APPROACHES TO MODERN LITERARY THEORIES

BY

JIDE BALOGUN, Ph.DJidebalogun2001@yahoo.com

1. Introduction

The history of literature is the history of literary criticism. The latter as an ally of

the former makes creative writing more complementary and helps to conceptualize the

pedagogical import of texts of literature into ideological standpoints. Over the ages,

literary theories have been the weapons for the realization of this crucial obligation of

literary criticism.

In the preface to A History of Literary Criticism (1991) A. N. Jeffares gives no room for

any doubt about the kinship of literature, literary criticism and literary theories. He says:

The study of literature requires knowledge of contexts as well as

of texts. What kind of person wrote the poem, the play, the novel,

the essay? What forces acted upon them as they wrote. What was

the historical, the political, the philosophical, the economic, the

cultural background etc?

All of these are antecedents to the birth of a particular literary production.

The argument of Jeffares is that for literature to be on course, it becomes

expedient that a structure is put in place to reveal its meaning beyond the literal level.

Broadly, texts of literature would possess two levels of meaning - the literal and the

super-literal. The super-literal meaning of texts of literature is the ideological implication

of the same; which criticism attempts to resolve. The task of resolving the crisis

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engendered in literary texts is possible through the formulation of some principles,

parameters and paradigms which are technically termed theories. Theories are meant to

interpret and evaluate works of literature with the mind of revealing the in-depth

implications of such works.

This chapter identifies and discusses some of these theories that have formed

the canons for the proper understanding of literature in the modern times. Modernity in

this context is with reference to those theories of criticism that have flourished from the

twentieth century up to date.

Two periods (the early and modern theories) could be delineated in the

development of theories of literature. However, the modernist approach appears to be

preferred to the former because it provides us with an art that discusses current and

concrete issues that are germane to the sustainability or otherwise of the humanity. The

profundity of the modernist perspective is expressed by David Ker (2001) as

“modernism’s consciousness of disorder, despair and anarchy is the perfect medium for

the African novelist for conveying on the one hand his nostalgia for the past, with all its

imperfections and on the other hand his bitterly ironic indictments of the present”.

2. Categorizing literary theories

I want to accept the two divisions of theories by Graham Hough as a frame. In his

book, An Essay on Criticism (1966) he distinguishes two categories of literary theories.

The first category which he calls the intrinsic theories is concerned with the moral nature

of literature. Theories in this category primarily emphasise the total essence of literature.

The second is what he describes as the extrinsic theories, which talk about the formal

nature of literature and more specifically what it is.

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The intrinsically inclined criticism is also a heterodiegetic judgment of literature.

This kind of literary theory isolates a work of literature from its external reality. The

adherents of this classification see a text of literature as having no relationship intended

or implied with its external world. That such a work is in its own ‘world’. The critical

theorists in this category are the Formalists, Structuralists and Post-structuralists or the

Deconstructionists. In the modern times, William Golding, Sophocles and Ayi Kwei

Armah are among the ardent disciples of this category of literary theories.

On the other hand, the extrinsically inspired literary theories tend to associate a

literary piece with its external world. Here, there is a departure from the isolationist

philosophy propounded by the ideologues of the intrinsically inclined criticism. Rather

extrinsic criticism is homodiegetic; meaning that a work of literature is essentially (i) a

representation of the spirit of the age and (ii) a reflection of the ‘world’ in which it

operates. It goes further to see a text of literature as a product of the producer’s (poet,

novelist, playwright, essayist) imagination, vision and sensibility in his external world.

Also, in this kind of criticism, the artist does not only focus on his external reality but he

is inside the literary production and creates a principal character and other characters to

carry out his mission. This final aspect of the extrinsic criticism is what I call autodiegetic

index of literary criticism.

The focus in this respect is for criticism to holistically investigate a piece of

literature with the mind of having a more practical judgment of the same. Modern literary

theories in this category are Psychological or Psychoanalytical, Marxist, Feminist and

Post-colonialist criticism. Today, the works of the German Bertolt Brecht, the American

Langston Hough, the South African Alex La Guma, the Nigerian Olu Obafemi etc are

among those that subscribe to this critical category.

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3. The Concept of Modern Literary Theories

The notion of modern literary theories transcends the motif of age-oriented and

movement-motivated principles of the early theories like Classicism, Romanticism,

Realism and the others. Rather, modernity distinguishes those new doctrinal methods

adopted to study literature. Such literary theories like Psychoanalysis, Formalism,

Structuralism/Semiotics, Post-structuralism or Deconstruction, Marxism, Feminism and

Post-colonialism are predominant in this designation.

The modernist tradition, concerns itself with an assessment of the material reality

of a literary text rather than focusing on the celebration of nature and culture noticeable

in some literary circles. This new development in the language of Terry Eagleton (1996)

is “theoretical revolution”, meant to address “the meaning of literature and the

implications of criticism for it”. Summed up as ‘New Criticism’, modern literary theories

are required to cope with the challenges of a world oriented towards modern science,

industrialization and technology. The concept of modern literary theories could be further

understood through the submission of the Canadian scholar- Northrop Frye (1957) who

rightly observes that early criticism was in a pathetic unscientific apathy requiring an

urgent rehabilitation.

The quality of articulating the different aspects of a text of literature into a more

digestible entity translates modern literary theories into a cynosure of critics and

intellectuals. Crucial elements of literature like theme, characterization, setting etc and

fundamental devices such as symbolism expressed in metaphor, simile, allegory and the

rest are instrumental to the conceptualization of literature texts.

A topical and literal reading of Edward Albee’s play – Who’s Afraid of Virginia

Woolf (1962), Niyi Osundare’s anthology of poems – The Word is an Egg (1999), Wole

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Soyinka’s comedy – The Lion and the Jewel (1964), Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful

Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) would elicit a superficial meaning without subjecting them

to modern literary criticism. To remove this obstacle, there is the need for a concise

explication as provided in modern literary theories. Validating this position Jerome Beaty

et al (2002) argue that the business of modern theories is to analyse and to analyse

means to break some thing. What criticism does through these theories is to break texts

of literature into meaningful entities.

4. Codifying Modern Literary Theories

This section identifies and discusses specific modern literary theories and their

peculiarities. This is done with the consciousness of the two broad categorization of

literary theories earlier discussed in this chapter.

I. Formalism

Formalism is ‘New Criticism’ developed and flourished in Russia in the middle of

the twentieth century. To the Formalists, a work of literature is perceived as being

autotelic in the sense that such is “self-complete, written for its own sake, and unified by

its form”. Jerome Beaty et al (2002: A18). The interpretation of this is that form

(methods, devices etc) used to present ideas in a work of literature is exalted more than

content (theme). From the Formalist’s standpoint, a work of literature is evaluated on the

basis of its literary devices and the susceptibility of the same to scientific investigation.

The critic’s concern therefore is to identify and discuss those devices in order to

determine the ‘literariness’ of such a text.

The critical practice of the Formalists needs a further appraisal because of its loss

of the organic essence of literature. A work of literature is a representation of a central

idea or theme whose interpretation is dependent on the different elements that

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contribute to its fulfillment and meaning. It wouldn’t be possible for Wole Soyinka’s The

Trials of Brother Jero (1964) to accomplish the enormous task of satirizing the

bastardization and the commercialization of the Christian faith if only the image of the

bar beach has been emphasized in the text without exposing the gullibility of prophet

Jero and the idiotic character of Amope. Certainly, a focus only on this aspect of a text is

a mere pursuance of shadow at the expense of substance.

II. Structuralism

In literature, Structuralism is concerned with an analysis of texts based on some

linguistic principles. Founded on modern linguistic theory of the French Ferdinard de

Saussure, literary Structuralism attempts to define, explain and analyse literature by

concentrating on signs in a given text. On this note, there is only a thin line of

demarcation between Structuralism and Semiotics – the science of signs.

According to Saussure quoted from Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory (1996),

language is:

A system of signs, which was to be studied ‘synchronically’ –

that is to say as a complete system at a given point of time –

rather than ‘diachronically’ in its historical development. Each

sign was to be seen as being made up of a ‘signifier’ (second

image, or its graphic equivalent) and a ‘signified’ (the concept

of meaning).

Literary Structuralism is an attempt to apply the above linguistic paradigm to study

literature. The term connotes structures and is more concerned with the way elements

relate with one another in a literary production. The focus of this approach is to analyse

deep structures in a given literary text. It sees issues in such a text in relation to the

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signs employed by a writer. Thus, “Structuralism focuses on the text as an independent

aesthetic object and also tends to detach literature from history and social and political

implications”. Jerome Beaty (2002: A18)

As laudable and science – based as Structuralism seems to be, literature

transcends an analysis of signs. Literature would not achieve its purpose of expressing

those fundamental and socio-cultural human desires that have passed through history, if

all it preoccupies itself with is an analysis of signs.

Certainly, other crucial elements demystifying the political leaders in Antigua as

exemplified in Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place (1988) would have been lost, if the

author’s emphases were only on the glamour of the V.C. Bird International Airport.

However, it is paradoxical to assert that literary Structuralism is an evidence of the

demystification of the monopoly of early literary theories. In other words, it provides

alternative principles for studying literature as against the monolithic posture portrayed

in the sociology of literature.

III. Post-structuralism or Deconstruction

While Structuralism believes in the explanation of all phenomena through the

science of signs, Post-structuralism objects to this position. The Deconstructionist view

is hung on what Harry Blamires (1991) refers to as the “instability of signification”.

Because a signifier, is not confined to a single but many signifieds, it is not safe to

depend only on signs as a means of eliciting the meaning of a concept. This is

compounded as an attempt to decode the meaning of such a concept leads to the

emergence of another meaning. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida

acknowledges this as he subscribes to “a fusion between the signifier and the signified”

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– Harry Blamires (1991:363). Derrida further posits that, it is illusive to think of a

structure devoid of its centre.

The argument of the Post-structuralists is that a meaning is not entirely contained in a

sign but rather in a chain of related issues within which signs function. Thus,

Deconstruction in literature gives primacy to the ‘when’ and ‘where’ there is a textual

deflection from the original pattern.

The Deconstructive criticism favours the employment of metaphysics as an

important instrument for studying a work of literature. This metaphysical view sees

literature functioning beyond the periphery but rather associates every human

phenomenon with supernaturalism. Hence, the human quest for the utopia that is always

the preoccupation of literature is the prerogative of such variables as drawing:

Rigid boundaries between what is acceptable and what is

not, between self and non-self, truth and falsity, sense and

nonsense, reason and madness, central and marginal,

surface and depth. Terry Eagleton (1996:114)

Jerome Beaty et al (2002) codify Formalism, Structuralism, and Post-structuralism as

the objectivist criticism, within which they define literature “as a fixed and freestanding

object made up of words on a page”.

IV. Psychological or Psychoanalytical Criticism

This could be considered from the perspectives of Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939),

Jacques Lacan and Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961). The centrality of psychological

criticism is to define literature as an expression of the author’s psyche pivoted on his or

her unconscious being which requires an interpretation like a dream.

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A leading tradition in psychological criticism is the Freudian’s. According to its

followers, the meaning of a work of literature depends on the psyche and even on the

neuroses of the author. Thus, a literary work is valued based on the author’s

unconscious. A Freudian reading of A Walk in the Night (1974) for example reveals that

Michael Adonis is violent because of his frustrated desire to live in South Africa that is

devoid of racial bigotry. Some Freudian adherents emphasise the author’s psyche and

see A Walk in the Night as an expression of his disgust with the apartheid regime in

South Africa. Other Freudian critics see the effect of the novel on the reader as an

expression of the rebirth of South Africa.

While Lacanian psychology (and the critical theory produced by it) acknowledges

“the unconscious as the realm of repressed desire”, (Beaty, 2002:A21), it romances with

the Deconstructionist’s view of using language to express the abstract (metaphysical).

The abstract expressed in the word (language) belongs to the unconscious desire

whose attainment is illusive or unattainable.

A more concrete and popular dimension of Psychological criticism is that which

was founded on Carl Gustav Jung’s Psychoanalysis commonly referred to as Jungian

symbolism or Jungian criticism.

The principle of Jungian criticism hinges on the assumption that all mortal beings have a

common universal or what is technically termed collective unconscious; within which

individual and racial unconscious functions. Carl Gustav Jung and his followers posit

that within the collective unconscious, individual and racial unconsciouses are found as

archetypes (universal symbols, forms of human experiences and pattern).

In literature, archetypes are usually represented in recurring themes, characters,

plots, events, settings and other indices of literary production. An important issue in

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archetypal criticism is the universality of those images, symbols, patterns and

experiences called archetypes.

Archetypes, though associated with history and the antiquity, they have serious

implications for the contemporary society. For instance the theme of jealousy one finds

in Kunene’s Emperor Shaka the Great (1979) is what we find in Clark’s The Ozidi Saga

(1977). The trickster symbolism associated with the tortoise is universal. The mother-

image found in every literature featuring the mother figure is the same over the ages.

Thus, archetypes are the appearances of “the primordial image of a figure, whether a

demon, man or process that repeats itself in the course of history where creativity

manifests.

From the foregoing discussions on archetypes, it would be logical to argue that it

is possible to subject all phenomena to archetypal criticism. The reason is that every

phenomenon is a prototype of another already deposited in a person’s unconscious.

What literature does is to appeal to the individual, racial or universal unconsciouses for a

particular literary production. Modern archetypal critics include Maud Bodkin, Masizi

Kunene, John Pepper Clark among others.

V. Marxism

Fundamentally anchored on the work of Karl Marx, Marxism is a dominant critical

theory born in the middle of the 19th century and flourished tremendously throughout the

twentieth century. Concerned about historical and cultural issues, Marxism identifies

social and economic factors as crucial denominators of relationship in society. Karl Marx

saw a capitalist society as basically a class society where the oppression of a class by

another is perpetrated. He was an avowed adversary of oppression in whatever form.

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Thus he joined the proletariat (working class) to advocate for the abolition of class

oppression.

The philosophy of Marxism is rooted in what is known as dialectical materialism,

which stresses economic determinism (economic survival) as an index of social

struggles. The Marxist ideologues believe that all social struggles are economy-based

whose resolution stirs conflicts among the different classes inhabiting a social milieu.

Society is divided into two broad classes; the oppressor and the oppressed, who

in Marx parlance are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat respectively. Because the

former holds the means of production, it becomes dominant and hence oppresses the

latter.

Bayo Lawal (1989), summarises the focus of Marxism in the context of human

activity “based on the infrastructure which can be broadly divided into (a) forces of

production and (b) productive relations”. He goes further to see work as being crucial to

human existence and relevance, in the capitalist world; work is grossly misused and

abused by the oppressors.

He expresses this in the following words:

In the capitalist system, work or labour, is deceitful because,

in Marx’s view man likes to be proud of what he creates and

in the capitalist society, the fruits of Man’s creative ability are

for capitalists. Man therefore, becomes estranged from what

he produces. He is also alienated from the person who gets

what he creates from him to sell at a price very higher than

the cost of production ………. to strengthen and ensure the

exploitative connection. Bayo Lawal (1989:126).

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What Marxist writers (poets, playwrights and novelists) do is to expose the

oppressors’ class and its mechanism of oppression. This is realized as settings, themes,

characters and events conflating are discussed thereby creating the avenue for the

Marxist critics to demonstrate their craft.

The above is the reason Marxist critics see the history of society as the history of class

struggles and also explain the class struggles and antagonism predominant in a

capitalist society.

The interest of Marxist literature is to defend the cause of the oppressed. The

Marxist critics believe that the achievement of this goal is by evolving an egalitarian

society where the ideal is stressed. To achieve this, they explore society and situate

sources of oppression. They identify and critique elements of exploitation, alienation and

other indices of oppression. They go beyond critiquing to also proffer panacea to the

crises engendered by social parity.

For instance, a Marxist critique of Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood

(1962) sees the White colonial owners of the Railway system as the oppressors and the

Black indigenous Railway workers as the oppressed. While the members of the ruling

class (the colonial masters) employ various draconian methods to oppress the

colonized, the oppressed class in the novel employs strike and other revolutionary

approaches to assert its protest against the oppressive syndrome.

VI. Feminism

It was Dr. Betty Roynolds (2001) of the United States of America who once said

that:

We are in the midst of sweeping shift in human potential.

The movement of women from a second-class subjugated

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social status to a more equal and respected existence will

have a far-reaching impact on human society. While the

shift is by no means complete nor-ubiquitous, the progress

made in the latter half of the twentieth century is mind-

boggling compared with women’s progress up to that point.

Feminism is an attempt by the women-folk to universally liberate itself from male

chauvinism and patriarchy. While the shift is not intended to cause gender terrorism, it

aims at making the position of women at home, at work, at school, in the street etc more

challenging to themselves and their men-folk in the social phenomenon. This

iconoclastic and radical approach pursues the ambition of making women to gain

equality with men. The radical posture of Feminist criticism is reflected in its

dissatisfaction with the place of women in global social and cultural situations. Because

of its interest in social issues, Feminism, like Marxism, is historical, political and it

proposes a dynamic ideological commitment.

The Feminist literary critic’s interest is to pursue the cause of women in literary

texts. This is accomplished as women authors write novels, plays and poems.

Furthermore, the Feminist literary writers feature and make women characters and ideas

dominant in their works. Such writers endeavour to propagate Feminist thought, female

concerns, ideas “and accomplishments and to recover the largely unrecorded and

unknown history of women in earlier times”. Jerome Beaty (2002:A25). Prominent

among Feminist critics are Virjinia Woolf and Betty Raynolds, the American authors of

Contemporary Writers (1965), and Setting the Record Straight (2001) respectively, the

Jamaican novelist and the author of A Small Place (1988), Jamaica Kincaid, the British

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feminist theatre practitioner and critic and the editor of Feminist theatre and theory

(1996) - Helene Keyssar.

In the African Feminist literary scenario, we have the Ghanaian playwright and

theatre practitioner and the author of The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965) Amata Aidoo, the

Nigerian playwright, theatre practitioner and the author of Old Wives are Tasty (1991) -

Zulu Sofola, the Nigerian novelists and the authors of The Joys of Motherhood (1979)

and Condolences (2002) - Buchi Emecheta and Bina Nengi – Ilagha respectively. An

endearing and enduring peculiarity of these Feminist critics and writers is their ability to

design a concept best referred to as ‘Feminocracy’ – the art of the women, by the

women and for the women.

An interesting aspect of Feminism is the conscious or unconscious interest of

male writers to assert the position of women in the social phenomenon. For instance, a

critical reading of Sembene Ousmane’s God’s Bits of Wood (1962) and Wole Soyinka’s

The Lion and the Jewel (1964) would be shallow without paying attention, to the

influence of the women-folk in the strike action in the novel and the roles played by Sidi

and Sadiku in the play respectively.

VII. Post-colonialism

Post-colonialism as a literary theory, emerged in the late 19th century and thrived

throughout the 20th century. Post-colonialism is a literary approach that gives a kind of

psychological relief to the people (the colonized) for whom it was born.

The focus of the Post-colonial critic is to expose the mechanism and the evil

effect(s) of that monster called colonialism on the colonized. Colonialism which is the

capitalistic and exploitative method by a ‘superior’ nation (colonizer) to lord itself over a

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less privileged nation (colonized) leads to the impoverishment of the latter. The concept

of colonialism has political, economic and cultural implications.

Post-colonialism sees literature as an avenue to probe into the history of society

by recreating its past experience with the mind of forestalling the repetition of history.

The ultimate for the Post-colonial critic is to develop a kind of nostalgia about his

historical moment that produces a new dawn in his society.

Post-colonialism is a dominant feature in African and Caribbean literature as

writers in these settings see colonialism as an instrument of reducing them to

nonentities. An interesting feature of Post-colonial criticism is its attempt, not only to

expose the oddities of colonialism but to reveal and discuss what the independent

nations make of themselves even after the demise of colonialism. Works of the

celebrated Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe like A Man of the People (1966), the

Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah like’ the Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) and

the Jamaican novelist Jamaica Kincaid like A Small Place (1988) and the Nigerian

playwright and theatre practitioner – Olu Obafemi like Suicide Syndrome (1986) are all

interesting to the Post-colonial critic.

CONCLUSION

From the foregoing discussions, it has been established that literary theories are

indispensable tools for literature to achieve, its goal of sensitizing its audience towards

conscientization. It is not superfluous to argue that the ‘naughtiness’ in form of ‘lack of

comprehension’ common in texts of literature is resolved by literary theories.

What we have done in this paper is to discuss seven prominent literary theories

that help to make literature more enjoyable and meaningful to its readers and users.

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Aidoo, A. A. (1965). The Dilemma of a Ghost. England: Longman.

Albee, E. (1962). Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. England: Penguin Books.

Armah, K. A. (1968). The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. London: Heinemann.

Beaty, J. et al. (2002). The Norton Introduction to Literature, 8th edition. New York: W.W

Norton Company.

Blamires, H. (1991). A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

Clark, J. P. (1977). (Trans.). The Ozidi Saga. Ibadan: University Press.

Eagleton, T. (1996). Literary Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition. Minneapolis: The

University of Minnesota Press.

Emcheta, B. (1979). The Joys of Motherhood. Ibadan: Heinemann.

Frye, N. (1957) Anatomy of Criticism. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Kenene, M (1979). (Trans.) Emperor Shaka The Great. London: Heinemann.

Ker, D. (2000). The African Novel and the Modernist Tradition. New York: Peter Lang

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Keyssar, H. (1996). (ed.) Feminist Theatre and Theory. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

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La Guma, A. (1974). A Walk in the Night. London: Heinemann.

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Nengi-Ilagha, B. (2002). Condolences. Ibadan: Treasure Books.

Obafemi, O. (1986). Suicide Syndrome. Benin City: Adena Press.

Osundare, N. (2000). The Word is an Egg. Ibadan: Kraftgriots.

Ousmane, S. (1962). God’s Bits of Wood. London: Hienemann.

Reynolds, B. (2001). Setting the Record Straight. Denver: White Apple Press.

Sofola, Z. (1991). Old Wives are Tasty. Ibadan: University Press Ltd.

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