1. Marxist Lens
A form of critique or discourse for interrogating all societies and their texts in terms of certain specific issues – including race, class, and the attitudes shared within a given culture.

2. Karl Marx Born in Trier, Germany in 1818
German philosopher who rejected the tenets of Romanticism/Idealization in favor of philosophy of dialectical materialism – question the need for material goods.
Criticized the injustice inherent in the European class/capitalist system of economics operating in the 19th Century.
Believed that capitalism allowed the bourgeoisie to benefit at the expense of the workers.
The Communist Manifesto - analyzes the capitalist form of wealth production and its consequences for culture.

3. Questions to keep in mind:
The author’s social class
Its effects upon the author’s society
Examining the history and the culture of the times as reflected in the text
Investigate how the author either correctly or incorrectly pictures this historical period

4. Empowerment Lens:
In academic literature, the word empowerment first came onto the scene with regards to civil rights. One of the first articles was written in 1975 and called “Toward Black Political Empowerment – Can the System Be Transformed.” This sparked multiple articles discussing empowering the black community, but it also ignited the use of the word in other circles.
Empowerment means to give power or authority or to authorize someone especially by legal or official means.

5. The term really took off with literature discussing empowerment of marginalized peoples, such as women and the poor, and especially with regards to community development. Now, the literature has increasingly been focused on these issues.
Empowerment can look different at the individual level versus the community level, and it can look different in the state versus the market.
Empowerment is also relational, for it occurs in relation to whom a person interacts with. Empowerment can have different forms, such as power over, power to, power with, and power within. Finally, empowerment is extremely culturally specific.

6. Biographical Lens:
This approach begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work.
Biographical lens then often affords a practical method by which readers can better understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to take the biographical facts of a writer’s life too far in criticizing the works of that writer.

7. Archetypal criticism
Argues that archetypes (models) determine the form and function of literary works, that a text's meaning is shaped by cultural and psychological myths.
Archetypes are the unknowable basic forms personified in recurring images, symbols, or patterns which may include motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent.
The archetypes include character types such as the trickster or the hero, or symbols such as the apple or snake, or images such as crucifixion.
Carl Gustav Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concept of archetypes.

8. Carl Jung, postulated that humankind has a "collective unconscious," a kind of universal psyche, which is manifested in dreams and myths and which harbors themes and images that we all inherit. Literature, therefore, imitates not the world but rather the "total dream of humankind.” Jung called mythology "the textbook of the archetypes."
Archetypal images and story patterns encourage readers to participate in basic beliefs, fears, and anxieties of their age. These archetypal features not only constitute the intelligibility of the text but also tap into a level of desires and anxieties of humankind.

9. Formalist lens:
Is a criticism of a text that looks solely at the written structure.
It does not take into account historical, biographical, or cultural background that could have influenced the author and the writing of the text.
What it looks at: figurative language, syntax, structure, themes, and motifs that could have influenced the author.

10. Figurative language is laced throughout all written work, but some authors use it in their works more often than others.
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” William Wordsworth - Poet
“Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Emily Dickinson - Poet
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances.” William Shakespeare – Poet & playwright

11. Typical questions:
How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not contribute to the aesthetic quality of the work?
What does the form of the work say about its content?
Is there a central passage that can be said to sum up the entirety of the work?
How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to the meaning or effect of the piece?

12. Readers Response Lens
At its most basic level, reader response criticism considers readers' reactions to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text. However, reader-response criticism can take a number of different approaches. A critic deploying reader-response theory can use a psychoanalytic (psychological) lens, or a feminists lens. What these different lenses have in common when using a reader response approach is they maintain "...that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does" 
Reader-response theorists share two beliefs:
1) that the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and
2) that readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature.

13. Typical questions:
How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?
Do the sounds/shapes of the words as they appear on the page or how they are spoken by the reader enhance or change the meaning of the word/work?
How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's response is, or is analogous to, the topic of the story?

14. Psychological Criticism
Psychological criticism is an approach to literary criticism that interprets writings, authors, and readers through a psychological lens.
Often, the focus is on the expression of the unconscious in the work, looking at psychology in the narrative itself as well as in the author.

15. In this form of literary criticism, critics think about the symbols in the work and what they might mean. They also evaluate the psychological state of the characters, and examine their motivations and actions with an understanding of psychology in mind.
Taking an example like a horror story where the narrator kills his mother, the critic might look to the character’s past to understand why he committed matricide. At the same time, this criticism can explore matricide as a literary theme and may explore the author’s own history to determine why he or she chose to tell that particular story.

16. Typical questions:
How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?
What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader?
How symbolic is the imagery in the work?
How does the protagonist reflect the hero of myth?
Does the “hero” embark on a journey in either a physical or spiritual sense?
Is there a journey to an underworld or land of the dead?
What trials or ordeals does the protagonist face? What is the reward for overcoming them?

17. Moral Criticism
Moral criticism considers the value of the literature on its moral lesson or ethical teaching. Therefore, a written work that is ethically sound and encourages virtue is praised, but a work that misguides and/or corrupts is condemned.
Plato argues that literature (and art) is capable of corrupting or influencing people to act or behave in various ways. Sometimes these themes, subject matter, or the actions of literary characters undermine religion or ethics, he warns.
Aristotle and Horace both believed that literature can instruct as well as corrupt. So care must be taken when writing or reading.

18. The underlying principle then is whether or not the text can be seen as moral, practical or useful. Literature in these terms may be considered bad if the work is too self-indulgent or leads to moral decay or degeneration.
More recently – 1940’s, moral criticism has fallen away to Christian Humanism which seeks the same goal as moral criticism, but uses Christian belief and teachings of morality as its basis.

19. Typical Questions
Does the text seek to corrupt or negatively influence the reader? How so and/or why?
What moral lesson or ethical teaching is the author presenting in the text/or through character, plot, or theme?
How do characters, settings, and plot events represent or allegorize moral or ethical principles?
Does the work in question pose a pragmatic or moral lesson or philosophical idea?

20. Feminist Lens
Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women" (Tyson). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and "...this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing about women" (Richter 1346).

21. Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: "...unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to under-represent the contribution of women writers" (Tyson 82-83).
Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas of commonality (6).
Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so.
In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values.

22. All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the world.
While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (masculine or feminine).
All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality.
Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not (91).

23. Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three waves of feminism:
First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Agnes Campbell Macphail, Nellie McClung, and Emily Murphy who fought for women’s right to vote in the 1920’s.

24. Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: The late 1960s in Canada, as throughout the Western world, saw the emergence of a new women's movement. This new feminism rejected all limits to the equality of women's rights and showed that equality in daily life cannot be obtained through simple legal, political or institutional modifications.
At first, some were consciousness-raising groups, but others quickly turned to concrete action, providing abortion services, health centers, feminist magazines, militant theatre, day-care, shelters for battered women and rape crisis centers, and organizing for equal pay.

25. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist (over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from contemporary gender and race theories and strives to achieve equality for all who are marginalized.

26. Typical questions:
How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about women's creativity?

27. Historical Lens
Historical lens is concerned with the time period in which a text is written. It seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time (Michel Foucault's concept of episteme = justified true belief).
Historicism assumes that every work is a product of the historic moment that created it.

28. Historicists do not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather that we interpret events as products of our time and culture and that "...we don't have clear access to any but the most basic facts of history...our understanding of what such facts mean...is...strictly a matter of interpretation, not fact" (279). Moreover, Historicism holds that we are hopelessly subjective interpreters of what we observe.

29. Typical questions:
What language/characters/events present in the work reflect the current events of the author’s day?
Are there words in the text that have changed their meaning from the time of the writing?
How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the day?
How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical/cultural texts from the same period...?
How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?