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.

ROLE OF WORLD BANK IN EDUCATION IN INDIA

World Bank

 Education is a powerful driver of development and is one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. Although there has been great progress in the last decade, some 121 million children are still out of primary and lower secondary school, and 250 million children cannot read or write although many have been to school. 

Education has large, consistent returns in terms of income and counters widening inequality, but this potential is too often unrealized due to alarmingly low learning levels. Providing all children with a quality education that teaches them skills for work is critical to end poverty by 2030. 

The World Bank Group is committed to supporting countries that request financing or technical assistance to be able to reach Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 , which calls for access to quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.  It helped draft and is a signatory to the Education 2030 Framework for Action, which will guide countries through the implementation of SDG4. 

To make this vision a reality, the World Bank Group is mobilizing all available resources. The Education Sector Strategy 2020, “Learning for All” emphasizes that the knowledge and skills youth gain through learning help lift them out of poverty and drive development. Countries are encouraged to “invest early” because foundational skills acquired early help lifelong learning, “invest smartly” in efforts proven to improve learning, and “invest for all” children and youth.

Achieving learning for all also means moving beyond financing the inputs that education systems need, to strengthening these systems to deliver results. There is growing demand from countries for Results-Based Financing, which is a promising set of tools to help achieve better alignment of incentives and desired outcomes by making financing contingent on the achievement of pre-agreed results. This approach has shown promise and could help countries leverage the financial resources needed to achieve the SDGs.

In May 2015, at the historic World Education Forum in Incheon, Korea, the World Bank Group committed to double its Results-Based Financing support for education to $5 billion over the next five years. Over a quarter of this has already been delivered.

In April 2016, the WBG committed to investing $2.5 billion over five years in education projects that include adolescent girls (aged 12-17) as direct beneficiaries. About 75% of this investment will be in low-income countries, largely in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The World Bank Group’s support to education focuses on areas that matter to developing countries:

• Ramping up Early Child Development investments to enable a lifetime of learning and raise future productivity.
• Ensuring that children who are in school are actually learning foundational skills.
• Lowering barriers to quality education for girls and children from disadvantaged communities.
• Fixing the wide disconnect between skills development, higher education and the labor market.
• Addressing systemic issues at all levels, to increase efficiency and transparency.
• Increasing innovative Results-Based Financing in responding to country demand.

It is important for education systems to provide students at all levels with the skills necessary to promote productivity and growth.

Investing in young children (from birth to age five) before they even enter primary school—ensuring they have the right stimulation, nurturing and nutrition—is one of the smartest investments a country can make to address inequality, break the cycle of poverty, and boost productivity. The “Stepping Up Early Childhood Development” report is a practical guide for policymakers and practitioners about how to invest in young children.

Quality education can only be achieved with excellent teachers. A 2014 report, “Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean”, distills the latest evidence and practical experience with teacher policy reforms. “How Shanghai Does It”, a 2016 World Bank Group report, also highlights how the most impressive aspects of Shanghai’s education system is the way it grooms, supports, and manages teachers, who are central to any effort to raise the education quality in schools.

To help increase labor market productivity, the World Bank Group examines how education can play a role in addressing the skills mismatch present in many countries around the world. The Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) skills measurement survey is shedding light on skills gaps and mismatches by generating new, internationally comparable data on adult workers’ skills. The World Bank Group also produces several regional skills reports, including the Preparing the next generation in Tanzania : challenges and opportunities in education, Developing Skills for Innovative Growth in the Russian Federation, and Sub-Saharan African Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Research : A Decade of Development.

The World Bank Group’s Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) platform has been widely used around the world, producing 167 country reports that help assess education policies and identify actionable priorities.

The World Bank Group conducts and supports rigorous impact evaluations to generate stronger evidence about what works in education under different conditions. Also, in Africa, Service Delivery Indicator (SDI) surveys track performance and quality of service delivery in education and health across countries and over time. At a global level, the World Bank Group’s EdStats website features more than 2,500 internationally comparable education indicators on access, completion, learning outcomes, expenditures, and more.

During 2000 to 2016, the World Bank Group invested $46 billion in education. Over the period of 2000-2015, the share of education in World Bank Group lending has doubled from five percent to about 10 percent, showing the importance of education in the overall portfolio.  The World Bank Group’s lending for education for fiscal year 2016 was $3.4 billion, which is the same as the average lending for education over the past 10 years. The World Bank Group’s current active education portfolio is $14.5 billion.

 In many countries, World Bank Group funds are also helping to crowd in much larger resources from governments, as well as other development partners, resulting in harmonized education programs and lower transaction costs for governments.

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In India, from 2012 to 2015, the massive nationwide Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan program for elementary education reached more than 120 million children across about 1.4 million schools, helping improve the pupil-teacher ratio from 30 students per teacher to 25. During that same period, teacher attendance improved from 75 percent to 85 percent, while the share of professionally trained teachers remained stable, thereby establishing the foundation for improved quality of education. In addition, the ratio of girls to boys enrolled in government schools improved from 1:1 in 2012 to 1:1.03 in 2015.

The World Bank Group collaborates closely with United Nations (UN) agencies and development partners and will strongly support countries as they work towards the SDGs.

The World Bank Group a co-convener of the World Education Forum (May 2015; Incheon, Korea)—the most important global event on education in a decade.

The World Bank Group was instrumental in creating the multi-donorGlobal Partnership for Education (GPE), an important partner in basic education, in 2002. Efforts to better coordinate education financing from GPE and the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, are underway.

The World Bank Group partners with bilateral donors, for example, with Norway, the United States, and Germany for the Results in Education for All Children (REACH program), which is supporting efforts to build evidence on RBF in education.

Other trust fund partners include Australia, the European Commission, Ireland, Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

The World Bank Group is also working with new partners including Teach for All, the Arab World Initiative, the Early Childhood Consultative Group, the Global Reading Network, the Building Evidence in Education (BE²) Group, and the Global Compact on Learning Donor Network. 

The Planning Commission

The Planning Commission

History

The Planning Commission was set up by a Resolution of the Government of India in March 1950 in pursuance of declared objectives of the Government to promote a rapid rise in the standard of living of the people by efficient exploitation of the resources of the country, increasing production and offering opportunities to all for employment in the service of the community. The Planning Commission was charged with the responsibility of making assessment of all resources of the country, augmenting deficient resources, formulating plans for the most effective and balanced utilisation of resources and determining priorities. Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Chairman of the Planning Commission.

The first Five-year Plan was launched in 1951 and two subsequent five-year plans were formulated till 1965, when there was a break because of the Indo-Pakistan Conflict. Two successive years of drought, devaluation of the currency, a general rise in prices and erosion of resources disrupted the planning process and after three Annual Plans between 1966 and 1969, the fourth Five-year plan was started in 1969.

The Eighth Plan could not take off in 1990 due to the fast changing political situation at the Centre and the years 1990-91 and 1991-92 were treated as Annual Plans. The Eighth Plan was finally launched in 1992 after the initiation of structural adjustment policies.

For the first eight Plans the emphasis was on a growing public sector with massive investments in basic and heavy industries, but since the launch of the Ninth Plan in 1997, the emphasis on the public sector has become less pronounced and the current thinking on planning in the country, in general, is that it should increasingly be of an indicative nature.

Functions

The 1950 resolution setting up the Planning Commission outlined its functions as to:

1. Make an assessment of the material, capital and human resources of the country, including technical personnel, and investigate the possibilities of augmenting such of these resources as are found to be deficient in relation to the nation’s requirement;
2. Formulate a Plan for the most effective and balanced utilisation of country's resources;
3. On a determination of priorities, define the stages in which the Plan should be carried out and propose the allocation of resources for the due completion of each stage;
4. Indicate the factors which are tending to retard economic development, and determine the conditions which, in view of the current social and political situation, should be established for the successful execution of the Plan;
5. Determine the nature of the machinery which will be necessary for securing the successful implementation of each stage of the Plan in all its aspects;
6. Appraise from time to time the progress achieved in the execution of each stage of the Plan and recommend the adjustments of policy and measures that such appraisal may show to be necessary; and
7. Make such interim or ancillary recommendations as appear to it to be appropriate either for facilitating the discharge of the duties assigned to it, or on a consideration of prevailing economic conditions, current policies, measures and development programmes or on an examination of such specific problems as may be referred to it for advice by Central or State Governments.

Evolving Functions

From a highly centralised planning system, the Indian economy is gradually moving towards indicative planning where Planning Commission concerns itself with the building of a long term strategic vision of the future and decide on priorities of nation. It works out sectoral targets and provides promotional stimulus to the economy to grow in the desired direction.

Planning Commission plays an integrative role in the development of a holistic approach to the policy formulation in critical areas of human and economic development. In the social sector, schemes which require coordination and synthesis like rural health, drinking water, rural energy needs, literacy and environment protection have yet to be subjected to coordinated policy formulation. It has led to multiplicity of agencies. An integrated approach can lead to better results at much lower costs.

The emphasis of the Commission is on maximising the output by using our limited resources optimally. Instead of looking for mere increase in the plan outlays, the effort is to look for increases in the efficiency of utilisation of the allocations being made.

With the emergence of severe constraints on available budgetary resources, the resource allocation system between the States and Ministries of the Central Government is under strain. This requires the Planning Commission to play a mediatory and facilitating role, keeping in view the best interest of all concerned. It has to ensure smooth management of the change and help in creating a culture of high productivity and efficiency in the Government.

The key to efficient utilisation of resources lies in the creation of appropriate self-managed organisations at all levels. In this area, Planning Commission attempts to play a systems change role and provide consultancy within the Government for developing better systems. In order to spread the gains of experience more widely, Planning Commission  also plays an information dissemination role.

Role of Planning Commission 

Through the Plans Five Year Plans :  First  Second  Third  Fourth  Fifth  Sixth  Seventh  Eighth  Ninth  Tenth Eleventh

The scope of work of the Education Division covers:

• Different stages of education such as Pre-primary, formal and non-formal Education, Secondary, Senior Secondary, University and Technical Education;
• Special areas such as that of girls' education, Education for the children of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes;
• Adult Education and Education in the backward areas.

2. The major Education programmes relate to achieving the aim of Universalisation of Elementary Education through Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Adult Education, Vocationalisation of Education, Teacher Education, Science Education, Educational Planning, Administration and Supervision, Physical Education, Games and Sports, Scholarship, Language Development, Book Promotion, Libraries, Youth Service Schemes, Cultural Institutions and activities etc.

3. The Education Division performs the following functions, within the areas of its concern:

1. Formation of long-term, medium-term and annual plans for the Central and the State/Union Territories levels, defining the phases in which they should be implemented, assigning their inter-se priorities and resource allocation;
2. Coordination of the education plans of the States/Union Territories and the central agencies including the University Grants Commission and the National Council of Education Research and Training as well as of the national-educational plan with the development plans in other sectors, assessing and indicating adjustments needed in the plan policies, programmes and priorities so as to achieve national goals and objectives;
3. In support of the above functions, maintain educational statistics and undertake/promote/support research studies and surveys covering –
   (a) Generation, collection, compilation and analysis of data and relevant information (b) Programme evaluation and prognosis and
   (c) Alternative and/or supplementary measures and new policy initiatives in the field of education;
4. Collaborate with and/or advise/assist the concerned Government Departments, international organizations and other agencies like NUEPA, NCERT, UGC in matters such as;
   (a) Foreign technical assistance for education development;
   (b) Training of educational planning functionaries;
   (c) Administrative reforms, innovations and experiments bearing upon economy efficiency and effectiveness of educational services; and
5. Examine resource mobilization and low cost strategies/alternatives and make recommendations in this regard;
6. Review of Committees and Commissions, Central Advisory Boards and Annual/Five Year Plan;
7. The technical staff of the Division is also working on the Educational Statistics received from the MHRD, and the Department of Statistics and other agencies.

Art and Culture

The functions of Education Division are primarily to provide over-all policy and guidance in formulation of plans and programmes for preserving and promoting the rich cultural heritage of the country. These are plans/programmes of the Ministry of Culture, whose main activities are of archaeological excavations, promotion of visual and literary arts, preservation of the material and non-material heritage, developing of museums, libraries and institutions. A number of institutions have been actively associated with the promotion, preservation and dissemination of rich cultural heritage of India.

Youth Affairs and Sports

The Education Division also looks after the over-all planning and policies of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports take steps to channelize the energy of the youth into constructive work and to inculcate in them noble and patriotic values. These programmes stress promotion and up-gradation of necessary life skills amongst the youth through vocational training besides creating employment opportunities for them. Efforts are made to involve youth in national building activities. The Division also addresses issues relating to promotion of sports, sports talents and sports infrastructure in States/UTs.