Notesale: Turn your study into money

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literary study – one is creative art, the other a species of knowledge and science
there have been attempts to mingle those two up, but that is no good
some say literature cannot be „studied“ at all – we can only read and enjoy it, some say the only objective
knowledge we can gain about literature is purely historiographical
but W&W believe study of literature can and should be systematic
how to do it? Through exact science?
– → This has been suggested before – the example may be the call for objectivity and certainty in
lit
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However, it did not work
literary scientists do have their own valid theoretical and intellectual methods that may be used
(philosophy, history, theology, philology) – and there is a difference between the methods and aims of
the natural sciences and humanities
in the past, many philosophers (Wilhelm Dilthey, W
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2: THE NATURE OF LITERATURE
– what is literature? What is not literature?
– Definitions of literature
– 1) Everything in print
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It identifies literature with history of
civilization, but W&W say that exactly that is the problem
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There is only little
focus on literature and its specifics
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= the canon
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Value judgment is needed – by defining the „great books“ we have to also define
„the non-great books“ that we define as inferior
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But their work usually lacks the proper context, they become simple compilers, for the
study of the great books is isolationist in its nature
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– 3) Art of literature (=Imaginative literature)
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To W&W, this seems „the best“
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Language itself has a lot of cultural heritage within itself, it is not like a stone
we use to sculpt
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– Scientific – language is purely denotative, the sign is completely arbitrary and it aims at
one-to-one correspondence between sign and referent
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– Literary – appears deficient in comparison to the scientific
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It is also expressive
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The individual specifics of the literary use may be accentuated differently in different
types of literatures – a documentary or realistic novel („objective“) may tend to be
actually more scientific, etc
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Colloquial use, commercial, official, religious, etc
etc
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Literary use uses the everyday use, but transforms it and
sometimes violates it in order to induce awarness and attention
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This conception of literature is decriptive, not evaluative, and thus it includes in it all kinds of
fiction, even the worst novels and poems
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3 – THE FUNCTION OF LITERATURE
– the use of literature is correlative: every object is used most efficiently for what it is mainly, and at the
same time the nature of the object follows from its use – it is reciprocal
– the nature and function of literature, acc
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e
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– the useful is defined as „not a waste of time“, something deserving attention
– the sweet is equivalent to „not a bore“, „not a duty“
– the two „notes“ of pleasure should merge together if the work if the work of literature works successfully
–
–
–
–
–
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literature can take the place of many things and acquire it as function – travelling, history, direct
experience
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) There is a view, also, that art is propaganda – the writer is not the discoverer but the
persuasice purveyor of the truth
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„Research“ sucks as well)
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three main branches of literary study:
1) THEORY – explore principles, categories, criteria and functions of literature
2) CRITICISM – study of concrete works of literature (= „practical criticism“), main
process is interpretation (= hermeneutics) that attempts to analyze, interpret and evaluate
individual works or groups of works of literature
3) LITERARY HISTORY – study of literary biography, of historical and political and
social development
→ all these branches complement one another, there cannot be one with the other
→ some people tried to use those separately, it didnt work
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Some are obsessed with the author´s
intention (but acc
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It is rather the result of a
process of accretion, i
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the history of its criticism by its many readers in many
ages
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in the USA, there is a serious danger – a RELATIVISM EQUIVALENT TO AN ANARCHY OF
VALUES
– no literary history has ever been written without any selection or evaluation

Ch
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folk-tale themes and their migration, of how and
when they entered the „higher“ literature
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Some define it as concerned with „the world literature“ or „universal literature“

the great argument for „comparative“ or „general“ literature is the obvious falsity of the idea of a selfenclosed national literature
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The imporatnce of linguistic barriers was magnified during the 19th century – this emphasis was due to the
very close association between Romantic nationalism and the rise of modern organized literary history
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6 – THE ORDERING AND ESTABLISHING OF EVIDENCE
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the first task of literary scholarship is the assembly of materials, the examination of authorship, the
careful undoing of the effects of time, etc
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This has been done quite successfully in English literary
history, though several texts are missing
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There are different editions, some include important criticism or introduction
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(Annotation = the explanation of a text, linguistic,
historical, which is different from a general commentary)
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Chronology is
difficult if texts are undated
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Questions of forgeries, frauds, etc
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Some people work with the authorial intention only
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Some try to explain literature by the intellectual „climate“
or atmosphere at the given time
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7 - Literature and Biography
– the approach that the creator of a text is the most important thing
– Biography, in the study of literature, may be used in three ways:
– 1) In relation to the production of the text
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His intellectual, moral development
– 3) Study of the poetic process and of the guy´s psychology
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Reconstruction sucks, and it is almost impossible
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Some authors invite to that – e
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Romantics who wrote about themselves
there are two types of poets – objective and subjective, and our use of biography in the analysis of their
texts should be differents
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It doesnt work so simply
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The problem of personality in literature – we may deny personality at all, but at the same time we
cannot deny that works by one author have undeniable similarity
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Ch
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The „literary genius“
has always attracted attention
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If the writer is a neurotic, does it show in the
work? Some theories see art as neurosis
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Homo Scriptor is not a single
type and it has been viewed differently in the past
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„Inspiration“ is the traditional name for the unconscious
factor in creation
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The question of the conscious and unconscious mind
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How do the people the author
meet get projected in his work? The experience?
– The study of the psychological types and laws present within works of literature
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Ch
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Every writer can be studied as a social being
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We can use statistics in this approach
(what is the perception of workmen / bourgeois among writers?) Sometimes, writers have put
themselves at the service of another class
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The modern writer´s isolation from society is the thing now
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The question of censorship
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Used as a social document, literature can be made to yield the outlines
of social history (e
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Addison and Fielding represent the newly arised bourgeois of the 18 th cen
England)
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Max Weber has a concept of ideal social types (class hatred, snobbery, hatred of Jews)
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Ch
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Where and how do these norms exist? There is no single system of norms, but rather a system which is
made up from several strata, each implying its own subordinate group
– W&W use the theory of Roman Ingarden, who has employed the methods of Husserl´s
„Phenomenology“ to arrive at such distinctions of strata

–
–

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STRATA:
– 1) The sound stratum
– 2) The stratum of the units of meaning – every single word has its meaning and combines into
units in the context, into syntagmas and sentence patterns
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(…) A
character in a novel grows only out of the units of meaning, is made of the sentences“
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That
is because the structure is dynamic (we may imagine it as a concept, as variables)
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Ch
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Words
are linked up or contrasted by rhythm
3 different degrees of sound-meaning patterns:
– Imitation of actual physical sounds (cuckoo)
– Sound-painting – something in between ??
– Sound-metaphor – arbitrary

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3 main types of metrical theories:
– 1) Graphic – the oldest, derived from Renaissance handbooks
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14 – STYLE AND STYLISTICS
– a literary work is a selection from a given language; the relation between language and literature is a
dialectical relation (language makes up the text, but at the same time literature has profoundly
influenced language)
– W&W stress the importance of the linguistic study of literature
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e
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15 – IMAGE, METAPHOR, SYMBOL, MYTH
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–

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Image
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In this way it is used also in literature – it is a (visual) image that stands for or
refers to something invisible, inner
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Something stands for something else – used in mathematics, religion, literature
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It is different from image in that there is a recurrence and
persistence of the symbol
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A narrative, a story
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Myth, historically, is the spoken part of ritual, the story which the ritual enacts
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Nietszche´s view is that the modern man lacks mythology
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= The traditional figures of contiguity (= similarity)
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Metaphor
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In terms of history of
metaphor, it (acc
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In the baroque periods, the characteristic figure become the paradox, the oxymoron, and the catachresis

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Many people do not take it seriously
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„Fiction“ may have negative connotations as „not true“ - however, realism or naturalism are no
„better“ than surrealism or romanticism, for the distinction is not between reality and illusion, but between
differing conceptions of reality
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There is always a
world, or Kosmos, of a novelist which includes plot, characters, setting, tone
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There is a certain timespan, as it was in the old narrative (the traditional
timespan of an epic was 1 year)
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Historically, there are two chief modes of narrative fiction that are distinguished, the romance and the novel
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There are, parallelly, 2 types of plots: romantic and realistic
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Composition or motivation includes narrative method: scale, pace, devices, the proportioning of scenes
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Setting, in which the plot takes place, may be a massive determinant – it may be an environment viewed as
physical or social causation over which the character has no control (naturalism)
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Ch
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value (=take interest in) x evaluate (=execute a judgement)
-W&W: „Men ought to VALUE literature for being what it is; they ought to EVALUATE it in terms and in
degrees of its literary value, and of its own NATURE“
-in order to be able to evaluate work of art, we have to answer the question: What Is Its Function?
-The issue of aesthetics lies between the notion of arts being instrumental to science and society and the notion of
aesthetic experience
-Kant: „the purposiveness withouth purpose“ - Kant believed that art had an „aesthetic superiority of applied
beauty“, which is closely connected with one´s feelings and it is valued for its own qualities only …
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-Evaluation cannot be based on personas of authors as well
-W&W: One should not „try to place the poem as to author, period or school before judging it“
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“ „To spend time and attention
on a poem is already a judgment of value
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“
Ch
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– There is also prejudice that no history of literature is possible in terms of causal explanation by some
other human activity
– the other problem is that literature is very much personal, it reflects the person of the author, and it is
therefore less connected to the development of general history than other forms of art – it is hard or
even imporrisble to trace literature as art in isolation from the social history, biographies of authors,
criticism, etc
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There is a history of literary genres and types
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– → the exactly same problem arises when we study a period or movement
– → most literary historeis divide their periods in accordance with political changes
(literature as determined by political and social environment)
– → the apparent confusion was caused by history itself
– → literary historians first have to pay attention to the ideas and conceptions of
the writers themselves and therefore they have to be content with accepting
their own divisions
– → writing the history of a period means basically describing the decay of one
convention and the rise of a new one, or the rise of a new generation



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