Many Disclaimers

The goal of this class is to give you some insights into how the MLA Bibliography grew historically to reflect changes in the discipline of Literary Research. You will find out how the MLA IB is structured and you will understand which queries in literary research can best be answered by using the MLA IB, and when to go to other sources, including sources in the vernacular.

What follows are some basic concepts and developments in Literature as a Discipline. This is a very general introduction. Please note my disclaimers, such as: movements do not begin and end on certain dates, the dates below are for the purpose of orientation within the framework of centuries; “approaches” evolve and merge, a simplified summary of an approach is just that....

Why start in 1850?

You should be aware of three sets of technical terms - you will see later that the MLA subject analysis uses these terms for indexing.

1. Literary Movements (See German example below, and consult Henderson handout later on)
   
2. Schools of Literary Criticism (in alphabetical order, you might separate "Critics" from "Theorists")
   
3. Critical Vocabulary "Literary Terms" 

A typical construction of “periods in a national literature”: History of German Literature

• Early Middle Ages 750-1170
• High Middle Ages 1170 - 1270
• Late Middle Ages 1270 - 1500
  
• Renaissance 1470 -1600
• Baroque 1600-1720
• Enlightenment 1720-1785
• Empfindsamkeit 1740 - 1780
  
• Sturm und Drang 1767-1785
• Classicism 1786-1832
• Romanticism 1798 -1835
• Biedermeier 1820-1850
• Junges Deutschland and Vormärz 1830-1850
• Realism 1850-1890
• Naturalism 1880-1900
• Gegenströmung zum Naturalismus (includes various)1890 - 1920
  
• Expressionism 1910-1925
• Verlorene und Verbürgte Wirklichkeit 1925 - 1950
  
• Weimar Republic 1925-1933
• Third Reich 1933-1945
• Abbild, Zerrbild, Vexierbild - Post War 1945-1989 (West Germany – East Germany)
• 1989 Current (including Afro-German, foreign born writers, esp. Turkish writers, ...)
  

A typical construction of periods in literary criticism:  A History of Literary Criticism: from Plato to the Present. M.A.R. Habib. 2005.

Selected Schools of Literary Criticism

For the purpose of our discussion, I have chosen to highlight the following: 

• 1850 – 1890 Positivism and Historicism.
• 1890 – 1930 Literature as a Separate System
• 1930 – 1965 Phenomenology, Formalism, New Criticism
  
• 1965 – 1980 Structuralism,
• 1980s   Deconstruction
• 1980 - Until /The Canon Wars
  
• 1990 – Postmodernism and new “stand on your own” movements, some of which have deep roots in the past and have reemerged; examples include Archetypal/Myth Criticism. Gender Criticism (including Men’s Studies), New African American Criticism, Marxist Criticism and New Historicism, Ethnic Criticism, Post Colonialism, Queer Theory, Post Structuralism, Psychoanalytic Criticism…..
  

1850 – 1890 Positivism and Historicism

Example: Philosophy and Social Science

• Auguste Compte. (1798-1857). Cours de philosophie positive. 1830.
  Suspicious of any thought that cannot be reduced to observation; theological and metaphysical speculation are sees as stages in the development of the human mind toward the perfect, the positivistic approach to knowledge.
• Charles Darwin. (1809- 1882).
• Karl Marx. (1813-1883).
  

Example: Literary Movement
Realism, Naturalism: reality in all its misery, no idealization. The great novelists…just a handful here

• Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
• George Eliot (1819-80)
• Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
• Theodor Fontane (1819-1898)
• Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
• Hugo, Victor (1802-85)
• Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, 1818-1883
• Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
• Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
• Emile Zola  (1840-1902)
  

Example: Literary Theory and Criticism

• Charles-Augustin Saint Beuve (1804-1869)
  One example of many of St. Beuve's biographism: Les grands écrivains français:
  Great “Men”= Great Literature; know the “man” and you will understand the literary object s/he created
  
• Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893)
  Literature is the product of "la race, le milieu et le moment" (Histoire xxiii)
• Les Philosophes classiques du dix-neuvième siècle en France. [The Nineteenth-century French philosophers] (1857).
  Essais de critique et d’histoire [Critical and historical essays] (1858).
  Histoire de la littérature anglaise (1864, History of English Literature, 1872).
  De l’intelligence (1870, On Intelligence, 1871).
  Les Origines de la France contemporaine (Origins of Contemporary France, 1876-1894).
  

In the same vain: representative narrative histories of the national stamp are:

• Georg Gottfried Gervinus’s History of the Poetic National Literature of the Germans (1835–42),
  
• Julian Schmidt’s History of German Literature since the Death of Lessing (1861),
  
• Francesco De Sanctis’s History of Italian Literature (1870–71),
  
• Wilhelm Scherer’s History of German Literature (1883), and
  
• Gustave Lanson’s Histoire de la littérature française (1894).
  
• Georg Brandes' Hovedstrømninger: Det 19de aarhundredes litteratur (written1872–90)
  [quoted from. John Paul Russo. Historical Theory and Criticism . The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Second Edition 2005 [Duke Database] ].
  

Summary: Positivist/Historicist Approach in Literary Criticism

• The work of art is an illustration of history, and if you understand the author, you will understand the work. The realistic novel rejects idealization and escapism
• Preferred topics in novels are of middle and lower class life with detailed physical and social/economic setting, local color. The point of view is from an omniscient third person author.
  
• A novel that perfectly reflects reality is the new classic
• Again: note that the novel has a long history as an alternative genre, we are talking here about the 19th century realistic novel.
  

The Birth of Comparative Literature as a Discipline around 1830.

• Abel Francois Villemain (1790-1870).Cours de littérature française. Lectures published:
  1828 Tableau de la literature au VIIIe siecle
  1830 Tableau de la littérature au moyen âg e en France, en Italie, en Espagne et en Angleterre.

Summary: Comparativist Perspective

• Analysis of similarities and differences in the context of "nation" – assuming national/geographic/linguistic borders and going beyond borders for
  
• studies of influence and confluence based on scientific “fact finding”.
  
• Supranational analysis of genres, forms, themes, literary relations, historical configurations, movements…
• Comparative Literature always worked in the language of the literature, and therefore struggled with “Globalization” and Cultural Studies in "English Only." Comparative Literature adopted other non European nationalities/languages and cultures in the past 30 years, but in the end, many departments merged with English Departments for courses on World Literature in translation and cultural studies in English.
  

1890 – 1930 Literature as a Separate System

• Introduction, notes on historical events
  
• Handout:
  Henderson, Helene and Jay P. Pederson
  “Twentieth Century Literary Movements Dictionary.” 2000. The tables show an explosion of experimentation and new awareness. Literature does not want to be a “only” handmaiden to history. Literary movements had their own sphere of development and expression .
• Critical Vocabulary, that is, specialized terminology used in literary research publications and dialogs has always been relevant, new approaches simply produce new, additional vocabulary. Dictionaries, including the MLA IB Thesaurus, cover terms across centuries, periods, movements and critical approaches: http://library.duke.edu/services/classes/western_european/german_264s_lit_terms.html
  
• We will consider - below - three important intellectual movements that proclaim that literature is a separate system, separate from history, philosophy,etc. The three approaches are distinct developments but are thematically related in their general outlook on literature.
  

1930 – 1965 Phenomenology in Literature; Development of the Formalist Approach; Development of New Criticism

Phenomenology

• Roman Ingarden. (1893–1970.
  The Literary Work of Art. (1931).
  The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art. (1937).

Summary: Phenomenology in Literature 

• Ingarden describes a literary work as "an intersubjective intentional object."
• The work is not reducible to the psychology of either the author or the reader.
• “It has a history that goes beyond the consciousness that originated it or the consciousness of any individual reader. The existence of a work transcends any particular, momentary experience of it, even though it came into being and continues to exist only through various acts of consciousness.
• The literary work is a stratified formation. It comprises four related strata, each of which has its own characteristic "value qualities" : (1) word sounds, (2) meaning units, (3) "schematized aspects" (the perspectives through which states of affairs are viewed), and (4) represented objectivities.”
• The work as a whole is "schematic," he argues, because the strata (especially the last two) have "places of indeterminacy" that readers may fill in differently. Hence lays foundation to Reader Response Criticism – Wolfgang Iser, etc.
• the literary object does not exist like an idea ("chairness") and it does not exists like a physical object (a chair) - so, "where", "how" does it exist? 
• [quotes from Paul B. Armstrong.The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Second Edition 2005 [Duke Database]
  

Russian Formalism
[mostly 1916 - 1929, note that “formalist” was a put down by Marxist Criticism who felt that the historical method was “the” method…].
Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPOYAZ (the Society for the Study of Poetic Language) in St. Petersburg:

• Osip Brik,
  
• Boris Eikhenbaum,
  
• Roman Jakobson,
  
• Viktor Shklovskii,
  
• Boris Tomashevskii, and
  
• Jurii Tynianov;
  
• V. V. Vinogradov , and  V. Zhirmunskii.
  Published a number of volumes collaboratively.
• Important individual works:
  Viktor Shlovsky 1893-1984. On the Theory of Prose. 1925.
  Boris Eikhenbaum 1886-1959. Theory of the Formal Method. 1925.
  Boris Tomashevsky 1890-1957. Russian Versification: Metrics. 1923; Theory of Literature. 1925 (the father of narratology).
  Yury Tynyanov 1894-1943. The Problem of Poetic Language. 1924.
  Viktor Zhirmunsky 1991-1971. Questions of Literary Theory. 1928.
  

Summary: Formalist Approach

• Literature is self-referential, constructs its own reality and does not refer to an outside reality. Life and art are radically different.
• Literariness: the sum of devices that distinguish literature from everyday use of language.
• Defamiliarization: literature is not a reflection of the world- it is a disruption of our habitual/automized perception of the world; defamiliarization makes us see the world anew.
• Story: full sequence of events in their likely order, duration and frequency
• Plot: the arrangement of the raw material of the story in a particular order, which highlights the relationships between incidents.
  

How were these ideas received in the US?
Emigration of European and Eastern European Scholars to America
Just a couple of examples:

• Roman Jakobson 1896-1982. Linguist: Prague linguistic Circle
  Jakobson circle: Stayed behind, but important: Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin 1895-1975.
  “Received in the US” after being translated in the 50s Vladimir Propp 1895-1970.
• Rene Wellek. 1903-1995. One of the most influential literary critics in post 1945 America.
  

New Criticism
[Not exactly a school; includes critics that resisted political/historical handmaidendom of literature]

• John Crow Ransom. 1888-1979. The New Criticism. 1941
• Allen Tate 1899-1979. Literature as Knowledge. 1941
• R.P. Blachmur. 1904-1965. A Critics Job of Work. In: The Double Agent. 1935.
• Kenneth Burke. 1897-1993. The Philosophy of Literary Form. 1941; A Grammar of Motives. 1945.
• Cleanth Brooks. 1906-1989. The Well Wrought Urn. 1947.
• Robert Penn Warren. 1905-1989. Pure and Impure Poetry. 1943.
• William K. Wimsatt. 1907-1975. The Verbal Icon. 1954. 

Summary: New Criticism 

• The Thematic Structure of the work has to be explicated without reference to reality, author, intent, and reader: “intrinsic qualities of the work/literary object”
• The work is an organic unit, emphasis on analyzing irony, paradox, imagery, metaphor, symbol and techniques of artistic expressions; types of thematic structure
• Focused initially on poetry, but inspired application to the novel. Approach insists on distinction between the literary work of art – and fiction. Bestsellers are not necessarily works of art!
• Belief that all great works of art share in universal standards: you can construct a canon of great works of one nation, rather than use traditional timelines and chronologies of literary movements.
• “World Literature” is taught in translation by English Departments in contrast to  “Comparative Literature” which works in the vernacular…
  

1965 – 1980 Structuralism

• Ferdinand de Saussure. (1857-1913). Course in General Linguistics. (Lectures 1907-11, transcribed later)
• Northrop Frye. (1912 -1991), Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton University Press, 1957
• Algirdas Julius Greimas. (1917-19920. Semantique Struturale. 1966.
• Gérard Genette. 1930. Structuralism and Literary Criticism. 1969 translation.
• Roland Barthes. 1912. S/Z. 1970.
• Claude Levi-Strauss. 1908. The raw and the cooked: Introduction to a science of mythology. 1969. Anthropologie structurale II. 1973.
  

Summary: Structuralist Approach

• Emphasizes the systematic interrelationships amongst elements of all human activity – literature is not autonomous.
• Abstracts codes and conventions that govern the social production of meaning – best examples come form folklore, mythology and anthropology.
• Everything is text, from newspaper to the novel: text is the objective structure of codes/conventions that have to be situated historically – ii is not dependent on the authors intention.
• Explore binary opposition: up/down; good/bad – by finding binary oppositions, single elements are defined.
• Function of language in the text – multidirectional:
  Emotive – attitude or mood of addresser
  Conative- attitude toward addressee
  Referential- relationship to outside reality
  Phatic – expresses contact between addresser and addressee
  Metalingual – about code that is shared by addresser and addressee
  Poetic – expressing a message
  

1980s Deconstruction

• Jacques Derrida. 1930-2004. Of Grammatology. 1980. Writing and Difference. 1978.
• Many writers (some translators of Derrida into English) and many critics used this method of reading text; please consult “Deconstruction 1" and "Deconstruction 2" in the Johns Hopkins Database for a full list of scholars.

Summary: Deconstruction

• Deconstruction uses the structuralist notion that meaning is located in “difference”- a thing is itself by virtue of what it differs from – what it differs from remains as a trace.
• Everything we know is “text”; there is no distinction between text and non-text.
• “In one of its typical analytical procedures, a deconstructive reading focuses on binary oppositions within a text, first, to show how those oppositions are structured hierarchically; second, to overturn that hierarchy temporarily, as if to make the text say the opposite of what it appeared to say initially; and third, to displace and reassert both terms of the opposition within a nonhierarchical relationship of "difference."
  [quotes are from J. Douglas Kneale. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Second Edition 2005 [Duke Database]
• Formerly central ideas such as “man” and “truth” are seen in their instability:
• Historical phenomena are explained by difference: the dominance of white male writers implies the suppression of others. The “classics” are most fruitful for deconstructive readings (Eurocentric, white Dead Males)
• Before Freud, people didn't “read” dreams. Before Derrida people didn't “read” difference. Derrida maintained a difference between an “approach” which deconstruction is not, and a way of “reading” which deconstruction is….
  

1980 Until /The  Canon Wars

• Bloom, Harold.
  The Western Canon : the Books and School of the Ages.
  Edition  1st ed.  New York : Harcourt Brace, c1994.
  Location Perkins/Bostock Library:  Stacks | PN81 .B545 1994 
  Excerpts from page 532 – 567.
  http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/theocraticcanon.html
  http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/aristocraticcanon.html
  http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/democraticcanon.html
  http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/chaoticcanon.html

1990 –Postmodernism and “Post” modernism

Postmodernism and new “stand on your own” movements, some of which have deep roots in the past and have reemerged; examples include Archetypal/Myth Criticism. Gender Criticism (Men’s Studies), New African American Criticism, Marxist Criticism and New Historicism, Ethnic Criticism, Post Colonialism, Queer Theory, Post Structuralism, Psychoanalytic Criticism…..

Each school of literary criticism has its own core scholars, writings and literary vocabulary. A survey of schools is at http://library.duke.edu/services/classes/western_european/german_264s_crit_schools.html

Illustrating different theoretical points of view – there are many tongue in cheek versions of this, for example: http://www.geocities.com/litcrittoolkit/

Upon seeing an orange...

Deconstruction asks... 'If the orange peel and the flesh are both part of an "orange", are they not in fact one and the same thing?'
Ecocriticism asks... 'How does this orange fit into the wider ecosystem?'
Feminist theory asks... 'What possibilities are available to a woman who eats this orange?'
Formalism asks... 'What shape and diameter is the orange?'
Marxist theory asks... 'Who owns the orange?'
New Historicism asks... 'How many oranges do people buy?'
Postcolonialism asks... 'Who doesn't own the orange?'
Psychoanalysis asks... 'What does the orange remind us of?'
Reader-Response asks... 'What does the orange taste like?'
Structuralism asks... 'How are the orange peel and the flesh differentiated into composite parts of the orange?'

Discussion of MLA Organization, Merits and Limits

• HANDOUT ON MLA IB what you need to know
  
• SHORT USER GUIDE: http://library.duke.edu/services/classes/western_european/mla.html
  

Where does MLA IB rank as a resource for German Literature?

1. BDSL
2. Germanistik
3. IBZ
4. MLA
5. Academic Search Premier
6. Historical Abstracts
7. DigiZeitschriften
8. Info Trac
9. International medieval bibliography
10. Literature Resource Center
11. Periodical Contents Index PCI
12. Project Muse
13. Jstore

You need more!

Duke Database Navigation: now that you have considered the current trends in literary analysis and the content  and organization of the MLA IB, please go to Duke Databases by Subject and identify interdisciplinary databases or databases of other relevant disciplines for literary research involving Gender/Ethic/Political Science/History … 

By the way: how do you search for publications in the area of literary research (Western Europe) published before 1926, which is the date that MLA IB coverage starts :)