Wednesday 31 May 2017

PG TRB ENGLISH

ENGLISH
1. Aeolus is the Greek God of
A) Thunder 
B) Sea C) Wind D) Wine
2. The action of the play Death of Salesman takes place in _________ house.
A) Uncle Ben’s 
B) Willy Loman’s C) Miss. Forsythe’s D) Howard Wagner’s
3. Earth is the right place for love
I do not know where it is likely to go better’ – These lines occur in
A) Birches B) Mending Wall
C) The Road Not Taken D) West Running Brook
4. Emerson asserts the ________ of the truly creative scholarship
A) Sincerity B) Originality 
C) Creativity D) Loyalty
5. ‘Take me away! Oh! the filthy beast’ – ‘Beast’ here refers to
A) Yank B) Lang C) Paddy D) Doughlass
6. The carriage in which Dickinson travelled held the poetess, death and
A) Immortality B) Mortality C) Fear D) Immorality
7. Sylvia Plath describes her father as a Nazi Officer and associates him with a
A) Cross B) Holy Grail C) Sun Cross 
D) Swastika
8. “The Cambridge Ladies who live in furnished souls”
In the above lines the The Camridge Ladies, the phrase “furnished souls” refers to the souls
fashioned by the
A) Spirit of culture B) Sprit of the place C) Spirit of patriotism 
D) Spirit of fervor
9. Ishmael prefers to go to the sea simply as a
A) Captain B) Tar C) Tourist 
D) Sailor
10. ________taught huckleberry firm about Moses and Bulrushers.
A) Widow Douglas B) Miss. Watson C) Judge Thatcher D) Torn
11. In which of the following year was Tagore awarded the Nobel prize for Literature?
A) 1923 B) 1912 C) 1915 
D) 1913
12. What sort of a character of the father described in Nizzim Ezekiel’s “Night of the Scorpion”?
A) Spiritual B) Suspicious 
C) Sceptical D) Superstitious
13. The women of Kanthapura gathered under the leadership of
A) Narasamma 
B) Rangamma C) Nanjamma D) Satamma
14. In “Tughlaq” Sultan Mohammad shifted the capital from
A) Daulatabad to Kaziabad B) Kaziabad to Delhi
C) Delhi to Daulatabad D) Daulatabad to Delhi
15. The title of kamala Markandaya’s “A Handful of Rice” is suggestive of
A) Poverty B) Agriculture C) Prosperity D) None of these
16. __________ decides the fate of its characters in a tragedy.
A) Climax B) Exposition C) Complication 
D) Catastrophe
17. Who described the novel as a “Pocket Theatre”?
A) Marion Crawford B) Baccaccio C) Meridith D) W.H.Hudson
18. Which movement prepared the ground for modern poetry?
A) Imagism B) Symbolism 
C) Decadence D) Aestheticism
19. Who wrote English like a dead language according to T.S. Eliot?
A) Dryden B) Pope C) Wordsworth 
D) John Milton
20. The word “hermeneutics” means
A) To consolidate B) To compose C) To correlate 
D) To explain
21. ________ had no ‘silent syllables’ and the spelling was phonetic because the letters
represented the sounds fairly closely.
A) Middle English 
B) Old English C) Modern English D) Latin
22. Using “honor, color” without “u”, employing one consonant instead of two in “traveler,
Wagon”, using “er” instead of “re”, preferring “s” in words like “defense, offense” are all
examples of
A) International spelling B) British spelling 
C) American spelling D) Indian spelling
23. The word ‘anthology’ now used to designate a collection of poems, is literally the Greek term
for a bunch of flowers. It has changed its meaning owing to
A) Extension or transference B) Polarisation or colouring
C) Metaphorical application D) Specialisation
24. God created Adam and “whatever Adam called every living creature, that was the name
thereof” supports the view that language originated from
A) The natural –sound source B) The oral gesture source
C) The divine source D) Glossogenetics
25. “Mongoose, bungalow, shampoo, juggernaut” have been borrowed from
A) Rome B) France C) Scandinavia 
D) India
26. According to Tate, metaphorical meaning is called
A) Contention B) Intention C) Extension 
D) Tension
27. According to Cleanth Brooks, ________ are important in poetry.
A) Canotations B) Denotations C) Metres 
D) Rhymes
28. Frye’s criticism is not ________ based.
A) Content B) Meaning 
C) Moral D) Text
29. Dryden’s An Essay on Dramatic Poesie is cast in the form of
A) Poem B) Address C) Play 
D) Dialogue
30. According to Frye, the pastoral name ‘Lycidas’ is the equivalent of
A) Apollo 
B) Adonis C) St. Peter D) David
31. “Oats, Wheat”:- ‘s’ in oats and its absence in wheat shows that
A) Wheat does not take plural – s B) Oats is grammatically plural
C) Wheat is grammatically singular
D) Grammatical distinctions are not semantic and there cannot be a one-to-one
correspondence between the two

32. Two or more different (written) forms like ‘flour-flower’, ‘pale-pail’ that have the same
pronunciation are called
A) Homophones B) Homonyms C) Polysemy D) Metonymy
33. Words that derive their meaning based on emotional rather than rational attitudes are the
result of
A) Assocation B) Collocation C) Connotation D) Denotation
34. Dialect is ‘a variety of language distinguished according to user’. What is ‘a variety of
language distinguished according to use’ called?
A) Idiolect 
B) Register C) Tone D) Pitch
35. Who among the following writers was a member of the royal society which was founded in
1662 to fix English spelling?
A) Beckett B) James Boswell C) Skinner D) Dryden
36. Sounds that are articulated with a stricture of complete oral closure are called
A) Plosives B) Nasals C) Fricatives D) Affricates
37. What is the largest unit to which we can assign a grammatical structure?
A) Clause B) Phrase 
C) Sentence D) Paragraph
38. Subordination of one sentence so that it functions as part of the other sentence is called
A) Kernel B) Complementation C) Prediction 
D) Embedding
39. Segmentation of a sentence until the smallest units, morphemes are reached is
A) Phrase structure B) TG grammar 
C) IC analysis D) Latinate fallacy
40. Language has a finite set of rules and infinite number of sentences. So, repeating the same
linguistic device again and again to form the longest sentence is
A) Embedding 
B) Recursion C) Constituent D) Ambiguity
41. According to Ferdinand Sassure “Langue” refers to
A) Meaning of Language B) Structure of Language
C) Origin of Language 
D) Function of Language
42. Communicative approach emphasizes
A) The rules of Language B) History of Language
C) The meaning of Language 
D) Function of Language
43. Suggestopedia is the pedagogic application of suggestion; advocated by Lozanov.
He was a
A) Linguist B) Essayist 
C) Psychiatrist D) ELT specialist
44. British language teaching specialist Michael West examined the role of English in India in the
A) 1920s B) 1930s C) 1960s D) 1970s
45. Who coined the term ‘Post Modernism’?
A) Roman Jakobson B) Lesile Fiedler C) Leslie Mallarme D) Stanley Fish
46. Which of the following consonants are syllabic?
A) |p b t d| B) |m n l r| C) |f v s z| 
D) |k g m n|
47. Identify the English Bible translators.
A) Tyndale and Coverdale B) Tyndale and Dr. Johnson
C) Coverdale and Boswell D) Boswell and Dr. Johnson
48. Jakob Grimm referred to verbs that show change in tense by change of vowel as
A) Weak verbs B) Secondary verbs C) Derivatives 
D) Strong verbs
49. The heathen Anglo-Saxons had a great spring festival of revival celebrating their goddess of
dawn. It has remained in England even after the advent of Christianity as
A) Christmas B) Doicese C) Easter D) Mass
50. English descended from the Western set (group) of the Indo-European family of languages
which is also called
A) Centum B) Satem C) Armenian D) Albanian
51. The Poetics defines poetry and drama as modes of
A) Copy B) limitation C) Replica D) Creativity
52. Dryden admines _______ but he loves Shakespeare
A) Pope B) Virgie C) Milton 
D) Johnson
53. Who first used the words ‘fancy and imagination’ in his theory of poetry?
A) William Wordsworth B) John Dryden C) T.S. Eliot 
D) S.T. Coleridge
54. Who first used the term ‘Metaphysics?
A) John Donne 
B) Dryden C) Milton D) T.S. Eliot
55. Who is the author of the critical essay ‘The Seven Type of Ambiguity’?
A) Herbert Read B) Kenneth Burke C) George Herbert 
D) William Empson
56. On which date did Spenser marry Elizabeth Boyle?
A) 25th June 
B) 11th June C) 19th June D) 12th June
57. In Chaucer’s Prologue to Canterbury Tales’, the shipman is the owner of a vessel called
A) Madeline B) Victoria C) Baltic D) Princess
58. The wife of Bath besides countless lovers has married _______ husbands
A) Two B) Six C) Four 
D) Five
59. Faustus is advised by his friends _______ and _______ to study necromancy.
A) Horace and Tony B) Abraham and Chaplain
C) Ferdinand and Joan 
D) Valdes and Cornelius
60. When Faustus signs the treaty with Lucifer, the words that appear on his arm are
A) Homofuge B) Consummatum est
C) Veni mephistophile D) Vis-à-vis
61. Which spirit is described as the “regent of the sun” in Paradise Lost Book IX?
A) Cherubin B) Gabriel 
C) Uriel D) Samson
62. “The Mistakes of Night” is another title of the drama
A) The School for Scandal B) The Way of the World
C) All for Love 
D) She Stoops to Conquer
63. Who starts his journey from the ‘City of Destruction’?
A) Christian B) Goodwill C) Evangelist D) Faith
64. Fielding’s approach to his novels are
A) Dull and sober B) Serious and impractical
C) Worldly-wise and genial D) Idealistic
65. Through the character of Belinda Alexander Pope Satirise
A) Ambitious men B) Vicious politicians
C) Women lavishing on their own beauty D) Impoverished women
66. In the esay ‘Of Truth’ Bacon compares Truth to
A) Sun 
B) Daylight C) Fire D) Candle-light

67. In the essay ‘Of Friendship’ Bacon says that a _________ is not a company.
A) Neighbor B) Relative C) Senior 
D) Crowd
68. Spenser was buried beside __________ in West Minister Abbey.
A) Shakespeare B) Lamb 
C) Chaucer D) Sydney
69. In Spenser’s stanza, the last ninth line has twelve syllables. It is called
A) Alexandrine B) Parabola C) Retrain D) Quatrain
70. The first scene in the Alchemist by Ben Johnson opens with the quarrel between _______
and _________
A) Simon and Subtle B) Dapper and Drugger
C) Face and Subtle D) Mammon and Surly
71. Tintern Abbey was composed on revisiting the banks of
A) The Rhine 
B) The Wye C) The Nile D) The Thames
72. Keats is a ______ poets.
A) Sensuous B) Sensual C) Sensitive D) Sensible
73. _________ has over-brimmed their clammy cells.
A) Winter 
B) Autumn C) Spring D) Summer
74. Shelley appeals to the West wind to make him a
A) Trumpet B) Flute 
C) Lyre D) Tabor
75. _________ is the Greek God of Winds
A) Bacchus 
B) Aeolus C) Apollo D) Venus
76. How does the second witch address Macbeth?
A) Thane of Cawdor B) King of Scotland C) Thane of Glamis D) Thane of Norway
77. “What, will these hands ne’er be clean
…All the perfumes of Arabia will not
Sweeter this little hand”.
These words are uttered by,
A) Macbeth B) Macduff C) Lady Macbeth D) Banquo
78. Who helped Prospero and his little daughter with food, water, books ets., when they were
abandoned on a damaged ship?
A) Francisco B) Alonso C) Stephano 
D) Gonzalo
79. “…I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fadoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book”
Who utters these words?
A) Ferdinand B) Ariel 
C) Prospero D) Caliban
80. Why does Prince Harry spend more time in the company of Falstaff?
A) He wants to learn tricks from Falstaff
B) He wants to lower expectations so that when his kingly qualities are revealed, he can
impress all
C) He wants to escape from the control of his father
D) He wants Hotspur to think he is a drunkard

81. “All for Love” is fashioned upon the theme of
A) Troilus and Cressida 
B) Antony and Cleoptra
C) Romeo and Juliet D) Coriolanus
82. The role of Lady Sneerwell is to
A) Help poor people
B) Show kindness to her relatives
C) Spread scandalous information about people
D) Maintain true friendship
83. The relationship between Mirabell and the elderly Lady Wishfort reflects
A) True love 
B) Fake courtship C) Genuine friendship D) Deep affection
84. Dr. Johnson is highly critical of John Milton’s poem “Lycidas’ because its
A) Theme is irrelevant B) Technique is outdated
C) Characters are idealistic 
D) Diction is harsh and the rhymes uncertain
85. Why does George Herbert wish to be a ‘tree’?
A) To bear fruits B) To give shade
C) “Some bird would trust her household” 
D) All of the above
86. “Datta” in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste land” means
A) Take B) Protect C) Destroy 
D) Give
87. “Byzantium” for W.B. Yeats is
A) A kind of death B) A modern city
C) A state of frustration 
D) None of these
88. “Ah, Love, let us be true
To one another ! for the world, which seems”
These lines are taken from Arnold’s:
A) To Marguerite 
B) Dover Beach C) The Scholar Gypsy D) Palladium
89. In which of the following year, “The wreck of Duetchland” happened as mentioned by
Hopkins in his poem?
A) 7th Dec., 1875 B) 17th Nov., 1895 C) 17th Dec., 1865 D)7th Jan., 1885
90. “He that can walk, under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the stron man.” These
lines are written by
A) Carlyle B) Bacon C) Coleridge D) Arnold
91. Adonias is an written on the death of
A) Gray B) Wordsworth C) Coleridge 
D) Keats
89. In which of the following year, “The wreck of Duetchland” happened as mentioned by
Hopkins in his poem?
A) 7th Dec., 1875 B) 17th Nov., 1895 C) 17th Dec., 1865 D)7th Jan., 1885
90. “He that can walk, under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is the stron man.” These
lines are written by
A) Carlyle B) Bacon C) Coleridge D) Arnold
91. Adonias is an written on the death of
A) Gray B) Wordsworth C) Coleridge 
D) Keats
92. The great-grandmother of Lamb’s children, field lived in
A) Norfolk B) Yorkshire C) Lancashire D) Warwick
93. According to Shelley, Poets are the unacknowledged ________ of the world.
A) Rulers B) Reformers 
C) Legislators D) Saviours
94. _________is the first and last of all knowledge.
A) Novel 
B) Poetry C) Drama D) Philosophy
95. Ultimately Young Catherine married
A) Edgar B) Linton C) Hindley 
D) Hareton
96. “No poet, No artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his
appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.” These words
are written by
A) Sir Philip Sydney 
B) T.S. Eliot C) Mathew Arnold D) Carlyle
97. Which of the following Novels of Graham Greene deals with the persecution of Catholics in
Mexico?
A) The End of the Affair B) The Heart of the Matter
C) The Human Factor 
D) The Power and the Glory
98. George Eliot is the pen-name of
A) Mary Wolstoncraft B) Ifor Evans 
C) Mary Ann Evans D) Jane Austen
99. “In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking and drowning”.
The lines are taken from Wilfred Owen’s poem
A) Strange Meeting 
B) Duke et Decorum Est
C) Isensibility D) Shadwell Stair
100. ‘Who is the third who always walks beside you’?
The third person referred here is
A) Tinesius B) Phubas 
C) Jesus D) Hieronymo
101. In Measure for Measure why does the Duke leave Vienna in the charge of Lord Angels?
A) He does not like to serve as the Duke
B) He wants to observe Angels at work and analyse the situation in Vienna in disguise
C) He is scared of Angels and wants to abdicate his throne
D) He is sick and tired of his responsibilities and wants to enjoy life
102. How does Cleopatra kill herself?
A) She lets herself be bitten by poisonous asps
B) She stabs herself with a dagger
C) She drinks a goblet of wine with poison
D) She throws herself out of her balcony
103. How many plays and sonnets did Shakespeare write?
A) 36 plays and136 sonnets B) 35 plays and 154 sonnets
C) 36 plays and 155 sonnets 
D) 36 plays and 154 sonnets
104. Which of the following is not a great tragedy by Shakespeare?
A) Macbeth B) Hamlet 
C) The Tempest D) King Lear
105. In which play of Shakespeare does Shylock appear?
A) As you Like it 
B) The Merchant of Venice
C) Othello D) The Winters Tale

106. Which of the following plays was written by Wole Soyinka?
A) The Road B) Black Justice C) Ozidi D) Son of Guyana

107. Which of the following novels of Chinua Achebe is titled from W.B. Yeats poem “The Second
Coming”?
A) Arrow of God B) No Longer at Ease
C) Things Fall Apart D) A Man of The people

108. In Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country” Absalom was found guilty of murdering.
A) Stephen Kumalo B) James Jarvis
C) John Kumalo 
D) Arthur Trevelyan Jarvis
109. The character ‘Sadiku’ appears in Wole Soyinka’s
A) Kongi’s Forest 
B) The Lion and The Jewel
C) The Road D) None of these


110. “Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see the rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles
of my feet”.
In which of the following poems of Wole Soyinka these epithets are taken from?
A) Agbor Dancer B) To my First White Hairs
C) Telephonic Conversation D) Dedication

FOUNDERS AND FATHERS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

1.Geoffrey Chaucer = The Father of English Literature
2.Geoffrey Chaucer = The Father of English Poetry
3.Geoffrey Chaucer = The Father of English Language
4.Geoffrey Chaucer = The Morning Star of the Renaissance
5.Geoffrey Chaucer = The First National Poet
6.Venerable Bede = The Father of English Learning.
7.Venerable Bede = The Father of English History
8.King Alfred the Great = The Father of English Prose
9.Aeschylus = The Father of Tragedy
10.Nicholas Udall = The First English Comedy Writer
11.Edmund Spenser = The Poet’s poet (by Charles Lamb)
12.Edmund Spenser = The Child of Renaissance
13.Edmund Spenser = The Bridge between Renaissance and Reformation
14.Gutenberg = The Father of Printing
15.William Caxton = Father of English Press
16.Francis Bacon = The Father of English Essay
17.John Wycliffe = The Morning Star of the Reformation
18.Christopher Marlowe = The Father of English Tragedy
19.William Shakespeare = Bard of Avon
20.William Shakespeare = The Father of English Drama
21.William Shakespeare = Sweet Swan of Avon
22.William Shakespeare = The Bard
23.Robert Burns = The Bard of Ayrshire (Scotland)
24.Robert Burns = The National Poet of Scotland
25.Robert Burns = Rabbie
26.Robert Burns = The Ploughman Poet
27.William Dunber = The Chaucer of Scotland
28.John Dryden = Father of English criticism
29.William of Newbury = Father of Historical Criticism
30.John Donne = Poet of love
31.John Donne = Metaphysical poet
32.John Milton = Epic poet
33.John Milton = The great master of verse
34.John Milton = Lady of the Christ College
35.John Milton = Poet of the Devil’s Party
36.John Milton = Master of the Grand style
38.John Milton = The Blind Poet of England
39.Alexander Pope = Mock heroic poet
40.William Wordsworth = The Worshipper of Nature
41.William Wordsworth = The High Priest of Nature
42.William Wordsworth = The Poet of Nature
43.William Wordsworth = The Lake Poet
44.William Wordsworth = Poet of Childhood
45.William Wordsworth = Egotistical Sublime
46.Samuel Taylor Coleridge = The Poet of Supernaturalism
47.Samuel Taylor Coleridge = Opium Eater
48.Coleridge & Wordsworth = The Father of Romanticism
49.Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey = Lake Poets
50.Lord Byron = The Rebel Poet
51.Percy Bysshe Shelley = The Revolutionary Poet
52.Percy Bysshe Shelley = Poet of hope and
regeneration
53.John Keats = Poet of Beauty
54.William Blake = The Mystic Poet
55.John Keats = Chameleon Poet
56.Lord Alfred Tennyson = The Representative of the Victorian Era
57.George Bernard Shaw = The greatest modern dramatist
58.George Bernard Shaw = The Iconoclast
59.Jane Austen = Anti-romantic in Romantic age
60.Lindley Murray = Father of English Grammar
61.James Joyce = Father of English Stream of Conscious Novel
62.Edgar Allen Poe = Father of English Mystery play
63.Edgar Allen Poe = The Father of English Short Story
64.Henry Fielding = The Father of English Novel
65.Samuel Johnson = Father of English one Act Play
66.Sigmund Freud = A great Psycho-analyst
67.Robert Frost = The Poet of Terror
68.Francesco Petrarch = The Father of Sonnet (Italian)
69.Francesco Petrarch = The Father of Humanism
70.Sir Thomas Wyatt = The Father of English Sonnet
71.Henry Louis Vivian Derozio = The Father of Indian-Anglican Sonnet
72.William Hazlitt = Critic’s Critic
73.Charles Lamb = The Essay of Elia
74.Arthur Miller = Mulk Raj Anand of America
75.Addison = The voice of humanist Puritanism
76.Emerson = The Seneca of America

77.Mother Teresa = The Boon of Heaven
78.Thomas Nash = Young Juvenile
79.Thomas Decker = Fore-runner of Humorist
80.Homer = The Father of Epic Poetry
81.Homer = The Blind Poet
82.Henrick Ibsen = Father of Modern theatre
83.Rabindranath Tagore = Indian National Poet
84.Nissim Ezekiel = The Father of Indian English Poetry


Monday 22 May 2017

LITERARY THEORY







LITERARY THEORY
BACKGROUND INFO
A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics use to write and talk about art, literature, and even culture. These different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions. Those assumptions come from the theories and decide what particular aspects of a work are important.
E X A M P L E
       For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories, s/he might focus on how the characters in a story are created by an economic situation.
      If a critic is working with post-colonial theories, s/he might consider the same story but look at how characters from colonial powers (Britain, France, and even America) construct characters from, say, Africa or the Caribbean.


A L L L I T E R A R Y T H E O R I E S C A N B E C A T E G O R I Z E D B Y H O W T H E Y V I E W T H E W O R L D O U T S I D E T H E T E X T
Formal Critics
    Looks at only the text and how well it is dressed- at the form of the text itself.
    Seeks a static, unchanging universal Truth within the text.
    Everything outside the text is  irrelevant because it is not static.
    The Mona Lisa has an enigmatic smile whether one is male, female; young, old; Asian, European.


 Cultural Critics
 Always look at a work as a construct of the society that created it.
Andy Warhol’s soup cans only mean something if you have grown up in a consumer culture.
The song “YMCA” incorporates cultural assumptions that give it one particular meaning
A devoutly conservative Christian will have a different interpretation of the song than the producer who wrote it or the Santa Clarita teen who danced to it

NEW CRITICISM
 A form of Liberal Humanism, the text reveals the meaning of the overall piece through the resolution of some contradiction.
Uses themes, characters, and symbols
 This is a closed system in that the relationship between the text and meaning is autonomous.
 This theory dismisses authorial intent and instead derives meaning from the text itself.
Canonical approach
Form of traditional/formal literary criticism
 It is infinitely teachable.
There’s a right answer and critical reading skills illuminate that right answer
It fits into the broad sweep of a humanities curriculum.
The role of the individual response is dismissed as an
 affective fallacy.
 The misconception that arises from judging a piece of literature by the emotional effect that it produces in the reader.
 Instead, there is an objective corollary, that the tension at the core of the text inevitably surfaces through the actions of the characters.
Theory put forward by T.S. Eliot
The role of the critic is to resolve the contradictions to find the right meaning.


 S T RU C T U R A L I S M
The meaning of a text is in the familiar structures it employs.
Based upon the work of Ferdinand de Saussure
For example, a rose may symbolize love, or a stick figure may symbolize a person; however, literature has a very specific and important relationship to language
Signifiers (ideas) take the place of the signified.
The identity, or meaning, is relational to the system in which it operates.The relationship of one signifier to another is what provides the context with which to extrapolate meaning.  Example: Italian Western or Disneyland.

D E C O N S T RU C T I O N
A philosophical assumption that all language is vague.Everything can be misread or making it impossible to interpret anything in a static/stable way. “Deconstruction cannot limit or proceed immediately to a neutralization: it must…practice an overturning of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is only on this condition that deconstruction will provide itself the means with which to intervene in the field of oppositions that it criticizes, which is also a field of nondiscursive forces" (328). French philosopher Jacque Derrida.
  A deconstruction tends to be a rather verbose document because it is aiming for the contradiction of showing the imprecision of language with precise language.Almost all deconstructions can be deconstructed themselves.“A theory of reading which aims to undermine the logic of opposition within texts.”
 A Dictionary of  Critical Theory, London: Blackwell, 1996
Nothing written can really mean
what we think it means. Example: Hamlet where Hamlet asks “to be or not to be, that is the question.”  There is no question.“To be” is a transitive verb—it requires an object. So, one can’t just say “to be or not to be.”The final meaning of that passage cannot be what we think it is.
POST STRUCTURALISM
  Form of cultural criticism.Studied by former structuralists Jacque Derrida and Michel Foucault. A reaction to structuralism.Connects meaning to culture.Deconstructs signifiers as there are no universal truths, so signifiers/symbolic.constructs cannot be relied upon to give meaning.  A closed system.Unlike structuralism where symbols, paradigms, and schema are connected to a universal meaning.  In order to have actual meaning, they must become unstable or else they will simply work to leave hegemonies intact, thus leaving power structures in place.
FEMINIST THEORY
 The idea that patriarchal Western
society subsumes the role of women with the use of language constructs and representations of society based on male viewpoints.

v          Socioeconomic, experiential, and cultural differences do not lend themselves to a universal female ideology, and as such should not be the basis for understanding any piece of literature.






FEMINIST THEORY, CONT.



v           New language is needed to

express feminist viewpoints.

         Renders patriarchal hierarchies and ideologies impotent in literature.
v           Began as an opposition to

male critical theory

         Tended to follow patriarchal formula






FEMINIST THEORY, CONT.



v           In “A Room of One’s Own” Virginia Woolf

posited a hypothetical sister to Shakespeare, who, given the same conditions, would write works as good as Shakespeare’s.
v           More recent feminist critics have posited a

female voice that fundamentally differs from the male voice and which does not seek the validation of male theory.






GENDER/QUEER THEORY



v           Opens discourse surrounding cultural binaries and binary

oppositional language.

         father/mother, man/woman, masculine/feminine
v           Differs from feminist theory that looks upon woman as “Other”



GENDER/QUEER THEORY,

CONT.


v          Cultural ideology at the base of gender and sexuality is ever-changing.

v           Ideas regarding gender and sexuality should not remain static.

v          In order to remain in flux, hegemonic ideologies and marginalization of gender/sexuality roles must also remain in flux.





MARXIST THEORY




v                 Tend to focus on the representation of class conflict as well as the reinforcement of class distinctions.

v                                                                                                                                                                                                                Use traditional techniques of literary analysis but subordinate aesthetic concerns to the final social and political meanings of literature.


MARXIST THEORY, CONT.


v          Champions authors sympathetic to the working classes and authors whose work challenges economic equalities found in capitalist societies.

v          Theories arising from the Marxist paradigm have sought new ways of understanding the relationship between economic and cultural production as well as literature.



MARXIST THEORY, CONT.

v          Marxist analyses of society and history have had a profound effect on literary theory and practical criticism.
v           Most notably in the development of

“New Historicism” and “Cultural Materialism.”



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY--

HYBRID


v           Made popular by Himi K. Bhabha

v           Suggests that a culture can never return to its pre-colonized ways.

         A culture does not stay, or become, stagnant because it has been colonized.

         An idea Western culture places upon other cultures.
v           Instead, cultures merge and become part of the colonized culture.

         The result of a colonized people adapting to survive under new culture rules.



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY —

HYBRID, CONT.


v           In order to survive, cultures mimic things such as clothes, music,

education, and food.

         In turn makes the “other” become more like the colonized.
v           Although a mimic is almost the same, but not white, the “other”

starts to become more like the dominant culture as it shakes the confidence in the colonizer’s ideas of their own universal truth, thus destabilizing colonialism itself.



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY--

NEGRITUDE


Coined by Aime Cesaire.
Purports that black people from all over the world share a collective personality that is

different from that of European

personality.



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY —

NEGRITUDE, CONT.


v           Calls for pride in one’s culture

and independence from European “barbarians.”
v           Leaders of this movement

rejected the “savage” tag and

exposed the savagery of the colonists.



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY —

NEOCOLONIALIS M




v          Splitting the profits between local oligarchs and colonial powers updates the ravages of colonialism.



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY--

ORIENTALISM

v           Theory put forward by Edward Said.

v          The West has come up with ideas about the orient in an attempt to describe and distance it from Western ideas.

v           If Orient is lazy and cruel, the West is

produced as hard working and kind.

v          It shows how the West, in its construction of the Orient, allows for

Western ideas to be seen as universal truths.



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY —

ORIENTALISM, CONT.


v           By making these truths right and natural, it makes the Orient into

the “other.”
v           It also justifies the colonization of the people.

v           The colonized may not have been physically colonized, but

colonized by being “studied.”

Being the object of something someone else sought to understand.



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY--

SUBALTERN




v          The idea that a people without power, can actually be speaking for the system of ideologies put in place, which may or may not be their

own beliefs.

         Can be speaking out for themselves or speaking for groups.



POSTCOLONIAL THEORY —

SUBALTERN, CONT.


v           Marginalized “others” do not have access to imperial colonialist’s

experience and culture.

“Others” operate within the confines of the oppressive group.





POST ANALYTIC THEORY



v           Prompted by Freud’s work focusing on the Id, Ego, Superego,

Desire, the Unconscious, and Defenses.

         A broad spectrum of viewpoints inhabit this theory.

v          One can understand the text by psychoanalyzing motives, characters, symbols, actions, or any number of literary devices in order to discover meaning.





READER RESPONSE





v          The text is completely subjective and authorial intent means nothing.
v           Meaning is discovered

through the reader’s reaction to

what they have read, or the relationship between the reader

and the text.





READER RESPONSE





v          Each reader may bring a different interpretation based on his/her ideology and experience.