1. New Criticism

2. What is New Criticism?
The typical focus is on describing the features of the literary text such as setting, conflict, theme, character, symbolism, literary techniques, and plot in general.

3. What is New Criticism?
This is what you have been doing in school for the last few years. 
Everything you need to analyze is inside the text! (You don’t need to know the historical context, nor the author’s biography in order to come to any sort of meaning/conclusion.)
The analysis should come ONLY from the text itself.

4. What is New Criticism?
Main Principals:
1. The Universal Meaning

5. What is New Criticism?
The Universal Meaning Fixed and inherent within the text – YOU (reader) have no part in creating the meaning. The author’s purpose when writing the text should also have no consideration when examining the text.
Intentional Fallacy – “describes the problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art by assuming the intent or purpose of the artist who created it.” (Encyclopedia Britannica)
“literary critics should not search for ultimate meanings in texts by probing what their creators ‘intended’.” – Donald Hall
1. Authors do not always fully understand or be fully conscience of every detail in their work.
2. Texts have meaning beyond their authors.
3. The text itself must support its own meaning.

6. What is New Criticism? Main Principals: 1. The Universal Meaning
2. The Formal Aspects of Literature

7. What is New Criticism? The Formal Aspects of Literature
Literature should be examined differently than other texts – for example a presidential speech or a legal document.
The “formal aspects” of literature distinguishes it from other modes of expression.
It is also genre specific. (Example – in music you would analyze a 2 Chainz song differently than a Luke Bryan song. Poems cannot be analyzed using the same terms and definitions as a play.)
This makes the analysis more scientific because the critic can focus on more technical skills of literary analysis such as rhyme scheme or motif.

8. What is New Criticism? Main Principals: 1. The Universal Meaning
2. The Formal Aspects of Literature
3. Close Reading Rocks!

9. What is New Criticism? Close Reading Rocks
You must read and re-read and examine the language and details in order to fully analyze the meaning.
As a New Critic, you need to apply the analysis skills you have learned in English Class, and find and support the universal meaning using the text itself.

10. Symbolism Symbolism Dictionary

11. New Criticism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EryDcM1q1g
examples-quiz.html

12. Why Should Readers Care?
New Criticism tried to lay down some laws for reading and interpreting texts. They wanted to make the whole activity more systematic—scientific, even. And in the process, New Criticism made literary analysis more democratic, too; power to the (book-lovin') people, man.
To talk about Keat’s poems, you don't need to get dusty comparing different manuscript versions. You don't even need to spend years reading the history of England. Or researching different styles of 19th-century vases hoping to stumble across the model for Keats's Grecian urn.
Nope, you just need to get really up close and personal with the poems. New Criticism demands you ask yourself questions like: What ingredients make his poems good? Is it the paradoxes? The tension between different ideas? The sound of the meter and rhyme? That whole "unravish'd bride of quietness" bit?
The New Critics made it easier to talk clearly about literature and about how it works its intellectual and emotional magic on us. That's because all it demanded of readers was to, well, read. To pay attention to what was on the page (and what was markedly missing from it).
Without New Criticism's notion of close reading, book clubs would be more like fan clubs: "I love Lizzy Bennet." “Jane Austen is just to die for." Not a whole lot of substance there, eh?
But that handy dandy New Criticism toolbox allows us to discuss why Pride and Prejudice reads so well, in a pithy and understandable fashion. You know, who doesn't love the irony, the misunderstandings, and the marriage plots? Ladies, grab your knitting gear, let's talk some lit.

13. Why Do Theorists Care?
Before the New Critics arrived on the scene, English literature studies were all about history. All the great thinkers believed that in order to truly dig into a book's themes, you had to know the history of the language the work was written in, how it got written, what the author's life was like. And so on and so forth.
In fact, folks back then even maintained a strict division between being a critic and being a scholar. Critics were supposedly amateurs who just read literature for fun. Scholars were supposed to be the real professionals—the professors who knew every nit-picky detail, like how Shakespeare signed his name, and what sort of paperweights Dickens kept on his desk.
These two different camps—the amateur critics and the professional scholars—asked very different questions. If you were a critic, you tried to answer questions about quality: which poems were good or bad? Which novels were just so-so, and which were sparkling and brilliant? On the other hand, if you were a scholar, you kept your nose to the grindstone. You studied facts and spewed literary history.
Imagine we gave an apple to one old-school critic and one old-school scholar. The scholar would tell you all about the history of apple trees and maybe even about how this particular apple traveled from an orchard in Washington to our little neighborhood market. But the critic would bite into it, and tell you whether it was a perfectly tart and crisp apple or kind of sad and mealy.
Yum. So what did New Criticism do? Combined the two, of course. If we gave a New Critic an apple, she would closely examine it, then eat it slowly, and then explain why it was good or bad.
New Critics wanted to create a whole system for appreciating and criticizing literature. These critics didn't simply gush praise for a poem; they tried to explain why it was an extraordinary example of the poetic form. They asked questions like: What's going on with language in the poem? Where do the line breaks fall? How do all of these formal elements contribute to the poem's major themes?
If it weren't for New Criticism, we might still be studying literature by tracking down every allusion to astronomy in John Donne. Or imagine some future scholar starts reading Harry Potter in order to deduce what we thought about magic and science in the 21st century. Yikes.
As interesting as those studies might be, they're not really about the text: they're about 17th-century astronomy and 21st-century make-believe. They take us further and further away from the text itself—which, when you think about it, is where all of the text's meaning actually lives.

14. To An Athlete Dying Young – A.E. Housman
Practice your New Criticism skills
You may work with a partner! 

15. Feminist Theory

16. What is Feminist Theory?
Feminism and feminist literary theory criticism are often defined as a matter of what is absent, rather than what is present.

17. What is Feminist Theory?
lesson-quiz.html

18. What is Feminist Theory?
Feminist theory, or feminism, is support of equality for women and men.
Feminist theory has also expanded to include race and gender theory as well.

19. What is Feminist Theory?
Basic Feminist Ideas:
Working to increase equality.
Expanding human choice.
Eliminating gender stratification.
Ending sexual violence and promoting sexual freedom.

20. Feminism in Media Miss Representation (2011)
Miss Representation Curriculum
The Mask You Live In (2015)
#Likeagirl
The Bechdel Test (2012)

21. Disney?
Every 'Princess Movie' Passes The Bechdel Test With Flying Colors
For all the hate these movies get for their "unrealistic" representation of women, each and every one passes the Bechdel test. Truthfully, I don't think the only reason why little girls enjoy these movies so much is that they're about princesses. I think it's just nice to see more women on screen. Those princess movies show that a female can have her own story.
In these movies, not only is the lead character a woman, but the villain often is too, just to keep things balanced. There are also usually mothers and other female friends involved, named and ready to engage in a conversation about anything other than the Prince.
*I wouldn't consider Jasmine part of the Disney film princesses specifically as she appears in Aladdin, which isn't really about her.

22. Why Should We Care?
We're willing to bet that you've had at least a few experiences in your life where your gender suddenly stood out to you like never before. Maybe you're a girl and someone said you're not supposed to be good at soccer. Maybe you're a boy and you got made fun of for wanting to dance.
Or maybe your life isn't right out of Bend it Like Beckham or Billy Elliot, but you've still had some experience with gender-based discrimination or something that made you realize that you have certain rights and privileges that other friends of yours don't (or on the flip side, that they do and you don't).
Whatever the case, our gender identities affect our lives in all kinds of ways that we don't always recognize, and feminist theory has lots of tools to help you understand what your gender means to you. And beyond the realm of the personal, feminist theory has literally opened up a whole new world of reading.
Unlike some other kinds of literary criticism (*cough* psychoanalysis *cough*), feminism doesn't just want to talk about new ways of reading secret phallus symbols into old classics. Since the 1970s, feminist scholars have re-shaped the literary canon in a BIG way, digging up tons of work by women writers throughout the ages, and giving that work the attention it deserves.
So, if you're glad you had the chance to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) or Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (1891) in lit class, why not send a psychic thank-you note to the women who made that possible? And if you're thrilled that Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) are recognized as great American classics next to books penned by male writers, well, you can thank feminist scholars for those, too.
Whether it's about your favorite female authors or having a different lens on the world and your place in it, feminism gives you the tools for taking apart power structures—and doesn't care whether those are power tools or kitchen utensils.

23. Why do Theorists Care?
Aside from the fact that it's just plain silly to ignore the voices of half the world's population, lit scholars and crit theorists owe a lot to feminist theory. Many of theory's biggest schools— like psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and Marxist, postcolonial, gender, and queer theories—have been made bigger and better by feminist research and thinking.
Examples? Psychoanalytic theory just wouldn't be the same if Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan's ideas hadn't been challenged and taken in new directions by French feminist thinkers like Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva. By the same token, deconstruction and poststructuralism would never have been as useful for identity politics and LGBTQ activism if it wasn't for the works of Judith Butler. And, believe us, those schools of thought really wouldn't have worked so well for decolonizing movements and social justice theory if it weren't for thinkers like bell hooks and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Feminist theorists have radically challenged the everyday assumptions that have kept academic institutions chugging along since dinosaurs roamed the earth. They tackle topics that are so taboo they make other theorists quake in their boots. And, on top of all that, they're at the forefront of some of the smartest, savviest work being published today. Who wouldn't care?

24. Marxist Theory

25. Marxist Literary Theory
So what is that society like? Is it like yours? Do the rich and powerful have all the control? Or is it more egalitarian? And what even inspired the author to create this society in the first place?

26. Marxist Theory
Remember that Marxist thought gets its name from Karl Marx, the German philosopher who wrote The Communist Manifesto. In it, Marx and co- author Fredierich Engels argued that all of history is about the struggle between the have and the have-nots. They predicted that one day, the proletariat, or the have-nots, will throw off the oppression of the bourgeoisie, or those with means and power.

27. Marxist Theory
Marxist criticism is interested in the society created by the author in the piece of literature concerned.
The Hunger Games
 Various Districts are struggling economically and socially and eventually rise up against their government.

28. Marxist Theory The Hunger Games
A Marxist critique would go as far as to say that it was those conditions that caused the series to unfold the way it did. It was simply people rebelling against an unfair way of life.

29. Marxist Theory The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
This book takes place in the American South in the 19th century and follows a white boy, Huck, as he helps a black slave, Jim, escape his situation. Here we've got quite a bit more detail. Instead of just two large classes, society is really divided into several smaller ones.
As a result, a Marxist critique would focus not only on those classes, but also what happens when they break down. After all, Huck and Jim form a bond that society would have forbidden. Because of this, it could be argued that Twain wanted society to get rid of race-based castes altogether, since they only kept humanity in bondage.

30. Marxist Theory
Marxists might argue that literature doesn't just demonstrate class struggle, but are products of them. In a work, the society of the author often leaks through, and could be interpreted as a commentary of that society.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
It could be argued that Twain was commenting on his own society. After all, there was still a distinct stratification between rich and poor, and white and black on the Mississippi of the late 19th century. Marxist literary critique would argue that this is Twain's way of highlighting differences in his own society.

31. Marxist Theory Hunger Games
n the books, those who live in the Capital have a life of ease, but are supported by the slave- like conditions of the Districts. Marxist criticism could point out that the book shows the dangers of a society where the haves and the have-nots have been taken to the extreme. Was Collins trying to create a commentary on the themes of our own society, where issues like a higher minimum wage and disparity of income are hot topics?
It’s difficult to know. After all, one of the biggest problems with Marxist criticism is that sometimes it can read too far into a situation. The conditions clearly had something to do with the way that the story unfolds in The Hunger Games. However, it's much more difficult to assign a firm reason for why Collins wrote the books.

32. Marxist Theory

33. The Reader-Centered Approach to Literature

34. Reader-Centered Criticism
Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. – Francis Bacon
Readers return to books because of the way they feel about the reading, their response to the text. – Martha Combs

35. Reader-Centered Criticism
The reader-centered approach, based on reader-response criticism, emphasizes the individual as a reader-responder. It argues that reading a literary text is part of a complex process that includes a collaboration between the writer, the text, and the reader.
A text is re-created every time someone new reads it, and it becomes, in the process, increasingly richer. The text is a stimulus that elicits responses from us based on our past experiences, our previous reading, our thoughts, and our feelings.
In this reader-response approach, the text acts on the reader and the reader interacts with the text; therefore, this analytical method is often referred to as transactional analysis.
The reader-response critical theory teaches us that there are no absolutes. It enables us to examine the complexity of human behavior and motivation, the difficulty in ascertaining right and wrong, and the interdependencies involved in any social construct.

36. Reader-Centered Criticism
1.  Individual readers should feel comfortable with their own responses to a literary work.
2.  Readers should seek out the reasons for their responses and thereby come to understand themselves better.
3.  Readers should recognize, in the responses of others, the differences among people and to respect those differences.
4.  Readers should recognize, in the response of others, the similarities among people.