2007-08 BM1: Session 12

Back to 2007-08 BM1 Introduction to the Critical and Scholarly Discussion of Literature, Part 1

---

• 2007-08 BM1 Introduction to the Critical and Scholarly Discussion of Literature

Expectations:

1: Construct correct bibliographical entries for the following items.

• The paperback edition of J. M. Coetzee’s Booker Prize Winning novel Disgrace published in the year 2000 by the New York publisher Vintage. (5)

• J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace, New York: Vintage, 2000.

[1 right sequence, 1 title in italics, 3 (6 x 0,5) complete data, 1 plausible punctuation]

• An article entitled Speech-Manuscript-Print, published in the year 1990 by the historian D. F. McKenzie, and to be found on pages 87 to 109 in volume 22 of The Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin. (7)

• D. F. McKenzie, "Speech-Manuscript-Print", The Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin 22 (1990): 87–109.

[1 right sequence, 1 article title in inverted commas, 1 Journal in italics, 3 (6 x 0,5) complete data, 1 plausible punctuation]

2: Knowledge about established notions on periods.

a) Indicate roughly the dates usually associated with three of the following five periods. (6)

• Renaissance: 1350/1500-1650
• Restoration: 1660-1700/1720
• Enlightenment: 1660/1680-1790
• Romantic Age: 1770-1830
• Victorian Age: 1832/1837-1900/1901

b) For three periods of your choice, name at least one typical feature conventionally associated with it. (6)

• Renaissance (c.1500 - c.1650): discovery of antiquity and roman/greek poetry, rejection of medieval period, discovery of the individual (Renaissance man), humanism, boom in drama (Shakespeare embodies it all), religious conflict: English reformation to Civil War, which establishes a puritan republic (1649-1660).
• Restoration (1660-1700): under the special protection of the court, libetinistic, witty
• Enlightenment (1660-1790): rationality, age of reason, sciences, philosophy, civil liberties, religious and political tolerance.
• Romanticism (1770-1830): reacts to the deficits of enlightenment, radicalises emotions (and expresses them individually), turn to nature, individuality, heroism (outsiderdom), fragment and infinity, escapisms: exotism, medieval / pagan past, initially politically radical, then a conservative turn, -- turn to popular forms, rejection of poetic diction,
• Victorian Era (1832-1900): period of British imperialism, duplicity of moral standards: an age of strict morals, suppression of sexuality, transgressive literature produced by an avantgarde of authors, aestheticism, strong class division reflected by literature: boom of commercial entertainments esp. melodrama.

c) For three periods of your choice, name one writer who wrote during this period. (3)

• Renaissance: William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Edmund Spenser (not mentioned but also possible: Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Nashe, John Webster, John Donne)
• Restoration: Willaim Wycherley, William Congreve, Aphra Behn
• Enlightenment: Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Alexander Pope
• Romantic Age: Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth, William Blake
• Victorian Age: Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Moore

d) When were these periods 'invented'. Indicate roughly around what time scholars started constructing literary history as a succession of such periods. (3)

The present periodisation did basically beginn with the histories of literature produced in the 19th century

Es gibt halbe Punkte, wenn Folgefehler gemacht werden z.B.: Victorian age 14th century and Chaucer as poet.

3: Some aspects of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses can be described as 'postmodern'. Other aspects of the text can be described as 'postcolonial'. Give an example for either a postcolonial or a postmodern feature of the text.

Postcolonial key terms:

• identity, hybridity
• race and cultural difference
• hegemony - power
• challenging the centre
• challenging Western notions of progress vs. tradition

Postmodern features:

• "The Linguistic Turn": our access to the world is never independent of our language; Language games (Ludwig Wittgenstein), Discourses (Michel Foucault)
• "The Death of the Author" (Roland Barthes, 1967); de-centered subjects.
• deconstruction; challenging notions of unity and consistency
• Intertextuality
• Breaking down barriers between ontological levels, between reality and fiction

Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction, 1987, p. 9: "...the dominant of modernist fiction is epistemological. That is, modernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and foreground questions such as those ...: 'How can I interpret this world of which I am a part? ... What is there to be known?; Who knows it?; How do they know it, and with what degree of certainty?; How is knowledge transmitted from one knower to another, and with what degree of reliability?; How does the object of knowledge change as it passes from knower to knower?; What are the limits of the knowable? And so on." The above mentioned questions are handled "through the use of characteristically modernist (or epistemological) devices: the multiplication and juxtaposition of perspectives, the focalization of all the evidence through a single 'center of consciousness' […], virtuoso variants on interior monologue […] ,and so on."

Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction, 1987, p. 10: "... the dominant of postmodernist fiction is ontological. That is, postmodernist fiction deploys strategies which engage and foreground questions like ...: 'Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of my selves is to do it?' Other typical postmodernist questions bear either on the ontology of the literary text itself or on the ontology of the world which it projects, for instance. What is a world?; What kinds of world are there, how are they constituted, and how do they differ?; what happens when different kinds of world are placed in confrontation, or when boundaries between worlds are violated?; What is the mode of existence of a text, and what is the mode of existence of the world (or worlds) it projects?; How is a projected world structured? And so on."

• Invitations for Postcolonial Readings of Satanic Verses:

• multicultural Britain, diaspora identities, racism.
• Saladin Chamcha's / Salahuddin Chamchawala's identity quest

• Invitations for Postmodernist Readings of Satanic Verses:

• Closing the gap between the high and the popular – the use of contemporary popular culture (advertising; TV series; British, American and Indian Cinema)
• Strong Intertextuality: (numerous references to the European literary tradition: Ovid, Shakespeare [King Lear / Othello], Milton [Paradise Lost], Swift, Blake, Kafka, Joyce)
• the violation of ontological levels: Gibreel Farishta as actor and as Archangel Gibreel, his "dreaming" of the even-numbered books (cf. McHale, p. 85: "And what exactly is scandal? Ultimately, its source is ontological: boundaries between worlds have been violated.")
• the postmodern play with the (death of the) 'god-like' author

4: In the context of Shakespeare studies what is

a) a Quarto edition? (5)

• An edition of a single play in quarto format (some of these were published during Shakespeare's lifetime - Shakespeare editors divide quartos into good, bad and doubtful quartos; only about half of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions).

b) the Folio edition? (5)

• The edition of Shakespeare's collected plays published in 1623 in folio format.

5: Briefly characterise the status of Shakespeare

a) around 1600. (5)

• Shakespeare was mentioned and celebrated as the author of his plays (cf. title-page)
• But during his lifetime no one was interested in his personality.
• There were no manuscripts preserved.
• There was no contemporary interest in personal records, diaries, letters, etc.
• There were no literary reviews and periodicals, no theatre criticism.
• The interest in Shakespeare's person and the criticism of his work was retrospective.

b) in the nineteenth century. (5)

• The greatest English author if not the best author of all times, a genius; an author with insight into man's nature.
• From 1760s: Shakespeare cult, birthplace, stratford.
• His works the object of popular editions
• "Victorian bardolatry"
• Permanent Shakespeare performances at Stratford.

6: The meaning of the term 'poetry' has changed over the past few centuries. Name one contrast between the meaning of 'poetry' around 1700 and around 1900.

Before 1700

• Poetry is defined as everything written in verse.
• Poetry is divided up into a large number of genres: epic, tragedy, comedy, opera, song, ode, sonnet, elegy etc. etc.

These genres may be higher or lower, greater or smaller, fashionable or unfashionable at any particular time.

• Poetry has a widespread presence, as an almost everyday form of writing. (For funerals, weddings, for the expression of religious sentiments and beliefs. -- Scholars write poems as prefaces to other scholars' works.)

After 1700

• The corpus of existing poetry is reorganised along chronological and national lines
• After the mid-eighteenth century, there is a new mode of arrangement which is national and chronological. Cf. Percys Relics, Warton 1774

• This chronological rearrangement also changes the conditions under which new poets are writing.

• Poets now aim for a place in this chronology.
• Critics are monitoring the progress of the nation’s poets.
• Poets can form groups / schools / movements which (may claim to) represent new tendencies and can attract critical controversy.

• First example: the debate about the “modern school of English poetry”, later renamed the Romantic movement.

• Poetry is incorporated as a vital part of the newly-formed concept of Literature, but with some major differences to the older concept of poetry:

• Literature implies the exclusion of some genres which used to be part of poetry (notably the central areas of opera and song)

• Literature includes new genres which were not originally part of poetry (the novel)

• The term poetry itself was increasingly reduced in scope (only rarely used for dramatic or narrative texts), limited to a set of smaller poetic forms which had previously not been specifially labeled as a group.

(10) points.

7: Formulate at least two different definitions of the term 'literature' and discuss what advantages and disadvantages each definition could have for the practice of literary studies.

• Two different definitions (2x5)

[Do these definitions really exist?]

• Practical consequences for the field of literary studies

• Advantages (10)
• Disadvantages (10)

(30 points)

Notenskala:

• 73 – 100: 1
• 61 – 72: 2
• 49 – 60: 3
• 37 – 48: 4
• 25 – 36: 5
• 0 – 24: 6