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INTRODUCTION
A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different
lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture. These different
lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions within that
school of theory. The different lenses also allow critics to focus on particular aspects of
a work they consider important.
For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories, s/he might focus on how
the characters in a story interact based on their economic situation. If a critic is working
with post-colonial theories, s/he might consider the same story but look at how
characters from colonial powers (Britain, France, and even America) treat characters
from, say, Africa or the Caribbean. Hopefully, after reading through and working with the
resources in this area of the OWL, literary theory will become a little easier to
understand and use.
DISCLAIMER
Please note that the schools of literary criticism and their explanations included here are
by no means the only ways of distinguishing these separate areas of theory. Indeed,
many critics use tools from two or more schools in their work. Some would define
differently or greatly expand the (very) general statements given here. Our explanations
are meant only as starting places for your own investigation into literary theory. We
encourage you to use the list of scholars and works provided for each school to further
your understanding of these theories.
We also recommend the following secondary sources for study of literary theory:
The Critical Tradition: Classical Texts and Contemporary Trends, 1998, edited by
David H. Richter
Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 1999, by Lois Tyson
Beginning Theory, 2002, by Peter Barry
Although philosophers, critics, educators and authors have been writing about writing
since ancient times, contemporary schools of literary theory have cohered from these
discussions and now influence how scholars look at and write about literature. The
following sections overview these movements in critical theory. Though the timeline
below roughly follows a chronological order, we have placed some schools closer
together because they are so closely aligned.
TIMELINE (MOST OF THESE OVERLAP)
How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbols? (i.e. making a
certain road stand for death by constant association)
What is the quality of the work's organic unity "...the working together of all the
parts to make an inseparable whole..." (Tyson 121)? In other words, does how
the work is put together reflect what it is?
How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not contribute to
the aesthetic quality of the work?
How does the author resolve apparent contradictions within the work?
What does the form of the work say about its content?
Is there a central or focal passage that can be said to sum up the entirety of the
work?
How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to the meaning
or effect of the piece?
Victor Shklovsky
Roman Jakobson
Victor Erlich - Russian Formalism: History - Doctrine, 1955
Yuri Tynyanov
New Criticism
John Crowe Ransom - The New Criticism, 1938
I.A. Richards
William Empson
T.S. Eliot
Allen Tate
Cleanth Brooks
Oedipus Complex
Freud believed that the Oedipus complex was "...one of the most powerfully
determinative elements in the growth of the child" (Richter 1016). Essentially, the
Oedipus complex involves children's need for their parents and the conflict that arises
as children mature and realize they are not the absolute focus of their mother's
attention: "the Oedipus complex begins in a late phase of infantile sexuality, between
the child's third and sixth year, and it takes a different form in males than it does in
females" (Richter 1016).
Freud argued that both boys and girls wish to possess their mothers, but as they grow
older "...they begin to sense that their claim to exclusive attention is thwarted by the
mother's attention to the father..." (1016). Children, Freud maintained, connect this
conflict of attention to the intimate relations between mother and father, relations from
which the children are excluded. Freud believed that "the result is a murderous rage
against the father...and a desire to possess the mother" (1016).
Freud pointed out, however, that "...the Oedipus complex differs in boys and girls...the
functioning of the related castration complex" (1016). In short, Freud thought that
"...during the Oedipal rivalry [between boys and their fathers], boys fantasized that
punishment for their rage will take the form of..." castration (1016). When boys
effectively work through this anxiety, Freud argued, "...the boy learns to identify with the
father in the hope of someday possessing a woman like his mother. In girls, the
castration complex does not take the form of anxiety...the result is a frustrated rage in
which the girl shifts her sexual desire from the mother to the father" (1016).
Freud believed that eventually, the girl's spurned advances toward the father give way
to a desire to possess a man like her father later in life. Freud believed that the impact
of the unconscious, id, ego, superego, the defenses, and the Oedipus complex was
inescapable and that these elements of the mind influence all our behavior (and even
our dreams) as adults - of course this behavior involves what we write.
Freud and Literature
So what does all of this psychological business have to do with literature and the study
of literature? Put simply, some critics believe that we can "...read psychoanalytically...to
see which concepts are operating in the text in such a way as to enrich our
understanding of the work and, if we plan to write a paper about it, to yield a meaningful,
coherent psychoanalytic interpretation" (Tyson 29). Tyson provides some insightful and
applicable questions to help guide our understanding of psychoanalytic criticism.
Typical questions:
CARL JUNG
Jungian criticism attempts to explore the connection between literature and what Carl
Jung (a student of Freud) called the “collective unconscious” of the human race:
"...racial memory, through which the spirit of the whole human species manifests itself"
(Richter 504). Jungian criticism, which is closely related to Freudian theory because of
its connection to psychoanalysis, assumes that all stories and symbols are based on
mythic models from mankind’s past.
Based on these commonalities, Jung developed archetypal myths, the Syzygy: "...a
quaternion composing a whole, the unified self of which people are in search" (Richter
505). These archetypes are the Shadow, the Anima, the Animus, and the Spirit:
"...beneath...[the Shadow] is the Anima, the feminine side of the male Self, and the
Animus, the corresponding masculine side of the female Self" (Richter 505).
In literary analysis, a Jungian critic would look for archetypes (also see the discussion of
Northrop Frye in the Structuralism section) in creative works: "Jungian criticism is
generally involved with a search for the embodiment of these symbols within particular
works of art." (Richter 505). When dealing with this sort of criticism, it is often useful to
keep a handbook of mythology and a dictionary of symbols on hand.
Typical questions:
What connections can we make between elements of the text and the
archetypes? (Mask, Shadow, Anima, Animus)
How do the characters in the text mirror the archetypal figures? (Great Mother or
nurturing Mother, Whore, destroying Crone, Lover, Destroying Angel)
How does the text mirror the archetypal narrative patterns? (Quest, Night-Sea-
Journey)
How symbolic is the imagery in the work?
How does the protagonist reflect the hero of myth?
Does the “hero” embark on a journey in either a physical or spiritual sense?
Is there a journey to an underworld or land of the dead?
What trials or ordeals does the protagonist face? What is the reward for
overcoming them?
Karl Marx - (with Friedrich Engels) The Communist Manifesto, 1848; Das Kapital,
1867; "Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions" from The German
Ideology, 1932; "On Greek Art in Its Time" from A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy, 1859
Leon Trotsky - "Literature and Revolution," 1923
Georg Lukács - "The Ideology of Modernism," 1956
Walter Benjamin - "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"
1936
Theodor W. Adorno
Louis Althusser - Reading Capital, 1965
Terry Eagleton - Marxism and Literary Criticism, Criticism and Ideology, 1976
Frederic Jameson - Marxism and Form, The Political Unconscious, 1971
Jürgen Habermas - The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1990
1. "iconic signs, in which the signifier resembles the thing signified (such as the
stick figures on washroom doors that signify 'Men' or 'Women';
2. indexes, in which the signifier is a reliable indicator of the presence of the
signified (like fire and smoke);
3. true symbols, in which the signifier's relation to the thing signified is completely
arbitrary and conventional [just as the sound /kat/ or the written word cat are
conventional signs for the familiar feline]" (Richter 810).
These elements become very important when we move into deconstruction in the
Postmodernism resource. Peirce also influenced the semiotic school of structuralist
theory that uses sign systems.
Sign Systems
The discipline of semiotics plays an important role in structuralist literary theory and
cultural studies. Semioticians "...appl[y] structuralist insights to the study of...sign
systems...a non-linguistic object or behavior...that can be analyzed as if it were a
language" (Tyson 205). Specifically, "...semiotics examines the ways non-linguistic
objects and behaviors 'tell' us something.
For example, the picture of the reclining blond beauty in the skin-tight, black velvet
dress on the billboard...'tells' us that those who drink this whiskey (presumably male)
will be attractive to...beautiful women like the one displayed here" (Tyson 205). Lastly,
Richter states, "semiotics takes off from Peirce - for whom language is one of numerous
sign systems - and structuralism takes off from Saussure, for whom language was the
sign system par excellence" (810).
Typical questions:
Using a specific structuralist framework (like Frye's mythoi)...how should the text
be classified in terms of its genre? In other words, what patterns exist within the
text that make it a part of other works like it?
Using a specific structuralist framework...analyze the text's narrative
operations...can you speculate about the relationship between the...[text]... and
the culture from which the text emerged? In other words, what patterns exist
within the text that make it a product of a larger culture?
What patterns exist within the text that connect it to the larger "human"
experience? In other words, can we connect patterns and elements within the
text to other texts from other cultures to map similarities that tell us more about
the common human experience? This is a liberal humanist move that assumes
that since we are all human, we all share basic human commonalities.
What rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized in order to 'make
sense' of the text?
What are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or 'text,' such
as high-school football games, television and/or magazine ads for a particular
brand of perfume...or even media coverage of an historical event? (Tyson 225)
Modernism vs Postmodernism
Modernism Postmodernism
romanticism/symbolism paraphysics/Dadaism
purpose play
design chance
hierarchy anarchy
mastery/logos exhaustion/silence
centering absence
genre/boundary text/intertext
semantics rhetoric
metaphor metonymy
root/depth rhizome/surface
signified signifier
genital/phallic polymorphous/androgynous
paranoia schizophrenia
origin/cause difference-difference/trace
determinacy interdeterminacy
transcendence immanence
How is language thrown into freeplay or questioned in the work? For example,
note how Anthony Burgess plays with language (Russian vs English) in A
Clockwork Orange, or how Burroughs plays with names and language in Naked
Lunch.
How does the work undermine or contradict generally accepted truths?
How does the author (or a character) omit, change, or reconstruct memory and
identity?
How does a work fulfill or move outside the established conventions of its genre?
How does the work deal with the separation (or lack thereof) between writer,
work, and reader?
What ideology does the text seem to promote?
What is left out of the text that if included might undermine the goal of the work?
If we changed the point of view of the text - say from one character to another, or
multiple characters - how would the story change? Whose story is not told in the
text? Who is left out and why might the author have omitted this character's tale?
Immanuel Kant - "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?", 1784 (as
a baseline to understand what Nietzsche was resisting)
Friedrich Nietzsche - “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense," 1873; The
Gay Science, 1882; Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None, 1885
Jacques Derrida - "Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human
Sciences," 1966; Of Grammatology, 1967; "Signature Event Context," 1972
Roland Barthes - "The Death of the Author," 1967
Deleuze and Guattari - "Rhizome," 1976
Jean-François Lyotard - The Postmodern Condition, 1979
Michele Foucault - The Foucault Reader, 1984
Stephen Toulmin - Cosmopolis, 1990
Martin Heidegger - Basic Writings, 1993
Paul Cilliers - Complexity and Postmodernity, 1998
Ihab Hassan - The Dismemberment of Orpheus, 1998; From Postmodernism to
Postmodernity: The Local/Global Context, 2001
Postmodern Literature
How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of
colonial oppression?
What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity,
including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues
as double consciousness and hybridity?
What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How are
such persons/groups described and treated?
What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist
resistance?
What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the ways in
which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and
customs combine to form individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of
ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?
How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or
assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial
populations?
How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist
ideology through its representation of colonialization and/or its inappropriate
silence about colonized peoples? (Tyson 378-379)
Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three waves
of feminism:
1. First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft
(A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between
the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to
the women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in
1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment.
2. Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal
working conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such
as the National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist
political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949)
and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of
feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.
3. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist
(over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle
class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-
structural and contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on
marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to
"...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and] the
survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the
promotion of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and
of all the varieties of work women perform" (Tyson 107).
Typical questions:
Lois Tyson - Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 2nd ed., 2006.
What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful)
and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters support these
traditional roles?
What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the
masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived
masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both
(bisexual)?
How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? Is it secure
and forceful? Or is it more hesitant or even collaborative?
What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer
works, and how are those politics revealed in...the work's thematic content or
portrayals of its characters?
What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or
queer works?
What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian
experience and history, including literary history?
How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who
are apparently homosexual?
What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically,
psychologically) homophobic?
How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual
"identity," that is the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the
separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual?
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of
this theory:
Ecocriticism (1960-Present)
Ecocriticism is an umbrella term under which a variety of approaches fall; this can make
it a difficult term to define. As ecocritic Lawrence Buell says, ecocriticism is an
“increasingly heterogeneous movement” (1). But, “simply put, ecocriticism is the study
of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (Glotfelty xviii).
Emerging in the 1980s on the shoulders of the environmental movement begun in the
1960s with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, ecocriticism has been and
continues to be an “earth-centered approach” (Glotfelty xviii) the complex intersections
between environment and culture, believing that “human culture is connected to the
physical world, affecting it and affected by it” (Glotfelty xix). Ecocriticism is
interdisciplinary, calling for collaboration between natural scientists, writers, literary
critics, anthropologists, historians, and more. Ecocriticism asks us to examine ourselves
and the world around us, critiquing the way that we represent, interact with, and
construct the environment, both “natural” and manmade. At the heart of ecocriticism,
many maintain, is “a commitment to environmentality from whatever critical vantage
point” (Buell 11). The “challenge” for ecocritics is “keep[ing] one eye on the ways in
which ‘nature’ is always […] culturally constructed, and the other on the fact that nature
really exists” (Garrard 10). Similar to critical traditions examining gender and race,
ecocriticism deals not only with the socially-constructed, often dichotomous categories
we create for reality, but with reality itself.
FIRST AND SECOND WAVES
Several scholars have divided Ecocriticism into two waves (Buell)(Glotfelty), recognizing
the first as taking place throughout the eighties and nineties. The first wave is
characterized by its emphasis on nature writing as an object of study and as a
meaningful practice (Buell). Central to this wave and to the majority of ecocritics still
today is the environmental crisis of our age, seeing it as the duty of both the humanities
and the natural sciences to raise awareness and invent solutions for a problem that is
both cultural and physical. As such, a primary concern in first-wave ecocriticism was to
“speak for” nature (Buell 11). This is, perhaps, where ecocriticism gained its reputation
as an “avowedly political mode of analysis” (Garrard 3). This wave, unlike its successor,
kept the cultural distinction between human and nature, promoting the value of nature.
The second wave is particularly modern in its breaking down of some of the long-
standing distinctions between the human and the non-human, questioning these very
concepts (Garrard 5). The boundaries between the human and the non-human, nature
and non-nature are discussed as constructions, and ecocritics challenge these
constructions, asking (among other things) how they frame the environmental crisis and
its solution. This wave brought with it a redefinition of the term “environment,” expanding
its meaning to include both “nature” and the urban (Buell 11). Out of this expansion has
grown the ecojustice movement, one of the more political of ecocriticism branches that
is “raising an awareness of class, race, and gender through ecocritical reading of text”
(Bressler 236), often examining the plight of the poorest of a population who are the
victims of pollution are seen as having less access to “nature” in the traditional sense.
These waves are not exactly distinct, and there is debate over what exactly constitutes
the two. For instance, some ecocritics will claim activism has been a defining feature of
ecocriticism from the beginning, while others see activism as a defining feature of
primarily the first wave. While the exact features attributed to each wave may be
disputed, it is clear that Ecocriticism continues to evolve and has undergone several
shifts in attitude and direction since its conception.
TROPES AND APPROACHES
Pastoral
This trope, found in much British and American literature, focuses on the dichotomy
between urban and rural life, is “deeply entrenched in Western culture”(Garrard 33). At
the forefront of works which display pastoralism is a general idealization of the nature
and the rural and the demonization of the urban. Often, such works show a “retreat”
from city life to the country while romanticizing rural life, depicting an idealized rural
existence that “obscures” the reality of the hard work living in such areas requires
(Garrard 33). GregGarrardidentifies three branches of the pastoral: Classic Pastoral,
“characterized by nostalgia” (37) and an appreciation of nature as a place for human
relaxation and reflection; Romantic Pastoral, a period after the Industrial Revolution that
saw “rural independence” as desirable against the expansion of the urban; and
American Pastoralism, which “emphasize[d] agrarianism” (49) and represents land as a
resource to be cultivated, with farmland often creating a boundary between the urban
and the wilderness.
Wilderness
An interesting focus for many ecocritics is the way that wilderness is represented in
literature and popular culture. This approach examines the ways in which wilderness is
constructed, valued, and engaged. Representations of wilderness in British and
American culture can be separated into a few main tropes. First, Old World wilderness
displays wilderness as a place beyond the borders of civilization, wherein wilderness is
treated as a “threat,” a place of “exile” (Garrard 62). This trope can be seen in Biblical
tales of creation and early British culture. Old World wilderness is often conflated with
demonic practices in early American literature (Garrard 62). New World wilderness,
seen in portrayals of wilderness in later American literature, applies the pastoral trope of
the “retreat” to wilderness itself, seeing wilderness not as a place to fear, but as a place
to find sanctuary. The New World wilderness trope has informed much of the “American
identity,” and often constructs encounters with the wilderness that lead to a more
“authentic existence” (Garrard 71).
Ecofeminism
As a branch of ecocriticism, ecofeminism primarily “analyzes the interconnection of the
oppression of women and nature” (Bressler 236). Drawing parallels between domination
of land and the domination of men over women, ecofeminists examine these
hierarchical, gendered relationships, in which the land is often equated with the
feminine, seen as a fertile resources and the property of man. The ecofeminism
approach can be divided into two camps. The first, sometimes referred to as radical
ecofeminism, reverses the patriarchal domination of man over woman and nature,
“exalting nature,” the non-human, and the emotional” (Garrard 24). This approach
embraces the idea that women are inherently closer to nature biologically, spiritually,
and emotionally. The second camp, which followed the first historically, maintains that
there is no such thing as a “feminine essence” that would make women more likely to
connect with nature (Garrard 25). Of course, ecofeminism is a highly diverse and
complex branch, and many writers have undertaken the job of examining the
hierarchical relationships structured in our cultural representations of nature and of
women and other oppressed groups. In particular, studies regarding race have followed
in this trend, identifying groups that have been historically seen as somehow closer to
nature. The way Native Americans, for instance, have been described as “primitive” and
portrayed as “dwelling in harmony with nature,” despite facts to the
contrary.Garrardoffers an examination of this trope, calling it the Ecological Indian
(Garrard 120). Similar studies regarding representations and oppression of aboriginals
have surfaced, highlighting the misconceptions of these peoples as somehow “behind”
Europeans, needing to progress from “a natural to a civilized state” (Garrard 125).
TYPICAL QUESTIONS
Taking an ecocritical approach to a topic means asking questions not only of a primary
source such as literature, but asking larger questions about cultural attitudes towards
and definitions of nature. Generally, ecocriticism can be applied to a primary source by
either interpreting a text through an ecocritical lens, with an eye towards nature, or
examining an ecocritical trope within the text. The questions below are examples of
questions you might ask both when working with a primary source and when developing
a research question that might have a broader perspective.
There are many more questions than these to be asked, and a large variety of
approaches already exist that are asking different questions. Do some research to
check on the state of ecocritical discussion in your own area of interest.
FURTHER RESOURCES
There are many more approaches to analyzing interactions between culture and nature,
many of which are interdisciplinary. The following texts are recommended to help you
start exploring other avenues of Ecocriticsm.
Theory and Criticism
Rachel Carson
Aldo Leopold
John Muir
A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)
Studies in the Sierra (1950)
Williams Wordsworth
White privilege: Discussed by Lipsitz, Lee, Harris, McIntosh, and other CRT
scholars, white privilege refers to the various social, political, and economic
advantages white individuals experience in contrast to non-white citizens based
on their racial membership. These advantages can include both obvious and
subtle differences in access to power, social status, experiences of prejudice,
educational opportunities, and much more. For CRT scholars, the notion of white
privilege offers a way to discuss dominant culture’s tendency to normalize white
individuals’ experiences and ignore the experiences of non-whites. Fields such
as CRT and whiteness studies have focused explicitly on the concept of white
privilege to understand how racism influences white people.
Microaggressions: Microaggressions refer to the seemingly minute, often
unconscious, quotidian instances of prejudice that collectively contribute to
racism and the subordination of racialized individuals by dominant culture. Peggy
Davis discusses how legal discourse participates in and can counteract the
effects of microaggressions.
Institutionalized Racism: This concept, discussed extensively by Camara
Phyllis Jones, refers to the systemic ways dominant society restricts a racialized
individual or group’s access to opportunities. These inequalities, which include an
individual’s access to material conditions and power, are not only deeply
imbedded in legal institutions, but have been absorbed into American culture to
such a degree that they are often invisible or easily overlooked.
Social construction: In the context of CRT, “social construction” refers to the
notion that race is a product of social thought and relations. It suggests that race
is a product of neither biology nor genetics, but is rather a social invention.
Intersectionality and anti-essentialism: These terms refer to the notion that
one aspect of an individual’s identity does not necessarily determine other
categories of membership. As Delgado and Stefancic explain, “Everyone has
potentially conflicting, overlapping identities, loyalties, and allegiances” (CRT: An
Introduction 10). In other words, we cannot predict an individual’s identity, beliefs,
or values based on categories like race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality,
etc; instead, we must recognize that individuals are capable of claiming
membership to a variety of different (and oftentimes seemingly contradictory)
categories and belief systems regardless of the identities outsiders attempt to
impose upon them.
WORKS CITED
Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed.
New York: New York University Press, 2012.
Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic, eds. Critical Race Theory: The Cutting
Edge. 3rd ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013. Print.
RECOMMENDED SOURCES FOR ADDITIONAL RESEARCH
Bell, Derrick A. “Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory?” University of Illinois Law
Review 4 (1995): 893-910.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, eds. Critical
Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement. New York: The New Press,
1995
Davis, Peggy. “Law as Microaggression.” Yale Law Journal 98 (1989): 1559-1577.
Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary
Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Harris, Cheryl. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106.8 (1993): 1707-1791.
hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From the Margins to the Center. Boston: South End Press,
1984.
Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit
from Identity Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.
Spillers, Hortense. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar
Book.” Diacritics 17.2 (1987): 64-81.
Williams, Patricia. Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race. New York:
Noonday Press, 1998.
Critical Disability Studies
(1990s to Present)
Disability studies considers disability in political, aesthetic, ethical, and cultural contexts,
among others. In literature, many critics examine works to understand how
representations of disability and “normal” bodies change throughout history, including
the ways both are defined within the limits of historical or cultural situations. Disability
studies also investigates images and descriptions of disability, prejudice against people
with disabilities (ableism), and the ways narrative relates to disability (see “Narrative
Prosthesis” below).
It’s important to understand disability as part of one’s identity, much like race, class,
gender, sexuality, and nationality. Because of its concern with the body and
embodiment, disability studies also intersects other critical schools like gender studies,
queer studies, feminism, critical race studies, and more. In fact, many races, classes,
ethnicities, and other parts of identity have been classified as or associated with
disabilities in the past, emphasizing what feminist and disability theorist Rosemarie
Garland-Thomson describes as the tendency of disability to be a “synecdoche for all
forms that culture deems non-normative” (259). Put differently, disability frequently
signifies things outside of the “normal” world, making it an important area to investigate
critically.
The Social Model: Physical vs. Social
One approach to disability studies is the social model, a theory that distinguishes
between impairment and disability. “Impairment” refers to a physical limitation, while
“disability” refers to social exclusion. For instance, damage to the optic nerve resulting
in limited vision may be an impairment. However, the inaccessibility of our society to
those who are partially or fully blind is really based on assumptions about what a
“normal” body is, not on some universal Truth or ideal. The social model stresses that
we live in a disabling society—that the issue isn’t people with disabilities; rather, society
has failed to account for the diversity of bodies that live in the world.
Sociologist Tom Shakespeare writes that the social model is useful for creating a group
identity, spreading knowledge about disability, and promoting activism. However, the
social model has been criticized in recent decades for too-easily making distinctions
between physical impairment and social disability (Shakespeare 202). The way we
understand the body is based on socially constructed terms, ideas, and narratives;
therefore, the body is always already socially “coded” in one way or another. So, the
clear dividing line between physical and social sometimes breaks down. Nevertheless,
the social model is a good starting point for many when thinking about disability.
What Does It Mean to Be “Normal”?
Many literary critics in disability studies examine the ways novels and other public
spaces reinforce concepts about “normal” individuals. For instance, Lennard Davis
writes about the historical context of the term “normal,” noting that the word’s modern
use came into being with the rise of statistics and eugenics in the nineteenth century. At
this time, the idea of “the average man” became central to national discourses. For
Davis, a normal body is actually a theory or idea based on “the average man,” a
concept that ultimately disguises the drastic differences among individuals in a society.
In the context of literature, Davis writes, “the very structures on which the novel rests
tend to be normative, ideologically emphasizing the universal quality of the central
character whose normativity encourages us to identify with him or her” (11). Therefore,
investigating normalcy in literary texts allows one to use a disability studies approach
when reading almost any work.
In a similar vein, Garland-Thomson uses the term “normate” to describe those who are
unmarked by the stigmas of disability, framing disability as a minority (rather than
medical) discourse. The word “normate” highlights assumptions about the body in
politics, rhetoric, literature, and other areas, including the erasure of cultural and bodily
difference (compare “normate” to terms like “cisgender” or “cissexual,” for instance).
Narrative Prosthesis: The Story’s “Crutch”
Narrative is also intricately tied to disability. Theorists Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell
write that disabled characters act as a “crutch upon which literary narratives lean for
their representational power, disruptive potentiality, and analytical insight” (49).
Unlike some marginalized groups, people with disabilities have frequently been at the
foreground of representation, according to Snyder and Mitchell in Narrative Prosthesis.
For example, a captain’s prosthetic leg may entail a story about his obsession with a
whale, or characters like Tiny Tim may serve as wellsprings of pity and emotion. In
Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the protagonist’s disfigured foot and eventual blindness
metaphorize disability as destiny, and the hunchbacked protagonist of William
Shakespeare’s Richard III has a complex performance history that blurs high- and low-
art conventions. The list goes on.
“Narrativeprosthesis” refers the ways narrative uses disability as a device of
characterization or metaphor, but fails to further develop disability as a complex point of
view. Disability is used to mark characters as “unique,” and it is sometimes what
prompts a narrative in the first place; however, few works develop complex perspectives
about disability (Mitchell and Snyder 10). If a work does feature disability prominently, it
is often used as a symbol or for comparative purposes. For example, Benjy in The
Sound and the Fury has a cognitive disability, but many critics argue he is sometimes
reduced to a “moral arbiter for the rest of the characters” (Bérubé 575), a standard on
which the reader’s judgements about morality might be based. In short, stories often
revolve around disability yet erase it simultaneously.
Types of Questions
How is disability represented in literature?
How are “normal” people or bodies constructed? How is normalcy reinforced?
Is disability a catalyst for the narrative?
Are people with disabilities gendered differently? As asexual? As feminized?
In what ways do disability, gender, race, nationality, and class intersect?
Does the narrative refigure the ways we define the human body? For example,
how is prosthesis or technology tied to the body, and how does this change the
ways we relate to our environment?
How are disabilities like blindness tied to “Truth” or deafness to communication
within a literary work? What symbolism is attached to disability?
Works Cited
Bérubé, Michael. “Disability and Narrative.” PMLA, vol. 120, no. 2, Mar. 2005, pp. 568-
76.
Davis, Lennard. “Constructing Normalcy: The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention
of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century.” The Disability Studies Reader, 2nd ed.,
edited by Lennard Davis, Routledge, 2006, pp. 3-16.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist
Theory.” The Disability Studies Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Lennard Davis, Routledge,
2006, pp. 257-73.
Mitchell, David and Sharon Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the
Dependencies of Discourse. U of Michigan P, 2000.
Shakespeare, Tom. “The Social Model of Disability.” The Disability Studies Reader,
2nd ed., edited by Lennard Davis, Routledge, 2006, pp. 197-204.