Literary Theory and Criticism, Part-X

Recent Trends

There seems to be a general feeling among many theorists that the whole era of theory, or its heyday at least, may be over. Recent titles indicate that this feeling is broadly based. There are, for example, the collection of essays edited by Martin McQuillan and others called Post-Theory: New Directions in Criticism (1999) and two works with the same title After Theory, one by Thomas Docherty and the other by Terry Eagleton (both published in 2003). Some theorists have decided that it is high time critics returned to detailed analysis of literary texts. Jonathan Culler, in an essay in What’s Left of Theory? (2000), has argued that it is time to ‘reground the literary in literature’, and Valentine Cunningham, in Reading After Theory (2002), calls for a return to traditional close reading of texts. But Terry Eagleton has argued, in After Theory (2003), that cultural theory, and by implication literary theory, has always read its texts closely. Despite there being apparent disarray in theoretical stances and a lack of forceful new directions, some concerns have crystallized into distinctive trends, which can be identified and, indeed, named.

I. Postmodernism

One of the most problematic aspects of postmodernism is the term ‘postmodernism’ itself. It is difficult to find agreement among critics on its range of meanings and implications. One can only familiarise oneself with the range and note the overlaps. Some critics understand postmodernism to be essentially a later development of modernist ideas, but others regard it as radically different. Some believe it possible to consider writers and artists in the pre-modern period as essentially postmodern, even though the concept was not yet conceived. This is akin to the argument which sees Freud’s theories of the unconscious prefigured in German Romantic thought. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has argued that the ‘project of modernity’ is far from over and continues to pursue its goals (by this he means the Enlightenment values of reason and social justice).The term ‘postmodernism’ (and its cognates) is also often considered by many to refer, in general, to the role of the media in late twentieth century capitalist societies. Whatever usage one prefers, it is clear that ‘postmodernist theory’ implies certain critical stances: that the attempts to explain social and cultural developments by means of ‘grand narratives’ (all-embracing theories or accounts) are no longer feasible or acceptable, and that ideas can no longer be closely related to a historical reality. All is text, image, simulation. The world envisaged in the film The Matrix, one in which all human life is a simulation controlled by machines, is, for many of a postmodernist persuasion, not a science fiction nightmare but a metaphor for the present human condition.

These stances imply a fundamentally sceptical attitude to all human knowledge and have affected many academic disciplines and fields of human endeavour (from sociology to law and cultural studies, amongst others). For many postmodernism is dangerously nihilistic, undermining all sense of order and central control of experience. Neither the world nor the self have unity and coherence.

Postmodern writing, as postmodern thought, unsettles and destabilises all traditional notions about language and identity. Foreign students of English literature have been heard, frequently, to describe as ‘postmodern’ anything they cannot understand or express. Postmodern literary texts frequently reveal an absence of closure and analyses of them focus on that absence. Both texts and critiques are concerned with the uncertainty of identity and what is known as ‘intertextuality’: the reworking of earlier works or the interdependence of literary texts.

Postmodernism has attracted both strong positive and negative criticism. It can be seen as a positive, liberating force, destabilising preconceived notions of language and its relation to the world and undermining all metalanguages about history and society. But it is also seen as undermining its own presuppositions and warding off all coherent interpretation. For many it is apolitical and ironically non-committal.

A genre popular with postmodernist writers is that of parody, which enables the simultaneous recognition and breaking down of traditional literary modes. Postmodern writers break down boundaries between different discourses, between fiction and non-fiction, history and autobiography (a prime example of this is the writings of W G Sebald).Two thinkers most closely associated with postmodernism are Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard.

II. New Historicism

A useful working definition of new historicism is provided by John Brannigan in New Historicism and  Cultural Materialism (1998). He describes new historicism as ‘a mode of critical interpretation which privileges power relations as the most important context for texts of all kinds’, and ‘…it treats literary texts as a space where power relations are made visible’. The power referred to here is, of course, that posited by Foucault which is exerted though discourses, allowing the subject to believe that he or she is free and able to make autonomous decisions. The historical period of a text has to be studied in detail to determine what power relations (or, in Foucault’s terms, which discursive practices) were operating and how they affected the text. New historicism seeks its evidence  anywhere, not only in the text. Everything which constitutes part of a culture can be analysed like a text. Intertextuality (tracing relations between texts) is therefore a primary focus. Terry Eagleton has aptly written: ‘…the new historicism was prepared in pluralist spirit to examine any topic at all as long as it cropped up somewhere in the works of Michel Foucault’ (Literary Theory, Eagleton 2002).

A leading practitioner, Stephen Greenblatt, in his book Resonance and Wonder (1990), argues that ‘new historicism, as I understand it, does not posit historical processes as unalterable and inexorable, but it does tend to discover limits or constraints upon individual intervention…’ A major criticism levelled against new historicism is that its practitioners are blind to the conditions affecting their own perspectives. To some extent, their arguments are always the products of their own personal and social situation and can never attain the kind of objectivity which they seem to expect.

The new historicists have produced a large body of critical analyses focused on Romantic and Renaissance literature especially. They have explored, for example, the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays act out the power structure of the Tudor monarchy, reflecting the discourses dominating contemporary society. Although subversive ideas are frequently explored in Shakespeare’s plays, these ideas are always contained within the controlling discourses of the era. They do not become revolutionary. The critic Marjorie Levinson sees a work in the context of its time and related to the dominant discourses, but not necessarily as its contemporaries or its author viewed it: the aim is ‘to know a work as neither it, nor its original readers, nor its author could know it’ (Wordsworth’s Great Period Poems, 1986).

III. Cultural Materialism

Cultural materialism was developed in Great Britain as a politically more radical form of new historicism. For them Foucault’s ideas imply greater instability in the power structures of discourses than the new historicists perceive. They base their more dynamic model of culture on the ideas of Raymond Williams, as formulated way back in 1977 (in Marxism and Literature). Eagleton has defined the cultural materialism conceived by Williams as ‘a form of analysis which examined culture less as a set of isolated artistic monuments than as a material formation’ complete with its own ‘identifiable audiences, historically conditioned thought-forms’ etc. For Eagleton, cultural materialism also forms a kind of bridge between Marxism and postmodernism and, like new historicism, takes on board a wide range of topics, including feminism, sexual orientation, ethnic and postcolonial issues. Another focus of interest (as in some writings by Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield) is the ways in which literature from the past has functioned and been perceived in later periods. Sinfield has also explored his notion of ‘faultlines’ in literature, or the contradictions in the ideologies discoverable in texts. And Michael Bristol has taken up Bakhtin’s concept of ‘carnival’ and applied it to Renaissance culture in England. Carnival is the prime example of how popular culture can exist in opposition to officialdom. Carnival, Bristol claims, also mocks the symbols of power, although the criticism has been levelled against his argument that carnival cannot be an effective opposition strategy because it is, in fact, no more than sanctioned mockery. It is only an outlet for frustration and has had its sting removed.

IV. New Aestheticism

The name was coined by John Joughlin and Simon Malpas in The New Aestheticism (2003).The thrust of their argument is that developments in cultural theory have led to the loss of the very notion of a ‘work of art’. Critics no longer respect ‘the sense of art’s specificity as an object of analysis…’ The critics supporting the new aesthetics do not call for a return to a kind of ‘art for art’s sake’ approach but assert that they wish to relate a new sense of aesthetic form to an awareness of social context and political concerns. John Brenkman in Extreme Criticism (2000), has called for closer study of the relationship between inner form and the worldliness of a text. In The Radical Aesthetic (2000) Isobel Armstrong argues for establishing a ‘democratic aesthetic’, which she believes possible because we all share common components of the aesthetic life such as playing and dreaming. Thomas Docherty, in his book After Theory (1997), introduced a new approach to the role of literature in education and culture in general. In the theory of the new aesthetics, popularity and accessibility would seem to be implicit if not explicit watchwords. Its exponents are high on ideals couched in fine sounding words. It remains to be seen whether a coherent body of critical theory supporting these ideals will emerge.

V. Ecocriticism

In an edition of The Guardian (30 July 2005), an article by the writer Robert Macfarlane appeared under the title ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. The front page of the ‘Review’ section showed a portrait of him with the heading ‘The Landscape Library: Robert Macfarlane on Ecoclassics’. In the article, Macfarlane argues for a whole new perspective on the concerns on which literature and literary study should be focusing. In an earlier essay, he had proposed the setting up and publication of a library of classics of nature writing from Britain and Ireland: ‘…it would be a series of local writings, which concentrated on particular places, and which worked always to individuate, never to generalise.’ Any book, in order to be included, would ‘have to evince the belief that the fate of humanity and the fate of nature are inseparable’. And the natural environment would have to be approached ‘not with a view to conquest, acquisition and short-term use, but according to the principles of restraint and reciprocity.’ Macfarlane has essentially started the process of establishing a canon of ecologically aware British literature, which can serve as the basis of an ecocritical approach to the study of literature.

In America the concept of ‘ecocriticism’ can be traced back at least as far as an essay by William Rueckert in 1978, called Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism. The concept lay dormant for some time until Cheryll Burgess Glotfelty reawakened interest in the project by publishing a survey of the field, which she edited with Harold Fromm under the title The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology (1996). In 1992 the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) was founded, with its own journal, newsletter and website. There still seems to be no clear agreement as to what exactly constitutes ‘ecocriticism’. Some scholars have claimed that it adds the new category of ‘place’ to those of race, class, gender etc, as perspectives for analysing literature. The critic Lawrence Buell has argued that in theory there has for too long been ‘a gap between texts and facts’. Ecocriticism fills that gap: ‘Ecocriticism assumes that there is an extra-textual reality that impacts human beings and their artefacts – and vice versa.’ Glen A Love (University of Oregon) has said: ‘It’s time to heal the breach between the hard sciences and the humanities – and literary theory isn’t going to do it.’ Some essays in The Ecocriticism Reader, however, argue that the theories of Foucault and Said are relevant to a study of the environment which is itself a cultural construct.

In the introduction to the same volume Glotfelty and Fromm define ecocriticism as ‘the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment’. Ecocritics ask such questions as: ‘How is nature represented in this sonnet? What role does the physical setting play in the plot of this novel? Are the values expressed in this play consistent with ecological wisdom?’ etc. Another question considered is ‘Do men write about nature differently than women do?’ Not surprisingly, this has led to a sub-category of ecocriticism known as ‘ecofeminism’ with its own anthologies of women nature writers. Louise H Westling of the University of Oregon is, however, concerned about how ecofeminism emphasises the way gender is reflected in depictions of landscape and believes that it reinforces the tradition of assuming that the earth is female and those who use and dominate it male: ‘The land is not a woman. But from ancient times, writers have used feminine images to justify conquering it.’