(additional note: in general, the items in the reading list are to be found in the English Faculty library, on the Sidgwick site)

Part I: Paper6

LITERARY CRITICISM

Aim

Work for this paper should develop the skills of close reading and analysis, and it should foster the ability to relate such analysis to larger propositions about the nature and value of literature and the methods appropriate to its study. The paper thus offers students an opportunity to reflect on what they themselves do in their work for the other Part I papers and to extend that reflection by engaging with the work of some of the most influential critics and theorists. The paper encourages students to consider questions which arise out of the experience of reading and the practice of criticism. What has been taken for granted that should have been analysed? Have people always meant the same thing by 'literature'? Can our present methods of understanding be directly applied to the works of previous periods which may have had different forms of self-understanding? And so on.

Examination Regulations:

The paper will be set in two sections. Candidates will be required to answer three questions, including at least one question from each section; in Section B candidates may not answer two questions on the sam e topic.

Section A (Practical Criticism) will consist of questions offering passages of English prose or verse from various periods for critical comment. These questions will require close critical analysis of the given passage(s) but may also allow for the raising of general critical and theoretical issues appropriate to the reading of those passages. Some of the questions in this section will invite candidates to consider the passages in the light of the topics specified in Section B; there will be at least one such question corresponding to each of the topics.

Section B (Topics) will consist of essay questions on the three specified topics. For 2005-06

the specified topics are: i) The Function of Criticism; ii) Theories of Versification; iii) Writing and

the Unconscious.

The formal examination lasts for three and a half hours, of which thirty minutes are assigned for

reading-time.

Faculty Teaching

The following teaching is listed under Part I, Paper 6 in the Lecture list and in Notes on Courses. Students should also consult the entries under 'General' and Part II, Paper 9, which may contain Faculty teaching germane to this paper.

Michaelmas

'English Studies; An Historical Introduction'

'An Introduction to Twentieth Cent ury Literary Theory'

'Theories of Versification'

'Reading Poetry' and 'Reading Prose fiction'

'Literary Theory Lecture Circus'

'Literary Psychoanalysis'

'Metre and Verse Form: An Introduction'

Lent

'The Function of Criticism'

'Writing and the Unconscious Lecture Circus'

Easter

READING LISTS SECTION A

The reading suggested here is simply intended to indicate some starting points for the consideration of the history of literary criticism, especially in its relation to the activity known as 'practical criticism'. It consists of a) some general works on the history of criticism, and b) a sample of some of the major 'practitioner-critics' within the English critical tradition (that is, figures whose criticism was related to their own writing, particularly in poetry.

(a) History

Among anthologies of critical writing, the following brings together many of the main texts:

W.J. Bate, ed., Criticism: The Major Texts (2nd ed., N.Y. 1970)

For the twentieth century this may be supplemented by:

David Lodge, ed., Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism: A Reader (1972)

David Lodge, ed.. Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (1988)

Rick Rylance, ed., Debating Texts: A Reader in Twentieth-Century Theory and Method (Milton Keynes, 1987)

For a comprehensive survey of the history of criticism, see:

The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism (7 vols to date) (1991-)

For a detailed survey of modern criticism see:

Rene Weliek, A History of Modern Criticism 1750-1950. 8 vols (New Haven, 1955-89)

Two useful historical accounts focussing on the modern history of criticism are:

Chris Baldick. Criticism and Literary Theory 1890 to the Present (1996)

Patrick Parrinder, Authors and Authority: English and American Criticism 1750-1990

For an introduction to recent literary theory, see Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (rev. ed. 1995)

(b) Critics

John Dryden, Of Dramatick Poesie (1668)

Samuel Johnson, Preface to The Works of William Shakespeare (1765); Life of Cowley, in

Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets (1779-1781),

reprinted as Lives of the Poets S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria. chs I-XXII (1817)

Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, First Series (1865), esp. The Function of Criticism';

Essays in Criticism, Second Series (1888), esp. 'The Study of Poetry', 'Wordsworth' T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays (rev. ed., 1951) Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1925)

SECTION B a) The Function of Criticism

Core Reading .

Matthew Arnold, 'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time' (1864); in R.H. Super (ed.), The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, vol III (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1962), 258-285; and in Stefan Collini (ed,), Matthew Arnold: 'Culture and Anarchy' and other writings (C.U.P.,1993),26-51

Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist: a Dialogue' (1891); in Richard Ellmann (ed.), The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde (N.Y.: Random House, 1969), 341-407

T.S. Eliot, The Function of Criticism' (1923); repr. in Selected Essays (London: Faber, 1932), 23-34; and in Frank Kermode (ed.), Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot (London: Faber, 1975), 68-76 F.W. Bateson, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time', Essays in Criticism 3 (1953) 1-27

F.R. Leavis, The Responsible Critic, or The Function of Criticism at any Time', Scrutiny. 19 (1953), 162-83; repr. in Valuation in Criticism and Other Essays (C.U.P.. 1986). 184-206. T.W. Adorno, 'Cultural Criticism and Society' (1955); in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (London: Spearman) 17-34.

Edward Said, 'Secular Criticism', in The World, the Text. and the Critic. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard, 1983), 1-30.

Paul de Man, The resistance to theory', in The Resistance to Theory (Minnesota U.P. 1986) 3-20

Further Reading:

Sidney Coulling, Matthew Arnold and his Critics: A Study of Arnold's Controversies (Athens,

Ohio: Ohio U.P., 1974), chs 4 + 5 Kenneth Allott (ed.), Matthew Arnold (London: Bell, 1975), chs 4 + 5 lan Small, Conditions for Criticism: Authority, Knowledge, and Literature in the Late Nineteenth

Century (O.U.P.. 1991, ch 5 Regenia Gagnier, Idylls of the Market-Place: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public (Aldershot:

Scolar, 1987) David Goldie, A Critical Difference: T.S. Eliot and John Middleton Murry in English Literary Criticism. 1919-1928 (O.U.P.. 1998)

Edward Lobb. T.S. Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tradition (London: Routledge, 1981)

Stefan Collini, 'On Highest authority: the literary critic and other aviators in early twentieth-century Britain', in Dorothy Ross (ed.), Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences 1870-1930 (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1994), 152-70

Michael Bell, F.R. Leavis (London: Routledge, 1988)

R.P. Bilan, The Literary Criticism of F.R. Leavis (C.U.P., 1979), ch 4

Allen Tate, The man of letters in the modern world', in The Man of Letters in the Modern World: Selected Essays 1928-1955 (N.Y., Meridian, 1955), 11-22

Raymond Williams, 'Beyond Cambridge English', in Writing in Society (London: Verso, 1984), 212-26

Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago: Chicago U.P., 1987)

Paul Bove, 'Critical Nation: The Function of Criticism at the Present Time', Intellectuals in Power: A Genealogy of Critical Humanism (N.Y.: Columbia U.P.. 1986). 239-310.

Helen Vendler, The function of criticism', in The Music of What Happens: Poems, Poets. Critics Harvard U.P., 1988), 9-21

Bruce Robbins, Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture (London: Verso,

1993), ch 5

Peter Uwe Hohendahl, The Institution of Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell, 1982), ch 1

Terry Eagleton, The Function of Criticism: from The Spectator' to Post-structuralism (London: Verso, 1984).

Chris Baldick. The Social Mission of English Criticism 1848-1932 (O.U.P.. 1983)

Geoffrey Hartman. Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1980)

Adrienne Rich, 'When we dead awaken: writing as revision' (1971), in Rich, On Lies, Secrets,and Silence (1978)

J.Hillis Miller, The Function of Literary Theory at the Present Time', in Ralph Cohen (ed.), The Future of Literary Theory (London: Roufledge, 1989), 102-111.

b) Theories of Versification

Core reading: Alexander Pope, from An Essay on Criticism. especially lines 337-383; letter to William Walsh, October 22, 1706

Samuel Johnson, from Lives of Pope, Milton, Cowley in Lives of the Poets (2 vols, Oxford: Oxford Unnersity Press, 1906)

William Wordsworth, from "Preface" to Lyrical Ballads (1800) in Selected Prose, ed. John 0. Hayden (London: Penguin Books, 1990)

Coleridge, "Preface" to Christabel in William Keach, ed. Complete Poems (London: Penguin Books, 1997), p. 187; Bioaraphia Literaria. ed. Nigel Leask (London, 1997), chapters 14 and 18, pp. 179-85,214-35

Ezra Pound, "How to Read", in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound (London: Faber and Faber, 1954), pp. 15-40; "The Return", "Swinburne: A Critique", in Collected Early Poems, ed.

Michael John King (New York: New Directions, 1976)

T.S.Eliot, "The Music of Poetry", in On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), pp. 26-38

I.A. Richards, "Rhythm and Metre" in Principles of Literary Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1925)

William Empson, "Rhythm and Imagery in English Poetry", British Journal of Aesthetics 2 (1962), 36-54

Further reading

Derek Attridge, The Rhythms of English Poetry (Longman: London and New York, 1982) —, Well-weighed Syllables: Elizabethan Verse in Classical Metres (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974)

T.V.F. Brogan, English Versification, 1570-1980. A Reference Guide (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981) E

dward Bysshe, The Art of English Poetry (1702); Part 1, "Rules for making verses".

Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and MargaretSelting, eds.. Prosody in Conversation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

Roger Fowler, "What is Metrical Analysis?" in The Languages of Literature: some Linguistic Contributions to Literature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971)

Paul Fussell, Theory of Prosody in Eighteenth-Century England (Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1966)

Michel Grimaud, "Versification and its discontents: Toward a research program", Semiotica 8 (1992), 199-242

William Harmon, "Rhyme in English Verse: History, Structures, Functions": Studies in Philology 84(1987): 365-93

Paul Kiparsky, "The Role of Linguistics in a Theory of Poetry", Daedalus 102(1973), 231-44

Douglas Oliver, Poetry and Narrative in Performance (London: Macmillan, 1989)

Brendan O'Donnell, The Passion of Meter: A Study of Wordsworth's Metrical Art (Kent Ohio and London, Kent State University Press, 1995)

T.S.Omond, English Metrists: Being a Sketch of English Prosodical Criticism from Elizabethan Times to the Present Day (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1921)

David Perkins, "How the Romantics Recited Poetry", Studies in English Literature. 1500-1900. vol.31 (1991), 655-71

J.H. Prynne, Stars, Tigers and the Shapes of Words (London: Birkbeck College, 1993) The New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Politics, ed. Alex Preminger and T.V.F. Brogan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993)

Jacques Roubaud, La Viellesse d'Alexandre: Essai sur guelques etats recents du vers francais (Paris: Editions Ramsey, 1988)

Clive Scott, "The Reading of Verse", in The Poetics of French Verse: Studies in Reading (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 82-104

Marina Tarlinskaia, English Verse: Theory and History (Mouton: The Hague, 1976)

c) Writing and the Unconscious

Core reading

Sigmund Freud, Writings on Art and Literature, ed. Neil Hertz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

Sigmund Freud, "The Method of Interpreting Dreams: An Analysis of a Specimen Dream", ch. 2 of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900: tr. James Strachey 1953), Pelican Freud Library, vol. 4 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp. 169-99; and Standard Edition, vol. 4. ——, "The 'Uncanny'" (1919; tr. Alex Strachey 1925; tr. modified 1955), Pelican Freud Library, vol. 14 (London: Penguin, 1990), pp. 335-376; and Standard Edition, vol. 17. ——, "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917; tr. Joan Rivier 1925; tr. modified 1957), Pelican Freud Library, vol. 11 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984),pp. 247-268; and Standard Edition, vol. 14. ——, "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysterai ("Dora")", (1905; tr. Alix and James Stachey, 1925), Pelican Freud Library, vol. 8 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. 31-164; andStandard Edition, vol. 7. ——, "Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's 'Gravida'" (1907; tr. James Strachey 1959), Pelican Freud Library, vol. 14 (London: Penguin, 1990), pp. 29-118; and Standard Edition, vol. 9. ——, "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming" (1908; tr. Grant Duff 1925; tr. modified 1959), Pelican Freud Library, vol. 14 (London: Penguin, 1990), pp. 129-141; and Standard Edition, vol 9. ——, on Oedipus and Hamlet from chapter 5, "Material and Sources of Dreams". The Interpretation of Dreams (1900; tr. James Strachey 1953), Pelican Freud Library vol. 4 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), pp. 362-68.

Melanie Klein, "The Importance of Symbol Formation in the Development of the Ego" (1930), in Love, Guilt, Reparation and Other Works, 1921-1945 (London: Vintage, 1998, pp. 219-32

D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (1971; London: Tavistock, 1984), esp. Ch. 1: "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena".

Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'Conversations on Freud', in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief, ed. Cyril Barrett (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1967), pp.41-52.

Further reading

Janet Adelman on Hamlet in Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, "Hamlet" to "The Tempest" (London: Routledge, 992), pp. 11-37.

Christopher Bellas, "The Aesthetic Moment and the Search for Transformation", in Transitional Objects and Potential Spaces: Literary Uses of D.W. Winnicott. ed. Peter Rudnytsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)

Peter Brooks, "The Idea of a Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism", in Francoise Meltzer, ed.,The Trial(s) of Psvchoanalysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 144-59.

Cathy Caruth, "Past Recognition: Narrative Origins in Wordsworth and Freud", in Romanticism. ed. Cynthia Chase (London: Longman, 1993), pp. 98-112.

Maud Ellmann, "Eliot's Abjection" in Abjection, Melancholia and Love: The Work of Julia Kristeva. ed. John Fletcher and Andrew. Benjamin (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 178-200.

Maud Ellmann, ed., Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism (London: Longman, 1994).

Shoshana Felman, "Turning the Screw of Interpretation" (a study of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw), in Literature and Psychoanalvsis; The Question of Reading: Otherwise ed. Shoshana Felman (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1982).

Michael North, Reading 1922 (1999)

Georges Poulet: Studies in Human Time. tr. Eliot Coleman (1956)

Christopher Ricks: T. S. Eliot and Prejudice (1994); Decisions and Revisions in T.S.Eliot (2003)

Ronald Schuchard: Eliot's Dark Angel: intersections of life and art (1999)

Sanford Schwartz: The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Eliot and Early Twentieth-Century Thought (1985)

Eric Sigg: The American T.S. Eliot: a study of the early writings (1989)

Stan Smith: The Origins of Modernism. Eliot, Pound. Yeats and the Rhetorics of Renewal (1994)

B. C. Southam: A Student's Guide to the Selected Poems ofT. S. Eliot (1968/1994)

David Trotter: The Making of the Reader: Language and Subjectivity in Modern American, English and Irish Poetry (1984)

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Recommended Text

The Penguin edition, edited by Hermione Lee, has the fullest annotations.

Other works

The novels, especially Jacobs Room (1922),. Mrs Dallowav (1925), Orlando (1928), The Waves (1931), Between the Acts (1941).

A Writers Diary: being extracts from the diary of Virginia Woolf. ed. Leonard Woolf (1953:1979).

Virginia Woolf. A Room of Ones Own: Three Guineas, ed. Morag Shiach (1992) Andrew McNeillie, ed., The Essays of Virginia Woolf (1986-)

Life

Virginia Woolf. Moments of Being, ed. Jeanne Schulkind (1985). Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (1996)

Context

Virginia Woolf, Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf. ed. Joanne Trautmann Banks

(1989)

Perry Meisel, The Myth of the Modern: A Study of British Literature and Criticism after 1850 (1987)

Sigmund Freud, Two short accounts of psycho-analysis, ed. James Strachey (Penguin, 1981)

Vincent Sherry, The Great War and the Language of Modernism (2003)

Criticism

Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Fiction, trans. Willard Ropes Trask

(1953): also in Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse, ed. Morris Beja (1970).

Juliet Dusinberre, Alice to the Lighthouse: children's books and radical experients in art. 2nd ed. (1999)

Daniel Ferrer, Virginia Woolf and the Madness of Language, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel

Bowlby(1990)

Perry Meisel, The Absent Father: Virginia Woolf and Walter Pater (1980)

Gillian Beer, Virginia Woolf: The Common Ground (1996)

Mary Jacobus, The Third Stroke: Reading Woolf with Freud', in Rachel Bowlby, ed., Virginia Woolf

(1992)

Laura Marcus. Virginia Woolf (1997)

Susanne Raitt, Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse (1990)

Sue Roe and Susan Sellers, The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf (2000)

Jane Goldman, Feminist Aesthetics of Virginia Woolf (1998)

SOME OTHER AUTHORS WITHIN THE PERIOD 1895-1945

W.H.Auden, George Barker, Arnold Bennett, Elizabeth Bowen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Joseph Conrad, Hilda Doolittle, William Empson, Ford Madox Ford, E.M.Forster, John Galsworthy, Robert Graves,