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Marxist Approach to Literature: An Introduction
Journal of Teaching and Research in English Literature, 2015
In 20th century, literary criticism has witnessed influences from many schools of critical inquiries. One of the major schools is Marxist literary criticism. This paper highlights the major tenets of Marxist literary criticism. In other words, it studies the Marxist approach to literature.
An analysis of Marxist Literary Theory
Since the industrial revolution flourished, there was the continuous exploitation of the labor class. Marxism is the method of social economic Analysis of Capitalism, Cultural and Literary analysis which relates with the class struggle. Marxism is based on materialistic understanding of social development which includes social relation, political and legal system, morality and ideology. The main purpose of this study is to analyses the social responsibility activities carried out by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who chiefly concerned themselves with the capitalistic theory and their mode of production. This theory was later followed by the many writers.
Marxism and Literature: An Overview
Asian journal of multidisciplinary studies, 2016
Marxism gives a new dimension to the study of literature by laying stress upon the importance of history within which various social and cultural trends emerge. It helps us to gain a practical and systematic world view by devoting self to the intense study of history. It evaluates the modern society from a unique prism of master-slave view— Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The account of the horrid tale of proletariat’s oppression is recorded well in the seminal works of Karl Marx like Das Capital , The Communist Manifesto , The German Ideology and so on. A literary artist is deeply affected by the social, economic and political upheavels in the society and tries to give a true account of it in his literary works. Marxism helps the artist to unravel the self interest of the bourgeoisie by putting an end to the patriarchal and feudal idyllic relations which shook the ecstacies of brutal exploitation coated with religious fervor and sentimentalism. In this paper, an attempt has been made...
Marxist Literary Criticism: What It Is Not
An attempt to dispel the notion that Marxist literary criticism is nothing but the sociology of literature. On the contrary, the joint yardstick of the historical and the aesthetic is of essence.
Marxism and Literary Criticism (Chapters 1-2
complex, more than Shakespeare because we know more about the lives of women—Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf included. Both the victimization and the anger experienced by women are real, and have real sources, everywhere in the environment, built into society, language, the structures of thought. They will go on being tapped and explored by poets, among others. We can neither deny them, nor will we rest there. A new generation of women poets is already working out of the psychic energy released when women begin to move out towards what the feminist philosopher Mary Daly has described as the "new space" on the boundaries of patriarchy. 8 Women are speaking to and of women in these poems, out of a newly released courage to name, to love each other, to share risk and grief and celebration. To the eye of a feminist, the work of Western male poets now writing reveals a deep, fatalistic pessimism as to the possibilities of change, whether societal or personal, along with a familiar and threadbare use of women (and nature) as redemptive on the one hand, threatening on the other; and a new tide of phallocentric sadism and overt woman-hating which matches the sexual brutality of recent films. "Political" poetry by men remains stranded amid the struggles for power among male groups; in condemning U.S. imperialism or the Chilean junta the poet can claim to speak for the oppressed while remaining, as male, part of a system of sexual oppression. The enemy is always outside the self, the struggle somewhere else. The mood of isolation, self-pity, and self-imitation that pervades "nonpolitical" poetry suggests that a profound change in masculine consciousness will have to precede any new male poetic—or other—inspiration. The creative energy of patri-archy is fast running out; what remains is its self-generating energy for destruction. As women, we have our work cut out for us. 1976 In the preface to his book, Eagleton writes ironically: "No aoubt we shall soon see Marxist criticism comfortably wedged between Freudian and mythological approaches to literature, as yet one more stimulating academic 'approach,' one more well-tilled field of inquiry for students to tramp." He, urges against such an attitude, believing it "dangerous" to the centrality of Marxism as an agent of social change. Despite his warning, however, and because of his claims for the significance of Marxist criticism, Eagleton's opening chapters, dealing with tuo topics central to literary criticism, are here presented for some thoughtful "tramping." "Marxism," which in some quarters remains a pejorative term, is in fact an indispensable concern in modern intellectual history. Developed primarily as a way of examining historical, economic, and social issues, Marxist doctrine does not deal explicitly with theories of literature; consequently, there is no one orthodox Marxist school (as there is an orthodox Freudianism), but rather a diversity of Marxist readings. Eagleton's own discussion partly illustrates this diversity: he uses the familiar derogatory term "vulgar Marxism" to refe-to the simplistic deterministic notion that a literary work is nothing more than the direct product of its socioeconomic base. Aware also of how Marxist theory can be perverted, Eagleton in another chapter 's scorn-" ful of such politically motivated corruptions as the Stalinist doctrine From Marxism and Literary Criticism;
2018
Marxism in Literary or Art in our 21 St centuries is built around a debate of methodology and application when a critic is requested to evaluate a literary text or genre. Though disparities of thoughts in the point of views of some scholars such as: Georg Lukacs, Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser etc. have been involved in scientific debates whether Marxism as a sociological approach finds a better reliable application in literature. Marxism as a political ideology of Karl Marx was not designed for literary study, literature in terms of form, politics, ideology, and consciousness, numbers of research skills are required for a critic in almost literary components. While the question of methodology and application in literary analysis is still unsettled in the areas of literary studies so, it appears very difficult and ambiguous to some literary students and English teachers in our local universities in Bukavu (DRC) when prior involving in literary evaluation. Furthermore,...
Marxist Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reading Guide
Historical Materialism, 2019
Appeared online here: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/index.php/reading-guides/marxist-literary-criticism-introductory-reading-guide?fbclid=IwAR2vioz8HnlwSHpgoUdnH6cnwFNE7D2gb7juShyG0-z2LxNmyzYevqJLH8I
Marx and Engels produced no systematic theory of literature or art. Equally, the subsequent history of Marxist aesthetics has hardly comprised the cumulative unfolding of a coherent perspective. Rather, it has emerged, aptly, as a series of responses to concrete political exigencies. While these responses have sometimes collided at various theoretical planes, they achieve a dynamic and expansive coherence (rather than the static coherence of a closed, finished system) through both a general overlap of political motivation and the persistent reworking of a core of predispositions about literature and art deriving from Marx and Engels themselves. These predispositions include: (1) The rejection, following Hegel, of the notion of "identity" and a consequent denial of the view that any object, includin g literature, can somehow exist independently. The aesthetic corollary of this is that literature can only be understood in the fullness of its relations with ideology, class, and economic substructure. (2) The view that the so-called "objective" world is actually a progressive construction out of collective human subjectivity. What passes as "truth," then, is not eternal but institutionally created. "Private property," for example, is a bourgeois reification of an abstract category; it does not necessarily possess eternal validity. Language itself, as Marx said in The German Ideology: Part One, must be understood not as a self-sufficient system but as social practice. (3) The understanding of art itself as a commodity, sharing with other commodities an entry into material aspects of production. If, as Marx said, human beings produce themselves through labor, artistic production can be viewed as a branch of production in general. (4) A focus on the connections between class struggle as the inner dynamic of history and literature as the ideologically refracted site of such struggle. This has sometimes gone hand in hand with prescriptions for literature as an ideological ancillary to the aims and results of political revolution. (5) An insistence that language is not a self-enclosed system of relations but must be understood as social practice, as deeply rooted in material conditions as any other practice. To these predispositions could be added, for example, Engels' comments on "typicality," recommending th at art should express what is typical about a class or a peculiar intersection of ideological circumstances. One might also include the problem raised by Engels' granting a "relative autonomy" to art, his comments that art can transcend its ideological genesis and that superstructural elements are determined only in the "last instance" by economic relations: what exactly is the connection between art and the material base into which its constituting relations extend? Given the inconclusive and sometimes ambiguous nature of Marx's and
The Concept of Ideology in Marxist Literary Criticism
This paper attempts an exploration of the development of the Marxist literary theory in general and the concept of ideology in particular. Showing the significant role this theory plays in the field of literary criticism, the paper focuses on remarkable Marxist figures, explores their most notable works, and sheds light on their contributions to the theory and the field of literary criticism. For this purpose, the paper starts with basic Marxist principles of reading literature set by Marx and Engels and examines the changes that occurred with other critics, mainly Althusser, Jameson, and Eagleton in their attempts to show the importance of ideology in explaining literature and understanding its backgrounds, goals, and methods. Thus, the methodology will include an historical overview, shedding light on early Marxist perspectives, comparing and contrasting the contributions and adjustments added by remarkable Marxist thinkers, and illustrating by examples of literary texts and how they are seen and analyzed by these Marxist scholars.