"It is not expected of critics as it is of poets that they should help us to make sense of our lives; they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways in which we try to make sense of our lives.This series of talks is devoted to such an attempt, and I am well aware that neither good books nor good counsel have purged it of ignorance and dull vision; but
Frank Kermode on literary theory (cont)
I take comfort from the conviction that the topic is infallibly interesting, and especially at a moment in history when it may be harder than ever to accept the precedents of sense-making -- to believe that any earlier way of satisfying one's need to know the shape of life in relation to the perspectives of time will suffice.”
Critical Thinking
the intellectually disciplined process of
actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating
information gathered from observation, experience, reflection,
reasoning, or communication based on intellectual values such as clarity, accuracy, consistency, relevance, depth, fairness
see def by Michael Scriven & Richard Paul,
quoted at http://www.criticalthinking.org
Critical Thinking
involves the intellectual commitment of using those skills to guide behavior
Fairmindedness
to avoid skillful manipulation of ideas
to avoid irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest
to avoid thinking simplistically about complicated issues
to consider appropriately the rights and needs of others
Styles: formal, informal from academic writing to blogs
Examples from DES
angolPark
http://seas3.elte.hu/angolpark/
The AnaChronisT
http://anachronist.atw.hu/
Style guide for literature:
e.g., MLA Handbook 8th Edition
For a seminar paper
Check requirements of instructor, concerning theme, content, method, form
Select a work or a problem that is of interest to you.
Choose a title that describes a question or problem.
For a seminar paper (cont)
Collect the points that you want to make, and build an argument from them.
Support your points and arguments by quotations from the work(s) in question, using critical sources as well. Always provide the source of your quotation.
For a seminar paper (cont)
In the introduction explain what you want to do, such as analyse a book from a certain point of view; compare the treatment of a problem in two or more works; describe a feature of an author's style or other strategy in two or more works by the same author; discuss a more theoretical question of literature using works as examples.
For a seminar paper (cont)
Problems to discuss and features to analyse:
narration, characterisation, structure, style, motifs, use of symbols, treatment of social or moral issues, among others
For a seminar paper (cont)
Then go ahead and write an interesting, argumentative paper.
In your conclusion summarise your results. What have you learnt from all your work? How could you sum up your most important discoveries for someone new to your topic?
If you want to test yourself
Give a one-line definition of the following terms:
variation
author
anthology
Give a one-paragraph definition of one of the following terms:
context
edition
Now for a 15-minute task
Choose one of the following two extracts and
list possible ways you could analyse the piece
choose one approach and actually carry out the analysis
Please find extracts on the next slide.
Extract No 1
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, ...
Shakespeare "As You Like It" II.vll.
Extract No 2
I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Section 21
http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/logr/log_026.html
Now see what you have done
Did you write all 3 one-line definitions?
Did you notice that you only had to write a one-paragraph definition on one topic?
Did you notice that you had to list possible analytical approaches to one of the two texts only?
Did you remember to do the list, as well as choose one approach to elaborate?
Planning, writing and presenting a critical paper
The purpose is to enable the student to demonstrate that
she/he knows how to use libraries and other sources effectively to locate relevant materials
she/he can prepare and write up a sustained and logically structured academic argument in clear prose
she/he can present her/his work well, using appropriate scholarly conventions
Process
Deciding on a topic
Wide range of possible research topics
At BA and MA levels usually assigned to students
When the task is assigned, questions to be asked:
What were the key studies in the field?
What kinds of approaches have been taken to the subject?
Process
Turning a topic into an argument
to give a direction
to develop a set of questions to be
answered or problems to be solved
in the paper
Information and data should be gathered in
order to answer the questions, solve the
problems
A good paper takes the form of an argument
Process
turning a topic into an argument: argue
- for or against an existing critic or critical position
- about the importance of a particular influence on a writer or an influence exerted by her/him
- about the nature of the genre of a work
- about the significance of a little-known or undervalued author or work
- about some historical or literary-historical aspect of literature
Process
Working out a structure
Consider the question of length of the planned paper
Internal division of the argument into introduction, elaboration, conclusion
The elaboration section may be divided into smaller units
Development of the argument
Process
A research proposal when registering for a BA thesis should contain:
Title
Argument – in a concise form
Materials – presented in some detail (primary sources, secondary sources)
Conclusion – provisional
References – sources to be used
Bibliography – all relevant primary and secondary texts
Process
Writing a paper
taking notes – techniques
from the first rough draft to the final version
format of the text
setting out references – acknowledge quotations
Appendix: an example for a history of literary evaluation
The critical reception of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot from the first reviews of the 1953 Paris première of En attendant Godot to canonisation
JACQUES LEMARCHAND IN ‘FIGARO LITTERAIRE’ 17 January 1953, 10
I do not quite know how to begin describing this play
by Samuel Beckett, ‘Waiting for Godot’ (directed by
Roger Blin, now playing at the Théâtre de Babylone). I
have seen this play and seen it again, I have read and
reread it: it still has the power to move me. I should
like to communicate this feeling, to make it contagious.
At the same time I am faced with the difficulty of
fulfilling the primary duty of the critic, which, as
Postlewait, Thomas: “Self-Performing Voices: Mind,Memory, and Time in Beckett's Drama. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1978), pp. 473-491
Time is the burden in Beckett's drama-both as chronic
endurance and as recurrent theme. His characters
suffer time without being able to form it and
consciousness into a satisfying design. It does not
become for them, as it has throughout Western history,
a causal principle of existence, the soul and measure
of being: the Greek's Alpha and Omega-Chronos
(confused with Kronos), Heraclitus' river, Zeno's arrow,
Plato's moving image of eternity, Pindar's father of all
things, Aristotle's "number of motion in respect of
before and after," the Hebraic "Chronicles," the neo
Platonist's Nous or Cosmic Mind, St. Augustine's three
times (present of things past, memory; present of
Postlewait, Thomas: “Self-Performing Voices: Mind,Memory, and Time in Beckett's Drama. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1978), pp. 473-491
things present, sight; present of things future,
expectation) the medieval wheel of fortune, Petrarch's
devouring time with the hourglass, the Renaissance's
Father Time (half devouring demon, half eternal
principle), Spenser's mutability, Shakespeare's Time
of many faces (transience, death, decay, tyranny, sweet
remembrance, gloomy prospect of "tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow," and historical record of
royal and national needs of purpose), Locke's
measurable idea of succession and idea of duration,
Newton's "absolute, true, and mathematical time,"
Hegel's dialectical march of the Absolute Idea, Marx's
Postlewait, Thomas: “Self-Performing Voices: Mind,Memory, and Time in Beckett's Drama. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1978), pp. 473-491
progression of economic history, Bergson's duration,
Proust's memory, Einstein's relativity, and throughout
history the pragmatist's Locks of Opportunity. None of
these holds consciousness together for Beckett's
characters. Shakespeare writes that time "nursest all
and murder'st all that are"; however, it does not even
do this in Beckett's drama. It simply runs on and on
without cause.
Postlewait, Thomas: “Self-Performing Voices: Mind,Memory, and Time in Beckett's Drama. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1978), pp. 473-491
To illustrate this, Beckett divides Waiting for Godot,
Happy Days, and Play into two days or parts that are
confusingly the same. And Endgame, while limited to
one day and act, is nevertheless the representation of
spent in aimless routine and habit to pass the time of
day. The two main "actions" in Beckett's drama are
anticipation without much memory (Waiting for Godot)
and memory with much anticipation (Endgame). Most
of Beckett's short plays dramatize a mind or voice
recording in distant isolation the fragmented pieces of
Postlewait, Thomas: “Self-Performing Voices: Mind,Memory, and Time in Beckett's Drama. Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1978), pp. 473-491
memory that tumble out of consciousness as words,
words, and more disjointed words: Krapp's Last Tape,
Embers, Play, Eh Joe, Cascando, Not I, Footfalls, and
That Time.
Although the action in Waiting for Godot appears to
be random, especially from the characters' point of
view, the play is organized into a carefully controlled
plot. It unifies around two questions that recur
throughout the play: "Do you not remember?" and
"What are we waiting for?" That is, memory and
anticipation. The words "remember" and "waiting" are
constantly repeated in the play, closely matched by the
words "yesterday„ and "tomorrow."
Gordon, Lois: Reading Godot. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002, p 62
Beckett mirrors the paradoxes of existentialism — the
persistent need to act on precariously grounded
stages — with the repeated absence of denouement in
the enacted scenarios. Since much of act I, with its
series of miniplays, is repeated in the second act,
which concludes with an implicit return to act I, Beckett
creates a never-ending series of incomplete plays
within the larger drama, each of which lacks a
resolving deus ex machina. The paradox of purposive
action and ultimate meaninglessness pervades. A
deceptively simple boot routine is rationalized as
purposeful activity.
Graver, Lawrence: Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 20-21
The title, the sense of universal present time, the shape
of the plot and of the characters, the often pointed and
tantalizing allusions – these obviously invite allegorical
interpretation, and for many play goers and readers the
invitation has proved irresistible. It is also important to
existentialist, which seemed at first glance to have
marked similarities to Beckett’s work. Although not a
cohesive school, the existentialist writers were
Graver, Lawrence: Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 20-21
preoccupied with many of the same vital issues, most
notably the problem of discovering belief in the face of
radical twentieth-century perceptions of the
meaningless or absurdity of human life.
A characteristic existentialist response was to
accept nothingness, absence, and absurdity as given
and then to explore the way human beings might self
consciously form their essence in the course of the
lives they choose to lead. The origin of the inclination
for transcendence was little agreed upon by such
writers as Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert
Camus, and Karl aspers; but as Richard Shepard has
described it, ‘a radically negative experience is seen to
Graver, Lawrence: Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 20-21
contain the embryo of a positive development – though
the psychological and philosophical content of that
development is extremely diverse’ (Fowler, p. 82).
The pervasiveness of existentialist thinking in the
1940s and 1950s was so great that any work about an
individual’s quest for purpose and order in life,
especially in relation to an absent or a present divinity,
was likely to be discussed in the context of current
controversies about existence, essence, personal
freedom, responsibility, and commitment. Many
philosophers who were not existentialists were also
absorbed by these same questions.
Graver, Lawrence: Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 20-21
For instance, Simone Weil, who coincidentally
had been a student at l’Ecole normale superieure when
Beckett lectured there, published a widely-read book,
Attente de Dieu (Waiting for God), just at the time that
Beckett and Roger Blin were trying to stage En
attendant Godot. Yet there seems to have been no
direct connection with or influence of either writer on
the other. The issues were in the air.
Worton, Michael: “Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theatre as Text”. In: Pilling, John, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp 67-87
Beckett's first two published plays constitute a crux, a
theatre. In refusing both the psychological realism of
Chekhov, Ibsen and Strindberg and the pure
theatricality of the body advocated by Artaud, they
stand as significant transitional works as well as major
works in themselves. The central problem they pose is
what language can and cannot do. Language is no
longer presented as a vehicle for direct communication
or as a screen through which one can see darkly
the psychic movements of a character.
Worton, Michael: “Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theatre as Text”. In: Pilling, John, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp 67-87
Rather it is used in all its grammatical, syntactic and –
especially - intertextual force to make the reader/
spectator aware of how much we depend on language
and of how much we need to be wary of the
codifications that language imposes upon us.
Explaining why he turned to theatre, Beckett once
wrote: 'When I was working on Watt, I felt the need to
create for a smaller space, one in which I had some
control of where people stood or moved, above all of a
certain light. I wrote Waiting for Godot.‘ This desire for
control is crucial and determines the shape of
Beckett's last theatrical works; the notion that
Worton, Michael: “Waiting for Godot and Endgame: Theatre as Text”. In: Pilling, John, ed.: The Cambridge Companion to Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp 67-87
the space created in - and by - the playscript is smaller
than that of the novel, however, needs urgent and
Interrogative attention. It is undeniable that, having
chosen to write in French in order to avoid the
temptation of lyricism, Beckett was working with and
against the Anglo-Irish theatrical tradition of ironic and
