Literary Theory and Methodology

1. Literary Theory and Methodology Session Five: Marxist Criticism

2. Agenda • Jakobson’s model of communication • Test • Marxist Criticism: Some Key Concepts • Examples

3. Jakobson’s Six Factors of Verbal Communication context Addresser message addressee contact code

4. Jakobson’s Six Functions of Verbal Communication Referential Emotive poetic conative phatic metalingual

5. Mimetic criticism • The literary work of art is a mirror. • It imitates, or reflects, or represents reality, or life, or the world. • Prescribes the kinds of things a literary work ought to mirror.

6. Marxist criticism • What is being / ought to be reflected? • The nature of reflection • Base and superstructure • Class struggle • History as a dialectic process • Ideology • Hegemony

7. 1. What is being / ought to be reflected? • Realism vs. Modernism • Society vs. The individual

8. 2. The nature of reflection • How is reality being reflected? • Is literature passive or active?

9. 3. Base and superstructure • Base: socio-economic relations between classes • Superstructure: ideology, politics, religion, philosophy, literature (?)

10. 4. Class struggle • Capitalists vs. workers • The means of production are privatized while the process of production is socialized

11. 5. History as a dialectic process • Dialectics and dialectical materialism • Dynamic relationships of interconnectedness between the classes • The internal tensions and contradictions between and among the classes

12. 6. Ideology • = superstructure • A set of ideas, norms, and values that form a distortion of reality (opposed to science) • False consciousness; hidden and illusory assumptions that naturalise our ways of making sense of and dealing with the world

13. Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction • The general material process of production of ideas, beliefs and values in social life • Ideas and beliefs (whether true or false) which symbolize the conditions and life-experiences of a specific, socially significant group or class • The promotion and legitimation of the interests of such social groups in the face of opposing interests • Such promotion and legitimation when carried out by a dominant social power • Ideas and beliefs which help to legitimatethe interests of a ruling group or class specifically by distortion and dissimulation • Similar false and deceptive beliefs which arise not from the interests of a dominant class but from the structure of society as a whole

14. 7. Hegemony • The way a (small) class of people non-violently maintains power over another (larger) class

15. An Example: Graham Greene, ”I Spy”