culture, Popular Culture, The Production and Consumption of Culture, power/ Culture

Topic:- Culture, Popular Culture, The Production and Consumption of Culture, Power / culture

Name:- Upadhyay Devangana S.

Sub:- the cultural Studies

Paper:- 08

Std:- M.A. Sem – 2

Roll No:- 06

Submitted to:- M.K. Bhavnagaar University

           Before we know what is Culture study we have to know what is Culture? Answer of this is

Culture...

• influences our expectations of what is appropriate or inappropriate
• is learned
• reflects the values of a society
• frames our experiences
• provides us with patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling, and interacting

                In summery culture means how we live our life, style of life. We cannot defined any particular definition of the culture because every people have their own culture. Every society and place culture’s definition will be change so it is very difficult to say about culture. Most of the people are unaware for their culture. When we come to know about another culture only that time we become aware about our culture and we able to find different between our and other culture.  Cultural misunderstandings and conflicts arise mostly out of culturally-shaped perceptions and interpretations of each other's cultural norms, values, and beliefs (those elements below the waterline). Entering another culture is like two icebergs colliding - the real clash occurs beneath the water where values and thought patterns conflict.

Now we move on what is Culture study, how it work, where it began?

                         Cultural studies is an academic field of critical theory and literary criticism initially introduced by British academics in 1964 and subsequently adopted by allied academics throughout the world. Characteristically interdisciplinary, cultural studies is an academic discipline aiding cultural researchers who theorize about the forces from which the whole of humankind construct their daily lives. Cultural Studies is not a unified theory, but a diverse field of study encompassing many different approaches, methods and academic perspectives. Distinct from the breadth, objective and methodology of cultural anthropology and ethnic studies, cultural studies is focused upon the political dynamics of contemporary culture and its historical foundations, conflicts and defining traits. Researchers concentrate on how a particular medium or message relates to ideology, social class, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality and gender, rather than providing an encyclopedic identification, categorization or definition of a particular culture or area of the world.^[1]

                            Cultural studies seeks to understand how meaning is generated, disseminated, and produced from the social, political and economic spheres within a given culture. The influential theories of cultural hegemony and agency have emerged from the cultural studies movement as well as the most recent communications theory, which attempts to explain the cultural forces behind globalization. Unique academic approaches to cultural studies have also emerged in the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa and Italy.

                          During the 1980s rise of neo-liberalism in Britain and the new conservatism in America, cultural studies was beset with criticism from both outside political and inside academic forces, due to the close alliance between many cultural studies scholars and Marxist theory, left-wing politics and perceived "triumphalism" by other established scholars. Opposition to cultural studies was most dramatically demonstrated with the 2002 closing of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, UK. CCCS was considered the founding academic program for cultural studies in the world, and was closed due to the result of the Research Assessment Exercise of 2001, a holdover initiative of the Margaret Thatcher-led UK Government of 1986, that determined research funding for university programs. While many of its opponents continue to describe the discipline as "irrelevant," the field has a world-wide presence consisting of numerous annual international conferences, academic programs, publications, students and practitioners, from Taiwan to Amsterdam and from Bangalore to Santa Cruz.

                  Culture studies initially developed in Britain as a reaction against specific disciplinary and political positions. The most important of these were liberal humanism. Specifically the ‘culture and civilization’ tradition in literary studies; orthodox Marxism culture studies developed as part of an engagement with the New left in the 1950 and 1960 and the mass society thesis and the related tradition of media effects research in mass communications studies. Here culture studies took issue with an impoverished view of culture and agency and a ‘Scientific’ – that is to sat, positivist – empiricist research method.

                 In the previous lesson we saw how complex the concept of culture could be. In this lesson we will look at the history of Cultural Studies.

                    Most accounts of the history of Cultural Studies point to the origins of the discipline in the West, and also draw attention to the difference between the British and American variants of Cultural Studies. When we talk of Cultural Studies in India, we need to note that British Cultural Studies has certainly been an important influence. However, the emergence of the area in the Indian context has also been determined by developments in the disciplines of history, art history and the study of cinema. Moreover, much of what we may today view as early work in Cultural Studies was in fact not called Cultural Studies.

                    A working definition of Cultural Studies would be that it is the study of culture in order to understand a society and its politics. While attempting to trace the history of Cultural Studies we need to look at approaches and areas that are clearly related to what we identify as the concerns of Cultural Studies.

·         Popular Culture

              

                      Popular culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of the society.

             The term "popular culture" was coined in the 19th century or earlier. Traditionally, the term has denoted the education and general "culturedness" of the lower classes, as opposed to the "official culture" and higher or the education emanated by the dominant classes.

             The stress in the distinction from "official culture" became more pronounced towards the end of the 19th century a usage that became established by the interbellum period.

                  From the end of World War II, following major cultural and social changes brought by mass media innovations, the meaning of popular culture began to overlap with those of mass culture, media culture, image culture, consumer culture, and culture for mass consumption. Social and cultural changes in the United States were a pioneer in this with respect to other western countries.

            The abbreviated form "pop" for popular, as in pop music, dates from the late 1950s.Although terms "pop" and "popular" are in some cases used interchangeably, and their meaning partially overlap, the term "pop" is narrower. Pop is specific of something containing qualities of mass appeal, while "popular" refers to what has gained popularity, regardless of its style.

                           According to John Storey, there are six definitions of popular culture. The quantitative definition of culture has the problem that much "high culture" (e.g., television dramatizations of Jane Austen) is also "popular". "Pop culture" is also defined as the culture that is "left over" when we have decided what high culture is. However, many works straddle the boundaries, e.g., Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.

Definition: Popular culture is the accumulated store of cultural products such as music, art, literature, fashion, dance, film, television, and radio that are consumed primarily by non-elite groups such as the working, lower, and middle class. There are two opposing sociological arguments in relation to popular culture. One argument is that popular culture is used by the elites (who tend to control the mass media and popular culture outlets) to control those below them because it dulls people’s minds, making them passive and easy to control. A second argument is just the opposite, that popular culture is a vehicle for rebellion against the culture of dominant groups.

                        Owing to the pervasive and increasingly interconnected nature of popular culture, especially its intermingling of complementary distribution sources, some cultural anthropologists, literary, and cultural critics have identified a large amount of intertextuality in popular culture's portrayals of itself. One commentator has suggested this self-referentiality reflects the advancing encroachment of popular culture into every realm of collective experience. "Instead of referring to the real world, much media output devotes itself to referring to other images, other narratives; self-referentiality is all-embracing, although it is rarely taken account of." Furthermore, the commentary on the intertextuality and its self-referential nature has itself become the subject of self-referential and recursive commentary.

                             Many cultural critics have dismissed this as merely a symptom or side-effect of mass consumerism; however, alternate explanations and critique have also been offered. One critic asserts that it reflects a fundamental paradox: the increase in technological and cultural sophistication, combined with an increase in superficiality and dehumanization.

                               Long-running television series The Simpsons routinely alludes to mainstream media properties, as well as the commercial content of the show itself. In the episode "Bartvs. Thanks giving", Bart complains about the crass commercialism of the Macy's Thanks giving Day Parade while watching television. When he turns his head away from the television, the screen shows an oversized inflatable balloon of Bart Simpson floating past.

                     According to television studies scholars specializing in quality television, such as Kristin Thompson, self-referentiality in mainstream American television (especially comedy) reflects and exemplifies the type of progression characterized previously. Thompson argues shows such as The Simpsons use a "...flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the programme as a television show." Extreme examples approach a kind of thematic infinite regress wherein distinctions between art and life, commerce and critique, ridicule and homage become intractably blurred.

See also.

·         The production and Consumption of Culture

                       Max Weber's theory of cultural rationalization and differentiation is well known. For Weber the development of modernity not only involved a long process of differentiation of the capitalist economy and the modern state but also entailed a cultural rationalization with the emergence of separate scientific, aesthetic, and moral value spheres. Weber's (1948) discussion of the differentiation of the cultural sphere from a more rudimentary, holistic, religious cultural core is conducted at a high level of abstraction. Although Weber provides brief glimpses of the way in which each aspect of the cultural sphere is relentlessly driven by its own logic, the way in which values relate to life-style and conduct, and the tensions experienced by intellectuals, the "cultivated man" and the cultural specialist, his prime purpose was to sketch out a typology (Weber 1948:323–24). While we do find fuller discussions of the cultural sphere in the writings of Bell (1976) and Habermas (1981), we need to build on these sources if we seek to understand the particular conjunction of culture in contemporary Western societies. In effect we need to investigate the conditions for the development of the cultural sphere by focusing on particular historical sequences and locations. First, we need to understand the emergence of relatively autonomous culture (knowledge and other symbolic media) in relation to the growth in the autonomy and power potential of specialists in symbolic production.

                                    We therefore need to focus on the carriers of culture and the contradictory pressures that are generated by changing interdependencies and power struggles of the growing fraction within the middle class toward dual processes of (a) the monopolization and separation of a cultural enclave and (b) the demonopolization and diffusion of culture to wider publics. Second, we need to focus on the development of separate institutions and life-styles for cultural specialists and examine the relation between value complexes and conduct in the various life orders, not only in terms of a cultural sphere conceived as the arts and the academy ("high culture") but also in terms of the generation of oppositional countercultures (bohemias, artistic avant-gardes). Third, we need to comprehend the relational dynamic of a parallel development to that of the cultural sphere: the general expansion of cultural production via "culture industries" and the generation of a wider market for cultural and other symbolic goods to produce what has been termed a mass culture or consumers culture . Both tendencies have contributed to the increasing prominence of culture within modern societies—tendencies that threaten to erode and domesticate everyday culture, the taken-for-granted stock of memories, traditions, and myths.

                              Like the pieces of a mosaic, popular culture practices embody a series of different yet, overlapping elements through which unique traditions emerge. For most Americans, popular culture is the way of life in which, and by which, the dominant society lives. As Ray Brown defines it, "popular culture is the everyday culture of a group, large or small, of people." He contends that, in a democracy like the United States, "popular culture is the voice of the people- their practices, likes and dislikes- the lifeblood of their daily existence" (Brown 23). When looking at American popular cultural studies, however, it is important to consider that there are unlimited demonstrations of cultural behavior dictated by history, race, ethnicity, custom, gender, age, locality and group-size conditions. While most would confine the 'popular' aspects of cultural practices to the dominant, it is also important to consider the alternative cultural narratives that have emerged as hybrids from within the margins of American society.                                          Although these cultural elements make up a much smaller component than those of the dominant society, they are uniquely relevant in explaining and emphasizing the fragmentary nature of American popular culture and the extent to which the 'popular' has conditioned and contested the formation of social spaces.

                Because of their exclusion from political power, cultural recognition, mass communication and popular culture, ethnic minorities and immigrants have played an important role in shaping the American post-modem aesthetic for decades. These exclusions, while often generating marginal states of consciousness among minorities, have contributed to the development of 'historical blocs' of oppositional groups. These 'historical blocs'- united by common ideas, dreams, intentions and alienating experiences- signify the fragmentary nature of the post modem sensibility and display the importance of the many overlapping and inter working popular cultures of American society. (Lipsitz 152).

              While popular culture studies have embraced a wide definition of culture, and have resisted any particular set of theories and methodologies, ghettos, barrios and border zones have been the setting for most texts that examine the popular culture of minority groups in United States (Cawelti 5). When immigrants and ethnic minorities assemble in these urban communities, they often settle as ethnic groups and are surrounded by other marginal clusters. Because such communities share with each other similar experiences of alienation on the margins of society, they have produced similarly apparent, yet alternative narratives, influenced by their conflicting desires to challenge ideological hegemony and/or conform to the mainstream of mass popular culture. "Neither assimilationist nor separatist, these groups drew upon 'families of resemblance'

similarities to the experiences and cultures of other groups- to fashion a unity of disunity"

·         Power\ culture

                             Culture can and should play a role in bringing people together, even those with very different world views. Culture can undoubtedly change individual lives. Beyond that though, it can help to solve intractable social and economic problems; to raise understanding between people and nations; and to encourage solutions to some of the major international challenges we all face.

                   With the pressing economic, social and environmental issues which face the international community, the Edinburgh International Culture Summit will create a much needed and rare opportunity to look at the role of culture in government and governments in culture. It creates a significant new platform to think about key issues such as how Ministries of Culture, and their equivalents, can encourage the right environment for helping culture in all its forms to develop and grow.

             The summit also provides an opportunity for Ministers, and other key figures in the international world of culture, to think about, and discuss together, how cultural policy in countries across the world can be enriched by the sharing of international best practice and co-operation.

                 The process of globalisation is transforming all societies and making them increasingly diverse and interconnected. This opens vast new opportunities for exchange and mutual enrichment between persons of different and plural cultures. It is also raising new questions about inclusion, human rights, and sustainability, calling for new competencies.

               Culture is a key resource to address both the economic and social dimensions of poverty and to provide innovative and cross-cutting solutions to complex issues such as health and the environment, gender equality and promoting quality education for all. Cultural and creative industries are some of the most rapidly growing sectors in the world, representing an estimated global value of US$ 1.3 trillion.

                At the same time, culture is a source of wealth in ways that do not have price tags. Culture can help promote social cohesion and youth engagement, and it is a wellspring for social resilience. Culture is a source of identity and cohesion for societies at a time of bewildering change. No development can be sustainable without it.

At this moment of change, when we are rethinking strategies for development and seeking to identify new sources of dynamism, let’s put culture on the agenda as a force for sustainability in development.

         The Power of Culture is a website about culture and development. Culture is not a peripheral matter. The ideas, ideals and creativity of people are the driving force behind development towards more political, economic and social freedom. The Power of Culture reviews art and cultural expressions in conjunction with human rights, education, the environment, emancipation and democratisation. The site offers a list of projects, initiatives and objectives of Dutch organisations active in this area.
                The site also reports on the part played by cultural organisations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and South-east Europe. News and background information illustrate how culture is inextricably entwined with ethics and policy. The Power of Culture also points the way to other internet sources, media and organisations. No development without culture. If culture is defined as the entire system of beliefs, practices and customs that exist in a society, it is the foundation that supports every development. Economic development without cultural roots will never be sustainable. But culture is not merely a vehicle for material progress: it is a goal in itself. It is part of the daily reality and is therefore essential to the development of all people.
All our efforts to achieve the millennium goals will be in vain if we fail to notice the themes that occupy people every day and bypass their creativity.

The Features of Victorian Age

Topic: - features of Victorian Age

Name: - Upadhyay Devangana S.

Sub: - The Victorian Literature

Paper: - 06

Std: - M.A. Sem – 2

Roll No: - 06

Submitted to: - M.K. Bhavnagaer University

·       Introduction:-

                         Strictly speaking, the Victorian era or the Age of Tennyson covers the period from 1832 to 1887. The reign of Queen Victorian extends from 1837 to 1901 but literary movements rarely coincide with the exact year of a royal accession or death. During the last decade of the nineteenth century the ideals which were upheld by the Victorian or more precisely by their mouthpiece, Lord Alfred Tennyson, were put to the anvil. The last decade of the nineteenth century was characterized by a revolt against Victorianism, a wholesale condemnation of the ideals and values which had been cherished during the earlier decades of Queen Victoria’s reign. Hence it shell be valid to mark the dates of the Victorian era from 1832 to 1887. In this connection W. H. Hudson writes, “ Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, and it was during the decade between 1830 and 1840 that many of the writers who were to add special distinction to her reign their work. But, though her own life extended till 1901. We may conveniently take the year of her jubilee – 1887 – as marking the close of an epoch. By that time a fresh race in literature had arisen, while those of the former generation who still survived had nothing of importance to add to their production and indeed, like Tennyson’s Bedivere, found themselves ‘ among new men, strange faces, other minds’.

                       The Victorian age is one of the most remarkable periods in the history of England. It was an era of material affluence, political consciousness, democratic reforms, industrial and mechanical progress, empire building and religious uncertainty. There were a number by the Victorians, while from a whole class of adverse critics could be heard a scathing criticism of the values held dear by the Victorian. While Macaulay trumpeted the progress that the Victorians had made, Ruskin and Carlyle, Arnold, Lytton Strachey and Trollope raised frowns of disfavor against the soul – killing materialism of the age. Carlyle, himself a hostile critic of the age, admired L. H. Myer’s reference to ‘ the deep – seated spiritual vulgarity that lies at the heart of our civilization’ Symonds detected in the Victorian period, whatever may be its buoyancy and promise, elements of ‘world fatigue,’ which were quite alien to the Elizabethan age, with which the Victorian era is often compared. Whatever may be the defects of the Victorian way of life, it cannot be denied that it was n many ways a glorious epoch in history of English literature and the advancement made in the field of poetry, prose and fiction was really commendable.

                      The Victorian age was essentially a period of peace and prosperity for England. The few colonial wars that broke out during this period exercised little adverse effects on the national life. The Crimean War, of course, caused a stir in England, but its effects were soon forgotten and the people regained the normal tenor of their lives without feeling the aftermaths of war in their round of daily activities. In the earlier years of the age, the effect of the French Revolution was still felt, but by the middle of the century, it had almost completely dwindled and England felt safe from any revolutionary upsurge disturbing the placidity and peaceful existence of its life. On the whole, it was a comparatively peaceful reign when Englishmen secure in their island base, could complete the transformation of all aspects of their interruptions that gave quite a different quality to the history of continental nation. It was an era when the ‘war drum throbb’d no longer’ and the people felt safe and secure in their island home.

                   Peace brought material advancement and industrial progress in the country. The Industrial Revolution during this age transformed the agrarian economy of England into an industrial economy. Mills and factories were established at important centers, and the whole of England hummed with rattle of looms and booms of weaving machines.

                         Industrial advancement created social unrest and economic distress among the masses. The Industrial Revolution while creating the privileged class of capitalists and mill – owners, rolling in wealth and riches, also brought in its wake the semi – starved and ill – clad lass of labourers and factory workers who were thoroughly dissatisfied with their miserable lot. National wealth increased but it was not equitably distributed. A new class of landed aristocracy and mill – owners sprang up. They looked with eyes of disdain and withering contempt on the lot of the ragged and miserable factory hands. Conditions of life held no charm for labourers and workers in the field, for they were required to dwell in slum areas with no amenities of life attending them at any stage of their miserable existence. There were scenes of horrid despair witnessed in the lives of the poor. Whirligig of time, a wave of social unrest, swept over England, and the ulcers of this apparently opulent society were drought to the surface by writers like Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle and Arnold. The deplorable state of the debtor’s prison, the Fleet and the Marshalsea, the dismal abysses of elementary education, the sorry type of nurses available in sickness the oppression of little children the prevalence of religions hypocrisy – these and many other dark corners in the life of England were illuminated b the searchlight of Dickens genius.

                The woeful and deplorable condition of labourers miners, debtors and prisoners soon caught the eyes of social reformers, and a stage was prepared or ameliorating the lot of the downtrodden and the under – dogs of an affluent society. The Victorian ear, therefore witnessed vigorous social reforms and a line of crusading humanitarian reformers who sought to do away with the festering sores and seething maladies of the Victorian age. The Victorian age is, therefore an age of humanitarian considerations and social uplift for the masses.

                      In the course of the Victorian era there developed among the increasingly large number of literary men and woman and philanthropic social reformers a humanist attitude to life which was not a matter of creed and dogmas, but a recognition of the love and loyalty that the works of Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Carlyle and Ruskin, we notice the crusading zeal of the literary artists to bring about salutary reforms in the social, political and economic life of the country.

                 The growing importance of the masses and the large number of factory hands gave a spurt to the Reform Bills, which heralded the birth of democratic consciousness among the Victorian people. The Victorian age witnessed a conflict between aristocracy and plutocracy on the one hand, and democracy and socialism on the other hand. The advance in the direction of democracy was well marked out, and in spite of the protests of Tennyson and Carlyle, its sweeping tide could not be stemmed. The long struggle of the Anglo – Saxons for personal liberty is definitely settled, and democracy becomes the established order of the day. The king and peers are both stripped of their power and left as figure – heads of a past civilization. The last vestige of personal government and the divine right of rulers disappear; the House of Commons becomes the ruling power in England and a series of new reform bills rapidly extend the suffrage until the whole body of English people choose for themselves the men who shall represent them.

                 England witnessed expansion in the field of education. The passing of the Education Acts was landmark in the history of education in the country. A large reading public was prepared to welcome the outpourings of novelists, poets and social reformers. The press also came into its own and became a potent force in awakening political consciousness among the people of this age.

                     There was a phenomenal growth in population during the Victorian age. The population of Great Britain at the time of the first census in 1801 was about ten and a half millions. By 1901 it had grown to thirty seven millions. More and more of territorial expansion was needed for the habitation of this growing population and England during this age marched on the course of empire building and establishing its hegemony in countries where the light of civilization had not yet advanced.

                    There was an unprecedented intellectual and scientific advancement during the Victorian age. Ti was a period of intellectual ferment and scientific thinking. Science, once a sealed book saves to an elect few was democratized and more and more scientific works like Darwin’s Origin of Species. The man of science was regarded on more an academic recluse, but as a social figure exercising a deep and profound influence on the social and educational life of the age.

                In spite of the advance of science and the various scientific discoveries the general tenor of life was still governed by religious and moral considerations. The Victorians were moralists at heart, and religion was the sheet anchor of their lives. There was a marked conflict between religion and science, between moralists and scientists, each outdoing the other, but the current of religious thought was not chilled. It was an age in which Prime – ministers raised echoes of a submerged religious vocabulary in their speeches and novels. The Oxford Movement represents the revival of the old Roman Catholic religion and the authority of the church at a time when science was challenging the religious thought of the age.

                       In domestic life the Victorian upheld the authority of parents over children. In the Barrets of wimpole Street we have a vivid picture of parental authority and the subjugation of children to the will of the head of the family. Emphasis was laid on authority and reverence for the elders. Women were relegated to a lower place. They were expected to cultivate domestic virtues, rear up children and look after the home and Mrs. Ellis in the Women of England outlined the role of the female sex as being of service to the male members of the family. “The first thing of importance,” she said, “was to be inferior to men, inferior in strength.” Education was a closed book for most of the women, and the idea of establishing women’s colleges was ridiculed by Tennyson, the national poet, in the princess.

                            The Victorian laid emphasis on order, decorum and decency. To talk of duty honour, the obligation of obligation f being a gentleman, the responsibility of matrimony, and the sacredness of religious belief was to be Victorian. “The Victorian we are told, “were a poor, blind, complacent people,” yet they were torn by doubt, spiritually bewildered, lost in a troubled universe. They were cross materialists wholly absorbed in the present quite unconcerned with abstract varieties and eternal values but they were also excessively religious, lamentably idealistic, nostalgic for the past, and ready to forego present delights for a vision of a world beyond despite their slavish “conformity,” their purblind respect for convention, they were, we learn, “rugged individualists,” give to “doing as one like,” needless of culture, shipped the idols of authority. They were, besides, at once sentimental humanitarians and hard – boiled exponents of free enterprise. Politically they were governed by narrow insular prejudice, but swayed by dark imperialistic designs. Intellectually and emotionally they believed in progress, denied original sin, and affirmed the death of the Devil, yet y temperament they were patently Manichaeans to whom living was a desperate struggle between the force of good and the power of darkness. While they professed “manliness” they yielded to feminine standards: if they emancipated woman from age – oil bondage, the also robbed her of a vital place in society. Though they were sexually inhibited and even failed to consider the existence of physical love, they begot incredibly large families and flaunted art constitutes a shameless record of both hypocrisy and ingenuousness, and their literature remains too purposeful, propagandistic, didactic, aesthetic, with too palpable a design upon the reader; yet it is clearly so romantic, aesthetic, ‘escapist’, that it carries to posterity but a tale of little meaning,”. Whatever we may say of Europe between Waterloo and Sedan,” wrote John Morley:-

In our county at least it was an fepoch of hearts lifted

With hope, and brains active with sober and manly

Reason for the common good. Some ages are marked as sentimental,

Others stand conspicuous as rational. The Victorian age

Was happier than most in the flow of both these currents into

A common stream of vigorous and effective talent.

New truths were welcomed in free minds and minds make brave men.”

                           Our study of Victorian background will not be complete without adding a few line about the Victorian compromise The Victorian sought a happy compromise when they were faced with radical problems. They were not willing to be dominated by one extreme viewpoint and in a welter of confusing issues they struck out a pleasing compromise. Victorian compromise was particularly perceptible in three branches of life. In the field of political life there was a compromise between democracy and aristocracy. While accepting the claims of the rising masses to political equality they defended the rights of aristocracy. While reposing their faith in progress in the political sphere they were not ready for revolutionary upsurges disturbing the settled order of life. Progressive ideals were reconciled with conservative leanings for an established order of society. In the field of religion and science, a satisfying compromise was affected. The advances made by science were accepted, but the claims of old religion were not ignored. The Victorian took up compromising position between faith of religion and doubt created by science.

There remains more faith in honest doubt

Believe me than in half the creeds.

                      “ They desired to be assured that all for the best; they desired to discover some compromise which while not outraging their intellect and their reason, would none the less soothe their conscience and restore their faith, if not completely at least sufficiently to allow them to believe in some ultimate purpose and more important still, in the life after death. In voicing these doubts, in phrasing the inevitable compromise Tennyson found and endeavored passionately to fulfill his appointed mission.”

                    In the field of sex, the Victorian made a compromise. The sex problem was the most blatant and persistent. In this field their object was to discover some middle course between the unbridled licentiousness of previous ages and the complete negation of the functions and purposes of nature. The Victorians permitted indulgence in sex but restricted its sphere to conjugal felicity and happy marred life. They disfavored physical passion and illegal gratification of sex impulse. They could not contemplate the possibility of any relation between man and woman other than the conjugal. In Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot we are introduced to ‘two young lovers walking together in the moonlight but we are at once reassured by the statement that these two lovers were ‘lately wed’. The Victorian of the sex urge by illegal and unauthorized methods.

                             The Victorian age was one of the most remarkable periods in the history of English Literature. It witnessed the flowering of poetry in the hands of host of poets, great and small. Ti marked in the growth of the English novel, and laid the foundation of English prose on a surer footing.

                          The note of individuality was the hall mark of Victorian literature. The literary figures of the Victorian age were endowed with marked originality in outlook, character and style. “In Macaulay there was much of the energy and enterprise of the self – mad man. Tennyson loved to sing the praises of sturdy independence. In Dickens books there are, perhaps more originals than in those of any other novelist in the world. The Bronte sisters pursued their lonely path in life with the pride and endurance learnt at the Haworth parsonage. Carlyle and Browning cultivated manner full of eccentricity and even Thackeray though more regular in style than his contemporaries loved to follow a haphazard path in the conduct of his stories indulging in unbounded license of comment and digression.”

                        The Victorian age was essentially the age of prose and novel. “Though the age produced many poets, and two who deserve to rank among the greatest,” says W.J. Long;

“Nevertheless this is emphatically an age of

Prose and novel. The novel in this ge fills a place

Which the dream held in the beys of

Elizabeth; and never before, inany age or language, has the novel

Appeared in such numbers and in such perfection.”

                    

                             Victorian Literature in its varied aspects was marked by a deep moral note. “The second marked characteristic of the age is that literature both in prose and poetry, seems to depart from the purely artistic standard of art’s sake and to be actuated by a definite moral purpose.” Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin were primarily interested in their message to their countrymen. They were teachers of England and were inspired by a conscious moral purpose to uplift and instruct their fellowmen. Behind the fun and sentiment of Dickens, the social miniatures of Thackeray, the psychological studies of George Eliot, lay hidden a definite moral purpose to sweep away error and to bring out vividly in unmistakable terms the underlying truth of human life.

·         Conclusion:-

                  In one direction the literature of the Victorian age achieved a salient and momentous advance over the literature of the Romantic Revival. The poets of the Romantic Revival were interested in nature, in the past and in a lesser degree in art but they were not intensively interested in men and woman. To Wordsworth the dalesmen of the lakes were a part of the scenery they moved in. He treated human beings as natural objects and divested them of the complexities and passions of life as it is lived. The Victorian poets and novelist laid emphasis on men and women and imparted to them the same warmth and glow which the Romantic poets had given to nature.

“The Victorian Age extended to the complexities of human life, the imaginative sensibility which its predecessor had brought to bear on nature and history. The Victorian poets and novelists added humanity to nature and art as the subject matter of literature”

Archetypal inductive and deductive theory

Topic: - Archetypal inductive and deductive theory

Name: - Upadhyay Devangana S.

Sub: - Literary Theory & Criticism

Paper: - 07

Std: - M.A. Sem – 2

Roll No: - 07

Submitted to: - M.K. Bhavnager University

 

                                  Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), which led to the reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake. His lasting reputation rests principally on the theory of literary criticism that he developed in Anatomy of Criticism (1957), one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. The American critic Harold Bloom commented at the time of its publication that Anatomy established Frye as "the foremost living student of Western literature." Frye's contributions to cultural and social criticism spanned a long career during which he earned widespread recognition and received many honours.

                      Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec but raised in Moncton, New Brunswick, Frye was the third child of Herman Edward Frye and of Catherine Maud Howard. His much older brother, Howard, died in World War I; he also had a sister, Vera. Frye went to Toronto to compete in a national typing contest in 1929. He studied for his undergraduate degree at Victoria, where he edited the college literary journal, Acts Victoriana. He then studied theology at Emmanuel College (like Victoria College, a constituent part of the University of Toronto). After a brief stint as a student minister in Saskatchewan, he was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Canada. He then studied at Merton College, Oxford, before returning to Victoria College, where he spent the remainder of his professional career.

                      As A. C. Hamilton outlines in Northrop Frye: Anatomy of his Criticism, Frye's assumption of coherence for literary criticism carries important implications. Firstly and most fundamentally, it presupposes that literary criticism is a discipline in its own right, independent of literature. Claiming with John Stuart Mill that "the artist . . . is not heard but overheard," Frye insists that

                  The axiom of criticism must be, not that the poet does not know what he is talking about, but that he cannot talk about what he knows. To defend the right of criticism to exist at all, therefore, is to assume that criticism is a structure of thought and knowledge existing in its own right, with some measure of independence from the art it deals with (Anatomy 5).This "declaration of independence" (Hart xv) is necessarily a measured one for Frye. For coherence requires that the autonomy of criticism, the need to eradicate its conception as "a parasitic form of literary expression . . . a second-hand imitation of creative power" (Anatomy 3), sits in dynamic tension with the need to establish integrity for it as a discipline. For Frye, this kind of coherent, critical integrity involves claiming a body of knowledge for criticism that, while independent of literature, is yet constrained by it: "If criticism exists," he declares, "it must be an examination of literature in terms of a conceptual framework derivable from an inductive survey of the literary field" itself

                 In literary criticism the term archetype denotes recurrent narratives designs, patterns of action character – types, theme, and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even social rituals. Such recurrent items are held to be the result of element and universal forms or patterns in the human psyche, whose effective embodiment in a literary work evokes a profound response from the attentive reader, because he or she shares the psychic archetypes expressed by the author, An important antecedent of the literary theory of the archetype was the treatment of myth by a group of comparative anthropologists at Cambridge University, especially James. Frazer, who’s “The Golden Bough” (1890 – 1915) identified elemental patterns of myth and ritual that, claimed recur in the legends and ceremonials of diverse and far – flung cultures and religions. An even more important antecedent was the depth psychology of Carl G. Jung (1875 – 1961) who applied the term “archetype“to what he called” primordial images “, the “psychic residue” of repeated patterns of experience in our very ancient ancestors which he maintained survive in the “collective unconscious “of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dream, and private fantasies, as well as in works of literature.

              Archetypal literary criticism is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes (from the Greek archē, or beginning, and typos, or imprint) in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types in literary work. As a form of literary criticism, it dates back to 1934 when Maud Bodkin published Archetypal Patterns in Poetry.

                Archetypal literary criticism’s origins are rooted in two other academic disciplines, social anthropology and psychoanalysis; each contributed to literary criticism in separate ways, with the latter being a sub-branch of critical theory. Archetypal criticism was at its most popular in the 1940s and 1950s, largely due to the work of Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. Though archetypal literary criticism is no longer widely practiced, nor have there been any major developments in the field, it still has a place in the tradition of literary studies

                       In The Golden Bough Frazer identifies with shared practices and mythological beliefs between primitive religions and modern religions. Frazer argues that the death-rebirth myth is present in almost all cultural mythologies, and is acted out in terms of growing seasons and vegetation. The myth is symbolized by the death (i.e. final harvest) and rebirth (i.e. spring) of the god of vegetation. As an example, Frazer cites the Greek myth of Persephone, who was taken to the Underworld by Hades. Her mother Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, was so sad that she struck the world with fall and winter. While in the underworld Persephone ate 6 of the 12 pomegranate seeds given to her by Hades. Because of what she ate, she was forced to spend half the year, from then on, in the underworld, representative of autumn and winter, or the death in the death-rebirth myth. The other half of the year Persephone was permitted to be in the mortal realm with Demeter, which represents spring and summer, or the rebirth in the death-rebirth myth.

                 Bodkin’s Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, the first work on the subject of archetypal literary criticism, applies Jung’s theories about the collective unconscious, archetypes, and primordial images to literature. It was not until the work of the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye that archetypal criticism was theorized in purely literary terms. The major work of Frye’s to deal with archetypes is Anatomy of Criticism but his essay “The Archetypes of Literature” is a precursor to the book. Frye’s thesis in “The Archetypes of Literature” remains largely unchanged in Anatomy of Criticism. Frye’s work helped displace New Criticism as the major mode of analyzing literary texts, before giving way to structuralism and semiotics.

             Frye’s work breaks from both Frazer and Jung in such a way that it is distinct from its anthropological and psychoanalytical precursors.

                In his remarkable and influential book Anatomy of Criticism N. Frye developed the archetypal approach and the practice of literary criticism.

                  There are two basic categories in Frye’s framework, i.e. comedic and tragic. Each category is further subdivided into two categories: Comedy and romance for the comedic: tragedy and satire for the tragic. Though he is dismissive of Frazer, Frye uses the seasons in his archetypal scheme. Each season is aligned with a literary genre: comedy with spring romance with summer, tragedy with autumn and satire with winter.

·        Comedy is aligned with spring because the genre of comedy is characterized by the birth of the hero, revival and resurrection. Also spring symbolizes the defeat of winter and darkness.

·        Romance and summer are paired together because summer is the culmination of life in the seasonal calendar, and the romance genre culminates with some sort of triumph, usually a marriage.

·        Autumn is the dying stage of the seasonal calendar, which parallels the tragedy genre because it is known for the “fall” or demise of the protagonist.

·        Satire is metonymies with winter on the grounds that satire is a “dark” genre. Satire is a disillusioned and mocking from of the three other genres. It is noted for its darkness dissolution, the return of chaos and the defeat of the heroic figure.

The context of a genre determines how a symbol or image is to be interpreted. Frye outline five different sphere in his schema: human, animal, vegetation, mineral, and water.

·        The comedic human world is representative of wish – fulfillment and being community centered. In contrast, the tragic human world is of isolation, tyranny, and the fallen hero.

·        Animal in the comedic genres are docile and pastoral (e.g. sheep), while animal are predatory and hunters in the tragic 9e.g. wolves)

·        For the realm of vegetation the comedic is, again, pastoral but also represented by gardens, parks, rose and lotuses. As for the tragic, vegetation is of a wild forest, or as being barren.

·        Cities temples, or precious stones represent the comedic mineral realm. The tragic mineral realm is noted for being a desert, ruins, or “of sinister geometrical images”.

·        Lastly the water realm is represented by rivers in the comedic. With the tragic, the seas, and especially floods, signify the water sphere.

          Frye admits that his schema in “The Archrtypes of Literature” is simplistic, but makes room for exception by noting that there are neutral archetypes. The example he cites are islands such as Circe’s which cannot be categorized under the tragic or comedic.

·        Definition of Inductive theory:-

“The philosophical definition of inductive reasoning is much more nuanced than simple progression from particular/individual instances to broader generalizations. Rather, the premises of an inductive logical argument indicate some degree of support (inductive probability) for the conclusion but do not entail it; that is, they suggest truth but do not ensure it. In this manner, there is the possibility of moving from general statements to individual instances (for example, statistical syllogisms, discussed below).

Though many dictionaries define inductive reasoning as reasoning that derives general principles from specific observations, this usage is outdated.^”

·        Definition of deductive theory

Deductive reasoning happens when a researcher works from the more general information to the more specific. Sometimes this is called the “top-down” approach because the researcher starts at the top with a very broad spectrum of information and they work their way down to a specific conclusion. For instance, a researcher might begin with a theory about his or her topic of interest. From there, he or she would narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that can be tested. The hypotheses are then narrowed down even further when observations are collected to test the hypotheses. This ultimately leads the researcher to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data, leading to a confirmation (or not) of the original theory and arriving at a conclusion.

Developing an inductive, or grounded, theory generally follows the following steps:

·         Research design: Define your research questions and the main concepts and variables involved.

·         Data collection: Collect data for your study using any of the various methods (field research, interviews, surveys, etc.)

·         Data ordering: Arrange your data chronologically to facilitate easier data analysis and examination of processes.

·         Data analysis: Analyze your data using methods of your choosing to look for patterns, connections, and significant findings.

·         Theory construction: Using the patterns and findings from your data analysis, develop a theory about what you discovered.

·         Literature comparison: Compare your emerging theory with the existing literature. Are there conflicting frameworks, similar frameworks, etc.?

                  Deductive reasoning works from the more general to the more specific. Sometimes this is informally called a "top-down" approach. We might begin with thinking up a theory about our topic of interest. We then narrow that down into more specific hypotheses that we can test. We narrow down even further when we collect observations to address the hypotheses. This ultimately leads us to be able to test the hypotheses with specific data -- a confirmation (or not) of our original theories. Let it see through the chart.

          

      Inductive theory is the reveres process of this. In inductive theory Conformation come first then Observation, Hypothesis and Theory. This theory also known as “Bottom – up” approach.

 

                       These two methods of reasoning have a very different "feel" to them when you're conducting research. Inductive reasoning, by its very nature, is more open-ended and exploratory, especially at the beginning. Deductive reasoning is more narrow in nature and is concerned with testing or confirming hypotheses. Even though a particular study may look like it's purely deductive (e.g., an experiment designed to test the hypothesized effects of some treatment on some outcome), most social research involves both inductive and deductive reasoning processes at some time in the project. In fact, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that we could assemble the two graphs above into a single circular one that continually cycles from theories down to observations and back up again to theories. Even in the most constrained experiment, the researchers may observe patterns in the data that lead them to develop new theories.

                  Deduction: In the process of deduction, you begin with some statements, called 'premises', that are assumed to be true, you then determine what else would have to be true if the premises are true. For example, you can begin by assuming that God exists, and is good, and then determine what would logically follow from such an assumption. You can begin by assuming that if you think, then you must exist, and work from there. In mathematics you can begin with some axioms and then determine what you can prove to be true given those axioms. With deduction you can provide absolute proof of your conclusions, given that your premises are correct. The premises themselves, however, remain unproven and unprovable, they must be accepted on face value, or by faith, or for the purpose of exploration.

                   Induction: In the process of induction, you begin with some data, and then determine what general conclusion(s) can logically be derived from those data. In other words, you determine what theory or theories could explain the data. For example, you note that the probability of becoming schizophrenic is greatly increased if at least one parent is schizophrenic, and from that you conclude that schizophrenia may be inherited. That is certainly a reasonable hypothesis given the data. Note, however, that induction does not prove that the theory is correct. There are often alternative theories that are also supported by the data. For example, the behavior of the schizophrenic parent may cause the child to be schizophrenic, not the genes. What is important in induction is that the theory does indeed offer a logical explanation of the data. To conclude that the parents have no effect on the schizophrenia of the children is not supportable given the data, and would not be a logical conclusion.

Comparison of two reasoning:-

Properties of Deduction

• In a valid deductive argument, all of the content of the conclusion is present, at least implicitly, in the premises. Deduction is nonampliative.
• If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Valid deduction is necessarily truth preserving.
• If new premises are added to a valid deductive argument (and none of its premises are changed or deleted) the argument remains valid.
• Deduction is erosion-proof.
• Deductive validity is an all-or-nothing matter; validity does not come in degrees. An argument is totally valid, or it is invalid.

Properties of Induction

• Induction is ampliative. The conclusion of an inductive argument has content that goes beyond the content of its premises.
• A correct inductive argument may have true premises and a false conclusion. Induction is not necessarily truth preserving.
• New premises may completely undermine a strong inductive argument. Induction is not erosion-proof.
• Inductive arguments come in different degrees of strength. In some inductions, the premises support the conclusions more strongly than in others.