Use of Greek Myth in John Keats's Odes

       USE OF GREEK MYTH IN JOHN KEATS’S ODES

Introduction of John Keats:

John Keats was born on 31^st October 1795, and died in February 1821. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets. John Keats lived only twenty five years and four months, yet his poetic achievement is extraordinary. His writing career lasted a little more than five years (1814-1820), and two of his great odes- “Ode to Nightingale”, “Ode on a Grecian urn”.

In “Ode to Nightingale” and “Ode to a Grecian urn”, Keats tries to free himself from the world of change by identifying with the Nightingale representing nature, and the urn representing art. These odes, as well as “The ode to psyche”, present the poet as dreamer.

The deeper force of the Greek spirit led him from his early romantic formlessness to the achievement of the most exquisite classical perfection of form and finish. His Romantic glow and emotion never fade or cool, but such poems as the odes to the Nightingale and to a Grecian urn, and the fragment of ‘Hyperion’ are absolutely flawless and satisfying in structure and expression.

Here I define Greek myth in, Ode to Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian urn, and ode to psyche.

 

  ODE TO NIGHTINGALE:

The only place that the word “Nightingale” even appears is in the title, but the nightingale and its rich, intoxicating nighttime world are at the center of the poem. As Keats imagines it, this bird lives in its own reality within the enchanting forest. In poetic terms, the nightingale has important connection to mythology that we discuss below. But the most important thing to keep in mind is that it represents a kind of carefree existence that is free from the burdens of time, death, and human concerns. The importance of the nightingale stems from its appearance in Greek myth. Since this is a poem inspired by a Greek form, it is fitting that there are several other allusions to the mythology and culture of ancient Greece in this poem.

Title: -

 The nightingale is a symbol of beauty, immortality, and freedom from the world’s troubles. Nightingales are known for singing in the nighttime, hence the name. In Greek and Roman myth, the nightingale also alludes to the Philomel (Philomela).

The story of Philomela in myth:

Philomel (Philomela) is a minor figure in Greek mythology and is frequently invoked as a direct and figurative symbol in literary, artistic, and musical works in the Western canon. She is identified as being the “princess of Athens” and the younger of two daughters of Pandion 1, King of Athens and Zeuxippe. Her sister, Procne, was the wife of king Tereus of Thrace. While the myth has several variations, the general depiction is that Philomela, after being raped and mutilated by her sister’s husband, Tereus, obtains her revenge and is transformed into a nightingale (lusciniamegarhynchos), a migratorypasserinebird native to Europe and southwest Asia noted for its song.  According to Ovid, in the fifth year of Procne’s marriage to Tereus, King of Thrace and son of Ares, she asked her husband to “let me at Athens my dear sister see/ or let her come to Thrace, and visit me.” Indulging his wife’s request, Tereus agreed to travel to Athens and escort Philomela, his wife’s sister, to Thrace. King Pandion of Athens, the father of Philomela and Procne, was apprehensive about letting his only remaining daughter leave his home and protection and asks Tereus to protect her as if he were her father. Tereus agrees. However, Tereus lusted for Philomela when he first saw her, and that grew during the course of the return voyage to Thrace. Arriving in Thrace, he forced her to a cabin or lodges in the woods and raped her. After the assault, Tereus threatened her and advised her to keep silent. Philomela was defiant and angered Tereus. In his rage, he was incited to cut out her tongue. Whose tongue was cut out to prevent her from telling about her rape, and who was later turned into a nightingale by the gods to help her escape from death at the hands of her rapist.

Line: 4 – or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

               One minute past, and Lethe- words had sunk:

In the extended simile of lines 3-4, opium causes the speaker to lose memory and consciousness. “Lethe” alludes to a river in the Greek afterworld, Hades. Those who drank from it lost their memory.

Line: 7 – That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees

This line contains another allusion, or reference to another text. In Greek mythology, a “dryad” is a female spirit attached to a tree.

                                                                                                      

Line: 16 – Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

In Greek myth, “Hippocrene,” was the name of a spring that the winged horse Pegasus created by stamping its hoof into the ground. Drinking from it was supposed to give poetic inspiration the drink is personified as “blushing” because of its red color.

Line: 32 – Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

Bacchus is the Greek god of wine and drunkenness. In this allusive metaphor, the speaker claims that his escape into the nightingale’s world will not be due to drunkenness.

Line: 61 – Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

Many readers have criticized the speaker for believing (mistakely, of course) that the nightingale is immortal. But we think this is just an example of hyperbole’ or intentional exaggeration to make a point. The point is that it is the nightingale’s song that echoes through history and outlives each individual bird.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

The poem consists of a person talking to kind of fancy Greek pot known as an “urn” that was made of marble. Keats would have been able to see many urns from Ancient Greece at the British Museum, the world’s biggest archeological treasure-trove. (The northern Europeans plundered the Greeks’ ancient artifacts, and some might joke that now the Greeks are taking revenge by blowing up the European economy…) Urns are known not only for their sleek, beautiful shape but also for the quality of the pictures that were often painted on their sides. Most of the poem centers on the story told in the images carved on the side of one particular urn. He wrote “Ode on a Grecian urn” about an imaginary urn and three images he sees on it. The scenes are about revelry and sex, a piper and a lover’s pursuit of a fair maid, and a sacrificial ritual. All the scenes depict some form of human emotion, particularly love and desire.

Keats uses a lot of imagery from Greek culture to illustrate the importance of beauty. In the first stanza, he speaks of the places in Greece known for their beauty and serenity.

ODE TO PSYCHE

The Myth of Psyche:-

In Greek myth, Psyche was a princess whom cupid, the son of Venus, Fell in love with. Fearing his mother’s jealousy of her beauty, he visited her only at night, in total darkness. In one version of the myth she was a snake; in any event, to discover who and what he was, she looked at him one night after he had fallen asleep. When oil dripping from her lamp awoke him, he fled. Psyche searched for him, enduring much suffering. As a reward for her devotion and the hardships she had undergone, she was made immortal and reunited with cupid.

Why did this myth attract Keats?

All classical allusions enabled Keats to universalize his poetry, connected the poet’s concerns with images and stories which had gathered in meaning over the centuries; classical tales represented their own kind of permanence; they were widely understood and seen to be symbolic by Keats’s readers. The classical age was also seen as a time of simplicity where feeling and thought, spirituality and sensuality were united.

Northrop Frye - The Methodology

 NORTHROP FRYE – THE METHODOLOG

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

Northrop Frye was born in Canada in 1921 and studied at Toronto University and Merton +

College, Oxford University. Initially he was a student of theology and then he switched over to literature. He published his first book, Fearful symmetry: A Study of William Blake in 1947. Northrop Frye rose to international prominence with the publication of Anatomy of criticism, in 1957 and it firmly established him as one of the most brilliant, original and influential of modern critics. Frye died in 1991. On the whole, he wrote about twenty books on Western literature, culture, myth, archetypal theory, religion and social thought. The Fables of identity: studies in Poetic Mythology is a critical work published in 1963. The present essay, “Archetypes of Literature,” is taken from the book. In the essay Frye critically analyses literature against the backdrop of rituals and myths. He interprets literature in the light of various rituals and myths. Frye has divided the essay into three parts.

 

 The concept of Archetypal Literature

 The Inductive method of analysis
 The Deductive method of analysis 

 Here I define only two part of the essay second part THE INDUCTIVE METHOD OF ANALYSIS and the third part THE DEDUCTIVE METHOD OF ANALYSIS.

PART: 2) THE INDUCTIVE METHOD OF ANALYSIS:-

STRUCTURAL CRITICISM AND INDUCTIVE ANALYSIS:

 

     Frye contends that structural criticism will help a reader in understanding a text, and in his analysis, he proceeds inductively. That is, from particular truths in a work, he draws forth general truths. Owing to jealousy, Othello, in the Shakespearean Play, inflicts upon himself affliction and this is the particular truth of the drama from which the reader learns the general truth of life that jealousy is always destructive. This is called the inductive method of analysis under structural criticism, and Frye discusses this in detail in this section of the essay. An author cannot intrude into his text and express his personal emotions and comments. He should maintain absolute objectivity. A critic studies a work and finds out whether an author is free from textual interference. This is a sort of psychological approach also, and this method of criticism helps the reader in understanding an author’s personal symbols, images and myths which he incorporates in his work. At times the author himself may be unconscious of the myths, symbols etc., which he has exploited I his work, and the critic “discovers” such things.

            HISTORICAL CRITICISM AND IDUCTIVE ANALYSIS:

      Under the second type of criticism called historical criticism, a critic interprets the birth of a text and resolves that it is an outcome of the social and cultural demands of a society in a particular period. The social and culture milieus are the causes responsible for the creation of a work. Quite evidently the historical-critic plays a major role in the understanding of a text. In fact, both structural criticism and historical criticism are the necessity in archetypal criticism and neither can be dispensed with. But either of them alone does not explain a work completely. A historical critic discovers common symbols and images being used by different writers in their works, and resolves that there must be a common ‘source from which writers have derived their symbols, images and myths. The sea is a common symbol used by many writers over the years and therefore it is an archetypal symbol. Not only symbols, images and myths are archetypal; even genres are archetypal. For example, the genre of drama originates from Greek religion. Thus the historical inductive method of criticism helps the readers in understanding not only symbols, images and myths, but also the very genre itself.

      THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS OR RACIAL MEMORY:

      Archetypal criticism dissects ad analysis symbols, images and mythologies used by a writer in works, and these symbols, myths and rituals have their origin in primitive myths, rituals, folk-lore and cultures. Such primitive factors according to Jung lie buried in the “Collective unconscious” which may otherwise be called “racial memory” of a people. Since a writer is part of race, what lies in his “unconscious” mind is expressed in his works in the form, of myths, rituals, symbols and images. Archetypal criticism focuses on such things in work. In archetypal criticism, under the reductive method of analysis, a critic, while elucidating a text, moves from the particular truth to the general truth. A particular symbol or myth leads to the establishment of a general truth. Works of art are created in this way ad their origin is inn primitive cultures. Literature is produced I this manner over the years.

      ARCHITYPAL CRITICISM AND ITS FACETS:  

      Archetypal criticism is an all-inclusive term. It involves the efforts of many specialists, and at every stage of interpretation of a text, it is based “on a certain kind of scholarly organization.” An editor is needed to “clean up” the text; a rhetorician analysis the narrative pace; a philologist scrutinizes the choice ad significance of words; a literary social historian studies the evolution of myths and rituals. Under archetypal criticism the efforts of all these specialists converge on the analysis of a text. The contribution of a literary anthropologist to archetypal criticism is no small. In an archetypal study of Hamlet an anthropologist traces the sources of the drama to the Hamlet legend described by Saxon, a thirteenth century Danish historian in his book entitled Danes, Gesta Danorum. He further traces the sources of the drama to nature myths, which were in vogue in the Norman Conquest period. Thus an anthropologist makes a threadbare analysis of the origins of Hamlet under archetypal criticism.

PART: 3) DEDUCTIVE METHOD OF ANALYSIS:-

RHYTHM AND PATTERN IN LITERATURE: 

An archetypal critic, under the deductive method of analysis, proceeds to establish the meaning of a work from the general truth to the particular truth. Literature is like music and painting. Rhythm in music is temporal ad pattern in paintings is spatial. In literature both rhythm ad pattern are recurrence of images, forms and words. In literature rhythm means the narrative and the narrative presents all the events and episodes as a sequence and hastens action. Pattern in literature signifies its verbal structure and conveys a meaning. In producing the intended artistic effect, a work of literature should have both rhythm (narrative) pattern 

(meaning).

 
 The world of nature is governed by rhythm and it has got a natural cycle. The seasonal rhythms in a solar year are sprig, winter, autumn ad summer. This kind of rhythm is there in the world of animals and in the human world also. The mating of animals and birds rhythmically takes place in a particular season every year and the mating may be called a ritual. A ritual is not performed frequently, but rhythmically after a log gap and it has a meaning: fertility and consummation of life. In the human world rituals are performed voluntarily and they have their own significance. Works of literature have their origins in such rituals and the archetypal critic discovers and explain them. He explains the rhythm of the rituals, which are the basis of literature in general.

     PATTERN  IN  A WORK:  

      It has already been established that in literature pattern is recurrence of images, forms and words. Patterns are derived from a writer’s “epiphany moments.” That is, a writer gets the concept of his work or ideas of his work in moments of inspiration and he looks into the heart of things. Then he expresses what he has “perceived” in the form of proverbs, riddles, commandments ad etiological folktales. Such things have already an element of narrative and they add further to the narrative of writer in his work. A writer expresses what he has “perceived,” ad he uses myths either deliberately or unconsciously, ad it is the critic who discovers the archetypes, the myths, in a work and explicates the patterns I the work. Both pattern ad rhythm the major basic components of a work.

    The four phases of the myth:
   
      Every myth has a central significance and the narrative in a myth centers on a figure may be a god or demi-god or superhuman being or legend. Frazer and Jung contend that in the development of a myth the central figure or central significance is the most important factor and many writers have accepted this view. Frye classifies myths into four categories:

1. The dawn, spring and birth phase
2. The Zenith, summer and marriage or Triumph phase
3. The sunset, autumn and death phase
4. The darkness, winter and desolation phase 

  LITERARY CRITICISM AND RELIGION

      There is close relation between literary criticism and religion. In his analysis, a literary critic considers God as an archetype of man who is portrayed as a hero in a work. God is a character in the story of Paradise lost or The Bible, and the critic deals with him and considers Him only as a human character. Criticism does not deal with any actuality, but with what is conceivable and possible. Similarly religion is not associated with scientific actuality, but with how things look like. Literary criticism works on conceivability. Likewise, religion functions on conceivability. There can be no place for scientific actuality in both, but what, is conceived is accepted by all. Both in religion and literary criticism, an epiphany is at work. It is a revelation of god or truth and it is a profound insight. It originates from the subconscious, from the dreams.

Class Distinction in Middlemarch

     

CLASS DISTINCTION IN MIDDLEMARCH

     The class system itself is complex define without using a superficial definition the system was always altering due to different legislation, and upon the development of the middle class began subcategories such as the ‘upper-middle class’ and the ‘lower-working class’. “Different society classes can be (and were by the classes themselves) distinguished by inequalities in such areas as power, authority, wealth, working and living conditions, life styles, life-span, education, religion, and culture”. The middle class came about as a result of the industrial revolution, those who had profession such as factory workers were not wealthy enough and did not have the same aristocratic heritage as the upper class, but were more affluent  and comfortable in their lifestyle them the working class. They were the “new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions.

   CLASS DISTINCTION MIDDLEMARCH:

It is the issue of class differences, of economic inequality, that is presented as the more pressing of humanity’s problems. For some reason this issue has received little critical attention. The issue of economic inequality is introduced early in the novel. It is through the young Dorothea’s efforts to improve the lot of the poor by building better cottages that we first see this issue of class. It is introduced almost anecdotally, and could be written off as a gloss on Dorothea’s ardent nature, but it stems from her looking at the luxury I which she is living and comparing it with the relative squalor in which the lower classes on her uncle’s land are living. It is this effort to improve the lives of the poorer classes that is the essence of Dorothea’s struggle to find her vocation.

And Casaubon is not just a symbol of patriarchal oppression. He is also representative of the problem of artificial class distinctions. The first inkling notion Dorothea gets that Casaubon is not the great man she thinks of him as is in his disinterest toward her plan for the cottages. She tries to overlook this by justifying his lack of concern for the poor by the fact that he is so busy with his intellectual work, and the fact that the workers on his land are really not so poorly treated. But his cold dismissal of her concerns disturbs her and she is not fully able to overlook his lack of sympathy. And this is not the only time that the class issue surfaces and causes problems between the two. The second time it arises is in reference to will Ladislaw. Dorothea first sees Ladislaw as Casaubon’s idle young relative who is taking advantage of Casaubon’s kindness and generosity in offering him an allowance. As she gets to know will better he grows in her estimation, and as the circumstances of his background unfold it is revealed that his grandmother was disinherited simply because she married a man beneath her in class. And typical of Dorothea’s ardent nature, she sees an injustice ad tries to rectify it.

This theme of classicism and economic inequality is highlighted by Dorothea’s passionate efforts to improve the lot of the poor, but it is even more powerfully underscored by her lament in the midst of all of her own suffering. The light of Dorothea’s conscience clearly illuminates the injustice of class distinction. Her recognition of the difficulty of life for the laboring classes, and her recognition of the wrongs suffered by will’s mother and grandmother because of society’s class structure, coupled with her efforts to rectify both of these situations highlight class inequality as one of the major themes of the novel. Will Ladislaw is a figure of central importance in the novel’s discussion of class issues. His very name, Will Ladislaw, resonates with the history of the legal tradition of inheritance. He is associated three times in the novel with this issue of inheritance.

1.     The disinheritance of his grandmother,
2.     The codicil to Casaubon’s will that will disinherit Dorothea if she ever marries him,
3.     The revelation of his relation to Mr.Bulstrode - Who has in essence stolen a second inheritance from him.

Not only is Ladislaw thus thoroughly immersed in the issue of class through the legal tradition of inheritance, but Eliot also depicts of him as an “a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the sense of belonging to o class”. This further sets him up      as a model for evolution away from artificial class distinctions. At this class was not just a matter of economics. It was a matter of blood. The members of the aristocracy were superior to the commoners because of a natural, inbred nobility (pun intended). Ladislaw is distrusted and looked down upon because he contains the taint of foreign blood. His Jewish or Italian polish heritage causes rumor and speculation to swirl around him. Ladislaw’s intelligence and goodness highlight the ridiculousness of these racist and classist views. Dorothea’s acceptance of will represents the rejection of the save lives that makes him noble: It is not that his uncle is a duke. But in the class system of the time, the uncle is the nobler of the two. Lydgate, however, is not able to fully free himself from the bonds of the aristocratic tradition. As admirable a character a Lydgate is, he is also flawed. His main character flaw lies in his arrogance surrounding the nobility of his blood. In chapter 15^th Eliot introduces us to what makes Lydgate such an admirable figure. She also illustrates his flaws:

Lydgate’s conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering, never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. […] All his faults were marked by kindred traits and were those of a man who had a fine baritone, whose clothes hung well upon him, and who had a fine baritone, whose clothes hug well upon him, and who even in his ordinary gestures had an air of inbred distinction.

These false notion of class superiority are so ingrained in him that his very being is infused them. In the same way that the young Dorothea unthinkingly embraces her prescribed gender role, Lydgate has subconsciously assumed the notion that a man born of noble blood is naturally superior to those of more common lineage.

Lydgate’s classism is inextricably linked with his sexism. It is his aristocratic pretensions that mislead him into thinking he needs a gentlewoman for a wife. His marriage to Rosamond, that ultimately dooms him to mediocrity, is the result. And the expenses of that wedding are just as much Lydgate’s fault as Rosamond’s. It is his picture of himself as the aristocrat that makes him feel the need to buy the finest of furnishings for his home; ad it is that which begins his descent in to debt. 

Lydgate is certainly a figure to admire, but his faults are deeper than either Dorothea’s or Ladislaw’s. Dorothea and Ladislaw are steps forward in the evolutionary process of society. Lydgate is too much rooted in the past. It is his classism that ultimately murders his brains. As powerful an example of the destructive force of these false perceptions of class as Lydgate is, and as symbolic as the death of Casaubon and the emergence of Ladislaw is of this move away from strict class distinction toward greater equality, the falseness of the tradition of the class structure is perhaps even more powerfully displayed in the contrast between the Vinci's and the Garths. Rosamond Vinci is presented as a frivolous young woman. As the worldly rose she is truly an ornament. Her education, both by her family and Miss Lemon’s school, has indoctrinated her into this role. Dorothea sees the life of a gentlewoman as a prison to be escaped. She longs for action: to do something good and meaningful. And this criticism of the idle gentlewoman is made even more vivid give Dorothea’s guilt at her position of luxury juxtaposed against the hardships of the working class. It never occurs to Rosamond to be anything other than what she is. Her failing is twofold- she has unthinkingly accepted both the gender and class roles prescribed to her. Both leave her a frivolous and idle person, waddled in moral stupidity. But if it is an example of moral stupidity to be an idle gentlewoman, then it is at least equality so to be an idle gentleman.

 

 

 

 

 

British Cultural Materialism

                         BRITISH CULTURAL MATERIALISM

 

What is Cultural studies

 

Cultural studies is the science of understanding modern society,with an emphasis on politics and power cultural studies is an umbrella term used to look at a number of different subject. Categories studied include media studies including film and Journalism, sociology, industrial culture, globalization and social theory. To pursue cultural studies is to try to decipher the world that we live in.

 

The definition of cultural studies can sometimes be misconstrued. It is not simply the study of different cultures but uses many other studies to analyze different cultures such as philosophy, theology, literature etc.…

   Five types of cultural studies:-

1.   British cultural Materialism

2.   New Historicism

3.   American Multiculturalism

·       African American Writers

·       Latina writers

·       American Indian literature

·       Asian American writers

  4. Postmodernism and popular cultural

  5. Post-colonial studies 

Here I define British cultural Materialism

BRITISH CULTURAL MATERIALISM:-

Cultural studies is referred to as "cultural materialism" in Britain, and it has a long tradition. In the later nineteenth century Matthew Arnold sought to redefine the "givens" of British cultural. Edward Burnett Tylor's pioneering anthropological study Primitive cultural (1871) argued that "culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is a complex whole which includes knowledge belief, art, morals, low, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (1). Claude Levi-Strauss's influence moved British thinkers to assign "culture" to primitive peoples, and then, with the work of British scholars like Raymond Williams memorably states: "There are no message; there are only ways of seeing [other] people as masses" (300). 

 To appreciate the importance of this revision of "culture" we must situate it within the controlling myth of social and political reality of the British Empire upon which the sun never set, an ideology left over from previous century. In modern Britain two trajectories for "culture" developed: one led back to the past and the feudal hierarchies that ordered community in the past; here, culture acted in its sacred function as preserver of the past The other trajectory led toward a future, socialist utopia that would annual the distinction between labor and leisure classes and make transformation of status, not fixity, the norm. This cultural materialism furnished a leftist orientation "critical of the aestheticism, formalism, ant historicism, and apoliticism common among the dominant postwar methods of academic literary criticism"; such was the description in the John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Groden and Krieswirth 180).

 Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950s with the work of F.R.Leavis, heavily influenced by Matthew Arnold's analyses of bourgeois culture. Leavis sought to use the educational system to distribute literary knowledge and appreciation more widely; leavisites promoted the "great tradition" of Shakespeare and Milton to improve the moral sensibilities of a wider range of readers than just the elite.

 Ironically the threat to their project was mass culture. Raymond Williams applauded the richness of canonical texts such as Leavis promoted, but also found they could seem to erase certain communal forms of life. Inspired by Karl Marx, British theorists were also influenced by Gorgy Lukas, Theodor Adorns, Louis Althusser Max Horkheimer, Mikhail Bakhtin, Antonio Gramsci. They were especially interested in problems of cultural hegemony and in the many systems of domination related to literature. From Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, for example, they got the concept of cultural "hegemony," referring to relations of domination not always visible as such. Williams noted that hegemony was "a sense of reality for most people . . . beyond which it is very difficult for most members of society to move" (Marxism and Literature 110). But the people are not always of hegemony; they sometimes possess the power to change it. Althusser insisted that ideology was ultimately in control of the people, that "the main function of ideology is to reproduce the society's existing relation of production, and that function is even carried out in literary texts." Ideology must maintain this state of affairs if the state and capitalism can continue to reproduce themselves without fear of revolution. Althusser saw popular literature as merely "carrying the baggage of a culture’s ideology," whereas "high" literature retained more autonomy and hence had more power (233). Walter Benjamin attacked fascism by questioning the value of what he called the "aura" of culture. Benjamin helps explain the frightening cultural context for a film such as Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the will (1935). Lukas developed what he called a "reflection theory", in which he stressed literature's reflection conscious or unconscious, of the social reality surrounding it not just a flood of realistic detail but a reflection of the essence of a society. Fiction formed without a sense of such reflection can never fully show the meaning of a given society.

Cultural materialists also turned to the more humanistic and even spiritual insights of the great student of Rabelais and Dostoevsky, Russian Formalist Bakhtin, especially his amplification of the dialogic form of meaning within narrative and class struggle, at once conflictual and communal, individual and social. Feminism was also important for cultural materialists in recognizing how seemingly "disinterested" thought is shaped by power structures as patriarchy.