Approaches in Interpreting a Literary Text
story to another, the interconnection of
1. Text- orient approach
- analyze a work of literature as complete in
itself without relating to it that outside of the
world
2. Author-oriented approach
- Study an author’s life to better understand
the author’s work
3. Reader-oriented approach
- Requires research. Reader brings a unique
set of experience and expectations to
literature in its extreme form
Literary Criticism
- Calls out the interesting thing in a work of art
- Aristotle on criticism: It is a standard of
judging well, the most essential part is to
observe those excellences which should
delight a reasonable reader
Literary Theories and Criticism
Literary Theories – needed to support the reader in
understanding the text
 Mimetic Theory – based on the classical
Aristotelian idea that literature imitates or
reflects the real world or the world of ideal
concepts or things from which subject of
literature is derived.
 Authorial Theory – the author is the sole
source of meaning. One eye is on the literary
text and the other is on the author’s biography.
The work is a private expression of the writer’s
feelings, imagination, inspiration and intention.
 Reader Response Theory – also called
effective pragmatic theory. This theory
permits varied and numerous interpretations
of the literary text from as many readers.
 Literary Tradition Theory – relates the work to
its literary history by identifying the tradition to
which it belongs
 Textual Analysis Theory – also known as the
work as an entity itself
 Note: “No Theory” – latter day critics
Literary Criticism – refers to the individual’s way of
reading a literary text
 New Criticism
» Seeks to make literary criticism a
scientific study
» Insists that each literary work as
harmonious possessing a universal
meaning. There is only one “correct” way
of reading
» Meaning is revealed by dissecting the
literary text
» Strength: calls for careful and thorough
reading of the text
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» Weakness: ignores the relationship of one
literature, the influence of society and
literature, and the importance of the
author’s individualism. It denies the
impact of the reader’s personal
experience
 Archetypal Criticism
» Influenced by Carla Gustav Jung’s belief
in the collective unconscious of all the
people of the world
» Identifies certain archetypes, which are
simple repeated patterns or images of
human experience
» Depends heavily on symbols and patterns
operating on a universal scale
» Uses Northop Frye’s assertion that
literature consists of variation on a great
mythic theme that contains the following
elements:
✓ The creation of life is a paradise:
garden
✓ A displacement form paradise:
alienation
✓ A time trial and tribulation, usually a
wandering: a journey
✓ A self-discovery as a result of the
struggle: an epiphany
✓ A return to paradise: either the original
or a new improved one
 Historicism
» Examines the culture and society from
which literature is produced, and how
three influences affect literature
✓ Who is the author? Where did he/she
come from? What were his/her
objectives in writing?
✓ How did the political events influence
what the writer wrote?
✓ How did the predominant social
customs of the time influence the
writer’s outlook?
✓ What is the predominant philosophy
that influences the work?
✓ Were there any special circumstances
under which the work was written?
» Strength: enriches one’s understanding of
literature because a knowledge of the
historical times in which a piece is written
» Weakness: overlooks the literary elements
and structure as well as the author’s
individual contribution
 Marxist Criticism
» Has the longest history being a 20th
century phenomenon
» Argues that literature is a product of real,
social and economic existence
» Views literature to be ideologically
determined, usually of the dominant
social class
 »Uses Moa Tse Tung’s ideas that literature
must answer:
✓ Whom to serve: the working people, the
masses
✓ How to serve: awaken and arouse the
masses and impel them to unite and
struggle to change their environment
» Strength: provides functional cultural and
political agenda of literature
» Weakness: opens up the possibility of
prioritizing content over form, ideological
criterion over artistic
 Feminist Criticism
» Combines several critical methods while
focusing on the questions on how gender
affects a literary work, writer, or reader.
✓ How are women portrayed in the work?
As stereotypes? As individuals?
✓ How is the woman’s point of view
considered?
✓ Is the male superiority implied in the
text?
✓ In what way is the work affected
because it was written by a woman?
» Strength: enriches a reading by showing
awareness of the complexity of the
human interaction
» Weakness: ultimate culturally criticism
 Structuralism
» Is based on the linguistic theories of
Ferdinand Saussure and cultural theories
of Clause Levi-Strauss
✓ Language is a well-contained system of
signs (Saussure)
✓ Culture, like languages, could be viewed
as system of signs and could be
analyzed in terms of the structural
relations among their elements (Levi-
Strauss)
» Views literary text as systems of
interlocking signs which are arbitrary
» Seeks to make explicit the “grammar” (the
rules and codes or system of
organization)
» Uses the concept of binary opposition
(sign-signifier, parole-langue,
performance-competence)
» Believes that a sign (something which
stands to somebody for something) can
never have a definite meaning, must be
continuously qualified
» Strength: allows intertextuality and links
literary text to system of signs that exist
even before the work is written
» Weakness: denies author’s individual
contribution
 Deconstruction
» Initiated by Jacques Derrida in the late
1960’s
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» Assumes that language refers only to
itself rather to an extra-textual reality
» Asserts multiple conflicting
interpretations to a text
» Bases interpretation on the philosophical,
political or social implications of the use
of language in a text rather than on the
author’s intentions
» Involves the questioning of the many
hierarchical oppositions (binary
oppositions) in order to expose bias of
privilege terms
» Takes apart the logic of language in
which authors make their claims
» Reveals how all text undermine
themselves in that every text includes
unconscious traces of other positions
exactly opposite to that which it sets out
to uphold
» Strength: debunks the idea of the
arbitraries of the verbal sign and loosens
up language from concepts and referents
» Weakness: views that the meaning of the
text bears only accidental relationship to
the author’s conscious intentions
WHAT LITERARY CRITICISM IS ALL ABOUT
1. Critics usually call our attention to the
interesting thing going on in the work of art.
2. Aristotle: A standard of judging well, the most
essential part is to observe those excellences
which should delight a reasonable reader.
FUNCTION OF A CRITIC: (Sylvan Barnet)
1. Introduce readers to authors or works of
which they are not aware.
2. Convince readers that they have understand
an author or work because they have not read
them carefully enough.
3. Show readers the relation between works of
different ages, each culture which they could
never have seen for themselves, because
they have limited knowledge.
4. Give a “reading” of a work which increases
the readers’ understanding of it.
5. Throw light upon the process of artistic
“making”.
6. Throw light upon the relation of art of life to
science, economics, ethics, religion.
TWO WAYS TO EMPLOY CRITICISM
1. Explication
- It is an ordinary line by line or episode-
episode commentary on what is going.
2. Analysis
- A breaking of the work into parts, or the study
of one or more parts.
Analyzing fiction:
1. Introduction
2. Complication
 3. Resolution
WAYS OF LOOKING AT LITERATURE
Literary Work
Writer Reader
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE OF LITERATURE
• The WRITER
-life
-culture
• The WORK
-ideas
-character
-structure
• CONNECTIONS
-previous interpretation
-content
-historical
-artistic/literary
• The READER
-culture
-life
CATEGORIES OF OBSERVATION
• The Writer’s Life
-Who wrote this?
-What kind of person was he/she?
-How old was the writer when the poem was
written?
• The Writer’s Culture
-In what place and time was it written?
-What was going on at the time?
-What events and ideas were important?
-What was the world view?
• The Work, Structure, Techniques
-How many parts are there in this work?
-How are they related?
-What key words, images, figure of speech
are important?
• Characters of Speaker
-Who is talking here? To whom?
-What is their relationship like?
-What motivates them?
-What conflict do they have?
• Ideas, Lesson Philosophy
-What ideas or lessons are expressed or
implied here?
-What are the values?
-What forces have determined these events?
-What are we supposed to learn?
• The Reader: Yourself as the Reader
-How does it make me feel?
-What features of the wok stand out?
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-What happens to me when I read this?
• Your culture
-What is the present worldview in the place
where I am situated?
-What events or ideas are important?
• Historical Perspective
-Does this refer to historical events?
-Is it about something or somebody in the
past?
• Artistic/Literary Tradition
-What does it remind me of?
- How is it related to other works, storylines,
characters, or myths?
PHILIPPINE LITERATURE
-A product, a reflection of and reaction of and
reaction to the period, place and people who
produced it. (Balabar, et. al., 1989, p. 5)
-is the body of works, both oral and written, that
Filipinos whether native, naturalized, foreign born,
have created about the experience of people living in
or relating to the Philippine Society. It may be written
in Spanish, English or Chinese.
-works that tell about Filipino’s lives and aspirations
LITERATURE THROUGH THE AGES
1. Ancient Literature
-all literature began with simple words
-Rhythmic sounds that might have meanings
-Lullaby songs
-Religious chants or hymns
-Praises for heroes, gods and goddesses
2. Middle Kingdom of Egypt
-The oldest extant literature are the literary
remains of the middle kingdom of the
MIDDLE KINGDOM OF EGYPT which are
written in ink on papyrus.
-Fragments of stories still exist like
marvelous adventures of a shipwrecked
sailor or the tale of the eloquent peasant.
-Collection of wise sayings, shrewd
observations and good counsel
3. Babylonian and Assyria
-Their religious literature consisted of the:
a) Ritual worship
b) Magic incantations to repel evil spirits
in this life
c) Predictions of the future
- Epics dealing with such topics as creation
and the flood
-These themes appear on the Hebrew Book
of Genesis
4. Greece
-Homeric poems represented an age of epic
poetry with the odyssey as shining example
-This was followed in the seventh and sixth
centuries of lyric age
-In the fifth century, dramatic poetry became
a leading form.
 -Prose • Onomatopoeia – The use of words that
a) Historical imitate the sounds associated with the
b) Philosophical objects or actions they refer to.
c) Oratorical- became predominant • Oxymoron – A figure of speech in which
-The period of lyric poetry is from 700 to 470 incongruous or contradictory terms appear
when it culminated the pinder side by side.
-Dramatic dances and performances are • Paradox – A statement that appears to
almost universal among savage people. contradict itself.
5. Other examples • Personification – A figure of speech in which
-They were closely connected with: an inanimate object or abstraction is
a) Religion and public life endowed with human qualities or abilities.
b) Drawing subjects and characters • Pun – A play on words, sometimes on
from the myths different senses of the same word and
-Confucius in China sometimes on the similar sense or sound of
c) Edited in the book, Book of History different words.
d) Composed Spring and autumn • Simile – A stated comparison (usually
formed with "like" or "as") between two
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGES (from quizlet) fundamentally dissimilar things that have
certain qualities in common.
• Alliteration – The repetition of an initial • Synecdoche – A figure of speech in which a
consonant sound. part is used to represent the whole (for
• Anaphora – The repetition of the same word example, ABCs for alphabet) or the whole for
or phrase at the beginning of successive a part ("England won the World Cup in 1966")
clauses or verses. • Understatement – A figure of speech in
• Antithesis – The juxtaposition of contrasting which a writer or a speaker deliberately
ideas in balanced phrases. makes a situation seem less important or
• Apostrophe – Breaking off discourse to serious than it is.
address some absent person or thing, some
abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a
nonexistent character.
• Assonance – Identity or similarity in sound
between internal vowels in neighboring
words.
• Chiasmus – A verbal pattern in which the
second half of an expression is balanced
against the first but with the parts reversed.
• Euphemism – The substitution of an
inoffensive term for one considered
offensively explicit.
• Hyperbole – An extravagant statement; the
use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of
emphasis or heightened effect.
• Irony – The use of words to convey the
opposite of their literal meaning. A statement
or situation where the meaning is
contradicted by the appearance or
presentation of the idea.
• Litotes – A figure of speech consisting of an
understatement in which an affirmative is
expressed by negating its opposite.
• Metaphor – An implied comparison between
two unlike things that actually have
something important in common.
• Metonymy – A figure of speech in which one
word or phrase is substituted for another with
which it is closely associated; also, the
rhetorical strategy of describing something
indirectly by referring to things around it.

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