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An Introduction To Literary Studies Klarer Pdf Downloadl



4 Published 1998 (3rd revised edition) by Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt as Einführung in die anglistischamerikanistische Literaturwissenschaft 1998 Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt First published in English 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-library, To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge s collection of thousands of ebooks please go to Routledge All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Klarer, Mario, 1962 [Einführung in die anglistisch-amerikanistische Literaturwissenschaft. English] An introduction to literary studies/ Mario Klarer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English literature History and criticism Theory, etc. 2. American literature History and criticism Theory, etc. I. Title. PR21.K dc CIP ISBN Master e-book ISBN ISBN (hbk) ISBN (pbk)




An Introduction To Literary Studies Klarer Pdf Downloadl



6 Contents Preliminary remarks viii Acknowledgments x 1 What is literature, what is a text? 1 1 Genre, text type and discourse 3 2 Primary and secondary sources 4 2 Major genres in textual studies 9 1 Fiction 9 2 Poetry 27 3 Drama 42 4 Film 54 3 Periods of English Literatures 65 4 Theoretical approaches to literature 73 1 Text-oriented approaches 76 2 Author-oriented approaches 88 3 Reader-oriented approaches 89 4 Context-oriented approaches 91 5 Literary critique or evaluation 97 5 Where and how to find secondary literature How to write a scholarly paper Suggestions for further reading Glossary of literary and cinematographic terms 129 Notes 149 Author and title index 151 Subject index 159


7 Preliminary remarks This concise introduction provides a general survey of various aspects of textual studies for college students who intend to specialize in English or American literature and want to acquire a basic familiarity with the entire field. The book targets both the European and American college market: it is not only designed for beginners in the European system, where students have to specialize in one or two disciplines upon entering university, but it also meets the requirements for American undergraduates who have opted for a major in English and need an introduction to the more scholarly aspects of literary studies, one which goes beyond freshman Introduction to Literature courses. It therefore serves as a textbook for Introduction to English Literature classes at all major European universities or advanced undergraduate English (honors) courses in the USA and as an independent study guide. Its simple language and accessible style make the book equally apt for English native speakers as well as students of English Literature whose native language is other than English. Unlike most of the existing American textbooks geared toward freshman Introduction to Literature courses, which emphasize the first-hand reading of primary texts, this book targets a slightly more advanced audience interested in the scholarly aspects of literature. The book does not include entire literary texts, but rather draws on a number of very short excerpts to illustrate major issues of literary studies as an academic discipline. An Introduction deals with questions concerning the nature of literature and text, discusses the three major textual genres, as well as film and its terminology, gives an overview of the most important periods of Literatures in English, and raises issues of literary theory. A separate section explains basic research and composition techniques pertinent for the beginner. An extensive


8 glossary of the major literary and cinematic terms gives easy and quick access to terminological information and also serves as a means to test one s knowledge when preparing for exams. In order to meet the expectations of contemporary textual studies, major emphasis is placed on the accessibility of literary theory for beginners. All major schools and approaches, including the latest developments, are presented with reference to concrete textual examples. Film is integrated as a fourth genre alongside fiction, poetry and drama to highlight the interdependence of literature and film in both artistic production and scholarly inquiry. The chapters on basic research and composition techniques explain today s standard computational facilities such as the online use of the MLA International Bibliography as well as the most important rules of the MLA Style Sheet and guidelines for research papers. The book owes a great deal to my interaction with students in the Introduction to Literature classes which I taught at the American Studies and Comparative Literature Departments of the University of Innsbruck. I also owe thanks for suggestions and critical comments to friends and colleagues, including Sonja Bahn, Gudrun M.Grabher, Monika Messner, Wolfgang Koch and Elliott Schreiber. Large parts of the book were written during an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Santa Monica from 1992 to The English translation was completed at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina during a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1995/ 96. I am particularly indebted to a number of friends for reading the manuscript. Monika Fludernik, J.Paul Hunter, Ulrich C.Knoepflmacher, Christian Mair, Steven Marcus and Devin Stewart have been very generous in their advice. My biggest thanks go to my companion Bernadette Rangger for critically discussing every chapter of the book from its earliest stages to its final version, f or having been with me during all these years and for having made these years a wonderful time. vii


11 2 WHAT IS LITERATURE, WHAT IS A TEXT? Not only the visual writing is always pictorial but also the acoustic element, the spoken word, is an integral part of literature, for 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 s or minstrel s memory which could be recited upon demand. It is assumed that most of the early classical and Old English epics were produced in this tradition and only later preserved in written form. This oral component, which runs counter to the modern way of thinking about texts, has been revived in our century through the medium of radio and other sound carriers. Audio-literature and the lyrics of songs display the acoustic features of literary phenomena. The visual in literary texts, as well as the oral dimension, has been pushed into the background in the course of history. While in the Middle Ages the visual component of writing was highly privileged 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 and even partly overlapped, slowly disappeared. This modern iconoclasm not only restricts the visual dimensions of texts but also sees writing as a medium which 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 is traditionally and without hesitation viewed as literature, combines the acoustic and the visual elements, which are usually classified as non-literary. 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 word and picture are recorded and, as in a book, can be looked up at any time. Methods of literary and textual criticism are, therefore, frequently applied to the cinema and acoustic media. Computer hypertexts and networks such as the Internet are the latest hybrids


12 WHAT IS LITERATURE, WHAT IS A TEXT? 3 of the textual and various media; here writing is linked to sounds, pictures or even video clips within an interdependent network. Although the written medium is obviously the main concern in the study of literature or texts, this field of inquiry is also closely related to other media such as the stage, painting, film, music or even computer networks. As a result of the permeation of modern textual studies with unusual media, there have been major controversies as to 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. Visual and acoustic elements are being reintroduced into literature, and media, genres, text types and discourses are being mixed. 1 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 former area is referred to as literary history, whereas the latter 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, drama, or poetry. This categorization is slightly confusing as the epic occurs in verse, too, but is not classified 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 introduce prose, fiction or prose fiction for the relatively young literary forms of the novel and the short story. Beside the genres which describe general areas of traditional literature, the term text type has been introduced, under the influence of linguistics. Texts which cannot be categorized under the canonical genres of fiction, drama and poetry are now often dealt with in modern linguistics. Scholars are looking at texts which were previously regarded as worthless or irrelevant for textual analysis. The term text type refers to highly conventional 350c69d7ab


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