Concept of Tradition in Eliot’s Theory

Jankiba Rana
Paper: 07
Assignment Topic: Concept of Tradition in Eliot’s Theory
Roll no:9
Submitted to: Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar Uiversity

                                 Tradition and Individual Talent


                      In his essay Tradition and Individual Talent” Eliot spreads his concept of tradition, which reflects his reaction against romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He also signifies the importance of the tradition. He opines that tradition gives the reader something new, something arresting, something intellectual and something vital for literary conception.

    According to Eliot,Tradion is that part of living culture inherited from the past and functioning in the formation of the present. Eliot maintains that tradition is bound up with historical sense, which is a perception that the past is not something lost and invalid.
                     
               The idea of tradition has long been recognized as central both to Eliot’s aesthetics and his conservative politics, and commentary on Eliot has sometimes come to grief either by trying to separate art from politics completely or by trying to subordinate art to politics. These two errors, mechanical applications of extreme New Critical and Marxist positions without the subtlety of their better practitioners, are often the result of critical laziness, and one aspect of that laziness is the failure to acknowledge the broader anterior influences which shaped both Eliot’s critical and political writings. The Cianci and Harding collection, which originated in a conference on “Re-Reading T.S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’” at the University of Milan in 2004, is an attempt to recontextualize Eliot’s idea of tradition. Most of the contributors are not Eliot specialists, and few of the essays refer to any Eliot criticism that is more than twenty years old.

This reiteration gives much of the volume an amateur air,the fourteen articles in this collection are grouped in four sections which deal with tradition and impersonality, literary contexts, art and anthropological contexts, and Eliot’s relation to individual artists and critics; there is no section on philosophy and (with one exception) no serious discussion of Eliot’s...

            It exits with the present. It exerts its influence in our ideas, thoughts and consciousness. This is historical sense. It is an awareness not only of the past ness of the past but the presence of the past. On this sense the past is our contemporary as the present is.

Eliot’s view of tradition is not linear but spatial. Eliot does not believe that the past is followed by the presence and succession of a line. On the contrary, the past and the present live side by side in the space. Thus it is spatial.

Then Eliot holds that not only the past influences the present but the present, too, influences the past. To prove this idea, he conceives of all literature as a total, indivisible order. All existing literary works belong to an order like the member of a family. Any new work of literature is like the arrival of a member or a new relative or a new acquaintance. Its arrival and presence brings about a readjustment of the previous relationship of the old members. A new work takes its place in the order. Its arrival and inclusion modifies the order and relationship among all works. The order is then modified. A new work of art influences all the existing- literary work, as a new relative influences the old members of a family. It is this sense that the present modifies the past as the past modifies the present. The past is modified by the present also in the sense that we can look at the past literature always through ever renewing perceptive of the present.

A new work of art can not be evaluated in isolation without reference to past literature and tradition. Evaluation is always comparative and relative. It calls for a comparison with the past that is with tradition. The value of a work depends on how well it is adjusted into the order of existing literary works. No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You can not value him alone. You must set him for contrast and comparison among the dead.

A work of art has two dimensions- it is at once personal and universal. It is an individual composition, but at the same time, its inclusion into tradition determines its worth and universal appeal. A writer must be aware that he belongs to a larger tradition and there is always an impact of tradition on him. Individual is an element formed by and forming the culture to which he belongs. He should surrender his personality to something larger and more significant.

In his conscious cultivation of historical sense, a writer reduces the magnification of personal self, which leads to depersonalization and impersonal act.

When a writer is aware the historical sense, it does not mean that he is influenced by the past or his own self. Rather the writer should minimize the importance of his personal self, which will lead him to depersonalization and impersonal act.

Tradition is a living stream. It is not a lump or dead mass.But the main current does not always flow through the most noted authoress.

Eliot regrets that tradition in English world of letters is used in prerogative sense. This is one reason of the undeveloped critical sense of the English nation. They are too individualistic on intellectual habits.

Eliot criticizes the English intellectuals. According to Eliot to the English intellectual tradition is something that should be avoided. They give much more importance on individualism and are critical about the historical sense or tradition.

Like Arnold , Eliot views tradition as something living. For both the word “tradition” implies growth.Eliot recalls Edmund Burke what Burke did for political thought, by glorifying the idea of inheritance, Eliot has done for English literary criticism.Burke, famous English politician, gave emphasis on the experience of the past in politics. In the same Eliot also gives emphasis on the past regarding English criticism.

Tradition does not mean uncritical imitation of the past. Nor does it mean only erudition. A writer draws on only the necessary knowledge of tradition. He must use his freedom according to his needs. He cannot be completely detached.Often the most original moments of a work of art echo the mind of earlier writers. Though it sounds paradoxical it is true.It is paradoxical but true that even the most original writings sometimes reflect the thinking of the past or earlier writers. So, there is nothing which is absolutely original.

A partial or complete break with the literary past is a danger. An awareness of what has gone before is necessary to know what is there to be done in the present or future. A balance between the control of tradition and the freedom of an individual is essential to art.

Eliot said elsewhere that by losing tradition we lose our held on the present. Hence, a writer should be aware of the importance of tradition.
     

Assignment Topic: Contribution of Charles Dickens as a Novelist

Jankiba Rana’s  Assignment

The Victorian Literature

 Assignment Topic:  Contribution of Charles Dickens as a Novelist

Roll No  : 9

M.A.Sem – II

Batch : 2014 – ‘15

Submitted to – Department of English

   Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji  

     Bhavnagar University.

         Bhavnagar.

         Contribution Of Charles dickens as a novelist

Charles Dickens                  

                                As a novelist, Dickens is a social Chronicler. He is found to have introduced social novels in a much broader sense. In his such novels as David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Hard Times, he gave the contemporary social picture and attacked the various vices of the victorian age. Dickens enjoyed life, but hated the social system into which he had been born. There are many indications that he was half-way towards being a revolutionary, and in many of the later novels he was to attack the corruptions of his time. In Oliver Twist, (which followed in 1837-8), pathos is beginning to intrude on humour, and Dickens, appalled by the cruelty of his time,feels that he must convey a message through fiction to his hardhearted generation. Yet some modern social historians assert that he disguised the depths to which the lower classes had been brutalized. His invention is still abundant, as he tells the story of the virtuous pauper boy who has to submit to perils and temptations. Burnaby Rudge, with its picture of the Gordon Riots, is Dickens’s first attempt in the historical novel, and here plot, which had counted for nothing in Pickwick Papers, becomes increasingly important.

In David Copperfield he brought the first phase of his novel-writing to an end in a work with a strong autobiographical element, and with such firm characterization as Micawber and Uriah Heep. Bleak House is the most conscious and deeply planned novel in Dickens’s whole work, and clearly his art has moved far from the spontaneous gaiety of Pickwick Papers. It was followed by Herd Times, a novel dedicated to Carlyle. While in all his work Dickens is attacking the social conditions of his time, here he gives this theme a special emphasis with A Tale of Two Cities he returned to the historical novel and, inspired by Carlyle, laid his theme in the French Revolution. None his works shows more clearly how wide and unexpected were the resources of his genius. 

Impression  over  Dickens

When He was born  ( nineteenth century ) During that era political, social and literary change was only beginning. The Victorian Age, when Dickens was to reach his greatness as a novelist lay ahead; and in the year of his birth, Napoleonic France received its first setback at the gates of Moscow, which was followed in 1817, 1830 and 1848 with the liberal movements that overthrew some of the revolutionary message, of the French Revolution.

But France remained nonetheless continually in men’s minds throughout his life. In 1837, Thomas Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution had a profound impact onEnglish thought and made a specially deep impression upon Dickens

As a Representative Novelist :

                   Charles Dickens was the Representative novelist of the victorian age. He is the Greatest novelist that england has yet produced.  He is writer of some great novels such as :  pickwick papers

                                        oliver twist

                                        Great Expectation

                                        David copperfield 

                                        Bleak House

                                                        and in which his comic view of life , Social Criticism , power of Story telling and use of human have been vividly exemplified.

                      

                           Now , Lets see How he Contributed in Literature :

1 .  pickwick papers  :

                                       One of  his first novel was Pickwick Papers, the supreme comic novel in English language. His comedy is never superimposed because it is an effortless expression of a comic view of life. Dickens seems to see things differently in an amusing and exaggerated way, and in his early work with much exuberance he plunges from one adventure to another, without any thought of plot or design.          

            Dickens achieved in his lifetime wide popularity among all sections of readers. Cambell, the famous Lord Chief Justice, remarked that he would have been prouder of having written Pickwick Papers than of all the honours he had earned at the Bar. Dickens' popularity overstepped the frontiers of his country and spread in most countries of Europe, as also across the Atlantic. While he was in America, he received a hero's welcome everywhere

2. Oliver Twist :

 

                                  This is the second novel by him . Dickens mixed up with the old material, materials so subtly modern, so made of the French Revolution, that the whole is transformed. If we want the best example of this, the best example is Oliver Twist

       This is the story of an orphan, Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Naïvely unaware of their unlawful activities, Oliver is led to the lair of their elderly criminal trainer Fagin. It is notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. It exposes the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London during the Dickensian era. The book's subtitle, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and also to a pair of popular 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progressand A Harlot's Progress.  

              Relatively to the other works of Dickens Oliver Twist is not of great value, but it is of great importance. Some parts of it are so crude and of so clumsy a melodrama, that one is almost tempted to say that Dickens would have been greater without it. But even if be had been greater without it he would still have been incomplete without it.

3.  Great Expectation : 

                                            Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens is a fascinating tale of love and fortune. The main character, Pip, is a dynamic character who undergoes many changes through the course of the book. Throughout this analysis the character, Pip will be identified and his gradual change through the story will be surveyed. 

                                                In what may be Dickens's best novel, humble, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman — and one day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of "great expectations." In this gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward, the compelling characters include Magwitch, the fearful and fearsome convict; Estella, whose beauty is excelled only by her haughtiness; and the embittered Miss Havisham, an eccentric jilted bride.

     Faminist Approach :            

Great Expectations offers many opportunities for the first two of these approaches. As it is narrated by Pip, the male point of view inevitably predominates, but it is important to bear in mind that the events of the novel might seem very different if narrated by one of the women characters:

Mrs. Joe, Pip's sister, often complains about her situation, and in the narrative she is presented either as a comic figure or as a domestic tyrant, but like Pip, she has lost her parents and brother

Miss Havisham has endured long, lonely years nursing her resentment and planning her revenge by her manipulation of Estella's feelings

Estella herself has experienced a strange upbringing: she has no knowledge of her true parentage and has lived in the extraordinary setting of Satis House, cut off from other children and seeing the world only as Miss Havisham represents it to her

there is a novel called Estella: Her Expectation, written by Sue Roe and published in 1982, which sets out to tell the story from Estella's point of view.

other female characters, including Biddy, Clara and Molly (Jaggers' housekeeper) also have stories of their own, which are represented entirely through the words of Pip as narrator and other male characters

some of the female characters are victims of the behaviour of men and the expectations of society about women's role and behaviour – Mrs Pocket is a good example.

 4.   David copperfield :

it is written in the first person

it follows its main character from childhood to middle age

in both books, the characters undertake a kind of pilgrimage during which they are tested and encounter difficulties and disappointment

it includes similar plot and thematic elements:

an orphaned boy who suffers from parental deprivation and childhood neglect

the narrator's gradual discovery of true values

David, like Pip, is supported by a variety of eccentric but kindly characters, only one of whom is actually a relative.

The novel also includes some autobiographical elements:

David is sent to work in a blacking factory by his harsh stepfather Mr. Murdstone, an episode that parallels Dickens' own      experience as a young boy

this period in David's life is recounted in almost exactly the same      words in anautobiographical account printed in the biography (1872-4) published by his friend John Forster

like Dickens, David grows up to become a popular author

like Dickens, David endures an unhappy marriage contracted when he is very young; unlike Dickens, however, he enjoys a happy second marriage

5. Bleak House :

                                       Bleak Housewas the 9th novel of Charles Dickens.  The novel was published in installments from March 1852 through September 1853.

Bleak House had several working titles.  Some of these included:

·         East Wind

·         Tom-All-Alone’s

·         Bleak House and the East Wind

·         The Solitary House that was Always Shut Up

Spontaneous Combustion

In Bleak House a character dies via an unusual method — spontaneous combustion.  The unfortunate character to meet this fate is Krook, the brother of Mrs. Smallweed.

George Henry Lewes, a writer for the Leader, complained in his February 1853 column that people just didn’t suddenly burst into flame.  Dickens responded by writing a coroner’s inquest into the next segment of Bleak House.  In the book Krook’s death was investigated and authorities on spontaneous combustion were cited to prove that the the phenomena really did exist.

Spontaneous combustion was a good literary device to demonstrate that passionate forces can lie within us.  However, despite the fact that aBleak House inquest “proved” that people can spontaneously combust, this idea is not taken seriously today.

Dickens's   Characters

(1) The normal                                                                      (2) The abnormal

(i) Satirical portraits              (ii) The grotesques                (iii) The villains

                                          (drawn for a special purpose)

The abnormal characters do not embody "normal" reality, but they are not essentially unrealistic. It is curious that Dickens succeeds better with the abnormal than with the normal characters. Normality does not attract him on account of being dull and "ordinary."

Dickens is more successful with characters drawn from the middle and lower classes of his society. As a child and young man he had seen and even experienced the life of these classes. It was in his blood even after he had become a high-hat with his thumping success in the field of fiction. He is much less successful with the bigwigs and aristocracy. There ate some set types which make their appearance much too often in Dickens' novels. Some of them, according to a critic, are:

(i)         "the innocent little child, like Oliver, Joe, Paul, Tiny Tim, and little Nell, appealing powerfully to the child love in every human heart";

(ii)        "the horrible or grotesque foil, like Squeer, Fagin, Quilp, Uriah Heep, and Bill Sykes";

(iii)       "the grandiloquent or broadly humorous fellow, the fun master, like Micawber and Sam Walter";          

(iv)       "and fourth, a tenderly or powerfully drawn figure like Lady Dedlock of Bleak House, and Sydney Carton of A Tale of Two Cities, which rise to the dignity of true characters."

Humour:

               Dickens architectonic deficiency the moment we take congnizance of his humour. Humour is the very soul of his work.Dickens' humour arises from a deep human sympathy and is ever fresh and refreshing. It is customary to compare him with such great humorists before him as Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Fielding. Sometimes his humour is corrective and satiric-but it always has the quality of geniality, charity, and tolerance. Humour with him is not only an occasional mood but a consistent point of view, and even a "philosophy of life." His comic fertility is indeed amazing. We have above referred to Dickens "world."

Pathos:

              Dickens was as considerably influenced by Goldsmith and Steme as by Fielding and Smollet. Sterne's sentimentalism and rather hypersensitive human sympathy as also Goldsmith's fundamental sweetness and fellow-feeling often make themselves felt in Dickens' work. The earliest attempt made by Dickens at the delineation of the pathetic is to be found in his very first novel Pickwick Papers-the death of the Chancery prisoners. He is wonderfully successful in delineating the pathos of child life. As a child, he himself had suffered much, and his accounts of such life are always redolent of his personal experiences. Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and many more novels are rich in pathetic accounts of the lives of their heroes in childhood. What is more, pathos in them mingles and merges with humour, creating very peculiar effects.

Autobiographic Touches:

A peculiar feature of Dickens' art as novelist is his tendency to be autobiographic. He constantly draws upon his own experience, and the sympathies and antipathies which we find so persistenly manifested by him in his work very often have their origin in the years of his adolescence. Many of his novels are the records of his own life-though modified by subjection to the canons of art. Thus David Copperfield is, in essentials, Dickens' autobiography. Oliver Twist uses a lot of material supplied by his own experience of the low life of London in his tender years. In Bleak House he draws substantially upon his early knowledge of law courts and legal affairs. He recollects his school days in Nicholas Nickleby. And so forth.

Dickens and social concern : 

    There is, however, little of this optimism in Dickens' novels. He focuses instead on the daily needs and  problems of ordinary people: poverty, poor housing, ill health, a horrifying level of child mortality, hunger, long hours of grinding labour.

The rapid changes of the time benefited some people long before others. Dickens is concerned with those still waiting for improvements and raises key moral and social questions in his writing:

the need for schooling and the care of orphans and other deprived children

cruelty to children and the corruption of children by criminals

the problems created by emphasis onsocial class and newly acquired wealth

the problems created by rapid industrialization and urbanization and the conflict between employers and workers.

        

Conclusion:

In spite of the formidable number of flaws and limitations from which Dickens' art as a novelist suffers, he is a great novelist. His humour, basic human sympathy, and his rich, vitalising imagination are his basic assets, even though he is deficient in the architectural skill as well as other formal and "technical" qualifications as a novelist. 

Advantages and Disadvantages of New Historicism

Jankiba Rana’s  Assignment

Assignment :Advantages and Disadvantages of New Historicism


Roll No  : 9
M.A.Sem – II
Batch : 2014 – ‘15

Submitted to – Department of English
    Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.  Bhavnagar.










                                                                              New Historicism:
       
·       Introduction:

                                                  The Twenty first century is regarded as the age of globalization transnationalism and telecommunication. Education today is focused to prepare people to be flexible multiskilled dynamic problemsolvers, and creative explorer of resources with the ability to interpret reality from multiple perspectives and bring harmony between knowledge and creative.

                                          Therefore the traditional approaches to teaching literature have been replaced with modern approaches. The modern approaches were introduced at the turn of twentieth century. Initial efforts were mad by formalists and the new critics, who assigning primary importance to the text set up the tradition of close reading.

             Today reader’s response, deconstruction and other deconstructive reader based interpretative theories such as New Historicism, Post structuralism, Maxicism cognitive poetics, feminism post colonialism and post modernism are considered majore interpretative method.

v Meaning and Definition of New Historicism:

                                A simple definition of the New Historicism is that it is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and non- literary texts, usually of the same historical period. That is to say New Historicism refuses to privilege the literary texts; instead of the literary ‘fore ground’ and a historical ‘background’ it envisages and practices a mode of a study in which literary and non- literary texts are given equal, weight and constantly inform or interrogate echo there. Petre Berry, “Beginning Theory- An introduction to Literary and cultural Studies.”

New Historicism differs from the old Historicism in large measure not based on the approach but rather on changes in historical methodology, the rise of the so-called New history. The term new history was indebted to the French term nouvelle histoire, itself associated particularly with the historian Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora, members of the third generation of the Annales School, which appeared in the 1970s. The movement can be associated with cultural history, history of representations, and histoire des mentalités. While there may be no precise definition, the new history is best understood in contrast with prior methods of writing history, resisting their focus on politics and "great men;" their insistence on composing historical narrative; their emphasis on administrative documents as key source materials; their concern with individuals' motivations and intentions as explanatory factors for historical events; and their willingness to accept the possibility of historians' objectivity.

                      New Historicism is based on the assumption that a literary work is the product of the time, place, and circumstances of its composition. The New Historicists, therefore, reject the autonomy of both an artist and work of art and argue that literary texts cannot be read and understood in isolation. They emphasize that literary texts must be read and interpreted in its biographical, social historical contexts.

·        Origins of New Historicism:

                         The term ‘New Historicism’ was coined by the American critic Stephan Green Blatt. Whose book Renaissance self- Fashioning: From more to Shakespeare (1988). This is usually regarded as the beginning of New Historicism. However, similar tendencies can be identified in work by various critics published during the 1970s. J.W.Lever, The tragedy of State: A study of Jacobean Drama, Published in 1971. This brief and epoch making book challenged conservative critical views about Jacobean Theater, and linked the plays much more closely with the political events of their era than previous critics had done. New Historicism provides critical method of interpretation of a literary work of art; which came, into being as a reacting New Historicism.

Michel Foucault’s views that the discourse of an era, instead of reflecting pre- existing entitle and orders, brings into being the concepts, oppositions and hierarchies of which it speaks; that these elements are both products and propagators of “power”, or social forces, and that as a result, the particular discursive formations of an era determine what is at the time accounted “knowledge” and “truth”, as well as what is considered to be criminal, or insane or sexually deviant; see Foucault under post structuralism.

                            Harold Bloom criticizes the New Historicism for reducing literature to a footnote of history, and for not paying attention to the details involves in analyzing literature.


·         Historical Background :
o    Developed in late 1970's in response to perceived excesses of New Criticism, which tended to ignore importance of historical context of work of art
·         Assumptions
o    As with traditional historicism, new historicists argue that we cannot know texts separate from their historical context
o    Unlike traditional historicists, new historicists insist that all interpretation is subjectively filtered through one's own set of historically conditioned viewpoints. There is no "objective" history.
o    From Foucault, history is an intersection of discourses that establish an episteme, a dominant ideology.
o    Texts sometimes reveal a resistance to the episteme, rather than reflect it.
o    The real center of inquiry is not the text, but history.
o    Each text is only one example of many types of discourses that reveal history
o    To best understand a text, one should look at all sorts of other texts of the time, including social practice (as a kind of text)
·         Methods
o    Similar to traditional historicism, except that it looks to a greater variety of "discourses": social, political, religious, artistic to help explain the text
o    New Historicists investigate
§  the life of the author
§  social rules found within the text
§  the manner in which the text reveals an historical situation
§  the ways in which other historical texts can help us understand the texts
·         Criticisms of this approach:
o    Since the true center of analysis is history, New Historical critics sometimes don't pay close attention to the actual text.
o    Some historians (as opposed to English professors, for example) criticize the limited sampling of texts used to explain/elucidate the text. Some New Historicists, for example, can be accused of hasty generalizations.
·         What we can gain from applying this approach
o    See comments under traditional historicism
o    In addition to the above, we gain a better understanding of how historical viewpoints are complicated and how they are filtered through our own epistemes.


Traditional Historicism

·         Historical Background
o    Dates from the 19th century, the abuse of this approach in part led to New Criticism. Historical context used to explain and understand the literary text.
·         Assumptions
o    To know a text, one needs to understand its insertion in a particular moment in time, as an expression of a writer influenced by his/her times.
o    History consists in part of consistent world views that are reflected in art
·         Methods
o    Research an author's biographical data, as well as historical works from the time in order to show how the text reflects its time: ideology, social, political, economic beliefs and trends, etc.
·         Criticisms of this approach:
o    Sometimes brings with it simplistic view of history. History is more complicated, involving a swirl of conflicting attititudes. No history is objective. We always understand history from a set of beliefs, values, etc., rooted in our time.
o    In the worst cases it can lead us away from close reading of the text, subordinating the text to a preconception of history. New Critics believed we should first and foremast read the text closely, on its own terms.
·         What we can gain from applying this approach
o    When done by excellent historicists, a deeper understanding of the historical determinants of meaning in a text. Knowing the implied context that permeates a text helps us understand it more fully.



·         Advantages and Disadvantages of New Criticism :


·         Although it is based on poststructuralist thinking, it is written in an easily accessible way. The style and vocabulary of poststructuralist time was avoided.
·        
·         It presents its data and draws its conclusions, if the data can be challenged the way it is propounded in the empirical foundation on which the data is available for analysis.
·         The second advantage is the material itself is often fascinating and completely distinctive in the context of literary studies.
·        
·         The difference between literary and non literary text remains in the minds. That is to say “Uncluttered” (Pared down) feel of the essay, which is resulted from not citing previous discussions of literary work gives them stark and domestic air. The political edge of New Historicist writing is always sharp, but it directly meets with Marxist Criticsm.

                 New Historicism also shares many of the same theories as with what is often called Cultural Studies, but cultural critics are even more likely to put emphasis on the present implications of their study and to position themselves in disagreement to current power structures, working to give power to traditionally disadvantaged groups. Cultural critics also downplay the distinction between "high" and "low" culture and often focus predominantly on the productions of "popular culture."

               This shift of focus mirrors a trend in critical assessment of the decorative arts. Unlike fine arts, which had been discussed in purely formal terms under the influences of Bernard Berenson and Ernst Gombrich, nuanced discussion of the arts of design since the 1970s have been set within social and intellectual contexts, taking account of fluctuations in luxury trades, the availability of design prototypes to local craftsmen, the cultural horizons of the patron, and economic considerations—"the limits of the possible" in economic historian Fernand Braudel's famous phrase

                Historicism also often challenged the concept of truth and the notion of rationality in modernity. Modern thinkers held that reason was a universal faculty of the mind that is free of interpretation, that can grasp universal and unchanging truth. Historicism questioned this notion of rationality and truth, and argued for the historical context of knowledge and reason; historicism is an explicit formulation of the historicity of knowledge.

                   It is a new critic method, challenging all kinds of formalism and traditional historicism. This paper mainly discusses how the theory of New Historicism critic is applied in literary. M.H.Abrams puts forward the theory of four essential factors that includes "world, art, writer and reader". By this way, I review in details New Historicism critic's different views on literature and investigate the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of critic method in the western literary criticism of whole century.

               New Historicism critic distinctive writer's subjective position. Writes complete self-fashioning inthe text and language world. They write down the process of self-fashioning and fulfill fashioning of others. On the views of literature, the "intertexuality" is very important. New Historicism critic is deeply influence by Hayden White and Michel Foucault. They place history and literature in the same rank order and broke to traditionally belong to the relation. They find a new way for the study of literature. New Historicism critics pay more attention to politics ideology of literature. They study both subvert and restrain and dig into the essence

                New  Historicism  critic advocate a kind of synthesizing thought mode, and also can be seen the stir to fine course thought. New Historicism critic is many-faced poetry science mode, which transfer from writer center to text center. Meanwhile, this mode exists many flaws. Firstly, it stem from interior methodology and practice contradiction. Secondly, New Historicism critic is apt to studying text synchronic and ignores text development diachronic. Finally, basing on the history limitations, they are short of entirety certainty. Whatever, they urge us to rethink our culture…
Key words: New Historicism critic; views on literature; writer’s subjective position; literature and history; poetry science.

Criticism
                          New historicism has come into conflict with some of the anti-historical tendencies of postmodernism. New historicism denies the claim that society has entered a "post-modern" or "post-historical" phase and allegedly ignited the "culture wars" of the 1980s.The main points of this argument are that new historicism, unlike post-modernism, acknowledges that almost all historic views, accounts, and facts they use contain biases which derive from the position of that view. As Carl Rapp states: "[The new historicists] often appear to be saying, 'We are the only ones who are willing to admit that all knowledge is contaminated, including even our own.’
                       Some complaints sometimes made about New Historicism are that in seems to lessen literature to a footnote of history. It has also been said that it does not pay attention to the antiquate details involved with analyzing literature. New Historicism simply states historical issues that literature may make connections with without explain why it has done this, lacking in-depth knowledge to literature and its structures.

Narrative technique in Frankenstein

Jankiba Rana’s  Assignment

Assignment :Narrative technique in Frankenstein

      

                                      Roll No  : 9

                                      M.A.Sem – II

                                      Batch : 2014 – ‘15

                                      Submitted to – Department of English

                                      Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar                                                       university.

                                      Bhavnagar.

 “ I busied myself to

think of a story, -- a

story to rival those

which had excited us to

this task. One which

would speak to the

mysterious fears of our

nature and awaken

thrilling horror. . .”

• Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley had many narrative conventions hitherto followed by earlier writers. Jane Austen had written many novels, but the area, she covered was restricted to one or two families. Her realistic mode did not suit Mary Shelley .

Since the novel is said to have originated in the so-called ‘ghost-story’ context, she fell back on the Gothic tradition, but altered it drastically. So much so that the novel as it was published could hardly be called Gothic, for, with a few exceptions, there are no supernatural trappings. As a literary heiress to two great and eminent intellectuals, Mary seems to have examined and tested all existing conventions, but she found none which could suit her: she invented her own – a hybrid of ‘Chinese box’, ‘point of view’, ‘indirections’ and Framed or Embedded Narrative, which is a also known as framed narratives or Chinese box structure of stories within stories, meta fiction. The first narrative was taken by Walton Who writes to his sister Mrs. Saville .

Basic narrative

Largely, the novel consists of a single story which takes Frankenstein from childhood in Geneva to his death in the Arctic aboard Captain Walton's ship. All the action of the novel arises from:

• Frankenstein's childhood and education
• His creation of the monster and its consequences.

When other stories are told – such as that of the de Laceys, Justine or Elizabeth – they are subordinate to this central action.

Comparison with Walton

The closest the novel comes to what might be an alternative, or sub, plot is the story of Captain Walton. But this plot, with its emphasis on aspiration, exploration and the obsessive search for new discoveries is in reality a kind of echo of Frankenstein's story, and the main reason why Walton welcomes Victor so warmly is that he finds him a kindred spirit. However, the stories do diverge, in that:

• Walton, unlike Victor, is forced to acknowledge and accede to the wishes of other people
• whereas Frankenstein can pursue his studies in isolation, Walton is dependent on his crew
• when  his crew demand to return to England, upon their ship becoming ice-bound, Walton has to submit to their demands.

·          

·                           The novel opens with four letters written by Walton to his sister, Mrs. Saville. The letters are written in first person . At the end of Letter IV, Walton agrees to hear the stranger's tale. The stranger declares that his destiny is determined, nothing can change it. Understanding the importance of the stranger's tale, Walton decides to take notes on the story.

·         I have resolved every night, when I am not imperatively occupied by my duties, to record, as nearly as possible in his own words.

·         Therefore, this sets the narrative voice--Walton's telling of Victor's story.

 Third Person (i.e. he, his, him /she, her /it /they, their /[name]) 

Second Person (addressed to: you, your, thee*, thou* or thine ) 

First Person (singular: I, me, my, mine; plural: we, us, our)

Frankenstein --- First-person Narration

        The whole story is narrated through first-person narration with two different viewpoints. First is from the viewpoint of Frankenstein; and the other, Walton. In this article, I am going to discuss the use of first-person narration to show the reliability of the story.

      There are Three different narratives in frankenstein :

                  Shelley the author, uses, something calling a “framing device “ and “ epistolary “ narration .

                   A framing Device is used when a someone’s story is told through someone who reads it or hears it. Epistolary narration is when a story it’s told through letters.

The reader is introduced to Robert Walton , a failed writer turned explorer as Robert is writing to his sister about his adventures in searching for the North Pole , the Robert and the audience meet victor.

          Victor then tell Robert his story about he ended up in the North Pole. The reader learns of his creature , victor’s past...essentially the story of Frankenstein. 

           At the beginning of the last chapter, Shelly makes use of the first-person narration to tell the story. Frankenstein continued to tell his story. He wanted to take revenge on his creature Daemon as it killed his friends and family. He was desperate to  destroy the monster. He pursued it no matter how hard his life was and how difficult the processes were. The story of capturing the monster was told by Frankenstein himself and used “I” to indicate creditability. That is the first-person narration.

            After Frankenstein had finished his story, the book turned back to Walton’s letter. Walton saved Frankenstein from the iced Ocean and became his friend. The narration turned to Walton’s story. From his letter to his sister Margaret, we know that Frankenstein was dead finally and the monster came to take his body away. Through Walton’s narration, we can find that Daemon has still got its conscience. He was borne away by waves and lost in darkness at last. The second part of the last chapter was narrated by Walton, as mentioned before. In this part, “I” was used to indicate Walton, not Frankenstein.

            All in all, this novel used first-person narration in two different ways, one for Frankenstein and one for Walton. Using this method to narrate story can create a more reliable atmosphere for readers and lead them inside the story easily and deeply. Walton states that he is the witness of Frankenstein’s story. Like this novel, we can understand what Frankenstein or Walton felt directly and can easily catch the passion of the characters. Frankenstein is a great story and gives an excellent description of characters’ feelings!

Frankenstein has an odd structure. Most is written in first person, from several different characters' points of view. We hear the explorer's thoughts on Frankenstein, the monster's thoughts as well as those of Victor Frankenstein himself as in the famous passage:

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.

Other sections of the story are second person - told in 'letters' (olden-times 'email'). A letter is also called an 'epistle' - hence 'epistolary' novel. Elizabeth writes to Victor Frankenstein to tell him about events at home. She narrates events to Victor using 'you'. As with most 'second person', the writer also uses first and third person.

Third Person and First Person are by far the most common point of view styles in novels. In poetry, it's first person, then second.

Omniscient third person is a fairly distanced viewpoint where the narrator hovers above the action, shifting from one character and place to another. Literally, omniscient means 'all knowing'. Sometimes this includes the author's opinion (in first person). Charles Dickens uses this style a lot - hovering over various characters. We hear the voice of the author (in the first person) at the start of A Tale of Two Cities:

We had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going direct to Heaven; we were all going the other way.

      Mary Shelley uses a multiple narrative in Frankenstein. A multiple narrative (sometimes referred to as an epistolary narrative) uses the voices of multiple characters within the text. Epistolary narratives can also use letters (such as Walton's four letters at the opening of the novel and the letters between the Frankenstein family) to detail parts of the plot and storyline. Some readers may forget, as they move through the novel, that Walton is responsible for telling the story of Victor and his creation.

Third person limited Narration or Limited 

Omimiscience :   Focusing a third person narration Though the eyes of a single character. Even when an author chooses to tell a narrative through omniscient narrations/he will sometimes ( or even for the entire tale ) limite the perspective of the narrative to that of a single character , choosing for example only to narrate the inner thoughts of that character. The narrative is still told in third person ( unlike first-person narration );however, it clear that it is ,nonetheless, being told through the eyes of a single character. A famous example of this from of narration is James Joyce’s   “ The Dead “( in dubiners).  A narrative can also shift among various third person limited narrations.(see also focalize.) Third-Person

Third-Person Omniscient Narration   :                  This is a common form of third-person narration in which the teller of the tale , who often appears to speak with the voice of the author himself , assumes an omniscient (all knowing) perspective on the story being told : diving into private thoughts, narrating secret or hidden events , jumping between spaces and times. Of course, the ominiscience narrator does not therefore tell the reader viewer everything, at least not until the moment of greatest effect. In other words , the hermeneutic code is still very much in play throughout such narration. Such a narrator will also discursively re-order the chronological events of the story.

Frame narrative :

A frame narrative is a literary technique used to contain an embedded narrative, a story within a story, to provide the reader with context about the main narrative. A frame narrative, also known as a framing narrative or a frame story, might be found in the beginning, middle or end of the story. It can also act like a link that connects many stories together.

The Frame Narrative in Frankenstein  :

Frankenstein uses a double frame structure, with Walton telling the story of his encounter with Frankenstein, who, in turn, tells the story of his disastrous experiment, and within that includes a re-telling of the Creature's own story.

This use of the frame narrative achieves a number of effects, influencing how we read and understand the text, and also influencing our emotional response to the characters and narrators.

Firstly, the fact that the stories of all three narrators seem to concur adds credibility to the narrative. This is, however, deceptive, as each narrator is able to give his own view of events without danger of contradiction - all three are together only after the death of Frankenstein. In addition to this, both Frankenstein and Walton are able to edit not only their own stories but those of the 'framed' narrator(s). We have, really, only Walton's version of events - he gives his version of Frankenstein's version of the Creature's version of his story - and we are under no obligation to believe Walton.

Cynicism aside, it seems reasonable to accept the majority of Walton's account - we are given no reason to do otherwise. Caution must be exercised, however, when it comes to Walton's descriptions of Frankenstein; Walton is clearly heavily under the influence of Frankenstein's exceptional charm and charisma, and lavishes upon him a praise which many readers would find difficult to understand.

The second effect of the frame narrative is that it provides us with a number of perspectives, giving more than one version of the truth. Remembering that we remember that the narratives of the Creature and Frankenstein are coloured by the re-telling of their tales, we are presented with three different personal views on the story.

Whilst we are encouraged by each narrator to believe his narrative, and sympathise with him and his concerns, this is quite obvious, and so the reader is empowered to select a viewpoint, either from the three given, or by constructing a new, personal opinion on the story and characters. This then leads the reader to become engaged, and perhaps even immersed in the story, helping Shelley to achieve her purposes: to horrify and to generate thought on a number of social, moral, religious and political issues. The empowerment of the reader, giving the freedom to choose what to accept and find sympathetic, carries with it the responsibility to develop a personal view on these issues.

This use of the frame narrative to provide different viewpoints gives its third effect: to bring the use of foil characters to the attention of the reader. Frankenstein uses a number of foils, all of whom are used to demonstrate Frankenstein's inadequacies and failings as a human being:

·         The Creature himself, especially if he is Frankenstein's double, serves to show that Frankenstein had good innate within him, but (willfully or accidentally) turned from it. The Creature and Frankenstein seem to have only one measure of humanity between them, and as the Creature becomes increasingly human (even with all the attendant vices that implies), Frankenstein becomes increasingly monstrous. The Creature uses reason to get what he wants (initially at least); Frankenstein uses hysterical threatening. The Creature performs altruistic actions; Frankenstein is the epitome of egocentrism.

·         Walton serves to show what Frankenstein was before he was perverted by his blind attachment to science. The novel begins as Walton is treading a knife-edge between sane, rational normality and wild, driven ambition - Frankenstein's warning to him seems to succeed, and he is prevented from taking a similarly destructive path.

·         Henry Clerval is the exact opposite of Frankenstein in almost every way. Whilst he also wishes to study and to acquire knowledge, his motives seem to be less selfish than Frankenstein's - it is difficult to see how a desire to master foreign languages could lead to an all-consuming and destructive ambition. Clerval is calm; Frankenstein raves madly. Clerval is caring; Frankenstein seems unable to sympathise with others, much less to empathise. Clerval is chivalrous and well-mannered; Frankenstein's selfishness prevents him from behaving in anything other than a callous and rude fashion. Clerval is interested in poetry; Frankenstein is interested in nothing but science. Clerval is a dedicated Romantic; Frankenstein is still lost in the worldliness of the Enlightenment.

·         Elizabeth, too, is a foil for Frankenstein - she demonstrates true loyalty to family and friends, and an appreciation of the beauty of nature which makes Frankenstein's use of the horrific and unnatural look extremely bad. Elizabeth also seems to welcome her forthcoming marriage, showing the strangeness of Frankenstein's reluctance. Elizabeth, as a mother-figure and 'love interest' represents procreation and sexuality, which serves to highlight the wrong Frankenstein has done in creating life without the involvement of a woman, and also shows his odd rejection of mature sexuality.

Multiple Perspectives :

                                                             One thing a frame narrative does is change the point of view from which the story is presented. In other words, a frame narrative offers the reader multiple points of view within the same story. For example, in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” the narrator, who is also a character within the story, tells the story that makes up the novel. The effect is that the reader is presented with multiple perspectives of the story within one text, and these multiple perspectives provide the reader with more information about the characters including their motivations, thoughts and feelings.

Multiple Stories :

                                                  A frame narrative also allows the writer to incorporate a set of smaller narratives into one overall story. In general, a story within a main story is used to sum up some aspect of the framing story. For example, in “The Book of the One Thousand and One Nights,” the narrator, who is also a character in the story, relates a number of fairy tales to another character. The overall effect of this type of frame narration is to tie all of the stories together to present the reader with one collection of related tales.

Multiple Levels of Meaning :

                                                                                  Overall, frame narratives are used to provide the reader with multiple levels of meaning. Whether a narrative contains one embedded narrative or a series of related stories, the framing of a narrative creates opportunities for multiple levels of interpretation. For instance, a frame may expand or shrink the distance between the reader and the story, change the reader’s sense of what is and what is not important, or imply certain sociological, political or ethical consequences that reach beyond the text into the outside world. All of these effects of frame narratives give stories different levels of meaning .

               Finally, the frame narrative reinforces the message of the text - anyone behaving like Frankenstein will come to no good - by having the entire story told in the barren wastes of the Arctic. There is no life, and therefore symbolically no hope for Frankenstein, at the beginning, and we are reminded of this when Walton's narrative resumes at the end. Frankenstein had failed and was at death's door as the narrative began - we were presented with this 'warning' at the beginning of the text, as well as its being shown to us more directly and in greater detail at the end.