An Introduction to Literary Studies

Mario Klarer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135084783
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

In this classic beginner's guide to English literature, Mario Klarer offers a concise and accessible discussion of central issues in the study of literary texts, looking at:

• definitions of key terms such as literature and text
• the genres of fiction, poetry, drama, and film
• periods and classifications of literature
• theoretical approaches to texts
• the use of secondary resources
• guidelines for writing research essays

The new and expanded edition is fully updated to include:

• a wider range of textual examples from world literature
• additional references to contemporary cinema, a section on comparative literature
• an extended survey of literary periods and genres
• recent changes in MLA guidelines
• information on state-of-the-art citation management software
• the use and abuse of online resources.

The book also features suggestions for further reading as well as an extensive glossary of key terms.

1

WHAT IS LITERATURE?
WHAT IS A TEXT?

Look up the term literature in any current encyclopedia and you will be struck by the vagueness of its usage as well as by an inevitable lack of substance in the attempts to define it. In most cases, literature is referred to as the entirety of written expression, with the restriction that not every written document can be categorized as literature in the more exact sense of the word. The definitions, therefore, usually include additional adjectives such as “aesthetic” or “artistic” in order to distinguish literary works from texts for everyday use such as telephone books, newspapers, legal documents, and scholarly writings.

Etymologically, the Latin word litteratura derives from littera (letter), which is the smallest element of alphabetical writing. The word text is related to textile and translates as “fabric”: just as single threads form a fabric, so words and sentences form a meaningful and coherent text. The origins of the two central terms are, therefore, not of great help in defining literature or text. It is more enlightening to look at literature or text as cultural and historical phenomena and to investigate the conditions of their production and reception.

Underlying literary production is certainly the human desire to leave behind a trace of oneself through creative expression, which will exist detached from the individual and, therefore, outlast its creator. The earliest manifestations of this creative wish are prehistoric cave paintings, which pass on encrypted messages through visual signs. This visual component inevitably remains closely connected to literature throughout its various historical and social manifestations. In some periods, however, the pictorial dimension is pushed into the background and is hardly noticeable.

Not only the visual — writing is always pictorial — but also the acoustic element, the spoken word, is an integral part of literature, as the alphabet translates spoken words into signs. Before writing developed as a system of signs, whether pictographs or alphabets, texts were passed on orally. This predecessor of literary expression, called oral poetry, consisted of texts stored in a bard or minstrel's memory from which the singers could recite upon demand. Some scholars assume that most of the early classical and Old English epics originated in this tradition and were only later preserved in written form. But even classical literary genres such as ancient Greek poetry were — as its name “lyrical” poetry suggests — sung and accompanied by musical instruments, such as the lyre. Also, classical Greek drama contained large song-like parts, similar to the modern opera. Gradually, this acoustic dimension of texts lost momentum and gave way to nonhybrid formats that privilege pure text. This oral component, which runs counter to the modern way of thinking about texts, has been revived in the twentieth century through the medium of radio and other sound carriers. Audio-literature and the lyrics of songs still display the acoustic features of literary phenomena.

The visual aspect of literary texts, as well as the oral dimension, has been pushed into the background in the course of history. While the Middle Ages highly privileged the visual component of writing in such forms as richly decorated handwritten manuscripts, the arrival of the modern age — along with the invention of the printing press — made the visual element disappear or reduced it to a few illustrations in the text. “Pure” writing became more and more stylized as an abstract medium devoid of traces of material or physical elements. The medieval union of word and picture, in which both components of the text formed a single, harmonious entity, slowly disappeared. This modern iconoclasm (i.e., hostility toward pictures) not only restricts the visual dimensions of texts but also sees writing as a medium that can function with little connection to the acoustic element of language.

It is only in drama that the union between the spoken word and visual expression survives in a traditional literary genre, although this feature is not always immediately noticeable. Drama, which we — traditionally and without hesitation — read as one of the major representatives of literature, combines acoustic and visual elements more than any other literary genre. Even more obviously than in drama, the symbiosis of word and image culminates in film. This young medium is particularly interesting for textual studies, since film records spoken words and pictures in a manner that is reminiscent of books, allowing multiple viewings or readings. Methods of literary and textual criticism are, therefore, useful tools for the analysis of cinema and acoustic media. Computer hypertexts, such as web pages, are the most common contemporary hybrids of the textual and various other media; here, writing is linked to sounds, pictures, or video clips within an interdependent network. A relatively recent phenomenon, which also amalgamates the verbal and the visual, is the graphic novel. In the past few decades, these comic-book-like narratives have received the attention of traditional literary scholars. Although the written medium is obviously the main concern in the study of literature or texts, this field of inquiry has opened up to other areas of media, such as the stage, painting, film, music, or the Internet.

The permeation of modern textual studies with other media has recently resulted in controversies over the definition of “text.” Many authors and critics have deliberately left the traditional paths of literature, abandoning old textual forms in order to find new ways of literary expression and analysis. On the one hand, visual and acoustic elements are being reintroduced into literature; on the other, literature mixes with other media, genres, text types, and discourses.

GENRE, TEXT TYPE, AND DISCOURSE

Literary criticism, like biology, resorts to the concept of evolution or development and to criteria of classification to distinguish various genres. The evolutionary approach is referred to as “literary history,” whereas the generic approach is termed “poetics.” Both fields are closely related to the issue at hand, as every attempt to define text or literature touches not only upon differences between genres but also upon the historical dimensions of these literary forms of expression.

The term genre usually refers to one of the three classical literary forms of epic, poetry, or drama. This categorization is slightly confusing since the epic, despite its verse form, does not qualify as poetry. It is, in fact, a precursor of the modern novel (i.e., prose fiction) because of its structural features, such as plot, character presentation, and narrative perspective. Although this old classification is still in use, the tendency today is to abandon the term “epic” and use “prose,” “fiction,” or “prose fiction” for the relatively young literary forms of the novel and the short story.

Besides the genres that define or demarcate the general areas of traditional literature, the term text type has gained wide currency under the influence of linguistics. Texts that do not fit into the canonical genre categories of fiction, drama, and poetry often become objects of inquiry for modern linguistics. But literary scholars have also been looking increasingly at texts that were previously deemed to be worthless or irrelevant for textual analysis. The term text type refers to highly conventional written documents, such as instruction manuals, sermons, obituaries, advertising texts, catalogues, and scientific or scholarly writing. It can, of course, also include the three main literary genres and their subgenres.

A further key term in theoretical treatises on literary phenomena is discourse. Like text type, it is used as a term for any kind of classifiable linguistic expression. It has become a useful denotation for various linguistic conventions that refer to areas of content and theme; for instance, we may speak of male or female, political, sexual, economic, philosophical, or historical discourse. The classifications for these forms of linguistic expression are based on levels of content, vocabulary, and syntax, as well as stylistic and rhetorical elements. Whereas the term text type refers to written documents, discourse includes written and oral expression.

In sum, the term genre applies primarily to the three classical forms of the literary tradition; text type is a broader term that is also applicable to “non-canonical” written texts (i.e., those that traditionally do not qualify as literature); and discourse is the broadest term, referring to a variety of written and oral manifestations that share common thematic or structural features. The boundaries of these terms are not fixed and vary depending on the context in which they appear.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCES

Whether analyzing a traditional genre, or an unconventional text type or discourse, literary studies distinguishes between the artistic object, or primary source, and its scholarly treatment in a critical text, or the secondary source. Primary sources denote the traditional objects of analysis in literary criticism, including texts from all literary genres, such as fiction, poetry, or drama.

The term secondary source applies to texts such as articles (or essays), book reviews, and notes (brief comments on a very specific topic), all of which are published primarily in scholarly journals. In literary studies, as in any other academic discipline, articles of approximately 15 to 25 pages in regularly published journals inform the scientific community about the latest results of researchers (see Chapter 5, “Where and how to find secondary literature”). Articles also appear in collections of essays (or anthologies) compiled by one or several editors on a specific theme. Collections of essays published in honor of a famous researcher on one of his or her research topics go by the German name Festschrift. Results of scholarly research are not only published as articles but also as monographs (i.e., larger book-length treatises on a single theme). Most dissertations and books published by university presses or scholarly publishing houses belong to this group.

In terms of content, secondary literature tries to uphold those standards of scholarly practice that have, over time, been established for scientific discourse, including objectivity, documentation of sources, and general validity. It is vital for any reader to be able to check and follow the arguments, results, and statements of literary criticism. Since the interpretation of texts always contains subjective traits, secondary sources can only to a certain degree apply and maintain objective criteria or the general validity of the thesis. This idiosyncrasy can be seen as the main difference between literary criticism and the natural sciences. At the same time, it is the basis for the tremendous creative potential of this academic field. Slight changes of perspective and varying methodological approaches can produce new and original results in the interpretation of texts.

As far as documentation of sources is concerned, however, the requirements in literary criticism are as strict as those of the natural sciences. The reader of a secondary source should be able to retrace every quotation or paraphrase (summary) to the primary or secondary source from which it has been taken. Although varying and subjective opinions on texts will remain, the scholarly documentation of the sources should permit the reader to refer back to the original texts and thus make it possible to compare results and judge the quality of the interpretation.

As a consequence of these conventions in documentation, a number of formal criteria have evolved in literary criticism. Literary studies uses the term critical apparatus to refer to the list of sources of a scholarly paper or monograph, including: footnotes or endnotes, providing comments on the main text or references to further secondary or primary sources; a bibliography (or list of works cited); and, possibly, an index. Historically speaking, this documentation format has not always been followed in scholarly texts, but, rather, it has developed into a convention in the field only over the last several centuries (see also Chapter 6, “How to write a research paper”).

Secondary literature

text types	publication media
monograph	book
essay (article)	journal
note	collection of essays
book review	Festschrift
review article	DVD, CD-ROM
	Internet
formal aspects	goals
footnotes	originality
bibliography	objectivity
quotations	lucidity of arguments
paraphrases	traceability of sources
index	general validity of thesis

In most cases, it is easy to distinguish between primary and secondary literature. However, every literary period produces works that, for various reasons, attempt to blur the boundaries between these two text types. In the late Middle Ages, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) added glosses (i.e., footnote-like explanations) to his Italian epic Teseida (c. 1339), thus placing it on one level with the scientific works of his time, which also employed a critical apparatus.

The essay is another historical example, u...