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CHAPTER 2 Introduction:
The first difficulty which is often encountered in defining a school of thought or movement is finding general terms which will encompass all that the movement stands for in its entirety. Not least daunting is the task of choosing the main protagonists of the m<?vement, upon whose theories one can claim to find generalisations which justify inclusion of some and exclusion of others, as Erlich puts the position with reference to Russian Formalism: « No individual theoretician, however dynamic or influential, could claim full credit – or assume full blame – for the Formalist methodology. It was a product of intellectual team work rarely paralleled in the history of literary scholarship … ., (Erlich, 1981:70). Even a monolithic deism such as Christianity has its own schisms: Catholicism and Protestantism; established church and nonconformist church; high church and low church ethics; celibate priesthood and matrimonial ministry; established and separatist or syncretic denominations and so forth. It is therefore logical that phenomena without a centrifugal force, like secular schools of thought, philosophies,or even ideologies, should embrace as many variant versions within themselves as there are individual proponents. The.case is not more true of any philosophy than any of those schools of thought or theoretical paradigms which this thesis sets out to discuss, namely, Formalist-Structuralism and New Criticism. With reference to Russian Formalism some five years after its beginning there came a rift between some of the major theoreticians, embodied by the two institutions which formed the Formalist school. (_)n the one hand the Petrograd group was mainly concerned with literary history and resorted to linguistics as an area of ancillary interest, while on the other the Moscow circle of linguists regarded poetics as an integral part of linguistics.The rift between the two groups was personified in the conflict between the linguists Jakobson and Borgatyrev on the one hand, and the literary historians Eikhenbaum and Shlovsky on the other, and the Formalist sympathiser Zirmunskij. As Erlich puts it: « Jakobson stated the case for a consistently linguistic approach to poetry in no uncertain terms … ‘Poetry’, wrote Jakobson, ‘is simply language in its aesthetic function … ‘ » while Eikhenbaum argued that « Poetics is based on the teleological principle and therefore uses as its point of departure the concept of device. Linguistics, like all natural science, revolves around the category of causations, that is, the notion of the phenomenon as such » (Erlich, 1981:95).Zirmunskij, on the other hand, insisted that there was a relationship between literature and society, despite his sympathies with the Formalist critical methods and theories which excluded extra-literary elements in the study of the text. He was attacked by Eikhenbaum, who asserted that Zirmunskij had never been a real Formalist: « Zirmunskij found the Formal method of interest only as one of a set of possible scientific rubrics – as the technique of breaking material down into various groupings. With such a conception of the Formal method, nothing else could have been expected of him than what he in fact produced » (Matejka and Pomorska,1971:23). Zirmunskij eventually parted ways with the Formalists. The gradual disintegration of the Formalist school was noted by Bakhtin (who was not part of the movement), though with some degree of exaggeration: Formalism was no longer the unified movement it had been in its first period, although its basic premises and habits of thinking were still completely intact … The process of dissolution of formalist theory and the disagreement among its practitioners is reaching its climax at the present time [1920s]. Strictly speaking, formalism should now be considered a thing of the past. The movement has no unity. The militant slogans have faded. There have become as many formalisms as there are foi:malists (Bakhtin/Medvedev, 1985:68-9). Despite their major differences on the place of poetics in relation to linguistics, there are, however, some common features of the critical methods of these theorists which guaranteed their continued categorisation or definition as Formalists. The problem of direct discrepancies and incidental ones is also characteristic of the other critics which we are going to discuss here. A comment about our decision to leave out Bakhtin, a contemporary of the Russian Formalists, in the list of theorists selected for detailed attention in our case studies, is perhaps required. Though being rediscovered in certain critical circles,including South African literary studies, Bakhtin’s views, together with his contribution to the study of the literary text, present a three-fold problem: Firstly, he never joined any school of thought, nor wanted to influence any, and never debated issues with Formalists personally; secondly, most of the works which are attributed to him cannot be verified to be his exactly, finally, he did not regard himself as a literary theorist although he brushed shoulders with Futurists, and « whatever else he may have been, Bakhtin was an opponent of canons, and to claim
that any version of him is somehow the correct one would be to straightjacket the philosopher of variety, to ‘monologize’ the singer of ‘polyphony’ » (Clark and Holquist, 1984:4). The controversy over three major works now attributed to Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov is discussed in the detailed biographical discussion of the development of Bakhtin’s thoughts by Clark and Holquist, in a chapter entitled « The Disputed Texts » (1984:146-170). The fact that Bakhtin was influenced by both Formalists and Marxists, thereby suggesting a possible interarticulation between the so-called intrinsic and extrinsic approaches, not only supports this view, but, more importantly, it may be construed as an indication that the proposed syncretic approach advocated in this study could perhaps best be guided by his theories on language and the dialogic nature of literary discourse. The extent to which his theory deviated from the ideas of the Formalists and Structuralists resulted in an incorporation of some of his concepts of post-coloniality in the « postindependence aesthetics » noted above (see chapter 1: section 1.2), and it might wen. be a worthwhile enterprise to consider Bakhtin’s relevance for the study of African literature. However, our focus in this study is primarily on the critical practice of some African critics of oral poetry; whereas Bakhtin’s theories of discourse, particularly the polyphony of voices present in utterances, refer to a different genre,namely novels. It is for this reason that we have excluded him from our selection of case studies. This problem of schism of methodological and theoretical differences also manifests itself in other schools of our choice, and ramifies into a second problem, that of selection. With a school of thought such as, for instance, New Criticism, which attracted a wide variety of rigorous and talented scholars it is not easy to choose representative figures: It is difficult to justify the choice, as we have done here, of I. A. Richards, William Empson, and Cleanth Brooks but exclude F. R.
Leavis, T. S. Eliot, John C. Ransom, John Tate, C. K. Ogden and J. Wood. It may also be argued, as Grabe does, that « this group was not homogeneous, and its members differed radically on many issues – there was no question of a « school » in the sense that Russian Formalism constituted a school » (Grabe, 1985:101). This strengthens our case study approach, for it illuminates individual contributions at one level, and coincidences of analyses at another, partly arising from the universal aspects of language, which cannot be avoided in the reading of any text. We admit the shortcomings of this selection, and that it is not meant to indicate or imply the superiority of some theorists and methodologists over others, but is purely an expedient way of attempting to illustrate by case studies the main purpose of this discussion, which is to compare critical methods applied in the study of South African literature, specifically oral poetry, with the general trend of changes in literary scholarship in general over a certain period of time, in view and context of the debate and search for critical standards for African literature. Implied also is our intention to open up the field for other scholars who may take interest in looking at the contribution of other critics not stlidied here.
ABSTRACf
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
CHAPTER 1: PREliMINARIES
1.1 Introduction
1.2 The debate on critical methods
1.3 Method of this study
CHAPTER 2: CRITICAL METHODS AND CASE STUDIES (1)
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Russian Formalism 1915-1930
2.2.1 Roman Jakobson (1896-1982)
2.2.1.1 Language and Poetics
2.2.1.2 Poetry as verbal art
2.2.2 Viktor Shlovsky (1893-1984)
2.2.2.1 Poeticity of poetry
2.2.3 Jan Mukafuvskf
2.2.3.1 Poetic language
2.2.3.2 Poetry as art
2. 3 Conclusion
CHAPTER 3: CRITICAL METHODS AND CASE STUDIES (2)
3.1 Introduction
3.2 New Criticism
3.2.1 Ivor A. Richards (1893-1979)
3.2.1.1 Functions of meaning in poetry
3.2.1.2 Rhythm and meter
3.2.1.3 Figurative language
3.2.2 William Empson (1906-1984)
3.2.2.1 Verbal analysis of poetry
3.2.3 Cleanth Brooks (1906-)
3.2.3.1 The nature of poetry
3.2.3.2 Images (metaphor and symbol)
3.2.3.3 Rhythm. rhyme and meter
3.2.3.4 Intention and meaning
3.3 Conclusion
CHAPTER 4: CRITICAL METIIODS ON ORAL POETRY (1)
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Critical methods
4.2.1 Isaac Schapera (1905-)
4.2.1.1 The context of Tswana pr~se poetry
4.2.1.2 The poetic structure of praise poetcy
4.2.2 Archibald C. Jordan (1906-1968)
4.2.2.1 Context of oral literature
4.2.2.2 Structure of songs and poetcy
4.2.3 Trevor Cope (1928-)
4.2.3.1 The context of Zulu praise poetcy
4.2.3.2 The poetic structure of praise poetry
4.2.3.3 Thematic structure
4.3 Conclusion
CHAPTER 5: CRITICAL METHODS ON ORAL POETRY (2)
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Critical methods
5.2.1 Daniel P. Kunene (1923-)
5.2.1.1 The context of Sotho praise poetry
5.2.1.2 Grammatical analysis (deverbatives)
5.2.1.3 Classification of eulogues
5.2.1.4 Paragraph versus stanza
5.2.1.5 Parallelism and structure
5.2.1.6 Figurative language
5.3.1 Jeff Opland (1943-)
5.3.1.1 The context of Xhosa oral poetry
5.3.1.2 Critical analysis
5.3.1.3 General structure
5.4 Conclusion
CHAPTER 6: COMPARATIVE META-CRIDCISM
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Assessing proposed syncretic analysis
6.3 Conclusion
BffiUOGRAPHY
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