Study of Literary History

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Study of Literary History

• EH 4301
• Spring 2005

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Literary History

• Facts of authors life
• Culture and ideas of the time
• Possible influences of previous literary works

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Rely on knowledge of

• Biography
• Intellectual history
• Social history
• Tradition of literature

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• Extrinsic
• Critic goes outside of the literary work for
  knowledge and insights that can be applied to
  literature

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Historical Critics believe

• Such knowledge is indispensable to an
  understanding of the literary texts.
• Meaning of any work is inextricably bound to its
  nature as a statement from and of the past.
• The pastness is part of texts essential nature
  and any reading that ignores the historical
  element is incomplete

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• The literary work is ineluctably an historical
  factThe words, phrasings, ideas, and structures
  of literary works are products of a specific
  time, place, and person and readers respond in
  light of these facts. ---Lionel Trilling

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• Great literature may be said to transcend time
• Speaks to readers at many different historical
  moments
• Also exists within time
• Time of composition
• Time of reading

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• Literary historians attempt to illuminate works
  of literature and increase the readers
  understanding of them

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Concerns About Historical Approaches

• Fear that literary history may make literature
  adjunct to history
• (another set of facts)

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Concerns About Historical Approaches

• Concern about the value and relevance of
  historical knowledge when applied to literature
• Focus on background rather than on text
• Literary text may be lost in accounts of life and
  times of author
• Intellectual and social forces of the times are
  not central to literary study and may distract
  attention from significant feature of text

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Literary Historical Approaches

• Historical Studies
• Biographical Studies
• Studies of the Literary Tradition

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Authenticating Text

• Clarify text as a document or material cultural
  artifact
• Fixing the date of composition
• Establishing authoritive version of text
• Does it correspond with known manuscripts?
• Are there spurious editions of this text?
  

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Authenticating Text

• Plays important role in studying the development
  of a piece of literature
• Authors original manuscript
• May contain errors/omissions
• Grammatical/mechanics may be corrected/changed by
  typesetters/copyists/printers who take it upon
  themselves to improve the work

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Authenticating Text

• Censorship
• Some works may have been edited because of
  content ideas
• Twain editors and wife

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Authenticating Text

• Authors revise
• Charles Dickens
• Second ending of Great Expectations
• First unhappy
• Editors later published the first aesthetic
  integrity
• Thomas Hardy
• 4 versions of Return of the Native

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Historical Studies

• Way most college texts are organized
• Chronologically
• Works/authors categorized by periods

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Historical Studies

• Bound by the belief that
• HISTORY MATTERS

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Historical Studies

• Time and conditions of a works origin are
  important

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Literary Historians

• Hippolyte Taine
• Michelet
• Saint-Beuve
• Robert Spiller
• All interpreted books in terms of historical
  origins

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Hippolyte Taine

• French scholar
• Historical critic
• History of English Literature
• Pub. 1863
• Translated by H. Van Laun in 1871

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3 Factors That Shape Literary Work

• race man was a product of "innate and
  hereditary dispositions"
• surroundings - culture, including climate,
  geography, conditions that mold attitudes and
  customs (historical conditioning and environment)
• epochs or milieus- large expanses of time in
  which "a certain dominant idea has had sway
  (whole social life of any nation)

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Robert Spiller

• Factors which contribute to the existence of a
  literary work
• shaped by great ideas of their time, whether
  religious, political, scientific, or
  psychological
• influenced by their culture, the habits, norms,
  values, roles, etc. of their time and place
• Influenced by institutions such as the political
  party, the church, the military, the school
• Tradition
• Myth
• Biography

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History of Ideas

• Some primarily investigate the history of certain
  ideas themselves
• more historical or philosophical than literary
• Others go further and apply that knowledge of an
  historical idea to the interpretation of a
  specific literary text.

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Lovejoys Chain of Being

• History of certain idea.
• The Great Chain of Being A Study of the History
  of an Idea (1936)
• traces idea of chain of being from beginning in
  Greek philosophy to 19th century (throughout
  Western thought)
• Term implies hierarchical universe all
  creatures are linked in a continuous chain from
  high to low.

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Lovejoys Chain of Being

• His study does not interpret specific literary
  works
• provides knowledge of the idea UNDERLYING many
  works.
• This chain has shaped and has been reflected in
  many literary works through the ages.

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E.M.W. Tillyard

• He applies chain of being idea to specific time
  period and looks at how it influenced works of
  the day.
• He saw the need to "articulate the commonplace
  understandings of the time, ideas so fundamental
  they are assumed rather than made explicit in
  literature."
• A knowledge of these ideas leads to new insights.

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E.M.W. Tillyard

• The Elizabethan World Picture (1944)
• looks at certain ideas in relationship to 16th
  century literature
• Example Antony Cleopatra
• Shakespeare makes reference to Antony as
  "dolphin-like"
• on the chain of being the dolphin was "king of
  the fish".

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• Significant are the implications of his
  discussion of the human being's place on the
  chain, midway between the angels and beasts.
• 16th century saw humans
• allied to beasts through sensual desire.
• allied to angels through the mind (understanding
  and will).

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• center of Elizabethan ethics, so
• 1. duty to gain knowledge
• 2. duty to act rightly in light of that
• knowledge
• Tillyard assumes that a people's ethical
  principles are crucial to literature.
• Othello Lear - defective in understanding
  misguided and do not determine truth
• Hamlet Macbeth - defective in will understand
  but do not act according to their knowledge

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SAMUEL MONK (1955)

• Applied knowledge of chain of being and other
  historical ideas to the interpretation of a
  single text Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
• He considers 18th century ideas of Christianity,
  humanism, stoicism and chain of being to the work.

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Biographical Studies

• Belief that the authors life must be taken into
  account if we are to get an accurate
  interpretation of a text.
• Attacks the intentional fallacy
• not separating the work from the authors
  intended meaning
• Wimsatt and Beardsley a confusion between the
  poem and its origins

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Arguments Against Biographical Studies

• Need to describe and judge literary works in
  their own terms and on their own merits, not on
  the authors intentions
• Disbelief in the possibility of determining such
  an intention

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Hagiography

• Early biographies (esp. medieval Latin) are
  Hagiography
• Idealized portraits of saints and rulers
• Glorify their subject
• Only writing about the positive aspects could
  cloud the biographical use for interpretation of
  work.

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Biographical Studies

• Renaissance brought change to tone of
  biographies
• Sir Thomas Mores biography of Richard III
• Accentuates bad side/vices of ruler

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Biographical Studies

• Not until 17th century that biographers began to
  make conscious effort to give clear, accurate
  portrait of whole individual, both good and bad.

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Biographical Studies

• 18th Century examples of literary biography
• James Boswells Life of Samuel Johnson
• Boswell spent much time with Johnson
• Combined first-hand knowledge with thorough
  research and artful presentation
• Samuel Johnsons Lives of the English Poets
• Combined biography and literary criticism

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Biographical Studies

• 19th century biographies
• Use of intimate details and presentation of whole
  person often not found
• Frequently show only public side of figures
• Ignore the unsavory aspects

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Biographical Studies

• 20th century biographies
• Reaction to 19th century tendencies
• Focus on private, sometimes sordid details of
  lives
• Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (1969)
• Ignorance which selects and omits, with a placid
  perfection unattainable by the highest art.
• Need for truth
• Problem seems to have distorted his subjects
  through his own preconceptions about Victorian
  society and his own desire to debunk the legends
  that had grown up around his subjects.

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Biographical Studies

• When taking biographies into account
• Make sure they are accurate and truthful
• Biographer must have thorough knowledge of the
  subjects life and times
• Consider biases or preconceptions the author may
  have about subject
• Agenda of author
• Take information with a grain of salt
• Not everything you read about a person may be
  truth

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Biographical Studies

• Quentin Bells Virginia Woolf A Biography
• Gives detailed description of her life
• No consideration of her literary work
• Home Before Dark by Susan Cheever
• Biography of John Cheever written by his daughter
• References to his works
• Influenced by e.e. cummings

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When I Consider How My Light is Spent
(1655?)John Milton

• When I consider how my light is spent,
• Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
• And that one talent which is death to hide
• Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
• To serve therewith my Maker, and present
• My true account, lest He returning chide,
• Doth God exact day-labor, light denied,
• I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
• That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
• Either mans work or His own gifts. Who best
• Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best. His
  state
• Is kingly thousands at his bidding speed,
• And post oer land and ocean without rest
• They also serve who only stand and wait.

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When I Consider How My Light is Spent
(1655?)John Milton

• When I consider how my light is spent,
• Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
• And that one talent which is death to hide
• Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
• To serve therewith my Maker, and present
• My true account, lest He returning chide,
• Doth God exact day-labor, light denied,
• I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
• That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
• Either mans work or His own gifts. Who best
• Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best. His
  state
• Is kingly thousands at his bidding speed,
• And post oer land and ocean without rest
• They also serve who only stand and wait.

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• Milton had lost his eyesight by 1651
• This might help us understand the usage of
  certain phrases
• Knowing about his life may help us appreciate the
  poems significance
• The speaker is not a fictional made up
  character, but has some connection to a real man,
  a writer, contemplating the horror of his own
  blindness

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• Work might help us understand Miltons life
• Oxford Companion calls him a domestic tyrant
  (654)
• Poem may suggest he saw universe in terms of
  servant/master relationship
• Viewed himself as a servant of God
• Submissiveness of poem indicates he must strive
  to be subservient to God, even if it is just by
  standing and waiting.

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We Must Remember

• Avoid equating the works content with the
  authors life
• Piece of writing isnt the same thing as a
  persons life
• Writers do sometimes try to express themselves
  truthfully
• Some works are more moving if we imagine the
  author is writing about self

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Psychobiography

• Biographies based on analysis of works to come up
  with personality traits of the author
• Reconstruction if parts are missing, through
  deduction, the missing parts can be recreated in
  relation to existing fragments.
• Paleontologist reconstructs a skeleton

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Psychobiography

• Speculation, not always the truth
• John Codys work on Emily Dickinson
• Tries to determine the inner motives of Dickinson
• Tries to reconstruct parts of her life through
  the application of psychoanalytic theory