What is a Literary Approach?

✓It is used to thoroughly read,

analyze, evaluate, interpret and
judge a specific literary piece,
leading to the act of
LITERARY
ANALYSIS/CRITICISM
-asks what literature is,

what it does, and what it is

worth

PAGE 01

✓ Provides the basis that
grounds the critique, giving it
solid foundation.
✓Serve as the readers’ lenses
to see the text even clearer, to
go beyond just by the written
PAGE 02
words .
What are the examples of
these Literary Approaches?
o TRADITIONAL APPROACH
• Historical Approach
• Biographical Approach
• Marxist Approach
• Gender-Queer (Feminist)
Approach
o NEW/ INTERPRETATIVE
APPROACH
PAGE 03
• Reader-response Approach
• Formalist Approach
 What is a Traditional
Approach?
✓ focuses on tracking the
influence used in the making and
publication of the literary work
✓ follows a principle that every
literary text is NOT a stand-
alone piece of literature, that
not all context are based on the
words inside it
✓May either be based by the
PAGE 04
author’s life or by real life issues
What is a New / Interpretative
Approach?
✓ focuses on what is within the
text rather than what the
author intended it to be
✓ follows a principle that every
literary text can stand-alone as
a piece of literature, that the
essential context are just within
it
PAGE 05
 What are the examples of a Historical Approach
Traditional Approach?

• HISTORICAL ✓dependent on the author

and his world
APPROACH
✓ for the literary work to
• BIOGRAPHICAL make sense, the reader must
dig in into the world of the
APPROACH
author and be informed about
• MARXIST APPROACH his beliefs, prejudices and as

(Marxism) well as his timetable in

making the text
• GENDER-QUEER
✓ adaptation of real historical
PAGE 06

PAGE 07
(Feminist) APPROACH events
 Biographical Approach
✓ dependent on the author’s
life
✓ showcases how the
author’s life has a significant
bearing in shaping the
literary work
✓ considers the author’s
Background including his way
of living
✓ bringing out a part of the
author’s life ,past and
PAGE 08
present, into the text
Marxist Approach
✓ based on Karl Marx theory
of Marxism
✓ "Marxism attempts to
reveal the ways in which our
socioeconomic system is the
ultimate source of our
experience" (Tyson 277)
✓ concerns itself with class
differences including the
implications and
complications of the system
PAGE 09
 Marxist Approach
✓ aches to answer the
question:
“whom does it [the work, the
effort, the policy, the road,
the government, etc.] benefit?
The elite? The middle class? “
✓ shows interest in how the
lower or working classes are
oppressed
PAGE 10
✓ to simplify. . .
It shows analysis of the clash
of opposing social classes in
society, namely; the ruling
class (bourgeoisie) and the
working class (proletariat) as
it shaped the events that
come to light in the story
PAGE 11
 Gender-Queer
Approach
✓ greatly influenced by the
Feminist Approach (concerns
with the woman’s role in
society as portrayed through
texts)
✓see the sights on issues of
sexuality, power, and
marginalized populations
(woman as other) in
PAGE 12
literature and culture
✓ main concern is how gender
and sexuality is discussed
✓ it gives the notion of how
readers will embrace these
issues as a normal form of
reading material rather than
an awkward and unusual
(taboo for some) work for
literature
PAGE 13
 Gender-Queer Approach
✓ "Effective as this work
[feminism] was in changing what
teachers taught and what the
students read, there was a sense
on the part of some feminist critics
that...it was still the old game that
was being played, when what it
needed was a new game entirely.
The argument posed was that in
order to counter patriarchy, it was
necessary not merely to think
about new texts, but to think
about them in radically new ways“
PAGE 14
✓ There is a set up of series of
binary oppositions (active/passive,
sun/moon...father/mother,
logos/pathos). Each pair can be
analyzed as a hierarchy in which
the former term represents the
positive and masculine and the
latter the negative and feminine
principle" (Richter)

PAGE 15
(Richter)
 What are the examples of a
New/ Interpretative
Reader-Response
Approach? Approach
✓ focuses on how the work is
• READER-RESPONSE perceived by the audience
✓ readers' reactions to
APPROACH
literature is considered vital
• FORMALIST to understanding the sense of
the text; that each reader’s
APPROACH (Formalism)
perception may be different
from each other but of same
acknowledgement of
importance
PAGE 16

PAGE 17
 Reader-Response Approach
✓ "...reader-response theorists ✓ the author is no longer
share two beliefs: 1) that the relevant once the work is
role of the reader cannot be published; "the death of the
omitted from our author"
understanding of literature
and 2) that readers do not
passively consume the
meaning presented to them by
an objective literary text;
rather they actively make the
meaning they find in
PAGE 18

PAGE 19
literature" (Tyson 154)
 Formalist
Approach
✓ deals chiefly with the text
and not with any of the
outside considerations
(author, the real world,
audience, era or even other
literature)
✓ Challenges other
approaches to treat each
work as its own distinct piece
✓ since the text is considered
autonomous, “close-reading”
on the elements present in a
literary work is expected

✓meaning is determinant, all

other considerations are
PAGE 20

PAGE 21
irrelevant
 ❑ In the study of literature
Reminders:
learning can be fully
❑ One must have an open achieved through an
mind when it comes to understanding of different
literature, for it doesn’t levels of criticism with
these approaches.
just allow you to
❑ Both groups of literary
explore and imagine
approaches touch all
but lets you have a important aspects of a
whole new perspective narrative; the author, the
of ideas and concepts, text, and the context; hence
it might not be a bad idea
even with the ones you
to combine them in a single
PAGE 22

PAGE 23
are unfamiliar with.
process.
 Which of the
approaches is/are
often used on the
understanding of the Which of the
literary works from approaches is/are
the 21st Century ? applicable in
furthering the study
of the Virtual
Center?
PAGE 24

PAGE 25
 AUTHOR’S WORLD

AUTHOR’S LIFE
The literary Map

OTHER LITERATURE
LITERARY
REAL WORLD

WORK shows the influences

ITSELF
and focuses of each of
AUDIENCE the Approaches
PAGE 26

PAGE 27