Block-5 Marxist View of Literature Notes from all units with Important questions from previous question papers
1. How do Marxists understand literature ? Support your points with suitable examples.
2. Critically appraise the ideas of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels about class relations and class ideology.
3. How do Marx and Engels interpret literature ?
4. Assess the impact of Marxism on subsequent literary/critical theories in the 20th century.
5. "Writers are unable to see the truth about their societies because they are caught up in the 'false consciousness' of ideology." Examine the statement in the context of the Marxist view of literature.
6. Show how literary criticism and theory have developed a materialistic dimension based on Marxism.
7. Write a short essay showing how Marxism has influenced many critics in the 20 the century. Illustrate your answer with suitable examples.
8. Explain Marx's idea of dialectical materialism. How does it help us in understanding literature ?
9. Explain with the help of suitable examples, the Marxian concept of base and superstructure.
10. Critically examine the role of ideology in literary production following the Marxist critical theory.
11. Explain in your own words Marx's views of the base — superstructure relationship. How does an artist become conscious of it in his/her creations ?
12. What is superstructure in Marxist criticism ? Provide examples of superstructures. How do they function ?
13. What is meant by 'superstructure' in Marxist Theory ? How would you interpret it ?
14. Write a critical note on the essentials of Marxist literary theory.
15. How does literature represent the social conditions and social structure ?
16. In what sense is literature a form of Propaganda?
17. Explain the concept of a structure and discuss the notion of a stable centre.
18. Literary criticism has a social function. Discuss.
19. Attempt a short essay on the relation between literature and ideology.
20. How do Marxists understand literature ? Support your points with suitable examples.
21. How do Marx and Engels interpret literature ? Give examples.
22. Discuss the role of superstructure in Marxist criticism. Do you think literature is an important part of the superstructure ?
23. Bring out the Marxian concept of ‘purpose’ in Literature.
24. To what extent is ideology central to literature, according to Marxist critics ?
Marxism easy definition for someone who has no clue about it. Pros and Cons, critical feedback. With examples of countries (Russia, china, and Eastern European socialist countries) Super structure - Law as Superstructure , Religious, philosophical and cultural superstructures, The Political Superstructure, Problems of superstructure
UNIT 1 MARXISM AND LITERATURE
What is Marxism? Multiple outlook depending on what is your perspective. For literature- we use Marxism as essentially a world outlook, something that tells us about the author's mind and the nature of his thought. sciences.' The concept of action separates Marxism from all earlier philosophies, which only interpret the world, "while the point is to change it." This means that Marxism's central point is to change the world through collective social action.
Difficulty about how to comprehend Marxism in our time has largely arisen because of different applications of this approach. Marxist practice in the twentieth century has been a combination of state control, democracy, and bourgeois tendencies in politics and individualism among people in general.
How capitalism has affected the literature - noticed, it eliminates the human being in society by turning people into objects and commodities that are available in the market for sale. Things have become so bad that even writers and artist, let alone ordinary people, opt for nothing better than a job, which should actually be seen as a mere venture for earning bread.
Marxist critics Raymond Williams, Frederic Jameson and Terry Eagleton
Literature & Society –
the social organisation of a particular time be viewed as part of a whole series of changes taking place in history. Eg French revolution. People were fed up of the king and revolution took place and so their literature for a long time was about brotherhood, struggle, equality. The energy and passion in the French fiction of the nineteenth century can be clearly linked up with the social upheaval in France in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Who is the central figure in the French novels of the period if not an ordinary villager or city dweller, a middle class individual, a small trader, a clerk or a poet?
Eg2 the Industrial Revolution in England, we can say that it did not appear as spectacular as the French Revolution. It had no heroes and villains. Nor did it have contending armies in its midst that fought for political changes. It is called 'revolution' in the sense that it changed the social landscape of England by decisively shifting the movement of life in the direction of industrialism. The rural production and life dependent on age-old use of land ceased to be the dominant mode of existence as more and more people flocked to the cities in search of bread and butter. The city also opened up new avenues of progress. the novels of Dickens and George Eliot capture an England that has an entirely new set of questions confronting it. Descriptions of poverty and inequality are so stark in Dickens's novels and their link with the expansion of industry is so strong that the reader cannot link the representation with anything written before. The novels of Dickens are clearly rooted in the reality of mid-nineteenth century England. In the same way, we come across such protagonists in George Eliot's novels as are closely identifiable - middle-class individuals with a new kind of sensitivity and inner life. Undeniably, the development of industrial production in England inspired this powerful fictional trend. Once again, we do not see in this fiction a simple reflection of society but a treatment of issues fiction so many different points of view in a society that is caught in the process of change. We should also notice that under the impact of the Industrial Revolution, most of the writers of the day became sympathetic towards the common masses and picked up characters from among them for projecting deep human urges and interests. Characters from the upper classes represented in nineteenth century fiction look insipid and lifeless in comparison.
RELEVANCE OF MARXISM TO LITERATURE
With the help of Marxism that we comprehend the relationship between a writer and his/her society. This relationship is that of a sensitive individual with his/her environment. This individual is deeply concerned with the conditions of people around him/her. She recognises the existence of not merely pain and anguish but also anger and a sense of resistance in their lives. At the same time, the writer notices among people the great urge to enjoy celebrate and be happy. This makes him/her combine within their writing the different human emotions of melancholy, disquiet as well as anger and joy. On the surface, these appear to be expressions of an individual's response. However, the writer's response has its roots in the society to which she belongs and, therefore, reflects upon the nature of his/her surroundings. Marxism does not stop at this point but takes the consideration further to the specific mode of production, the governing economic structure, which regulates the activity of men and women in a decisive way. Marxism also pinpoints the role of human beings in shaping their society through sharp questioning and active mobilisation.
2 types of writers based on Marxism - one can see two clear and distinct streams of writers. To the former .team belong poets such as W.H. Auden, C. Day Lewis and Luis Macniece and to latter belong W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. The critical intelligence and vigour of the former stems from their intense hatred for the philistinism and superficiality of culture in their time. They clearly recognised the source of this philistinism in money and privilege. On the other hand, Yeats, Pound and Eliot distrusted the common masses. These poets were unable to notice the potentiality of change in the collective action of people. In fact, they looked for inspiration towards the privileged and the elite who in their opinion were capable of transcending the lay uninformed masses.
Beckett's plays fall in the category of the drama of the absurd, not in the sense that they lack meaning and significance but that they reveal and emphasise absurdity as the central principle in modem-day human existence, Brecht's plays are characterised as heroic drama. Brecht is remarkable in his portrayal of courage and perseverance in ordinary people. The heroism, the spirit to withstand pressures in Brecht's characters is largely owing to the writer's adoption of the Marxist outlook because of which common people appear to him as carriers of a definite revolution. Both Beckett and Brecht belong to the period around the Second World War. It could be expected that because of their sensitivity and intelligence, the two would exhibit identical social concerns. However, the fact is that Beckett concentrates upon what can be called human fate and human destiny in modem times while Brecht endeavours to bring out the creative, the noble and the heroic in the common masses of the day.
UNIT 2 SOCIETY AND HISTORY: MARXIST VIEW
most of us are in the habit of shifting our positions rather frequently, forgetting that the world we live in is divided into two hostile camps, one dominant and the other dominated, both of which constantly critique and attack each other. a section within itself, one can call it the middle class, .to take an apparently 'independent' and 'objective' position and question the validity of both camps, the oppressors and the oppressed - to assert that both can be equally right and wrong in different situations.
if we kept the expression 'moral terms' out of our discourse, we would realise that words such as 'misappropriation,' 'exploitation,' 'injustice,' etc. in Marx seem to lay great stress on the desirability of change in a society ridden with problems of inequality, mass hunger, profit-oriented planning, and unemployment. While most social commentators and analysts talk of these problems as if they were God-given and, therefore, meant to stay till some power above and beyond them intervened of its own will, Marx made a fundamental departure from such a stance by stating that "philosophers have so far merely interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it."
Social reality – Not entirely free no totally bound. Some choice but knowing the fact that we have to bear the consequences of our actions. Eg.afer school we go look for a job.
We do not realise that without these activities, the existence and survival of life is impossible. For instance, factories work continuously to produce goods that we use in daily life and this production is carried on in accordance with market-demands. Finished goods reach the retail shop through the whole sale market to be made available to the individual consumer. In the same way, raw materials are produced through agricultural activity that goes on round the year. There is a market-segment that works as a bridge between the agricultural produce (cotton, coal, and petroleum) on the one side and industry (cloth, oil, petrol and steel) on the other. All this is part of a highly organised and complex activity, something we can comprehend fully or sufficiently only after a great deal of mental effort.
Marx considered production as the most crucial aspect of human existence. In his words, "Men can be distinguished from animals by- consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of substance men are indirectly producing their actual material life.. . . As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce.
It also reflects the nature of people engaged in the production of raw materials or industrial goods, and industrial production as such. Still more, it dictates what should be produced. Are we surprised that the market is not a mere agency of distribution through selling and buying of produced goods? Marx has visualised human beings as divided into two groups - those who own the means of production and those others who work on land or in manufacturing units, big and small. This binds society in a specific relationship, that of the employer and employee, the employer being the owner of the means of production (land, raw materials and factory) and the employee who (with labour-power as his sole resource) is available merely as a purchasable commodity himself.
capitalism operates to distribute the social surplus in a particular way. Under this operation, the social surplus flows into the hands of the owning group while the producers of surplus, the workers get only their 'wages,' a name for the cost of what Marx calls their labour power. Marx places the whole activity with the social and legal sanction that it gets at every point of time in history under 'economic mode of production. An economic mode of production -the combination of methods and means of production - is a highly complex phenomenon and is, as we have said above, the most vital factor of human existence at a given time. We can see the similarity between capitalist countries, all of which have a common attitude towards their common people. It is rarely, if at all, that people are looked at as human beings with a sense of dignity in them.
UNIT 3 REPRESENTING AND CRITIQUING SOCIETY: SUPERSTRUCTURES
18th century literature is courageous, bold and dares to critique the existing system.
HOW TO INTERPRET SUPERSTRUCTURES
Marx uses the metaphor of 'a building', which has a base or a structure (foundation, pillars) and a superstructure, something standing upon or emerging from the foundation. The building can be characterised as wholeness consisting of highly active parts. largely at the base or what can be called the mode of production.
According to Marx, superstructure was totally man-made, unlike the base in which a strong component of nature (inanimate and animate) existed. Whereas base manifests the planned collective labour of men and women under a social framework, superstructure is evolved to interpret, explain and justify the distribution of social surplus. As people fight for survival in the base, they become conscious of its nature in their minds, which constitute the area of superstructure. Understandably, a society formed of and working through contending classes under a mode of production requires a great deal of conscious explanation as to why a small section of society should enjoy ownership of wealth and resources and an overwhelmingly large mass of people live at the subsistence level. This is what everyone would like to know. Firstly, in spite of an oppressive state machinery - army, police, bureaucracy – to protect the interests of the privileged few, the owning section needs an acceptable social argument to say that they have a legitimate claim on the surplus wealth generated on the strength of human labour through the working of a particular mode of production. The law most substantially meets this need, or what Marx called 'the legal superstructure. '
Law as Superstructure - at every point in history, competent minds work assiduously to frame laws that would 1egiGmise the misappropriation of socially generated resources by a few in society. The property owners misappropriate the surplus 'legally.'
The Political Superstructure According to him, it is mainly politics in which people fight their battle for change. Political formations such as parties play such a vital role in the life of a society that each formation is supposed to project the view of a distinct class and mobilise masses on behalf of that class.
The Religious Superstructure of God at two points of time has been done radically differently, that the feudal concept of God is not the same as the capitalist one, the former being oppressive, overbearing and paternally beneficent and the latter a relatively friendly, persuasive and sympathetic entity. The religious superstructure has two clear end-points the first touching the emotional-spiritual state of ordinary people and the second one compelling religious thinkers, poets and writers to correlate new responses to the already established notions of spirituality & religiosity. Eg- Milton’s Paradise Lost- Divine attitude I God & Son, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews – Adam is not a rigid traditional teacher but a good friend, fun loving person.
Philosophical and cultural superstructures – more intricate as the others deal with ideas, feelings and emotions. Faith distinguishes religion from philosophy and in the latter, one has to work out, analyse and explain rather than merely tell or preach. There is little scope for questioning or doubt in the former (faith does not allow query) while it is the mainstay of philosophy. Philosophy by nature is not passive and can stretch itself to see beyond the limits set by a governing order. for instance, identify ourselves with events and people of faraway countries since, philosophically seen, they appear connected with us in thoughts, values and aspirations. Geographically and culturally apart, people of different societies can be knit into an impressive pattern under categories such as race, creed or broad humanity.
CULTURE AS SUPERSTRUCTURE These segments of human life in particular phases of history project joys, pains and sufferings of human beings existing then in such a way that they (joys, pains, etc.) appear to be the expressions of our own feelings and emotions at present. What is this particular way? Does this suggest that a kind of intensity and immediacy enters the represented feelings and makes it attractive to a distant audience? It is for this reason, perhaps, that literary works produced far away from our time and place touch deep chords in our heart. It cannot, therefore, be said that culture and literature bear a direct or immediate connection with a specific base. They indeed give the impression that they do not at all belong to the realm of superstructure of a particular epoch, but appeal to humanity as universal and timeless phenomena.
Working people become active in the political superstructure to bring about a radical change in their social environment, which means that they get together under a commonly conceived programme and hit collectively at vested economic interests. This is done by the mass of human beings not necessarily in terms of violent subversion of the state machinery or civil society behind which the ruling class stands organised in any case, but through winning over the majority of the members of society to their side.
"By the seventeenth century the subordinate capitalist mode of production had developed to the point at which it came into clear contradiction with the dominant feudal mode" (John Milton and the English Revolution - London: Macmillan, 198 1, p. 66). That it crumbled gradually under pressure from a new and progressive bourgeois class is not indicative of its weak social urge or motivation. It was an extremely violent struggle. The process of active hostility between the two classes lasted well over a hundred and fifty years and the eighteenth century witnessed an inexorable march of the new class towards complete domination of society.
imagine the case of those writers who stood in the thick of things and bore upon their nerves the pressures of the day. This long and complex process was well captured by writers such as John Milton, Henry Fielding and William Blake. See how their writing is marked by the distinction between good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable. They were not humanist writers in the usual sense of the term but were sharp critics of those tendencies that worked against the interests of the common masses. These writers were intelligent enough not to be taken in by words such as 'tradition,' 'patriotism,' honour' and 'virtue.' They took it as their job to approach the reader with the message of change. There is no doubt that their literary behaviour involved a great deal of debate, disagreement and even violent exchange of words. And the whole thing corresponded to that which happened in the political sphere of the period. The point to note is that clashes and confrontations in the political superstructure had a direct impact on what has been called the economic mode of production and that the political superstructure derived its punch, its effectiveness from its linkage with the socio-economic reality. – IMP
3.5 – RFB-VVIMP – king was overthrown
UNIT 4 COMMITMENT 'IN LITERATURE
WHO IS A COMMITTED WRITER? "committed" writers I mean those who consciously and effectively draw the attention of the reader towards injustice, exploitation and oppression in society through their writing and provide a rational-critical dimension to their representations in literature. Committed wanting has the power to involve readers as participants in their own problem-ridden environment as well.
differently, the ordinary people are in fact not ordinary but the most productive and, therefore, the most extraordinary. What would happen if we change our viewpoint so radically? Such a viewpoint is bound to make us rethink our parameters of criticism.
After the WW I & II living under the threat of death. Love and death became the central features of this discourse, which did not know of the actual clashes taking place in the modern world. Blinded by assaults from all sides, the modern writer clung to the idea of the individual which had nowhere to look for hope, neither in spreading a belief or message, in the loyalty to the country of their origin (that in the past translated into what can be called patriotism) nor the ideal of freedom and liberation. This could be said of the vision of Hemingway. In the case of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), the critique assumed the form of a wholesale attack on industrialism as such which to the uncritical eye was a strong factor behind the malaise among men and women in the modern world.
The nineteenth century writer had finally realised that the norms and principles cherished by hider were threatened by a structure that was driven by the laws of capitalism. This explained why nineteenth century English writers were able to offer a sound critique of the active interests under capitalism and produce 'works of great literary merit. On the other hand, the twentieth century writer did not relate important social developments to capitalism.
the new writer, who wrote around the World War I, years had deliberately changed his/her strategy of action in literature, that she had resolved not to point an accusing finger at capitalism in its imperialist phase. Instead, as a carrier and representative of this new capitalism, she decided to oppose all that went in the name of renaissance humanism, scientific thought and rational outlook. In consequence, she severed all connection with the great realistic tradition of eighteenth and nineteenth century literature.
the role of a writer in society. paragraph. Is a writer not supposed to tell his/her reader about the state in which the large masses of people find themselves, as also about how these people could respond to the prevalent pressures of economy, society and culture? One answer can be that a writer's job is only to share with the reader the general mood of helplessness, despondency and disgust and that she should leave the rest of the matter to the reader's own devices. The modern writer does precisely this. The readers are left to fend for themselves with respect to solutions that they require to the pressing problems of the day. In fact, the reading of literature in the twentieth century helps only in duplicating, if not actually compounding the sense of alienation that people feel in their lives. Another answer can be that literature could provide a sharp awareness and understanding of the life- processes of the time when it is produced. While doing so, literary writing may focus upon the aspect of change in life. To committed writing, change alone would indicate the relevance of positive thought and intervention in society.
UNIT 5 AUTONOMY IN LITERATURE –
The word 'autonomy' signifies independent existence and working. literature as a phenomenon does not necessarily have a direct one-to-one relation with the economic or political situation of the time in which it is produced. This is to mean that a severe economic crisis and a totally fantasy-based, fairy tale-like literature can coexist - the former pressing the writer to take cognizance of mass deprivation and the latter choosing to create a wholly imaginary work of beauty and wonder. It is also possible that the literature of a period would depict helplessness or sense of insecurity among human beings in the midst of prosperity. The reason for this is that imaginative writing has its own peculiar history and tradition and its own to come to terms with them. As a consequence of this, the pressures of a period do not affect or determine writing in a simple manner. we would have noticed that at the level of language also, phrases idioms and expressions that writers of the previous era pioneered constitute a large part of a literary work. The ordinary reader is kept out of the purview of these 'behind the scene' practices of writers who remain divided into different groups, promoting or pulling down one another. In another sense, autonomy refers to the individual act of writing in which the writer constructs a poem, a novel or a play through a creative process not known to people active in philosophy or politics.
to one who has some acquaintance with Marxism that a work of literature should essentially be considered a product of its times, an expression of the pain and miseries, joys and celebrations of the period in which it was composed. However, in our century, this view has not found favour with a large section of critics. It is believed that art is independent of its immediate social pressures and transcends the boundaries of time and place. For these critics, it is the sharp and appealing, in many cases dazzling aspect of a literary work that catches the reader's attention irrespective of whether the reader belongs to the time in which the work was written or the ethos to which she or he belonged.
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