West European Studies

The decay of the aura as Benjamin understands it comes about as a result of absence rather than presence of the object of focus. If Karl Marx and Frederick Engels are better known for their political and economic rather than literary writings, this is not in the least because they are regarded literature as insignificant (Seashore, 1967). This is because some of the literary and thematic writings and performances lack an object of focus leading to Aristotelian belief that literature is not a reflection of reality. I can substantiate this claims by the following presentations which show that some forms of literature lack the appropriate content therefore there is no way that they can reflect the society and what the society aspires (Ryan,1991).

The writings of Karl Marx
The writings of Karl Marx as a youthful author of lyric, himself as a youthful author of lyric poetry, a fragment of verse-drama and an unfinished comic novel much influenced by Laurence Sterne, are laced with literary concepts and allusions. He wrote a sizable unpublished manuscript on art and religion, and planned a journal of dramatic criticism, a full length study of Balzac and a treatise on aesthetics (Terry, 1976). Art and literature were part of the very air that Marx breathed as a formidably cultured German intellectual in the great classical tradition of his society. His acquaintance with literature, from Sophocles to the Spanish novel, Lucretius to pot boiling English fiction, was staggering in its scope. The German workers circle he founded in Brussels devoted an evening a week to discussing the arts, and Marx himself was an inveterate theatre-goer, declaimer of poetry, devourer of every species of literary art from Augustan prose to industrial ballads.

He criticized his own works in a letter to Engels as artistic whole and was scrupulously sensitive to questions of literary style, but not considered a particular subject of address (Terry, 1976).. Moreover the pressure of aesthetic concepts can be detected behind some of the most crucial categories of economic thought he employees in his mature work.

Marxist criticism is not merely sociology of literature concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is to explain the literary work more fully and this means a sensitive attention to its forms styles and meanings (Thomas, 1991). It also means grasping those forms, styles and meanings as the products of a particular history.

Art therefore for Marxism is part of the superstructure society. It is part of the societys ideology an element in that complex structure of social perception which ensures that the situation in which one social class has powers over others is either seen by most members of the society as natural or not seen at all (Thomas, 1991).  To understand literature then means understanding the total social process of which it is part. As the Russian Marxist critic Georgy Plekhanov put it the social mentality of an age is conditioned by that ages social relations. This is nowhere quite as evident as in the history of art and literature. Literary works are not mysteriously inspired, or explicable simply in terms of their authors psychology (Jonathan, 1992).

Painter Henry Matisse
He once remarked that all art bears the imprint of its historical epoch, but that great art is that in which this imprint is most deeply marked. Most students of literature are thought otherwise the greatest art is that which is timelessly transcends its historical conditions. Marxist criticism of this has much to say on the issue but the historical analysis of literature did not of course begin with Marxism (Terry, 1976). Many thinkers before Marx had tried to account for literary works in terms of the history which produced them. One of this is the German idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel, who had a profound influence on Marxs own aesthetic thought. The originality of Marxist criticism, then lies not in the historical approach to literature, but in its revolutionary understanding of history itself.

The production of ides, concepts and consciousness is first of all directly interwoven with the material intercourse of man, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the spiritual intercourse of men, appear here as the direct efflux of mens material behavior (Seashore, 1967). We dont proceed from what men say, imagine, conceive nor from men as described, throughout of, imagined, conceived in order to arrive at corporeal man rather we proceed from the active man consciousness. Consciousness does not determine life but life is able to determine consciousness. Many literary works are written out of consciousness hence they dont reflect what life entails. If only the writer were considering life experiences and then write in consideration with them, then the works of literature would be having subjects of focus.

It is for the above reason that Marx argued that in the social production of literary writers, they enter into definite relationships that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces (Seashore, 1967). The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which raises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material conditions the social, political and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men, that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

The dunciad
To understand King Lears work you dont have to understand the symbolism but study the literary history and add footnotes about the sociological facts which enter into them. First it calls for the understanding of the complex indirect relations between the works and the ideological worlds they inhabit, relations which emerge not just in themes and preoccupations but in style rhythm, image, quality and form (Brown, 1988). However we do not understand the ideology either unless we grasp the part it plays in society as a whole how it consists of a definite historically relative structure of perception which underpins the power of a particular social class.

Symbolic elements of Salambo
The process of writing Salambo occupied more than five years of Flauberts life. During this time, Flaubert claimed to have read hundreds of texts on the culture, art, economy, and history of the ancient Carthage. Flaubert organized these records in his dossier for the novel of which later was released to the public. This was partially in response to the criticism from his contemporary Charles Augustine Sainte-beuve, who had questioned not only the obscure subject of the work, but also its historical accuracy. Like Sainte-beuve, modern scholars have generally dismissed Flaubert claims of historical veracity. They have pointed out that Flaubert drew his material from one principal source, the history written by Polybius in the second century B.C., a basic record of the pubic wars. Accompanying such historical personages as Hamilcar Barca, Hanno and Matho, all of whom appear in the writings of Polybius, Flaubert inserted the indented figure of Salambo. In the end people consider Salambo as a conflation of history and the product of Flauberts active and neurotic imagination.

In the 20th century, George Kukacs viewed Salambo as a model of the historical novel. Later commentators have responded by arguing that Flauberts novel, despite its historic setting, bears little resemblance to such fiction, which tends to depict psychological motivation and to trace teleological momentum in history, qualities completely lacking in Salambo (Langer, 1942). In the contemporary period, victor Brombert initiated a new phase of serious interest in the work.  He viewed the work as a compendium of atrocities and refused to dismiss its outright as the sensationalized product of a disturbed mind.

In addition to form and theme, many late 20th century critics of Salambo have drawn to the sense of historiography implied by the novel most have maintained that its method is historical, observing that Salambo questions the very possibility of composing a scientific, archaeological recovery of the past in written form. Other scholars have considered Flauberts appropriation of myth in his narrative. O0ther scholars have also suggested that Flaubert undertook to write historical analogue by drawing broad comparisons between the ancient Carthaginians and the French bourgeoisie in the 19th century. As numerous points of view have been forwarded by critics, most consider the work paradoxical and unique component of the 19th century French fiction.