![]() Critics, especially male critics, seem to have allowed themselves to approach a text in a “masterly” manner that evades the “affect” of a text and the emotional effect transmitted to readers. In this book Armstrong devotes many pages to restoring the role and effect of the emotions in a text, which are often ignored under the strong influence of contemporary literary criticism. The Radical Esthetic by Isobel Armstrong may be the single most significant work in the “new aesthetics” movement. ![]() These writers, whose attitudes are often summed up in the slogan “art for art’s sake,” affirm the autonomy of literature and the arts, while also liberating art and literature from considerations of moral correctness or social utility ( CitationBarry 250). In addition, “new aesthetics” shows the revival of the interests and attitudes toward esthetics first expressed in the late 19th century through the “aesthetic movement,” evident in the works of poet Alfernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909), poet – painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1928–82), Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), and essayist – critic Walter Pater (1839–94). Nearly all these trends challenged and denied the autonomy of literature ( CitationBarry 242). It works in contrast to the main trends of literary theory that dominated from the 1970s onwards. In the emerging post-theory critical movements, “new aesthetics” shows a clear challenge to contemporary criticism. In Reading After Theory (Blackwell, 2001), Valentine Cunningham acknowledges with relief that theory “had run its course,” with him starting “ the process of repairing aspects of criticism which theory had damaged,” and giving them back their proper places within literary studies, rather like someone starting to tidy up after a flood of theory (HTM italic) ( CitationBarry 242). However, the supremacy of theory came to a standstill and even experienced a regression, with many critics expressing their opposition to theory by the end of the 20th century. Indeed, “influence study” was later overwhelmed by the younger “parallel studies,” followed by a subtle combination of the two research areas above, many trends in comparative literature stem from this combination, such as the recent “variation theory of comparative literature” or the “juxtapositional model of comparison.” ![]() Many scholars doubted and cast judgment on the field of comparative literature that fit within the framework of “influence studies” such as that which Fernand Baldensperger, Paul Van Tieghem, and others laid out. In particular, the emergence of post-structuralism and its challenge to the very nature of deconstruction became the basis for influential movements in criticism such as postcolonial criticism, feminist criticism, and ecocriticism among others. “Influence study” gradually lost its central position to the development and explosion of contemporary literary theories in the 20th century. Ihab Hassan, an Egyptian-born American critic, harshly criticizes the principle of “influence” in comparative literature as “inaccurate” and “ambiguous.” Since the mid-1990s, it has been viewed as an imperialist and Western hegemonic research approach for its study of non-Western works only through translations that often favor an Orientalist perspective. “Influence study,” with names like Fernand Baldensperger, Paul Van Tiegem, Jean-Marie Carré and Marius Francois Guyard involved in French comparative literature in the first half of the 20th century, has long been viewed as outdated, with literary influences becoming an increasingly complex phenomenon not capable of being contained by any single theoretical framework. This is a case of interesting and complex indirect influence cited by the critic Hoai Thanh as early as 1942 in Vietnam. As such, it is possible to distinguish a case of indirect influence from Edgar Allan Poe to Han Mac Tu 1 through the intermediary Charles Baudelaire. Armstrong’s thinking is quite close to that of Lev Tolstoy, who framed the standard of art as its “affective contagion.” These ideas also serve as important links to identify cases of direct influence and indirect influence in literature. In this work, Armstrong restores the role of a text’s “emotional effect,” which many critics today, especially male ones, appear to despise to the point of elimination. The paper stems from discussions raised in Isobel Armstrong’s The Radical Esthetic, a work situated in post-theory criticism.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |