1. Looking Through the Lens with Lois Tyson
Critical theory
Looking Through the Lens with Lois Tyson

2. Basic Understanding Nothing is "natural."
The way we live, work, and relate to others-none of this is neutral.
Everything is constructed by society.
So…everything can be deconstructed too!
This leads to social change.

3. Sample Media

4. Critical Thinkers Ask…
· Who constructed this text?
· What are his or her beliefs?
· For whom is it constructed?
· Where did it appear?
· How is the topic presented?
· What are other ways it could have been
presented?
· Whose voices are heard/whose are left out?
· What is the text trying to do to the reader?
· What is the message? How could it be
conveyed differently? Should it be resisted?

5. Literary Perspectives
Help us explain why people might interpret the same text in different ways
Help us understand what is important to individual readers
Lens: the idea that you can read a text through (metaphorically speaking) others’ glasses

6. The Lenses Reader-Response Archetypal Formalist Biographical
Historical
Social-Class
Gender
Deconstruction
Post-Colonialism

7. Reader Response Criticism
This theory focuses on the reader and the response they have to the particular text.
A literary work is converted into an activity that goes on in a reader’s mind
Narrator, plot, characters, style and structure are not as important as the connection between a reader’s experience and the text.
It is through the connection that the meaning is made.
People bring their own thoughts, moods, and experiences to whatever text they are reading and walk away from the text with whatever they picked up from the text themselves

8. Deconstructionist Criticism
By far the most difficult criticism for people to understand
Created by unconventional thinkers, who declared that literature means nothing because language means nothing
Believe that social constructionists made up everything, so really everything made up means nothing, including language

9. Archetypal Criticism [ahr-ki-tahp-al]
Origins, “archetype” meaning the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype.

10. Archetypal Criticism
Signifies narrative designs, character types, or images, which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even ritualized modes of social behavior
Example: Disney movies
Damsel in distress
Prince Charming
Villain with a motive

11. Archetypal Criticism
This criticism would find the journey underground, the search for the father, the heaven/hell image, the rebel-hero, etc in each text.

12. Gender/Feminist Criticism
Views cultural and economic disabilities in a “patriarchal” society that have prevented women from realizing their creative possibilities, including woman’s cultural identification as merely a passive object, or “Other”, and man is the defining and dominating subject
[pay-tree-ahr-kuh l] stems from “patriarch” , meaning, family, community, church, etc. are all controlled by men

13. Gender/Feminist Criticism
In terms of texts, this lens would view even the great works to:
lack autonomous female role models
Implicitly address male readers
Focus on relationships between genders

14. Gender/Feminist Criticism
Feminist Criticism examines the ways in which literature and other cultural productions reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social and psychological oppression of women. (Tyson, p. 83)
The traditional view of feminism is oversimplified and negative and it persists today. This is seen in the home, the workplace, and the media, and it is culturally constructed.
Patriarchy is the binary opposite of Feminism.
Women are seen as the other in a patriarchal society.
Women are marginalized voices in history (his story) and literature.
Sex is biological. Gender is a social construction.
Patriarchy has created a position for women that has been culturally produced, not biologically.

15. Gender/Feminist Criticism
Women are oppressed 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 objectified and marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms.
All of Western civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology. (Eve/Pandora)
Gender refers to our behavior, not our anatomy.
All feminist activity promotes women’s equality- it is a form of activism.
Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience.

16. Gender/Feminist Criticism
1. What does the work reveal about the operations of patriarchy? How are women portrayed? How do these portrayals relate to gender issues of the period in which the novel was written or is set?
2. What does the work suggest about the ways in which race, class, and/or other cultural factors intersect with gender in producing women’s experience?
3. How does the work define femininity and masculinity? Do the characters always conform to their assigned genders?
4. What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a means of resisting patriarchy?
5. How was the work received by the public and by the critics? What does this tell us about the operations of patriarchy?
6. What role does the work play in terms of women’s literary history and tradition?

17. Lesbian, Gay, Queer + Criticism
Non-straight population oppressed in society
Heterosexuality is “normal”/ Homosexuality is abnormal
Heterosexuality is the binary opposite of homosexuality and is privileged
Dominance of heterosexuality has been a social construction

18. Lesbian, Gay, Queer + Criticism
Is homosexuality present in the cultural text? If so, is it adequately represented?
Is there an imbalance in power and respect concerning sexuality?
How do the literary texts illustrate the problems that people face due to their sexuality?
Do events favor a particular sexuality, putting one above the others?
Is the text displaying characteristics of homophobia?

19. Lesbian, Gay, Queer+ Criticism
Homophobia: dislike of or prejudice against homosexual people
Compulsory heterosexuality:  is the idea that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced by a heteronormative society
Heterocentrism: A belief that heterosexuality is the only normal and acceptable sexual orientation and is superior to other orientations
Biological essentialism: The belief that 'human nature', an individual's personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity, homosexuality, masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural 'essence' (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture).
Social constructionism: examines the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality.

20. Lesbian, Gay, Queer+ Criticism
Mean 5:43
Referenced, not represented
Obvious imbalance in respect and power
Wasn’t allowed at the party, socially shunned
She’s excluded, “weird” and changes appearance; not favored.
Characteristics of homophobia are present out of context

21. Social-Class/Marxist Criticism
This lens grounds its theory on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx and Fredirch Engles
Marxist Critics would view texts on the following claims:
Basic economic organization
Conflict between economic classes
Social reality of that time and place

22. Social-Class/Marxist Criticism
Questions one would ask through this lens would be:
Who has the power/money?
Who does not?
What happens as a result?

23. New Criticism
This lens looks at texts for what it IS rather than what is SHOULD be, disregarding its time, genre and author background.
This lens follows these guidelines
Regarded as an independent and self sufficient object
Close reading: detailed analysis of the components in the work
Deal with meanings and interactions of words, figures of speech and symbols
Distinction between genres is not essential

24. Psychological/Psychoanalytic Criticism
This lens looks at a piece of work primarily as an expression, in fictional form, of the personality, state of mind, feelings, and desires of its author
One would correlate the following with the piece of work:
Author’s personality to interpret literary work
Literary work is to establish the personality of the author (biographically)
The work is used to experience the distinctive subjectivity or consciousness of its author

25. Psychological/Psychoanalytic Criticism
This theory requires that we investigate the psychology of a character or an author to figure out the meaning of the text
However, this theory can be considered biological criticism

26. Historical Criticism
This theory requires that you apply specific historical information about the time during which an author wrote
A text would refer to the social, political, economic, cultural and intellectual climate of the time
Historians ask: What happened? What does this event tell us about history?
A>B>C
Ex: To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby

27. New Historical
Believe we don’t have clear access to any but the most basis facts of history.
Strictly a matter of interpretation, not fact.
New Historians ask: How has the event tell us about history? What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?
History cannot be understood a a linear progression of events
**French Philosopher Michel Foucault

28. Cultural Criticism
Shares with New Historicism that human history and culture constitute a complex arena of dynamic forces of which we can construct only a partial and subjective picture.
A text like the Great Gatsby through a Marxist Lens, Feminist Lens, Lesbian/Gay/Queer Lens can all be examples of Cultural Criticism as the interpretations are exploring American culture.
**French Philosopher Michel Foucault

29. Postcolonial Criticism
A framework for examining similarities among all critical theories that deal with human oppression, such as Marxism; feminism; gay, lesbian, and queer theories; and African American theory.
Defines formerly colonized peoples as any population that has been subjected to the political domination of another population, you may see postcolonial critics draw examples from African American and Indigenous writers (to name a few)

30. Postcolonial Criticism
Uses politically, socially, culturally and psychologically viewpoints to analyze colonialist and anti-colonialist ideologies
Defines formerly colonized peoples as any population that has been subjected to the political domination of another population
Colonizers believed they were superior than the people they were colonizing
A view of the people who had been colonized
A view of the colonizers
Postcolonial culture include both a merger between the culture of the colonized and the colonizer
Even when the colonizers leave, their culture is still left on the colonized
Double consciousness – perceiving the world that is divided between two antagonistic cultures: that of the colonizer and that of the indigenous community

31. Postcolonial Criticism
Eurocentrism – the use of European culture as the standard to which all other cultures are negatively contrasted
Universalism – the assumption that all European ideas, ideals, and experience were universal, the standard for all humankind
Similar to feminism; devaluation of women and colonized peoples poses very similar problems
Postcolonial identity is unstable due to a hybrid of two cultures

32. Postcolonial Criticism
How does the text represent colonial oppression?
What problems does the text bring up with postcolonial identity?
What does the text say about the resistance of colonization?
What cultural differences are present and what effect do they have in the text?
How do people respond to the writings/works of those who were colonized?
Once a colony becomes independent, how do they adapt to a new culture?
Do European texts look at colonization as positive or negative?

33. Example for Postcolonial Criticism
Hong Kong: Formerly ceded as British territory from Opium War (1843) Colonized for 99 years.

34. Thinking Time….

35. Thinking Time…

36. Thinking Time…
There Was an Old Woman There was an old woman, Who lived in a shoe, She had so many children She didn’t know what to do; She gave them some broth, Without any bread, She whipped them all soundly, And sent them to Bed

37. Individual Critical Analysis
Read “The Lottery Ticket” by Anton Chekhov in the Echoes textbook (p )
Respond Critically to the short story by:
Finding/Analyzing/Explaining or Reflecting parts/examples of the story that can be critically viewed through any of the lenses we have discussed in class (you must stick with one lens throughout assignment). Typed, and to be handed in FRIDAY (Sept 12th)
Topic Sentence can be as simple as:
“I read “The Lottery Ticket” by Anton Chekhov through the _____________ lens/perspective because…”