ENG432A: Literature and Ideology

Lecture 3:
Relationship Between
Ideology and Literature

Please read ‘Internationale’, ‘‘Prominent Facebooker

has a Close Brush with Death’, ‘Migrating, COVID-19’
and ‘A Rose’ before looking at / listening to this lecture.
 ‘Literature’
Any Written Text Literary Texts

Two Levels of Relationship with Three Points of Intersection:

Ideology: Text
Intended / Explicit Writer / Author
Unintended / Implicit Reader / Receiver
 What is a ‘Text’?
Actual Words on the Page
Commonly accessible to everyone
A Written Product
Defined in relation to other written products

How does Text relate to Ideology?

Genre Context

Format: Textbook, brochure,

Prose, Literary Socio-Political
Manifesto, Fable, Movements Milieu /
Poetry, Utopia/Dystopia
Drama Movements
Satire
Ideology
Ideology through
purpose of Ideology in
through Ideology
Literature relation to
style through concerns
purpose
 ‘Text’ and Ideological Analysis
Genre
United struggle by the oppressed
Manifesto “Internationale” will win
Ideology as ‘promise’
Prose:
Social media destroys human
Fiction or “Prominent Facebooker” connections
Non-Fiction?
Ideology through plotting
Context
Beauty of nature on its own
Romanticism “A Rose” terms
Ideology through language

COVID-19 Workers’ lives are rooted in

“Migrating, COVID-19”
Pandemic villages.
Ideology through focus
and details
 ‘Writer’ or ‘Author’?
Expressing through writing Control through authority
Ideology as Unintentional Ideology as Intentional
Ideological interpretation is NOT limited
to authorial intention

“Prominent Facebooker”
Gender Ideology: Satire: Potting (structure)
Masculinity as risk-taking and Exaggeration (style)
“A Rose”
‘I’m a rose’: Rhythm of Poetry:
Nature’s beauty defined by Undermining importance
a rose of objective description

Access to Writer / Author is only through Text

-- NOT Biographical
 The Reader / Receiver
Multiple Responses to the Same Text

Ideological, NOT individual

Interests /
Orientation Fulfilment of Like /
(For example, reading Expectations Dislike
‘Internationale’ as utopian)

‘Taste’/ Ideological Agree /

Cultural Training Disagree
(For example, noticing Analysis
rhythm in ‘A Rose’)

Social Understandable /
Level of Acceptance /
Position Confusing
(For example, seeing only
Conformity to ‘Normal’
men as risk-takers in
‘Prominent Facebooker’)

Danger of Misreading:
Incorrect Interpretation