Literary Methodologies Lecture Material Master Program in Literature Department of Literature, Faculty of Humanities University of Indonesia

by Tommy Christomy ( [email protected]) Faculty of Humanities University of Indonesia

Semula   

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Positivism Hermeneutics Phenomenology: understanding reality through informant’s eyes, producing convinced description of what they experience rather than provide explanations and causes Ethnography  a narrative that describes a culture or a part of culture--

Sosiologi Sastra    

Author Texts Audience Patron

Methodologies          

Metamorphosis and expansion: AESTHETICS and the production of Aesthetics in a given time and place (Formalisms) Fixed Standard (Formalism) New Critics and literature formal properties/apolitical stance The significance of form in political and social interest (Karl Marx) Literature and individual personality (Freud, phsyconalitic) Beyond the formal limit of the text (questioning the power of text) Implicit political agenda of literary criticism Text and context  literary analysis to cultural analysis studying social/cultural realm Pluralistic (text)

Methodologies       

Chose a topic Acquaint yourself thoroughly with your text Chose appropriate methodologies Understanding methodologies strengths and weakness as well as basis principle Provide ample textual evidence to support analysis and interpretative claims Alwayls consider your readers and their needs as you write and revise No methodology explains a text completely or definitively (Hall 2001)

Interpretative Paradigms

Literary and Cultural Theory Donald E. Hall (2001)        

Formalist analysis Reader-Response Analysis Marxist and Materialist Analysis Psychoanalytic analysis Deconstruction and Post-Structuralist Analysis Feminist Analysis Race, Ethnicity, and Post Colonial Analysis The New Historicism and Pluralistic Cultural Analysis

Formalist 

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The aesthetic experience is unique, powerful, and significant Literature has formal aspect that distinguish it clearly from other types of expression Literature can be usefully subdivided into genres Literary Analysis has its own specifict

Reader-Response 

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The “meaning” of a text is not wholly intrinsic to the text The Reading experience may be private and subjective Text often presuppose an “ideal” reader, while a “real” reader has his or her own idiosyncratic background, context, expectations, and interpretative strategies

Reader-Response 

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The investigations suggested above may lead to research in psychology, social history, gender studies, or other fields As readers proceed through a text, they make choices and engage in interpretative process that be traced and analyzed The success of reader-response analysis depends largery on the sophistication of the critic’s meta-theoretical approach to the reading process and the quality of the evidence presented to support any conclusion or generalizations

Marxist and Materialist 

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An attention to the material conditions of life and a critical engagement with our attitudes about those conditions are essential for achieving positive social change The traditional social structure of classes, within and around texts, is built on the oppresion of workers Social classes, within and around texts, ultimately have conflicting interest, even if they share certain beliefs at the present time

Marxist and Materialist     

Literary and other cultural texts are ideological in background, form, and function The production and consumption of texts reflect class ideologies Representations within texts reflect class ideologies The production, consumption, and content of literary and cultural critism is also ideological in nature A key role of the critic is to elucidate textual and extratextual ideologies and thereby to further class awareness and positive social change

Psychoanalytic  

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Human activity is not reducible to conscious intent While biology may have some part to play in the development of human psychology, environment also has an important role Individuals move thorough development stages early in life, and traumas or experiences during that process may have a lasting effect on personality The psychology of authors has an impact on literary and other forms of cultural representation

Psychoanalytic  

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Characters in texts may also have a complex psychology Literary and other cultural texts may have a psychological impact on readers or meet a psychological need in them It is unlikely on theory can ever fully capture the complexity of human psychology and development, which can vary widely across cultures, classes, genders, sexual orientations, and familial and other personal contexts Thus the literary and cultural critic, like the psychoanalyst, must be very careful to avoid “imposing” meanings on a given story or text

Deconstruction and PostStructuralist  

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There is no transcendental signified Although relationships among signs account for contextual meanings, those relationships are never fixed or fully knowable Text betray traces of their awn instability There is nothing outside of the text The deployment of power is polyvalent, as are all forms of signification Cultural and literary criticism is a form of signification

Feminist 

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Language, institutions, and social power structures have reflected patriarchal interests throughout much of history; this has had a profound impact on women’s ability to express themselves and the quality of their daily lives Yet at the same time, women have resisted and subverted patriarchal oppression in variety of ways This combination of patriarchal oppression and women’s resistance to it is apparent in literary and other cultural texts For some feminist, the most important way to resist patriarchy is to challenge laws and other institutional barriers to women’s equality

Feminist 

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For more essentialist feminist, resistance often means focusing on the differences between men and women as well as ensuring the social valuation and expression of the latter’s unique abilities For feminist interested in issues of race and ethnicity, both sexism and racism demand analysis in literary and other cultural texts For materialist feminist, resistance to patriarchy must include thorough questioning of the class system as well as the gender system For past-structuralist feminist, man/ woman is a a hierarchical binary that may be challenged through intense critical scrutiny

Race, Ethnicity, and Post Colonial 

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Categories of race and ethnicity have been used in ways that have empowered and oppressed This differentiation of people is reflected in and reinforced by language and metaphor This differentiation of peoples, as well as forces of economic greed nd expansionism, are reflected in a centuries-long history of imperialism and colonialization

Race, Ethnicity, and Post Colonial 

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This differentiation of peoples and its political consequences are reflected not only in literary and other forms of representation but also our very notion of literature Thus an understanding of textual reflections of racism and ethnocentrism demand san attention to cultural history and belief systems of the social group(s) being portrayed and discussed The analysis of racism and ethnocentrism in texts from the past may have relevance to the ways we live our lives today Textual analysis of race, ethnicity, and post-coloniality can serve as a starting point for positive forms of social change in the future

The New Historicism and Pluralistic Cultural 

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History is not linearly progressive and is not reducible to the activities of prominent individuals The mundane activities and conditions of daily life can tell us much about the belief systems of a time period Literary and other cultural texts are connected in complex ways to the time period in which they were created

The New Historicism and Pluralistic Cultural   

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Many different types of cultural texts can reflect and advance social interests A synthetic methodology or pluralistic approach still requires both precision and unity Many of the rules apply equally to interpreters of literary texts and to the interpretations that they generate Therefore no reading of a literary or other cultural text is definitive

What is Anthropology    

Inductive instead of deductive People/folks concept Thick description Comparable

What is Anthropology    

Inductive instead of deductive People/folks concept Thick description Comparable

Anthropologi Sastra    

Author Texts Audience Patron

What is sastra?

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Canonised text: interpretation, model building, the sign function of medium, turning the text into the reflection of the needs question Why literature reflect/capture something spesial that neither philosophies of history nor sociological theories

Cermin, Cerminan, Bercermin    

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literarue= mirror Why such a mirror as literature should exist and how it enables us to find things out? Literature  medium Anthropological needs What anthropological needs? To merely tasted oriented, impresionic type of intrepretation, to provide model Medium  starting point whya we have such medium to continue, renewly (p. 264)

Anthropological Implication  

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Literary anthropology Literature  instrument of explolartion (what is literature, what is literary in literature, poetic in poetry) Literature is not self sufficient (p. 264) Function

Anthropological Implication   

Why do we need a fiction Intention, function, form Fiction = mode of existence of all reality, basic for constituting reality

Enthography