LITERARY FORMS

SUPPLEMENTARY STUDY MATERIAL: LITERARY FORMS

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, S.S. GOVERNMENT ARTS COLLEGE

Prof. J.Dinesh Kumar

NOVEL

The Picaresque Novel

The word ‘picaresque’ has been derived from the Spanish word ‘picaro’ which means a ‘rogue’ and ‘knave’.

The picaresque novel is the tale of the adventures or misadventures of a picaro or rogue who wanders from one country to another, from one setting to another, from the town to the country, from one inn to another, and in this way the novelist gets an opportunity of introducing a variety of characters and incidents, of painting society as a whole realistically.

The picture may be satiric but the aim of the novelist is to delight and entertain, and not to reform or improve.

 Indeed this type of novel has no plot worth the name being a union of intrigue and adventure, and the only unity in it is provided by the central figure.

To Thomas Nash goes the credit of being the first writer of a picaresque novel in English – ‘The Unfortunate Traveller or The Life of Jack Wilton’. Following are the famous picaresque novels in English: Richard Hood’s ‘The English Rogue’, Daniel Defoe’s ‘Moll Flanders’, and Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’ to name a few.

Gothic Novel/ Novel of Terror

Gothic Fiction is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole ‘The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story’ – the subtitle refers to its medieval setting – and which flourished through the early nineteenth century. Following Walpole’s example, authors of such novels set their stories in the medieval period, often in a gloomy castle replete with dungeons, subterranean passages, and sliding panels, and made plentiful use of ghosts, mysterious disappearances, and other sensational and supernatural occurrences(which in some writers turned out to have natural explanations); their principal aim was to evoke chilling terror by exploiting mystery, cruelty and a variety of horrors.

Few notable examples of Gothic novels are William Beckford’s ‘Vathek’, Ann Radcliff’s ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ and Matthew Gregory Lewis’ ‘The Monk’.

The Detective Novel

Origin:

“Edgar Allan Poe published ‘The Murders in Rue Morgue’ in the year 1841 and that began it all.” – Erik Routley Crime Fiction began in America. In 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published his ‘A Study in Scarlet’. This was the first crime novel in England.

The Important Characteristics of a Detective Novel:

The Detective: The important features of the detective are:

-          He is an amateur(not paid money to solve the crime). He does it out of his own interest.

-          He is a very intelligent person. The case presented to him is like a ‘challenge’ to his intelligence.

-          By nature, he is very curious and a very knowledgeable person.

-          He is endowed with some eccentricities. Certain features that are peculiar only to that person.

-          He is a jovial person. He has a lot of fun at the cost and expense of the police inspector.

The Police Inspector:

-          He is a professional(paid by government).

-          He is always presented with all the paraphernalia of the police department, like baton, uniform, handcuffs, policemen, and so on.

-          The Police Inspector is a foil to the detective. The novelists will make the police as stupid as possible to show the detective’s intelligence.

-          He is always in confrontation with the amateur detective. Much of the humour is presented because of this. They are always competing with each other. Most often the police inspector ends as the ‘butt of all jokes’.

The Narrator:

-          He is a close friend of the detective.

-          The story is told in as objective a manner as possible to the narrator.

-          The method of story-telling is the catechism method(question and answer method). The narrator will ask the questions and the detective will give the information.

The Victim:

-          He could be a person murdered or the victim of a theft. The victim is the main purpose for the story.

-          The victim is usually killed before the story begins or at the very beginning.

-          No one sympathizes with the victim.

-          Many motives are presented. The more number of motives, the more complicated the plot is. This makes it interesting.

-          These motives must be credible and the suspicion must spread out on as many characters as possible.

The Murderer:

-          The person committing crime. The murderer must play an important role throughout the novel.

-          We do not sympathize with the murderer.

-          The motive for which he murdered must be credible and justified.

The Clients:

The person who meets the detective and seeks his help to solve the crime.

The Plot Sequence:

The plot of a detective novel is termed as a ‘whodunit’ plot.

-          The murder is committed and discovered.

-          Enquiry begins.

-          Suspicion is aroused and spread out on as many characters as possible.

-          Suspense is created.

-          The discovery of the murderer.

-          The punishment.

The Science Fiction

Science fiction, literary genre in which a background of science or pseudoscience is an integral part of the story. Although science fiction is a form of fantastic literature, many of the events recounted are within the realm of future possibility, e.g., robots, space travel, interplanetary war, invasions from outer space.

Science fiction is generally considered to have had its beginnings in the late 19th century with the romances of Jules Verne and the novels of H. G. Wells. In 1926, Hugo Gernsback founded the pulp magazine Amazing Stories, devoted exclusively to science fiction, particularly to serious explorations into the future. Good writing in the field was further encouraged when John W. Campbell, Jr., founded Astounding Science Fiction in 1937. In that magazine much attention was paid to literary and dramatic qualities, theme, and characterization; Campbell “discovered” and popularized many important science fiction writers, including Isaac Asimov, Frederic Brown, A. E. van Vogt, Lewis Padgett, Eric Frank Russell, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Murray Leinster, Robert Heinlein, Raymond F. Jones, and Robert Sheckley.

Science fiction has established itself as a legitimate branch of literature. C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet (1938) used science fiction as a vehicle for theological speculation, and works such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four (1949), Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Cat's Cradle (1963) demonstrate the particular effectiveness of the genre as an instrument of social criticism. Science-fiction literature anticipates and comments on political and social concerns, and a variety of science-fiction subgenres have emerged: feminist science fiction; disaster novels and novels treating the world emerging from a disaster's wake; stories postulating alternative worlds; fantastic voyages to “inner space”; and “cyberpunk” novels set in “cyberspace,” a realm where computerized information possesses three dimensions in a “virtual reality.”

The Stream of Consciousness Novel

The stream of consciousness is a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes. The technique aims to give readers the impression of being inside the mind of the character - an internal view that illuminates plot and motivation in the novel. Thoughts spoken aloud are not always the same as those “on the floor of the mind”, as Woolf puts it. The emphasis is not upon external action but upon the mental activity in the character’s mind.

Stream of consciousness is strongly associated with the modernist movement. It’s introduction in the literary context, transferred from psychology, is attributed to May Sinclair.

Stream of consciousness writing is usually regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is characterized by associative(and at times dissassociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation that can make the prose difficult to follow, tracing as they do a character’s fragmentary thoughts and sensory feelings. The speaker’ s thought processes are more often depicted as overheard(or addressed to oneself) and is primarily a fictional device.

Famous writers to employ this technique in English include Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and William Faulkner.

The Historical Novel

The Historical Novel takes its setting and some of its characters and events from history; the term is usually applied only if the historical milieu and events are fairly elaborately developed and important to the central narrative.

The historical novel, on the face of it, seems to be a contradiction in terms. The word novel designates a work of fiction; and facts are the underlying basis of history.  If history and fiction are correctly understood, it would result in a perfect historical novel. The historical novelist takes certain events and characters from history and weaves around them a fictitious enchantment. In making use of facts, the novelist does not follow the method of the historian but of the artist. He selects facts and arranges them according to his choice. In short, he takes into account what may be described as the spirit and atmosphere of history. He reconstructs imaginatively the life of the past. He does not allow historical facts to come in the way of his fiction; nor does he permit his fiction to violate the significance of historical facts.

Few notable historical novels includes Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe’, Dickens’’A Tale of Two Cities’ Kenneth Roberts’’Northwest Passage’.

The chief elements of a Novel are:

-          It deals with events and actions which constitutes its plot.

-          It has characters, i.e., men and women which carry on its action and to whom things happen.

-          The conversation of these characters constitutes the element of dialogue.

-          It has a scene and time of action, i.e., the place and time where different things happen to different characters. It may be some limited region or its action may range over large number of places, cities, even countries.

-          Its treatment of life and its problems are realistic. Thus, it is realism which distinguishes it from the earlier prose romances. The novel does not provide escape from life and its problems, but rather a better understanding of them. It also reflects the very spirit of the age in which it is written.

-          It exhibits the author’s views of life and some of the problems of life. It thus gives the author’s criticism of life or his life philosophy of life.

Modernist Fiction:

In Modernist Fiction Randall Stevenson says: Postmodernism extends modernist uncertainty, often by assuming that reality, if it exists at all, is unknowable or inaccessible through a language grown detached from it.                                                                                                                                Characteristics of Postmodernism in Fiction :                                                                                         Postmodernist fiction is generally marked by one or more of the following characteristics:

• playfulness with language
• experimentation in the form of the novel
• less reliance on traditional narrative form
• less reliance on traditional character development
• experimentation with point of view
• experimentation with the way time is conveyed in the novel
• mixture of "high art" and popular culture
• interest in metafiction, that is, fiction about the nature of fiction

Etymology of Novel: The word novel comes from the French word ‘noveau’ which means ‘new’. So, the word novel literally means a new form.

Definition: “a fiction in prose of a certain extent(over 50,000 words)”E.M. Forster in ‘Aspects of the Novel’.

The prose medium combined with the elements of drama viz., time, place, people and dialogue to produce a new form called novel. The novel deals with a human character in a social situation, man as a social being. The novel places more emphasis on character than on plot. Another major characteristic of the novel is realism – a full and authentic report of human life.

Plot vs Story:

A ‘story’ is a narrative of events placed within a time sequence.

A ‘plot’ is also a narrative of events, but its emphasis is on causality.

Here is the famous example of the difference between story and plot: The king died and then the queen died(is a story). The king died and then the queen died of grief(is a plot).

THE ESSAY

Etymology:  The word essay comes from the French word ‘essayer’ which means ‘to try’.

Definition:  “A Short piece of expositive prose, which attempts to shed some light on a restricted subject of discussion.’ – Reader’s Companion to World Literature. An essay is a short, non-fictional composition that presents the writer’s opinion or analysis of a particular subject.

Personal Essay(also called Informal or Familiar Essay):                                                                                Characteristics:  A Personal Essay is written in a casual, conversational style assuming tone of intimacy with his audience, tends to be concerned with everyday things rather than with public affairs or specialized topics, writen in a relaxed, self-revelatory and often whimsical fashion. As in the words of Halliward Hill “Personal Element – a picture of the writer’s mind as affected for the moment by the subject with which he is dealing” and so the essay is only an attempt to write about the subject in question, it is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of the subject.                                                                           Origin: Personal Essays were originated by Michel de Montaigne, a French writer of the 1500’s. He was the first writer to establish the essay as a distinct form of literature. The word essay comes from ‘Essais’(1580) – his two volume collection of writings. He called this collection ‘Essais’, a French word meaning ‘trials or attempts’ because his compositions are exploratory and informal. They discuss such topics as idleness, judgement and lying. “Everyone recognizes me in my book and everyone recognizes my book in me.” – Montaigne                                                                                                                                                                Development: Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, two English essayists of the early 1700’s wrote about the opinions and tastes of the English people. Addison composed clear and compact essays. Steele’s essays are more spontaneous and conversational. Together they published two periodicals – Tatler and Spectator for which they wrote many essays. Charles Lamb, an English author of the early 1800’s wrote essays about the people and events in his life. His essays contain interesting insights and are written in a casual and sometimes in a humorous style. His work was published in several collections, including his ‘Essays of Elia’.

Formal Essays:                                                                                                                                                        Characteristics: Formal Essays are completely impersonal, with a neutral style and the purpose of the formal essay is to communicate the information and so the contents of a non-artistic essay are looked upon as independent truths.                                                                                                                                        Origin: Formal Essays were developed by Sir Francis Bacon, an English philosopher and statesman of the mid 1500’s and early 1600’s. “The word is late but the thing is ancient. For Seneca’s ‘Epistles to Lucilius’ if one mark them well are but essays, i.e. ‘dispersed meditations’.” – Bacon Bacon is the first English essayist. His essays are short, impersonal and informative and they discuss such subjects as death, fear, truth and wealth.                                                                                                                                            Development: The English poet and essayist, John Milton wrote ‘Areopagitica’ – a persuasive appeal to parliament to protect the freedom of speech and of the press. Alexander Pope, an English poet of the 1700’s wrote Formal Essays in verse. In his ‘Essay on Criticism’, he used verse to explain how poetry should be criticized. He also discussed the works of several major poets in his informative, clearly written essay. His other works includes ‘Essay on Man’, ‘Moral Essays’ and so on. The English critic William Hazlitt was one of the best writers of formal essays during the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. He wrote a collection of critical essays called ‘Characters of Shakespearean Characters’. His writing is spontaneous but logically organized. He also wrote many fine personal essays.

The two main points of difference between the two categories of essays are that: (i) objectivity to subjectivity, and (ii) from formality to familiarity.

The Periodical Essay:

With the rise of the periodical press, in the beginning of the 18^th century, the essay took a long stride forward. The struggle for political supremacy between the two political parties – the Whigs and the Tories – resulted in the publication of a large number of Journals or Periodicals like ‘The Tatler’ and ‘The Spectator’, founded by Addison and Steele.

The aim of the two collaborators was social reform – to censor the manners and morals of the age, more particularly the frivolities of the female sex. Addison’s essays had the rare charm of humour, delicate, gentlemanly, urbane and tolerant. He perfected the middle-style, and laid the lines along which the essay was to be developed by his successors.

The essayist who maintained the tradition of Addison and who had the true essay-manner is  Oliver Goldsmith. His collection titled ‘The citizen of the world’ – his characters namely, ‘Beau Tibbs’ and ‘Man in Black’ are great classics. The comments on English society which we get in his essays are both simple and shrewd.

With the periodicals the essay acquired an additional importance and significance.

Aphoristic Essays:

"Aphorism" is a general, all-encompassing term for a condensed sentence or statement. Short and concise, it is a written or spoken expression of an observation, principle, or precept of truth or advice. (The Oxford English Dictionary defines the aphorism as a "short, pithy sentence expressing a truth of general import.") The etymology of the aphorism is revealing: apo plus horizein denote "away from a marked area or limited boundary." Thus it proceeds by a dual process, of initial divergence from the terms of a given discourse followed by a return to it, but importing an unusual perspective, a process often characterized by a fusion of logic and imagination, or wit.

Francis Bacon’s essays are of the aphoristic kind. He is considered as the father of the English essay, for he was the first to use the word ‘essay’ in England, and his volume of Essays published in 1597 was the first of its kind in England. He had defined his essays as “counsels, civil and moral”. His purpose was not to preach morality,but to give valuable guidance on a variety of subjects drawn from day to day affairs of practical life.

BIOGRAPHY

Etymology:  The word ‘biography’ comes from two English words namely, ‘Bios’ meaning ‘life’ and ‘ graphia’ which means ‘ writing’.

Definition:

Biography – an account of someone’s life, written by another person.

Biography is “history of the lives of individual men as a branch of literature.” In other words of Harold Nicolson, the Biography is “a truthful record of an individual, composed as a work of art.’

Biography differs from history in being a record of the life of one individual. “It is a study sharply defined by two definite events: birth and death. It fills its canvas with one figure, and other character, however great in themselves, must always be subsidiary to the central hero.” It studies its subject from both without and within; it is an account of his\her achievements and of his personality.                                                                                                                                            The function of Biography is ‘to transmit personality’, as Sir Sidney Lee says, to rebuild a living man from dead bones, and the ideal Biography would be almost a novel of character with verifiable facts for its basis instead of invented details.

Biography features in-depth profiles of the exceptional people whose lives and times stir our imagination. Biography thrives on rich details, fascinating portraits and historical accuracy, seasoned with insider insights and observations.

Origin and Development:

“The proper study of mankind is man”, says Pope. The basis of the biographical impulse if similarly man’s absorbing interest in man.

The biographer instinctively aims at a revelation which will both capture the individuality of his subject and also show the common touch of humanity in his which he assures the reader that human nature is always essentially the same. In this field of literature, as in the novel, it is the psychological element that has become more interesting and significant than the mere record of events.

Late in the seventeenth century Dryden neatly defined biography as “the history of particular men’s lives.” The name now connotes a relatively full account of the facts of a man’s life, involving the attempt to set forth his character, temperament, and milieu, as well as his experiences and activities.  Notable biographies includes, Izaak Walton’s ‘Lives’(of John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Hooker, and others), written between 1640 and 1678, Dr. Johnson’s monumental ‘Lives of the English Poets’(1779-1781) and James Boswell’s ‘Life of Samuel Johnson’(1791).

Characteristics of a Good Biography:

- Accurate presentation of the life history from birth to death of an Individual.

- Honest effort is made to interpret the life so as to offer a unified impression of the character, mind and personality of the subject.

-. In a good biography, the individual’s character is revealed to the reader through the details and events of his or her life and as a complex individual with his or her own share of human strengths as well as weaknesses. Readers can understand and, at least sometimes, relate to the person’s feelings of frustration and happiness. A good biography should depict the life of an individual in ways that allow the reader to question, evaluate, and analyze the narrative to identify the pattern or meaning in the person’s life.
-Next, a good biography should stay away from didacticism. Sermon should not “substitute for story” and fictionalization should not “enhance factual material”. Included should be the feelings, beliefs, actions, and daily decisions made by the individual. However, to keep a biography from becoming a chronology of events or a collection of dates without any unifying theme, there needs to be a definite narrative thread. Grounded in the historical context of the time period in which an individual lived, a biography must tell the story of that person’s life in a way that captures and holds the reader’s interest.
-Biographies must avoid stereotypes based on things such as gender, culture, religious background, and ethnicity. This does not mean that biographies should distort the truth or contain inaccuracies. For example, one cannot disguise the fact that women received second-class treatment for many decades and this treatment should be accurately portrayed. However, in writing about these times, writers should avoid placing women in stereotypical roles such as being helpless and dependent upon a male. According to Lucy Townsend (Townsend & Hanson, 2001), many earlier biographies of women show them achieving success only through their relationships with others (e.g., wife, mother, daughter). While historical perspectives and events cannot be changed, women need to be shown as individuals with unique strengths as well as weaknesses.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Autobiography is a biography written by the subject about himself/herself.
The main interest of an autobiography resides in a conscious or unconscious self-portrayl by the author. In an autobiography stress is laid on introspection, or on the significance of the author’s life against a wider background – comments on crucial incidents and personages one comes across.
The autobiography is concerned with self-revelation of the author. He must honestly relate various events of his life and facts of his personality. The autobiographer should also deal with contemporary society and tell us about the other eminent personalities of his/her time. However, the eminent personalities should remain subsidiary to the autobiographer.
Notable examples includes, ‘Diaries’ of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, ‘Journals’ of James Boswell. The first fully developed autobiography the ‘Confessions’ of St.Augustine and followed by the ‘Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners’ of John Bunyan, and works of De Quincey, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Leigh Hunt, Ruskin, H.G.Wells, Rudyard Kipling and so forth.

CRITICISM

Etymology:

The English word criticism is derived from the French critique, which dates back to at least the 14th century. The words "critic" and "critical" existed in the English language from the mid-16th century, and the word "criticism" first made its appearance in English in the early 17th century.In turn, the French expression critique has roots in Latin ("criticus" - a judger, decider, or critic), and, even earlier, classical Greek language ("kritos" means judge, and "kritikos" means able to make judgements, or the critic). The early English meaning of criticism was primarily that of "fault-finding" and that of judging literature. In the course of the 17th century, it acquired the more general sense of censure, as well as the more specialized meaning of the "discernment of taste", i.e. the art of estimating the qualities and character of literary or artistic works, implicitly from the point of view of a consumer. To be critical meant, positively, to have good, informed judgement about matters of culture (to be cultivated, to be a man or woman of distinction).

Definition:

Literary criticism is the study of literature in order to interpret, explicate and evaluate it. It defines the qualities and points out the merits of a literary work. It sets standards and tastes and influence the writers.

Approaches:

There are two approaches to criticism – the classical and the romantic. Classical criticism, also called ‘judicial criticism’ insists upon a uniform standard based on the rules given by classics like ‘Poetics’. The work of art is to be judged on absolute standards and established conventions.

As opposed to classical criticism, the romantic criticism, also called ‘impressionistic criticism’ expresses the attitudes and responses evoked by the work of art.

Classification:

‘Mimetic criticism’ views the literary work as an imitation, or reflection, or representation of the world and human life, and the primary criterion applied to a work is that of the ‘truth’ of its representation to the objects it represents, or should represent.

‘Pragmatic criticism’ views the work as something which is constructed in order to achieve certain effects on the audience and it tends to judge the value of the work according to its success in achieving that aim.

‘Expressive criticism’ regards the work primarily in relation to the author himself. It analyses how successfully and sincerely the poet had expressed his feelings or perceptions.

‘Objective criticism’ approaches the work as something which stands free from poet, audience, and the environing world. It describes the literary product as a self-sufficient object, a world-in-itself to be analyzed and judged by criteria such as complexity, coherence, and the interrelations of its component elements.

SHORT STORY

Origin: Not until the OED Supplement of 1933 did the term ‘short story’ itself, designating a particular kind of literary product, gain formal admittance into the vocabulary of English readers. However, theoretical discussion of the form had begun nearly a century before that tardy christening with some essays of Edgar Allan Poe.

The art of story telling is doubtlessly older than record of civilization. Short stories have their origins in oral story-telling traditions and the prose anecdote, a swiftly-sketched situation that quickly comes to its point.

Definition: A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe’s essay ‘The Philosophy of Composition’.

‘It is an imaginary story of limited length, intending to entertain, and describing an event in which the interest arises from the change in the fortunes of the leading characters or from behavior characteristic of them; an event concerned with real-life people in a real-life setting”- Sophie Trenker, ‘The Greek Novella in the Classical Period’

Short story refers to a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, usually in narrative format.

Features of the Short Story:

-          ‘Singleness of Effect’:“A short story is, or should be, a simple thing; it aims at producing one singly vivid effect: it has to seize the attention at the outset, and never relaxing, gather it together more and more until the climax is reached. The limits of the human capacity to attend closely therefore set a limit to it; it must explode and finish before interruption occurs or fatigue sets in” -  H.G. Wells

-          Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually a short story focuses on only one incident, has a single plot, a single setting, a small number of characters, and covers a short period of time.

-          Short stories only occasionally have an ‘exposition’. More typical, though, is an abrupt beginning, with the story starting in the middle of the action(in media res). As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a climax, crisis or turning point. However, the endings of many short stories are abrupt and open and may or may not have a moral or practical lesson.

-          As with any art form, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary by author(including the length of the short story dictated by individual author’s preference, or the story’s actual needs and the submission guidelines.

Types of Criticism 

1. Formal Criticism that analyzes a work of literature in terms of its genre or type. Every genre of literature follows specific patterns and includes specific elements.

• For example, what makes the works of William Shakespeare an exemplary of the Elizabethan period?

2. Historical Criticism that views the work of art as a product of the period in which it was produced.

·         An example would be an analysis of the influence the French and American Revolutions had on English Romanticism.

·         Poems are placed in their historical context — to explain not only their allusions and particular use of words, but the conventions and expectations of the times.

·         The approach may be evaluative (i.e. the critic may suggest ways of responding to the poem once the perspective is corrected), or may simply use it as historical data.

3. Biographical Criticism that attempts to account for elements of literary works by relating them to events in the lives of their authors.

·         As with the historical approach, a poem may be used to illuminate the writer's psychology, or as biographic data. No less than the correspondence, remembered conversations, choice of reading matter, the poem is analyzed for relevance to its author.

4. Jungian Criticism that explores the presence in works of art of archetypes—unconscious images, symbols, associations, or concepts presumed to be a common inheritance of all human beings. 

·         An analysis of symbol of rebirth would be an example of Jungian criticism. * Jungians search for recurring poetic images, symbols and situations in poems, but their aim is not to categorize poems but to relate them to larger patterns in society.

5. Marxist Criticism that evaluates and interprets works of art with regard to the material, economic forces that shape them or with regard to their origins in or depictions of struggle between social classes. 

•  The poem may be assessed on its political correctness — on its support for workers against capitalist exploitation — but most Marxists praise work that analyses or describes the injustices that Marxist societies aim to overcome.

6. Romantic/Expressivist Criticism that views a work of art as primarily an expression of the spirit, ideas, beliefs, values, or emotions of its creator.

7. Pragmatic/Rhetorical Criticism that interprets or evaluates a work of art in terms of its effects on the audience. 

·         Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and the rhetorical approach attempts to understand how the content of the poem, which is more than intellectual meaning, is put across.

·         How arguments are presented, attitudes struck, evidence marshaled, various appeals made to the reader — all are relevant.

8. Freudian Criticism that generally views literary works or parts thereof as expressions of unconscious desires, as wish fulfillments, or as neurotic sublimations or unresolved conflicts from childhood.  *

·         Not only is the diction examined for sexual imagery, but also the whole work is seen through Freudian concepts: struggles of the superego, the Oedipus complex, with the repressed contents of consciousness, etc. The aim is illumination of psychic conflicts, not aesthetic ranking.

9. Feminist Criticism that evaluates and interprets works of art with regard to their portrayal of or influence upon gender roles. This criticism can include giving women from the past recognition they deserve, pointing out gender bias by analyzing depictions of males and females, and by analyzing the effects of literary works, activities, and movements on cultural norms related to gender.

10. Didactic Criticism that evaluates works of art in terms of moral, ethical, or political messages that they convey.

11. Structuralism Criticism that analyzes works of literature and art in terms of binary, or two-part, relationships or structures.

·         Here the writing is related to underlying patterns of symmetry that are held to be common to all societies. Evidence is drawn from sociology and anthropology, and the approach attempts to place the work in larger context rather than assess its quality.

12. Deconstructionist Criticism that calls into question the idea that there is one “meaning” behind a literary work by inviting the reader to reverse the binary, two-part, relations that structure meaning in a work. Thinking of contrasts is essential to this form of criticism.

13. Mimetic Criticism that derives from the teaching of Aristotle, it views works of art as imitations of nature and the real world and evaluates them according to the accuracy of those portrayals.

14. New Criticism that insists upon the interpretation and evaluation of literary works based on details found in the works themselves rather than on information gathered from outside the works.  It disregards such matters as the life of the author, the period in which the work was written, the literary movement that led to its production, and the emotional effect of the work upon the reader.

·         The New Critics insist on the importance of close analysis and the irreducibility of text to generalizations or paraphrases.

·         The poem (the approach works best for poetry, and especially the lyric) is detached from its biographical or historical context, and analyzed thoroughly: diction, imagery, and meanings, particularly complexities of meaning. Some explanation of unfamiliar words and/or uses may be allowed, but the poem is otherwise expected to stand on its own feet, as though it were a contemporary production.

15. Author’s Intent-Criticism that insist upon the interpretation in terms of how the original author intended to present the topic. (often confused as biographical)

 SAMPLE QUESTION PAPER - UNIVERSITY OF MADRAS AFFILIATED COLLEGES

LITERARY FORMS

Section – A

Answer any TEN of the following in about 50 words each:  (10x2=20)

1.       What is an elegy?

2.       Define ballad.

3.       What is a dramatic monologue?

4.       What is the theme of an essay?

5.       Define short story.

6.       What are the types of autobiography?

7.       What are the three unities of a drama?

8.       Define masque.

9.       Explain farce.

10.    What is a novel?

11.   Define the epistolary novel.

12.   What is a science fiction?

Section – B

Answer any Five of the following question in about 150 words each:  (5x5=25)

1.       What are the conventions of an epic?

2.       Write briefly on the aphoristic essay.

3.       Discuss postmodern trends in fiction.

4.       Describe objective and subjective autobiographies.

5.       Trace the origin and development of drama in English.

6.       Explain the features of the stream of consciousness novel.

7.       Give a brief account of the various types of comedy.

Section – C

Answer any THREE of the following questions in about 300 words each:  (3x10=30)

1.       Write an essay on ode.

2.       Trace the development of the essay.

3.       ‘drama is a composite art’. Give details about tragedy and comedy.

4.       Evaluate the various types of criticism.

5.       What are the features which make a good novel?