Between the Lines

The male and female signs that greet us at the toilet door offer us two very binary options, but in reality sex and gender is far more complicated than those signs suggest. Sex is never as simple as a binary choices, and it is this that queer theory wants you to understand; that all our pre-conceived ideas about gender roles and sexual identities are in fact unstable, and can be destabilized by simply picking them apart. Queer Theory is a relatively new cultural theory which emerged out of the 1990s, but very much has its origins in the work of Michel Foucault . It looked to establish sexual orientation as a fundamental category of analysis and understanding, and thus it has both a social and political aim. It is a criticism informed by a resistance to homophobia and heterosexism by exposing the ideological and institutional practices of heterosexual privilege. It was the feminist critics of the 70s that first began to explore and dissect gender, but the feminist outlook soon began ...

Feminist theory first emerges as a literary theory during the women's movement of the 1960s, but it is important to remember that it followed a much older tradition of thought and action around women's equality, and is very much a renewal of those traditions. The foundations of this theory can be found in texts such as: Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex to name a few, but it is not until the 60s that it began to take a theoretical form. The movement realised the significance of the images of women propagated by literature, and saw it vital to combat and question the authority and coherence of those representations. For this reason, feminist literary criticism should not be seen as an offshoot of the feminist movement, but rather, it is intrinsically linked to the movement as a practical tool in influencing attitudes towards women. This makes feminist litera...

Leda and the Swan BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS A sudden blow: the great wings beating still  Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed  By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,  He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.  How can those terrified vague fingers push  The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?  And how can body, laid in that white rush,  But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?  A shudder in the loins engenders there  The broken wall, the burning roof and tower  And Agamemnon dead.  Being so caught up,  So mastered by the brute blood of the air,  Did she put on his knowledge with his power  Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? WB Yates Leda and the swan is a daring sonnet by Irish poet William Butler Yates that retells the story from Greek mythology of Leda,s impregnation  by the god...

Along with Nietzsche and Marx, Sigmund Freud was the third of the founding fathers of the hermaneutics of suspicion that I covered at the very beginning of this series of blogs. If you haven't read that blog, or have simply forgotten those founding principles, I recommend re-reading before you continue. Psychoanalytical theory centers around the works of Sigmund Freud which was brought back into importance during the 60s, supplemented with post-structuralist ideas, by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan . Jacques Lacan Psychoanalysis works by exploring that gap between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. Freud claimed that the deepest desires and wishes of the conscious will regularly erupt, uninvited, into our lives. Perhaps the most famous of his ideas are written in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). In the work, he sets out the theory of an Oedipal complex or Elektra complex  that is essential to development. He claims that a child's desire for sexual...

Key Terms: Alliteration  - Repeated sound of the first consonant in a series of multiple words. Apostrophe  - Directly addressing something, someone or an abstract concept not present in the poem. Volta -  The turn of thought or argument in a sonnet. Iambic Pentameter -  Line of five feet of unstressed followed by stressed syllables.   Personification -  Human qualities given to animals, objects or ideas. Speaker  - The voice narrating the poem. Not necessarily the poet.  It has been a long time since I have done a close reading, and with all my blogs on theory and criticism, I think its important not to lose sight of our appreciation for the art. So in today's blog we will go back to the basics of appreciating and admiring poetry for what it is. I have chosen to look at this sonnet by John Keats -  Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art. BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—   Not in...

In structuralism , we discovered the theory of a linguistic structure which binds all of our cultural production, but this notion came under continued scrutiny for some of its flawed principles. These critiques of structuralism began to form new ways of looking at and thinking about the textual. One such theory is post-structuralism also known as deconstruction. Jacques Derrida Just as structuralism is not purely a literary theory, neither is deconstruction. The textual is not solely the writing we are looking at, but also the entire way we experience the world. Post-structuralism  is rather difficult to pin down and is arguably not even theory at all. For the most part, we can consider both post-structuralism and deconstruction as the same theory, and the existence of both terms emerged out of critics arguing over which was more accurate. Jacques Derrida was not happy with the term "post-structuralism" as he believed, whilst his theory concerned structures, it was ...

Structuralism is not solely a literary term, it is a methodology that is concerned with language and specifically signs and signification. Structuralists attempt to uncover the structures and patterns that underlie all cultural phenomena. Structuralism is not only applicable to literature, it is applicable to everything humans do from media to fashion. Structuralism can be a deeply complex cultural theory, and as my knowledge of linguistics is minimal, I will refrain from going into the finer details of this theory and focus this blog on its relevance to literature. Ferdinand de Sausseure Structuralist theory emerged out of the work of Ferdinand de Sausseure in the 20th Century. He established the notion of language as a sign system of unchanging patterns and rules. Following his death, his notes and lectures on structural linguistics were compiled and published in the work,  A Course in General Linguistics . The work was highly influential and marks the starting point of st...

Boris Eikenbaum Russian Formalism and New Criticism very much go hand in hand under the umbrella term of formalism. They share similar qualities in that the focus of their study is on the text itself and dismisses the importance of the author. This school of literary theory came out of the will to reform outdated approaches to literature, in Russia, in the early part of the 1900s. It was Boris Eikenbaum who set about recording the principles of this school of theory in his text Theory of the Formal Method. As with  New Criticism, close reading is the key tool for the Russian Formalists with a heavy focus on language, syntax, grammatical construction and the sounds of words. It is the job of formalist critics to consider how these elements function and contribute to the form of the poem. Remember that the form is not what the poem is saying, but how it is saying it. What the poem is about is of no interest to formalists. The very basis of Russian Formalist theory is cente...

"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...

I am very happy to have been offered the opportunity to study a masters in English Literary Studies at the University of Exeter. During the course, I will be specialising in an area that has always engaged me during my undergraduate degree; that of literary theory and criticism. Literary theory can be a daunting world of abstract thoughts and philosophies; so I thought I would begin a series of blogs in which I will break down this broad area of literary studies into easily digestible guides. In these guides I intend to provide an overview of the paradigms and debates that make up literary theory; providing the reader with a good basic introduction, and myself the opportunity to consolidate my own knowledge. Literary theory is a difficult term to pin down. It is a term that incorporates elements of cultural, philosophical and sociological studies, and is made of numerous different approaches, many of which will feature in future blogs. Essentially literary theory is the study o...