 Friends, welcome to my channel. In this video I am going to talk about one of the most frightening topics of English Literature, which is Literary Theory. But before we embark into the journey of Literary Theory, let me tell you one thing. Literary Theory is not very hard. It just involves that you should understand the concept and once you understand the theory and how to apply those theories in Literature, Literary Theory becomes one of the most interesting parts of Literature. But before we understand Literary Theory, it is important that we should understand Literary Criticism. Literary Criticism gradually develops and converts into Literary Theory. Now, let's first look at what Criticism is all about. We all go to parties in weddings and when we go to a party in order to meet our friends and relatives, we have this habit of observing things in that party. We look at the food, the kind of flavour it has, we look at the decoration, we look at the people, the crowd that is there in that party and next day when we come back home, we talk to our friends over the phone and we give our opinion about that party. We tell them that the food was not so good but the desserts were good and we talk about decoration and we give our analysis and opinion about the party. That process is called Criticism. It is called Critiquing. Those of you who confuse Criticism by Criticizing, I would like to tell you that these two are very different things. Criticism doesn't mean Criticizing something. It means Critiquing something. Criticism doesn't mean anything bad. It actually means judging that thing, analyzing that thing and telling about the positive as well as the negative aspects of that particular thing. We critique so many things. When we go to watch a movie, we all have this habit that we read the Critics' rating about that movie and those Critics who are the Film Critics, they tell us about the movie, they tell how the plot is, how the storyline is, the characters, how the actors have acted in that movie. Is that movie worth watching? What kind of age group the movie is targeting? So all these questions are being answered by the Film Critic. If you are a person who loves animated movie, then I would recommend you to watch Rata to me. It's a wonderful movie in which we have a Critic, a Food Critic who goes to restaurants and in those restaurants he eats the food and he gives his opinion about that restaurant. And every restaurant's sales depend on their opinion because people read his reviews and then decide which restaurant they want to visit. So it's a lovely movie by Pixar Company. So you can go and watch that movie. It's about this small mouse who turns to be a chef and he loves cooking food. So it's a must watch movie and you will also understand what critiquing something is all about. So this is all about criticism and how we critique things around us. Now let's look at literature and how criticism applies to literature. Now when it comes to literature, we have so many books. There are people who read those books and give their opinion about those books. Criticism in literature can be on two basis. Number one, poets and writers can talk about poetry and literature in general or they can talk about some specific books. Whenever a writer writes criticism, he or she talks about a general literature like Aristotle did in his Poetics. He has not talked about any specific writer or work but then he has given certain important characteristics of a good theatre, a good play, a good poem. Then on the other hand we have writers like Matthew Arnoil. He has written this work called Study of Poetry and in this work Study of Poetry he has talked about the touchstone method. He has said that there are certain writers who are very good and whose passages of whose poetry can be used as reference and yardstick in order to judge the poetry of other writers and then he has criticized several writers like Chaucer. So Matthew Arnoil's criticism that is based on specific works and specific writers whereas the criticism by Aristotle is about literature in general. So in literature we can have two kinds of criticism. Also we must understand that criticism is going on for a long time. In the Greek period when Plato and Aristotle lived in Greece, from there it is going on. In 500 BC we had Greek critics, then Roman Empire, in Roman Empire there was Horace, Lunginus, Roman Critics. Then after that we had different critics from Britain. The first person was Philip Sidney who wrote the defense of Poesie and later on we have the Ottoman Critics, we have Romantics, Victorians. And during the Victorian period, criticism reached its peak. After Romantics and Victorians, when modern comes, literary theory begins. What is literary theory? We will talk about that later on but then you need to understand that literary theory has developed from literary criticism itself. And literary criticism has gradually changed the shape of literary theory. So this is all about literary theory and criticism. Now let's look at literary theory and why literary theory is important and what is literary theory in general. In order to understand literary theory I would rather tell you that let's take example of a car. If you look at a car from different perspective, different angles, you will have different opinions about that car. If you look at a car from front, then you look at the car from back, from side angle, from other left side angle, right side angle, you will have different opinions about the car. Similarly when I put pink coloured glasses on my eyes, the entire world will look pink. If I put red coloured glasses on my eye, the entire world will look red. Similarly if I put marxist glasses on my eyes and then I look at a piece of literature, I will take out all the elements which talk about class conflict, about how ruling class is actually degrading the society and how the poor class is suffering. If I look the same text from feminist classes, I will look at the problems faced by the females in that text. I will look at how the female protagonist faces the challenges just because she is a female. So literary theory basically helps you look at a single piece from different perspective. Let's take example of Mansfield Park. If you look at Mansfield Park from feminist point of view, you will look at the character of Fanny Price and how she gradually develops into an individual. If you look the same text from Mansfield Park from Marxist point of view or from post-colonial point of view, you will see how Britain was colonising and degrading the condition of other colonised countries. So similar text looked from different perspective. Actually if we talk about literary theory then one thing you have to understand is that literary theory helps in order to give historic and cultural significance to the text. It is not talking about the text but it is talking how the society influences the text. So when you look at a single piece of literature from different literary theory glasses, then you come up with different interpretations and that is how literary theory helps in analysing and interpreting literature. So literary criticism is basically about critiquing a piece of literature but criticism was done by very famous critics who have read a lot of things and only then they can give their opinion because if we give criticism on a piece, then we would try and give a very faulty criticism. But when Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare and Matthew Arnold such great writers give their opinion on a work, that opinion is valued because they are well read and they have so much knowledge about literature. Literary criticism will help you in critiquing a world whereas literary theory will help you in critiquing the text yourself. You yourself become a critic and you yourself can interpret a literature by using different literary lenses. So literary criticism is basically about critiquing by important critics. Literary theory on the other hand is about critiquing the piece of literature yourself. Criticism deals with great writers talking about great works. Theory deals with us talking about great works. I am looking at a certain piece of literature from different point of view and giving my opinion is what literary theory is all about. The first important literary theory is new criticism. New criticism is a literary theory which developed in Britain in 1920 and the name New Criticism is taken from an essay written by John Crow Ransom by the same name. So John Crow Ransom wrote an essay New Criticism which gave this new theory which is called New Criticism. Why it is called New Criticism? Because it is a shift from old criticism. Old criticism is a kind of criticism varying. You see authors background and then you analyze the text. New Criticism says that meaning is generated only through text. You look at a text you closely read the text and then you find out the meaning. Author's intention is not important. Why? Because there is a beautiful essay written under New Criticism titled Intentional Fallacy. Under intentional fallacy the writer says that fallacy means false. Intention means author's intention. So we don't know author's intention. So if we don't know the intention of author while he is writing the work, how can we judge the work based on his intention? If a writer is writing a work thinking something in mind and then he is writing it, we don't know what he is thinking in his mind. So how can we interpret that author must have thought this way because he cannot press his thoughts. He is dead. So we cannot see what he was thinking when he was alive and while he was writing the work. So New Criticism basically says that the book in front of you or the piece of literature in front of you read the words and analyze them. Author's background is not important. Author's thought is not important because we cannot understand the author's thought at this time. Author is dead. So if the author is dead, we cannot see what was he thinking while he was writing that work. So this is what New Criticism is all about. Now we have another important literary theory which is called Formalism. Formalism also came around 1920s. In Britain in 1920s we had New Criticism. In Europe and other parts in front and Russia we had Formalism. Formalism and New Criticism is almost same. Both of them are talking about the same thing. New Criticism is saying close reading of text is important and the meaning is generated through text. On the other hand Formalism is saying that form is important. Structure, style that is important on the basis of those structures, style and symbols you can judge the text. So Formalism is looking at the form of the text New Criticism is looking at the close reading. Both of them are talking about the same thing but in different countries. New Criticism started in Britain 1920s. Formalism started in two countries, Russia and French. So we have two branches of Formalism French Formalism and Russian Formalism. Also two main leaders of Formalism are Victor Chavosky. Victor Chavosky was the head of Moscow Literary Circle and we have another important character who is from Prague linguistic circle. And his name is Roman Jakobson. So we talk about Victor Chavosky and Roman Jakobson in detail in my audio online course. I talk about all the important works written by all important literary theorists and what all things they have talked about in their theories. I take up each and every writer who is concerned with different literary theory. You can get the list of all the writers that I cover under literary theories in my website www.arupatakarba.com If you like the kind of writer and the kind of structure that I have developed for literary theory, you can subscribe to my online course because once you enroll in my online course, I will provide you detailed audio lectures about each and every literary theory and will prepare you for UGC Literature. Now let's talk about the third important theory which is Structuralism. Structuralism as the word means, it talks about structures. According to structuralism, her cheese is a structure. Everything in this universe is a structure and in order to understand the elements of the structure you must need to understand the other elements of that structure. In order to understand India, you need to understand what Asia is, then what Earth is, what solar system is, what universes. You can only understand India in relation to Universe. If you don't know what Universe is, what countries are, what continent are then you won't be able to understand what India is. Okay, so everything in our structure can be understood only in relation to the other strings which are a part of that same structure. Like now let's look at a novel. If you want to understand a novel there are many sentences in it. Sentences are made up of words. So only when you understand the words, you will be able to understand the novel. You can't understand a novel without understanding words. First you will understand words, then you will understand sentences, then you will understand paragraphs and then you will be able to understand novels slowly. So this is what structuralism is all about. Now let's get an example. For example we have a sentence, dog bark bird act. This sentence doesn't make sense because the words of this sentence are not understood in relation to each other. But if I reframe the sentence and I say that dog barks at the bird, it makes sense because every word is understood in relation to each other's word. So this is what structuralism is all about. It says that you need to understand language in order to understand the novel. You will have to understand the structure of the novel if you want to understand the novel or any text. The most important theorist in structuralism is Ferdinand de Sassure. He has given a theory on semiotics. Semiotics is basically study of sign. So any word is a sign in itself. Any image you see is a sign. Sign is made up of two things Signifier and Signifier. Signifier is a word or image. Signified is the concept that comes in our mind when we look at the word or image. For example, I said dog. When we say dog word, we get different images of the dog. If I love pugs, then in my mind there will be a pugs. If you have seen a street dog in the morning today, you might think of a street dog. So signifier is a word dog which I said and signified is the image or a concept which is developed in your mind after saying dog. Okay, the doggy has its characteristics. If I ask a small child who is a dog, he will determine and define the dog that an animal walking on four feet which barks and who keeps on waging his tail and such kind of creature is called a dog. So these characteristics are the concept that is the signifier. Signifier is the word or image. If you see red, then either it can symbolize love. It can symbolize danger. So red is signifier. Signified is the concept that comes in our mind when we look at the color red. This is all about for Dhananda Sushor. He has talked about a lot of things. He has talked about planning for all. He has talked about synchrony and dichromy and various other concepts. But one of the important things to understand is that this relation between the signifier and the signifier is arbitrary. It is culturally determined. If a small child is told since childhood that red symbolizes peace, then he can slowly link red with peace. So automatic meaning of red is not love or blood or war or danger. It has been come over the period of time due to the repetitive use of red with blood, red with war, red with love. So all these things are culturally determined. It has no inherent meaning. So this is very important. When you understand it, you will see that structures help you to understand novel or any work. Plus at the same time, structures are the reason we can understand language. Signifier and signifier when we understand and the link between the two we can understand a language. Now let's look at another important literary theory which came in response to structuralism. It is called post-structuralism or deconstructionism. Post-structuralism as the name suggests it came after structuralism and it opposes the idea placed by structuralist thinkers. Structuralism believes that to understand the language if you understand the structure of language, sign, symbol, signifier and signifier in terms, then you can understand the language and if you understand the language, then you can understand the text, any important literary work. But post-structuralist thinkers say communication is not that easy. I cannot communicate what I want to communicate. If I say yellow dog, then in everyone's mind different images will come of yellow dog. So in my mind the image of yellow dog that will differ from the image created in your brain. So how can I communicate the same thing to you? If I give a person's description that he was like this, he kept clothes on this type, his height was that much, weight was that much, then can we imagine the same kind of person? No, we always think of certain different kind of people. So in my mind, the image that I can't create in your mind through words and that is how language fails. So post-structuralists say that language itself is uncentered. If you have ever played the game of word association, if I say a word related to that word, then I say that word and you will tell another word. For example I say rose, you will say love. I will say love, you might say Valentine's Day. I say Valentine's Day, you will say gifts. So this is how you build up different, different things and you link each and everything with other things. So if you talk about post-structuralism, then you will understand that Jack Dharita, the great post-structuralist thinker in sociology has mentioned this thing that every signifier leads to another signifier and will never lead to a signified. So entire sign becomes of no use. Because if I say lion, it will not lead to image of lion, but it will lead to another concept like king. Lion was associated with king. King was associated with crown. Crown was associated with empire. So lion actually was not able to reach another signifier. And the process keeps on continuing. Also Jack Dharita has talked about a very, very important concept of aporia. Aporia basically means confusion. So he says that, you know, we need to be happy in this place of confusion. If you want to structurally do something, then you will see that there is no center, there is no center there. So we should be happy in this state of confusion and which he calls aporia. There are various other post-structuralist thinkers who have given a very good theory on post-structuralism. We discuss all those theories as part of our course. So if you wish you can join my course. Also if you are not joining my course, at least go to my website, look at the theorist mentioned under post-structuralism and do start reading about them. Because Jack Dharita has just one theorist. There are several other theorists who are important from Netpoint of View. There are a lot of other literary theories. We will be covering all the other literary theories in my next video. So stay tuned and keep loving literature. Also if you like this video then do give it a thumbs up. Also if you have any questions any queries you can write that in the comment section below. Subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you are notified every time I come online. Also go and check my Facebook page. 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