ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

LITERATURE QUESTIONS

LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

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Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]

Who originated the term “objective correlative, ” which is often used in formalist criticism?

A	C.S. Lewis
B	Virginia Woolf
C	Matthew Arnold
D	T.S. Eliot

Explanation:

Detailed explanation-1: -objective correlative, literary theory first set forth by T.S. Eliot in the essay “Hamlet and His Problems” and published in The Sacred Wood (1920).

Detailed explanation-2: -T.S. Eliot used this phrase to describe “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion” that the poet feels and hopes to evoke in the reader (“Hamlet, ” 1919).

Detailed explanation-3: -In literary criticism, an objective correlative is a group of things or events which systematically represent emotions.

Detailed explanation-4: -In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", Eliot uses different images, symbols and other devices as media for the system of objective correlative. He arranges these media in a way that shows Prufrock’s emotion towards the society he lives in, his surroundings, his defects and inner life.

Detailed explanation-5: -It refers to a literary description that depicts an emotion and hopefully evokes that emotion in the reader or viewer. It is employed in a literary work to describe a set of objects, a sequence of events, cluster of images and setting which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.

There is 1 question to complete.