Literary text analysis in Modern Literary theory
Literary text analysis in Modern Literary theory1. The subject matter of literary text analysis
2. The methodological basis of literary text analysis
The object of literary text analysis is a literary text. Terry Eagleton (based on Russian formalists Boris Tomashevsky, Yury Tynyarov). He thought that literary text is created by peculiar use of language formed in various ways: “Under the pressure of literary devices ordinary language is intensified, condensed, twisted, turned on its head”.
The subject matter of literary text analysis is the text artistic language and text aesthetic properties generally knows as: literariness, poeticity, expressiveness, functionality.
Literariness is a set of language aesthetic properties of a text, which presupposes a recognizable social reality and as such can be considered in terms of a conventionalized cultural tradition. (L. Jakobson, 1921).
The term poeticity implies that words and their composition, their meaning, their external and inner form acquire a weigh and value of their own instead of referring indifferently to reality.
Expressiveness adds an emotional edge to the logical neutralities (?) of the lingual expression.
Literary expression is achieved by a variety of verbal procedures from the purely acoustically meaningful like alliteration to their broadest textual…
In terms of fictionality a work of literature can be defined as a verbal text modeled upon the real physical and social world to which meanings in the text are related.
Wolfgang Iser: A literary work has two poles: the aesthetic and the artistic. The artistic pole is the author’s text and the authentic is the realization accomplished by the reader.
The text has virtual characteristics that cannot be reduced to the reality of the text itself of the subjectivity of the reader and it derives by its dynamism from that virtuality:
Literary text analysis: literary history, literary theory, literary criticism.
Literary theory or poetics, describes the principles of literature, it’s genres, techniques and functions.
History views literature as a part of historical process. Criticism studies and analyses works and their authors often from specific theoretical approaches such as Marxism or feminism.
Approaches to literary text analysis: author-oriented, text-oriented, reader-oriented, context-oriented.
Text-oriented is primarily concerned with question of language and style and the formal structure of literary works.
Author-oriented tries to establish connections between the work of art and the biography of its creator.
Reader-oriented focuses of the reception of texts and the texts’ general impact on the audience.
Context-oriented approach tries to place literary texts against a background of historical, social or political developments, attempting to classify text according to the genres and historical periods.
Meyer H. Abrans
Traditional perspectives of literary text analysis
1) Mimetic: interested in the world that the text reveals
2) Pragmatic: focused on the text’s impact upon the reader
3) Expressive: concerned with the origin of the text
4) Objective: considers the quality of the text itself
Literary work: universe, artist, audience.
Speaker 1: reader-response criticism


