Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide PDF (3rd Edition)

All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:37 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost Critical Theory Today “Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today is an accessible introduction to many of the major schools of literary interpretation. She provides clear explanations and illuminating cross-comparisons that work very eﬀectively in the undergraduate classroom.” Elizabeth Renker, Professor of English, The Ohio State University, USA “For anyone who wants to understand contemporary cultural theory, Critical Theory Today is the undisputed starting point for that understanding. No other introduction to theory presents each theory on its own terms in the way that Lois Tyson’s indispensable work does. She combines penetrating clarity with theoretical sophistication in order to create a book that everyone can learn from. The welcome new third edition provides a keyhole into what’s going on right now in the rapidly changing world of contemporary theory.” Todd McGowan, Associate Professor, The University of Vermont, USA This thoroughly updated third edition of Critical Theory Today oﬀers an accessible intro- duction to contemporary critical theory, providing in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today, including: feminism; psychoanalysis; Marxism; reader- response theory; New Criticism; structuralism and semiotics; deconstruction; new histori- cism and cultural criticism; lesbian, gay, and queer theory; African American criticism and postcolonial criticism. This new edition features: a major expansion of the chapter on postcolonial criticism that includes topics such as Nordicism, globalization and the ‘end’ of postcolonial theory, global tourism and global conservation an extended explanation of each theory, using examples from everyday life, popular culture, and literary texts a list of speciﬁc questions critics ask about literary texts an interpretation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory a list of questions for further practice to guide readers in applying each theory to diﬀerent literary works updated and expanded bibliographies Both engaging and rigorous, this is a “how-to” book for undergraduate and graduate students new to critical theory and for college professors who want to broaden their repertoire of critical approaches to literature. Lois Tyson is Professor Emerita of English at Grand Valley State University, USA EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:37 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use This page intentionally left blank EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:37 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Critical Theory Today A user-friendly guide Third edition Lois Tyson All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:37 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost Third edition published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1998, 2006, 2015 Lois Tyson The right of Lois Tyson to be identiﬁed as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identiﬁcation and explanation without intent to All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. infringe. First edition published in 1998 by Routledge Second edition published in 2006 by Routledge British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tyson, Lois, 1950– Critical theory today: a user-friendly guide / Lois Tyson. – 3rd edition. pages; cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Criticism. I. Title. PN81.T97 2014 801’.95–dc23 2014005974 ISBN: 978-0-415-50674-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-50675-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-76079-7 (ebk) Typeset in Perpetua by Taylor & Francis Books Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:37 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost I gratefully dedicate this book to my students and to my teachers. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. I hope I will always have diﬃculty telling you apart. Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost This page intentionally left blank EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Contents Preface to the third edition xii Preface for instructors xiv All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Acknowledgments xvi 1 Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask 1 2 Psychoanalytic criticism 11 The origins of the unconscious 12 The defenses, anxiety, and core issues 15 Dreams and dream symbols 18 The meaning of death 21 The meaning of sexuality 23 Lacanian psychoanalysis 25 Classical psychoanalysis and literature 33 Some questions psychoanalytic critics ask about literary texts 36 “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”: a psychoanalytic reading of The Great Gatsby 38 Questions for further practice: psychoanalytic approaches to other literary works 48 For further reading 48 For advanced readers 49 3 Marxist criticism 51 The fundamental premises of Marxism 51 The class system in America 52 The role of ideology 54 Human behavior, the commodity, and the family 59 Marxism and literature 62 Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost viii Contents Some questions Marxist critics ask about literary texts 65 You are what you own: a Marxist reading of The Great Gatsby 66 Questions for further practice: Marxist approaches to other literary works 76 For further reading 76 For advanced readers 76 4 Feminist criticism 79 Traditional gender roles 81 A summary of feminist premises 87 Getting beyond patriarchy 88 French feminism 91 Multicultural feminism 100 Gender studies and feminism 103 Feminism and literature 112 Some questions feminist critics ask about literary texts 114 “ … next they’ll throw everything overboard … ”: a feminist reading of The Great Gatsby 115 Questions for further practice: feminist approaches to other literary works 125 For further reading 126 For advanced readers 126 5 New Criticism 129 “The text itself” 129 Literary language and organic unity 131 A New Critical reading of “There Is a Girl Inside” 137 New Criticism as intrinsic, objective criticism 141 The single best interpretation 142 The question New Critics asked about literary texts 143 The “deathless song” of longing: a New Critical reading of The Great Gatsby 144 Questions for further practice: New Critical approaches to other literary works 157 For further reading 158 For advanced readers 159 6 Reader-response criticism 161 The house passage 162 Transactional reader-response theory 165 Aﬀective stylistics 166 Subjective reader-response theory 169 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Contents ix Psychological reader-response theory 173 Social reader-response theory 176 Deﬁning readers 178 Some questions reader-response critics ask about literary texts 180 Projecting the reader: a reader-response analysis of The Great Gatsby 181 Questions for further practice: reader-response approaches to other literary works 193 For further reading 194 For advanced readers 195 7 Structuralist criticism 198 Structural linguistics 201 Structural anthropology 203 Semiotics 205 Structuralism and literature 207 The structure of literary genres 209 The structure of narrative (structuralist narratology) 212 The structure of literary interpretation 217 Some questions structuralist critics ask about literary texts 220 “Seek and ye shall ﬁnd” … and then lose: a structuralist reading of The Great Gatsby 221 Questions for further practice: structuralist approaches to other literary works 231 For further reading 232 For advanced readers 232 8 Deconstructive criticism 235 Deconstructing language 235 Deconstructing our world 241 Deconstructing human identity 243 Deconstructing literature 244 A deconstructive reading of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” 246 Some questions deconstructive critics ask about literary texts 251 “ … the thrilling, returning trains of my youth … ”: a deconstructive reading of The Great Gatsby 252 Questions for further practice: deconstructive approaches to other literary works 264 For further reading 265 For advanced readers 266 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use x Contents 9 New historical and cultural criticism 267 New historicism 267 New historicism and literature 276 Cultural criticism 280 Cultural criticism and literature 282 Some questions new historical and cultural critics ask about literary texts 285 The discourse of the self-made man: a new historical reading of The Great Gatsby 287 Questions for further practice: new historical and cultural criticism of other literary works 297 For further reading 298 For advanced readers 298 10 Lesbian, gay, and queer criticism 302 The marginalization of LGBTQ people 303 Lesbian criticism 308 Gay criticism 314 Queer criticism 319 Some shared features of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism 324 Some questions lesbian, gay, and queer critics ask about literary texts 326 Will the real Nick Carraway please come out? A queer reading of The Great Gatsby 327 Questions for further practice: lesbian, gay, and queer approaches to other literary works 338 For further reading 340 For advanced readers 340 11 African American criticism 343 Racial issues and African American literary history 343 Recent developments: critical race theory 350 Basic tenets 352 African American criticism and literature 368 Some questions African American critics ask about literary texts 377 But where’s Harlem? An African American reading of The Great Gatsby 379 Questions for further practice: African American approaches to other literary works 392 For further reading 393 For advanced readers 394 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Contents xi 12 Postcolonial criticism 398 Colonialist ideology and postcolonial identity 399 Foundational postcolonial debates 406 Globalization and the “end” of postcolonial theory 409 Postcolonial theory and global tourism 412 Postcolonial theory and global conservation 416 Postcolonial criticism and literature 421 Some questions postcolonial critics ask about literary texts 425 The colony within: a postcolonial reading of The Great Gatsby 428 Questions for further practice: postcolonial approaches to other literary works 440 For further reading 441 For advanced readers 442 13 Gaining an overview 448 Index 454 EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Preface to the third edition Since the second edition of Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide was pub- All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. lished in 2006, the ﬁeld of critical theory has continued to evolve in a number of ways. For example, an interest in critical theory, sometimes under the rubric of cultural theory, continues to facilitate cross fertilization among a number of diﬀerent educational ﬁelds that are often divided into separate university departments – such as literature, history, anthropology, philosophy, and sociology – and continues to inform the educational programs it helped create, including women’s studies, gender studies, and studies in popular culture. So it is not surprising that the use of one or more of the theoretical perspectives addressed in this book has become a staple of undergraduate courses in these areas or that most graduate level programs in these ﬁelds assume that their students will arrive with some degree of theore- tical knowledge. A relatively recent development, however, is that an interest in critical theory – which is largely a production of western or westernized educa- tional systems – has grown in many non-western, non-English speaking countries that have their own respected traditions of knowledge. For example, university presses in China, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia are currently in the process of translating the second edition of Critical Theory Today into their own languages for use by their own students and teachers. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the purpose of this book. It is still an introduction to critical theory written by a teacher of critical theory and literature. And it is still intended for teachers and college-level students who want to learn about critical theory and its usefulness in helping us to achieve a better under- standing of literature. As in the case of any new edition of a textbook, you’ll ﬁnd in the third edition of Critical Theory Today new theoretical concepts and vocabulary, some expanded discussions of foundational theoretical issues, and, at the end of every chapter, updated and expanded bibliographies “For further reading” and “For advanced readers.” You’ll also ﬁnd a reorganized and expanded chapter on post- colonial criticism that includes, among other additions, new sections entitled “Globalization and the ‘end’ of postcolonial theory,” “Postcolonial theory and global Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost Preface to the third edition xiii tourism,” and “Postcolonial theory and global conservation,” which reﬂect recent developments in this ﬁeld. Because I am a teacher writing for teachers and stu- dents, the third edition also contains clariﬁcations wherever my own students have had repeated diﬃculty, over the years, in understanding a particular concept addressed in the book. Thus you’ll ﬁnd, to cite just a few representative examples, a clariﬁcation of the relationship among the operations of the ego, id, and superego in the chapter on psychoanalytic criticism; an expanded explanation of the concept of undecidability in the chapter on deconstructive criticism; and, in the chapter on lesbian, gay, and queer criticism, additional discussion and literary examples of the concept of homosocial bonding. Indeed, my own two copies of the second edition, which I’ve used in my classes, contain innumerable little page markers where a clariﬁcation, word change, or additional concrete example was deemed helpful, and all of those small changes also have been made. As I’ve so often told my students, a better understanding of the world in which we live, it seems to me, automatically comes along for the ride when we study literature, and the study of critical theory makes that enterprise even more pro- ductive. I believed that proposition when I wrote the ﬁrst and second editions of the book you now hold in your hands, and I’ve come to believe it more with every critical theory class I’ve taught. I hope that your experience of the third edition of Critical Theory Today also leads you to ﬁnd that small truth to be self-evident. EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Preface for instructors The writing of this textbook was the product of a sense of pedagogical frustration All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. that I suspect many of you may share. Over the last few decades, critical theory has become a dominant force in higher education. It is now considered an essential part of graduate education, and it plays an increasingly visible role in the under- graduate classroom as well. Yet many college students at all levels, as well as some of their professors, remain confused by much of this jargon-ridden discipline, which seems to defy their understanding. As one colleague said to his students, “Critical theory is a bus, and you’re not going to get on it.” Anthologies of essays often used in critical theory courses – which generally include pieces by such frequently arcane theorists as Lacan, Derrida, Spivak, Benjamin, and the like – and books that oﬀer high-tech summaries of these theorists’ views don’t help the majority of students who are unfamiliar with the basic principles one must understand in order to understand these texts. Conversely, many of the theory textbooks that are written in accessible language are too limited in scope to oﬀer an adequate introduction to this complex ﬁeld. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide attempts to ﬁll this gap by oﬀering an accessible, unusually thorough introduction to this diﬃcult ﬁeld that will (1) enable readers to grasp heretofore obscure theoretical concepts by relating them to our everyday experience; (2) show them how to apply theoretical perspectives to lit- erary works; and (3) reveal the relationships among theories – their diﬀerences, similarities, strengths, and weaknesses – by applying them all to a single literary work: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925). I’ve chosen The Great Gatsby for this purpose for several reasons. In addition to lending itself readily to the eleven theoretical readings I oﬀer, the novel is fairly short, quite readable, and familiar, both in terms of its treatment of common themes and in terms of readers’ prior exposure to the work. In fact, many of my colleagues who teach critical theory have indicated that they would prefer a text- book that uses The Great Gatsby for its literary applications because of their own familiarity with the novel. Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost Preface for instructors xv Aimed primarily at newcomers to the ﬁeld, each chapter explains the basic principles of the theory it addresses, including the basic principles of literary application, in order to enable students to write their own theoretical interpretations of literature and read with insight what the theorists themselves have written. Thus, this book can be used as the only text in a course or as a precursor to (or in tandem with) critical theory anthologies. Each chapter has grown out of classroom practice, has been thoroughly ﬁeld tested, and has demonstrated its capacity to motivate students by showing them what critical theory can oﬀer, not only in terms of their practical understanding of literary texts, but also in terms of their personal understanding of themselves and the world in which they live. In a very real sense, this textbook is a “how-to” manual for readers who will probably come to their study of theory with some anxiety, whether they are ﬁrst-year theory students or college professors who wish to familiarize themselves with theoretical perspectives with which they have not yet become thoroughly acquainted. Chapters are sequenced for a speciﬁc pedagogical purpose: to demonstrate how critical theories both argue and overlap with one another, sometimes overturning, sometimes building on the insights of competing theories. Nevertheless, each chapter is self-explanatory and was written to stand on its own. Therefore, this textbook can be customized to ﬁt your own instructional needs by assigning the chapters in any order you choose; by eliminating some chapters entirely; or by assigning only certain sections of particular chapters, for which purpose chapter subtitles should prove helpful. Similarly, the “Questions for further practice” (which follow each reading of The Great Gatsby and can serve as paper topics) encourage students to apply each theory to other well-known, frequently anthologized literary works, but you can have your students apply these questions to any works you select. However you choose to use Critical Theory Today, I hope you will agree that, if critical theory is a bus, it is one our students have every reason to climb aboard. And if this book does its job, they will even enjoy the ride. EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Acknowledgments My most sincere thanks go to the following friends and colleagues for their helpful All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. suggestions and moral support: Hannah Berkowitz, Bertrand Bickersteth, Pat Bloem, Kathleen Blumreich, Linda Chown, Gretchen Cline, Brian Deyo, Michelle Disler, Diane Griﬃn Crowder, Michelle DeRose, Milt Ford, Jeremy Franceschi, David Greetham, Chance Guyette, Karen Hammes, Michael Hartnett, Alan Hausman, Roseanne Hoefel, Bill Hoﬀman, Jay Hullett, Howard Kahane, Stephen Lacey, James Lindesay, Rosalind Srb Mayberry, Corinna McLeod, Scott Minar, Joanie Pearlman, James Phelan, Rob Rozema, Sue William Silverman, Veta Smith Tucker, Jill Van Antwerp, Megan Ward, Brian White, and Sharon Whitehill. Special thanks also go to Grand Valley State University for its generous ﬁnancial support of this project – especially to Dean Fred Antczak; the late Dean Forrest Armstrong; Professor Jo Miller; and Nancy Raymond, formerly of the Zumberge Library. I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to the wonderful staﬀ of the Loutit District Library in Grand Haven, Michigan, especially to the Interlibrary Loan Department, which is to say especially to Julie M. Williams. At Routledge Press, I am gratefully indebted to Ruth Hilsdon and Elizabeth Levine for their advice and support throughout this project and Polly Dodson and Christina Taranto for their prompt and gracious assistance always. Fond gratitude is still oﬀered to Phyllis Korper, formerly of Garland Press, for her unﬂagging enthusiasm for the ﬁrst edition. Finally, the deepest gratitude is expressed to Mac Davis, the only brave heart who read every word of every chapter of every edition, and to Lenny Briscoe for his invaluable spiritual guidance. Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:38 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost 1 Everything you wanted to know about critical theory but were afraid to ask Why should we bother to learn about critical theories? Is it really worth the trouble? Won’t all those abstract concepts (if I can even understand any of them) All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. interfere with my natural, personal interpretations of literature? These ques- tions, or ones like them, are probably the questions most frequently asked by new students of critical theory, regardless of their age or educational status, and such questions reveal the two-fold nature of our reluctance to study theory: (1) fear of failure, and (2) fear of losing the intimate, exciting, magical connection with lit- erature that is our reason for reading it in the ﬁrst place. I think both these fears are well founded. With notable exceptions, most theoretical writing – by the big names in the ﬁeld and by those who attempt to explain their ideas to novices – is ﬁlled with technical terms and theoretical concepts that assume a level of familiarity newcomers simply don’t have. And because such writing doesn’t seem to connect with our love of literature, let alone with the everyday world we live in, it seems that theory’s purpose must be to take us into some abstract, intellectual realm in which we try to impress one another by using the latest theoretical jargon (which we hope our peers haven’t heard yet) and dropping the names of obscure theorists (whom we hope our peers haven’t read yet). In other words, because knowledge of critical theory has become, over the last decade or so, a mark of status, an educational “property” for which students and professors compete, it has also become a costly commodity that is diﬃcult to acquire and to maintain at the state of the art. Indeed, I think the anxiety that most of us bring to our study of critical theory is due largely to our initial encounters with theoretical jargon or, more accurately, with people who use theoretical jargon to inﬂate their own status. To cite just one example, a student recently asked me what “the death of the author” means. He’d heard the phrase bandied about, but no one explained it to him, so he felt excluded from the conversation. Because the meaning of the phrase wasn’t evident in the context in which he’d heard it used, the student felt that it must be a complex concept. Because those who used the phrase acted as though they belon- ged to an elite club, at the same time as they pretended that everyone knew what it Copyright 2015. Routledge. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 8/26/2020 5:30 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM AN: 864907 ; Lois Tyson.; Critical Theory Today : A User-Friendly Guide Account: s5153412.main.ehost 2 Everything you wanted to know about theory meant, he felt stupid for not knowing the term and, therefore, afraid to ask about it, afraid to reveal his stupidity. In fact, “the death of the author” is a simple con- cept, but unless someone explains it to you the phrase makes little sense. “The death of the author” merely refers to the change in attitude toward the role of the author in our interpretation of literary works. In the early decades of the twentieth century, students of literature were taught that the author was our primary con- cern in reading a literary work: our task was to examine the author’s life in order to discover what the author meant to communicate – his or her message, theme, or moral – which is called authorial intention. Our focus has changed over the years to the point that, now, among many contemporary critical theorists at least, the author is no longer considered a meaningful object of analysis. We focus, instead, on the reader; on the ideological, rhetorical, or aesthetic structure of the text; or on the culture in which the text was produced, usually without reference to the author. So, for all intents and purposes, the author is “dead.” It’s a simple idea, really, yet, like many ideas that belong to a particular academic discipline, it can be used to exclude people rather than to communicate with them. This situation is especially objectionable because it results in the exclusion of those of us who might stand to beneﬁt from critical theory in the most concrete ways: current and future teachers at the elementary and secondary levels; faculty and students at community colleges; and faculty and students in all departments at the thousands of liberal arts colleges responsible for the bulk of American education but whose members may not be on the “fast track” to academic stardom. What are the concrete ways in which we can beneﬁt from an understanding of critical theory? As I hope the following chapters will illustrate, theory can help us learn to see ourselves and our world in valuable new ways, ways that can inﬂuence how we educate our children, both as parents and teachers; how we view televi- sion, from the nightly news to situation comedies; how we behave as voters and consumers; how we react to others with whom we do not agree on social, reli- gious, and political issues; and how we recognize and deal with our own motives, fears, and desires. And if we believe that human productions – not just literature but also, for example, ﬁlm, music, art, science, technology, and architecture – are outgrowths of human experience and therefore reﬂect human desire, conﬂict, and potential, then we can learn to interpret those productions in order to learn something important about ourselves as a species. Critical theory, I think you will ﬁnd, provides excellent tools for that endeavor, tools that not only can show us our world and ourselves through new and valuable lenses but also can strengthen our ability to think logically, creatively, and with a good deal of insight. To that end, each chapter will explain the basic principles of the theory it addresses in order to enable you to read what the theorists themselves have writ- ten. Each chapter will focus on a critical theory that has had a signiﬁcant impact on the practice of literary criticism today and will attempt to show the world through EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:30 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Everything you wanted to know about theory 3 the lens of that theory. Think of each theory as a new pair of eyeglasses through which certain elements of our world are brought into focus while others, of course, fade into the background. Did that last idea give you pause, I hope? Why should some ideas have to fade into the background in order to focus on others? Doesn’t this suggest that each theory can oﬀer only an incomplete picture of the world? It seems unavoidable, and part of the paradox of seeing and learning is that in order to understand some things clearly we must restrict our focus in a way that highlights certain elements and ignores others, just as the close-up camera crystal- lizes whatever it frames and renders the rest a blurred background. Perhaps this is why, for example, science and religion often seem so at odds, not just because they often oﬀer conﬂicting explanations of the same phenomena but because they focus our vision on diﬀerent dimensions of our own experience. This is why it seems to me so important that we study a number of theories in succession, not just to remind ourselves that multiple viewpoints are important if we are to see the whole picture but to grasp the very process of understanding that underlies human experience and to thereby increase our ability to see both the value and the lim- itations of every method of viewing the world. In fact, one of the most important things theory can show us is that methodologies are ways of seeing the world, whether we’re talking about physics or sociology, literature or medicine. Indeed, because they are ways of seeing the world, critical theories compete with one another for dominance in educational and cultural communities. Each theory oﬀers itself as the most (or the only) accurate means of understanding human experience. Thus, competition among theories has always had a strong political dimension in at least two senses of the word political: (1) diﬀerent theories oﬀer very diﬀerent interpretations of history and of current events, including inter- pretations of government policies, and (2) advocates of the most popular theories of the day usually receive the best jobs and the most funding for their projects. Even within the ranks of any given critical theory there are countless disagree- ments among practitioners that result in the emergence of diﬀerent schools of thought within a single theory. In fact, the history of every critical theory is, in eﬀect, the history of an ongoing debate among its own advocates as well as an ongoing debate with the advocates of other theories. However, before you can understand an argument, you have to understand the language or languages in which the oppo- nents express their ideas. By familiarizing you with the language each theory speaks – that is, with the key concepts on which each theory is grounded – this book will prepare you to understand the ongoing debates both within and among critical theories. Learning to use the diﬀerent languages of theory oﬀered here will also accustom you to “thinking theoretically,” that is, to seeing the assumptions, whether stated or not, that underlie every viewpoint. For example, as you read the following chapters, I hope it will become clear to you that even our “personal,” “natural” interpretations of literature and of the EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:30 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 4 Everything you wanted to know about theory world we live in – interpretations “unsullied” by theory – are based on assump- tions, on ways of seeing the world, that are themselves theoretical and that we don’t realize we’ve internalized. In other words, there is no such thing as a non- theoretical interpretation. We may not be aware of the theoretical assumptions that guide our thinking, but those assumptions are there nevertheless. For example, why do we assume that the proper way to interpret a story for an English class is to show how images and metaphors convey ideas and feelings or how the story illustrates a theme or reﬂects some aspect of history or communicates the author’s viewpoint? Why isn’t the proper response, instead, to do volunteer work at a shelter for the homeless, sculpt a statue, or throw a party? In other words, the interpretations of literature we produce before we study critical theory may seem completely personal or natural, but they are based on beliefs – beliefs about lit- erature, about education, about language, about selfhood – that permeate our culture and that we therefore take for granted. I hope you will also ﬁnd, once you’ve become better acquainted with critical theory, that it increases rather than decreases your appreciation of literature. Think back to your junior high or high school experiences as a reader. Can you remember a story or two, or a novel or play, that you just loved or just hated, yet when you read it again a few years later your reaction had signiﬁcantly changed? The more we experience in life, the more we are capable of experiencing in literature. So as you grow in your capacity to understand theory, to think more broadly and more deeply about human experience and the world of ideas, the more you will be capable of appreciating the rich density, the varied texture and shades of meaning, available in literary works. It’s possible that an old favorite might fall by the wayside, but you’ll have new favorites, and you’ll have the capacity to see more and therefore appreciate more in everything you read. In order to illustrate the various ways in which diﬀerent critical theories inter- pret literature, each chapter will include, in addition to short examples drawn from diﬀerent literary texts, a fully developed reading of the same work: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s well-known novel The Great Gatsby, published in 1925.1 The focus of the following chapters is primarily literary for two reasons: (1) I assume that most readers will approach critical theory as students or teachers of literature, and (2) literature, conceived as a “laboratory” of human life, provides examples of human experience presumably common to all readers. Why The Great Gatsby and not some other literary work? I did not choose Fitzgerald’s novel because I think you will ﬁnd it necessarily a great work or even an enjoyable work, although many readers consider it both. I chose it because it lends itself well to the critical theories we are studying. Although, hypothetically at least, every lit- erary work can be interpreted using every critical framework, most works lend themselves more readily to some frameworks than to others, and the attempt to read a text using an incompatible framework can be a relatively fruitless endeavor EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:30 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Everything you wanted to know about theory 5 that risks distorting elements of the text, the theory, or both, as we try to make them ﬁt each other. It’s a judgment call, of course, and readers will diﬀer as to which theories they are able to apply fruitfully to which literary works. Our task, then, is to know our own strengths and limitations as well as those of the theories we employ, even as we work to increase our ability to use theories. Another fact to keep in mind as we apply critical theories to The Great Gatsby and as you begin to use them to read other literary works is that diﬀerent theo- retical interpretations of the same literary work can bring forth very diﬀerent views of the work, focusing on diﬀerent characters and diﬀerent parts of the plot or generating opposing views of the same characters and events. Theories can also overlap a good deal with one another, producing very compatible, even similar, readings of the same work. Critical theories are not isolated entities, completely diﬀerent from one another, separable into tidy bins, like the tubs of tulips, daﬀodils, and carnations we see at the ﬂorist. It would be more useful to think of theories, to continue the metaphor, as mixed bouquets, each of which can contain a few of the ﬂowers that predominate in or that serve diﬀerent purposes in other bouquets. Thus, for example, while Marxism focuses on the socioeconomic considerations that underlie human behavior, it doesn’t exclude the psychological domain of human experience; rather, when it addresses human psychology, it does so in order to demonstrate how psychological experience is produced by socioeconomic factors rather than by the causes usually posited by psychoanalysis. Similarly, while feminist analysis often draws on psychoanalytic and Marxist concepts, it uses them to illu- minate feminist concerns: for example, to examine the ways in which women are psychologically and socioeconomically oppressed. And even when critics use the same theoretical tools to read the same literary work, they might produce very diﬀerent interpretations of that work. Using the same theory doesn’t necessarily mean reading the literary work in the same way. If you read other critics’ inter- pretations of The Great Gatsby, you will probably ﬁnd that they agree with my interpretations on some points and disagree on others even when we seem to be using the same critical tools. At this point, a brief explanation of a few important concepts might be useful. I refer above to other “critics,” and it’s important to remind ourselves that the terms critic and literary criticism don’t necessarily imply ﬁnding fault with literary works. Literary criticism, by and large, tries to explain the literary work to us: its pro- duction, its meaning, its design, its beauty. Critics tend to ﬁnd ﬂaws in one another’s interpretations more than in literary works. Unlike movie critics and book reviewers, who tell us whether or not we should see the ﬁlms or read the books they review, literary critics spend much more time explaining than evaluating, even when their oﬃcial purpose, like that of the New Critics described in chapter 5, is to assess the aesthetic quality of the literary work. Of course, when we apply critical theories that involve a desire to change the world for the better – such as EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:30 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 6 Everything you wanted to know about theory feminism, Marxism, African American criticism, lesbian/gay/queer criticism, and postcolonial criticism – we will sometimes ﬁnd a literary work ﬂawed in terms of its deliberate or inadvertent promotion of, for example, sexist, classist, racist, heterosexist, or colonialist values. But even in these cases, the ﬂawed work has value because we can use it to understand how these repressive ideologies operate. Critical theory (or literary theory), on the other hand, tries to explain the assumptions and values upon which various forms of literary criticism rest. Strictly speaking, when we interpret a literary text, we are doing literary criticism; when we examine the criteria upon which our interpretation rests, we are doing critical theory. Simply put, literary criticism is the application of critical theory to a lit- erary text, whether or not a given critic is aware of the theoretical assumptions informing her or his interpretation. In fact, the widespread recognition that lite- rary criticism cannot be separated from the theoretical assumptions on which it is based is one reason why the word criticism is often used as if it included the word theory. Examples of critical theory include Jacques Derrida’s essays on his deconstructive theory of language; Louise Rosenblatt’s deﬁnitions of text, reader, and poem; and even my attempts in the following chapters to explain the operations of and rela- tionships among theoretical concepts from various critical schools. Examples of literary criticism would include a deconstructive interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), a Marxist analysis of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970), a gay reading of the imagery in Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (1855), and the various interpretations of The Great Gatsby oﬀered in the following chapters. Despite their tendency to interpret rather than to evaluate literature, literary critics have an enormous eﬀect on the literary marketplace, not in terms of what they say about particular works but in terms of which works they choose to interpret and which works they ignore. And of course, critics tend to interpret works that lend themselves readily to the critical theory they employ. Thus, whenever a single critical theory dominates literary studies, those works that lend themselves well to that theory will be considered “great works” and will be taught in the college classroom, while other works will be ignored. Because most of us who become teachers tend to teach the works we were taught, a popular critical theory can result in the institutionalization, or canonization, of certain literary works: those works then are taught to successive generations of students as “great works” with “timeless” appeal. The last concept I want to discuss with you, before explaining how this book is organized, might be called reading “with the grain” or “against the grain” of a literary work. When we read with the grain of a literary work, we interpret the work the way it seems to invite us to interpret it. For example, the Marxist interpretation of The Great Gatsby in Chapter 3 reads with the grain of the story to the extent that it clariﬁes the ways in which the text itself explicitly condemns the superﬁcial values EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:30 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use Everything you wanted to know about theory 7 that put social status above every other concern. In contrast, that same inter- pretation reads against the grain of the story when it seeks to show the ways in which the novel, apparently unwittingly, actually promotes the values it clearly wants to condemn. Thus, when we read against the grain, we analyze elements in the text of which the text itself seems unaware. To give another example, because The Great Gatsby explicitly shows that Tom, Daisy, and Myrtle are hardly ideal spouses, our psychoanalytic interpretation of the novel in Chapter 2 reads with the grain – interprets the novel the way it seems to invite us to interpret it – when our interpretation suggests that these characters are not really in love with their mates. However, because the novel presents Gatsby’s love for Daisy in such a tra- ditional romantic manner – Nick says that Gatsby “committed himself” to Daisy as “to the following of a grail” (156; ch. 8), and Gatsby ends up sacriﬁcing his life for her – our psychoanalytic interpretation may be said to read against the grain when it argues that his feelings for Daisy are as far from real love as those of the other characters. This latter interpretation of Gatsby is one of which the novel seems unaware, given the ways in which the work portrays Gatsby’s devotion to Daisy in contrast to the shallow relationships of the other characters. Reading with the grain thus implies seeing what the author intended us to see, while reading against the grain implies seeing something the author didn’t intend, something of which he or she was unaware. However, we generally talk about what the text intends, rather than about what the author intended. As the New Critics observed, we can’t always know what the author intended, and even if authors say what they intended, the literary work might fail to live up to that intention or might go beyond it. Of course, some critics do choose to talk about the author’s intention, and they shoulder the burden of providing biographical arguments to try to convince us that they’re right. By the same token, talking about what the text intends doesn’t guarantee that our analysis is correct; we still must provide evi- dence from the text to support our view. In any event, any given theory can read with or against the grain of any literary work at any given point in the text. It’s usually important to know whether we’re reading with or against the grain so that we don’t, for example, condemn a literary work for its portrayal of sexist behavior when that very portrayal is given in order to condemn sexism. Like many elements of literary interpretation, this is a sticky one, and readers often disagree about what a work invites us to see and what it does not. While such issues are important, at this point in time they shouldn’t concern you too much. For now, just let them ﬂoat around in the back of your mind as you read through the chapters that follow. Indeed, I think this book will do its job best if you read it for interest and enjoyment rather than in hopes of becoming a master theoretician who understands everything. For one thing, reading this book won’t make you a master theoretician who understands everything. Of course, there’s no such creature. And the book you have in your hands is only an introduction to EBSCOhost - printed on 8/26/2020 5:30 AM via VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use 8 Everything you wanted to know about theory critical theory, a ﬁrst step into what I hope will be a long and enriching process. While this book will acquaint you with what many of us consider the most well- known and useful theories, there are many other theories not oﬀered here. Having read this book, however, you should be ready to read about additional theories on your own if you’re interested, and you should also be ready to read more about the theories covered here if you ﬁnd you have a particular interest in some of them. To help you attain that readiness, each chapter begins with an explanation of the theory in question in plain English, drawing on examples from everyday experience and well-known literary works to clarify key points. To help you look at literature the way a theorist might, each chapter also contains a list of general questions such theorists ask about literary works. Then, as a speciﬁc illustration, an interpretation of Fitzgerald’s novel through the lens of the theory at hand follows. Next, you will ﬁnd questions for further practice, which serve as guides to applying the theory under consideration to other literature. These questions (which also can function as paper topics) attempt to focus your attention on speciﬁc theoretical concepts illu- strated in speciﬁc literary works. Most of these works are frequently anthologized and appear often on college syllabi, but you or your instructor might want to apply the questions to diﬀerent pieces of literature. Finally, in case you would like to learn more about a particular theory, each chapter closes with a bibliography of theory and criticism, “For further reading” and “For advanced readers,” that will serve as a useful follow-up to what you have just learned. Chapter 13, “Gaining an Overview,” oﬀers you a way to clarify and organize your thoughts about the critical theories discussed in this textbook by providing questions – one for each theory – that each represent the general focus, a kind of bird’s-eye view, of each school of criticism. In addition, Chapter 13 attempts to explain how theories reﬂect the history and politics of the culture that produces them and how diﬀerent theories can be used in conjunction to produce a single interpretation of a literary work. It might also be helpful to know that the theories we will examine are presented in logical sequence rather than in strict chronological order.2 We will begin with those theories I think you will ﬁnd most accessible and most clearly related to our everyday world and then move on to others in terms of some logical connection among them, so that you can see theories as overlapping, competing, quarrelling visions of the world rather than as tidy categories. Thus, we will begin with a chapter on psychoanalytic criticism because most of us have been exposed to some psychoanalytic concepts in our daily lives, albeit as clichéd commonplaces, and because psychoanalysis draws on personal experiences to which most of us can very readily relate. A chapter on Marxist criticism immediately follows because Marxism

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