Create a 9 page essay paper that discusses What is literature and how should one read it.Download file to see previous pages... There are various theoretical approaches to the study of literature such

Create a 9 page essay paper that discusses What is literature and how should one read it.

There are various theoretical approaches to the study of literature such as Marxism, Semiotics, Poststructuralism and Psychoanalysis. Marxism tries to explain literature from the light of existing social, economic, political and cultural realities within the framework of a holistic understanding of history and societal development.The simplest goals of Marxist literary criticism can include an assessment of the political "tendency" of a literary work, determining whether its social content or its literary form are "progressive". this is by no means the only or the necessary goal. However, Marxism is not a homogenous approach to the study of literature. Rather, it is a collective of contending schools of thought which understand and explain literature in radically different ways. It is possible to identify the major trends within the Marxist framework as Classical Marxism, Critical Theory, Frankfurt School and Structuralism. All of these perspectives have differing degrees of compatibility with what could be seen as the founding principles of Marxism such as Materialist conception of the world, and Dialectical and Historical Materialism.Art is one of the principal means by which human beings make sense of the world and through which their striving to change reality takes place. The need to translate experience, knowledge and desire into concrete imagery is not a whim or a fancy, it is clearly built into human consciousness. All of us are artists at night. Dreams, with their compressed, imagistic references to conscious experience, demonstrate many of the characteristics of works of art.

The intellectually tumultuous twentieth century saw the emergence of various theoretical approaches, which were contesting each other and the same time mutually enriching. Psychoanalysis, Marxism, critical theory, structuralism and post structuralism were the prominent streams among them. As a theorist of writing, Roland Barthes best represents the transitional stage between structuralism and post structuralism. However, it is possible to identify the 'Barthes in the making' (as he always was) with the structuralist trend that was prominent among the intelligentsia(s) in France in the early decades of cold war period, along with other intellectual stalwarts such as Julia Kristeva, Levi Strauss and TzvetanTodorov. The present essay seeks to examine the central tenets of Barthes's philosophy and the impact of his notion of 'writerly text' on the relation between reader/viewer and writer/artist. Since Barthes's formulation on reader-writer relationship could easily be replicated into art without modifications, the essay does not intend to mention the viewer-artist relationship exclusively: however, the reader may understand them interchangeably.

In its inception, Marxism was a challenge to Hegelianism and Marx is supposed to have turned Hegel upside down. Contrary to the Hegelian logic, Marx argued that history is not the unfolding of absolute reason but the coming to existence of mental systems which are the products or constructs of concrete historical conditions at a given point of time. Therefore, Marxism talks about literature which not only represents the social truth but also but also changes it.

Although the writings of Marx and Engels provide crucial insights to the understanding of art and literature from a materialist standpoint, it is Georg Luk'cs who came up with philosophical and comprehensive Marxist elaboration of literature as a materialist force. In his 1923 History and Class Consciousness, Luk'cs defines realism as an approach that represents the social truth in its all complexities and contradictions than merely photographing it. For Luk'cs, literature involves the deep reflections over life as a social process.

Art and literature, in a capitalist society, has become increasingly characterized by commodity fetishism which becomes prevalent as market subsumes the entire society under its logic.