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1920s Russian Formalism:

(1914)-1930s Moscow Linguistic Circle (1915): Roman Jacobson- Metaphor and metonymy
Society for the Study of Poetic Language (1916):Victor Shklovsky - Defamiliarization
Vladimir Propp- Morphology of the Folktale (1928)
Mikhail Bakhtin- Heteroglossia, Carnival.
1940-60 Structuralism: Ferdinand de Saussure - Course in General Linguistics (1916)
Unlike Formalism, it is concerned with the meaning and the content of the work and not just form.
signifier/signified;Langue/parole;;Synchronic/diachronic analyses;Paradigmatic and syntagmatic
relationship
Arbitrariness and difference
Roland Barthes- Sign (the word that carries the combined meaning of the signifier and the signified”;
lexia
TzvetanTodorov- Introduction to Poetics (1968), 3 aspects of literary text: semantic, syntactic and verbal
1920s /30-1960s The New Criticism - T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards - Principles of Literary Criticism (1924), Practical
Criticism(1929): empirical/practical response; F. R Leavis- New Bearings in English Poetry (1932),
Revaluation (1936).
emphasized ‘form’ and the literary text as an intrinsic and self-sufficient object of study without need for
external/historical factors.

1920s Marxist Criticism- Russian& Western: Theodore Adorno; Walter Benjamin; Louis Althusser-“Ideology
and Ideological State Apparatuses” Disapproved of experiments in Modernist literature. 1. Studies the
materialist and social character of literature; 2. Studies literature in relation to its social, economic and
historical contexts; 3. Explains how ideology influences literature 4. Uses the metaphor of the base and
superstructure 5. Perceives literature as a direct expression of class interests
- The Gramscians: a. Raymond Williams Marxism and Form (1971), The Prison House of Language: A
Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (1972), The Political Unconscious (1981) b.
Terry Eagleton c. Fredric Jameson - Cultural Materialism.
1960s Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida: “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of
Human Sciences” (1966;
1. Rhetorical in approach 2. It is not definitive 3. Against humanist and empiricist theories 4. Does not
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believe in the stability of meaning 5. Hence, it does not seek a definite meaning in a text 6. Tries to show
ambiguities and disruptions in the texts
Michel Foucault-“The Order of Discourse” (1970); “What is an Author?” (1966); Concept of Discourse
Paul de Man - The Yale School (Deconstruction) - Allegories of Reading (1979) - Trope
Harold Bloom- A Map of Misreading- Limitation, substitution, and representation
Postcolonialists:Edward Said ,GayatriSpivak and HomiBhabha
1900s-1940s Psychoanalytic Criticism: Freud (1856-1939)- The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Sexualized all
forms of images –Oedipal complex; the unconscious ; Id- the repressed unconscious; Ego-
rational/conscious; mind; Super-ego- conscience
Viennese Psychoanalytic Society:C.G. Jung; Alfred Adler; Otto Rank; Ernest Alfred Jones
Collective Unconscious-“inferiority complex” (Adler); Reconciled psychoanalysis with literary studies
1960s onward Post –Freudian/Psychologists:Jacques Lacan-
Jacques Lacan(combined Freudian psychoanalysis with Saussurean linguistics)= The unconscious is
structured like language.
The Imaginary (pre-Oedipal), the Symbolic and the Real(Mirror stage 6-18 months)
Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze; Feminists:Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray
1950s to 60s Mythological/Archeypal approach: Northrop Frye : The Anatomy of Criticism (1957): myth critic
studies archetypes or archetypal patterns that the writer has drawn from and which animate a literary work
and elicit a particular deep response among readers.
Carl Jung; Joseph Campbell- The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (1957).
Maud Bodkin - Archetypal patterns in Poetry (1958) ; James Frazer- The Golden Bough (1922).
1950s onwards Postcolonialism; Frantz Fanon- Black Skin, White Masks (1952), The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
;Edward Said- Orientalism (1978), Culture &Imperialism (1993);,Homi K. Bhabha- Nation and
Narration (1990),The Location of Culture (1994);,GayatriChakravortySpivak -“The Woman’s Text and a
Critique of Imperialism” (1985), “French Feminism in an International Frame” (1987), “Can the
Subaltern Speak?” (1988), A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999)
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin;Gauri Viswanathan- Masks of Conquest: Literary Study
and British Rule in India (1989);Aijaz Ahmad- In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992)
;Resistance towards the Western projection of the non-West & Western attempt to dominate such studies.
1960s-1980s Reader-ResponseTheory: Stanley E. Fish;David Bleich;Wolfgang Iser. 1. Argues that a text has no
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meaning before a reader experiences—reads—it.

2. The focus shifts from the text to the reader and the reading process.
3. The reader-response critic’s job is to examine the scope and variety of reader reactions and analyze the
ways in which different readers, sometimes called “interpretive communities,” make meaning out of both
purely personal reactions and inherited or culturally conditioned ways of reading.
4. The theory is based on rhetoric, the art of persuasion.
1960s onwards Feminist Criticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, ; Virginia Woolf ;Juliet Mitchell; Michele Barrett;Simone de
Beauvoir;Betty Friedan;Mary Ellman;;Kate Millet;;Gremaine Greer;Elaine Showalter;Sandra Gilbert
Susan Gubar; ;TorilMoi;French Feminists: Helene Cixous; ;Julia Kristeva ; ;LuceIrigaray;Black
Feminist Criticism:Barbara Christian;Postcolonial Feminist Criticism:;Gayatri Spivak-“Can the
Subaltern Speak?”(1988), In Other Worlds (1987), “Three Women’s Texts”, “Feminism and
Deconstruction”
; Ann McClintock;Chandra TalpadeMohanty-“Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourse” (1986), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (1991;KumkumSangari and
SudeshVaid (eds.); Vandana Shiva.
“English feminist criticism, essentially Marxist, stresses opposition;
French feminist criticism, essentially psychoanalytic, stresses repression;
American feminist criticism, essentially textual, stresses expression.” (Showalter)Distinguishes between
sex and gender;
Androcentric ideologies pervade traditional canonical literature.

1980s New Historicism (American): Stephen Greenblatt- Renaissance Self-Fashioning (1980): used the term
New Historicism in 1982 in the Introduction of his book, Genre, on Renaissance literature
Louis Montrose-“A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Shaping Fantasies of Elizabethan Culture:
Gender, Power, Form” (1986)
A reaction against Structuralism;It is opposed to oppressive discursive practices—anti-
establishment;Shows an aversion to the concept of essential human nature;Doubted a complete recovery
of the past.
1980s Cultural Materialism (British)- Raymond Williams; Marxism and Literature (1977)
Jonathan Dollimore- Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism(1985)
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Alan Sinfield. 1. a historical context2. a theoretical method3. political commitment4. textual analysis
1980s Postmodernism: 1. Destabilizes the notions, space, place, nation, etc.
2. Historically, it designates the latest phase in the broad evolution of capitalist economy and culture that
started in the later part of the 20thc.
3. Economics now mould relationships, social structure, and international political decisions
4. One of its manifestations is poststructuralism
5. Truth is relative and subjective
6. The margins are as important as the centre.
Jean Francois Lyotard;Jean Baudrillard; Negation of all grand narratives;
1. Started with mass migration from the East to the West
2. The term was first used by Charles Jenks in 1947 with reference to architecture.
3. Unlike Modernism, postmodernism has no nostalgia for the aesthetic of sublime; tries to find new
presentations in order to demonstrate that the aesthetic of sublime is still unpresentable.
4. Modernism laments fragmentation; postmodernism celebrates it.
5. It explores the irrationality of art.
6. Marked by recognition of ethnic, sexual and cultural diversity.
7. Extends into the domain of popular culture; disregards the hierarchy of high/low culture.
8. Revels in difference, diversity and incoherence
9. Stands for freedom from tradition and authority.
10.Irreverence towards authority, indeterminacy, experiments in technique, eclecticism, pastiche,
magicrealism, collapse of demarcation between fact and fiction, no-recognition of boundaries, belief in
relativity of critical approaches.
11. PM literature is marked by a complex combination of techniques, genres and discourses.
12. A return to the pleasure principle
13. Fascination for history