1. Literary Criticism

2. “Often literary theories change our views of
a work of literature by proposing new
distinctions or new categories for looking at
the work. This is a bit like putting on a new
set of glasses: suddenly you see things
more clearly.”
- Stephen Bonnycastle
In Search of Authority

3. “Literary criticism is nothing more than discourse – spoken or written – about literature. Literary critics have borrowed concepts from other disciplines, such as philosophy, history, linguistics, psychology, and anthropology, to analyze imaginative literature more perceptively. Literary theory tries to formulate general principles rather than discuss specific texts.”
- X. J. Kennedy

4. There are 9 approaches we will look at
Formalist - Sociological
Biographical - Gender
Historical - Deconstructionist
Psychological - Cultural
Mythological

5. “Studying theory means you can take your own part in the struggles for power between different ideologies. It helps you to discover elements of your own ideology, and understand why you hold certain values unconsciously. It means no authority can impose a truth on you in a dogmatic way – and if some authority does try, you can challenge that truth in a powerful way, by asking what ideology it is based on…Theory is subversive because it puts authority in question.”
- Stephen Bonnycastle

6. “A man with one theory is lost. He needs several of them, or lots
“A man with one theory is lost. He needs several of them, or lots! He should stuff them in his pockets like newspapers.”
- Bertolt Brecht
“Everything we do in life is rooted in theory.”
- bell hooks

7. Formalistic Approach (New Criticism)
Close reading and analysis of elements such as setting, irony, paradox, imagery, and metaphor
Reading stands on its own
Awareness of denotative and connotative implications
Alertness to allusions to mythology, history, literature

8. Formalistic Approach (New Criticism)
Sees structure and patterns
Primarily used during the first two-thirds of the 20th Century
This is the “AP” style of analysis, involving a close reading of a text and the assumption that all information necessary to the interpretation of a work must be found within the work itself.
A literary work should be treated as an independent and self-sufficient object

9. Formalistic Approach (New Criticism)
Advantage
Performed without research
Emphasizes value of literature apart from its context
Disadvantages
Text is seen in isolation
Ignores context of the work
Cannot account for allusions
Tends to reduce literature to just a few narrow rhetorical devices, such as irony, paradox and tension.

10. Formalistic Approach (New Criticism)
Strategies and questions
Read closely. You can assume that every aspect is carefully calculated to contribute to the work’s unity – figures of speech, point of view, diction recurrent ideas or events, everything.
How is the work structured or organized? How does it begin? Where does it go next? How does it end? What is the work’s plot? How is its plot related to is structure?
What is the relationship of each part of the work as a whole? How are the parts related to one another?
Who is narrating or telling what happens in the work? How is the narrator, speaker, or character revealed to readers? How do we come to know and understand this figure?
Who are the major and minor characters? What do they represent? How do they relate to one another?

11. Formalistic Approach (New Criticism)
Strategies and questions cont.
What are the time and place of the work – it’s setting? How is the setting related to what we know of the characters and their actions? To what extent is the setting symbolic?
What kind of language does the author use to describe, narrate, explain, or otherwise create the world of the literary work? More specifically, what images, similes, metaphors, symbols appear in the work? What is their function? What meanings do they convey?

12. Gender Criticism
“The study of gender, within literature, is of general importance to everyone.”
- Judith Spector
“I have a male mind with male experiences. Therefore I see things through the perception of a man. I couldn’t relate to some of Virginia Woolf’s views and I despised the way she pushed her viewpoint on the reader. This was brought on by my masculinity, I feel.”
-Bill, 12th Grade

13. Gender Criticism
Sees the exclusion of women from the literary canon as a political as well as aesthetic act.
Works to change the language of literary criticism
Examines the experiences of women from all races, classes, cultures
Feminist criticism reasserts the authority of experience
Exposes patriarchal premises and resulting prejudices to promote discovery and reevaluation of literature by women
Feminist literary criticism has most developed since the women’s movement beginning in the early 1960’s.

14. Gender Criticism
Examines social, cultural, and psychosexual contexts of literature and criticism.
In the production of literature and within stories themselves, men and women have not had equal access.
Men and women are different: they write differently, read differently, and write about their reading differently. These differences should be valued.
Describes how women in texts are constrained in culture and society.
Gender is conceived as complex cultural idea and psychological component rather than as strictly tied to biological gender
Always political and always revisionist

15. Gender Criticism
This patriarchal ideology pervades those writings that have been considered great literature. Such works lack autonomous female role models, are implicitly addressed to male readers, and shut out the woman reader as an alien outsider or solicit her to identify against herself by assuming male values and ways of perceiving, feeling, and acting.

16. Gender Criticism Advantages Disadvantages
Women have been somewhat underrepresented in the traditional canon; a feminist approach to literature helps redress this problem
Disadvantages
Feminist critics turn literary criticism into a political battlefield and overlook the merits of works they consider “patriarchal.”
When arguing for a distinct feminine writing style, feminist critics tend to regulate women’s literature to ghetto status; this in turn prevents female literature from being naturally included in the literary canon
Often too theoretical

17. Gender Criticism Strategies and questions
To what extent does the representation of gender in the work reflect the place and time in which the work was written?
How are the relationships between gender presented in the work? What roles do men and women assume and perform and with what consequences?
Does the author present the work from within a predominantly male or female sensibility? Why might this have been done, and with what effects?
How do the facts of the author’s life relate to the presentation of men and women in the work? To their relative degrees of power?

18. Gender Criticism Strategies and questions cont.
How do other works by the author correspond to this one in their depiction of the power relationships between men and women?
What role does gender or sexuality play in this work?
Specifically, observe how sexual stereotypes might be reinforced or undermined. Try to see how the work reflects or distorts the place of women (men) in society.
Look at the effects of power drawn from gender within the plot or form.

19. Psychological Criticism
Most controversial, most abused, least appreciated form
Associated with Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) and his followers
Creative writing (like dreaming) represents the (disguised) fulfillment of a (repressed) wish or fear
Everyone’s formative history is different in its particulars, but there are basic recurrent patterns of development for most people. These particulars and patterns have lasting effects.
In reading literature, we can make educated guesses about what has been repressed and transformed.

20. Psychological Criticism
Emphasis on the unconscious aspects of the human psyche
Experimental and diagnostic; closely related to biological science
All human behavior is motivated ultimately by the prime psychic force, libido
Because of the powerful social taboos attached to sexual impulses, many of our desires and memories are repressed
Concave images are female symbols and images of length are male symbols
Such activities as dancing, riding, and flying are symbols of sexual pleasures

21. Psychological Criticism
Advantages
Helpful for understanding works whose characters have psychological issues
A valuable tool in understanding human nature, individual characters, and symbolic meaning
Disadvantages
Psychological criticism can turn a work into little more than a psychological case study, neglecting to view it as a piece of art.
Critics tend to see sex in everything, exaggerating this aspect of literature. Some works simply do not lend themselves to this approach
Often simplify and distort

22. Psychological Criticism
Strategies and questions
What connections can you make between your knowledge of an author’s life and the behavior and motivations of characters in his/her work?
How does your understanding of the characters, their relationships, their actions, and their motivations in a literary work help you better understand the mental world and imaginative life, or the actions and motivations of the author?
How does a particular literary work – its images, metaphors, and other linguistic elements – reveal the psychological motivations of its characters or the psychological mindset of its author?

23. Psychological Criticism
Strategies and questions cont.
To what extent can you employ the concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis to understand the motivations of literary characters?
What kinds of literary works and what types of literary characters seem best suited to a critical approach that employs a psychological or psychoanalytical perspective? Why?
How can a psychological or psychoanalytical approach to a particular work be combined with an approach from another critical perspective?

24. Sociological Criticism
Karl Marx argued that the way people think and behave in any society is determined by basic economic factors. He believed those groups of people who owned and controlled major industries could exploit the rest
Marxist critics examine literature for its refection of how dominant elites exploit subordinate groups, how people become “alienated” from each other, and how middle-class/bourgeois values lead to the control and suppression of the working class
See literature’s value in promoting social and economic revolution
Such changes would include the overthrow of the dominant capitalist ideology and the loss of power by those with money and privilege

25. Sociological Criticism
Concerned with understanding the role of politics, money, and power in literary works, and with redefining and reforming the way society distributes its resources among the classes
Marxist critics generally approach literary works as products of their era, especially as influenced, even determined by the economic and political ideologies that prevail at the time of their composition
The literary work is a “product” in relation to the actual economic and social conditions that exist at either the time of the work’s composition or the time and place of the action it describes.

26. Sociological Criticism
Advantages
Frequently evaluative and judges some literary work better than others on an ideological basis
Can illuminate political and economic dimensions of literature that other approaches overlook
Disadvantages
May impose critic’s personal politics on the work in question and then evaluating it according to how closely it endorses that ideology
There is a tendency that can lead to reductive judgment because an author may illustrate the principles of class struggle more clearly and will be judge superior because of this

27. Sociological Criticism
Strategies and questions
Explore the way different groups of people are represented in texts. Evaluate the level of social realism in the text and how society is portrayed
Consider how the text itself is a commodity that reproduces certain social beliefs and practices. Analyze the social effect of the literary work
Look at the effects of power drawn from economic or social class
What social forces and institutions are represented in the work? How are these forces portrayed? What is the author’s attitude toward them?

28. Sociological Criticism
Strategies and questions cont.
What political economic elements appear in the work? How important are they in determining or influencing the lives of the characters?
What economic issues appear in the course of the work? How important are economic facts in influencing the motivation and behavior of the characters?
To what extent are the lives of the characters influenced or determined by social, political, and economic forces? To what extent are the characters aware of these forces?
Best way to look at it – who has the power/money? Who does not? What happens as a result?

29. Biographical Criticism
Authors typically write about things they know well, the events and circumstances of their lives are often reflected in their works.
The context for a literary work includes information about the author
Interpretation of the work should be based on an understanding of its context
Focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the author’s life

30. Biographical Criticism
Advantages
Helps to illuminate the text; provide insight into themes historical references, social oppositions and the creation of fiction characters
Disadvantages
Some biographical details may be irrelevant
Writers often revise facts
Can overwhelm and distort the work
Requires knowledge of the author

31. Biographical Criticism
Questions and strategies
Research the author’s life and relate that information to the work
Research the author’s time and relate that information to the work
What elements of the author’s life come out in the work? Why?
How might the work came into being? How did the author change it from its autobiographical origins?

32. Historical Criticism
When reading a text, you have to place it within its historical context
Historical refers to the social, political, economic, cultural, and intellectual climate of the time
Less concerned with explaining a work’s literary significance for today’s readers than with helping us understand the work by recreating the exact meaning and impact it had on its original audience

33. Historical Criticism Advantages Disadvantages
There have been so many social, cultural, and linguistic changes that some older texts are incomprehensible without this criticism
Even simple historical analysis can help with analysis
Disadvantages
Requires research and prior knowledge
May be missed if knowledge isn’t present
Often ignores the other types of analysis

34. Historical Criticism Strategies and Questions
What information about the time the author wrote is important to the work?
What information about the time the work is set in is important to the work?
What ways did the people of that period see and think about the world in which they lived
Research the fundamental historical events of the period in which the author wrote

35. Historical Criticism Strategies and Questions, cont.
Consider the fundamental historical events of the period in which the literary work is set if it is different from the period in which the author wrote
View the text as part of a larger context of historical movements, and consider how it both contributes to and reflects certain fundamental aspects of human history? How does this effect the story?

36. Deconstructionist Criticism
The most difficult. There can be no absolute knowledge about anything because language can never say what we intended it to mean.
Developed by some very unconventional thinkers, who declared that literature means nothing because language means nothing.
In other words, we cannot say that we know what the “meaning” of a story is because there is no way of knowing.
Language is irretrievably self-contradictory and self-destroying.
Through a careful analysis of a text’s language, deconstructionist unravel the text by pointing to places where it is ambivalent, contradictory, or otherwise ambiguous.

37. Deconstructionist Criticism
Strategies and Questions
What oppositions exist in the work?
What textual elements (descriptive details, images, incidents, passages) suggest a contradiction or alternative to the privileged or more powerful term. Meaning…how these elements can offer multiple meanings
What is the prevailing ideology or set of cultural assumptions in the work? Where are these assumptions most evident?
What passages of the work most reveal gaps, inconsistencies, or contradictions?

38. Deconstructionist Criticism
Strategies and Questions, cont.
How stable is the text?
How are the “truths” in the story provisional and contradictory?
While a formalist tries to demonstrate how the diverse elements of a text cohere into meaning, the deconstructionist attempts to show how the text can be broken down.
Look for gaps where meaning breaks down.

39. Cultural Criticism
Does not offer a single way of analyzing literature – will borrow concepts from deconstruction, Marxist, gender, race and psychology theories
Looks at culture for its dissensions and conflicts
A chief goal is to understand the nature of social power as reflected in “texts”.
The relevant mission of cultural studies is to identify both the overt and covert values reflected in a cultural practice.
Tries to trace out and understand the structures of meaning that hold those assumptions in place and give them the appearance of objective representation.
Seeks to portray social, political and psychological conflicts it masks
Often asks questions about what social class created a work of art and what class(es) served as its audience.

40. Cultural Criticism
Concern with social inequality between the sexes and races.
A political enterprise that views literary analysis as a means of furthering social justice
Notion of boundaries is one of the more helpful metaphors for thinking about cultural studies.
An additional area of cultural studies deals with gender criticism – specifically gay and lesbian studies. This examines the representation of sexual orientation a text, and with the social and cultural implications of these representations. Will examine a text for themes of heterosexual privilege, sexual identity and affiliation, homoerotic imagery and power imbalances based on sexual orientation.
Also looks to race and how it is represented in the text. Will examine for racial stereotypes, themes of inequalities based on race or ethnicity, and racial identity and affiliation.
What one sees most clearly are a commitment to examining issues of class, race, and gender

41. Cultural Criticism Advantages
Provides new social, political, and historical insights
Disadvantages
Notorious for its complex intellectual analysis of mundane materials
No single way of analysis

42. Cultural Criticism Strategies and Questions
What cultural conflicts are suggested by or embodied in the work?
What kinds of gender identity, behavior, and attitudes are reflected in the work? Is there any overtly or covertly expressed view of race, homosexuality or lesbianism?
With what kinds of social, economic, and cultural privileges (or lack thereof) are same-sex unions or relationships depicted? With what effects and consequences?
What stereotypes of race are depicted? Are inequalities are based on race, ethnicity or sexual orientation are depicted in the text?