Marxism
- Marxism was founded by Karl Marx in the 19th C.
- He was a German philosopher and was the first Marxist literary critic
- Marx wrote 'Das Kapital' and critical essays in 1830 about Shakespeare and Wolfgang von Geothe.
- Marxism includes psychoanalysis and feminist criticism and concerns itself not what the text says, but what it hides.
Terry Eagleton - "Its task is to show the text as it cannot know itself, to manifest those conditions of its making (inscribed in its very letter) about which it is necessarily silent. It is not just that the text knows some things and not others; it is rather that its very self-knowledge is the construction of a self-oblivion."
Base vs Superstructure
The economic base verses culture, Ideology, religion, law, philosophy, politics and art
Ideology
The shares belied and values and government and wealth (economic influence)
Hegemony
Power structure, power over people, web of ideologies, hierarchy of power (highest power vs lowest power)
Reificution
Used to describe the way which people turn into commodities useful in market exchange E.g. people used in an economic sense.
Questions:
- Does the text reflect or resist a dominant ideology or both?
- Does the main character in a narrative affirm or resist bourgeoisie (new money) values?
- Whose story gets told in the text? Are lower economic groups ignored or devalued?
- Are values the support the dominant economic group given privilege?
- They look at conditions for publication for the work of art - e.g. :
- What are the economic conditions for publication of work? Who was the audience? What does the text suggest about the values of this audience?
Marxist Literary Criticism: General –
- Marx and Engels did not put forward a complicated theory.
- Their views were relaxed and did not include rules.
- Good art always had the freedom to convey what the message behind it is.
- Engels wrote to English novelist Margaret Harkness saying he is ‘far from finding fault with you for not writing a point blank socialist novel… the more the opinion of the author are hidden the better the work of art’ – you have to find out what the authors opinions are by reading in between the lines.
- Marx and Engels had access to ‘great’ art (because of their social class).
- They emphasis the difference between art and propaganda.
- Marxist Literary criticisms tell us that the authors writing suggest their beliefs, values and social class as a whole.
- We no longer see them as creative and inspiring geniuses but writers who have merely been influenced by their environment.
- This not only reflects the content of their work but also how they've written it in terms of formality.
- For instance, British Marxist Critic, Terry Eagleton, suggested that in language 'shared definitions and regularities of grammar both reflect and help constitute a well ordered political state'.
- In other words, if their style of writhing is all the same, the social structure of their society must be in order.
- Catherine Belsey is a prominent critic that argued that the form of ‘realist’ (showing things how they really are) novels show that there are social structures as it observes conventions of society without criticising the reality of it.
- Form’ is the same; chronological order, formal endings/beginnings, plot, characterisations, narration’s point of view.
- The broken parts of forms of drama and fiction by twentieth-century writers like Samuel Beckett (black comedy writer) and Franz Kafka (themes and archetypes of alienation, physical and psychological brutality) are a response to the capitalist society.
- Ken Newton (a Professor at the University of Dundee), states that traditional Marxist criticism usually deals with history in a generalised way.
- This includes conflicts between social classes and clashes of large historical forces.
- However, the criticism looks closely at the interpretation of a particular literary texts rather than discussing specific details of a historical situation.
Terry Eagleton - Why Marx is Right
- Marx was a champion of capitalism
- Capitalism has wealthy and created an unfair system
- Marx wanted everyone to enjoy their life more
- Wealth and poverty were two sides on a coin - showing the contradiction
- Marx thought that capitalism revolutionised the face of the earth
- Marx thought that an ideal society was one without toil (he was a socialist)
- He thought that the purpose of life was to realise one's own power and capacity for themselves.
- The only image of the future is the failure of the present
- People have to realise others in order to realise themselves
- Marx didn't believe in a perfect society - thought it would be better to be messy and imperfect.