What is discussed in Critical Practice by Catherine Belsey?

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Introduction

Critical Practice by Catherine Belsey is a book on criticism that puts six literary theories in the funnel to find the meaning of a given text. According to her, the actual problem in a text is 'where' to look for the meaning in a text. Belsey presents six theories to ponder: 

• What is poststructuralist theory and its implication in criticism? 
• Does the meaning of the text lie in the author's head or in the reader's? 
• Or is the meaning traced during practice? 
• How do our values affect the interpretation of the text? 
• And what is the role of the text? 

Belsey considers these questions important to draw a line between the mindset of the readers and the (authority of the) text. Let us discuss these theories in detail: 

Criticism and Common Sense

The first step in the evaluation of the text is to make ourselves familiar with the text itself as well as the story. While common sense in literature means knowing about a set of valuable texts as well as the period in which they were produced. But they also include a rough idea about the depiction of human nature and society too. Common Sense advocates that Man is the centre of the action, meaning, history and meaning. 

Ideology

Ideology is a discourse of language while discourse is a domain of language that focuses on a particular way of conversation. Belsey, then, asserts that ideology is a total of our response to the happenings of life. Thus, ideology is somewhat reaching to the core meaning of a writing through the stairs of text, author's intent and then through his contemporary society. Author-Oriented Theory can he an important step in finding out the meaning of the text. The theory encourages to find the meaning in the mind of the author (of the particular text) and it can only be the one. 

Belsey, then, adds Plato's interpretation of the poets who says that when poets write poetry, they come out of their senses. Just like a anxious man is unconscious of his anxiety but his anxiety is obvious when someone sees that man. Similarly, when a poet composes a poem, he becomes unaware of his current surroundings but he gets into the immersion of the world he is writing about. 

The ideological interpretation of finding meaning in realistic or unrealistic work of literature through applying different theories is difficult. Belsey gives a rather simple explanation of the relation of ideology with a literary work,

Ideology is both a real and an imaginary relation to the world. 

Therefore, ideology is the whole environment including thoughts, beliefs, practices, language and feelings. 

Split Subject

Another question arises while evaluating a work of literature whether an individual is important or the subject of the work. A specific solution is Spirit Subject that divides the two. It involves in two different interpretations of I, as personal ideology as well as the ideology of the critic. Other 'I' is the speaker and the addressor. Belsey, one by one rejects the following theories: 

• Expressive realism
• General experience
• Reader Oriented Theory
• Existentialism
• Absurdism
• Historical and psychological approaches

The reason behind her rejection of these theories (and others) is because according to her, they withhold a person from reaching to the exact meaning. But they do help in lighting up the path to find out the exact meaning a person is looking for. 

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is not destruction but splitting a piece of work according to the language it exhibits. This approach of the reconstruction of the meaning by division of the work is favoured by Belsey. Deconstruction is a structural analysis of a piece of work. For example, when analysing a poem, deconstruction focuses on splitting the contents of the poem on the basis of literary devices, diction, rhyme and rhythm etc. 

As mentioned before, deconstruction is basically a two-way process in which a work, i e a poem has to be divided into its structural elements (as mentioned in above lines). And then reconstructing the actual meaning (theme or central idea) through the raw materials of the structural data. 

Conclusion

Belsey's tendency to critically evaluate a piece of writing is that of a structuralist. Although not all modern theories are false yet her approach is most close to what we have been observing in our academics (in the form of writing a critical appreciation of a poem). 

Source

1. Literary Criticism - Current Notes - Page 287