Gulliver’s Travel, he advocated passion not harmony in
nature. He showed how depraved man was and how he could
not live up to the ideals of harmony in the universe
Apart from Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope happens to be
one of the most influential writers of the period. He is said to
be the third most quoted writer after Shakespeare and Alfred
Tennyson in Oxford Learners Dictionary.
During his time Catholics were not allowed to participate
in social or even academic activities. For example you could
not teach or even go to an Anglican School if you were a
Catholic. Therefore Pope’s parents moved to a regional suburb
in London so that Pope could attend Catholic school. Pope
attended an illegal Catholic school. As a Catholic, you couldn’t
vote or be voted for; you couldn’t also attend universities.
Pope was therefore mostly taught by his aunt. He grew up and
became a great mind despite the limitations society put on
Catholics during his day.
He wrote mostly heroic couplets. Heroic couplet is a
traditional form of English poetry. It refers mostly to narrative
poems, epic poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming
pairs of iambic pentameters.
Pope worshiped and admired Newton. He was thrilled by
his theory of order and symmetry in the universe as well as the
theory of the uniformity of the planetary systems. He even
once said that God commanded: Let there be light and there
33
was Newton. He wrote the works: Essay on Man, Essay on
Criticism, Rape of the Lock and Dunciad.
Daniel Defoe belonged also to the league of important
writers of the 18th century. He gained fame with his work,
Robinson Crusoe. The work was referred to, for the first time,
as a novel because of certain characteristics:
-Realism, that is, it was objective, critical, innovative, truthful
and anti-tradition. Realism is, therefore, an objective, critical
narrative portrayal of truth or seeming realities. It is also an
aversion for traditionalism in this context.
The realist novel in the 18 th century differed from the
prose fiction of the past by not taking material from
mythology, legend or history or even past literature –it was
indeed novel, that is, new and unique.
Realist in the 18 th century believed in truth of individual
experience: that is, what you experience is what you know.
That is the only way of knowing the truth, in their opinion.
Medieval realists believed in what they called the universals –
that is, abstract realities, the inner light or subjective realities.
Therefore the novel of Daniel Defoe differed in a great way
from the works of Shakespeare, Spencer or even Milton. These
writers took material from mythology, legend, history or
imitated previous literatures.
Defoe was believed, however, not to be the sole inventor
of the literary type called the novel: Samuel Richardson and
Henry Fielding started out on a new terrain as Defoe in their
experimentations in their works. Richardson was known for
Clarissa and Pamela, while Henry was known mainly for his
Tom Jones.
Characteristics of Robinson Crusoe:
34
-it is fiction
-it is true to life
-the writer tried to convince the reader of the solid reality of
Crusoe
-it was based on the true adventure of a castaway or
shipwrecked called Alexander Selkink (1676-1721). Defoe
aimed at more than a historical account. Being marooned in an
island, away from family and society would mean a new
beginning for Crusoe. His truths would be based on the new
individual experience he would make. This is quite different
from the past where the major test for truth was based on
series of traditional practices to which references could be
made.
35
1.5 The Romantic Period in Literature (1780-1830)
The Romantic Period in Literature was indeed a period of great
upheavals like the French Revolution, Industrial Revolution as
well as European Revolution.
During the Newtonian era, a rational culture began to
evolve. People were no longer interested in the revelation of
inner light, but on hard realities observable by science.
Scientific thoughts and innovations gave rise to industries or
industrial revolution. The 18th century could rightly be said to
be the age of enlightenment or the age of the machine.
The growing industrialisation occasioned the emergence of a
new class of individuals quite apart from aristocracy. This class
was the bourgeois class, the owners of industries and
businesses, and as such, the new owners of wealth or capital.
This class displaced, with their emergence, the old feudal
system, which ensured that wealth or capital was the exclusive
preserve of the royals and noblemen.
The new Bourgeoisie, being owners of industries and
businesses must therefore be pragmatic, shrewd, rational,
empirical and logical in order to run their businesses and
create even more wealth for themselves (see Habib, 2005:
350). They shrewdly exploited labour-force to maximise wealth
or to keep accumulating wealth.
The effect of this new system of wealth ownership and
mind-set to sustain wealth accumulation reflected in the
environment or nature so that there increased urban slum,
poverty of the exploited class and debasement caused by the
use of the machine or industrial revolution.
36
In the late 18th century, intellectuals and artists sought to
respond to the pervading sense of science and redeem nature
thereby from its state of utter destruction caused by industrial
revolution. The activities of those intellectuals and artists in
redeeming nature during the late 18th century and early 19th
century are what is known as and called Romanticism. They
sought to redeem nature and man by
37
thought to be unstable: he left his wife and first child and went
back to his father and later left his father again. Rousseau
mother died one week after he was born. He was raised by his
uncle and aunt, who sent him off to boarding school, where he
said he learnt all useless trash in the name of education. He
married in 1746 a certain Therese Levasseur, with whom he
had four children. They sent the children to orphanages.
During this period, sending children to orphanages was a
common response to poverty. He regretted doing that later in
life, but still thought he would have made a very lousy father.
A literary prize instituted at that time with a pecuniary
prize attracted his attention. He contested the prize with his
essay –Discourse on Arts and Science and won in 1750. He
tried to prove in the book that man was inherently good –an
18th century argument; but that man was only corrupted by
society which was shaped by reason, philosophy, logic and the
machine –that is, industrialisation. He called for a return to
nature –not in the jungle or desert sense of nature but in the
appreciation of the beauty of creation and the divine will of
God operative in it.
He also published a book entitled, Discourse on the Origin
and Fundamentals of Inequality among Men in 1755. This was
an essay he submitted for a literary competition in 1753. It
won the prize eventually. In the book, he accepted the
biological inequality among men; but he did not see any other
bases for political, economic, social and moral inequalities.
These inequalities, in his opinion, existed as a result of the
existence of private property and the need for their owners to
protect them by the use of force, if necessary. He argued that
as a result of the corrupt state of affairs in society, it would be
38
ideal for man to withdraw from civilisation, but then that was
no longer possible because civilisation has become part of
human nature; therefore, the best we could do was to lead
simple lives with only a few luxuries.
In 1762, he wrote his famous book, Social Contract. He
also wrote a novel in the same, and it was entitled Emile. It
was a discourse on child education. In the book, he rejected
any form of education in which force was used. He posited that
nature was the best educator for the child; and that the child
should be nurtured gradually so that its potential could be
unfolded. He advocated heuristic education –a kind of
education, where the child learns by experiencing. He posited
further that moral education should continue till the child was
12. Intellectual education could begin from the age of 18, so
that the child could reasonably accept religious beliefs and not
mythology as religion.
In his Social Contract Theory, the individual was not
separate from the society. In fact, the individual is the society.
The society was for him a moral person who embodied the
general will of all in society. Therefore the contract among
individuals who make a society is the contract of association
for the common or social good. The law in society, therefore,
would not be the law made by government, but the natural law
because of the inherent goodness of man exemplified in his or
her ability to feel the suffering of another. This ability to feel is
the common or social good, which in itself constitutes the
General Will. Individuals in society, therefore, will not need
government. In fact government for him was the source of
corruption in that it encouraged laziness in the one and
overwork in the other.
39
In fact, in social contract, men and women in society are
guided by natural laws, and not laws made by government.
Rousseau, though a French man, influenced Romantic thoughts
in England. His philosophies of society and state of nature
influenced English writers and thinkers like William Godwin
(1756-1836).
William Godwin seemed to be the first English anarchist.
He believed that the sole aim of human existence was for
universal happiness and social well-being. He suggested the
gradual abolishment or melting away of government which
would be replaced by radical anarchism. In this state, law,
inequality, injustice, government and even marriage would be
abolished.
During this period, writers, intellectuals used fiction to
promote their idea of social revolution; and so William Godwin
used his novel The Adventures of Caleb William to articulate his
ideas.
Some influential women writer like Mary Wollstonecraft
used their fictional works and essays too to promote their ideas
of social re-engineering. Wollstonecraft wrote the novel Mary
and the essay, The Vindication of the Right of Woman. She
also wrote The Vindication of the Right of Man.
There was also Percy Shelley, very prominent during the
period and who wrote Prometheus Unbound and the Revolt of
Islam. Other prominent writers of the period are William Blake,
William Wordsworth and John Keat.
40
1.6 High Victorian and Edwardian Literature (1830-1880)
41
creation story was now in question .However, the Mid-Victorian
society was still held together by Christian morality. The
puritan sexual mores had somehow contributed to the
sustenance of the Christian moral teaching. Value was placed
on the virtues of monogamy and family life. As Sanders
opines:
42
The true meaning of the principles of liberty of conscience
and the freedom of the individual as enshrined in the law as
well as in the writings of Thomas Macaulay and Mill was really
felt; however, only by middle-class men. The teeming majority
of women, who were still denied proper education, property
right and the right to individual freedom, did not really feel the
impact of principles of these liberties during this period of
unregulated industrialism. Not only that, the majority of the
working people didn’t seem to be really free and couldn’t own
any property. This seemed to be the consequence of
unregulated industrialism. The now permanently established
middle-class, who own most of the industries, did not relent in
their crass exploitation of labour force.
44
Furthermore, Stuart Mill writes On the Principle of Liberty.
In this essay, he insists that a society is not free when its
citizens cannot exercise their liberty to feel, think as well as
the liberty of conscience. He argues that a free society is such
in which the citizen is at liberty to express his or her opinion on
any issue –be the issue religious, moral, ethical, etc. However,
today in the world, not all societies are free to the extent of
allowing their citizens the liberty to express that freedom.
46
and his wife the perfect example of a couple striving to
equality: he does not shout down on her as Murdstone does to
Clara Copperfield; even when he corrects her, he does so only
for her to learn. Through these expositions, Charles Dickens
shows himself as not in total support of gender equality, but he
is definitely pointing toward the future when women will be
equal to men.
47
were always expected to represent virtuous womanhood;
however, if virtuous womanhood meant accepting an unequal
position to the man, she totally rejected it.
48
Christian narrowness in spiritual things. Others are William
Morris (1834-96), Elizabeth Browning and George Eliot (1815-
50) among others.
49
1.7 Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature (1880-1920)
50
Some people like Bernard Shaw saw Socialism “as the
true liberating politics of the future (Sanders, 1996).” It was
during this period that Thomas Hardy became influential with
the novel Tess of the D’Urberville. Samuel Butler’s The Way of
all Flesh also denounced the narrow Victorian family values and
attempted to stress the importance of social evolution and
family influence and believed that Victorian ideology confused
theology with righteousness (see Sanderss, 460).
52
1.8 Modernism and Post-modernism: Literature
(1920 -1945 and Beyond)
Modernism or modernity was a term common more in
Germany than in France or the Anglophone intellectual world.
It is used to describe the post-feudal era. German thinkers like
Jürgen Habermas think of this period as one of progressive
enlightenment and rationalisation (see Rivkin & Ryan (eds.),
1988: 353).
If one goes by this definition, then the modern era definitely
dates back to the Age of Enlightenment, the age of scientific
and industrial revolutions, when many believed that the world
could only be known through empirical observation. Truth or
meaning could be identified through known structures –
anything to the contrary was unscientific!
The New Bourgeoisie, who emphasised individual freedom,
practical and rational approaches to issues as well as
objectivity, became also the new owners of property and
wealth. They formed government and used the instrument of
coercion to protect them. In fact, they constructed “an ideal of
reason that licensed the definition of alternative to the society
as madness (Rivkin and Ryan, 338).”
Such tendency was also adopted in literature, whereby a
novel was to have defined form with a harmonious plot, a
setting located within a specific time frame and characters with
definable and identifiable identities.
Nevertheless, this particular tendency of knowing things
through known and identifiable structures in progressive
societies was subverted in Germany by Nietzsche through his
writings. He had especially done the subversion with his Birth
53
of Tragedy, Ecce Homo and Also Sprach Zarathustra. Therefore
if Modernism in Germany was synonymous with progressive
rationalism based on empirical observation and the knowing of
truth from known structures, Nietzsche was already Post-
modernist by insisting that the truth or meaning supposedly
known through knowable structures emanated from disorder;
in other words, truth and meaning were flux; as such that
state of fluidity of meaning or truth must be accepted:
assigning meaning to things or categorisation cannot be
accepted.
Therefore, if Post-modernism was already a way of
accepting fragmentations in human ideas, thoughts and even
consciousness, if it was a way of accepting truth or meaning as
flux in Germany, it could be said to be Modernism in England;
for as the first world war ended, people were shocked at the
utter human and material destruction. The years after the end
of the war were years “haunted by long memories, some
tender, some angry, most sickening (Sanders, 1996: 505)”. In
fact it took more than ten years for most of those who fought
in the war to really “come to terms with what the war had
meant to them ... (Sanders, 505)” they had to deal with that
first of all before they could transform their experience into
literature: imagine a dying soldier in the battle-field close to an
unfeeling friendliness of a wild flower or flowers by his side. He
would eventually die, but the flower or flowers will not stop
radiating beauty to the nature around it. Rats around
unmindful of the dying soldier would continue to feed on the
feet of an already dead soldier lying around. That was the state
of things in the war and thereafter.
54
Writers before this period did not seem to have noticed this
other side of things in their writings. Therefore, as Sanders
puts it:
Nevertheless, it was the incongruity implicit
in the idea of the “friendliness” of the unfeeling
wild flowers not by Lutyens, as much as that
of the equally indifferent poppies, cornflowers
skylarks and rats of the poetry that had emerged
from the war, that effectively marked the end an
art which had once reached for comforting and
sympathetic images from nature (1996: 505)
55
accumulated sense of exhilaration at a vanity of new
beginnings and rejections of the past (Sanders, 505-6).”
In fact the world marked a turning point in its history with
the first-world war and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
Civilisation halted as the war progressed. At its end new
thoughts and attitude emerged: intellectuals started to
question the past traditions and culture. With that tendency,
new perspectives began also to emerge. Modernism is actually
rooted in that questioning. The turn it took in literature a few
years before the outbreak of the second-world war seemed
very post-modern in that it became really urgent to free the
novel from commonly received understanding of plot, time and
identity became imperative. It was already a tradition to see
the form of the novel in that light. Furthermore, established
religions, social, philosophical and political truths were
deconstructed in the manner Nietzsche had done it in
Germany. Truths or meanings these departments were thought
to represent were after all seen to be in flux; in other word,
there was no end to meaning or truth.
In her book entitled ‘Modern Fiction’ Virginia Woolf argued
against the traditional mode of representation in works of
fiction. Prior to her criticism, a novel was thought to have a
particular form which must have an organised plot system or
story arrangements with harmonious patterns. The story must
be set within a particular time frame and have characters
identifiable with definable traits. Such harmonies were no
longer necessary in the opinion of Woolf since the human mind
received innumerable impressions –some trivial, some fantastic
and short-lived, while others were engraved with the
sharpness of steel (Virginia quoted in Sanders, 1996: 514).
56
However, if a writer could base his or her work on his own
feeling and not on convention, then there won’t be need for
plot, there would be no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or
catastrophe (see Sanders, 1996: 515), because as we receive
impressions of a feeling of comedy, we also receive
impressions of tragedy.
Therefore, according to Virginia Woolf, the novel of the
20th century, or rightly put, the novel of the future would have
such a new form as would represent the “myriad impressions
which daily impose themselves on the human consciousness
(Sanders, 515).”
In her novels, she experimented on the new modes,
whereby “specific characterisation receded and the detailed
exploration of individual identity tended to melt into larger and
freer expression (Sanders, 515).”
In her Mrs Dalloway (1925) particularly, she
experimented on the representation of Mrs Dalloway. She also
wrote The Voyage Out (1915), To the Lighthouse (1927) and
The Waves (1931).
Virginia Woolf was not alone in the experimentations.
Mrs Richardson in her Pilgrimage did not “offer a fiction of
fortuitous shapes, of patterns, of images or of manipulated
events (Sander, 519).” In fact, her narrative did not abide by
the rule of a straight-line development. She did that “to allow
for a reader’s freedom of engagement with her implied
thematic structures (519).”
For his part D.H Lawrence centred his new philosophy
on the idea of liberating human sexuality from inherited social
repressions. These were somehow experimented upon in his
novels –Sons and Lovers (1913), The Rainbow (1915), Women
57
in Love (1920), Kangaroo (1925) and The Plumed Serpent
(1926).
T.S. Eliot achieved the most striking effect of
inconsistence, of perceptions, Juxtaposition, Multiplicities and
Fluxes typical of modernism in his poem The Waste Land (see
Sanders, 533).
James Joyce defied the rules of form in Ulysses. In
Finnegans Wake, he tried to proof that he didn’t need to follow
form to be able to communicate meaning.
George Orwell, in all his novels like The Animal Farm,
1984, writes directly or indirectly against totalitarianism. He
was for democratic socialism.
Some writers of the modernist period were still active
during the post-modern era. However, like in every epoch,
some remarkable writers emerged. The post-modern
characteristics in the writings of some modernist writers like
Virginia Woolf did not stop, it continued with the writers of the
post-modern period. Some of these writers were Samuel
Beckett, Graham Greene, Salman Rushdie, William Golding,
Doris Lessing and so many more.
New Theatres and New wave of Morality emerged:
women took to taking pills, adultery became fashionable and
the question of gender as biologically determined or socially
constructed became rife with a growing number of males and
females adopting alternative sexual behaviour –that is,
homosexuality.
58
2
Literary devices and their meaning
59
or heard. Example: (a) your proposal smells fishy. (b) I failed
to grasp what they were trying to prove. (c) I’d like your
opinion as to whether my plan sounds reasonable (1989).
Writing process is often talked by writers and critics as
“cooking”: (d) I let my manuscript simmer for six months. (e)
Who knows what kind of story he is brewing! (f) Their last book
was little more than a half-baked concoction of earlier work
(1989). Metaphors of emotion are based on a common
principle of the “heart being a place where emotions are
experienced”; example: (a) It is with heavy heart that I tell
you of her death. (b) You shouldn’t speak light-heartedly about
this tragedy. (c) The rescuers received the survivors’ heartfelt
thanks (1989). Finally, as Finegan puts it:
Most of the metaphors discussed so far are
relatively conventionalized –that is, they are
found in the speech and writing of many
language users because they are preset. But
language lends itself to creative activities, and
language Users do not hesitate to create new
metaphors of their own. Even when speakers
and writers, create their own metaphors,
however, they must follow the principles that
regulate conventionalised metaphors. In
English, metaphors that refer to time must
obey the convention of “moving through time
in the direction of the future (1989: 174).
60
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10 th Edition). Example
(a) A child is the father of the man; (b) Her happiest day was
her saddest. In poetry and high prose, it is used to create
ambiguity which typifies the complexity of the human make-
up. It also create avenue for the self to expire to go beyond
self in order to experience the “truth”.
However, with Antithesis, ideas are contrasted by means
of parallel arrangement of words, clauses or sentences as in:
they promised us freedom and provided slavery (see again
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary).
Oxymoron combines contradictory or incongruous words;
for example: (a) cruel kindness. In reading this, the reader
asks himself or herself whether cruelty can be kind, but he or
she is only made to imagine the extent or depth of that
kindness. Another example is: (b) women are necessary evil:
you are struck by the truth of the statement in spite of its
incongruity, because even when women are evil, still you need
that evil for life to be complete.
Apostrophe addresses an absent person, usually or a
personified thing rhetorically, for example: Carlyle’s: O Liberty,
what things are done in thy name; or as in the bible: O Death
where is thy sting! As can be seen, the expressions are
emotive.
Pun is humorous use of different words which sound the
same or of two meanings of the same word. For instance, as
he rolled down the road, like a huge load gathering no moss, I
looked at the fool as he wounded his foot.
Rhyme is the sameness of sound of the endings of two or
more words at the ends of lines of verse, e.g say, day, play;
measure, pleasure; puff, rough (see Oxford Advanced English
61
Dictionary) or even alternately. Let us look at particular
examples in the poem: The Fire Has Gone Out by Lenrie
Peters.
The Fire has gone out
The last flicker gone
Nothing but aching gout
To weather the coming storm.
As you can see, the lines rhyme at the end of the lines
and of course alternately –out with gout, gone with storm;
away with pray, south with doubt. Rhymes can also be internal
–that is, internal rhymes: let us look at the lines 4, 6 and 7
of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s 14 line (Sonnet) poem:
4 Why do men then now not reck his rod? And
6 And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
7 And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
62
that were followed by unstressed syllables, as in
chiming/rhyming, they would have been feminine rhymes.
Let us look at the first 8 lines Hopkins’s God’s Granduer in its
entirety:
1 The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
2 It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
3 It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
4 Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
5 Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
6 And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
7 And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
8 Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
63
important component of language. As Ferguson, Salter and
Stallworthy put it:
[W] hen we speak, we hear a sequence of syllables.
These, the basic units of pronunciation, can
consist of a vowel sound alone or a vowel
with attendant consonants: Oh; syl-la-ble.
sometimes m, n, and l are counted as vowel
sounds, as in riddle (rid-dl) and prism (pri-zm).
in words of two or more syllables, one is almost
always given more emphasis or, as we say, is
more heavily stressed than the others, so that
what we hear in ordinary speech is a sequence
of such units, variously stresses and unstressed
as, for example: A poem is a composition written
for performance by the human voice (1997: 1104).
65
stop marrying, because we are afraid our wives might be taken
from us by rich men? This is a Rhetorical Question that is
not intended to be answered. It is rather a literary device
meant to strengthen a point being made or to stress an
instruction being given. The rich man, who was killed,
happened to be an old man; as such one expected that he
respected his old age, because in African traditional society,
(a) we respect grey hair: this implies that old age, which
wisdom is associated with, is respected in Africa. We also
respect the crown in Africa: that means that royalty, which is
associated with the crown, is honoured. The literary device is
used to replace the name of one thing with the name of
something associated with it and it is called Metonymy: it
seems to have taken the place of metaphor and reflects a
contemporary shift from the emotive and the sensory, which
metaphor is thought to represent, to the intellectual
(Surdulescu, 2002). At the present a combined device of
metonymy and metaphor are used by writers and critics, so
much so that there is today what is known as metonymic-
metaphor –this is to be found in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of
the Lock: From silver Spouts the grateful Liquors glide, While
China’s Earth receives the smoking Tide. According to
Surdulescu “the phrase “China’s earth” is both a metonym,
referring to the porcelain object of art (a tea cup), and a
metaphor, standing for the whole body of China, with its
mushrooming population (2002).”
Parallelism is a repeated syntactical similarities
introduced for rhetorical effect. This device was skilfully used
by Dr. Martin Luther King in his great speech during the one-
million-man march: I have a dream. This was used repeatedly
66
to express his hopes for America, making thereby his rhetoric
very effective.
Other literary devices are Hyperbole, Enjambment,
Irony, Syllogism, Satire, Synecdoche and many more.
Hyperbolic statements are often extravagantly exaggerated.
The exaggeration, however, is only for the purpose of driving
home a point. For example, when the case of the man, who
killed his boss because he was having affairs with his wife, was
brought to court, the whole country came to witness the
sentencing of a frustrated man. Of course the whole country
did not come to the court to witness his sentencing, but I used
the Hyperbole to draw attention to the damage frustration
could do to a man. However, seeing the rich man as he carried
along his life of opulence and philanthropy, you could not but
see him as an honourable man. He was an honourable man
indeed! This statement is ironic, because no honourable man
would be seen making love to the wife of his servant. And so
Irony is a literary device used to express something other
than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning. Wole
Soyinka’s Telephone Conversation as well as Alexander Pope’s
The Rape of the Lock (see The Northon Anthology of Poetry,
1997: 1043; 323) is a poem rife with irony.
Syllogism is usually, according to Merriam Webster’s
Collegiate Dictionary, a deductive scheme of argument
consisting of a major and minor premises as well as a
conclusion. For example: every virtue is laudable; kindness is a
virtue; therefore kindness is laudable.
Enjambment involves the running over of the sense and
grammatical structure of a verse line from one verse line or
couplet to the next without a punctuated pause. It is also
67
called Run-on line. For example, Philip Larkin’s Here runs-on till
the line twenty-four before it paused:
Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistle to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
5 Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river’s slow presence,
The plied gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud
68
feel diminished, contempt and scorn for themselves, while
being amused at the same time (1965: 260).
Synecdoche is a literary device by which a part is put for the
whole as in fifty sail for fifty ship, or the whole is put for a part
–as in boards for stage (see Merriam Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary).
69
3
Critical methods
70
science through the description of literary devices in the
literary text –devices such as metaphor, irony, and paradox ,
simile, personification, euphemism, etc. (1998:7). They
believed that these devices were capable of supporting the
structure of meaning within the text. Their study of literature
was such that was concerned with the traditional religious and
aesthetic values, which was being displaced by science –that
is, values of Christian theology and idealist aesthetics, “(that
is, an aesthetics rooted in the idea that universal truth is
available through art of a kind that is not determined by
material social and historical circumstances (1998) ).” In The
Verbal Icon (1954), William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley
described two fallacies which are encountered in the study of
literature: Intentional Fallacy and Affective Fallacy. On the one
hand, “Intentional Fallacy” is the mistake of attempting to
understand the author's intentions when interpreting a literary
work. They believe that such an approach is fallacious because
the meaning of a work should be contained solely within the
work itself, and attempts to understand the author's intention
violate the autonomous value of the work. On the other hand,
"Affective Fallacy" is the mistake of believing that a work has
effect upon its audience or reader. The new critics believed
that a text should not have to be understood through the
reader response, because the meaning and merit of the text
are inherent in the text.
European Structuralism is based “on the realization that
if human actions or productions have a meaning there must be
an underlying system of distinctions and conventions which
make this meaning possible (Jonathan Culler in Rivkin and
Ryan (ed.), 1998:73).” In other words, finding a meaning in a
71
literary text, for example, is only possible through a set of
institutional conventions –as in the use of linguistic, stylistic,
pragmatic or even semiotic, methods. For example,
semantics, according to Edward Finegan “is the study of
systematic ways in which languages structure meaning,
especially in words and sentences (Language: its use and
structure, second edition, 1994: 156).” He gave further
examples with some sentences, whose meanings he tried to
locate semantically:
72
verb phrase predicate, are animals. There meanings are
therefore derived from their structure, which is well-formed.
Edward gave further examples with two more sentences:
Sentence 1: I saw duck; sentence 2: she ate the pie. He
argued that sentence 1 could be interpreted in two ways
whereby duck could be a verb referring to the act of bending
over quickly or it could be a noun referring to domesticated
bird. In other words, the sentences are ambiguous because of
the two possible readings of them. Sentence 2, in Finegan’s
opinion is not ambiguous, but vague, because if we try to take
the sentence out of context, we will see that while it is obvious
that the subject of the predicate, ate the pie, is a female, we
cannot still know who she refers to or even what particular pie
was eaten; for the pie indicates that the speaker has a
particular kind of pie in mind. Therefore, linguistic semantics
shows the different ways in which language “means”
(1994:158).
73
However, Emmanuel Ngara, one of the foremost literary
critics in Africa, has argued that Content in literary criticism
referred always to critical method which argues that literature
must of necessity reflect social realities; Form, he insists is
Stylistic Criticism (Art and Ideology in African Novel, 1985:1).
But he believes, like every other formalist that form and
content are inseparable. He believes, however, that African
writers are in constant search of a new social vision as well as
new aesthetic standards; that they occupy themselves not only
with artistic forms, but also with ideological problems facing
their societies; that they are very committed and extremely
sensitive to the various social problems of their day and time
and that they are constantly preoccupied with the role of art in
society and are endeavouring to develop literary forms that
match their social vision (1985).
Though a formalist, yet he believes that Marxist Criticism
should be married with Stylistic Criticism, for, in his opinion,
the only philosophy that has most adequately engaged itself
with the difficult problem of ideology is Marxist philosophy and
it is his conviction that Marxist aesthetic offers a deeper
understanding of the relationship between art and ideology
than any other aesthetic in vogue today (1985).
He believes that the critic of African literature ought to
work hand-in-hand with the politician, the philosopher,
theologian or educator to find solutions to the numerous
African problems. The literary scholar has to bear in mind,
therefore, that literary studies is both a critical as well as a
hermeneutic practice which demands of its practitioners an
ability for critical thinking; and that the literary text itself is
criticism as much as it is the object of Criticism.
74
Furthermore, he spelt out what he called the goals of
Stylistic Criticism by differentiating general linguistics from
Stylistic criticism. While, in his opinion, general linguistic is
about the analysis of the various levels of language, like the
phonetic, the grammatical, the lexical as well as the semantic
level; Stylistics uses these general linguistic principles to
isolate the distinctive features of a variety of the idiosyncrasies
of an author (Stylistic Criticism and The African Novel,
1982:11-12). He argues that the stylistic critic makes use of
the principles of general linguistic to identify the features of
language which are restricted to a particular social context.
S/he also accounts for the reasons why such features are used
and when and where they are used. He also quantifies stylistic
features in order to determine frequencies of occurrence.
Furthermore, Ngara maintains that the literary stylistic critic
can apply the methods of stylistics to the language of
literature, while the sociolinguist’s domain is that of the
relationship between language and society, that is, the
question of national languages, standard languages, dialects,
orthographies, language contact, bilingualism, language and
social class, and so on (1982:12). He argues further that the
distinction between the stylistician and the sociolinguist was
not clear-cut, as the sociolinguist was frequently called upon to
use the methods of the stylistician, who was in turn called
upon to make use of the techniques and principles of general
linguistics; thus general linguistics became the basis of other
branches of linguistics which overlap with one another (1982).
Therefore, the stylistic critic uses the analytic tools of the
linguist and stylistician; he concerns himself with minute
details of grammar, lexis, phonology, prosody, meaning, as
75
well as with the wider issues of deviation from the norm, the
relationship between language and character, the relationship
between the author and his audience. But, more than that, he
relates his analysis of linguistic features to considerations of
content value and aesthetic quality in art (Ngara, 1982:12).
While the stylistician, according to Lodge, “seems obliged
to rely upon an implied or accepted scale of values, or to put
aside questions of value altogether, the literary critic
undertakes to combine analysis with evaluation (Language of
Fiction, 1966: 56).” The stylistic critic is, therefore, interested
in theme, plot and character except that his interest is always
related to the role that language plays in the delineation of
these features of the novel (Ngara, 1982:12).
77
Meanwhile, while Post-Structuralism tries to undo the
order or truth or meaning created by Structuralism,
Deconstruction wants to know what justifies the distinction
between inside and outside, intelligible and physical, speech
and writing. It wonders whether there has to be a prior act of
expulsion, setting in opposition, and differentiation in order
that the supposed ground and absolute foundation of truth in
the voice of the mind thinking the presence of truth to itself to
come into being (1998: 339). Deconstruction believes that if
philosophy is about intelligibility, then it is worth the while to
be able to make a distinction beforehand between what is
intelligible and what is sensible or material or physical or
graphical (1998). If, for example, the ground of truth, which is
the effect of something more primordial and which should
have no other ground apart from itself, is derived,
Deconstruction would want to know that more primordial thing
in order to assert that it is also derived, making the circle of
derivation of truths unending (1998).
Post-Modernism became another word for Post-
Structuralism by 1979. However, whenever names change,
things change, too (Rivkin &Ryan (eds.) 1998: 352). Post-
Modernism originated in America and being that America was
struggling to locate its position in world discourse, it used Post-
Modernism to counter almost all the positions of European
thoughts –from Structuralism to Post-Structuralism. Lyotard,
with his publication Post-Modern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge, became the avant-garde of Post-Modernism. In the
book, he argued that the old west European master narratives
of progressive subjective enlightenment and rational liberation
(Liberal Humanism and Marxism especially) was no longer
78
applicable to a world of micro-narratives that could not be
dominated by any single legitimating meta-narrative (1998:
352). European Structuralism had sought to establish order or
truth through known conventions or structures. Post-
Structuralism and Deconstruction tried to displace this ordering
or structuring of truth so that the energies or potentials that
they held could be harnessed and channelled into creating a
new society. However, Post-Modernism postulated that truth
was no longer the possession of a rational subject, nor was it a
property of a reality that would be described objectively using
objective scientific methods; rather it was determined by the
effectiveness of knowledge within a particular economic
situation dominated by corporations that had the power both to
shape the world and to say what counted as scientific truth
regarding the world. What would count as true was what was
useful from their point of view. For instance, tests on drugs
that provided justification for marketability would be deemed
true; tests that provided contrary results would be avoided: so
long as people continued to smoke and buy cigarettes, it would
be true that they could not be banished –in other words, only
tests that proved they could not be banished would be deemed
true(1998:352-353).
In Psychoanalysis, Freud tries to prove that dreams are
the expression of our unconscious. He goes further to write
that literary texts are like dreams, for they displace
unconscious drives, desires and motives into imagery that
might bear no resemblance to its origin but which nevertheless
permits the imagery to achieve release or expression (1998:
125)
Feminism theorises both the essential and constructed
79
nature of the female as well as the role of language in feminist
constructivism. The condition of the woman under patriarchy
was essentially the preoccupation of the women movement of
the 1960s and early 1970s. They had suddenly realised that
the canon taught in schools were overwhelmingly male and
that they heard only male points of view that were noticeably
misogynists and so they wondered if there were no female
writers (1998: 527-8). Gender Theory, for its part,
preoccupies itself in certain writings on whether gender was a
question of biology or simply a social construct, while Ethnic
studies and Post-colonial Theory help us to understand the
ethnic issues of our given societies as well as the conditions of
post-coloniality. Cultural criticism tries to locate cultural
phenomena in contexts of domination and freedom.
80
4
81
about human beings as politics is. In other words literature
reflects “actual men and women and children, breathing,
eating, crying laughing, creating, dying, growing, struggling,
organising, people in history of which they are its products, its
producers and analysts (Ngugi, 1997).” Therefore the criticism
of literature will also reflect the conditions of these actual men
and women, children, breathing, eating, crying and laughing,
etc.
Furthermore, we must bear in mind that Terry Eagleton had
argued that criticism has never been an innocent discipline;
that Marxist criticism, which is a branch of criticism itself,
makes enquiries into the history of criticism itself and as such
it always posed the question of under what conditions and for
what ends does literary criticism come about. He argues that
criticism has a history and that the history is more than a
random combination of critical acts; for even if literature was
the object of criticism, it was not its point of genesis.
Therefore, criticism did not arise as a spontaneous response to
the existential fact of the text, organically coupled with the
object it tries to explain: criticism, he maintained, has its own
relatively autonomous life, laws and structure. In short
criticism is interwoven with the entire literary system and not
necessarily reflexive of it (Criticism and Ideology, 1976:17).
If, therefore a reader or critic in the process of critiquing
a text, reads it and is struck in the process that the writers are
talking about something serious –that is, the works are telling
him or her something (see Ashcroft, Post-colonial
Transformations, 2001:73), that the characters express the
feelings he/she most likely is very familiar with as well as the
experiences he/she knows; if he/she, therefore, jumps in and
82
out of the work at will, and acquires thereby a deep
understanding of his/her nature and respect for the complex
identities of others, including diverse histories and cultures. If
he/she begins to interpret and evaluate the information in the
works from a variety of sources in relation to the society and
the writers, if he/she makes complex intellectual connections
across disciplines, cultures, and institutions while reading the
books, if he/she begins to exchange the world of the works
he/she is immersed in with the world that he/she knows, if
he/she becomes conscious of his or her condition and desires
to apply the knowledge he/she has gained in solving his/her
problems, then the reader or critic is actually applying
literature, that is he/she is making literature practical; for, first
and foremost, he/she has seen the text as reflecting social
realities –the realities he/she is very familiar with. These social
realities are mirrored in texts. For example most Nigerian texts
are a description or representation of Nigerian life and could,
therefore, help to visualise some of the social issues in Nigeria
–issues like ethnic conflicts, which most often cannot be
directly observed. These texts are able to help in visualising
ethnic conflicts because they are a representation of reality and
detail perceptively why ethnic conflicts occur. They also identify
barriers to settlement, and indicate procedures to manage or
resolve the disputes.
Therefore, a scholar of literature, who has become better
informed of the Nigerian condition by reading Nigerian
literature, for example, may naturally aspire to make his/her
knowledge of these situations concrete and practical. He/she
may even become concerned with people’s political situations
as a whole – these political situations are already represented
83
in literary texts – rather than being narrowly concerned with
immediate interpersonal relations which can be abstracted
from the concrete whole (Eagleton, 1983: 208).
Literary studies does not preoccupy itself only with political
questions, and moral arguments, its scholarship ought to be
able, therefore, to equip its students with the ability also of a
genuine moral and political argument, with the depth of insight
and critical thinking to see the relations between individual
qualities, values and the whole material conditions of
existence.
Furthermore, since the information in literary works is a
carrier of knowledge, it is the scholar’s responsibility to
appropriate the information in them and transform them into
knowledge –knowledge of the situation around the world,
knowledge of the Nigerian condition, the corruption, injustice
and ethnic conflicts –and then transform that knowledge into
action; for example the resolution of the ethnic conflicts. Trying
to resolve the Nigerian ethnic conflicts is an effort to be
practical or to make one’s knowledge functional. Therefore, in
the course of studying the works that reflect ethnic conflict
situations in Nigeria, the scholar may acquire a deep
understanding of him/herself and respect for the complex
identities of others, including the histories and cultures of
Nigeria. Thereafter, he may want to participate actively as a
citizen not only in the complex democracy of the globalised
world, but also in the politics of Nigeria, being able to discern
the ethical consequences of decisions and actions of leaders
and people in positions of authority.
The scholar may likely begin to see Nigerian Literature as
existing generally within Nigeria’s specific culture. He would
84
even see that the literature ennobles and validates the culture.
Therefore, the version of high culture it imparts, according to
Said, should not be marginal to the serious political concerns of
[the Nigerian] society (see The World, the Text and the Critic,
1983: 2).1
Edward Said had accused professional humanists of
telling their students and their general constituency that they
defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the
precious pleasure of literature even as they show themselves
to be silent on or even incompetent about the historical and
social world in which all these things take place. This has led to
an institutional divorce of the cultural realm and its expertise
from their real connections with power. This was wonderfully
illustrated to Said by an exchange with his old college friend,
who worked in the department of defence for a period during
the Vietnam War. The bombings were in full course and
Edward Said was naively trying to understand the kind of
person who could order daily B-52 strikes over a distant Asian
country all in the name of the American interest in defending
freedom and stopping communism. His friend had told him
about the defence secretary, whom he considered a complex
human being. His friend believed that the defence secretary did
not fit the picture Said might have formed of the cold-blooded
imperialist murderer, because the last time he was with the
defence secretary in his office he had noticed the novel,
Alexandria Quartet, by Durrells on his desk. By that Said’s
friend implied that no-one who read and appreciated a novel
1
While Edward wrote about the ennobling and validating role of literature from the
universal point of view, I believe also that Nigerian literature exists within Nigeria’s
specific culture and that Nigerian literature ennobles and validates Nigerian culture.
85
could be a cold-blooded butcher one might suppose the
defence secretary to be (see Orientalism, 2003: 2-3).
The whole implausible anecdote made sense to Said after
many years and struck him as typical of what is obtainable,
that is, that humanists and intellectuals somehow accept the
idea that you can read classical fiction as well as kill and maim
because, according to Said:
[T] he cultural world is available for that particular sort
of camouflaging, and because cultural types are not
supposed to interfere in matters for which the social
system has not certified them. What the anecdote
illustrates is the approved separation of a high-level
bureaucrat from the reader of novels of questionable
worth and definite status (2003: 2-3).
86
classical imaginative and philosophical literature was
encouraged and emphasis was on the moral and practical
values rather than aesthetic ones. Reason was expected to
always prevail over instinct and wild passion and the rounded
development of the various and diverse powers – mental and
physical – of man was of great importance, while technical or
specialised training had lesser appeal (1993).
A humanist of the twenty-first century or humanities as a
study in the twenty-first century ought to concern itself with
human experiences which are both objective and subjective as
well as values which are also both practical and abstract. The
primary concern of a humanist or humanities, therefore, should
be to study aspects of the human condition in regard to how
human beings respond to or cope with the encompassing
totality of the experience of being human and living human
lives (see Abrams, 1993: 83).
Post-colonial studies, being part of the new humanism, is
a study about the human condition in post-colonial societies of
both the developing and developed world; therefore it should
have practical implications, which should be manifested in the
literary studies of both their societies. In studying the
literatures of the post-colonial societies of both the developing
and developed world, their practical implications should be
emphasised. And the practical implications of the texts will
take into consideration those things with which the writer
engaged himself or herself in relation to his or her society; that
is, the corruption, ethnicity, racism, religious bigotry and so
on. It should also consist in knowing what those things mean
to the reader or audience, how he or she could be affected by
the information he or she appropriates from reading texts as
87
well as what the duty of the professional humanist is in
imparting knowledge and disseminating information
appropriated from texts. All this constitutes a theoretical basis
for literature and praxis.
While Bill Ashcroft’s constitutive theory (2001) may be
useful in understanding what happens between the writer and
the reader of a literary work, a theory of literature and praxis
will go beyond that to demonstrate what can be done with that
which happens between a writer and the reader, and of course
the teacher, the professional humanist, who may as well be a
reader. Ashcroft theorised that just as a reader rewrites the
text in the process of reading the text and just as the reader-
function is present in the writing as the focus of “meanability”
of the writing, the author is also present in the reading (see
Post-colonial Transformation, 2001: 73). For Ashcroft, “this is
the specific and practical way in which consumption and
production are linked. Again, this is firstly true at a conscious
level, where the reader accepts the conviction that the author
is telling him or her something through the text (2001).”
Therefore, he argues further that readers respond to the text
as telling them something because language is used in such a
way as to make the text tell something. However, in his
opinion, “one cannot tell others anything that they do not
incorporate or tell themselves (2001: 73)”; for as he argued,
“the mind is active in knowing: whether a child learning a
language or a scientist “observing” an “objective” universe,
knowing is conducted within the situation of horizons of
expectations and other knowledge (2001).” Furthermore,
Ashcroft is of the opinion that as a reader reads a text, a
horizon of expectation is partially established by the text as it
88
unfolds, while the horizon of knowledge which is acquired
through other texts, a relevance of other knowledge, is
established by exploration. The reader thus constructs the
other dialogue pole of discourse. This is possible because
speaking is a social act (2001)). As Ashcroft puts it:
[R]eaders do not simply respond to the “intentionality” of
the work itself, quite apart from imputation of an author. The
work is a way of seeing and responding, a way of directing
attention to that which is “given to consciousness”. It is more
accurate to say that the reader sees according to, or “with” the
text rather than “see it”. This orientation to the intentionality
of the text occurs whenever we assign an author to a text. We
can deduce from this that the intentionality of the text can be put
for the direction of the author’s consciousness. Thus
interpretation is never univocal but the reader is subject to the
situation, to the rules of discourse and to the directing other as
the author is subject to them (2001: 73).
89
5
Conclusion
In the twenty-first century, literary education should consist
not only in making its scholars men and women of culture but
also in making the education of literary scholars concrete and
practical.
The context of worldly interactions, as Said had noted,
have become increasingly stirred up, ideologically turbulent
and even murderous. Patterns of power and dominance remain
unbearably evident. The third world is entrapped in debt and
broken into dozens of structurally weak entities. One sees
everywhere an ever-growing and an alarming pattern of ethnic
and religious conflicts, local wars and terrorism, which are not
only confined to the so-called third world (see Said 2003: 348).
Therefore, scholars of literature have a responsibility here
being humanists: their trained consciousness, perceptive and
observable faculties have to be put to good use. It is hoped,
therefore, that this book would make students of literature to
really appreciate the fact that the ability of literary studies to
make them better persons ought to be such that would make
that state of being a better person really practical and
concrete; that is to say, literary studies ought to be enough
preparation for them to face the challenges of life and to be
useful to the entire humanity and particularly their various
societies in a positive and impacting way, so that literature or
the cultural realm and its expertise will never again be
institutionally divorced from their real connections with power
– a case which was wonderfully illustrated for Edward Said by
an exchange with an old college friend of his who worked in
90
the department of defence for a period during the Vietnam war
(2003: 2-3).
91
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93
Index
Achebe, 42
Alliteration, 5, 54, 67
Anglecynn, 9
Angles, 8
Anglo-Saxon, 9, 11
Antithesis, 52
Arminians, 18, 19
Assonance, 5, 54, 67
Barbarians, 8
Britain, 8, 9, 11
Celtic, 8
Chike Obi, 50
Christendom, 14
Civilisation, 35, 46
Congregation, 18, 19
94
Criticism, 15, 37, 47, 61, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 83
Denmark, 8
Edward, Edwardian, 2, 16, 37, 41, 63, 64, 76, 81, 83, 84
England, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 29, 33, 36, 45
English, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 23, 36, 50, 51, 53, 55
Emile, 35
Folklore, 9
Francis Bacon, 20
Frisians, 8
Geoffrey Chaucer, 12
Henry viii, 14
Industrialisation, 32, 34
Institute, 18, 34
Jutes, 8
Leviathan, 23
95
Literature, 2, 3, 5, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 27, 29, 32, 37, 41, 44, 45, 46, 50, 56, 61,
62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 89
Meditations, 22
Monasteries, 14
Monks, 9, 10
Monogamy, 35
New Criticism, 61
Normans, 11
Oxymoron, 5, 52
Pirates, 8
Presbyterians, 18, 19
Psychoanalysis, 6, 70
Quakers, 18, 19
Reformation, 2, 14
Renaissance, 2, 14
96
Roman Empire, 8, 9
Romanticism, 33
Russian Formalism, 61
Saxons, 8
Scotland, 14, 20
Socialism, 42, 48
Soyinka, 58, 59
Ulysses, 48
Vortigern, 8
97