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LITERARY CRITICISM
Criticism- often interpreted as negative and faultfinding - evaluative - interpretive Evaluative - seeks to determine how accomplished a work is - what place it should hold in literary history Interpretive- seeks to explain, analyze, and clarify meaning - questions the meaning and significance of literature. Text- refers to the literary work -can be a poem, novel, story, play, or literary essay Theories- “Schools of thought” - ideas, concepts, and other terminologies behind the explanation of literature. Literary Criticism -is argumentative - critics disagree with one another since they write such different analyses of literature Formalism and New Criticism - Began in the Early 20th century; New Criticism prominent in 1970s - Focuses on the formal elements of literature (setting, tone, characters, theme, symbols) - Uses explication and close reading techniques - Attempts to prove the text as a universal work (means the same to everyone everywhere regardless of person, place, or time) - Formalist critics do not focus on race, class, gender, time period, author’s or reader’s background to determine meaning/s in literature - Parts of the text relate to one another and to the text as a whole
Feminist and Gender Criticism - Popular during the 1970s when the feminist movement was gaining strength - Focuses on roles of female characters, writers, and readers and their place in literature - Reveals how literature represents the oppression of women from a historical and cultural context - Shows how women can overcome sexist power structures in literature - Gender criticism: 1980s -includes male and female, -explores and questions issues of masculinity and femininity -contests struggles, roles, and issues between genders -Queer Theory-questions issues surrounding sexuality/ sexual orientation
Marxist Criticism - origin began with economic philosopher Karl Marx during the 1800s - literature is a battleground reflecting a struggle for power between social classes - reading and writing literature are acts of production and consumption - Labor issues: exploitation, marginality, alienation and class struggle of characters, readers, authors, and historians all influence a work - Vulgar Marxism: expose inequalities that underlie all societies both reflected through literature and through the author’s background - Discusses issues of social consciousness and liberation Cultural Studies -inequality in the literary canon (the texts held up as important or great works) -certain literature is considered superior to others -to celebrate and interpret the works of writers who come from culturally, historically, and economically disadvantaged backgrounds -erase the line that separates “high” and “low” art -Postcolonial Studies -focuses on literature after the period of European, imperialist invasion of territories -studies writing from former British colonies on how these writers differ from the writing of their native colonial counterparts
Historical Criticism/New Criticism -considers the time period and life of the author in order to understand his/her work -scholars read historical material such as newspapers, diaries, letters, and resort to other genealogical sources in order to understand the historical context of a work -a work cannot stand by itself without considering its historical background -New Criticism (created during the 1960s) - study history to interpret literature and literature to interpret history -literary and nonliterary texts are read parallel to each other in order to understand how each explains the other
Psychological Theories -emerged during the early 20th century -focuses on the emotional, mental, and behavioral actions that affect and motivate characters, authors, and readers in a work of literature -applies psychological theories, most popularly, Freudian psychoanalysis to literature -attention is paid to symbols, for their presence in literature can signify a deeper, hidden meaning -analyzes literature using other figures in psychology such as Carl Jung (idea of archetypes) and Jacques Lacan (unconscious and the nature of language)
Reader Response -a text is nothing without the reader -texts have no meaning until they come under the reader’s hands -Process- a text’s meaning is not absolute or static but an evolving entity -Gaps- holes in the text that need to be filled up by the reader’s interpretation -Reader’s insights come from a variety of sources: religious, political, cultural, gender, classicist, historical, and social -texts meaning changes over time Structuralism -derives from the work of anthropologists, linguists, and philosophers of mid-twentieth century who sought to understand how humans communicated -concerned with the arrangements that order the logic of texts, rather than the thematic, formalist aspects -every piece of knowledge is not a separate entity, but part of a network of associations -pays attention to two contexts -Cultural Context- understanding the author’s and a reader’s social, political, educational, familial, and labor environments and how these affect his/her interpretation or writing of the text -Literary Context- refers to everything that the author or the reader has read and how this affects his or her interpretation of the human experience in literature Poststructuralism/Deconstruction -debunks all literary theories that attempt to carve out a solid, absolutist understanding of literature -there is no center point of understanding but only an endless web of ideas leading to other ideas and other ideas -no text has a fixed or real meaning since meaning is forever shifting and altering through time -Deconstruction - school of thought that emerged in France -sought to overturn the tenets of Western Philosophy by proving that reality is not a stable entity -jouissance (bliss)-language in literature is perceived as free-spirited and playful -contradictory explanations are welcomed and even celebrated -more than one interpretation of literature can exist at the same time |
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