Marxism Theory by Karl Max, et al An approach to literary criticism

1. Prepared by: Monica San Juan

3. • Begin in the 19th century as a pragmatic view of
history that offered the working classes of society
an opportunity to change their world
• It offered humanity a social, political, economic,
and cultural understanding of the nature of
reality, society and the individual.

4. • Root of Marxist literary
theory
• Born in Tier, Germany in
1818
• His writings became the
basis of Marxism
Approach.
• Died on 14 March 1883

5. Marxism
Our place in the
society determine
our consciousness
study the
relationship between
a text and the
society that reads it.
focuses
on class relations
and societal conflict
People’s
experiences are
responsible for
shaping and
developing an
individual personal’s
consciousness

6. Works
of
Marx
German
Ideology
Das Capital
The
Communist
Manifesto

7. • Marx declares that “consciousness does not
determine life: life determines consciousness.”
• Humans define themselves.
• He said that our ideas and concepts about
ourselves fashioned in everyday discourse in the
language of real life.

8. • Core belief of Marxism
• Marx believed that society had progressed from one
economic system to another
• As society progresses from a feudal system to a more
market-based economy, the actual process from
producing, distributing, and consuming goods becomes
more complex
• People’s functions within the economic system become
differentiated.

9. 1. Base
Engenders and controls all human institutions and
ideologies
2. Superstructure
All social and legal institutions, political and
educational systems, religions, and art

10. Feudalism
(Social System)
Capitalism
(Production for profit)
Socialism
(Social Ownership)
Communism
(Society’s ultimate goal “the worker’s paradise”)

11. Proletariat
• class of society which
does not have ownership
of the means of
production.
Bourgeoisie
• wealthy class that rules
society.

12. • States that the history of all existing societies is
the history of class struggle
• They declare that the capitalists, or the
bourgeoisie, had successfully enslaved the
working class, or the proletariat through
economic policies and production of goods.

13. • History became the basis for 20th century
Marxism, socialism, and communism
• History, an understanding of people and their
actions and beliefs is determined by economic
conditions.
• Marx maintains that an intricate web of social
relationships emerges when any group of people
engage in the production of goods.

14. • The ideology of a society such as the
beliefs, values and culture is determined
by the upper class.
• The rich become richer, while the poor
become poorer

16. Proponents and their contributions

17. • G. K. Plehanov – Translated “The Communist
Manifesto”
• Russia – first country to promote Marxist
principles
• Leon Trotsky – became the founding father of
Marxist literary criticism as he authored
Literature and Revolution (1925)

18. • Believed that a detailed analysis of symbols, images and
other literary devices (formalism) would expose class
conflict and expose the relationship between the
superstructure and the base
• Reflectionism
Approach to literary analysis declaring that texts
directly reflect a society's consciousness
Emphasizing negative effects of capitalism such as
alienation

19. • Neo-Marxist group devoted to developing western
Marxist principles
• A text reveals a culture’s fragmentation and not its
wholeness

20. • He said that there is a complex relationship
between the base and the superstructure
• The bourgeoisie establish and maintain what he
calls hegemony
• As sustainers of the economic base, the
dominant class thus enjoys the prestige of the
masses and controls the ideology that shapes
individual consciousness
• Literature actually concerns itself with the
bourgeoisie

21. • Production Theory
The superstructure can and does influence the base
• Althusser believes that the prevailing ideology
forms the attitudes of people in society through a
process he calls interpellation or “hailing the
subject.”
• The people’s worldview is thus craftily shaped by
a complex network of messages sent to them
through the elements contained in the
superstructure, including the arts.

22. • Fredric Jameson believes that the function of
literary analysis is to uncover the political
unconscious present in a text.
He said that all critics must be aware of their own
ideology when analyzing a text and must therefore
possess dialectical self-awareness.

23. • Terry Eagleton
Believes that literature is neither a product of pure
inspiration nor the product of the author's feelings.
Literature is a product of an ideology. This ideology is a
result of the social interactions that occur between
people in definite times and locations.
The critic’s task is to reconstruct an author’s ideology.

25. • Marxism is not primarily a literary theory that can
be used to interpret a text.
• It is a set of social, economic, and political ideas
that its followers believe will enable them to
interpret and more importantly, change the world.

26. • Marxism is material, not spiritual.
• All of our actions and responses to such
activities are related in some way to our culture.
• In order to understand ourselves and our world,
we must first acknowledge the interrelatedness
of all our actions within the society.
• It is our cultural and our social circumstances
that determine who we are.

27. • The structure of our society is built on a series of
ongoing conflicts between social classes.
• Capitalists control the society’s ideology or social
consciousness (hegemony)
• The focus of literature is the relationship of a
society’s superstructure to other elements and to
the base.
• Marxism addresses the cry of working class

29. Marxism
Class
Struggle
Ideology
expressed
by author
Bourgeoisie
vs.
Proletariat

30. • Concerns for the working classes and the
individual
• Recognizing the interrelatedness of all human
activities
• Deals with more than the conventional literary
themes, matters of style, plot, characterization
and the usual emphasis on figures of speech and
other literary devices

31. 1. Author’s life
2. Time/period in which the text was written
3. Cultural milieu
4. Ideology expressed by the author

32. • Expressed by the author, as evidenced through
his or her fictional world, and how this ideology
interacts with the reader’s personal ideology.
• Expose class conflict with the dominant class
and its ideology being imposed

33. • The task of the critic is to uncover the ideology
and show how such a destructive ideology
entraps the working classes and oppresses them
in every area of their lives.
• A critic may begin by showing how an author’s
text reflects his or her ideology through an
examination of the fictional world’s characters.
Setting, society, or any other aspect of the text.
• It could also be by examining the history and the
culture of the times reflected in the text

34. 1. Is there an outright rejection of socialism in the
work?
2. Does the text raise fundamental criticism about
the emptiness of life in bourgeois society?
3. In portraying society, what approximation of
totality does the author achieve? What is
emphasized? What is ignored?
4. How well is the fate of the individual linked
organically to the nature of societal forces?
What are the work’s conflicting forces?

35. 5. At what points are actions or solutions to
problems forced or unreal?
6. Are characters from all social levels equally well
sketched?
7. What are the values of each class in the work?
8. What is valued most? Sacrifice? Assent?
Resistance?

36. 9. How clearly do narratives of disillusionment and
defeat indicate that bourgeoisie values
(competition, acquisitiveness, chauvism) are
incompatible with human happiness?
10.Does the protagonist defend or defect from the
dominant values of society? Are those values in
ascendancy or decay?