LESSON 5:

APPROACHES IN
LITERARY CRITICISM
(CRITICAL APPROACHES USED IN WRITING
A REVIEW/ CRITIQUE)
 Vocabulary Enhancement
Criticize
It is an act of judging or evaluating someone or
something.
CRITIQUE
It is the paper or essay criticizing a literary work/
piece of writing.
The product of criticizing.
CRITIC
It a person who does the evaluation or criticism of a
piece of writing.
REVIEW OR CRITIQUE
It is a genre of academic writing that
briefly summarizes and critically
evaluates a work or concept.
It is a careful analysis of an
argument in a material being read.
A review/ critique uses formal academic
writing style and has a clear structure.
Critical Approaches in
Literary Criticism
CRITICAL APPROACHES
These are the different perspectives
we consider when looking at a piece
of literature.
They seek to give us answers to
these questions, in addition to
aiding us in interpreting literature.
1. What do we read?
2. Why do we read?
3. How do we read?
 CRITICAL APPROACHES:
1 . FORMALISM
It emphasizes the form of a literary work to
determine its meaning, focusing on literary elements
and how they work to create meaning.
Poem (meter, figurative devices, imagery,
theme)
Books/stories (setting, characters, plot)
Movies (sound effects, transition, shots)
Artistic expression (lines, colors, shapes,
rhythm, texture, sound)
 CRITICAL APPROACHES:
2. BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM
It emphasizes the importance of the
author’s life and background into account
when analyzing a text.
How did the life of Dr. Jose Rizal
affect his written works?
How did Pablo Picasso’s life
experiences shape his painting style?
CRITICAL APPROACHES:
3. HISTORICAL CRITICISM
It posits that every literary work is the
product of its time and its world.
How did Juan Luna’s ‘Spolarium’ depict the
happenings during the time it was painted?
How did Victor Hugo show the hardships
and triumph during the French revolution,
in his work, ‘Les Miserables’?
CRITICAL APPROACHES:
4. MARXIST CRITICISM
It emphasizes on how power, politics,
and money play a role in literary texts
and amongst literary societies and
characters.
In what way did the story/movie
reflect the socio-economic status of
the characters?
CRITICAL APPROACHES:
5. FEMINISM
It emphasizes on the roles, positions,
and influences of women within
literary texts.
Are women viewed as inferior
beings in the movie? How were
they portrayed?
CRITICAL APPROACHES:
6. READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM
It emphasizes that the meaning of a text
is dependent upon the reader’s response to
it.
What emotion did you experience after
reading the poem?
What is your interpretation of the
painting?
 This formula makes it easier to
understand the Reader-Response
Approach:
READER + READING SITUATION + TEXT = MEANING
CRITICAL APPROACHES:
7. GENDER CRITICISM
This approach examines how sexual
identity influences the creation
and reception of literary works.
Feminist vs. Masculinist
 CRITICAL APPROACHES:
8. MEDIA CRITICISM
It is the act of closely examining
and judging the media.
Media bias is the perception
that the media is reporting the
news in a partial or prejudiced
manner.
CRITICAL APPROACHES:
9. STRUCTURALISM
It focused on how human behavior is determined by
social, cultural and psychological structures.
For example:
Structuralist analysis of Donne’s poem,
Good Morrow, demands more focus on the
relevant genre, the concept of courtly
love, rather than on the close reading of
the formal elements of the text.
CRITICAL APPROACHES:
10. PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM
It is based on Sigmund Freud’s
Psychoanalytic Approach.
It asserts that any text is a
reflection of its author’s mind and
personality.
 CRITICAL APPROACHES:
11. SOCIOLOGICAL CRITICISM
It claims that the social environment
must be considered in analyzing and
interpreting a text.
Focuses on the values of a society and
how those views are reflected in a text.
THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING !
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