New Criticism and "Meaning"

By Abdeslam Badre

 

"What is new criticism and the various assumptions formulated by the new critics, and the limitations together with the drawbacks as well as the strengths of this  mode of criticism?"

 

 

New criticism is a literary approach or a mode of reflection in literary works which has emanated from and chiefly dominated the American literary criticism, with the publication of New Criticism by John Crowe Ransom. Before its emergence, critics were concerned in their analysis of texts with the historical context and the author’s biographies in an attempt to uncover the meaning of the text. Accordingly, they depended on an extrinsic analysis, focussing mainly on the elements outside the text for interpretation.

 

However, this common mode of analysis was rejected by the new critics. For the latter , the poem, which is synonymous to any literary work be it writing or painting, is a self-enclosed and a concrete entity. It has an objective existence, and can therefore only be objectively evaluated: with no feeling as was the case with the romantics, or moral values as believed the new humanists, or impression in the work’s beauty as did the impressionists. Thus the new critics apply an intrinsic analysis of the text, focussing on the “words on the page”, not on any thing outside it. Thy overlooked the author’s historical background along with influence of his life on his work of art.

 

American new criticism has derived some of its principles from some British critics and writers  who helped lay the foundation of this form of criticism. The idea that criticism should be directed to the poem and not the poet was borrowed from T. S. Eliot. In many of his critical essays, he insisted that a poet does infuse the poem with his or her personality &emotions, but uses language to incorporate within the text his/her experiences that are similar to human beings’. That is, the poet does not reflect his/her personal feelings & experiences, but simply mirrors experiences which are basically shared by everybody. I. A. Richard has also contributed to this movement through his books, such as Literary Criticism & Science and Poetry.

 

Clean Brooks, Robert Warren , and W. K. Wimsatt are among the prominent  figures who adopted new criticism as a mode of textual analysis. Despite some individual differences concerning the various elements that constitute a poem, they shared a number of similarities. First, they asserted that a poem has ontological status: possessing its own being. For them a poem should be regarded as independent and self-sufficient body. Second, they considered the poem as an artifact and autonomous unit, with its own structure. Third, they believed that the meaning of a given text must not be equated with the authors intentions. Indeed, they warn against critical modes which localize the text meaning in the private experience  or intention of its author. The new critic referred to this tendency as the “intentional fallacy”, pointing out that  if reliance on the author’s intentions misleads the critic towards this fallacy. Likewise,  they warned against the “affective fallacy” which stations the reader or the author’s emotional response to the center for the  interpretation of the text. The new critics held that the poem is neither the author’s nor the reader’s own: once it is published, it becomes public and cut off the emotions of its creator. Forth, they adopted the strategy of closure, that is a text is a self-enclosed entity, sealed of the outside world; accordingly, a critic should interact  with it through a close reading: stick to the text and outlook what is outside it to produce meaning. Fifth, one important point for the N. Critics is that literature is verbal: form/structure and content/meaning go together and constitute a verbal organization of devices. They believed that a poem cannot be understood through paraphrasing. This error, they called, “ heresy of paraphrase” . that is no simple paraphrasing of the poem can lead to its actual meaning, though they did not deny that the paraphrasing of a poem may help for only an initial understanding. Finally, the new critics disregard the distinction between literary genres, for what is essential for them in the text is not characters or plot, but the paradoxes, ironies, and images.

 

Cleanth Brooks and Robert Warren re-commanded a method of analysis to approach a text from new criticism perspective. A critic should begin with a full and innocent immersion in the poem then raise inductive questions that would lead the critic to examine the materials within the text. Brooks focussed on the point of innocence  approach of the text, meaning to disregard any outside element that may affect the reader’s judgement.

 

            However, new criticism, like any critical mode of reflection, has its areas of strengths as well as drawbacks. The fact that new criticism made a science of literary criticism by following  objective analysis and evaluation is one of the advantages of this mode, adding to that the professional discipline it provided. Also, it developed  closes reading which is an important principle for analyzing poetry. This strategy leads to a complete criticism of the text without leaving any unasked question or gaps within it. However, the rejection of the historical context together with notion of intertextuality, reception, and gender are the inefficiencies of the new critics. They also give importance to the text and literature, but relegate the role of the author and literary criticism, which creates a sort of passive reader.

 

            To put it in nutshell, new criticism is a theory broke with the previous theories that followed traditional ways of interpretation, depending mainly on an extrinsic strategy. It has also rejected the idea that great literature is the product of the great man, since ,for them , the author has no authority over the text. The attempt to find the author within the text or the work of art through the author can simply mislead toward either the intentional or the affective fallacies. Left to be said, that new criticism, unlike many of the critical approaches, did not set up any kind of theory under which their study might be carried out.

D. Danial's "Realism" and F.R. Leavis' "the Great Tradition"

By Abdeslam Badre

Realism is associated mainly with the 19c. Having began in the 18c., realism and naturalism came as response to Romanticism. The purpose and main distinctive feature of realism was to represent “life as it is” as opposed to romanticism which was based on feelings. Realism in literature was derived from art , especially painting. In Europe, this mode of thinking is associated with Balzac, who is considered the father of literary realism, Gustave Flaubert, whose novels -following Balzac- were based on observation of real life. Then, came Emile Zola, the father of Naturalism, who build up his novels on scientific discoveries, and focussed on ordinary people who turned to be the product of their environment. In England, the realist movement was associated with writers as Daniel Defoe, the father of the realist novel, Moll Flanders- , Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding.

 

            Realism in art deals with scenes of ordinary people in their humble life: it represents life as it is and not as it should be. John Ruskin in Modern Painters stated that what is important in painting is what is expressed through the act of painting. That is, a painter who simply copies faithfully objects of the reality out-there has just learnt the basic techniques/language of art through which the artist’s ideas are to be expressed. Therefore, for Ruskin, greatness in art is not achieved through the exact imitation of nature, it is more importantly achieved through the many ideas that are expressed though that imitation. Put otherwise, greatness in art is the artist’s capacity to convey reality through great ideas by virtue of the expressive and mimetic skills. This is John Ruskin’s theory of “expressive realism”.

 

            Realism in literature is mode of writing which bases itself on rationalism and represents the subject as an illusion that looks like reality. The heroes of the realist fiction are the figures that have been neglected by the romantic writer. They are common people, uprooted from lower and working classes, living under ordinary or humble circumstances. By way of example, Daniel Defoe’s heroin Moll Flanders under whom the novel is titled, is a female outcast who after many failed experiences  turns to an adulterous, whore, thief, and ends up in the prison. The pioneers of the English realist fiction are Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. Those three have broken with the old fashion romance, adopting a new method of writing which shapes up its structure on a real human experience with a realistic aspect of life. This realistic aspect of life does not only reside in the kind of life under study or the identity of the character who acts the experience, but also in the way this life-experience in represented. In short, Realism is one feature that differentiates between the new form –namely the novel- and the other forms of writing.

 

            The major novelty brought about with the rise of realism is the novel genre. More than any other literary form, the novel raises the question of the correspondence between the literary work and the imitated reality. The novel came as to assert that the individual experience which is free from any past assumptions or traditional beliefs may lead to the “truth”. Accordingly, the novelist rejects literary traditionalism: he moves away from the traditional plots, adopting the individual experience, which guarantee the novel its originality. The realist writer, unlike all those who have preceded, does not plot their narratives on reliance on mythologies or histories; he uses original plots. He also stresses the fact that this plot should be acted by particular people in particular circumstances. This new tendency has the effect of individualizing the fictitious characters and giving them a detailed presentation of their environment, as it is demonstrated in the novel of Emile Zola. Adding to that, the focus on the character’s real personal identity with contemporary name and surnames and not with traditional ones.

 

            Other specificities of the novel form are the correlation of space as well as  time dimension and the referential language. On the one hand, the realist writer defines their characters by referring to space and time, for those element have a great impact on shaping up the personality of the character. On the other hand, the type of language that realism uses is prose style, which gives a sense of authenticity. Hardly composed of the rhetorical and figurative images, the language becomes more corresponding to the things it describes . By so doing, the realist writer wants to convey the concrete reality of words. And by this exhaustive presentation rather than elegant concentration, the writer is enabled to get closer to what he describes.

 

 

F.R. Leavis :         The Great Tradition

 

F.R. Leavis attempts to fix a definition of greatness in literary fields. For so doing, he traces a traditional going to Fielding and Richardson, the ones who led to Jane Austan, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and D.H. Laurence. Those novelists are , in Leavis’s view, great because they through their literary productions promote human ‘awareness of the possibility of life’. For leavis, Jane Austan is great not because she has individual talent, but because she successfully carried out the tradition, in the sense that she led to appearance of other great literary figures who learnt from her. Also, because she, together with George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad, have a conveyed ideology that teach the reader. Their work is great because it is involved with the tradition of Morality. Another element that helped those figure to attain greatness, in Leavis’s stand, is their concern with “form”. All the above-mentioned novelists were chiefly concerned with “form” as well as the question of how morality is revealed through “form”. Charles Dickens was also a great writer, however his writings  tend more to entertain than to teach morality.

 

Indeed, leavis’s judgements have paved the way for a whole critical discourse along with the notion of the ‘canon’. He permeated a whole literary culture, a whole educational system, which produced a high degree of consensus concerning the criteria if greatness in literature. He is the one who defined the great tradition which, in return, produced the notion of the ‘canon’, for people wanted to be taught something worthwhile at universities. Hence, the old religious ideology, which had lost force, has been replaced by the entity of literature which now  provide the reader with a morally correct ideology, aiming at guiding people toward universal human values, and thus to the truth.  Leavis’s ‘tradition’ has challenged the moral set up of aristocracy, and questioned the assumptions of the upper classes.

The Impacts of Romanticism on Literature

By Abdeslam Badre

Romanticism is a revolutionary movement associated with the French working-class revolution against the monarch and the aristocracy : they called for liberty, equality, and fraternity. The movement is also associated with the industrial revolution in England where the industrial town grew dramatically and a large working class, which was living very bad conditions, emerged.

 

            As mode of thinking, romanticism revolutionized literature, religion and philosophy. It questioned the settled way of thinking which had widely spread with the age of Enlightenment : the age that gave priority to reason, and preference to ideas. The romantic ideological novelty can be seen, for example, in the French philosopher, Jean Jack Rousseau, who says : ‘ I felt before I thought’. In this statement, he opposes Descartes who rather supports reason : ‘ I think therefore I am ‘. Rousseau also stated that Man should liberate his spirit. This must bring a new idea, which is feelings may lead to ‘truth’. Hence, the romantic philosophy rejected the 18C. concept of the mind as a mirror  or as a simple recipient of the reality out-there ; it rather considers the mind as itself the creator of the universe it perceives.

 

            Romanticism had a great impact on literature. Literary Romanticism has changed the notion of literature. The latter,  prior to the 18C., simply consisted of essays, history, and the study of ancient Greek & Roman languages. It was restricted to the study of Classics, and it was not something imaginative/inventive ; rather, it was very much limited and dominated by rationality. Poetry was regarded primarily as an imitation of nature. Then,  Romanticism came as new beginning with new conception for literature, by introducing new ideas and ways of perceiving things. By this time, literature was becoming virtually synonymous with the ‘imaginative’ & ‘inventive’ & ‘creative’. The literary work itself came to be seen as an organic unity : it became, as William Wordsworth defined it : ‘ the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling’. Poetry acquired then deep social, political and philosophical implications. Literature has become a whole alternative ideology governed by ‘imagination’. 

A Reading of Paul Grice’s Presupposition & Conversational Implicature

By Abdeslam Badre

Introduction :

       Two principal reasons are enough to account for both the importance as well as the reason behind designing social rules of natural language use. On the one hand, they – or some of them- are used to protect one’s feelings by showing respect. On the other hand, more importantly, rules of language use are designed to protect the integrity of language; otherwise, the latter would cease to be of any importance to us if people went on telling lies in such a random manner. For this reason, a set of conventions (governing language-use that preserves its integrity) is settled, requiring us: (1) to be honest –among other things- (2) to have evidence for what we say, and (3) to make what we say relevant to the speech context. For further explanation of the rules of language use as introduced by P.Grice, and the way they operate in a conversation, a thorough reading of Grice’s above mentioned article is highly recommended, which is the attempting aim of this paper.

 

1 - The basis of P. Grice theory:

      The overriding aim of the Griciane theory is to show the meaning of both some logical devices and the meaning of their counterparts in natural language- such as: ( “and” →  “&”), ( “not” → “┐”), (“the” → “Ś”)... Simultaneously, Grice endeavours to show whether there is a divergence between the meaning of the formal logical devices and their natural language counterparts. That is to say, divergence may appear to exist as follows:

 

• First, “The” → “Ś”= many logicians hold that if “the” appears in a definite description, then the phenomenon being referred to by whatever “the” modifies must exist and be unique. So, in logic, if you say: “ the restaurant in the Bristole road is excellent,” you would be taken to mean that there is one and only one restaurant in the Bristole road, and that is excellent. However, this is not the case in

 

 

natural language, for anyone to whom you may make the statement would ask: “ which restaurant do you mean?”

 

• Second, “not” → “┐” = in logic the negator  works in such a way that :  if  “┐P” is true, then “P” is false, and vice versa. But in natural language, there seem to be many cases in which this is not the case. For example, it may not be true that Salim is happy, but this does not guarantee the truth of the statement “Salim is happy”: He could simply be in a mental state in between happy and not happy.

 

• Third, “and” →  “&” =  in logic P & Q is true in exactly the same circumstances as Q& P. But in natural language, “I fell down and got up” is not necessarily true in the same circumstances as “I got up and fell down”. Grice suggests two sorts of tests by which one might hope to identify a conversational implicature, namely: 1) concellation, 2) non-detachability. A further explanation of these two notions is to be provided in coming part.

 

2 - Introduction To Conversational Implicature:

 

In all these three cases, it is tempting to suggest that the formal logical devices do not, in fact, have natural-language counterparts at all: that is, their meaning is radically different from the meaning of those natural-language items which just happen to look like translations of the formal logical items. To warrant this claim, Grice draws a distinction between what is said and what is conversationally implicated. A logician and a natural-language user say exactly the same, but it is a convention of natural language not shared by logic that the use of words we are concerned with  has certain implications in addition to what they say. This use normally implicates one particular order of succession or exclusion of one of the disjuncts (if/then, either/or...). As we are going to see, implicature cannot be part of what is being said, by considering the fact that it can be cancelled out: I can say : “A happened and B happened, but not in this order,” where “but not in that order” obviously cancels out the implication of succession of “and”.

 

To illustrate what is meant by implicature, and to show that it is quite distinct from what is said, Grice introduces a third notion, namely non-conversational implicature. This differs from conversational implicature in that it is very obviously distinct from what is being said. To illustrate on this, let us consider the following example:

“A “and “B” are talking about a mutual friend, “C”, who is now working in a bank. “A” asks “B” how “C” is getting in his job, and “B” replies :” oh quite well I think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to prison yet.”

 

Whatever is implied here obviously depends on many facts about “A”,”B”, and ”C” and their life history, which is thus in no sense conversationally implicated.

 

       There is, however, a subclass of non-conversational implicature which has aspects of conventionality in it, and it is this class which has been so influential in pragmatic theory: it is what Grice calls conversational implicature. The latter is essentially connected with general features of discourse; and these general features of discourse arise from the fact that if our talk exchanges are to be rational, they must consist of utterances which are in someway connected with each other. What guarantees this connection, according to Grice, is the co-operative principle

 

3 - The Co-Operative Principle:

Central to Paul Grice’s theory of conversational implicature is the notion of Co-operative Principle. It is believed that co-operative principle underlies language use, according to which we are enjoined to make sure that what we say in a conversation furthers the purpose of a given talk exchange. In this sense, the “principle” entails that : once in a conversation, a speaker should make his/her contribution such as required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of talk exchange in which the speaker is engaged.

 

Obviously, the requirements of different types of conversations will be different according to the degree of formality of speech, the context and the addressee. But this does not mean that the least formal sort of conversation is not rule-governed. Put other way, even the most casual talk exchange is unlikely to consist of such random sentences or disconnected discourse as:

 

       Badre:              How are you today?

       Amin:              Ottawa is the capital of Canada.

       Ali:              Really? I thought the weather would be warmer.

       Hanan:       in my opinion, the soup could have used a little salt.

 

In this talk exchange, no sentence seems to establish a link between what is said or yet to be said. The reason behind this disconnectedness can be explained in term of the co-Operative Principle. Grice argues that there are a number of rules, or maxims, that regulate conversation by way of enforcing compliance with the C.P. At  the heart of this system of maxims is the Maxims of Quality.

 

1-    Maxims of Quality:

Supermaxim:             Try to make your contribution one that is true.

More specifically:             a) Do not say what you believe to be false.

                                    b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

 

2-     Maxims of quantity:  (related to the amount of information to be provided.)

a) Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange.

b) don’t make your contribution more informative than is required.

 

3-    Maxims of relation: Be relevant.

 

4-    Maxims of manner:  concerned with how it is said rather than what is said.

Supermaxim:             Be perspicuous.

More specifically:            a) avoid obscurity.

                                    b) avoid ambiguity.

                                    c) be brief.

                                    d) be orderly.

 

4 - How a CP can be flouted?

A participant in a talk exchange may fail to fulfil a maxim in a number of ways. Firstly, A speaker may violates the maxim, in which case s/he will be likely to mislead. Secondly, a speaker may opt out of observing the principle by saying things like “I don’t want to talk about it”. Thirdly, there may be a conflict of maxims. That is you cannot be as informative as is required if you do not have adequate evidence. Finally, a speaker may blatantly flout a maxim. When, for instance, a maxim is being flouted while it is clear that the co-operative principle is being observed, the hearer will supply whatever implicature is necessary to reinstate the maxim. When this happens, Grice says that a maxim is being exploited.

 

5 - The five features of the Conversational Implicature.

Conversational implicature, confirms Grice, must possess five features:

1-    It can be cancelled, since it depends on the co-operative principle being observed; and one can opt out of observing it, by simply saying:” I don’t mean...”

2-    It is non-detachable from what is being said. If the same thing is said in different way, then the same implicature will attach to both manners of expression: the same implicature of “having failed to achieve something” which attaches to “I endeavoured to do it”, will also attach to the paraphrases  “I tried to do it,” or “I attempted to do it”.

3-    It is not part of the meaning of the expression, since if it were, it could not be cancelled, but is dependent on the prior knowledge of that meaning.

4-    It is not carried by what is said – the meaning- but by the saying of what is said (by the speech act, but not the propositional content).

5-    It is indeterminate: there are often several implicatures.

 

Although Grice states his maxims as if the purpose of talk exchange is always simply the effective exchange of information, he is aware that there are many other reasons for engaging in a conversation, and that other maxims, principles, and concerns may influence the ways in which people conduct themselves in conversations. We shall see below how later research in pragmatics has added to the basis provided by Grice.

 

6 - Leech’s Politeness Principle:

Leech (1983, p.80) points out that the CP in itself cannot explain why people are often so indirect in conveying what they actually mean; and what is the relation between sense and force when non-declarative types of sentence are being produced. So he suggests that a further, complementary, principle, the politeness principle (pp), is required to complement the CP. The PP has two formulations, one negative: it minimises the expression of impolite belief; the other is positive, and it maximises the expression of polite belief. This principle works as follows:

 

A : we’ll miss Bill & Iman, won’t we?

B : well, we’ll all miss Iman.

 

In this example, B apparently fails to observe the maxim of quantity: when A asks B to confirm A’s opinion, B merely conforms part of it, and ignores the rest. From this we derive the implicature: B implies that we wont miss Bill but Iman. We arrive at this conclusion not only on the ground of CP, because B could have added “... but not BILL,” without being untruthful, irrelevant or unclear. Indeed, our conclusion is that B could have been more informative, but only at the cost of being more impolite to a third part. So, B suppressed the desired information in order to uphold the PP.

 

Conclusion:

In short, politeness is gradable, an utterance tending to be more polite in proportion to the directness of its force. This is because an increase in indirectness seems to allow the hearer more choice in how s/he response. Leech outlines a number of maxims covering politeness, and points out that different societies differ in their weigh they attach to different maxims.

 

Bibliography:

1 - Cole., P. ‘‘Presupposition and Conversational Implicature,’’  in  Radical Pragmatics (Academic Press: 1981 ).

 

2 - Malmkjaer Kirsten, ed., The Linguistics Encyclopedia, ( London : Routledge, 1995).

How can you benefit from your competitor

Many people believe that competition serves only the benefits of costumers, which is true because companies, marketing the same product-type, are obliged to competitively struggle to provide the costumers with better product at lower price and faster distributing channels. Even entrepreneurs tend to desire that they would have less, if not no, competitors so as to keep manipulating a given market, with low costs and steady-increasing benefits. However, competition in marketing has far more positive effect not only on the consumers but also on the competing companies. In this essay, I will try to shift the traditionally-held perception of compotators, by arguing that competitors can help their rivals to save their firms and expand their markets.

 

True enough, the existence of markets, selling the same products/services, represents a great challenge in front of their competing markets/companies. The latter have to be always on the move: ready to react to their rivals competing strategy and act in a preemptory fashion, which requires strategic thinking and perhaps additional budget.  And after taking these measures, it still not sure which company might win the game as long as there are many other external factors controlling the business environment – costumers – that must be considered and anticipated.

 

Nevertheless, the existence of competitors can have an outstanding positive impact on the second party. First, thanks to competitors that other companies perpetually update their core strategies in terms of the quality of their products/services, communication channels and costumer services. This ongoing movement of companies helps in well-repositioning and leveling the sale of their products/services within markets. Second, companies can benefit from their competitors research results and use the latter as secondary data to either update the strategy or develop innovative product/service line; thus, the market research costs less funds thanks to the information provided by other companies. Also, sometimes the success of certain market serves competing companies to design competitive industry on the basis of the characteristics of the existing products. In this case, the presence of a company’s competitors is rather beneficial. Third, and finally, second to the advertising channels of a given company are indeed competitors. Most of the time, while promoting the image of their products/services, companies are implicitly admitting the existence of similar products, but perhaps not with the same effectiveness or the same price. The point I am trying to make here is that sometimes costumers are informed about the existence of given products through the existence of latter’s competitors, rather.

 

The cola war, discussed at the opening of chapter six of the text book, is a relevant illustrating example. Both Pepsi-cola and Coca-coal are two brands that fall under the same product type. The two companies have been competing for decades. Ironically, although Pepsi has always been the leader in terms of innovative marketing programs, Coca has consistently been the leader in terms of sale. The success of Coca has most of the time been induced by the existence of Pepsi. For instance, right after Pepsi’s development of the idea of supermarket sales, lunching a larger bottle size to capture family consumption, and expanding its product lines by including Diet Pepsi, Coca-cola responded back by matching Pepsi’s use of larger bottle size, using cans, and introducing new product line such as Sprite. Coca’s innovation turned out to be a success. Yet, that success would not have seen light, if it had not been motivated by Pepsi’s precedent campaign.

 

To rap it up, competition does not only serve the customer, but the counterparties as well. Many companies, that are leading the world market, started as small businesses. I believe that among the incentives that contributed to their success are their actual and rival competitors. Can you remember how many ‘As’ did you get, when you were a student, because of the challenging decision you took after getting a ‘C’ while one of your classmate had gotten an ‘A’ in the previous assignment.  After getting an ‘A’, you said: ‘yes I did it”. But you missed the fact that it was your classmate who actually helped you in that. Politically speaking, the out-measured popularity that helped G.W.Bush win the second election was mainly because of his propaganda of the war against terrorism and the chasing of Ben-Ladden. Ironically, it is Ben Ladden who has granted Bush the widespread popularity in the middle-east area; in return, Ben-Ladden’s popularity in the western world was indeed made true by G.W. Bush. Selfsame, the long-lasting life-circle of both Pepsi and Coca is partially the result of the old-dated competition between the two companies. This is just to say that sometimes our efforts can be a success due to our existing competitors.