Evans Midterm Part 1

Map of Influence

Key

(Just in case the zoom doesn't work, here is a link to Google Drive:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/15TejlYv4vrtX4Yd64BJE2rYO2x5016PR37LjWxKGypc/edit?usp=sharing)

My diagram is in roughly chronological order from top to bottom, with colors marking the different critical groupings (the large red circle, for example, represents Romanticism).  Blue arrows indicate that one theorist has marked influence on another. Arrows with red outlines indicate that a theorist was reacting to another (or to the previous critical movement). Under each theorist's name is a brief paraphrase of his or her views on the relationship between art and truth; more specifically, I tried to think of each theorist's answer to the question "how do we judge art?" or "how do we look at literature?"  Though these statements obviously do not include all discussed ideas of each theorist, I thought the repetition of these ideas would more clearly show the theoretical evolution from Plato to Althusser.

I suppose I should not have been surprised at the extent to which the texts are interrelated, but I found the relationships staggering.   Schleiermacher, especially, seemed to show up when I least expected him, especially in his views about the reciprocal relationship between historical context, language, and art.  In a future draft of this diagram, I would want to find a clearer way to represent the relationships between theorists; I realize it is not quite comprehensive, but I feared that adding arrows would make it unreadable.  There should be, for example, a very large arrow from Augustine to De Saussure (concerning their discussions of signs), but adding it only made the diagram confusing.  Finally, in a future draft, I would want to find a way to connect theorists beyond their critical moments. If, for example, I could find a way to connect the Romantics (Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Emerson) to Schleiermacher in their value of the author, and also group the New Critics and the Structuralists in their dedication to the "Death of the Author," I would be more satisfied. Similarly, if I could group Wollstonecraft, Marx, Horkheimer and Adorno, and Althusser together (because of their tendency toward social criticism), I think it would be more complete.  To achieve all of this, however, I think I would have to begin again using a sort of enormous Venn Diagram, a feat I will leave to someone with better academic credentials.