Catherine Belsey's Critical Practice (A Critical Analysis by Qaisar Iqbal Janjua)

Qaisar Iqbal Janjua, Contact: (92) 300 94 678

[email protected], [email protected]

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CRITICAL PRACTICE

Catherine Belsey

“This is a valiant attempt to explain the

principles and some of the intricacies of

structuralist criticism. It throws a good

deal of light on some of the terms, which

can baffle the uninitiated…. This is… a

helpful introduction to a subject which has

loomed large in recent years”

Terence Hawkes



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CATHERINE BELSEY THE POST-MODERN CRITIC

Catherine Belsey’s ‘Critical Practice’, which is fundamentally an anthology of essays in the series of ‘New Accents’, presents a modern rather post-modern observation of critical methods. Belsey has criticised the traditional orthodox ways of criticism and has made a scientific analysis of the techniques and styles of the works of last century’s artists. Her criticism demonstrates, although traditional criticism masquerades as a ‘common sense’, obvious and uncontroversial approach to literature, it is in fact a product of particular theoretical discourse isolated in time and space, which can make no valid claims to universality of ‘truth’.

She goes on to describe various critical positions, which have been set up in oppositions to the orthodoxy-New Criticism, Archetypical Criticism, Reader Theory and the Aesthetic of Reception. However, all these, though productive, are shown to fail because they adopt similar theories of language to the conventional criticism to which they object. The project of the remainder of the book is to explore the possibilities for a new critical practice, which fully takes into account the pioneering work of Saussure and makes use of subsequent advances in the field of semiotics, Marxist theory and psychoanalysis.

During the perusal of ‘Critical Practice’ several responses emerge - responses documented and grounded in specific examples are discussed in detail in here,

The terms "modernism," "postmodernism," "rationalism," "empiricism," "idealism," etc. do not mean in the "aesthetic domains" (art, architecture, and now literary critical theory) what they mean in philosophy.

The sense of liberation from an oppressive "modernity" or "modernism" in the aesthetic domains makes great sense - given what "modernity" and "modernism" have meant in those domains. By contrast, "modernity" and "modernism" in philosophy are sufficiently different that it is difficult to make direct comparisons between the aesthetic and the philosophical.

• In the philosophical world, what the aesthetic postmodernist rejection of "modernity" and "rationalism" appears to mean is really a rejection of Cartesian rationalism and Descartes' propensity to think dualistically. But this is in many ways a major theme of philosophical inquiry since Parmenides made so abundantly clear the limits of dualistic thought in the early 6th ct. B.C.E.

• Similarly, Belsey is most interesting as she works towards what appears to be a pluralistic theory of interpretation - one which runs between the assumption of a single, transcendent, fixed, universal Truth and sheer relativism. Perhaps this is "post-modern," if the assumption of a single transcendent truth is somehow "modern" in the terms of literary theory. But it is by no means uniquely "post-modern" in the philosophical domain. On the contrary, much of the work of the major Western philosophers - Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and their contemporary representatives (e.g., Habermas) - is precisely the project of overcoming dualistic modes of thinking and establishing pluralistic middle grounds between dogmatic assertions of single universal truths and (equally dogmatic) relativistic assertions of there existing no truth whatsoever.

• Finally, while Belsey in some ways seems to be stretching towards an explicitly philosophical approach to literary theory - she does not make the complete plunge into philosophy and its traditions. By stepping only halfway towards the philosophical domain, she thereby cuts herself off from the tools and insights, which would serve her so well in her project. Correlatively, despite her explicit interest in logic and logical consistency, she consistently falls prey to a number of common logical fallacies (question-begging, false dilemma, etc.). And her lack of awareness regarding the many philosophical versions of the sort of pluralistic



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middle ground she interested in leaves her to reinventing the wheel without the aid of these earlier and contemporary counterparts.

A CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL PRACTICE

Catherine Belsey’s observations on critical theory vis-à-vis "common sense" run in close parallel to Robert Dreier and Christi Lewis' observations on the resistance to philosophy in art and architecture:

“Common sense approaches literature not as a self conscious and deliberate practice, a method based on a reasoned theoretical position, but as the 'obvious' mode of reading, the 'natural' way of approaching literary works. Critical theory accordingly appears as a perfectly respectable but to some degree peripheral area, almost a distinct discipline, a suitable activity for graduate students or perhaps as a special option for undergraduates, having no necessary connection with the practice of reading itself. At best it is seen as a way of explaining in theoretical terms what we already - and on the whole without encountering any difficulties - do when we read; at worst it is held to be misleading, interfering with the natural way of reading, perplexing the minds of readers with nice speculations of philosophy and so leading to over-ingenuity, jargon and a loss of direct and spontaneous contact with the immediately perceptible reality of the text”.

Over against the self-evident assumption of the common sense view, she will urge the view of Saussure, that "common sense itself is ideologically and discursively constructed, rooted in a specific historical situation and operating in conjunction with a particular social formation."

Her critique, we note, is squarely logical and philosophical: "In reality, common sense betrays its own inadequacy by its incoherencies, its contradictions and its silences." Indeed, she makes the essential philosophical point: over against the anti-theoretical pretensions of the common sense approach, she states "But there is no practice without theory, however much that theory is suppressed, unformulated or perceived as 'obvious'."

She uses ideology in a specific way:

My use of the term, derived from Althusser's, assumes that ideology is not an optional extra, deliberately adopted by self-conscious individuals ('Conservative ideology', for instance), but the very condition of our experience of the world, unconscious precisely in that it is unquestioned, taken for granted. Ideology, in Althusser's use of the term, works in conjunction with political practice and economic practice to constitute the social formation, a formulation which promotes a more complex and radical analysis of social relations than the familiar term, 'society', which often evokes either a single homogenous mass, or alternatively a loosely connected group of autonomous individuals, and thus offers no challenge to the assumptions of common sense.

Her comment on the strategy of common sense in response to the new terms of her (ostensibly more radical) critical theory is worth reproducing:

...the last resort of common sense is to dismiss as 'unnecessary jargon' any discourse which conflicts with its own. This is an easy way of evading conceptual challenges, of course (and of eliciting reassuring sneers), but it negates the repeated liberal humanist claim to open-mindedness and pluralism.... To resist all linguistic innovation is by implication to claim that we already know all we need to know.



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As she provides a definition of the common sense view, however, she illustrates a point we've already seen in our discussion of architecture: the use of terms in one discipline may be only vaguely related to their use in another. Consider:

Common sense proposes a humanism based on an empiricist-idealist interpretation of the world. In other words, common sense urges that 'man' is the origin and source of meaning, of action, and of history (humanism). Our concepts and our knowledge are held to be the product of experience (empiricism), and this experience is preceded and interpreted by the mind, reason or thought, the property of a transcendent human nature whose essence is the attribute of each individual (idealism). These propositions, radically called in question by the implications of post-Saussurean linguistics, constitute the basis of a practice of reading which assumes, whether explicitly or implicitly, the theory of expressive realism. This is the theory that literature reflects the reality of experience as it is perceived by one (especially gifted) individual, who expresses it in a discourse, which enables other individuals to recognize it as true.

This necessarily general picture paints with such a broad brush that the key terms - humanism, empiricism, idealism, and reality - are necessarily equivocal, if they are to refer to any of the many currents of thought which use these terms as labels and organizing categories. As but one example: in the philosophical tradition, empiricism and idealism are generally opposed notions of how knowledge emerges - two distinct traditions of reflections on epistemology which Belsey joins neatly together without further comment. While such a conjunction vaguely recalls Kant (who is not named here) - the Kantian synthesis of idealism and empiricism excludes in turn Belsey's use of "transcendent" here to describe human nature.

From a philosophical perspective, then, the terms are used so broadly here as to jumble together what in philosophy is carefully kept separate. This is not to say that Belsey cannot use the terms in this way - only to say that we should be careful not to assume that her use of the terms perfectly matches their use in philosophy. Accordingly, whatever conclusions she may draw about idealism, empiricism, etc. may hold quite nicely in the domain of literary theory - but not necessarily beyond the bounds thereof.

This same problem reappears later when she criticizes the New Criticism for failing to confront "the idealist assumption that the text constituted an expression of an idea, a presence which existed in some shadowy realm of subjectivity anterior to and independent of the text itself." Just what sort of "idealism" is this? Platonic? Kantian? Neither? Both?

For that, following her summary of the emergence of the expressive realist position point to the precisely philosophical character of the questions she wants to address:

...expressive realism presents a number of problems not easily resolved within the framework of common sense. Difficulties, which have emerged, include the problem of access to the idea or experience, which is held to precede the expression of it. What form does it take? Do ideas exist outside discourse? Is the idea formulated in one discourse (a letter or a diary) the same as an idea formulated in different words in another discourse (a literary text)? In what sense is fiction 'true', and what constitutes evidence of that truth? What is the relationship between a text (a discursive construct) and the world? To what extent is it possible to perceive the world independently of the conventional ways in which it is represented? To what extent is experience contained by language, society, history?

To our eyes, these are the questions a philosopher would raise regarding epistemology, (our account of knowledge and theories of truth, including the role of perception), ontology or metaphysics (what is real? what are the relationships between realities?), and philosophy of language. Yet Belsey will not take up the theoretical approaches and lessons of philosophy to address these questions, but will rather remain



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within the frameworks of literary theory and critical theory. From my - admittedly biased - perspective, she thereby cuts herself off from a variety of theoretical tools, which would prove useful in addressing her questions.

And in remaining within the framework of literary theory and critical theory, she further cuts herself off from the history of philosophy - and from a full appreciation of logic.

She does not recognize, for example, in her quoting Wimsatt and Beardsley (as representative new critics), that they echo Plato's critique of writing in the Phaedrus. Recognizing this connection not only would have helped enrich her understanding of the long history of the recognition that words, once written down, are no longer the property of the author; thereby, she would be able to observe that the apparently contemporary debate between what she takes to be the common sense approach and her own, allegedly more radical approach, is by no means an entirely new thing under the sun. Indeed, it is conceivable that understanding the larger historical context - and in particular, some of the earlier responses to Plato's critique of writing (including Plato's own as the obvious author of many written works...) - would suggest still other responses to this debate than she is able to uncover.

As a specific example: she criticizes the New Criticism on the problem of meaning:

Within the expressive theory the text could be seen to possess a single, determinate meaning, however complex, and the authority for this meaning was the author. Meaning was what the author put into the text.

Not only does Belsey (following Saussure) reject this view - so does Plato after a fashion. Moreover, the insistence on a single meaning seems to a turn regarding language made in the rejection of certain forms of equivocal language (analogical equivocals, for example) by John Duns Scotus in the Middle Ages. Ever since Scotus, Western philosophers and scientists have largely argued that univocal terms are preferable to ambiguous terms - despite the observation made in Plato and Aristotle that language is perhaps intrinsically ambiguous, and some forms of ambiguity (analogical equivocals) may reflect important structures of connection and difference in both language and reality.

This failure to recognize the more nuanced and complex understanding of language in history seems to contribute to a simple dichotomy fundamental to Belsey's project. This simple dichotomy runs the risk of amounting to a false dilemma. In her analysis of expressive realism in general and New Criticism in particular, she pushes the understanding of meaning in expressive realism to an overly simple extreme:

...the continued assumption that meaning is single, and the continued quest for a guarantee of this single meaning results in a conviction that the meaning of any text is timeless, universal and trans-historical: 'though cultures have change and will change, poems remain and explain'.

This extreme version of some sort of idealism - or is it simply fundamentalism? - is then countered by her alternative, introduced here in a question-begging way:

The problem is...the failure to recognize that meaning exists only within a specific language, or more precisely within a specific discourse, and that it cannot therefore inhere timelessly within the words on the page.

This is Belsey's post-Saussurean view - but it is a view which is yet to be demonstrated. To assume it, as she does here - and then criticize an alternative view for failing to see this point, is to beg a very important question.

And to return to the initial problem, Belsey seems to present us with a simple either/or:

Either a single, timeless, universal, and trans-historical meaning exists



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Or meaning is solely constructed within and is thus valid only in relation to a given, historically-conditioned discourse.

But is this really the only choice? Or are these but the poles on a continuum of choices - including choices which include both the recognition of the role of history, culture, and subjectivity and independent frameworks and realities in the construction of meaning?

Belsey repeats this dichotomy later on, as she approves of Northrop Frye for glimpsing the "fact" that "...meaning is conventional, a matter of familiarity rather than intuition." Without demonstration that (a) in fact these are the only two (exclusive) alternatives and (b) that the second alternative is more likely to be true - to presume the truth of the second alternative remains question-begging. Belsey does this on the next page as she again critiques the New Critics as they are forced back on a naive empiricism-idealism which maintains that words stand either for things or for experiences, and that these inhere timelessly in the phenomenal world or in the continuity of essential human nature. Thus history becomes an anticipation of the present in all important aspects, and the specific, ideologically constructed experience of the twentieth century is universalized as the unchanging natural order....

SIMILARLY

The weakness of the theory originates in the attempt to locate meaning in a single place, in the words of the text, 'on the page'. In reality texts do offer positions from which they are intelligible, but these positions are never single because they are always positions in specific discourses. It is language, which provides the possibility of meaning, but because language is not static but perpetually in process, what is inherent in the text is a range of possibilities of meaning. Texts, in other words, are plural, open to a number of interpretations. Meanings are not fixed or given, but are released in the process of reading, and criticism is concerned with range of possible readings.

Beyond the question-begging - we need to notice a distinction which Belsey does not make: it is one thing to argue for an infinite range of possible meanings/interpretations (in a kind of hermeneutical relativism - the position we see Belsey heading towards) - and another thing to acknowledge that texts may issue in a perhaps very large but essentially limited plurality of possible meanings. The latter position does not force us into relativism - and is characteristic of such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, etc. (I'm not sure about Nietzsche: let us see!)

Belsey's question-begging takes an irritating turn when she comments:

New Criticism thus constitutes a contradictory moment, in a sense a liberation from the authoritarianism of the expressive theory, but inhibited from taking advantage of this liberation by its own commitment to empiricism and a concomitant idealism.

We may have missed something - but how does expressive theory get linked up with authoritarianism? Moreover, while we generally endorse liberation - why is liberation clearly good, and authoritarianism clearly bad?

"It is disappointing, therefore, to discover that this rich plurality is destined to be contained within a repressive pluralism which argues that conflict between points of view only inhibits the advancement of learning." Why is such a pluralism repressive?

Another example of question-begging: Belsey critiques Northrop Frye's "liberal humanism," not only as it is ostensibly founded on empiricism-idealism, but also as it, "as part of a liberal education, can make it possible to conceive of a free and classless society, transcending the world we know, 'clear of the bondage of history'." Belsey takes this independence of the determinism of history to mean a kind of transcendence which makes such conceptions ultimately irrelevant to the world we live in: "The human mind, forever isolated from the social formation in which in reality it is constructed, is seen as unable to influence the course of history in any substantial way."



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The question-begging at work in "the social formation in which in reality it is constructed" is made more explicit in her concluding paragraph:

No theoretical position can exist in isolation: any conceptual framework for literary criticism has implications which stretch beyond criticism itself to ideology and the place of ideology in the social formation as a whole. Assumptions about literature involve assumptions about language and about meaning, and these in turn involve assumptions about human society. The independent universe of literature and the autonomy of criticism are illusory.

Again, she asserts here a position she has to prove - and one that confronts us with a simple either/or: either meaning and criticism are thoroughly imbedded in and thus relative to a specific historical moment - or they are utterly independent (and thus irrelevant).

Beyond the logical fallacy of false dilemma at work here - the dilemma is disappointing because it misses the philosophical response to this dilemma as worked out by Plato, Aristotle, and subsequent philosophers. The third possibility which Belsey's dilemma overlooks is the Platonic ideal which is both transcendent of ordinary existence and intimately connected with it (through "participation," to use the Platonic phrase). This third possibility makes it possible to have a ground distinct from what is - i.e., a ground on which one stands in achieving a critical distance from the status quo, which may offer conceptions of important values such as justice, goodness, equality, etc. which fund both a critique of the status quo and provide standards towards which individuals and societies may move - while yet not entirely divorcing oneself from the ordinary world (and thus becoming irrelevant to it).

We suspect, in fact, that Belsey seeks to occupy this third position - but as her very limited understanding of Western philosophy prevents her from seeing it, I'm not sure she succeeds in occupying this third position entirely consistently.

Another quibble: we simply don't follow Belsey's understanding of philosophers and philosophical schools. Example:

Where they (the New Critics) are atomistic and detailed, he is categorical and sweeping; where they are Aristotelian, he is Neoplatonic, seeing literature as realizing a potential golden world rather than imitating a brazen one.

As we understand him, realizing the potential of the ideal is at least as much Aristotle as it is Neoplatonic; furthermore, Aristotle is more likely to be categorical rather than atomistic - while he is also quite detailed.

All of this is to say: beware of the oversimplifications regarding philosophy introduced by literary theorists who apparently do not intend to become overly familiar with philosophical approaches and frameworks.

Yet: Belsey (perhaps inevitably) strains towards the philosophical. The point of her summary of recent literary criticism is to make the argument:

The Anglo-American tradition of critical theory begins to appear as a series of such developments [i.e., faltering efforts to overcome the limits of expressive realism], based on a recognition of the inadequacies of the commonsense account of literature, but unable to resolve the problems it presents from within the empiricist-idealist conceptual framework. What is needed is a fundamental break with the empiricist-idealist position.

Countless philosophical steps have been made through the realization that the problems with a given theory issue not so much from a mistaken development of basic premises (what Aristotle called the first principles) - especially as these are often implicit, inarticulate, and thus not available for critical inspection - but with the limitations of the premises/first principles themselves. Belsey, perhaps without knowing it, is directly adopting that historical structure in her presentation of expressive realism as a tradition



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whose limits can only be overcome by moving beyond its fundamental principles. Aristotle (as one of the first to explicitly argue in this fashion - e.g., with his many references to the Presocratics and his explicit debates with Plato) would be pleased.

But this leads to one of my central points of discomfort with much of the argument I see in literary theory: while straining in this (and other ways) towards the philosophical - by remaining within the boundaries of literary criticism, such theorists cut themselves off from a whole tradition whose tools and lessons might well be essential to a more productive engagement with the ultimately philosophical issues raised.

MORE QUESTION-BEGGING AND FALSE DILEMMA

At its best, interest in the reader is entirely liberating, a rejection of authorial tyranny in favour of the participation of readers in the production of a plurality of meanings...

This question-begging is further at work in the language Belsey herself uses to discuss other views. It is, as these and earlier examples ('liberation') already make clear, the language of political power. So she goes on from here to critique Walter J. Slatoff as holding to a position marked by "authoritarianism" which she sees in his terms defining "...the practices of 'good readers and critics', who learn to 'submit' to the work and let their 'responses' be 'directed and limited' by it. "Now why is this "authoritarianism"?

And on the next page, she accuses the empiricist-idealist position as guilty of "suppression of language," something she says is by now familiar. But, by my reading, this is the first time she's suggested such a thing.

She also does not like Stanley Fish, despite his account of a dialectical relationship between reader and text:

A dialectical presentation...is disturbing, for it requires of its readers a searching and rigorous scrutiny of everything they believe in and live by. It is didactic in a special sense; it does not preach the truth, but asks that its readers discover the truth for themselves, and this discovery is often made at the expense not only of a reader's opinions and values, but of his self-esteem....For the end of a dialectical experience is (or should be) nothing less than a conversion, not only a changing, but an exchanging of minds.)

This account, we might notice, seems consistent with Platonic notions of dialogue and dialectical readings of the dialogues. But for Belsey, this account is still lacking:

Its weakness, however, is its failure to recognize that a plurality of readers must necessarily produce a plurality of readings. Fish's reader is disarmingly singular...

She further asserts that such a singular reader amounts to a "suppression of differences" - one that is appropriated from Anglo-American, specifically Chomsky's, linguistics, over against Saussure.

Again, there's a questionable either/or: either a single reader or the suppression of differences / or a plurality of readers. I'm not sure it's that simple. A similar simplicity: "...literary competence is learned, and as a result it cannot possibly be trans-historical."

Like the most elementary (and fallacious) arguments for relativism, this conclusion follows only if we assume that either there is a single, trans-historical truth which is immediately accessible to all human beings in a perfectly identical form/content - or everything is learned and thus utterly relative to specific histories/cultures.

A (Socratic/ Platonic/ Aristotelian/ Thomistic/ Kantian) middle is possible: what if there are trans-historical truths understood/applied/interpreted in different was in different histories/cultures? This is a logical possibility - and such truths, further, would involve "learning" of some sort, including the appropriation of a given language.



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Given the possibility of such a middle, we can see that Belsey's either/or further confuses necessary with sufficient conditions. Given the possibility of such a Socratic--Kantian middle, such a middle might require learning as a necessary condition for understanding. But it would also require a second condition - namely, its own trans-historical existence. This is different from taking learning as a sufficient condition for acquiring such understanding - in which case, learning would fully determine such understanding, and such understanding would be entirely relative to a specific history/culture.

Finally, Belsey turns to the German Aesthetic Response School of literary criticism, represented by Iser - one she still finds lacking, again in terms of political power:

...Iser's theory suppresses the relationship between language and experience.

This is because, apparently, Iser doesn't explicate that relationship. But is silence the same as suppression?

Couple this with her intended project, now that she has ostensibly demonstrated the inadequacies of Iser's theory - "To liberate new ways of reading which overcome the theoretical problems and the practical limitations I have discussed...."

Again, an either/or: we either suppress or liberate. Obviously, most of us would value the latter.



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MOST EXPECTED QUESTIONS

Q: WHAT DOES CATHERINE BELSY BRING FORWARD IN HER DISCUSSION OF THE SUBJECT AND THE TEXT?

Q: WHAT IS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SUBJECT AND THE TEXT ACCORDING TO BELSEY?

Q: WHAT IS ILLUSIONISM IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE? HOW CATHERINE BELSEY DEFINES IT?

Ans:

The article “Subject and The Text” deals with individual or subject and ideology and inter-relationship of these two entities in a classical realist setting. Belsey has made a convincing relationship between the subject and the text. Her explanation is conspicuous regarding modern interpretations of classical topics.

Catherine Belsey being modern critic and competitive authority over literature sets changed definitions which may be considered as new-fangled layers of meanings of the classical terms. According to her ideology, a capitalist system emphasizes a lot on individual freedom and “assumes a world of non-contradictory individuals whose unfettered consciousness is the origin of meaning knowledge and action.” But the important aspect is that, the role of ideology in a system is to suppress the role of language in the construction of the subject – since that would be a direct threat to the existing order.

According to Catherine Belsey, Classical Realism that is promoted by text print and electronic media represents a world of subjects which are the origin of meaning, or knowledge. But they are able to appreciate a classical realist literature due to the fact that the text available is relatively easily intelligible.

Belsey points out that the ‘I’ of the Romantics is different from classical realist fiction in the sense that it directly involves the individual to respond to that text or a piece of poetry. However, in fiction as a classical realist fiction whether drama or novel, there is a lack of direct authorial presence. The given statement is somewhat paradoxical, since the author presents it as a shadow which cannot be separated from the body of the text. Belsey here says that,

“The form of the classical realist text acts in conjunction with the expressive theory and with ideology by interpreting the reader as subject. In this way a classical realist constitutes an ideological practice in addressing itself to readers as subjects, interpreting them in order that they freely accept their subjectivity and their subjection.”

Belsey further elaborates that apart from illusionism, which is already evident from above discussion, from a paradoxical development of a subject within ideology and which is normally present in classical realist texts, there are certain other questions within the narrative techniques which ensure this subjectivity and subjection. These are closures and literacy of discourses, which combine to establish a “truth” of the story.

In Barthes view, closure is something which tends to form a very regular order or pattern in classical realist literature. Techniques like murder, love triangles etc. provide the destructive element in the text. But it eventually leads to an ideologically accepted closure, where a subject feels a certain relief and the order of things is re-established.

According to Belsey, “The moment of closure is the point, at which the events of the story become fully intelligible to the reader” it means that the closure is such point in a story when the fog starts to clear away and the real picture or the situation becomes clear to the reader.



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The second aspect of illusionism in classical realism to the “hierarchy of discourses” is in a text i.e. the existence of a privileged discourse outside the inverted comas, which develops strong author reader relationship. It also makes “obvious” in the involvement of a reader as a source of meaning through the use of discourse within inverted commas.

The discourse existing outside the commas is indirect authorial intrusion. This hierarchy of discourse is responsible for a distinction between ‘Discourse’ and ‘History’, according to Benveniste: Because history relates without the intervention of a speaker as there are no ‘you’ or ‘I’ involved in it. The presence of events or ideas through a first person narrative is not necessarily a way of evading authorial power or authority. But, in fact, they provide reader with an opportunity to involve in first person narrative and seemingly create the meanings of their own.

The presence of third person narrative, however, acts as the indirect authorial presence, which ensures the continuation and reaffirmation of the existing ideology.

Catherine Belsey is of the view that Classical Realism presents individuals whose traits of character, understood as essential and predominantly given, constrain the choices they make and whose potential for development depends on what is given. Human nature, thus, seems as a system of character differences existing in the world but one very clear and distinct closure. She says that:

“Initially constructed in discourse, the subject finds in the discourse of the classic realist text a confirmation of the position of autonomous subjectivity represented in ideology as ‘obvious’. It is possible to refuse that position, but to do so at least at present, is to make a deliberate and ideological choice.”

Q: PROVIDE A DETAILED BACKGROUND TO LINGUISTIC CRITICISM.

Q: WHAT IS POSTSAUSSUREIAN LINGUISTICS? GIVE A DETAILED DEPICTION OF EVOLUTION OF THE LINGUISTICS BEFORE AND AFTER SAUSSURE.

Q: WHAT IS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND IDEAOLOGY? GIVE AN EXAUSTIVE OVERVIEW.

Ans:

Linguistics has had a major impact on 20th century literary theory, and criticism, primarily through the influence of the Swiss Linguist Ferdinand De Saussure (Died 1913). Saussure argued that linguistics should move from a diachronic study of language i.e. how language develops historically to a synchronic study i.e. treating language as a system within one temporal plane.

He divided language into Langue, the underlying system that governs linguistic usage and Parole, how language is actually used in practice. The basis of Langue is that words are arbitrary signs, in that the relation between a word and what it signifies to arbitrary, i.e. almost entirely determined by conventions. What determines the meaning is not that the word refers to the word or to the ideas or concepts that exist outside the language. It is the difference between linguistic signs and themselves that create meaning.

Saussuries shift of linguistic emphasis to language as a signifying system paralleled development in formalists. Criticism and his work have been most influential on those who follow a formalist approach.

According to C. Belsey, Post Saussuries linguists challenge the expressive realism. Imprecise idealist’s stances in critical practice regarding the relationship between language and the world and also in the development of this linguistic approach.

Saussure’s concept plays very important role in the trial practice. In fact, he builds a basis for a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between language and the word.



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Saussures’s “Course in General Linguistics” is a very important contribution not only in the field of linguistics but also in the development of the science of signs, i.e. semiotics.

The concepts of signifying system have influenced the critical study of literature, which after Saussure is treated as a signifying practice.

Saussure’s concepts have proved to be very important and have removed many discrepancies and ambiguities regarding a relation between language and the ideology of the word. Catherine Belsey discuses a lot of important ideas and concepts given by Saussure and highlights their consequences in the study of literature as a signifying system.

The first important point is Saussure’s insistence about the role of language as not being just a tool to name different things but, in fact, in language the stresses, is a system of differences with no positive terms which means that language has been taken through ages as a naming device for already established concepts. He refused this superficial idea that language serves as a system of naming existing things.

Saussure gives out the concept that language, in fact, comes before the very existence of independent concepts. The word is a continuum independent entity which is differentiated through the signifying system. Thus without language this continuum cannot be easily deciphered.

According to Saussure, language is a system of signs. He divides these signs into two basic components, a signifier, which is a sound-image, or the specific written word combination, which is the concept that is being given to the sound of the written shape.

“Language can be compared with a sheet of paper; thought is the front and sound the back; one cannot cut the front without cutting the back at the same time; like wise in language, one can neither divide sounds from thought nor thought from sounds.”

She wants to say that language gives individual identity to the thought or the concept, thought or idea exists first and then comes language that makes this concept clear to the viewer or the listener. When someone says the word “eglantine“ or “rose”, the very utterance of the word the signifier; sound image, brings forward the concept related to that sound.

Saussure believes that language precedes the identity of individual. Man is the part of social fact and through the use of language as a signifying system; we make this concept clear by giving it a specific sound that relates us to the concept whenever we utter that very sound. The signifier, sound image makes the difference clear between things. The concept “Rabit” is signified by the word “Rabit”.

Saussure was an atheist, a man who believed that man lives in a Godless world. So he can give the idea that language makes clear the concept and language gives existence to concept, whereas in reality concept is not bound to language. Concept stands first or the thought comes first and then comes language.

Saussure is of the view that since the signifier and signified are inseparable for example the sound image ‘Rose’ belongs to the concept ‘Rose’, leads to an illusive paradox and nature of language is overlooked due to this illusion.

Saussure says,

“If words stood for pre-existing concepts, they would all have exact equivalents in meaning from one language to the next, but this is not true”

Saussure means to say that pre-existing concepts are not responsible for meaning. The belief, that a concept would have the same meaning or the same concept in every language, is not true, because different languages perceive the word in different ways.



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He gives the example of the French word “mouton” which means both mutton and sheep at the same time. If it has been the pre-existing concept, then the same word has been easily translated with the same meaning in English language. But we observe that in English we have two different words, i.e. “sheep” for the “animal” and “mutton” for its “meat”, which clearly establishes the importance of language as a signifying system preceding the existence of independent entity.

The word is a continuum and the sign is responsible, though the signifier and signified, to differentiate and distinguish between different entities in this continuum.

This theory of Saussure is not applicable to religious ideology. Because the word God stands for the concept Supreme Power, the Almighty, signifies word God is signified by concept God. But the concept of God is beyond human comprehension. If we do not name Him, “God” He will be there and will always make His presence felt. The concept “God” can be identified in different words in different religions.

The next important element in Saussure’s theory is that language is a social fact and only a certain community can generate signs, means that language cannot be produced in isolation. The particular sign in a language is arbitrary since it has no logical connection with the signified. But language being a social fact gives a particular signified or a particular signifier.

Language, thus, also becomes a matter of convention and the arbitrary nature of signs explains the social fact which generates a social system, but although the signifying system as a whole is not arbitrary. Because meaning in a social construct, it is directly influenced by a particular social formation.

This brings us to the valuable benefit of ideology, which is a product of a particular social system and it is inscribed in signifying practices i.e. it is inscribed in a language to a certain extent depending upon the signifying practices as discourses myths, presentations and representations of the way things are.

Belsey, here, opines that ideology cannot be reduced to a language and, likewise, language can certainly not be reduced to ideology, but signifying system can play a very important role in naturalizing and describing ideas and concepts. Thus, language, being a social fact is directly connected with ideology and ideology is inscribed in language.

Another important fact of post-Saussurean linguistics is that language is a system, which pre-exists the individual, in which the individual produces meaning. Thus a child learns a particular set of differentiating concepts, which identify not given entities but socially constructed signified. This classifies the point that language pre-exists the individual, since the individual being born in a social fact is before-hand provided with a particular signifying system.

It is important to note that language is not the only signifying system. Images, gestures, social behaviours etc. are all part of symbolic order. But language is a most practical way of communication and any threat from any symbolic order to an existing ideology is challenged and stopped within a language.

Thus, ideology, being an important component of social thought or, in fact, ideology being a social fact is closely connected with language. The given analysis briefly sums up the post Saussurean linguistic development. Belsey is of the view that:

“From this post Saussurean perspective, it is clear that the theory of literature as expressive realism is no longer tangible, because, since realism reflects the word constructed in language.”

But in fact, language precedes the individual. Language in ideology has a very strong connection, likewise language and thought has a very strong connection. Therefore, “the subjectivity of a specific perspective authority is no guarantee of the authority of a specific perception of the word”.



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Q: WHAT IS CONCEPT OF THE PLURALITY OF MEANINGS IN BELSEY’S “CRITICISM AND MEANING”?

Ans:

In her article “Criticism and Meaning” Catherine Belsey basically deals with the concept of plurality of meaning or with the quality of language as having numerous or infinite possibilities of interpretations. Belsey does not simply elaborate this point but brings forward the different conceptions of Expressive Realism, New criticism and Northrop Frye etc. and their attempt to find a device or method of interpretation of meaning aided by certain methodologies.

Catherine Belsey elaborates the importance of post saussurean Linguistics for its questioning of different critical practices regarding their attempt to locate a guarantee of the meaning of a text, especially without historical and ideological influences.

For example Expressive Realist finds the guarantee of the particular meaning in author’s mind. Thus he understands the quality of language as having a varied potential for interpretation and critical appreciation.

Likewise, Belsey elaborates that New Criticism is also unable to locate this guarantee of meaning due to its incomplete understanding and vision regarding language and human experience. Negating ideology and history in particular, it undermines the evaluation of a text and gives an incomplete account of the linguistic possibility.

Language being a social fact is subject to a variety of major and minor changes even within a single social system. Belsey gives an excellent example of a sentence i.e.

“Democracy will ensure that we extend the boundary of civilization.”

It’s an excellent example to bring out the potential for meaning and the ideological and historical impacts on its interpretation. For example a person of a developing country like Pakistan would interpret, “Democracy” in a different manner, owing to the historical and ideological influences. Whereas a person in one of the African tribes does not even know about Democracy and if he is told, would appreciate it according to the verdict given by the local witch-doctor.

Democracy and civilisation carry totally different concepts in a developed country. For examples the Scandinavian States (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland) have a freedom level of individuality to an extent that would be unthinkable in the states like Iran.

This example of the word “Democracy” makes evident the fact that language is a social fact and a meaning of a sentence in a discourse will be directly influenced by different influences which could be of an ideological or a historical or a purely linguistic nature.

Thus, this is evident again that the meaning in a particular sentence is plural. Therefore, to pose an individual subject as an authority for a single meaning is to ignore a degree to which subjectivity itself is a discursive construct. To find a guarantee of meaning in the world or in experience is to ignore the fact that our experience of the world is itself articulated in language.

Thus Catherine Belsey elaborates the plurality of meaning and its crucial significance in “Critical Practice”.

Q: WHAT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A SUBJECT AND IDEALOGY IS EXPRESSED IN “ADDRESSING THE SUBJECT” BY CATHERINE BELSEY?

Ans:

“Addressing The Subject” by Catherine Belsey, deals with the relationship of a subject to an ideology that is given forth in a particular fact and how text promotes a particular set of mode or ideology. Catherine Belsey makes it clear that, how by the use



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of particular ideological practices, the cutter makes the reader to believe in his individuality without realizing that he is being motivated by the particular ideology.

Text makes something “obvious” to the reader and reader thinks that he or she is reading a text as an individual. In fact, what the reader does not realise is that instead of promoting individual thought, the text is actually strengthening the existing ideology.

According to Belsey, classical Realism of 19th and 20th century in capitalist systems is excellent example of the practice of promoting a certain ideology without making the reader to realise it.

As already discussed in post-Saussurean Linguistics and also evident in this article that although the discussions of Althusser and Lacan, Language is supreme and the subject is constructed within language, as Lacan mentions in the studies of Freudian concept of the self and the development of the child and realisation of child as an individual ‘I’ so the subject is constructed in a language which makes him able to distinguish between “I” and ‘you’. So language is supreme and prime that as within language an individual can differentiate between ‘I’ and ‘You’ and feels the identity of his own self and others as well.

Ideology plays very important role in a community and staying within language gives a particular mode of usage to it.

There are several apparatuses in the society that Althusser calls as Ideological State apparatuses (ISAs) in a capitalist system, which consist of the educational system.

ISA is responsible for the usage of language, which promotes a particular ideology. As mentioned by Catherine Belsey in Chapter 2, that language and ideology has strong interaction, without being subservient to one another. This obviously demonstrates the fact that since subject is situated within a language, ideology has a strong inter-relationship, therefore, it can be deduced that the subject can never be separated from a particular set of ideology.

As discussed in the article, science is that branch of knowledge, which can lie outside the boundaries of ideology and can leave to the development of knowledge, which can challenge a particular ideology. Thus new branches of knowledge evolve through a dialectical process within ideology.

The subject or the self also faces the problem of having inherent contradiction, because the ‘I’ of the conscious state may be within ideology but the ‘I’ of conscious may lie outside it.

The inherent dialectic will eventually lead to a development of new modes of knowledge despite the suppression by existing ideological practices within language.

Functions of literature are diverse. It may primarily encourage or sustain a particular ideological practice and ensure the continuity of a particular ideological set up. Literature on the other hand, provides unlike Classical Realism, new modes of thought which instead of being obvious to the reader may challenge the existing ‘I’ system and thus provide space for the development of new knowledge to the subject.

Q: WHAT IS CATHERINE BELSEY’S IDEA OF EXPRESSIVE REALISM?

Q: PROVIDE A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF “EXPRESSIVE REALISM” BY CATHERINE BELSEY.

Q: HOW EXPRESSIVE REALISM HAS EVOLVED THROUGHOUT THE AGES?

Ans:

Catherine Belsey define, Expressive Realism as “the theory that literature reflects the reality of experience, as it is perceived by one individual, who expresses it in a discourse which enables other individuals to recognise it as true.”



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Expressive Realism can be divided into two parts. The first part deals with 19th century, especially the 2nd half of 19th century, (Victorian age). The most famous critic of this time is Ruskin. This age is also the age of industrial capitalism.

Capitalism is the system of free economy, where there is minimum interference of government in economic affairs of the country. The industrial revolution occurred in Europe through rapid development of industry. This industrial development actually was the real beginning of the modernism through industrialisation. Expressive Realism exists in the period of industrial capitalism in the writings of Ruskin.

Expressive Realism is influenced by the Aristotelian concept of art as “mimesis”. Mimesis as elaborated by Aristotle is translated as limitation. It is evident from Aristotle’s attention plotting that he does not by mimesis mean that art should be a literal or photographic representation of reality. In representation of reality material from life has to be selected and carefully organised. Thus imitation in literature will evidently and inevitably be the imitation of real life. So the first historical component of Expressive Realism is “mimesis” by Aristotle as “Imitation of reality” in literature or art.

The 2nd historical component of Expressive Realism is Representation. The concept of representation in Expressive Realism is derived from the critical concept of the Romantics that Poetry (imaginative literature) is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” or emotions.

The idea of representation as given by the Romantics can be summed up in the following lines where Wordsworth in his “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” says that:

“The sum of what was said is that the poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by the greater promptness to think and feel without immediate external excitement. And the greater power in expressing such thought and feelings as are produced in that manner. But these passions and thoughts and feelings are the general questions and thoughts and feelings of men.”

By the mid-nineteenth century, the Expressive Realism became widely established theory not only in literature but also in painting and especially in landscape painting, through the works of the major post Romantic theorist like Ruskin.

According to Ruskin the artist must both represent faithfully the objects portrayed and express the thoughts and feelings that evoke in him or her. The beginning of the concept of Expressive Realism can be found in Ruskin’s book “Modern Painters” in 1840 where he is treating poetry (imaginative synonymous literature) and painting as similar Ruskin actually combined both Aristotelian idea and Romantic concept together, because both poetry and painting represent reality.

Catherine Belsey critical examines both concepts of Expressive Realism, she is of the view,

“Whereas truth to nature is universally pleasing the representational aspects of art will delight everyone. The expressive aspects are apparent only to the few”

So, in the imitation of reality, although reality will be portrayed by the artist but every reader will not be able to appreciate the powerful overflow of emotions on a similar level as expressed by the author. Expressive Realism falls short on the level of perception of reader as the depicted reality in the form of imitation .

“Ruskin’s criticism will concentrate first on the question of truth to nature, since although it is possible to reach what I have stated to be the first end of art, the representation of facts, without reacting the second, the representation of thoughts, yet it is altogether impossible to reach the 2nd without having previously reached the first. Mimetic accuracy is the foundation of all arts ‘nothing can atone for the want of truth.”



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In Ruskin’s point of view both parts of Expressive Realism i.e. the imitation of reality and its representation are not different quantities, they in fact, are art is mimetic and expressive and Ruskin goes on to again that the two qualities are in fact, not two but one.

Because whenever the truth will be represented to the reader, it will remain same for all of them and they will appreciate the imitation of reality in the form of a piece of art, just at that level as the author has done. But Catherine Belsey says that it is not possible for all readers to appreciate the imitations of reality on the same level as author has appreciated and represented. So it is not but as Ruskin says that because reality is portrayed in the form of limitation so it will be same for all of the reality and its representation will help the reader to see it in that sense what the author wanted to portray or convey.

Another difficulty in Ruskin’s view as presented by Catherine Belsey is the difference of perception from author to reader or artist to spectator. Although reality is in front of all of them but how they perceive it, makes the real difference Belsey says “Already, however, Ruskin glimpses the problem in his empiricist idealist position. The facts of nature are there for every one to see and to be plainly expressed; some people perceive these facts more keenly and if they are artist, portray them invested with a nobility not apparent to every one, represent them differently.”

Catherine Belsey here means to say that “truth” itself can not be perceived and imitated by all authors in like manners. They may perceive truth according to their own level of perception and mental and emotional capacities. So, “the work of art may be read in different ways by different spectators.” In Belsey’s view Ruskin falls back on an uneasy separation of ‘the representation of facts’ from ‘the representation of thought.’

By the 1960’s Expressive Realism had to face many challenges, among those C. Belsey mentions some of them for instance Russian formalism and semiotics. Following the brief idea of difference from Expressive Realism, Russian formation rejected the unsystematic and critical approaches, which have previously dominated critical studies.

The formalists were interested, therefore, in the representational or expressive aspects of literary texts. They focused on those elements of texts, which they thought to be uniquely literary in their character.

To Formalists Representation is not very important, what matters to them is the literariness of the text, that what philosophical or literary ideas are conveyed in the text. The imitative quantities are not important what is presented is important.

Likewise the Semioticians insisted that the word itself, as it relates to the human mind, consists entirely of sign, since there can be no unmediated relationship with reality. To Semioticians, the representation also does not matter, unless we do not study the signs of language. Essence of the text that is conveyed by words and symbols is more important, the emotions and feelings come later. First comes language and the use of language within a text.

The first critic in 20th century is Barbra Hardy who directly and indirectly takes an expressive realities stance. For example she writes.

“The novelist, whoever he is and whenever he is writing, is giving form to a story, giving form to his moral and metaphysical views and giving form to his particular experience of sensations, people, places and society.”

In Hardy’s view a novelist is giving form of words to his experiences, his feelings and his emotions and the experience which he got from his society, he evolved it in his mind in the form of words and words and feelings were finally presented in the form of text is the reader and experience made an image in the mind of the writer it was imitation of reality, he, then combined it with the emotions and feelings and formed Expressive Realism.



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Belsey states almost Barbra Hardy that,

“The statement I have quoted, however, apparently innocent, depends on certain quite specific assumptions. It assumes the existence of a story, views and experiences in the mind of the novelist prior to and independent of the formation of them. These pre-exist the narrative and are “expressed” in it.”

Hardy’s statement is structure based and she takes ideology of the author and reader inferior to the form and in sum case of the text. Here, ideology makes the form of the text not its ideology.

Barbra Hardy is of the view that if truth is imitated just like the objective imitation of reality, combined with experience and emotions, the truth will be the same for all. We find a similar stance in Hardy as we find in Ruskin, i.e. the imitation of experience takes an important position and is culminated through expressions.

The 2nd expression realist critic in 20th century is F. R. Leavis. Leavis’ approach is important in this regard that it is not formulated in a specific theory or in organised structure. In this evaluation of Henry James’ works he adopts an approach which is expressive realists approach. For example he writes about the novels of James as having the quantity for “the vivid concreteness of the rendering of this world of individuals centres of consciousness we live in”, i.e. in felt life are present both the concepts of imitation and representation, when applied in literature.

The word ‘rendering’ here carries the direct concept of Expressive Realists’ representation i.e. Henry James consciousness as represented in his novels rests or in derived from his “most vital experience” (for Leavis the felt life or felt experience is important as it is important for B. Hardy).

Catherine Belsey further elaborates that “the text is seen as a way of arriving at something” interior to it: the convictions of the author or his or her experience as part of that society at that particular time. To understand the text is to explain it in terms of the author’s ideas, psychological state or social background. Thus, the felt experience of author becomes crucial in his imitations of reality and in its representation, which is a result of his felt experience.

So Ruskin, Hardy and F. R. Leavis, are one of the same views that the author is presenting to the reader a particular idea with a belief that the reader will perceive it in the same way as author has tried to convey. That is why the autobiographical note is given for the readers before the text so that the reader can easily relate to the idea, which the author has tried to project in his text.

Catherine Belsey concludes that the expressive realist portion has been subject to a series of challenges and in some cases by theories which have since become authorities in their own right. In this way, it has become apparent that expressive realism presents a number of problems not easily resolved within the framework of common sense. Difficulties, which have emerged, include the problem of access to the idea or experience, which is held to precede the expression of it, what form does not take. Does idea exist outside its course? Is the idea formulated in one discourse the same as an idea of formulated in different words in another discourse? Further, what do we mean by ‘realism’? In what sense is fiction ‘true’, and what constitutes evidence of that truth? What is the relationship between a text and the word? To what extent is it possible to perceive the word independently of the conventional ways in which it is represented? To what extent is experience contained by language, society, history?

Q: WHAT ARE NORTHROP FRYE’S DICTUMS OF LITERARY CRITICISM?

Q: WHAT ARE FRYE’S VIEWS REGARDING REALISM IN LITERATURE? Ans:



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Northrop Frye is one of those critics whose illustrations are more persuasive. Man believes in overall generalization when he traces limited patterns of significance by co-relating the phase of dawn spring and both with the myths of revival, resurrection and creation and finding there in the archetype of romance, or by co-relating the phase of Zenith, summer and marriage with myths of entering into the paradise and finding there in the archetypes of comedy, pastoral; the sender cannot but feel that an elaborated schedule of the obvious is being manufactured.

Catherine Belsey has discussed Northrop Frye in much detail and there is relatively less space given to her own critical appreciation in this article. For the purpose of simplification we shall discuss several points separately which have been united in a whole very beautifully.

Frye believes that criticism should be a systematic and organised study. In “Fables of Identity” 1963, he claims that much supposed criticism is sonorous (resonant) nonsense that contributes nothing to a systematic structure of knowledge. As for those who primarily practice structural analysis this stop short of recognising that literary criticism needs a coordinating principle by which what is seen in an individual work can be grasped as a part of a vast whole.

In short an immense source of critical enlightenment awaits us if we recognise that there may be much more in a poem than even poet may himself be aware of. Fry rejects Realists stance that we cannot perceive all that is conveyed in the text by just looking at it (the text) in relation to author’s thoughts, because there can be more than what author had the intention to convey in his text. Text gives an author a chance to trace what author may not has perceived so the text and its meaning to the reader occupy most of the importance in literary criticism.

The key to understanding lies in recognition of archetypes which represent a unifying category of literature or literary criticism. Frye observes that how random and peripheral is the critical experience which is produced by mediocre works of art, which the masterpiece seems to draw to appoint in which we can see an enormous number of converging patterns of significance.

The first major point in the structure of any literary composition, as opposed to the ideas of Northrop Frye is that criticism is not a parasitic activity but, in fact, it is a systematic study and evaluation of texts. Frye is of the view that

“criticism should become a coherent and systematic study, and the elementary principles of which could be explained in any intelligent nineteen years old.”

Frye tried to classify literary criticism. Thus he endeavours in the “Anatomy of Criticism” to classify the different modes, symbols, mythic symbol and genre for a classification between comparative study of authors and periods.

Another important point raised by Northrop Frye is, his insistence on the depiction of realism in literature as being undesirable and distasteful. He is of the view that a literature based on realistic appreciation, i.e. a literature which is not primarily about the world is simply not a literature underlying his formalism is the concept of immature and culture, which sees let as imitating not the world but rather the total deem of man it should be based on imagination not the reality.

Frye also puts an end to realist’s stance by his insistence that the writer’s aim is to produce the structure of the words for its own sake. And there-by, he discards the authorial power as celebrated in Expressive Realism.

Frye himself describes his own procedure as “Archetypal criticism”. He defines these archetypes as recurring images or symbols, which connect one text with author and constitute a source of the intelligibility of the text, thus developing a very strong concept



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of comparative critical approach. His ideas about archetypal criticism maintained that human nature being constant, these archetypes and the different symbols in different texts can be compared without keeping in view their historical settings.

Belsey is of the view that Frye’s consistence upon the particular point takes him much closer to New Criticism, because applying his ideas means that let transcends history and ideology give expression to the timeless aspiration of an essentially unchanging human nature.

Frye’s instance upon the idea of let from history and ideology shows that the meaning of a text and above the limitations of time and place in other words the meaning of a text will be single. It reflects the stance of new critics as they also insisted upon the single meaning of a text. So, while rejecting New Critics’ view, Frye is also one of them. But in reality the meaning of text or these archetypes never remain the same as time makes changes in the attitude and behaviour of people towards any text.

Frye’s formation also gives attention to the language of literary works. According to Northrop Frye, language is not just a simple conveying of this but it is its condition. The production of meaning is possible within language only. Meaning for Frye remains bound timelessly in verbal structures because the readers “recognise in them the echo of their own wishes and anxieties” so the meaning of a text is available in the body of a language. Belsey is of the view that Frye has not properly discussed the relationship between language of a text and its meanings.

Frye insists upon the plurality of meanings within a text and Catherine Belsey critically appreciates his efforts in this regard. Frye rejects the idea of the author as guarantee of the single meaning of the text. He is of the view that a critic should not look upon a literary text in the context of the intention of author. He should not assume the concept of the text as the author intended to show. Frye opines;

“The critic is assumed to have no conceptual framework. It is simply his job to take a poem which a poet has diligently stuffed a specific number of beauties or efforts and complacently extract them one by one.”

So, in the quest of meanings, a critic or reader should not look up to the intentions of the author.

The rejection of the authorial power in the quest of the meanings of the text focuses our attention upon the plurality of the meanings of a text. “Text is inevitably plural, open to a number of readings” and “to opt for a single pattern is to narrow the possibilities arbitrarily and unnecessarily”. Frye’s view is that the meaning of a text is subject to a change because in different times with the development of a number of schools of critical theory, they keep on emphasizing different aspects of a text. A text keeps in it plurality of meaning as every reader finds a specific meaning present and intelligible to him at a certain time period. To Frye the plurality of meaning is a healthy stance in criticism as the plural meaning of the text and not in conflict with one another but complementary each contributing to our understanding of the work as a (single) who can.

Catherine Belsey finally analyses Frye’s stance as having appreciative qualities but also having certain major drawbacks, such as Frye’s lack of appreciation of the important concept of ideology and history and their influence on the meaning of a text over a passage of time. This in brief, is the account of Frye’s concepts about criticism as discussed by C.B.

Major points of Frye’s critical dictums are: 1. Criticism is considered as systematic and organised study of literature. 2. Literature based on imagination and ideal factory ‘the total dream of man is not the

realistic depiction of life and world (Not good option as man cannot transcend from his social and historical values, he has to live in reality, let not escape from reality)



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3. Introduction of the Archetypes as they help in understanding the text by composition with the other.

4. Negation of the Expressive Realist stances by author as he is guarantee of the meanings of text.

5. Plurality of meanings within a text language as a condition to the expression of thoughts relationship between long remedy.

Q: WHAT IS NEW CRITICISM? HOW CAN IT BE CONSIDERED AS THE MODERN METHOD OF CRITICAL ANALYSIS?

Ans:

New Criticism was a reaction against the orthodoxy of Expressive Realism. In 1940s and 50s the New Critics in USA put their whole emphasis on “the text” as text if became a central plank in what was known as New Criticism. Here we will have a brief gaze upon some of the critics that uphold the structure of New Criticism.

John Crowe Ransom wrote a book “The New Criticism”, in which he proclaims:

“Criticism is the attempt to define and enjoy the aesthetic or characteristic value of literature”

Ransom has developed a distinction between texture and structure, the structure is the story, the object or situation or whatever, which gives us the argument of the poem, the texture is the thingness of the thing by which it is particularized. For example, Ransom allows for “studies are technique of art which in the case of poetry would concentrate on those devices which distinguish it from prose; structure, scene, description, basic setting of the text or poem: texture the emotions combined with the structure is texture, it carries the creative element that makes the poem superior.

The basic idea of thought based on emotions and feelings is texture and the way of conveying that certain idea is structure. Wimsatt and Beardsley have also played an important role on this regard. Both of them published their book the “Verbal Icon Studies in the Meaning of Poetry” (1954). Wimsatt and Beardsley insist that no poem can be judged by reference to the poet’s intention (authorial power denies).

The meaning of the text is something internal which can be discovered from the text of the poem, (shift from another is text in quest of meaning) that is public, which everything that is “external” and not the part of a work as a linguistic fact is private and idiosyncratic.

For example for critical purposes it is better to study Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” with a dictionary in your hands, rather than with the elaborate investigation into Coleridge’s reading made by professor Lowes in “Road to Xanadu”.

Cleanth Brooks says that literature is a description and evaluation of the object. It concerns itself as a work itself. In reply to those who argue that this isolation of the work cuts it loose from its author and his life and from its reader and their response, Brooks insists that what belongs to biography and psychology may be interesting but it is not to be confused with an account of the work.

In short we can put New Critics in these points that: 1. They denied the authorial power. 2. Focus on text as meaning of text can be found “on the page” and text as a “public

property”. 3. Meaning of the text is timeless universal and Trance historical”.

Although New Critics focused on a scientific approach for critical studies by denying the authorial power and Belsey agrees with them at that point. But she does not agree that text is a public property and the meaning of the text lies on the page. In her view, due to historical changes the words of the text as presented on the page will change, because every reader will analyse and understand the text or the words of text in the light of his own age and ideology. She also rejected that meaning of the text are



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universal because the words will convey the same message to all its readers in all ages. She proves it by saying that as meanings of a text are bound to the language; language is subject to change, so when language will change the meaning of the text will obviously change.

Along with this, the perception of the reader can be different from one person to another.

Belsey quotes the example of Paradise Lost by Milton that when it was written Satan was considered as a villain and devil, by the readers of that time. But in Renaissance age, Satan was placed at a high status and he occupied the stature of a hero. So, it is clear that the meaning of the text changes with the passage of time. Belsey beautifully proves that the meaning of a text changes from one person to the other and from the age to another.

Q: WHAT BELSEY WANTS TO PROVE IN HER ESSAY, “READER POWER”?

Q: WHAT IS POWER OF A REDER IN CRITICISM? MAKE A CONVINCING CASE.

Ans:

The role of the reader in relation to literary text gained importance and significance as one of the challenge to Expressive Realism through the works of several critics in the beginnings of the 1960s. The reader’s response criticism, as they propounded, has become significant development in 20th century critical practice. Belsey has summarised the benefits of this approach as,

“As its best interest in the reader is entirely liberating a rejection of authorial tyranny in favour of the participation of the reader in the production of plurality of meanings and its these effects as supporting and developing a raw authority figure which she describes as, Reader theory mainly constructs a new authority figure as guarantee of a single meaning, as unless transcendent highly trained model reader who cannot be wronged.”

In the article Reader Power, Catherine Belsey analysis briefly the development of this theory starting with W.J. Slatoff and concluding with Iszer.

According to Belsey, Slatoff‘s most important contribution is his propounding of the idea that text cannot be read in a similar manner, by all the readers because they cannot determine across history where is no possibility of identical interpretation of texts by various readers. What Slatoff, here, is giving the idea of individual reader and his perception misses on this very important component where as and believes that critic has an undivided power based on liking or disliking etc. to evaluate the text, there is no mention as such of an analysis of ideological and discussive difference.

Slatoff, like Wayne Booth’s concept of the implied author does not make any difference from the empirical author. Slatoff identifies readings which do not produce a required level of understanding between the reader and the writer as male adjustments indirectly and involuntarily justifying, once again author interventions. Slatoff does not point at the ideology, sometimes; there can be no compatibility between reader and author.

Catherine critically scrutinizes this point remarking that the production meaning by the reader is this essential movement by the reader is his thread towards the position of the author. What is lacking from Slatoff’s analysis is any concept of the role of assumptions and expectations in the productions of meaning.

Stanley Fish is a famous critic of modern age, he is a strong supporter of reader’s response theory and he has given several important dimensions. His important dictum is about the development and appreciation of reader powers. His first major idea regarding their power is the emphasis on the experience of the reader and connected with the



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concept is the idea that what does the text will cause reader. Experience by the reader is subject to variation and no text will do the same thing, produce the same effect for the readers. Thus establishing the authority of the reader as separate reader as mater of critically evaluates the text. Another important contribution by Fish is concentration on the text as on discourse. He challenges the reader to face area of difficulty regarding the reading and calls it dialectical, thus it seizes reader as active participant in the process of the construction of meaning but there is no obvious recognition that experience is ideologically constructed. The relationship between experience, language ideology and history is not clearly discussed by Fish, lending is the antithesis or reverse reaction in which the reader assumes the position as a new authority figure.

Catherine Belsey's Critical Practice (A Critical Analysis by Qaisar Iqbal Janjua)

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