QUESTIONS Critical Practice by Catherine Belsey

Theory of Literature as Expressive Realism How does Belsey introduce the Theory of Literature as Expressive Realism? Commonsense Criticism as the traditional criticism What relationship does Belsey establish between criticism and common sense? How much the common sense view of literature is justified? Discuss with reference to Belseys arguments. What according to Belsey is the difference between common sense and literary theory? New Criticism as a challenge to Expressive Realism Theory of Literature In what ways did New Critics change the approach of criticism towards a literary text? Explain the radical position of New Criticism in its time and say how it fails to break free from Expressive Realism. What are some of the assumptions of Expressive Realism that New Criticism attempts to challenge. Discuss Commonsense Criticism and New Criticism and also differentiate them from each other. Construction of meaning through juxtaposition of familiar signifiers and hence semes How can meaning be constructed by reproducing what is familiar? Structuralist Criticism Discuss Belseys arguments in the favor of structural criticism. How does Belsey discuss the authority of common sense with respect to Saussures view of linguistic theory? Explain the Post-Saussurean notion that the transparency of language is an illusion. According to Post-Saussurean concepts, can we understand the world through unmediated experience or thought without the mediation of any language or symbolic order? Classic Realist text What are the three features that describe a Classic Realist text? Addressing of the subject by a Classic Realist text How does a Classic Realist text address the subject? Role of Ideology in shaping up the Subject How does ideology shape the subject? Can the subject find his way out of ideology?

Role of Ideology in a discourse Define the terms ideology and discourse and explain their relationship to each other. There is no criticism without ideology. How does Belsey argue this thesis? Influence of Karl Marx and Louis Althusser on literary criticism Discuss the influence of Marx and Althusser on literary criticism. Influence of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan on literary criticism Freud and Lacan led the critics to probe the psychological depths in literature. What is your own view of this approach to the study of literature? Contribution of Lacan and Macherey What contribution did Lacan and Macherey make to the modern critical methods. Producing the text Explain with reference to Lacan/Barthes theory of the death of author, the concept of producing the text. Reader as a consumer How the present reader can be taken as a consumer? The Copernican Revolution in literature Explain with reference to Freud and Marx the Copernican Revolution in literature. Classification of texts into three kinds Explain the classification of texts into three kinds. The work of the reader for Dialectical, and Rhetorical texts What do you understand by a Dialectical Text? How is Reader Power Criticism well suited to the analysis of such texts? Differentiate between the Dialectical and the Rhetorical text. How does each determine the role of the reader differently? The work of the reader for Interrogative texts Critical Practice is produced with a bias in favor of the interrogative text. Would you agree? Give reasons. Discuss the concept of split and unfixed subject with reference to the interrogative text. Deconstructionist criticism Discuss Deconstruction method in detail. How has it changed the concept of modern criticism?

Explain the deconstruction of the text with reference to Barthes and Macherey. How far the methods of deconstruction of the text are justified? Write with reference to its place in modern criticism. Towards a new and productive critical practice Problems in the production of a text Where does the meaning lie: in the text, the reader, the writer, or the structure? What in your view is the main source of meaning? Discuss under the light of modern methods of criticism. How would you proceed in critical study, analysis or evaluation of a piece of literature? Discuss the methods of extracting meanings out of a creative text as described by Belsey. Catherine Belsey urges us to reevaluate the existing approaches to Criticism. Discuss. Discuss the problems involved in the production of a text. What are the major drawbacks preventing the attainment of a new and productive critical practice.