Between the Lines

"I have Jane Austen's diary at the time of writing Sense and Sensibility!" New Critic: "Not interested." "I have William Thackeray's annotated manuscript of Vanity Fair!" NC: "Am I bothered though?" "I have a time machine in which I can travel back to the early 1600s and ask Shakespeare about Hamlet!" NC: "Talk to the hand." This is how one can imagine a conversation with a New Critic may take place. Prior to the 20th century, literary analysis was was very much centered in a romanticist tradition which had its focus on the artist. It wanted to appreciate the intellect and the creative genius of the person who produced the text. After the turn of the century, there was a strong reaction against these old forms, that wanted to put the text back at the forefront of analysis. This movement was known as formalism, and its aim was to remove a text from the historical context of its production, and appreciate it for t...

Does a text have an author? At face value this may seem an absurd question. Surely the author of a text is the person who wrote it? That may seem a perfectly sensible answer, but it is one deeply problematic to literary theory.  If a text has an author then they are the authority over said text and preside over its meaning. The task of textual analysis becomes the process of deciphering the author's intention, and the author's intention is the definitive meaning.  Taking our lead from the skeptical thinkers in my last blog , we know we can undermine the author's authority by claiming that the writer is unaware of their own thought process. We can claim there are sociological, psychological, and historical factors that influence the texts meaning. The author's choice of language may give insights into the unconscious, the ideologies of society, or several other influences that the writer is unaware of at the time of writing. Furthermore, to give the writer a...