A Glossary of selected literary terms: 1. Feminist Criticism 2. Psychoanalytical Criticism 3. New Historicism 4. Eco-Criticism 5. Queer Theory

                         Assignment Topic: A Glossary of selected literary terms:

1.   Feminist Criticism

2.   Psychoanalytical Criticism

3.    New Historicism

4.   Eco-Criticism

5.   Queer Theory

Name: Jinal B. Parmar

Roll no.: 13

Paper no.: 7 – Literary Theory and Criticism

M.A. Sem.:2

Submitted to: Department of English

Smt. S. B. Gardi

Maharaja Krishna kumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

                        A Glossary of selected Literary Terms

Feminist Criticism

Psychoanalytical Criticism

Eco-Criticism

Definition of Criticism :

                “Criticism is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something or someone in an intelligible way.”

“Another meaning of Criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature, artwork, film and social trends.”

   1.)   Feminist Criticism:

“Re-vision the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a mew critical direction-is for women far more than a chapter in cultural history, it is an act of survival.”

                                                                                               -Adrienne Rich

                Feminist Criticism is a type of literary criticism, which may study and advocate the rights of women. As Judith Fetterley says, “Feminism Criticism is a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read.” In the most general and simple terms , feminist literary criticism before the 1970 in the first and second  waves of feminism was largly concerned  with the politics of women’s  authorship and the representation of women’s  condition with in literature, this includes the depiction of fictional female characters.  There is a three Waves of Feminism.

§  Three waves of Feminism:

1)  First Wave Feminism:- Late 1700s- early 1900s

                “First wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19^th and early 20^th century throughout the world, particularly in the U.K., Canada, the United States. It focused on de jure inequalities, primarily on gaining women’ suffrage. This term was coined in the 1970s.”

                  Writers like Mary Wollstonecraft in her work “A Vindication of Rights of Women” highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the Women’s suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the 19^th Amendment.

2)  Second Wave Feminism:- early 1960s- late 1970s

               “Second wave feminism is a period of feminist activity that first begun in the early 1960s in the United States, and eventually spread throughout the early 1980s .”

                 Building on more equal working conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for Women, formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.

3)  Third Wave Feminism:-s early 1990s- Present:

             “Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but are often marked as beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present.”

                Resisting the perceived essentialist ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race theories to expand on marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and] the survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform" (Tyson 97).

                The mainly feminist concern with representation and politics of women’s lives has continued to play an active role in criticism. More specifically, modern feminist criticism deals with those issues related to the patriarchal programming with in key aspects of society including politics, education and to the  forceful work.

                   Lisa Tuttle has defined feminist theory as asking "new questions of old texts." She cites the goals of feminist criticism as:

 (1) To develop and uncover a female tradition of writing,

 (2) To interpret symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view,

 (3) To rediscover old texts,

 (4) To analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective,

(5) To resist sexism in literature, and

 (6) To increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style.

                    

  Feminist Literary Critic:

               There are many Feminist Critic who write about the problems of women in society. Prominent feminist Literary Critics include Virginia Woolf, Isobel Armstrong, Nancy Armstrong, Barbara   Bowen, Laura Brown, Sandra Gilbert, etc. 

  History of Feminist Criticism:

                 The major role of feminist criticism is to expose the problems and situation of women which they suffer from their male dominated society. Throughout the 1970s, this feminist criticism played a vital role to expose the cultural ‘mind-set’ within society which sexual inequality. In feminist criticism where women as the object of their writing. It is about the  male dominated society.

 2.) Psychoanalytical Criticism:

             “Psychoanalytical Literary Criticism refers to literary criticism or literary theory which, in method, concept, or form is influenced by the tradition of psychoanalysis begun by Sigmund Freud.”  Psychoanalysis begun with Freud, who wrote literary criticism as well as psychoanalytic theory. Freud developed a language that described, a model that explained and a theory that encompassed human psychology. His theories are directly concerned with the nature of the unconscious mind.

              Some of the psycholytical theorist has gave their idea about what they think about human mind, human nature , human behavior and their psyche like,

·         Sigmund Freud - has given concept about Id, Ego, and Superego.

·         Jacques Lacan – Unconscious is structured like language

·         Carl Jung – Archetype

·         Karen Horney – Womb envy

               In this theory, Freud explains that each person’s personality is formed of three parts: Id, Ego, and Superego. Psychoanalysis is the process of using what we know about these three parts of someone’s personality to analyze the ways that person behaves. Literary critics sometimes analyze the actions of literary characters using the three personality structures that Freud identified. As critics explore the ego, superego, and id of characters in a work, they focus on the ways that these parts of the characters’ personalities influence the work as a whole. This process is called psychoanalytic criticism. Following there is explanation of these three personalities:

1.)   Id: "...the location of the drives" or libido

                     The id is the part of the personality that contains our primitive impulses—such as thirst, anger, hunger—and the desire for instant gratification or release. According to Freud, we are born with our id. The id is an important part of our personality because as newborns, it allows us to get our basic needs met. Freud believed that the id is based on our pleasure principle. The id wants whatever feels good at the time, with no consideration for the other circumstances of the situation. The id is sometimes represented by a devil sitting on someone’s shoulder. As this devil sits there, he tells the ego to base behavior on how the action will influence the self, specifically how it will bring the self pleasure.

                  He called the predominantly passional, irrational, unknown, and unconscious part of the psyche the id, or "it."

2.)   Superego:  the area of the unconscious that houses Judgment (of self and others) and "...which begins to form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex" (Richter 1015-1016)

               The superego is the part of the personality that represents the conscience, the moral part of us. The superego develops due to the moral and ethical restraints placed on us by our caregivers. It dictates our belief of right and wrong. The superego is sometimes represented by an angel sitting on someone’s shoulder, telling the ego to base behavior on how the action will influence society.

                Another aspect of the psyche, which he called the superego, is really a projection of the ego. The superego almost seems to be outside of the self, making moral judgments, telling us to make sacrifices for good causes even though self-sacrifice may not be quite logical or rational. And, in a sense, the superego is "outside," since much of what it tells us to do or think we have learned from our parents, our schools,. or our religious institutions.

3.)   Ego:  "...one of the major defenses against the power of the drives..." and home of the defenses listed above

                   The ego is the part of the personality that maintains a balance between our impulses (our id) and our conscience (our superego). The ego is based on the reality principle. The ego understands that other people have needs and desires and that sometimes being impulsive or selfish can hurt us in the end. It is the ego’s job to meet the needs of the id, while taking into consideration the reality of the situation. The ego works, in other words, to balance the id and superego. The ego is represented by a person, with a devil (the id) on one shoulder and an angel (the superego) on the other.

                The ego, or "I," was his term for the predominantly rational, logical, orderly, conscious part.

                Another psychoanalytical theorist Jacques Lacan focused on language and language related issues. Lacan    treats the unconscious as a language; consequently, he views the dream not as Freud did (that is, as a form and symptom of repression) but rather as a form of discourse. Thus we may study dreams psychoanalytically in order to learn about literature, even as we may study literature in order to learn more about the unconscious. Lacan also revised Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex—the childhood wish to displace the parent of one’s own sex and take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex—by relating it to the issue of language.

3.) Eco-Criticism:

         “Eco Criticism is the study of literature and environment from an interdisciplinary point of view where all sciences come together to analyse the environment and brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation.”

             The term Eco criticism is related to the our surrounding environment which also come in literature. The word eco criticism is a semi neologism. Eco is short of ecology, which is concerned with the relationships between living organisms in their natural environment as well as their relationships with that environment. By analogy, eco criticism is concerned with the relationships between literature and environment or how man’s relationships with his physical environment are reflected in literature.  Eco criticism was officially heralded by the publication of two seminal works both published in the mid- 1990s: ‘The Ecocriticism Reader’, edited by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, and ‘The Environment Imagination’ by Lawrence Buell.

              In the United States, eco criticism is often associated with the ‘Association for the Study of Literature and Environment’ which hosts biennial meeting for scholars who deal with environmental matters in literature. Eco criticism is an intentionally broad approach that is known by a number of other designations, including “Green Studies”, “Ecopoetics”, and “Environmental Literary Criticism”.

             William Rueckert may have been the first person to use the term eco criticism. In 1978 Rueckert published an essay titled Literature and ecology: An Experiment in Eco criticism. His intent was to focus on “the application of ecology and ecological concept to the study of literature”. Glotfelty's working definition in The Ecocriticism Reader is that "ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment" and one of the implicit goals of the approach is to recoup professional dignity for what Glotfelty calls the "undervalued genre of nature writing". Lawrence Buell defines ‘ecocriticism’ ... as [a] study of the relationship between literature and the environment conducted in a spirit of commitment to environmentalist praxis”.

             Eco criticism appropriate stress that it was only in the 1990s that eco criticism emerged as a separate discipline although it is a fact that the relationship between man and his physical environment had always been interesting to literary critics.3 This interest, both at the basic scientific level and in the metaphorical form in literature, can be explained in two ways: 1. man always exists within some natural environment or, according to Buell, there cannot be is without where,4 and 2.  the last decade of the twentieth century was the time when it became obvious that the greatest problem of the twenty-first century would be the survival of the Earth.

              The first explanation is concerned with man's essential quest for personal identity or with his need and failure to find his roots. That is the reason why he is a life-long wanderer, on the one hand, and why he is always identified with the familiar physical and cultural environment, on the other.5 The latter explanation results from the fact that man feels vitally threatened in the ecologically degraded world.

             Eco criticism is one of the term and one of the way where everyone can fight for the world.  The reflection of that difficult struggle in the area of culture and spirit speaks for the urgency of action or the urgent need to do something in this respect. The interdisciplinary combination of the physical and the spiritual can be seen in some of the terms used in ecology and eco criticism, which both have the same aim. Two different and distinct disciplines, ecology and literary criticism, are combined in order to restore the earth’s health, which was lost owing to man’s wrongdoing. There is table of Ecological terms as a source of Eco criticism and language study:

Ecological Terms as a Source of Ecocriticism and Language Study:

Ecology	Eco criticism and language study
ecology	Deep ecology
Physical environment	Environmental Imagination Reimagination
Biodiversity	Global Environmental Culture environmental Unconscious
Endangered Species	Eco cultural habitat
Pollution	Toxic discourse literary hazards Language Pollution

               Ecology is the science that studies the relationships between living organisms and their physical environment. In other words, ecology is concerned with the living organisms in their natural environment.  Greg Garrard has dubbed 'pastoral ecology' the notion that nature undisturbed is balanced and harmonious, while Dana Phillips has criticised the literary quality and scientific accuracy of nature writing in "The Truth of Ecology". Similarly, there has been a call to recognize the place of the Environmental Justice movement in redefining ecocritical discourse.

             Through this term Eco criticism some of the critics who write about the environment and our surrounding nature in literature and its played a vital role to aware the readers through their writing mainly on ecology and environment. 

4.)  New Historicism:

                  

“The term ‘new historicism’ was coined by the American critic Stephan Greenblatt. New Historicism is a school of literary theory which consolidates critical theory into easier forms of practice for academic literary theorists of the 1990s. It first developed in the 1980s and gained widespread influence in the following decade”.

‘New Historicism’ is one of the term through this term New historicists aim simultaneously to understand intellectual history through the literature. This should be the studied and interpreted within the context of the both the history of author and the history of the critic’s life. Based on the literary criticism of Stephen Greenblatt and influenced by the philosophy of Michel Foucault, New Historicism acknowledges not only that a work of literature is influenced by its author's times and circumstances, but that the critic's response to that work is also influenced by his environment, beliefs, and prejudices. A new historicist looks in a literature in wider historical context, examined both the writer’s time of writing and how it’s affected and reflects writer’s life.

For example, in the study of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, one critic comes to the question of whether the play shows Shakespeare to be anti-Semitic. This work must be judged in the context in which it was written; in turn, cultural history can be revealed by studying the work — especially, say New Historicists, by studying the use and dispersion of power and the marginalization of social classes within the work. Studying the history reveals more about the text; studying the text reveals and tells more about the history.

So, the New historicism is the theory through which the critic can get the history of writer’s time. New Historicism acknowledges and embraces the ideas that, as times change, so will our understanding of great literature.

5.)  Queer Theory:

“Queer Theory is also can be the “Gender Studies”. This is one of the theory which is the studies the gender issues in the society through the literature. Queer study is the field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the 1990s out of the field of Queer studies and women’s studies”. 

This is the study of LGBT – Lesbian, Gay, Bi – Sexual, and Trans sexual. One of gender activist Gopi Shankar wrote a book on queer language in Tamil and he coined the regional terms for gender queer people in Tamil. He said that apart from male and female, there are the more than the 20 types of genders such as, transwomen, transmen , trigender, pangender, etc,. After English, Tamil is the only language that has been given names for all the genders identified so far.

In Queer theory there is  commitment to deconstruction makes it nearly impossible to speak of a "lesbian" or "gay" subject, since all social categories are denaturalized and reduced to discourse. Another criticism is that queer theory, in part because it typically has recourse to a very technical jargon, is written by a narrow elite for that narrow elite.

The criticism of queer theory can be divided in three main ideas:

·         It has a failing itineration, the "subjectless critique" of queer studies

·         The unsustainable analysis of this failing self

·         The methodological implication that scholars of sexuality end up reiterating and consolidating social categories

This is the Queer theory which is the issue of the of the gender and about homosexual. Queer theory rejects an ‘essentialism’ of identity politics and the binary opposition of homosexual in favor of a more fluid, and impermanent nature of the same. Queer theory put stresses on the luminal nature of identity. They stress the gay-lesbian identity as a ‘crossing-over’.

The work of Judith Butler is crucial here because it offers a new way of dealing with the problem of identity. Butler begins with the assumption that identity is not a stable entity. Gender identity is ‘performed’, and is performed repeatedly, Butler argues that feminism has presupposed the category of women as a stable and unitary subject. Feminism,by treating the very fact of being a woman as the defining factor of identity, ignores other equally crucial factor of identity such as class, race or sexuality. Butler is suggesting that even feminist theory cannot assume that being ‘female’ or ‘male’ creates certain kind of identities.

Queer theory is kind of theory which gave the some of the identity of gay and lesbian and their relation to each other and it has new way in literature. Through literature this theory of same gender gave some light on the gender issue in the society.