T.S.Eliot

He was the most famous man of the twentieth century. He made a great success in many fields such as poetry, playwriting, criticism and publishing. Among his followers, Eliot has a great effect on poetry and criticism not less than others like Ben Johnson, Johnson, Coleridge and Matthew Arnold.

Biography

T.S Eliot was born on September 26, 1888. He was born in Missouri. He moved to England in 1914 as he worked and get married there. He went to Harvard, he studied at Oxford University. T.S Eliot attracted the attention by his famous poems which considered as masterpieces of modernism. In 1927, he joined the Anglican Catholic Church of England. He received the Nobel Prize in 1948. He died in 1965.

About the Essay

One of the most important essays in criticism named "Tradition and Individual Talent" (1919), has three parts. The first part talked about tradition. Then we find that the second part moved to Eliot's theory of impersonality in poetry. Then we find a summary of his thoughts in previous parts.

 Introduction

T.S Eliot talked about the relationship between tradition of the earlier writers and the individual talent of the poet.

(1) Meaning of the Tradition

Eliot mans the poets of the past as a whole. It reflects social , economic elements which influence the poet.

111) Dynamic Nature of Tradition .:

Tradition doesn't mean to take writings as it is from the past. You can get it through thinking and working. It's clear that literary tradition walks on the same line from the past until now. Eliot's conception of tradition is dynamic. The poets from the past must learn from those who came before them and so on, in order to make a line to complete each other.

  Function of Tradition : Importance of Both Tradition and Individual Talent

The job of tradition on Eliot's point of view is to judge on previous works of art. It doesn't mean that the new art is better than the old ones. The past ( tradition) helps to understand the present (  individual talent). Both of them are important and to combine them is to gain better piece of art.

Sense of the Tradition and its Importance :

In his essay, Eliot says that poets should have a sense of tradition to know and judge the past, the small and the great ones in a critical objective way.

Conclusion

Eliot has showed the meaning of tradition and it's relationship with individual poet. Then he talked about the important of sense of tradition.

Impersonality of Poetry :

Actually poetry doesn't express personality but it's a type of flee from personality. Objective criticism should be on the poem not on the poet.

111) Analogy of a Catalist :

According to Eliot, the poet must be impersonal like scientist. The personality of the poet isn't important, sense of tradition is more important than it. The poet should forget his sadness and joys to express his fact.

Writing a poem or a piece of art is like a chemical process. In a chemical lab we find that chemical elements and ingredients combine together to form a new element, the same thing happens in poetry, the poet combine thoughts, emotions and experiences to form poetry in it's perfect way.

 Poetry : Escape from Personality :

Eliot says :

" Poetry is not turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not expression of personality, but an escape from personality".

Poetic Emotions are Refined :

Eliot says that the emotions of poetry differ from the personal emotions of poet. The personal emotions may be small and simple but poetry emotions are more complicated.

Conclusion : Thus Eliot has given his famous theory of impersonality in art or poetry. It remains one of the better-known theories of Eliot.

“Practical Criticism”

I. A. Richards

Richards shows that the reader criticism should be objective. Richards has a scientific methodology. He doesn't begin from certain from the earlier standards,  Maybe, he begins as any great researcher would by looking to collect certain exact actualities.

He accumulates the real reactions offered by genuine college understudies in a classroom setting at the college of Cambridge. The following step is to break down the outcomes and to clarify these outcomes.

The last step is to give a cure by which to dodge the broken interpretive techniques in charge of these false readings and to actualize, by difference, right interpretive systems intended to lead one to a precise perusing of the importance of the work being referred to.

His main assumption is that works have a single, correct meaning.

Starts with the psychobiological birthplace of man's drive for expression

Considers analogy to be focal

Comprehends "talk" as the aggregate correspondence handle, and characterizes "talk" as "investigation of mistaken assumptions and their cure.

Meaning According to Richards:

To realize the meaning of words, it doesn't mean to know the definition from dictionary, but you should realize it through putting it a sentence.

Universal Sign Situation
Deduction and correspondence are occasions and have meaning seeing that we can relate the jolts to some past experience

Consciousness of the relationship in the middle of jolt and forerunners/consequents results from the association of the boost with comparative encounters before.

“Practical Criticism”:
      An over view of the book

• I. A. Richards, born in England  (26 February 1893 – 7 September 1979)
• His books include:
• The Meaning of Meaning
• Principles of Literary Criticism
• Practical Criticism

PART I: INTRODUCTORY

Richards describes how he got to be interested with the way that reactions to the same abstract work could be so broadly disparate.

This invigorated him to give out ballads to his understudies without titles or names on it – he did this so understudies would not be influenced by any presumptions which they may have officially had concerning the creator or the work being referred to.

PART II: DOCUMENTATION  Richard lays out the 13 lyrics together with the understudies' reactions to them, this with a perspective to archiving the sheer assortment and uniqueness of their understandings of the extremely same works.

STRUCTURALISM

Originated from France to the US in mid 1960s

It's a development to comprehend dialect through exploratory studies and 'profound structure'

It endeavors to represent human conduct, thought, discourse, and activity

Structuralism takes a gathering of abstract messages and follows examples to finish up a hypothesis, and to how these works and can identify with an entirety.

Through investigation, structuralism estimates about 'the novel', another article ( a hypothesis that demonstrates the profound structure that makes a novel.

The objective is to assemble enough information to orchestrate 'profound structures`

Ferdinand de Saussure

• He said “language is not a function of the speaker. It is a product that the passively assimilated by the individual”
• Language is not private but rather available in public domain

Language includes everything in dictionary

Language or Speech?

Speech is our main event and in with a specific end goal to bode well references dialect

We comprehend signs differentially through a procedure of invalidation (parallel)

Setting is vital (homonyms)

Dialect does not exist in disengagement but rather just in a framework

Key Principles:

1. Language structures our perception of the world

Contradicts customary suspicion that languagebexists as basic elucidating code through which the truth is straightforwardly imparted.

In spite of the fact that we think we control dialect, dialect controls us.

2. Language is understandable as system of signs:

Through implication qualities are forced on generally esteem free elements

No sign exists in seclusion

3. Signs are understandable synchronically:

4. Signs are understandable diachronically:

- Traces chronology of signs

5. Literature as manifestation of sign systems:

Stories structure society

Can examine a content synchronically or diachronically

Can search for 'profound structures'

Can search for paired resistances

6. No sign is fully understandable.

Too impressively joined with different signs for conclusive examination

Objective is to catch parts of a sign's importance

Reader-Response

Introduction

• Emerged in 1930
• Primary focus on reading
• It is text- based not author- based : “text and text alone”
• Also called as “Affective Fallacy”

Leading Scientists:

• Stanley Fish
• Wayne Booth
• Louise Rosenblatt

Theoretical Assumption

There should be some interaction between reader and The literary text in order to understand it. Reader has a great role as he's actually active.

Features

Relationship between text and  reader.

Reality exists in readers mind.

Subjective vs. Objective

A "subjective" perusing of a content:

relates to the individual (the peruser). A subjective perusing of a content is one in which accentuation is set on the states of mind, inclinations, and feelings of the peruser.

A "target" perusing of a content:

relates to an article (the content) separate from the individual (the peruser). A target perusing of a content is one that is uninfluenced by feelings or individual biases.

Peruser Response feedback offers a subjective, or egocentric, perusing of a content.

What is Reader-Response?

A text without a reader means nothing, so there isn't any text without a reader. A reader gives meaning to the text.

RR criticism is a trained hypothesis meriting a cautious perusing of the content.

The peruser joins with the creator to "offer the content some assistance with meaning."

A successful reader-response does not simply react to a content—anybody can do that—yet dissects his or her reaction, or the reactions of others.

Since every peruser will collaborate with the content in an unexpected way, the content may have more than one substantial translate.

READER-RESPONSE STYLISTICS

RR examines the reader’s response to a text as a response to a horizon of expectations.

In RR, there is a collaboration between the structure of the content and the peruser's reaction. It brings out a circumstance where singular perusers offer intending to the content. This is on the grounds that every peruser will collaborate with the content in an unexpected way, as the content may have more than one striking understanding.

RR theorists share two beliefs:

1. The important role of reader .
2. Reader gives active meaning to the text.

Reader Response Theory, simply stated, is the reader's response to literary text.

Reader response method differs from Traditional method

In RRM we find improving ideas, student dependent, critical reader. On the other hand in the TM we find single ideas, teacher dependent, no practice of mind.

  

Efferent vs. Aesthetic

 Efferent Mode: focus on the information which in the text

Aesthetic Mode: focus on the relationship that the reader experiences with the text.

Determinate vs. Indeterminate

Determinate significance alludes to what may be called realities of the content: certain occasions in the plot or physical depictions unmistakably gave by words on the page

Affective Stylistics

The content is analyzed nearly so as to see how (stylistics) the content influences (full of feeling) the peruser amid the perusing procedure.

The content does not have an altered significance autonomous of perusers

The importance of the sentence  for the reader, the problems which the reader can find through reading the text.

Critics using good ways .

• Types of Responses
• Initial emotional response
• Interpretive
• Analysis
• Question
• Summary
• Arguing with author
• Inter textuality

Kinds of Reader

Suggested reader figures out the determinate significance of the content

Genuine reader fills the crevice in the content and discover the uncertain importance of the content.

What is literature?

Works of the creative energy/experimental writing?

Works with a specific arrangement of characteristics—e.g., plot, character, tone, setting, and so on.?

Works that stress widespread subjects (i.e., rise above the simply social or political)?

Works that fit the parameters of artistic kinds: lyric, exposition, short story, novel?

What is literary theory?

The ability to make speculations regarding wonders and to create ideas that shape the premise for understanding and investigation—in this case, of an "abstract" content.

What is literary criticism?

Analyzing using theoretical principles and evaluating  the text.

THE 4 CRITICAL VARIABLES of LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM

1. the world
2. The author
3. The text
4. The reader

SOME TRADITIONAL APPROACHES

Authentic—author's chronicled minute is critical to understanding an abstract content

Historical—author's close to home encounters are key to understanding the content

Traditional ways of identifying literature

Mimesis: it's the oldest way.

Expresivity: combine emotions though empathy.

Rethorics: depending on expressive gadgets, and additionally on their ability to awe and impact the peruser.

Poetics : those attributes which separate a wonderful content from another scholarly content.

Narativity : for all time outlined to literature.

Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893)

Taine's three central point for deciphering a content:

Race—i.e., national qualities of the craftsman's authentic place and time

Milieu—i.e., whole of craftsman's experience

Minute—scholarly and philosophical streams of craftsman's authentic place

Wellek and Warren Theory of Literature (1949)

Key issues to understanding a text:

The writer’s heredity & environment (Taine’s “milieu”)

The fictional world of the text vis-à-vis the world outside the text (Taine’s “race” & “moment”

Irresolvable problem with traditional (pre-1970) social approaches to literary interpretation

Specialists expected that recorded, anecdotal, and social data could be precisely assembled and confirmed. They saw dialect as straightforward, actualities as solid, history as goal. Poststructuralist hypotheses about the ideological allotment of dialect by overwhelming gatherings and postmodernist bafflement with target reality both undermine old-style feedback.

NEW CRITICISM*

Writings may contain various messages, however must have a binding together focal subject made by the ideal union of every single aesthetic component.

Writings are aesthetic manifestations

FORMALISM

• (New Criticism)
• (Russian Formalism)

New criticism: America in the  1930s

The New Critics considered verse to be a method for living really in a shallow world (post-war mass frustration).

In their vision, translating a content rejects both the reader and the writer.

Intentional Fallacy theory (IF)

• IF(W. K. Wimsatt): the confusion of auctorial intention with the reality of the text
• The text in itself needs to guide us, not indicate what the author meant.

Affective Fallacy theory (AF)

The reader takes his/her enthusiastic response to the content with what the content "truly" intends to pass on.

The "genuine" which means of the content is escaped the peruser.

The New feedback proposed perusing and deciphered the sheer content.

Reading for form (New Criticism) 

The New Critics have made a unique sort of basic group, a "Procustian bed".

The primary attributes are incongruity, equivocalness, development, self-restraint (the artist/author were not permitted to customize the sonnet/work)

This hypothesis is reflected in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, or J. Joyce's Ulysses.

This sort of writing turns into the blue-print of genuineness, and "manly" clarity.

Russian Formalism

In the first many years of twentieth century in Moscow and St. Petersburg develops the European custom of advanced abstract studies.

The Formalist School is in the long run built up in France after the second World War.

The Formalist school achieves its crest in the 60's (Structuralism).

• The formalist’s works were translated into English btw. 1950-1960.

In France there was a parallel movement of cultural anthropology Cl. Levi Strauss

Russian Formalism

 At first centered around verse.

Their just concern is the type of a scholarly work, keeping in mind the end goal to peruse the profound significance of the content.

Not intrigued by the social capacity of writing.

They disregard the referential capacity (the old Aristotelian mimesis idea)

Essential questions of the Formalist approach

• What makes a text literature/literary?
• What do all literary texts have in common?
• Is there a common literary factor?

Means of identifying literarity in Formalism

defamiliarizing of normal dialect through ritmic and metrice structures (R. Jakobson)

story construction (Slovski, Propp)

elaborate gadgets (Vinogradov)

persuasions of classes (Tanianov)

topical structures (Tomasevski)

READER RESPONSE

The relation between reader and the text

STRUCTURALISM

Meaning resides in the structure of language.

Scientific way to analyze literature.

MARXISM

Importance lives in content, history, and belief system: messages of mistreatment and class struggle

Writings are things, not ageless centerpieces

Truths are socially developed.