CRITICA PRACTICA, Ejercicios de Literatura inglesa

¡Descarga CRITICA PRACTICA y más Ejercicios en PDF de Literatura inglesa solo en Docsity! FORMALISM WARM-UP: discussing “Against Interpretation” “In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art had the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one learn to treat the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.” (Sontag 1964/2001, 8) What kind of criticism, of commentary on the arts, is desirable today? For I am not saying that works of art are ineffable, that they cannot be described or paraphrased. They can be. The question is how. What would criticism look like that would serve the work of art, not usurp its place? What is needed, first, is more attention to form in art. If excessive stress on content provokes the arrogance of interpretation, more extended and more thorough descriptions of form would silence. What is needed is a vocabulary – a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, vocabulary – for forms. The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content into those of form. (Sontag 1964/2001, 12) Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text. It is the study of a text without taking into account any outside influence. • What sort of questions should/might the formalist ask the text? • Why might close reading be enriched through a formalist approach? 1) FORM   • Cadence – how words sound. When a character or narrator is speaking, the sound of what he or she is saying, or how he or she is saying it, can give clues about who the character is and why he or she is in the work. • Repetition – saying the same word, phrase or concept over and over again. Obviously, when something is repeated several times, it must be important. • Recurrences – when an event or a theme happens more than once. Like repetition, when something is repeated, it is for a reason.   • Relationships – the connections between the characters. By looking carefully at the connections among the people in the story, one can understand the meaning of a work. Every character is put into the story for a reason. The reader’s job is to find that reason. 2) DICTION   • Denotation – the dictionary definition of a word. Obviously, understanding the meaning of the words is vital to understanding a text. If a reader does not know what the words mean, he or she can have no idea what is being said. • Connotation – the subtle, commonly accepted meanings of words. Even though a word may technically mean one thing, the way it is used in society will often place a slightly