Theme & Theory + Critical Perspectives

[Capture]

How do you think the application of analytical and critical frameworks expands or limits the search for meaning or understanding within a text?

 

In uni, many different thematic, theoretical, and critical analytical perspectives from a variety of disciplines, particularly the humanities are taught, and applied to literary works, to divine meaning and significance.

 

Do you have a preferred literary, social, philosophical, critical, etc. perspective which you enjoy applying to a literary text?

Edited January 20, 2010 by Capture

[BookJumper]

... no .

 

Admittedly, this wasn't a popular position with a few of my professors these past four years yet, I always stood my ground: two English degrees later, I'm still a stern un-believer in sweeping literary theories. IMHO, theory tends to make little sense as it often tries to map modern concepts onto old(er) texts - a case in point being all those tiresome Oedipal readings of Hamlet. Freud was inspired by Hamlet when developing his theory, therefore how can the latter form the basis for a text written four hundred years ago? The anachronism does my head in.*

 

And I quote, if I may, from my own review for Alternative Shakespeares:

... since the advent of literary theory, notions of the author as a once living, feeling being seem to have become risible, which I find sad and rather unjust. It doesn't help that most theory I have encountered is so far fetched I've read science fiction more plausible, not to mention inscrutably written. If I can read Shakespeare more or less with no need for a dictionary why should I require one to decipher Shakespeare criticism?

 

* it is worthwile to note that while Laurence Olivier's Hamlet was directed and acted under the impression that Freud got it right, Sir Larry eventually saw the error of both their ways and retracted the position that the myth of Oedipus was all there was to the Prince of Denmark.

[Capture]

... no .

 

Admittedly, this wasn't a popular position with a few of my professors these past four years yet, I always stood my ground: two English degrees later, I'm still a stern un-believer in sweeping literary theories. IMHO, theory tends to make little sense as it often tries to map modern concepts onto old(er) texts - a case in point being all those tiresome Oedipal readings of Hamlet. Freud was inspired by Hamlet when developing his theory, therefore how can the latter form the basis for a text written four hundred years ago? The anachronism does my head in.*

 

And I quote, if I may, from my own review for Alternative Shakespeares:

 

... since the advent of literary theory, notions of the author as a once living, feeling being seem to have become risible, which I find sad and rather unjust. It doesn't help that most theory I have encountered is so far fetched I've read science fiction more plausible, not to mention inscrutably written. If I can read Shakespeare more or less with no need for a dictionary why should I require one to decipher Shakespeare criticism?

 

* it is worthwile to note that while Laurence Olivier's Hamlet was directed and acted under the impression that Freud got it right, Sir Larry eventually saw the error of both their ways and retracted the position that the myth of Oedipus was all there was to the Prince of Denmark.

 

Thanks for responding. Love the quote from Alternative Shakespeares. One thing I especially dislike about the use of theory application is the tendency of academia to suggest that the meaning of a text cannot be intuited without applying some critical perspective to it. I've always preferred close reading of a text compared to application of a particular theoretical framework.

[BookJumper]

The quote is not from Alternative Shakespeares, but from my scathing review of the same - AS is the first in a series of three books presenting the toppermost theorists giving us their feminist/marxist/etc. take of Shakespeare; I am proud to say I didn't get past the introduction of volume 1 before tossing it in a corner.

 

Definitely agree with the close reading vs. theory position you outline; if you want to find meaning in a text, look at the words it is made out of. And the context it came out of, obviously - though I don't subscribe to the view that a text is nothing more than the sum of its historical background, New Historicism seems to me the only critical movement which will speak some sense on occasion.

 

Are you entangled in academia yourself?