Types of Context for Literary Works
By definition, anything not contained within the literary text itself is potentially context. However, not all types of context will be germane to any particular literary work. Here are the broad categories of context you will be asked to explore in your papers for this class.
1) Authorial
context
Another term for
this is biographical context. To say that authors write from their own
experiences is an exaggeration (imagination is important, too), but their
lives always influence their work in some way. That does not mean, however,
that the author identifies with the main character or even the narrator, or
that the events in the work actually happened and the author is just reporting
what he or she has witnessed. Authorial context places a particular work
within the context of the author’s life. Did it come at the beginning
of his or her career, in the middle, or at the end? Had that career so
far been successful or not? In some cases, one book represents the entirety
of the career. Consider the circumstances under which the work was written.
What was going on in the author’s life? What personal circumstances,
or specific event, either at the time of composition or in the past, motivated
the author to write it? In short, how does this book fit into the author’s
life and what influence did that life have on it? While exploring biographical
context, useful sources include biographies of the author, autobiographies or
memoirs by the author or by people who knew him or her, and critical works that
give close attention to the author’s life.
2) Socio-historical
context
Literary works usually respond
in some way to the society in which they were written, and most often (though
not always) that response takes the form of criticism. Think about how
this particular work depicts society. With what societal issues is it
concerned? What seems to be the author’s attitude toward society?
If you detect criticism, at whom or what is it directed? How do you think
the author would like to see society changed? Where in the work do you
see evidence of this? Does the work describe real events, or some that
are strikingly similar to real events? Sources you might investigate include
works (books and articles) of history or sociology that talk about the strengths,
weaknesses, and changes occurring in the society during the period in which
the work is set, and critical works that emphasize the connection between the
society and the work.
3) Philosophical
context
Modern authors consciously
or subconsciously address the same questions that have captivated humanity’s
attention ever since we became prosperous enough to have the time and energy
to think about them: “What is the nature of the universe?” and
“What is the individual’s proper response to the universe?” Included in the first question are secondary questions about whether it has
a purpose or meaning, if it ever didn’t exist or if it will ever stop existing,
if it had a creator and, if so, whether he or she or it is still involved or
interested and whether benign, malefic, or indifferent, and any other questions
you can imagine by replacing the word universe with something else (humanity,
life, death, thought, love, God, nature, time). Included in the
second category are all questions of morality and behavior, pleasure and pain,
fate and free will, kindness and cruelty, and so on. How does the author attempt
to answer these questions in this particular work? Since the world a work depicts ois necessarily less complex than reality and absolutely did have a creator, you
can more easily ask what the nature of the work’s universe is,
and what the characters’ proper relationship to that universe should
be. And while everyone answers (or not) the big questions in his or her
own way, philosophy tends to develop trends and fashions just as music, painting,
and clothing do. To consider philosophical context, determine which philosophical
trends the author admires, and which he or she is rejecting. How does
the work demonstrate this? Critical works that explain the relationship
between the work and philosophy are an important source here, but once you
find out which philosopher(s) influenced the work, you
also must find at least one work that explains the philosopher’s ideas, whether
it is written by the philosopher or by someone else (but this person should
not be writing about the work).
4) Literary context
To whatever else
books respond, they also respond to other books. Authors respond to authors
positively, negatively, or both. Consider some of the following questions.
How does this book fit into a broader category of literary works? Can
it be characterized by a particular “-ism?” such as Romanticism, Realism,
Naturalism, Existentialism, Modernism, or Postmodernism? If so, how does it fit into
— and help us define — the larger category, and how can we tell?
How was this work different from what came before it? What other works
or authors influenced it? What other works or authors did it influence
in return? Very often, novelists and poets also write essays explaining
their own theories of writing and why they believe works should be written
in one way and not in another. Did your author write something like that?
Or did someone else write an essay like that with which the author either strongly
agreed or disgreed? How does the work reflect or react against these
principles? Those essays are your best sources here. Of course,
critical works that attempt to answer some of these questions would be useful,
too.
5) Critical context
Once a work
is published, it begins to attract criticism — if it is noticed at all,
anyway. That is, critics begin to write about it, expressing what they
admire and what they dislike about it. Early criticism typically takes
the form of book reviews, which are usually brief and concentrate mostly on
explaining to prospective readers what the work’s subject matter and tone
are, and whether it is any good. Over time, however, critics begin to
reflect more deeply on a work. They are no longer concerned with recommending
that people read it; rather, they assume a significant numbr of people have
already read it, and they attempt to explain something about the work that
the average reader might not have noticed or considered. They point out
hidden meanings, influences, and patterns, and they make connections between
this work and others, and between this author and others. This is the
realm of serious literary criticism. For any paper for this class, critical
works are essential, but you need to distinguish between contemporary reviews
and later, deeper reflection. On the other hand, once deeper critical
reflection has begun to appear, nothing guarantees progress. Unlike in
the sciences, in which later efforts build on earlier ones, in the humanities
it is perfectly possible that something written in 1900 or 1940 will be more
perceptive and exciting to read than something written in 1980. And because
time tends to weed out inferior critical works, just as it tends to weed out
lesser literary works, something written fifty years ago that you can still
find in print is quite likely to be better than something published last week.
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