English Literature 1 appunti

ENGLISH LITERATURE I- prof. Chiara Battisti

Appunti: Carolina De Negri

BASIC ELEMENTS OF THE NOVEL

 Plot

 Characters and their development

 Writing style

 Length

 Fictionality (novel/historiography)

The difference between romance and novel

The previous form of literature was the ROMANCE.

It had a vague idea of the time “once upon a time…”, a sort of fairy tale idea of time.

The NOVEL was born thanks to Defau’s “Robinson Crusoe” and Richardson’s “Pamela”. The two

authors are considered the fathers of the novel.

 In the novel the plot is not taken from myths or history but from everyday life.

 It sets in a precise historical period

 It focuses on the individual

 It sets in a precise space, one that everybody knows

Characters

 They can be described with deep highly detailed biographies or superficial descriptions.

 

There is the particularisation of the character the title of the novel is the name of the



character it highlights the individuality of the character, who is a person, a real one,

living in everyday world. So it has a name and surname.

 The character embodies a vice or a virtue.

Writing style

 How the novel is written

 The novel has a deep complex language

Length

 How long the book is

 The short story has many similarities with the novel, but it’s different from it because of

the length.

Fictionality

 It is the difference between the novel and historiography

 In the early modern period, historical authors included inventions to enrich their creation

 Victorian novel describes social and political problems but the characters and the plot are

invented.

Hayden White introduced the idea that history is a form of narration.

He considered the historical work a verbal structure.

th

In 20 century there is a critical perspective, history combines 3 elements:

1. Data

2. Theoretical concepts to explain data

3. Narrative structure for the presentation

2. The narrative structure is chosen by the author

There is a new idea of history:

 

th

20 century many different perspectives (dipende da chi narra la storia)

 

th

19 century “scientific history”, history is something objective “objective

knowledge”. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT

 Sarah is the protagonist also known as the “French Lieutenant’s whore” (prostitute).

 She was abandoned by her man, who was married.

 Charles is a gentleman

 Ernestina is the perfect Victorian woman, she’s beautiful, naïve, and she’s Charles’s fiancé.

 Charles is curious about Sarah, during their meetings Sarah shares her story asking him for

support.

   th

Chapter 13 is the chapter of METAFICTION a feature of 20 century literature.

Metafiction is a literary device used self-consciously and systematically to draw attention to a

work's status as an artifact. It poses questions about the relationship between fiction and

reality, usually using irony and self-reflection.

It is fiction that reflects on fiction itself, it is a part of the novel which shows the process of

creating a fictional content.

The author reflects on the act of writing, the process of creation. He analyses the process (l’autore

riflette sull’atto di creazione del romanzo).

A theoretical reflection doesn’t tell a story (story= in questo caso, una storia intesa con trama e

sviluppo). th

There are some examples of theoretical reflection in the 17 century:

 

Shakespeare metatheatre in a passage of the play “Hamlet”

In the passage of chapter 13 from “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”

“For the drift of the Maker is dark, and Isis hid by the veil…” Tennyson, Maud (1855)

THE EPIGRAPH is a literary device in a form of poem quotation at the beginning of the chapter

itself.

1. It reinforces the interpretation of a chapter itself

2. It creates an intertextual bond between “Maud” from which the text is taken, and “The

French Lieutenant’s Woman”

3. It mentions the Victorian period because the quotation was written in 1855

4. It provides a key to the reader to understand the chapter

What does it mean?

 God stands for the author (the author is God)

 It is impossible to know God’s=the author’s intentions; they are covered by a veil.

 God=the author hide very well

The author wants to unveil/show the artificiality of the novel, he exposes it.

The EPIGRAPH by Tennyson, for the postmodern reader, creates an allusion to another novel

which is “Possession” by Antonia Byatt (1990).

The post modern reader creates a comparison between the two creations, the novel and the

monologue.

“Possession” has different styles (letter, poetry…)

It has different devices, the novel is concerned with Victorian and nowadays period.

 In “Possession” the character is called “Maud”, her character is linked to the Tennyson

Tower so Antonia creates a link with the monologue by Tennyson and hers.

 “Possession” has a similar metacritical structure to “Maud”

The Epigraph and the comparison arise:

 The role of the author

 The role and function of the reader

 The fictionalised aspects of reality (aspetti finzionali della realtà)

 The idea of omniscient narrator

 

The real connotation of fiction the idea that a character can decide alone

Byatt and Fawles propose and destroy the Victorian tradition from the inside.

They adopt it, they don’t reject it but after the adoption they destroy it from the inside.

They have the same approach.

They use the Victorian tradition but they criticize it. 

Fawles is conscious of the expectations of his readers he can satisfy or destroy them.

He declares that the text is the result of a silent deal between the author and the reader

The author and the reader have a secret pact, in this, they pretend (fingono di) to believe in

GRAND NARRATIVES, which are:

 Time

 Progress

 Evolution MASTER-META-GRAND NARRATIVES

(Costruzioni culturali che danno risposte sulla storia e sulla conoscenza per fornire una versione di

verità assoluta).

They were introduced from Jean François Lyotard in “The Post Modern Condition” (1979). It is a

philosophical concept.

They are abstract ideas, considered to be comprehensive explanations of historical experiences or

knowledge.

They are narrative schemes which try to explain knowledge and experience.

They can be considered as a form of universal proof.

They are stories about stories, they explain them within totalizing schemes.

I can describe the same issue form different theoretical points of view and all of them can be

“true”.

After Lyotard we are aware of the pillars (pilastri) between power and knowledge.

There are different realities: I admit that what I say is only one of them, and not the only one.

10.10.16

FOCUS ON THE FIGURE OF THE WRITER (chapter 13 TFLW)

The idea of the writer in the Victorian period:

In the Victorian age, the narrator has power over his narration and character, he has unlimited

knowledge. He is like God, he can control everything, he knows everything. He has unlimited

knowledge.

In the act of representation, the author is forced to select areas of knowledge for the reader.

The idea of the writer in the post - modern period:

At the beginning of the chapter, Fawles says “I do not know”, he destroys the omniscient narrator.

The fact that he “doesn’t know” highlights the fact that the author destroys the omniscient

narrator, the narrator of the Victorian fiction.

Now there is a new and opposite definition of the author.

“I do not know”, in this case, means that the author doesn’t have knowledge.

There is no object (complemento oggetto), it expresses the fact that the author doesn’t know but

he imagines. He’s offering only one view of one event, so another view of the event can be

possible.

“This story I am telling is all imagination (…)”, the story is the product of his imagination.

At the beginning of the chapter he destroys the fictional world, he offers the reader not THE

description of THE real world but A POSSIBLE description of A real world.

At the end of the day, what is real in the post - modern conception, is the performance of the

author in the very act of creating.

The only form of realism is the “act of creating something fictional”.



For example “The Truman Show” the reality that is artificial.

For example “Pincher Martin” it is a novel about a naval officer who survives after the sinking of

his ship. He awakes in the darkness and he struggles for living in the desert island. There are some

strange events, which cause him to lose the sense of reality during the development of the novel.

At the end of the novel the reader realizes that all the description of the life of Martin on the

island is a creation of the dying mind of Pincher Martin. This novel tells us that reality is a mental

construction and that we are living in a virtual reality.

Elon Musk suggests that we are living in a virtual world. Everything we see is the fruit of virtual

creation.

Doubt on the border between reality and fictional reality, introduced by scientists.

Even if the “I”, is the “I” of the author, he’s projecting himself into the novel. Even if the author is

Fawles, it is a fictionalised Fawles because he is into the novel.

The autobiographical narration is a fictional creation because the author is describing a sort of

fictional character. The distinction between author and narrator, falls when the “I” of the narrator

is the voice of the author projected in the novel.

(Nel momento in cui faccio autobiografia, descrivo personaggio fittizio come me, perchè non

descrivo tutto di me, ma solo quello che voglio scrivere. Descrivo un io, che non sono io).

th

From chapter 13 TFLW

There are confused levels of reality but also



there are different ideas of time

 Introduced at “the time of my story” which is the Victorian age

 Also the time of the writing “but now I am living in…” the period when he writes the novel.

 The third time is the time of the reading, which is uncertain because everyone in the time

can read his novel.

We can consider the author a construction of the reading process, in fact it is the reader that has

to look for the similarities between Charles and the author (Charles is a character of the book).

The author suggests the fact that there are similarities between his character and himself, so the

reader has to get them.

The reader in the Victorian period:

The reader is:

 Passive entity because he accepts everything about the text, what it is about and how it is

offered.

 The reader was entertained and he had access to education (the function of the Victorian

novel is “teaching and entertaining”).

 He could have a certain influence on the author (ex. Conan Doyle).

The reader in the post- modern period:

The reader is:

 engaged in creating hypothesis about the meaning of the text

 engaged in filling in gaps in the text (riempire i vuoti)

 engaged in making implicit connections



In chapter 13 the author says “What you will” it involves the reader.

 “Reader Response Criticism” is a school of literary theory of the post structuralism, which

focuses on the readers and on the experiences of the reader of a literary work.

i) According to “RRC” each literature is a performative art, and each reading is a

performance which can be compared to acting drama, or playing music.

So literature exists only when it is read.

The act of reading is a performance.

ii) The literary text has no final or fixed meaning, so there isn’t the correct interpretation

of the text. But literary meanings and values are created by the interaction between

the reader and the text. (Il testo ha una pluralità di significati e valori, quindi cambia il

tempo e cambiano i valori che vengono letti nel testo, lo stesso testo può essere letto

diversamente a seconda del tempo e del luogo, e dei valori con cui viene letto).

iii) Wolfgang Iser (critic from “RRC”) thinks that the text contains gaps the reader fills but

in part the text controls the reader’s response. According to Iser, the reader must

explain the gaps, he connects what the gaps separate.

For example, “Marie Antoinette” by Sofia Coppola:

It is a post-modern film; Sofia Coppola is playing with the spectator because she introduces

a pair of baby blue converse “all-star”; another element connected to post - modern

interpretation is the soundtrack which belongs to the contemporary period. She plays with

her audience; she knows that the audience imagines everything in 1800s style.

 There are other schools that focus on the author, ecc…



“Game”(chapter 13) linked to Roland Barthes’s “The Pleasure of the Text”, which is an erotic

pleasure. th

Barths is a theoretical critic of the 20 century and Fawles is a novelist.

They move from modernism to post-modernism, and from a structuralist approach to the text to a

post structuralist approach. th

There are two real names of the 20 century “Alain Robbe-Grillet” from modernist to post

modernist approach to the text.

“Roland Barthes” moves from structuralist to post structuralist approach. 14 ottobre 2016

approccio

Il testo è considerato un’entità aperta post strutturalista.

Victorian period reality:

 External reality, it can be seen by the author and by the reader as the same thing.

Modernist period reality:

 Reality is based on perception; everybody can see different things from reality

 Nobody can share the same vision of reality

Post- modern period reality:

 Diversi livelli ontologici che si sovrappongono

 Chaos THE AUTHOR

Roland Barthes in “The pleasure of the text” (1973), is against the idea that author’s identity

(context, background, religion) is very important. He doesn’t believe in the importance of focusing

on the author’s background. He wants to analyse the production of the authors.

 Barthes asserts that “to give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text”.

Attribuire un autore a un testo è imporre un limite a un testo.

 According to Barthes a text has multiple layers of meanings (strati di significato).



Connected to the idea of the death of the author chapter 13 TFLW

LITERARY THEORY

 Literary theory is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of

literature

 It formulates the relationship between author and work

 It develops the significance of race, class and gender for literary study

 Literary theory offers different approaches for understanding the role of historical context

in interpretation as well as the importance of linguistic and unconscious element of the

text

With “literary theory” we refer to the theories that reveal what literature can mean, we don’t

refer to the meaning of the text.

 Principles derived from internal analysis of literary text or from knowledge external to the

text that can be applied in multiple interpretative situations

 Chinua Achebe is an example, he has analysed “Heart of darkness”, in this case there is a

perspective from a post-colonial critic, which is Achebe.

In this analysis he highlights exploitation and racism. His point of view is the one of a

postcolonial literary theory.

For exemple in “Heart of Darkness” the black woman can’t speak and the white woman

can. History of modern literary theory

 th

It emerged in the 19 century in Europe

 In Germany we find “higher criticism” or “source criticism” which historicise biblical tales. It

compares biblical tales to other similar narrations belonging to other cultures. In so doing,

it broke with the traditional interpretation of the Bible.

Fa vedere come certe narrazioni hanno qualcosa in comune con altre narrazioni diverse,

hanno una struttura comune.

 “Higher criticism” has the aim to find a structure and use it to interpret the text.

 In France there is Charles Augustin Saint Beuve, according to him, the work of literature

can be analysed and explained only in terms of biography. (La biografia dell’autore spiega

l’opera dell’autore).

 Marcel Proust was against the position of Saint Beuve. Proust believed that the details of

the life of the artist are transformed in the work of art. It is impossible to explain the work

of literature.

(Usare la biografia dell’autore per spiegare opera d’arte non serve, perché sarebbe

finzionale).

o Thea “a view” + horan “to see”. It was used in theatres.

LITERARY CRITICISM

A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics

use to view and talk about art, literature.

Literary theory is like a lens; it helps to analyse the text.

The idea of lenses is important, by changing the lenses you can see different points of view of the

text.

Different types of literary theory / criticism:

1. Marxist criticism: this school of thought concerns itself with class differences (economic

and otherwise) as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system.

o “Marxist attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the

ultimate source of our experience” (Thyson 277).

o Marxist theorists are interested in answering the question “Whom does it (the

work) benefit? The elite? The middle class?”.

o The Marxist critics are also interested in how the lower classes are oppressed in life

and in literature.

For example, in the case of “DRACULA” there is a condemn for the aristocratic class which