Literary theories: Short survey
Hermeneutics
As readers, we introduce our own life experience to the literary expression of others'
experience. But we can only understand particulars (particular expressions, sentences,
sections) if we have already understood the whole: this is the "hermeneutic circle." Any
understanding depends on the interpreting subject's depth of experience, which is why
understanding always remains to some extent irrational. Interpretation takes place in a
dialogue between past and present: the historically situated interpreter has a horizon of
meaning which has to blend with the literary work's own historical horizon. The literary work
can modify our own current assumptions; yet what the work tells us depends on the questions
we (from our own historical horizon of understanding) are able to ask. We cannot perceive a
literary work "per se" regardless of its own, and our own, historical situations. The historical
work remains within a literary tradition that is independent of the interpreter, although one
can draw new interpretive possibilities from one's own time and experience. Despite the stress
on literary tradition, and despite our need to "listen" to the literary work, understanding
remains a subjective and individual act, a productive act. The reading and interpreting subject
finds and constitutes itself in this process, and learns something new about life's meaning: the
world's transformation in literary play also playfully transforms the self (Ricoeur). Thus
hermeneutics is less a method or theory than a metatheory.
Wilhelm Dilthey, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung (1906); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und
Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (1965); Paul Ricoeur, Le conflit des
interpretations (1969), Ger. Hermeneutik und Strukturalismus (1973); Manfred Frank, Die
Unhintergehbarkeit von Individualität (1986)
Reception theory
Meaning does not lie simply within the text, it is realized and constituted by the reader. The
reader's expectations are important for interpretation: the less a text conforms to the preformed expectations and assumptions that a reader brings to bear on it, the higher its aesthetic
quality. That applies also to the literary work's own historical horizon: we need to analyze
literary works that were created before and at the same time as the work in question. That will
allow us to see what was new about the work in question, what its first readers' horizon of
expectation was like. According to Iser, a text includes instructions to the reader about how it
is to be understood. His questions are: What features in the text guide the reader's conduct and
attitudes? What gaps are there left in literary descriptions, motivations or actions that leave
room for the reader to fill?
Hans Robert Jauß, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft (1970);
Wolfgang Iser, Der implizite Leser (1972), Der Akt des Lesens (1976); Umberto Eco, The
Role of the Reader (1979); Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of
Interpretive Communities (1980)
NB. Contrasting position (Historical objectivism): E. D. Hirsch Jr., Validity in
Interpretation (1967), based on Husserl's phenomenology. A literary work's meanings move
within the system of typical expectations and probabilities that the author's intentions allow.
There are various criteria for reconstructing such intentions, depending on the kind of work
and the cultural situation. Even if we cannot always know precisely what the author intended,
reconstructing intention is the only valid criterion of meaning, and it remains fixed and
unchangeable. Different readers in different cultural situations can construct varied
interpretations that are liable to change; these are "significances" rather than meanings.
Structuralism
A text comes about by a selection of words and concepts (e.g., love, death, nature) and their
combination on the syntagmatic level of a sentence or textual unit. Analysis tries to describe
the construction of textual meanings by means of analogies (e.g., the correlation of love and
death, or wealth and unscrupulousness) and of binary oppositions of elements (e.g., subjectobject, nature-culture, young-old, above-below, reason-madness, light-dark). A systematic
and precise way to analyze a text is to look for dominant "semes" (or minimal units of
meaning of which lexemes are composed); then assess their relationship to each other
(parallelism, contrast) and see what "isotopies" (or patterns of meaning) are formed by the
relationship. Characteristic questions are: what cultural concepts does the text select, and how
are they placed in relation to each other? Which of these form opposites? Does this
relationship change, and why?
Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Eng. Structural Anthropology [1963]); Jurij
Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text (1977); A. J. Greimas, Sémantique structurale
(1971, nouvelle éd. 1986)
Poststructuralism and Postmodernism
Poststructuralism and Postmodernism are concerned with the radical instability of subjects
and with openness, plurality and difference. Poststructuralism grows out of Linguistics,
Anthropology and Philosophy, and is primarily concerned with language. Postmodernism
grows out of Art and Literature, and is chiefly concerned with communication and
multimedia.
Poststructuralism is associated with the later writings of Barthes, Derrida and Foucault.
Whereas a structuralist approach would tend to treat a sign-system as complete, potentially
knowable with a notional centre, a poststructuralist approach would tend to treat a signsystem as an incomplete and unknowable fragment with many potential centres or no centre at
all. "Deconstruction" involves breaking down a text into its constituent differences and
identifying its notional centre, then exploring the procedures whereby central aspects are
preferred or privileged. A characteristic deconstructive move is to point to what is
marginalized or absent, thereby setting up alternative centres or challenging the notion of
centres altogether.
Extending the premises of Modernism, Postmodernism is broadly populist rather than
narrowly elitist in appeal, and tends to focus on multimedia rather than purely literary
materials. Still, postmodernist texts deploy many of the strategies of Modernism and promote
a non-realist aesthetic. Thus collage, montage, pastiche, multiple viewpoint, reflexivity and
intertextuality are characteristic of such postmodern discourses as advertising, popular music,
TV shows, magazine programmes, computer games and the World-Wide Web.
How to practise
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Consider the subject matter of the text, the academic subject within which you are
studying, and yourself as constituted in terms of gender, class, ethnicity, education,
etc.
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What are the main contrasts, tensions, and contradictions through which the text seems
to operate? Are binary oppositions blurred anywhere?
Are certain poles within a polarity preferred before their opposites? Is that preference,
and reasons for it, ever made explicit?
What is central within the text?
What is marginal or ignored completely but might nonetheless offer an alternative
centre of interest and valuation?
Is there any limit to the number of different centres explicit and implicit in the text?
Try to describe the text as a "whole," complete and unified in itself. Do the same for
the language of the text.
Now try to describe the text as a series of "holes," through which fragments of other
perceptions can be glimpsed. Do the same for the language of the text.
Does the text comment on itself?
Deconstruction
While objects have a material existence, we need to realize that the objects or events that
language refers to do not exist, as such, before we raise them into linguistic consciousness:
languages give the world the shapes it has for the users of languages. When we try to find the
signifiant (meaning) of a signifié (signified concept), we do not find signifiés; instead we find
other signifiants, as in a dictionary. Thus signifiants and signifiés keep turning into each other.
Meaning is not immediately present in a sign: each sign only exists and has meaning by what
it is not, by its difference from all other signs. Meaning is dispersed (or deferred) along the
whole chain of signifiers; each sign points to another, which in turn points to another. Each
sign is thus permeated by many other signs, in each sign there are submerged traces of other
signs, earlier meanings are modified by later meanings, which in turn are not final and may
point back to earlier ones. Any sign can be reproduced in new contexts that change its
meaning. Hence there are no stable or unitary entities (truths, beings, realities). Accordingly,
the stable structuralist order of binary oppositions falls short of the way language works: the
signifiers of one (subordinate or marginal) pole of an antithesis are actually inscribed into the
other (dominant or central) pole, which is why their relationship is not stable. The belief that
there are unchanging or final signifiés present within signifiants is "logocentric" and
"metaphysical": this is the idea that any social discourse in language can give us direct access
to the real nature of things. Since this idea is usually patriarchal, based on the symbolic
phallus signifying self-identical truths, we can speak of a "phallogocentric" society. There is
no idea that is not caught up in an unlimited play of meanings. Any tendency to curb such
play, to impose a finite or strictly defined meaning on textual utterance, has authoritarian
political intentions. Important questions are: Which concepts within a text have positive value
or central position? Which concepts have negative value, or are hardly present or marginal in
the text? Why? How does each sign relate to other signs in the text? Do such relations modify
or contradict the surface (central, dominant) meanings? Does the text interrogate
contemporary values? Does the text alert its reader to the way it is constructed, and the way it
builds meanings?
Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie (1967), L'écriture et la différence (1967)
Feminism and Gender Studies
Feminism challenges the traditional power of men (patriarchy), and revalues the roles of
women. Feminism is influenced by Marxist and Postcolonial approaches, but also by
psychological methods, seeking to develop woman-centered or gender-sensitive critical and
therapeutic practices. Current practitioners often adopt one of the following positions or a
combination of them: Socialist Feminist; Black Feminist; Separatist Feminist; Liberal
Feminist.
Gender Studies investigates cultural constructions of women and men as well as the
implications of hetero- and homosexuality. Like Feminism, Gender Studies was initially
concerned with "images of women" in writing by men. Soon, however, attention was given to
previously marginalised works by women, gays and lesbians. Latterly there has been
particular emphasis on seeing not only gender roles but also patterns of sexuality in their
complexity rather than polarity.
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (1970); Hélène Cixous, The Hélène Cixous Reader (ed. Susan
Sellers [1994]); Luce Irigaray, Speculum de l'autre femme (1975), Ce sexe qui n'est pas un
(1977); Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985)
How to practise
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Consider the writer's sex, sexual orientations, and gender expectations.
Consider the gender roles and sexual practices current at the time represented / at the
time the author wrote.
Consider the sexual composition, orientation, and gender roles of the group in which
you are studying, and their possible effects on interpretation.
Consider your own reading and writing practices as a man or woman.
Consider the kinds of female and male characters or speakers represented in the text.
Go on to investigate other relatable texts by female and male authors, as well as other
media of presentation, at the time the author wrote.
Psychological approaches
Psychology studies mental and emotional processes, especially in the subconscious mind, as
these relate to culture. Language is the primary symbolic system through which we
differentiate and categorize the worlds within and around us, the chief means by which we
distinguish the roles and identities of self from other. It is hence a primary means of both
expression and repression, as a study of wordplay, ambiguities, and slips of the tongue will
reveal. Fiction can be recognized as a "space" in which the writer and especially the reader
explores various forms of interplay between conscious and subconscious states. Civilization
can be seen as the result of human beings’ struggle to control and redirect their basic animal
drives and desires. Viewed negatively, culture is thus an act of collective repression: it
alienates us from our subconscious and our bodies. Viewed positively, culture allows us to
express and project our bodies in many directions.
Psychoanalysis as developed from Freud especially by Jacques Lacan (e.g., Speech and
Language in Psychoanalysis [1981]) analyzes a literary text to find elements (especially
metaphors) that reveal desires or their suppression, in order to learn something about
submerged psychic conflicts inscribed into the text. Of central concern is the way an
individual's consciousness comes into being, with a sexual identity and--as stated above--with
the capacity to distinguish the self from the world and from other persons. As there is a
transition from the imaginary (symbiotic) phase to the symbolic order, the emerging
consciousness is traceable in the development of language. Fantasies of desire function to
bridge the separation that came about with individuation. Main question: What aspects of the
text reveal something about subconscious motivations?
Developed further by Julia Kristeva, e.g., La révolution du langage poétique (1974); Eng.
Revolution of Poetic Language (1984).
How to practise
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Consider how you as a modern reader relate to the events, characters and situations
represented.
Consider what the language of the text suggests about mental expression and
repression, about tensions between the conscious and subconscious.
Try to decode the text's strategies of condensation, displacement and symbolism.
Consider a text's suggestions of psychodramas such as the Oedipus complex and
hysteria.
Consider a text's treatments of lack and desire, self and other, the subject’s entry into
language.
Consider the textual representations of socio-psychological differences of sexuality
and gender, rank and class, ethnic group.
New Historicism
New Historicists, like the related school of Cultural Materialists, explore mechanisms of
repression and subjugation—"lost" histories. This means focusing on ways in which literary
works articulate the top of the social hierarchy, but it can also lead to a focus on the bottom of
that hierarchy (the lower classes, women, and other marginalized people). New Historicists
tend to draw on the disciplines of political science and anthropology, and they study the ways
in which cultural activities are subtly shaped by the values of commodification and the
market. All cultural activities may be equally important for historical analysis: contemporary
trials of hermaphrodites or the intricacies of map-making or village customs may inform a
Shakespeare play. In such contexts, New Historicism is specifically concerned with questions
of power, the political structures and institutions that produce the supposedly autonomous
self. In a number of cases, New Historicists attempt to show how specific historical anecdotes,
private documents, and minor events are connected with larger contradictory sociocultural
forces in a given period, since they believe that everything is caught up in the circulations of
power. New Historicists remain self-conscious about their own methodologies and
assumptions, since no-one is exempt from such circulations. The governing ideas and
ideologies of a given period harbor internal contradictions, which can be revealed by analysis
of the varied objects mentioned. As conceived by Michel Foucault, power does not
necessarily mean conflict or the exercise of violence, but rather the way in which the conduct
of individuals or groups is directed: the "government" of families, of communities, of social
minorities, i.e., the structuring or delimiting of possible fields of action of others.
Guiding questions (How to practise):
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What are the relations of power suggested by the text, and how do they operate?
Is there anything in the text that might threaten such operations?
How do those with authority attempt to contain any subversion of authority?
What historical or sociocultural events might help to understand the text?
What notions of society and social relations (also of individuality or of the human
body) does the literary work construct?
Veeser, Harold A., ed. The New Historicism Reader (1994); Kiernan Ryan, ed. New
Historicism and Cultural Materialism (1996)
Social semiotics
Literary works are not adequately understood if one looks at them outside of society and
history. Literary works can be analyzed as social constructs, sustained at particular times by
particular groups to serve particular interests, constructs concerned with legitimation and
control, working through a system that excludes or privileges certain kinds of text and specific
modes of reading. Objects of analysis are (a) social processes that flow through and connect
literary texts with many other though rather different kinds of text, and (b) social meanings
that are produced from many social sites, one of them being literary. Thus, following Michel
Foucault, literature is seen as a form of discourse, a process rather than a set of products: sign
systems interact with social instutions, being connected with mechanisms that attempt to
regulate the flow of knowledge and power in a community. The social production of meaning
(which is called semiosis) takes place in so-called "semiosic acts," i.e., the production of
textual units that carry meaning. These acts are controlled by regimes of production and
reception, so-called "logonomic systems": these attempt to determine who can think and say
what to whom in what way, and who or what is excluded from discourse. For example: rhyme
and metre are built on regularity, repetition and control, which are signifiers of conformity
and suppression of spontaneous and natural speech. But rhyme and metre also signify
qualities of sound, and thus an oral dimension. These messages about poetry may be used
simultaneously within a poem, for complex effect, even if that effect seems contradictory. A
poet may use both aspects in order to encode his/her understanding of a social situation: a
poet might signify a high status orderliness as a means to subtly convey a notion of the poet's
own stance outside the written word's accepted culture. Thus we can analyze ideological
complexes, which are often contradictory in themselves, but which reveal much about literary
versions of social reality.
M.A.K. Halliday, Language as Social Semiotic (1978); Gunther Kress & Robert Hodge,
Language as Ideology (1979); Roger Fowler, Literature as Social Discourse (1981); Robert
Hodge, Literature as Discourse 1990)
….. And a method: Close reading
Close reading as an intrinsic critical approach means to become sensitive to connotations of
language as used in a literary work. This involves attention to a work’s specific vocabulary,
sentence construction, and imagery, then the themes with which the work deals and thus the
view of the world that it offers. Analysis is done at the linguistic level: one pays close
attention to aspects of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, in connection with figures of speech.
At the semantic level, it is important to grasp the information content (denotation as well as
connotation) of significant words and phrases in the text. At the structural level, one analyzes
relationships between significant words and phrases in the text.
How to practise
Diction:
Which words and phrases appear significant for an understanding of the text?
How do such words and phrases relate to other significant words and phrases in the text?
Do any words and phrases seem unusual or unexpected? Why?
Do any words have double meanings or hidden associations?
What is the syntactic pattern (or syntactic function or rhythm or structure) in significant parts
of the text? Is there special use of hypotaxis or parataxis in any places? Are there variations?
Is there anything unusual about the punctuation, in significant places?
What figures of speech (rhetorical figures) are used in particular places, and to what effect?
Patterns:
 Does an image or metaphor or symbol in the text remind you of a feature elsewhere in
the same text, or perhaps in another work by the same author? Where exactly? What is
the nature of the connection?
 How might the image or symbol fit into the pattern of the work as a whole? Does it
help to explain the work?
 Is there any use of repetition within parts of the text? What could be the effect and
purpose?
 What functions do specific parts of the text appear to have (e.g., narration, description,
argument, dialogue ...)?
 Does anything the reader might expect appear to be left out or kept unsaid?
 Are colors, sounds, or physical description included in significant ways in the text?
What could be the purpose in such cases?
Point of View and Characterization:
 Who speaks in any specific part of the text? To whom does s/he speak? What can one
learn about the narrator, or about the lyrical persona?
 In a dramatic script or other form of direct speech, does an utterance help to
characterize the speaker, and if so, how?
Symbolism and Allegory:
 Is there one controlling metaphor or symbolic feature? If not, how many different ones
are there, and in what order do they occur? What is the significance of this?
 Do any represented objects appear to refer to something beyond themselves?
 Does a textual component or segment have an allegorical meaning?
Parts of the above are adapted from: Rob Pope, The English Studies Book (London, 1998)
("In der Wissenschaft geht es nicht primär um die Verifikation oder Falsifikation von
Theorien, sondern darum, die Reichweite eines Vorschlags auszuloten, also herauszufinden,
auf welche Gebiete oder Objekte er anwendbar ist."
Gabriele Müller-Oberhäuser, 1993)