EL 118 Literary Criticism Module FINAL TERM 2020

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2020
Course: EL 113
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Compiled by
FRINCESS T. FLORES
Lecturer
College of Teacher Education
and
NIKKO L. PACANAS
Lecturer
College of Teacher Education
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EL 113: LITERARY CRITICISM | TSU
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COURSE DESCRIPTION
Provides students the opportunities to study the basic approaches

to literary theory and criticism and their application to selected
literary works.
This course is designed to expose students to

literary theory and criticism. Students will read
material that cover key components of literary
analysis such as feminist theory, structuralism,
and postcolonial theory, among many others.
They will apply theoretical premises and
techniques to selected literary selections so as to
understand more fully those techniques and to
better understand the nature of literature in
general and specific literary texts in particular.
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COURSE OUTLINE
Course Content/Subject Matter

Week 1 A. Orientation
B. Introduction to the Course
Week 2-3 C. Psychoanalytic Criticism
Week 4 D. Marxist Criticism
Week 5-6 E. Feminist Criticism
Week 7 F. New Criticism
Week 8 G. Reader-response Criticism
Week 9-10 H. Structuralist Criticism
Week 11 I. Midterm Exam
Week 12 J. Deconstructive Criticism
Week 13 K. New Historical and Cultural Criticism
Week 14-15 L. Lesbian, Gay, Queer Criticism
Week 16 N. African American criticism
Week 17 O. Postcolonial Criticism
Week 18 P. Final Exam
One week (or Q. Allotted for the Midterm and the Final Exams
an equivalent
of three hours)
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What can you expect to

find in this module?
TOPICS
Deconstructive
Criticism
• Deconstructing language
• Deconstructing our world
• Deconstructing human identity
• Deconstructing literature
Historical and Cultural

Criticism
• New Historicism and literature
v
• Cultural criticism
Lesbian, Gay, Queer

Criticism
• The marginalization of lesbians and
gay men
• Lesbian criticism
• Gay criticism
• Queer criticism
African American Criticism
v
• Racial issues and African American literary

history
• Recent developments: critical race theory
• African American criticism and literature
Postcolonial Criticism
v
• Postcolonial identity
• Postcolonial debates
• Postcolonial criticism and literature
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COURSE
TITLE
Course: EL 113
2020
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RATIONALE
EL 113- LITERARY CRITICISM is designed to expose students to

literary theory and criticism. Students will read materials that cover key
components of literary analysis such as feminist theory, structuralism,
and postcolonial theory, among many others. They will apply
theoretical premises and techniques to selected literary selections so as
to understand more fully those techniques and to better understand the
nature of literature in general and specific literary texts in particular.
This course will allow students to encounter the critical theoretical
thinking of major figures. Students will also read a number of literary
texts from the major genre –short and long prose, poetry, and drama –
and write critical responses to those works using the theoretical tools
presented in the main references.
This course delivered via distance learning will enable students to
complete the academic work in a flexible manner, completely online.
Course materials and access to an online learning management system
will be made available to each student. Online assignments will be
submitted before the start of the next class meeting to provide more
time for the students to make what is due. Literary analysis will be one
of the requirements for midterm and for final term. Quizzes and graded
recitations are expected every meeting. The assigned faculty will serve
as the moderator and facilitator throughout the 18-week course.
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COURSE
OUTCOMES
At the end of the semester, a student completing this course should be

able to:
1. Distinguish, describe and employ a variety of literary theories;
2. Determine critical responses to literature grounded in those
theories;
3. Respond to works of literature using different critical and
theoretical response techniques;
4. Apply literary theory in articulate and grammatically correct
papers;
5. Name the major theorists and thinkers of literary theory criticism;
6. Explicate meaningfully the literary theory and justify its function;
7. Demonstrate understanding on how literary theory is connected to
various social and cultural movements and eras including women’s
rights, gay rights, and the political and social repercussions of
colonialism, colonization and the postcolonial era in Africa and Asia;
8. Describe how structuralism and poststructuralist theories connect
and build on one.
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1 Chapter 8: Deconstructive 11
CONTENTS
11
2 Chapter 9: Historical & Cultural 20
3 Chapter 10: Lesbian, Gay & Queer 25
4 Chapter 11: African American 41
5 Chapter 12: Postcolonial 51
6 Glossary 63
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Chapter 8
Terms to Remember
Undecidability
Signified Object
Signifier theme
Language symbol
HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW?

Multiple Choice
Direction: Read each item and possible answers given below carefully.
Shade one for each number. Avoid superimpositions and erasures.
1. A relationship of opposites that often
A B C D E
depend on each other for meaning.
Q Q
PRE-TEST
2. A dynamic, unstable, fluid, and

ambiguous set of conflicting A B C D E
ideologies according to Q Q
deconstructive critics.
3. This is the concept or idea that a A B C D E

word refers to. Q Q
4. This is the word itself. C

A B D E
Q Q
5. This is the combination of the
two – the word applied to the A B C D E
concept. Q Q
A. Language
B. Sign
C. Signifier
See choices below the statements
D. Signified
E. Binary
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Deconstructive Criticism
Distinguish the theory and determine its function.

Name the major thinkers of Deconstructive Criticism.
Respond to works of literature using the Deconstructive Criticism.
Key Concepts
Deconstructing Language TO THE DECONSTRUCTIONIST
Deconstruction’s theory of language

is based on the belief that language is much
WORDS ARE SLIPPERY
more slippery and ambiguous than we realize.
Deconstruction, in essence according to Walton (2019), allows
the reader to “take apart” a text in order to decipher a new meaning.
It rejects traditional readings and instead, calls readers to seek out
contradictory viewpoints and analysis. There is a focus on the actual
rhetoric and verbiage of the text as opposed to looking for the author’s intent.
When looking through a deconstruction lens, a reader would pay close attention to word choice
and syntax, as so many words have multiple connotations and denotations. The reader would
look for meaning, not only hidden, but possibly unintended by the author. “Deconstructionist
critics probe beneath the finished surface of a story. Having been written by a human being with
unresolved conflicts and contradictory emotions, a story may disguise rather than reveal the
underlying anxieties or perplexities of the author. Below the surface, unresolved tensions or
contradictions may account for the true dynamics of the story.” (Guth & Rico p. 336 in Walton
(2019)). To deconstruct a text is to show that it may have multiple meanings associated with it;
there i s not one correct reading, but a myriad of possibilities.
According to Tyson (2006), deconstructive criticism follows the belief that objects have
meaning because that it was it has been defined as through language. Deconstruction uses the
concept of binaries in which one object has been given a sort of privilege, the better appeal i.e.
good/bad, love/hate, white/black, and male/female. In texts these binaries form the motif, or
theme of a story. However, the theory of deconstruction focuses on how the language of the text
may appeal to one binary, but has signs that it favors the opposite, but not necessarily the
privileged binary. Using this concept theorist judge such texts to have “dismantled” themselves.
The binary was one relationship that Structuralists explored. A binary is a relationship of opposites that
often depend on each other for meaning.
Love --- Hate

Hot --- Cold
Heaven --- Hell
Notice how one half of each of these binaries is “better”? That is the privileged half of the binary.
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Notable Theorist/s
The most famous Deconstructionists is Jacques Derrida
who described language as never being stable because any
signifier (the object) can mean a range of signified (the idea or
symbolism of the object) at any given moment therefore making
language as ideological; we give it meaning.
Deconstructing binary opposition by finding textual
evidence that is conflicting with a works main ideological theme
is the goal of deconstructive literary criticism. In doing so the
reader identifies the ideologies at play within the text by identifying the binary oppositions, and
more specifically which of the two is privileged. By showing how the main ideological themes of
the work are contradicted by specific textual evidence the opposition deconstructs itself, or as
Tyson says “we do not deconstruct a text; we show how the text deconstructs itself” (265). The
Great Gatsby’s ideological theme is the condemnation of American decadence in the 1920’s, but
Tyson shows how the “novel’s representation of this culture’s decadence is undermined by the
text’s own ambivalence toward the binary oppositions on which this representation rests” (272).
Deconstructive critics believe that language is a dynamic, unstable, fluid, and ambiguous
set of conflicting ideologies. One of the many benefits of this critical theory is in “make[ing] us
aware of the oppressive role ideology can play in our lives” (249). Most people are unaware of
the extent to which ideologies shape their experiences, their world, and their identity. But what is
it? What is the thing that is creating the hidden ideologies that define our existence? Jacques
Derrida and other deconstructive critics would argue it is language itself. They argue it is the
language to which we are born that “mediates our experience of ourselves and the world. And for
deconstruction, language is wholly ideological: it consists entirely of the numerous conflicting,
dynamic ideologies or systems of beliefs and values- operating at any given point in time in any
given culture” (253). In other words, our world is created and constructed by language, and it is
beyond our capacity to move outside of its domain.
The importance of claiming that our world is constructed by language does no less than
turn all of previous Western Philosophy’s attempts at defining our grounding principle, our
meaning of existence, upside down. Like Copernicus’s revelation that the sun does not orbit the
earth, Derrida’s denial of logocentric philosophies removes the center of our understanding of
meaning and existence and throws our world into upheaval. There is no center, rather, “an
infinite number of vantage points from which to view it, and each of these vantage points has a
language of its own, which deconstruction calls its discourse” (256). For the deconstructionist
language is the grounding concept, and is “constantly overflowing with implications,
associations, and contradictions that reflect the implications, associations, and contradictions of
the ideologies of which it is formed” (255).
But what, after all, is language anyway? Structuralists believe language refers not to
things themselves but to concepts of things in the world created in our consciousness.
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“Deconstruction takes that idea a big step further by claiming that language is
nonreferential because it refers neither to things in the world nor to our concepts of things but
only to the play of signifiers of which language itself consists” (252). Both critical theories claim
language is nonreferential, both adhere to the sign = signifier + signified formula, but only the
latter ascribes an unstable, plural, fluidity, with never ending stream of meanings to language.
Again, the primary difference is that with deconstructive criticism “every signifier consists of
and produces more signifiers in a never ending deferral, or postponement, of meaning: we seek
meaning that is solid and stable, but we can never really find it because we can never get beyond
the play of signifiers that is language” (252–253). The framework is not stable; the meaning is
not fixed but dynamic.
Ferdinand de Saussure’s concepts of sign, signifier, and signified are at the core of
Structuralism and Deconstruction. These are words Saussure used to explain how language
makes meaning out of abstract concepts.
The signified is the concept or idea that a word refers to.
The signifier is the word itself.
The sign is the combination of the two – the word applied to the concept.
The study of signs, and how this whole process works, is called semiotics.
An example for signified, sign, and signifier: “Desk”
Signified: The concept of a place where people (possibly students,
possibly office workers or others doing tasks that involve paper or
study) sit.
Signifier: The word “desk.” (The actual sound you make when you
say it, or the written word.)
Sign: The word “desk” when it is used to refer to the concept of a
place where students/workers sit.
Signs are not always word-idea combinations! Objects can function
as signs, too.
Another example: A Box of Chocolates on Valentine’s Day

Signified: The concept of affection, specifically, romantic love.
Signifier: The object: in this case, a physical box of chocolates.
Sign: The box of chocolates as an expression of affection.
Signifiers (the words or objects themselves) are dependent on
the concepts they signify for meaning. Without the concept of
love/affection, the box of chocolates is just food. Without the
concept of a place where students/workers sit, the word “desk” is just a nonsense word.
Deconstruction did not originate as a form of literary criticism. It began as a criticism of

language itself and of any system of signs (signifiers) that we use to communicate our thoughts.
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There is no standard, objective form of cat of which

we all think when we read or hear the word cat. There are
only infinite varieties of cats. According to
deconstructionists, the word cat is, therefore, meaningless
following Tyson’s statement that the meaning is not fixed
but dynamic.
Structuralists
believed that “signs are
intelligible through the way
they relate to each other” (Hall 136). In other words, signs can be
understood by examining them in relationship to other related
signs.
Deconstructing Literature
There are two reasons to deconstruct literature: “(1) to reveal the text’s undecidability
and/or (2) to reveal the complex operations of the ideologies of which the text is constructed”
(259). We have already dealt with the latter, so now let’s turn our attention to what Tyson calls a
text’s undecidability.
Deconstructive critics believe meaning in literature is created during the act of reading a
text. It is precisely while the reader is reading that “moments” of meaning are created, but
inevitably give way to even more meanings, each new reading creating its own unique meaning
ad infinitum. This is why Tyson says art and literature is “a seething cauldron of meanings in
flux,” because there can be a large range of meanings within a text therefore the ultimate
meaning is undecidable (265).
“Undecidability means that reader and text alike are inextricably bound within
language’s dissemination of meanings. That is, reader and text are interwoven threads in the
perpetually working loom of language” (259).
How can we prove undecidability?
(1) note all the various interpretations- of characters, events, images, and so on- the text
seems to offer;
(2) show the ways in which these interpretations conflict with one another;
(3) show how these conflicts produce still more interpretations, which produce still more
conflicts, which produce still more interpretations; and (4) use steps 1, 2, 3, to argue for
the text’s undecidability” (259).
So now we know about undecidability and how to deconstruct literature by exposing the
binary oppositions and showing how they contradict the ideological theme which provides added
meaning to the never ending cycle of meanings we glean from texts, and moreover, why any of
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this is important at all. But deconstructive criticism and its deep implications don’t end with
literature and art. “If language is the ground of being, then the world is infinite text, that is, an
infinite chain of signifiers always in play. Because human beings are constituted by language,
they too, are texts” (257). Deconstructive criticism tells us a lot about what it means to be
human. It’s not just language that is unstable, as humans “we are multiple and fragmented,
consisting at any moment of any number of conflicting beliefs, desires, fears, anxieties, and
intentions” (257). And these conflicting feelings are always in flux, which might explain why
people are always in search of new meaning, a new thrill, a new identity, a new love, a new
outlet of expression, because just as soon as our “moment” of meaning has happened it’s gone
and makes way for something else in the endless, dynamic, unstable, cycle of life.
For more detailed discussion and examples, read Deconstructive criticism in our main references.
What questions might deconstructive critic ask?
(1) What ideas or characters seem to be in opposition in this work, and how does the work
avoid privileging (seeming to give preference to) one of them? In other words, how does
the work create ambiguity?
(2) What interpretive possibilities are presented by this ambiguity?
(3) How do various possible meanings presented by the text play off of each other?
Questions for everyday use
(4) What are some of the ideas that seem to be in opposition in this short story?
(5) Does the text (not the narrator…) “take sides”? Why or why not?
(6) How does this story deal with the “everyday use” vs. “reverence and preservation” binary
(remember, a binary is a pair of opposites)? Does it privilege one over the other?
(7) What multiple meanings does this story produce?
(8) Were there points in the story when your sympathy was with the narrator
Advance Reading
Critical Theory Today: A User Friendly Guide (2nd Edition) by Lois Tyson
Application Activity
Activity for Deconstructive Criticism
(1) Watch the Indian movie “The Three Idiots”.
(2) Respond to the literature using the Deconstructive criticism
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Self- Assessment
HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?

Essay One
Direction: Extract your understanding about the lesson and reflect it by
answering thoroughly the questions below. Use the space below each part for
your answers.
Part I: Important Findings. What are the terminologies that you have
encountered while reading the theory? Explicate the terms based on your
understanding.
POST-TEST
Part II: Self Reflections: Share your meaningful thoughts as you answer the
guide question. (1) State a specific characteristic of deconstructive criticism that
differs among the previous criticisms? What makes it different from the others?
Why do you say so?
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Main References and Suggested Readings
Appleman, D. (2009). "Critical Encounters in High School English (2nd Edition ed.). New York,
NY: Teachers College Press. Retrieved 2020, from
https://msgabrosknights.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/6/2/57620997/literary_lenses_toolkit.pdf.
Tyson, L. (2006). Critical Theory Today: A User Friendly Guide (Second Edition).
Gebriel, B. W. (2017). Int. to Literary Theory & Literary Criticism. Jimma, Ethiopia: Education.
Retrieved 2020, from https://www.slideshare.net/belacheww/unit-1-introduction-to-
literary-theory-amp-criticism-74333553.
Pandya, K., & Patel, V. I. (2011). Int. to Literary Theory & Literary Criticism. India, India:
Education. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.slideshare.net/KetanPandya2/nature-and-
function-of-literary-criticism.
Purdue Writing Lab. (n.d.). Introduction to Literary Theory // Purdue Writing Lab. Retrieved
from
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_a
nd_schools_of_criticism/index.html
MsDavis, (2015). Critical Approaches to Literature. N/a, N/a: Education. Retrieved 2020, from
https://www.slideshare.net/MsDavis1/critical-approaches-literary-theory-power-point.
Copper, J. (2019). HOW AND WHY TO TEACH LITERARY THEORY IN SECONDARY ELA.
N/a, N/a: WordPress. Retrieved 2020, from http://jennacopper.com/2019/03/26/how-and-
why-to-teach-literary-theory-in-secondary-ela/
Culler, J. (2011). Literary Theory.

Siegel, K. (2006, January). Introduction to Modern Literary Theory. Retrieved from
http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm
“Literary Theory,” by Vince Brewton, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-
0002, https://www.iep.utm.edu/literary/, 2020.
Walton, C. (2019). Literary Theories - A Guide: Home. Retrieved September 09, 2020, from
https://bowiestate.libguides.com/c.php?g=442217
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Suggested Videos
Nance, T. (2015). Deconstructive criticism. Retrieved 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cku46UJRlNo
Alberhasky, M. (2014). Deconstruction Theory. Retrieved 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Uili73qcQ4
Echols, C. (2015). Literary Deconstruction - A Simplified Definiton. Retrieved 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0LYYwQbp-Q
Yalecourses, N. (2009). 10. Deconstruction 1. Retrieved 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np72VPguqeI
Bolton, C. (2012). Animating Post structuralism. Retrieved 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a2dLVx8THA
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Chapter 9
Terms to Remember
History Product
Culture Discourses
Political Social
Subjective Process

Multiple Choice
Direction: Read each item and possible answers given below carefully. Shade one
for each number. Avoid superimpositions and erasures.
1. This is a process, not a product; it is a

A B C D E
lived experience, not a fixed
PRE-TEST
Q Q
definition.
2. This is shaped by and shapes the
culture in which it emerges…our
A B C D E
individual identity consists of the Q
Q
narratives we tell ourselves about
ourselves;”
3.This circulates in a culture through A B C D E
exchanges of material goods, Q Q
exchanges of human beings.
4. This is never wholly confined to a A B C D E
single person or a single level of Q Q
society.
A B C D E
5. This tends to be more overtly political Q Q
in its support of oppressed groups.
A. Cultural criticism
B. Culture
C. History See choices below the
D. Power statements
E. Personal Identity
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Historical and Cultural Criticism
Distinguish the theory and determine its function.

Name the major thinkers of Historical and Cultural Criticism.
Respond to works of literature using Historical and Cultural Criticism theory.
Key Concepts
New Historical and Cultural Criticism
When we speak of New Historical and Cultural
Criticism we speak of a dynamic web of discourses within
the culture of the producing event and the culture of the
interpreting event. And to be sure we understand the
terminology of this literary critical theory New Historicists
define discourses as “a social language created by
particular cultural conditions at a particular time and place, and it expresses a particular way of
understanding human experience” (285). New Historical Criticism believes “all events…are
shaped by and shape the culture in which they emerge,” or are mutually constitutive (Tyson
284). In broad terms we speak of the dynamic interplay of history and the interpretation of
historical events and literature as it relates to power and ideology, specifically the circulation or
social exchanges of the various discourses within a culture.
The key concepts of New Historical Critics can be summarized as follows:
(1) “history is a matter of interpretation, not facts. Thus all historical accounts are
narratives;”
(2) “history is neither linear nor progressive;”
(3) “power is never wholly confined to a single person or a single level of society. Rather
power circulates in a culture through exchanges of material goods, exchanges of human
beings, and, most important…exchanges of ideas through the various discourses a culture
produces;”
(4) “there is no monolithic (single, unified, universal) spirit of an age, and there is no
adequate totalizing explanation of history;”
(5) personal identity- like historical events, texts, and artifacts- is shaped by and shapes
the culture in which it emerges…our individual identity consists of the narratives we tell
ourselves about ourselves;” and
(6) “historical analysis is unavoidably subjective” (290).
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New Historical Criticism differs from Traditional

Historical Criticism in that the latter believes history is linear
and has a definable causal relationship between events, and that
through objective analysis we can discern facts that reveal the
world view within any given culture, and that history is
continually progressing and improving with time. New
Historical Critics deny those claims and maintain that history is a
web of discourses and interpretations of complex, dynamic
events and can be manipulated by those in power and inherently subjective, and that “literary
texts [are] cultural artifacts that can tell us something about the interplay of discourses, the web
of social meanings, operating in the time and place in which those texts were written” (286–287).
New Historical Critics also seek to deny master narratives, those that exclude a plurality of
voices and ignore the voices of marginalized and oppressed peoples. This approach also employs
“thick description” which “focuses on the personal side of history” and is “not a search for facts
but a search for meanings” (288).
Cultural Criticism shares so much of the beliefs of
New Historical Criticism that it is often difficult to
distinguish the two critical literary theories one from
another. Both are interdisciplinary and antidisciplinary, in
that “both argue that human experience, which is the stuff
of human history and culture, cannot be adequately
understood by means of academic disciplines that carve it
up into such artificially separated categories as sociology,
psychology, literature, and so forth” (295).
The primary differences between the two are that Cultural Criticism focuses more on
politics in general and supports oppressed and marginalized peoples, events, and historical
“moments” by drawing on varied political theories such as Marxism, Feminism, and
Postcolonial/African American Criticism. Another difference between New Historical Criticism
and Cultural Criticism is that that latter focuses more heavily on popular culture and believes
“there is no meaningful distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of culture” and that both play
a role as “cultural productions in the circulation of power” (296). For the Cultural Critic both the
‘highbrow’ opera and the ‘low brow’ monster truck rally serve a role in the dynamic interplay
and circulation of power within our modern culture; neither is inherently superior to the other.
The Cultural Critic believes “culture is a process, not a product; it is a lived experience,
not a fixed definition. More precisely, a culture is a collection of interactive cultures, each of
which is growing and changing, each of which is constituted at any given moment in time by the
intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, occupation, and
similar factors that contribute to the experience of its members” (296). Cultural Critics analyze
popular culture in all of its varied forms. In literature they often look closely at the similarities
and differences between the work and its adapted screen play or movie. It’s the Cultural Critics
duty to “determine the ways in which the popular versions transform the ideological content of
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the novel” (298). And together with the New Historical Critic both believe “great literary works
are timeless, autonomous (self-sufficient) art objects that exist in a realm beyond history” and are
but “a thread in the dynamic web of social meaning” (291).
As a great literary work The Great Gatsby’s meaning needs to be interpreted in context of
the history and culture in which it was written and the culture in which we live today because our
interpretation is biased and subjective as part of our cultural conditioning and ideologies.
Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby at a time when people really believed a person could raise
their born station in life and achieve limitless success. It was an era full of men achieving the
rags to riches lifestyle; the idea of the ‘self-made man’ was proven possible by “millionaires like
John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Philip Armour, and
James J. Hill” (301). Circulating throughout society were numerous works that described how
with determination, hard work, and perseverance anybody could become rich and successful
because “character, rather than education or business acumen, was considered the foundation of
the self-made man” (308). The ascendance of Jay Gatsby from his poor childhood as James Gatz
to the rich and powerful protagonist of the novel mirrored the contemporary discourses of the
era. But despite his accomplishments Gatsby tries to deny his past, to abolish his true identity in
the wake of his new persona as Jay Gatsby, and in this way the novel strives to “escape history
and transcend the historical realities of time, place, and human limitation” (301). Understanding
the complex meanings within The Great Gatsby requires a broad understanding of its historical
and cultural context, which is the aim of these critical literary theories.
New historicism for literary criticism key concepts
The writing of history is a matter of interpretations, not
facts. Thus, all historical accounts are narratives and can be
analyzed using many of the tools used by literary critics to
analyze narrative.
History is neither linear (it does not proceed neatly from
cause A to effect B and from cause B to effect C) nor
progressive (the human species is not steadily improving over
the course of time).
Power is never wholly confined to a single person or a single level of society. Rather,
power circulates in a culture through exchanges of material goods, exchanges of human beings,
and, most important for literary critics as we’ll see below, exchanges of ideas through the various
discourses a culture produces.
To sum up, then, cultural criticism shares new historicism’s theoretical premises except in the
following three instances.
1. Cultural criticism tends to be more overtly political in its support of oppressed groups.
2. Because of its political orientation, cultural criticism often draws on Marxist, feminist,
and other political theories in performing its analyses.
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3. Cultural criticism, in the narrower sense of the term, is especially interested in popular
culture.
Typical questions for New Historicism and Cultural criticism
1. What language/characters/events present in the work reflect the current events of the
author’s day?
2. Are there words in the text that have changed their meaning from the time of the
writing?
3. How are such events interpreted and presented?
4. How are events' interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
5. Does the work's presentation support or condemn the event?
6. Can it be seen to do both?
7. How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the
day?
8. How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other
historical/cultural texts from the same period?
9. How can we use a literary work to "map" the interplay of both traditional and
subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or the
cultures in which the work has been interpreted?
10. How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?
Advance Reading
Activity for New historicism for literary criticism
(1) Watch the Indian movie “The three Idiots”
(2) Respond to the literature using the techniques of the above mentioned literary
theory.
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Self- Assessment

COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Direction: Using the Venn diagram below, compare and contrast New Historical
and Cultural Criticism to New Criticism.
POST-TEST
New Criticism
New Historical and Cultural Criticism
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Main References

Suggested Readings
from
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_a
nd_schools_of_criticism/index.html
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Suggested Videos
The Literature Life, N. (2020). New Historicism| Explained in 10 easy points with examples.
Retrieved 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV7iBorIaUQ
Young, J. (2018). New Historicism & Cultural Studies (RSA). Retrieved 2020, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32PO5dIHQnQ
Multitasker, D. (2019). NEW HISTORICISM explained in the easiest possible way. Retrieved
2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u7TDL9Hy0E
Nance, T. (2015). What is Historical Criticism? Retrieved 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMxkN81QhKw
Izhar, S. (2020). New Historicism And Cultural Criticism 1. Retrieved 2020, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csXDnFFDBoA
Hall, A. (2015). New historicism part 1. Retrieved 2020, from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLzDu2772So
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Chapter 10
Terms to Remember
Sexuality Lesbian
Criticism Queer
Doubles Gay
Heterosexuality

PRE-TEST
Direction: Locate the listed words beside the puzzle by drawing a

straight line. The words can be positioned in all directions, written
from left to right from right to left, horizontally, vertically, and
diagonally, but is always on one straight line.
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Lesbian, Gay, & Queer Criticism
Determine the theory and explicate its function.

Name the major thinkers of Lesbian, Gay, & Queer Criticism.
Respond to works of literature using Lesbian, Gay, & Queer Criticism theory.
Key Concepts
Part and parcel of the discrimination practiced against lesbians and gay men are the
negative myths that used to be generally accepted as truth and that still exert some influence
today. These include the myth that gay people are sick, evil, or both and that it is therefore in
their “nature” to be insatiable sexual predators, to molest children, and to corrupt youths by
“recruiting” them to become homosexual.
Other common misconceptions include the belief that children raised by gay men or
lesbians will grow up to be gay.
Lesbian Criticism
Lesbian criticism is concerned with issues of personal identity and politics analogous to
those analyzed by feminists (see chapter 4). However, while feminism addresses issues related to
sexism and the difficulties involved in carving out a space for personal identity and political
action beyond the influence of sexist ideologies, lesbian critics address issues related to both
sexism and heterosexism. In other words, lesbian critics must deal with the psychological, social,
economic, and political oppression fostered not only by patriarchal male privilege, but by
heterosexual privilege as well. (Tyson 322-‐23)
Gay Criticism
The kinds of analyses that tend to engage the attention of gay critics often fall under the
heading of gay sensibility. How does being gay influence the way one sees the world, sees
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oneself and others, creates and responds to art and music, creates and interprets literature, or
experiences and expresses emotion? Ina heterosexist culture such as the one we inhabit at the
turn of the twenty-‐first century in America, gay sensibility includes an awareness of being
different, at least in certain ways, from the members of the mainstream, dominant culture, and
the complex feelings that result from an implicit, ongoing social oppression. In other words, part
of seeing the world as a gay man includes the ways in which one deals with being oppressed as a
gay man. Among others, three important domains of gay sensibility, all of which involve
responses to heterosexist oppression, are drag, camp, and dealing with the issue of AIDS. (Tyson
330)
Queer Theory
For queer theory, categories of sexuality cannot be
defined by such simple oppositions as
homosexual/heterosexual. Building on deconstruction’s
insights into human subjectivity (selfhood) as a fluid,
fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible “selves,”
queer theory defines individual sexuality as a fluid,
fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible sexualities.
Our sexuality may be different at different times over the
course of our lives or even at different times over the course of a week because sexuality is a
dynamic range of desire. Gay sexuality, lesbian sexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality are,
for all of us, possibilities along a continuum of sexual possibilities. And what these categories
mean to different individuals will be influenced by how they conceive their own racial and class
identities as well. Thus, sexuality is completely controlled neither by our biological sex (male or
female) nor by the way our culture translates biological sex into gender roles (masculine or
feminine). Sexuality exceeds these definitions and has a will, a creativity, an expressive need of
its own. (Tyson 335)
Finally, lesbian, gay, and queer criticism often rely on similar kinds of textual evidence.
For example, in addition to the more obvious forms of textual cues—such as homoerotic imagery
and erotic encounters between same-‐sex characters—there are rather subtle textual cues that
can create a homoerotic atmosphere even in an otherwise heterosexual text, as we saw in the
examples of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism provided earlier. No single textual cue can stand on
its own as evidence of a homoerotic atmosphere in a text. Nor can a small number of such cues
support a lesbian, gay, or queer reading. But a preponderance of these cues, especially if coupled
with other kinds of textual or biographical evidence, can strengthen a lesbian, gay, or queer
interpretation even of an apparently heterosexual text. (Tyson 339)
Typical questions for lesbian, gay, and queer criticism
1. 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?
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2. What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or
queer works?
3. What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian
experience and history, including literary history?
4. How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who
are apparently homosexual?
5. How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to reveal an unspoken or
unconscious lesbian, gay or queer presence? That is, does the work have an unconscious
lesbian, gay or queer desire or conflict that it submerges?
6. What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically,
psychologically) of heterosexism?
7. 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?
8. 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)?
9. 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?
10. What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the
masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
These are terms that you may encounter when you read lesbian and gay criticism
Homophobic reading - a reading informed by the fear and loathing of homosexuality.
Thus, it is part of a larger cultural context in which homophobia has long played a major role.
Homophobia is generally used to refer to an individual’s pathological dread of same‑sex
love, the author used the term to refer to institutionalized discrimination (discrimination that is
built into a culture’s laws and customs) against gay people.
Internalized homophobia refers to the self‑hatred some gay people experience because, in
their growth through adolescence to adulthood, they’ve internalized the homophobia pressed on
them by heterosexual America.
The word more commonly used to refer to institutionalized discrimination against
homosexuality, and the privileging of heterosexuality that accompanies it, is Heterosexism.
A heterosexist culture enforces compulsory heterosexuality, a term used by Adrienne
Rich, among others, to describe the enormous pressure to be heterosexual placed on young
people by their families, schools, the church, the medical professions, and all forms of the media.
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Heterocentrism - a subtler form of prejudice against gay men and lesbians, is the , often
unconscious, that heterosexuality is the universal norm by which everyone’s experience can be
understood. Heterocentrism renders lesbian and gay experience invisible, making it possible in
decades’ past.
It is interesting to note that the words homophobia, heterosexism, and heterocentrism
are sometimes used interchangeably, the difference among them apparently being one of degree:
homophobia suggests the most virulent antigay sentiment, heterocentrism the least virulent.
Biological essentialism - the idea that a fixed segment of the population is naturally gay,
just as the rest of the population is naturally heterosexual.
Social Constructionism - all human beings have the potential for same‑sex desire or
sexual activity; homosexuality and heterosexuality are products of social, not biological, forces.
Ways of understanding gay and lesbian experience that focus on their minority status are
called minoritizing views.
Ways of understanding gay and lesbian experience that focus on the homosexual
potential in all people are called universalizing views.
Homoerotic denotes erotic (though not necessarily overtly sexual) depictions that imply
same‑sex attraction or that might appeal sexually to a same‑sex reader, for example, a sensually
evocative description of women in the process of helping each other undress or of nude men
bathing in a pond. Such depictions can occur in any medium, such as film, painting, sculpture,
photography, and, of course, literature.
The word homosocial denotes same‑sex friendship of the kind seen in female‑ or
male‑bonding activities.
Lesbian criticism
Lesbian criticism is concerned with issues of
personal identity and politics analogous to those
analyzed by feminists.
Lesbian critics address issues related to both
sexism and heterosexism. In other words, lesbian
critics must deal with the psychological, social,
economic, and political oppression fostered not only
by patriarchal male privilege, but by heterosexual
privilege as well. And this second form of privilege
has often put heterosexual and lesbian feminists at
odds with each other.
Lesbians of color and working‑class lesbians have suffered a history of marginalization,
if not exclusion, within the lesbian‑feminist movement, which, like the feminist movement,
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emerged largely from the white middle class and, therefore, has been limited—until relatively
recently—by white middle‑class perspectives and goals.
Some lesbian are Separatists
They disassociate themselves as much as possible from all men, including gay men, and
from heterosexual women as well. They may also disassociate themselves from lesbians who
don’t share their views.
Gay criticism
As we noted above, unlike lesbian criticism, gay criticism doesn’t tend to focus on efforts
to define homosexuality. Sexual relations between men, or even just the sexual desire of one man
for another, is the generally accepted criterion of gayness in white middle‑class America today.
Nevertheless, not all cultures share this definition. For example, in Mexican and South American
cultures, the mere fact of sexual activity with or desire for another male does not indicate that a
man is homosexual. As long as he behaves in a traditionally masculine manner strong, dominant,
decisive—and consistently assumes the male sexual role as penetrator (never allowing himself to
be penetrated, orally or anally), a man remains a macho, a “real” man. As a macho, a man can
have sex with both men and women and not be considered what North Americans call
homosexual. The same definition of homosexuality was used in white American working‑class
culture around the turn of the twentieth century: only men who allowed themselves to be
penetrated by a man during sex and behaved in a traditionally feminine manner—submissive,
coy, flirtatious, “soft”—were considered homosexual.
How does being gay influence the way one sees the world, sees oneself and others, creates
and responds to art and music, creates and interprets literature, or experiences and
expresses emotion?
Gay sensibility includes an awareness of being different, at least in certain ways, from the
members of the mainstream, dominant culture, and the complex feelings that result from an
implicit, ongoing social oppression. In other words, part of seeing the world as a gay man
includes the ways in which one deals with being oppressed as a gay man. Among others, three
important domains of gay sensibility, all of which involve responses to heterosexist oppression,
are drag, camp, and dealing with the issue of AIDS.
Drag is the practice of dressing in women’s clothing. Drag queens are gay men who
dress in drag on a regular basis or who do it professionally. However, not all gay people
cross‑dress, not all cross‑dressers are gay, and not all gay people approve of drag. But for some,
it’s a source of self‑expression and entertainment that can also be a political statement against
traditional gender roles. Drag doesn’t necessarily involve (and perhaps never involves) the
fantasy that one is a woman. Rather it is a way for a man to express his feminine side or his sense
of the outrageous or his nonconformity. For other gay men, drag is a form of political activism
used to draw attention to gay issues, criticize homophobic government and religious policies, and
raise funds to fight AIDS. Whatever the purpose, drag is a way of refusing to be intimidated by
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heterosexist gender boundaries and a way of getting all of us to think about our own sexuality by
challenging gender roles.
Lesbians sometimes cross‑dress, too. In fact, there are some drag kings, such as Elvis
Herselvis, who satirizes Elvis impersonators and includes in her act a discussion of Elvis’s drug
problem and sexual proclivities. However, drag doesn’t seem to be for lesbians the major issue it
is for gay men. One reason may be that, at least since the late 1960s, women’s adoption of
masculine attire and grooming is not considered outrageous or even unfashionable. Also, in
general, the lesbian community’s adoption of male clothing and grooming (for example, butch
attire) or of androgenous clothing and grooming (for example, lesbian‑feminist attire of the
1970s) has tended to be a matter of personal self‑expression and/or quiet political statement that
hasn’t had the theatrical quality of gay drag.
Camp, of which flamboyant gay drag is an example, is a form of expression characterized by
irreverence, artifice, exaggeration, and theatricality. It’s ironic, witty, and humorous and often
involves a blurring or crossing of gender lines. It’s subversive in that it mocks authority and
traditional standards of behavior by imitating them in outrageous ways, often through the use of
exaggerated gestures, postures, and voice.
Gay and lesbian critics approach literary texts
Despite their focus on different theoretical issues, there is a good deal of similarity in the
way gay and lesbian critics approach literary texts. For example, like lesbian critics, gay critics
attempt to determine what might constitute a gay poetics, or a way of writing that is uniquely
gay; to establish a gay literary tradition; and to decide what writers and works belong to that
tradition. Gay critics also examine how gay sensibility affects literary expression and study the
ways in which heterosexual texts can have a homoerotic dimension. They try to rediscover gay
writers from the past whose work was underappreciated, distorted, or suppressed, including gay
writers who have been presumed heterosexual. They try to determine the sexual politics of
specific texts, analyzing, for example, how gay characters or “feminine” men are portrayed in
both gay and heterosexual texts. Finally, gay critics identify and correct heterosexist
interpretations of literature that fail to recognize or appreciate the gay sensibility informing
specific literary works.
Note: more about gay and lesbian criticism as you browse the main references.
Queer criticism
One of the first questions asked by students new to the study of gay and lesbian criticism
is why gay men and women have chosen the homophobic word queer to designate an approach
within their own discipline. I think there are several answers to that question, and they will serve
as an introduction to some of the basic premises of queer theory.
`The word queer is used to indicate a specific theoretical perspective. From a theoretical
point of view, the words gay and lesbian imply a definable category—homosexuality—that is
clearly opposite to another definable category: heterosexuality. However, for queer theory,
categories of sexuality cannot be defined by such simple oppositions as homosexual/
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heterosexual. Building on deconstruction’s insights into human subjectivity (selfhood) as a fluid,

fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible “selves,” queer theory defines individual sexuality
as a fluid, fragmented, dynamic collectivity of possible sexualities. Our sexuality may be
different at different times over the course of our lives or even at different times over the course
of a week because sexuality is a dynamic range of desire. Gay sexuality, lesbian sexuality,
bisexuality, and heterosexuality are, for all of us, possibilities along a continuum of sexual
possibilities. And what these categories mean to different individuals will be influenced by how
they conceive their own racial and class identities as well. Thus, sexuality is completely
controlled neither by our biological sex (male or female) nor by the way our culture translates
biological sex into gender roles (masculine or feminine). Sexuality exceeds these definitions and
has a will, a creativity, an expressive need of its own.
The word queer has a range of meanings in literary studies today. As an inclusive term, it
can refer to any piece of literary criticism that interprets a text from a nonstraight perspective.
Therefore, any of the examples of gay and lesbian criticism discussed earlier could be included
in a collection of queer essays. How‑ ever, if we restrict ourselves to its narrower theoretical
meaning—its deconstructive dimension—queer criticism reads texts to reveal the problematic
quality of their representations of sexual categories, in other words, to show the various ways in
which the categories homosexual and heterosexual break down, overlap, or do not adequately
represent the dynamic range of human sexuality. These kinds of readings can be rather complex.
Note: more about queer criticism in our main references
Some shared features of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism
Many gay and lesbian critics combine some of the deconstructive insights offered by
queer theory with the social and political concerns associated with more traditional forms of
lesbian and gay criticism. Indeed, many devotees of queer theory still refer to themselves as gay
or lesbian critics.
Critics from all three domains have taken an interest in recurring themes that appear
throughout gay and lesbian literature and that constitute part of an evolving literary tradition.
These themes include the following: initiation, including discovering one’s queer sexual
orientation, experiencing one’s first sexual encounters as a gay person, and “learning the ropes”
in the gay or lesbian subculture; “coming out” to family and friends; “coming out” at the
workplace; dealing with homophobia and with heterosexist discrimination; the psychology of
gay self‑hatred; overcoming gay self‑hatred; the role of camp and drag in gay life; dealing with
loneliness and alienation; finding love; building a life with a gay or lesbian partner; the quest to
build a lesbian utopia; life before and after Stonewall; life before and after AIDS (in terms of
both one’s personal life and the collective life of the gay and lesbian communities); caring for
loved ones with AIDS; mourning the death of AIDS victims; and the importance of gay and
lesbian community.
Finally, lesbian, gay, and queer criticism often rely on similar kinds of textual evidence.
For example, in addition to the more obvious forms of textual cues—such as homoerotic imagery
and erotic encounters between same‑sex characters— there are rather subtle textual cues that can
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create a homoerotic atmosphere even in an otherwise heterosexual text, as we saw in the

examples of lesbian, gay, and queer criticism provided earlier. No single textual cue can stand on
its own as evidence of a homoerotic atmosphere in a text. Nor can a small number of such cues
support a lesbian, gay, or queer reading. But a preponderance of these cues, especially if coupled
with other kinds of textual or biographical evidence, can strengthen a lesbian, gay, or queer
interpretation even of an apparently heterosexual text.
Heterosexual Text (subtitle cues)
(1) Homosocial bonding—The depiction of strong
emotional ties between same‑ sex characters can create a
homosocial atmosphere that may be subtly or overtly
homoerotic. (read more about this in our main
references)
(2) Gay or lesbian “signs”—Gay or lesbian signs are of two types. The first
type consists of characteristics that heterosexist culture
stereotypically associates with gay men or lesbians, such as
might be evident, for example, in the appearance and
behavior of “feminine” male characters or “masculine”
female characters. The second type are coded signs created
by the gay or lesbian subculture itself. For example, the
word gay, as used in the writing of Gertrude Stein in
the early decades of the twentieth century, may well have been an “in‑group”
coded sign that heterosexual culture of the period would not have recognized.
(read more about this in our main references)
(3) Same-sex “doubles”—A subtler, somewhat
abstract, form of gay and lesbian signs consists
of same‑sex characters who look alike, act alike,
or have parallel experiences. Because gay and
lesbian sexuality foregrounds sexual similarity,
same‑sex characters who function as some sort
of “mirror image” of each other can also function
as gay or lesbian signs. Same‑sex doubles may share a homoerotic bond, a
homosocial bond, or they may not know each other at all. (read more about this in
our main references)
(4) Transgressive sexuality—A text’s focus on transgressive sexuality, including
transgressive heterosexuality (such as extramarital
romance), throws into question the rules of traditional
heterosexuality and thus opens the door of
imagination to transgressive sexualities of all kinds.
(read more about this in our main references)
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Clearly, the boundaries among lesbian, gay, and queer criticism remain some‑ what fluid.
Your purpose in using the kinds of textual evidence just described, as well as your own
self‑identified critical orientation, will determine whether your interpretation of a literary work is
a lesbian, gay, or queer reading.
Advance Reading
Activity for Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Criticism
(1) Watch the movie “Girl Boy Bakla Tomboy”.
(2) Respond to the piece using Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Criticism
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Self- Assessment

Multiple Choice
Direction: Read each item carefully. Choose the correct answer from the
word pool. Strictly no superimpositions and erasures. Write ONLY the
letter.
_____ (1) A subtler, somewhat abstract, form of gay and lesbian signs
consists of same‑sex characters who look alike, act alike, or have
parallel experiences.
_____ (2) A form of expression characterized by irreverence, artifice,
exaggeration, and theatricality.
POST-TEST
_____ (3) The practice of dressing in women’s clothing.
______ (4) A way of refusing to be intimidated by heterosexist gender
boundaries and a way of getting all of us to think about our own
sexuality by challenging gender roles.
_____ (5) A term used to refer to an individual’s pathological dread of
same‑sex love.
_____ (6) A term used to refer to institutionalized discrimination
(discrimination that is built into a culture’s laws and customs)
against gay people.
_____ (7) This term denotes same‑sex friendship of the kind seen in
female‑ or male‑bonding activities.
_____ (8) A sensually evocative description of women in the process of
helping each other undress or of nude men bathing in a pond is an
example for this term.
_____ (9) States that all human beings have the potential for same‑sex
desire or sexual activity; homosexuality and heterosexuality are
products of social, not biological, forces.
_____ (10) An awareness of being different, at least in certain ways, from
the members of the mainstream, dominant culture, and the complex
feelings that result from an implicit, ongoing social oppression.
A. Homosocial E. Homoerotic I. Camp
B. Homophobia F. Social Constructionism J. Drag
C. Drag queens G. Gay Sensibility K Same – sex doubles
D. Heterocentrism H. Lesbian Criticism L. Queer theory
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Main References

Suggested Readings
Copper, J. (2019). HOW AND WHY TO TEACH LITERARY THEORY IN SECONDARY ELA.
N/a, N/a: WordPress. Retrieved 2020, from http://jennacopper.com/2019/03/26/how-and-
why-to-teach-literary-theory-in-secondary-ela/
from
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_and_sc
hools_of_criticism/index.html
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Suggested Videos
Foreman, K. (2018). What is Queer Theory? Youtube.Com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7p1c2ofLIU
Montilla, A. (2016). Queer Theory. Youtube.Com. https://youtu.be/Lhk_Cc0tgSo
On Queer Theory. (n.d.). Youtube.Com. Retrieved 2020, from https://youtu.be/t0PSwkoQ8y8
Literature Simply. (2020, April 16). What is Lesbian/ Gay Criticism & Queer Theory?| What
does Lesbian Feminism mean? YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAYgx3aFfsw
ENGLIT. (2019, June 6). Queer Theory (Gay Lesbian Theory) and its Relation with Cultural
Studies. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLosvs4lr8o
UGC NTA NET JRF ENGLISH LITERATURE. (2018, May 5). LITERARY THEORY --
"QUEER THEORY AND FEMINISM " TERMS AND WRITERS FOR ENGLISH
LITERATURE EXAMS. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWldEHRg69Y
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Chapter 11
Terms to Remember
Racialism Race
Orality Signifying
African Eurocentrism Racism
Internalized race Intersectionality
Universalism Double vision American
Direction:
Read the
clues below
PRE-TEST
and fill in the

correct
answer!
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African American Criticism
Explain the theory and determine its function.

Name the major thinkers of African American Criticism.
Respond to works of literature using African American Criticism theory.
Key Concepts
African American Literature
African American literature begins with a meditation on the

meaning of slavery and freedom, as early writers create new narrative
forms to seek agency, subjectivity, and community within the
dehumanizing conditions of forced migration and enslavement. The
Reconstruction era prompts the literature of racial uplift and the
theorization of double consciousness. During the Harlem Renaissance
and the black arts era, writers turn to realist protest fiction, lyrical poetry,
and committed theater to develop a cultural nationalism that combats
continuing segregation and Jim Crow disenfranchisement. Debates over
black feminism and queer sexuality challenge black nationalist
ideologies.
Contemporary African American literature includes strains of black postmodernism,
neo‐slavery, and Afrofuturism, as writers continue to develop innovative forms to complicate
existing notions of race and representation through debates over politics and aesthetics, diaspora
and transnationalism, and gender and sexuality.
The virtual exclusion of African American history and culture from American education,
which began to be addressed only in the late 1960s, reflects the virtual exclusion of African
American history and culture from official versions of American history before that time. Only
over the past few decades have American history books begun to include information about
black Americans that had been repressed in order to maintain the cultural hegemony, or
dominance, of white America.
Defining some key concepts concerning that issue about which many people still have
misconceptions.
Racialism, a word we don’t often hear in everyday speech,

refers to the belief in racial superiority, inferiority, and purity based on
the conviction that moral and intellectual characteristics, just like
physical characteristics, are biological properties that differentiate the
races.
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Racism refers to the unequal power relations that grow from the
sociopolitical domination of one race by another and that result in systematic
discriminatory practices (for example, segregation, domination, and
persecution).
Institutionalized racism refers to the incorporation of racist policies and practices in the
institutions by which a society operates: for example, education;
federal, state, and local governments; the law, both in terms of
what is written on the books and how it is implemented by the
courts and by police officials; health care, which can be racially
biased in everything from the allocation of research dollars to the
location of hospitals to the treatment of individual patients; and
the corporate world, which often practices racial discrimination in its hiring and promotion
despite whatever equal‑opportunity policies it officially claims to have.
Universalism: literary works have been defined as great art, as “universal”—relevant to

the experience of all people—and included in the canon only when they
reflect European experience and conform to the style and subject
matter of the European literary tradition, that is, only when they
resemble those European works already deemed “great.”
Eurocentrism is the belief that European culture is vastly superior to all others.
Internalized racism results from the psychological programming by
which a racist society indoctrinates people of color to believe in white
superiority. Victims of internalized racism generally feel inferior to
whites, less attractive, less worthwhile, less capable, and often wish they
were white or looked more white. Internalized racism often results in
intra-racial racism, which refers to discrimination within the black
community against those with darker skin and more African features.
Double consciousness or double vision, the awareness of belonging to two conflicting cultures:
The African culture, which grew from African roots and was
transformed by its own unique history on American soil, and the
European culture imposed by white America.
Recent developments: critical race theory
Of course, times have changed in many ways over the past few decades. Extreme forms
of overt violence against African Americans—such as lynching, the assassination of black
leaders, the bombing of black churches, mob attacks on black homes “too near” white
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neighborhoods, and the brutal treatment of civil rights protestors—seem to be a thing of the past
in the United States. In addition, racial discrimination against African Americans is now illegal:
according to the law, people of color may live, work, shop, dine out, and so forth where they
please.
The basic tenets of critical race theory
1. Everyday racism is a common, ordinary experience for people of color in the

United States.
2. Racism is largely the result of interest convergence, sometimes referred to as
material determinism.
3. Race is socially constructed.
4. Racism often takes the form of differential racialization.
5. Everyone’s identity is a product of intersectionality.
6. The experiences of racial minorities have given them what might be called a
unique voice of color.
Different kinds of issues that are of interest to critical race theorists
(1) Everyday Racism—Many white Americans still think that the word racism
applies only to very visible forms of racism, for example, physical or verbal
attacks against people of color; the activities of white supremacist groups; the
deliberate and overt exclusion of racial minorities from particular housing,
restaurants, and social organizations open to the public; and the like. However, in
many ways the most emotionally draining, stress‑provoking forms of racism are
the kinds that happen to people of color every day, and these forms of racism are
the rule, not the exception.
(2) Interest Convergence—Derrick Bell uses this term to explain that racism is
common in our country because it often converges, or overlaps, with the
interest—with something needed or desired—of a white individual or group
(Brown v. Board of Education 20–29).
(3) The Social Construction of Race—How can we define race as a matter of

physical features when the physical differences between light‑skinned blacks and
dark‑skinned whites, to cite just one example, are much fewer than the physical
differences we often see among members of each group?
(4) Differential Racialization—Differential racialization refers to the fact that “the

dominant society racializes [defines the racial characteristics of] different
minority groups [in different ways] at different times, in response to [its] shifting
needs” (Delgado and Stefancic 8).
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(5) Intersectionality—No one has a simple, uncomplicated identity based on race

alone. Race intersects with class, sex, sexual orientation, political orientation, and
personal history in forming each person’s complex identity. “Everyone has
potentially conflicting, overlapping identities, loyalties, and allegiances” (Delgado
and Stefancic 9).
(6) Voice of Color—Many critical race theorists believe that minority writers and
thinkers are generally in a better position than white writers and thinkers to write
and speak about race and racism because they experience racism directly. This
positionality is called the voice of color. Indeed, “black, Indian, Asian, and
Latino/a writers and thinkers may be able to communicate to their white
counterpart’s matters that the whites are unlikely to know” (Delgado and
Stefancic 9).
Note: More to know about the race issues as you browse the main references.
African American criticism and literature
Whether African American literary critics have sought to explain the unique quality of
African American literature by citing its African sources or its African and European American
sources, much effort has been expended in delineating the distinguishing features of what has
been identified as the African American literary tradition. Generally speaking, critics agree that
African American literature has focused on a number of recurring historical and sociological
themes, all of which reflect the politics—the realities of political, social, and economic power—
of black American experience.
Two prominent features of African American literature: orality and folk motifs
Orality, or the spoken quality of its language, gives a literary work a sense of immediacy,
of human presence, by giving readers the feeling they are hearing a human voice.
The use of folk motifs includes a wide range of character types and folk practices and
creates a sense of continuity with the African and African American past.
These character types include, for example, the local healer, the conjurer, the matriarch,
the local storyteller, the trickster, the religious leader, and the folk hero. Folk practices include,
for example, singing work songs, hymns, and the blues; engaging in folk and religious rituals as
a way of maintaining community and continuity with the past; storytelling as a way of relating
personal and group history and passing down traditional wisdom; passing down folk crafts and
skills, such as quilting, furniture making, and the preparation of traditional foods; and
emphasizing the importance of naming, including pet names, nicknames, and being called out of
one’s name (being called a derogatory name).
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Signifying, which Gates spells in this manner to emphasize the folk pronunciation of the
word and to distinguish it from other definitions of the term, refers to various indirect, clever,
ironic, and playful ways of giving your opinion about another person—for example, insulting
someone, deflating someone’s pretentiousness, or paying someone a compliment—without
saying explicitly what you mean. (more about signifying as you read the main references.)
Some questions African American critics ask about literary texts
African American criticism is both a subject matter—the study of a body of literature

written by a specific group of marginalized people—and a theoretical framework.
African American criticism foregrounds race (racial identity, African American cultural
traditions, psychology, politics, and so forth) as the object of analysis because race, in America,
informs our individual and cultural psychology, and therefore our literature, in profound ways.
As a theoretical framework, then, African American criticism can be used to analyze any
literary text that speaks to African American issues, regardless of the race of its author, although
the work of African American writers is the primary focus.
1. What can the work teach us about the specifics of African heritage, African American
culture and experience, and/or African American history (including but not limited to the history
of marginalization)?
2. What are the racial politics (ideological agendas related to racial oppression or
liberation) of specific African American works? For example, does the work correct stereotypes
of African Americans; correct historical misrepresentations of African Americans; celebrate
African American culture, experience, and achievement; or explore racial issues, including,
among others, the economic, social, or psychological effects of racism? Or as can be seen in the
literary production of many white authors, does the work reinforce racist ideologies?
3. What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of specific African American
works? For example, does the work use black vernacular or standard white English? Does the
work draw on African myths or African American folktales or folk motifs? Does the work
provide imagery that resonates with African American women’s domestic space, African
American cultural practices, history, or heritage? What are the effects of these literary devices
and how do they relate to the theme, or meaning, of the work?
4. How does the work participate in the African American literary tradition? To what
group of African American texts might we say it belongs in terms of its politics and poetics?
How does it conform to those texts? How does it break with them, perhaps seeking to redefine
literary aesthetics by experimenting with new forms? In short, what place does it occupy in
African American literary history or in African American women’s literary history?
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5. How does the work illustrate interest convergences, the social construction of race,
white privilege, or any other concept from critical race theory? How can an understanding of
these concepts deepen our interpretation of the work?
6. How is an Africanist presence—black characters, stories about black peo‑ ple,
representations of black speech, images associated with Africa or with blackness—used in works
by white writers to construct positive portrayals of white characters?
Advance Reading
Activity for African American Criticism
(1) Read the story “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
(2) Respond to the literature using the African American criticism.
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Self- Assessment
IDENTIFICATION
Direction: Read each statement carefully. Identify what is being described/asked
in each statement. Write your answer/s after the proposition. Avoid
superimpositions and erasures. Strictly no turning of pages while answering.
1. The use of this includes a wide range of character types and folk practices
and creates a sense of continuity with the African and African American
past.
2. No one has a simple, uncomplicated identity based on race alone.
POST-TEST
3. The most emotionally draining, stress‑provoking forms of racism are the
kinds that happen to people of color every day, and these forms of racism
are the rule, not the exception.
4. The spoken quality of its language, gives a literary work a sense of

immediacy, of human presence, by giving readers the feeling they are
hearing a human voice.
5. This refers to discrimination within the black community against those
with darker skin and more African features.
6. This refers to the fact that “the dominant society racializes [defines the
racial characteristics of] different minority groups [in different ways] at
different times, in response to [its] shifting needs.
7. The awareness of belonging to two conflicting cultures:
8. This refers to the unequal power relations that grow from the
sociopolitical domination of one race by another and that result in
systematic discriminatory practices.
9. This refers to the incorporation of racist policies and practices in the
institutions by which a society operates.
10. This refers to the belief in racial superiority, inferiority, and purity based
on the conviction that moral and intellectual characteristics, just like
physical characteristics, are biological properties that differentiate the
races.
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Main References

Suggested Readings
from
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Suggested Videos
Bell, K. (2020, June 24). racism. Open Education Sociology Dictionary.

https://sociologydictionary.org/racism/
The Audiopedia. (2017, February 26). What is EUROCENTRISM? What does EUROCENTRISM
mean? EUROCENTRISM meaning, definition & explanation. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFDQj9LLs0k
Intersectionality. (2015). Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/social-

inequality/social-class/v/intersectionality
Dr. B’s History of SW class. (2018, September 9). Week 4 Part 5, CRT: Differential
Racialization. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I238sWzea7U
AFRICAN AMERICAN CRITICISM Natalia Destefanis, Francisco Vergara. (2017, September

5). Ppt Video Online Download. https://slideplayer.com/slide/5749596/
Jen Lor. (2018, January 22). African American Criticism and Literature. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJXEi8mYz58
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Chapter 12
Terms to Remember
Alterity Diaspora
Neocolonialism
Hybridity Imperialism Eurocentrism
Hegemony Postcolonial Identity

Identification
Direction: Read each item carefully. Identify one correct answer for each
number from the word pool below. Write your answer after the
proposition. Avoid superimpositions and erasures.
1. The lack of identification with some part of one's personality or

PRE-TEST
one's community, differentness, otherness.

2. An important concept in postcolonial theory, referring to the
integration (or, mingling) of cultural signs and practices from the
colonizing and the colonized cultures.
3. The policy of extending the control or authority over foreign entities
as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through
direct territorial control or through indirect methods of exerting control
on the politics and/or economy of other countries.
4. Any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their
traditional ethnic homelands, being dispersed throughout other parts of
the world, and the ensuing developments in their dispersal and culture.
5. The practice, conscious or otherwise, of placing emphasis on
European (and, generally, Western) concerns, culture and values at the
expense of those of other cultures.
Hegemony Alterity Diaspora Imperialism

Hybridity Eurocentrism Identity Postcolonial
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Define the theory and identify its function.

Identify the major thinkers of Postcolonial Criticism.
Respond to works of literature using Postcolonial Criticism theory.
Key Concepts
Literally, postcolonialism refers to the period following the
decline of colonialism, e.g., the end or lessening of domination by
European empires. Although the term postcolonialism generally refers
to the period after colonialism, the distinction is not always made. In
its use as a critical approach, postcolonialism refers to "a collection of
theoretical and critical strategies used to examine the culture
(literature, politics, history, and so forth) of former colonies of the European empires, and their
relation to the rest of the world" (Makaryk 155).
Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempt both to resurrect
their culture and to combat preconceptions about their culture. Edward Said, for example, uses
the word Orientalism to describe the discourse about the East constructed by the West. Major
figures include Edward Said (sah-EED), Homi Bhabha (bah-bah), Frantz Fanon (fah-NAWN),
Gayatri Spivak, Chinua Achebe (ah-CHAY-bay), Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Jamaica
Kincaid, and Buchi Emecheta.
Key Terms:
Alterity - "lack of identification with some part of one's personality
or one's community, differentness, otherness"
Diaspora (dI-ASP-er-ah) - "is used
(without capitalization) to refer to any people or ethnic population
forced or induced to leave their traditional ethnic homelands,
being dispersed throughout other parts of the world, and the
ensuing developments in their dispersal and culture" (Wikipedia).
Eurocentrism - "the practice, conscious or otherwise, of
placing emphasis on European (and, generally, Western) concerns, culture and values at the
expense of those of other cultures. It is an instance of ethnocentrism, perhaps especially relevant
because of its alignment with current and past real power structures in the world"
(Dictionary.LaborLawTalk.com)
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Hybridity - "an important concept in post-colonial theory, referring

to the integration (or, mingling) of cultural signs and practices from the
colonizing and the colonized cultures ("integration" may be too orderly a
word to represent the variety of stratagems, desperate or cunning or good-
willed, by which people adapt themselves to the necessities and the
opportunities of more or less oppressive or invasive cultural impositions,
live into alien cultural patterns through their own structures of
understanding, thus producing something familiar but new). The
assimilation and adaptation of cultural practices, the cross-fertilization of
cultures, can be seen as positive, enriching, and dynamic, as well as as
oppressive" (from Dr. John Lye - see General Literary Theory Websites
below).
Imperialism - "the policy of extending the control or authority over foreign entities as a
means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through direct territorial control or
through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries.
The term is used by some to describe the policy of a country in maintaining colonies and
dominance over distant lands, regardless of whether the country calls itself an empire"
(Dictionary.LaborLawTalk.com).
Perhaps one of the most important abilities critical theory develops in us is the ability to
see connections where we didn’t know they existed: for example, connections between our
personal psychological conflicts and the way we interpret a poem, between the ideologies we’ve
internalized and the literary works we find aesthetically pleasing, between a nation’s political
climate and what its intellectuals consider “great” literature, and so forth. Most of the critical
theories we’ve studied so far have encouraged us to make connections along one or more of
these lines. Postcolonial criticism is particularly effective at helping us see connections among
all the domains of our experience—the psychological, ideological, social, political, intellectual,
and aesthetic—in ways that show us just how inseparable these categories are in our lived
experience of ourselves and our world. In addition, postcolonial theory offers us a framework for
examining the similarities among all critical theories that deal with human oppression, such as
Marxism; feminism; gay, lesbian, and queer theories; and African American theory.
In fact, because postcolonial criticism defines formerly colonized peoples as any
population that has been subjected to the political domination of another population, you may see
postcolonial critics draw examples from the literary works of African Americans as well as from,
for example, the literature of aboriginal Australians or the formerly colonized population of
India. However, the tendency of postcolonial criticism to focus on global issues, on comparisons
and contrasts among various peoples, means that it is up to the individual members of specific
populations to develop their own body of criticism on the history, traditions, and interpretation of
their own literature. Of course, this is precisely what African American critics have been doing
for some time, long before postcolonial criticism emerged as a powerful force in literary studies
in the early 1990s.
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Post‑ colonial criticism seeks to understand the operations—politically, socially,

culturally, and psychologically—of colonialist and anticolonialist ideologies. For example, a
good deal of postcolonial criticism analyzes the ideological forces that, on the one hand, pressed
the colonized to internalize the colonizers’ values and, on the other hand, promoted the resistance
of colonized peoples against their oppressors, a resistance that is as old as colonialism itself. And
as we’ll see, because colonialist and anticolonialist ideologies can be present in any literary text,
a work doesn’t have to be categorized as postcolonial for us to be able to use postcolonial
criticism to analyze it.
Postcolonial identity
Colonialist ideology, often referred to as colonialist
discourse to mark its relation‑ ship to the language in which
colonialist thinking was expressed, was based on the colonizers’
assumption of their own superiority, which they contrasted with
the alleged inferiority of native (indigenous) peoples, the
original inhabit‑ ants of the lands they invaded. The colonizers
believed that only their own Anglo‑European culture was
civilized, sophisticated, or, as postcolonial critics put it,
metropolitan. Therefore, native peoples were defined as savage,
back‑ ward, and undeveloped. Because their technology was
more highly advanced, the colonizers believed that their whole
culture was more highly advanced, and they ignored or swept
aside the religions, customs, and codes of behavior of the
peoples they subjugated. So the colonizers saw themselves at the center of the world; the
colonized were at the margins. The colonizers saw themselves as the embodiment of what a
human being should be, the proper “self”; native peoples were considered “other,” different, and
therefore inferior to the point of being less than fully human. This practice of judging all who are
different as less than fully human is called othering, and it divides the world between “us” (the
“civilized”) and “them” (the “others” or “savages”). The “savage” is usually considered evil as
well as inferior (the demonic other). But sometimes the “savage” is perceived as possessing a
“primitive” beauty or nobility born of a closeness to nature (the exotic other). In either case,
however, the “savage” remains other and, therefore, not fully human.
Note: more to know about postcolonial identity in our main references.
Postcolonial debates
Postcolonial criticism implies that colonialism is a thing of the past.
In reality, it is not. Colonialism is no longer practiced as it was between the
late fifteenth and mid‑twentieth centuries, through the direct, overt
administration of governors and educators from the colonizing country.
This neocolonialism, as it’s called, exploits the cheap labor available
in developing countries, often at the expense of those countries’ own
struggling businesses, cultural traditions, and ecological well‑being.
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Neocolonialist corporate enterprise is supported, when the need arises, by puppet regimes (local
rulers paid by a corporation to support its interests) and by covert military intervention (some‑
times in the form of financing troops loyal to corporate political interests, some‑ times in the
form of enlisting military aid from the Western power most closely aligned with the
corporation’s concerns).
Cultural imperialism, a direct result of economic domination, consists of the “takeover”
of one culture by another: the food, clothing, customs, recreation, and values of the economically
dominant culture increasingly replace those of the economically vulnerable culture until the latter
appears to be a kind of imitation of the former.
Some theorists believe that postcolonial criticism is itself a form of cultural imperialism.
For one thing, most postcolonial critics—including those born in formerly colonized nations,
many of whom were educated at European universities and live abroad—all belong to an
intellectual elite, an academic ruling class that has, it would seem, little in common with
subalterns, or people of inferior status, that is, with the majority of poor, exploited ex‑colonial
peoples who are the object of their concern.
Postcolonial criticism can be used to interpret literature in the Western literary canon,
some theorists are concerned that it will become just one more way to read the same First World
authors we’ve been reading for years, rather than a method that brings to the fore the works of
Third and Fourth World writers as well as the works of those Second World writers who address
postcolonial issues.
Postcolonial criticism and literature
Wherever postcolonial critics place themselves in terms of these debates, however, most
interpret postcolonial literature in terms of a number of overlapping topics. These include,
among others, the following common topics.
1. The native people’s initial encounter with the colonizers and the disruption of
indigenous culture
2. The journey of the European outsider through an unfamiliar wilderness with a native
guide
3. Othering (the colonizers’ treatment of members of the indigenous culture as less than
fully human) and colonial oppression in all its forms
4. Mimicry (the attempt of the colonized to be accepted by imitating the dress, behavior,
speech, and lifestyle of the colonizers)
5. Exile (the experience of being an “outsider” in one’s own land or a foreign wanderer in
Britain)
6. Post‑independence exuberance followed by disillusionment
7. The struggle for individual and collective cultural identity and the related themes of
alienation, unhomeliness (feeling that one has no cultural “home,” or sense of cultural
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belonging), double consciousness (feeling torn between the social and psychological
demands of two antagonistic cultures), and hybridity (experiencing one’s cultural identity
as a hybrid of two or more cultures, which feeling is sometimes described as a positive
alternative to unhomeliness)
8. The need for continuity with a precolonial past and self‑definition of the political
future
Note: read more to know more about Postcolonial criticism. Read the main references to
further understand the connections of lines presented in this paper.
The Literary Lens

Examining colonizers/colonized relationship in literature
• Is the work pro/anti colonialist? Why?
• Does the text reinforce or resist colonialist ideology?
Types of oppression
• What tools do the colonizers use to demean or oppress the colonized?
• What psychological aftermath are the colonized people left with?
• Considering the present as well as the past, is the author using the language of a
colonizer?
Questions to prompt postcolonial analysis
1. How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of
colonial oppression?
2. What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity,
including the relationship between personal and cultural identity within cultural
borderlands?
3. What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How are
such persons/groups described and treated?
4. What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist
resistance?
5. What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the ways in
which race, religion, class, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form
individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world
in which we live?
6. How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist
ideology through its representation of colonization and/or its inappropriate silence
about colonized peoples? (Tyson, 2006)
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Advance Reading
Activity for Postcolonial Criticism
(1) Read Harriet Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.
(2) Respond to the novel using the Postcolonial criticism theory
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Self- Assessment
POST It!
Direction: Grab pictures online and post it alongside each of the
following words. Do not forget to include a short description about
each photo, and briefly explicate its connection to the word next to it.
1. Ethnocentrism
POST-TEST
2. Hybridity
3. Mimicry
4. Inferior
5. Othering
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Main References
LitAnalysisWS.pdf - LITERARY ANALYSIS WORKSHEET. Course Hero. (2019, March 6).
Coursehero.Com. https://www.coursehero.com/file/38638662/LitAnalysisWSpdf/
Suggested Readings
Retrieved 2020, from https://www.slideshare.net/belacheww/unit-1-introduction-to-literary-
theory-amp-criticism-74333553.
Education. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.slideshare.net/KetanPandya2/nature-and-function-
of-literary-criticism.
from
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Suggested Videos
Bruce Derby. (2011, April 2). Postcolonial Criticism. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBkYIOdqbgo
abimyster. (2011, October 28). Postcolonial Criticism. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27ZQiJy_Qwo
Allie Belcher. (2012, November 29). Post-Colonial/Historical Criticism. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8FixCF_lDs
Tom Nicholas. (2018, October 24). Postcolonialism: WTF? An Intro to Postcolonial Theory.
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbLyd0mQwIk
Emily Hehn. (2020, March 19). Postcolonial Criticism #3. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB8wRMjIwBM
Arda Arikan. (2020, April 7). Colonialism and Post-Colonial Literary Criticism. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYZ7VgnZz9E
Hanan Muzaffar. (2020, May 9). Postcolonial Criticism in Peter Barry’s Beginning Theory.
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syheSnnoA1o
TestPrep. (2020, June 27). Postcolonialism: Criticism, Major Writers - Achebe, Conrad, Austen
| English Literature. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6NortAFpac
litdiscourse. (2020, August 22). Postcolonial Criticism. YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtXCVolchuo
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Self- Assessment
Literary Theory: Prisms of

Possibilities
Read the poem Desiderata and discuss it in your group, using the
assigned lens. We will consider each lens when we reconvene as a large
group.
Deconstructive Historical Lesbian, gay, African American Postcolonial

cultural queer
What aspects of
the poem lend
themselves to
this particular
lens?
Cite specific
textual
passage(s)
that support
this reading.
If you look
through this
lens, what
themes or
patterns are
brought into
sharp relief?
If you look
through this
lens, what
questions
emerge?
Do you believe
in this reading?
Why or why
not?
Literary theory activity adapted from Appleman (2009)
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Literary Theory: A Frankenstein Monster
Please consider Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in light of the following theories. Fill out as much of the chart as you can. We’ll be discussing it
together as a whole class.
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Deconstructive Historical and Lesbian, Gay, African American Postcolonial
Cultural
And Queer
Citation of a specific textual
passage that supports this kind of
reading.
List at least two incidents that

support this kind of reading.
Interpret at least one character

through this lens.
If you look through this lens,

what themes/issues emerge?
What symbols do you see?
Do you believe in this reading?

Why or why not?
Literary theory activity adopted from Appleman (2009)

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GLOSSARY
“savage” is perceived as possessing a “primitive” beauty or nobility born of a closeness to
nature (the exotic other).
“universality”: to be considered a great work, a literary text had to have “universal”
characters and themes.
A common example of Eurocentrism in literary studies is the long‑standing philosophy of
so‑called universalism.
A proposition is formed by combining a character with an irreducible action.
A sequence is a string of propositions that can stand on its own as a story.
A sign system is a linguistic or nonlinguistic object or behavior (or collection of objects or
behaviors) that can be analyzed as if it were a specialized language.
A signifier is a “sound‑image” (a mental imprint of a linguistic sound)
A symbol is a sign in which the relationship between signifier and signified is neither natural
nor necessary but arbitrary.
African American criticism
Africanism is a white conception (or more accurately, misconception) of African and African
American people on which white authors have projected their own fears, needs, desires, and
conflicts.
Africanist as “a term for the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have
come to signify.
An icon is a sign in which the signifier physically resembles the signified.
An index is a sign in which the signifier has a concrete, causal relationship to the signified.
Another example of Eurocentrism is a specific form of othering called orientalism. Its
purpose is to produce a positive national self‑definition for Western nations
Archetypal criticism - it deals with the recurrence of certain narrative patterns throughout
the history of Western literature.
Archetype refers to any recurring image, character type, plot formula, or pattern of action.
basic components (phonemes)
Binary oppositions - Slippery quality of language.
Binary oppositions - we tend to conceptualize our experience in terms of polar opposites.
Binary oppositions: two ideas, directly opposed, each of which we understand by means of
its opposition to the other.
biological essentialism - the idea that a fixed segment of the population is naturally
gay
Boston marriage - refer to a monogamous relationship of long standing between two single
women.
civilized as the opposite of primitive
colonial subjects, colonized persons who did not resist colonial subjugation,
Colonialist ideology, often referred to as colonialist discourse to mark its relationship to the
language in which colonialist thinking was expressed, was based on the colonizers’
assumption of their own superiority.
Comparison (the presence of an action or attribute to different degrees).
compulsory heterosexuality - a term to describe the enormous pressure to be heterosexual
placed on young people by their families, schools, the church, the medical professions, and
all forms of IN
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media.
conditions (the most stable attributes, such as one’s sex, religion, or social position).
Contractual structures involve the making/breaking of agreements or the
establishment/violation of prohibitions and the alienation or reconciliation that follows.
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GLOSSARY
compulsory heterosexuality - a term to describe the enormous pressure to be heterosexual
placed on young people by their families, schools, the church, the medical professions, and
all forms of the media.
conditions (the most stable attributes, such as one’s sex, religion, or social position).
Contractual structures involve the making/breaking of agreements or the
establishment/violation of prohibitions and the alienation or reconciliation that follows.
cultural colonization: the inculcation of a British system of government and education,
British culture, and British values
Cultural imperialism,3 a direct result of economic domination, consists of the “takeover” of
one culture by another:
deconstruction is called a poststructuralist theory.
Deferral, or postponement, of meaning: we seek meaning that is solid and stable, but we can
never really find it because we can never get beyond the play of signifiers that is language.
Diachronically - language was studied in terms of the history of changes in individual words
over time.
Difference simply means that our ability to identify an entity (such as an object, a concept, or
a sound) is based on the difference we perceive between it and all other entities.
Differential racialization refers to the fact that “the dominant society different minority
groups [in different ways] at different times, in response to [its] shifting needs”
Discourse - an infinite number of vantage points from which to view it, and each of these
vantage points has a language of its own.
discourse is a social language created by particular cultural conditions at a particular time
and place.
Disjunctive structures involve travel, movement, arrivals, and departures.
Distance is created when the narrator is one of the characters in the narrative, a
“go‑between” through whose consciousness the story is filtered.
double consciousness or double vision, the awareness of belonging to two conflicting
cultures.
Drag is the practice of dressing in women’s clothing.
Drag queens are gay men who dress in drag on a regular basis or who do it professionally.
Duration refers to the relationship between the length of time over which a given event
occurs in the story and the number of pages of narrative devoted to describing it.
Eurocentrism is the belief that European culture is vastly superior to all others.
Everyday Racism—Many white Americans still think that the word racism applies only to very
visible forms of racism.
First World refers to, respectively, (1) Britain, Europe, and the United States;
Frequency involves the relationship between the ways in which events may be repeated in
the story.
good by contrasting it with the word evil.
hegemony or dominance
Heterocentrism - a subtler form of prejudice against gay men and lesbians.
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GLOSSARY
heterosexism - refer to institutionalized discrimination against homosexuality, and the
privileging of heterosexuality that accompanies it.
History is a series of events that have a linear, causal relationship.
Homoerotic - denotes depictions that imply same‑sex attraction or that might appeal
sexually to a same‑sex reader.
Homophobia - is generally used to refer to an individual’s pathological dread of same‑sex
love.
Homophobic - a reading informed by the fear and loathing of homosexuality.
Homosocial - denotes same‑sex friendship of the kind seen in female‑ or male‑bonding
activities.
Homosocial bonding—The depiction of strong emotional ties between samesex characters.
hybridity, or syncretism - rather a productive, exciting, positive force in a shrinking world
that is itself becoming more and more culturally hybrid.
identities” are the ones we invent and choose to believe.
identity implies that we consist of one, singular self, but in fact we are multiple and
fragmented, consisting at any moment of any number of conflicting beliefs, desires, fears,
anxieties, and intentions.
ideologies—or systems of beliefs and values—operating at any given point in time in any
given culture
institutionalized discrimination (discrimination that is built into a culture’s laws and
customs).
Institutionalized racism refers to the incorporation of racist policies and practices in the
institutions by which a society operates:
Interest Convergence—Derrick Bell uses this term to explain that racism is common in our
country because it often converges, or overlaps.
Internalized homophobia - refers to the self‑hatred some gay people experience because, in
their growth through adolescence to adulthood.
Intersectionality—No one has a simple, uncomplicated identity based on race alone.
intra-racial racism - refers to discrimination within the black community against those with
darker skin and more African features.
intra-racial racism - refers to discrimination within the black community against those with
darker skin and more African features.
language mediates our experience of ourselves and the world.
langue – (the French word for language). The structure of language
langue is the proper object of study.
lesbian continuum - a range—through each woman’s life and throughout history.
Lesbian, gay, and masculine as the opposite of feminine
Mimicry - individuals tried to imitate their colonizers, as much as possible, in dress, speech,
behavior, and lifestyle.
Minoritizing views - Ways of understanding gay and lesbian experience that focus on their
minority.
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GLOSSARY
Modes (the qualification of an action or attribute, such as occurs when an action or attribute
is desired, feared, expected, done unwillingly, and the like).
Mood is the atmosphere of the narrative created by distance and perspective.
Mythemes - the fundamental units of myths.
Mythoi (plural of mythos).
Narration refers to the act of telling the story to some audience and thereby producing the
narrative.
Narrative refers to the actual words on the page, the discourse, the text itself, from which
the reader constructs both story and narration.
Naturalization is the process by which we transform the text so that the strangeness of its
literary form, which we don’t see in everyday writing.
Negation (the absence of an action or attribute).
neocolonialism, as it’s called, exploits the cheap labor available in developing countries,
often at the expense of those countries’ own struggling businesses, cultural traditions, and
ecological well‑being.
New historical and cultural criticism
new utterances (words and sentences)
Nonreferential because it doesn’t refer to things in the world but only to our concepts of
things in the world.
objective is the source of knowledge
Orality, or the spoken quality of its language.
Order refers to the relationship between the chronology of the story.
Parole (the French word for speech). The individual utterances that occur when we speak.
Parole is of interest only in that it reveals langue.
Performative structures involve the performance of tasks, trials, struggles, and the like.
Perspective refers to point of view, or the eyes through which we see any given part of the
narrative.
Phonemes - fundamental units of sound recognized as meaningful by native speakers of a
language.
Postcolonial criticism
practice of judging all who are different as less than fully human is called othering,
progressive, that the human species is improving over the course of time.
qualities (more stable attributes, such as good and evil),
Queer - The word collective identity to which all nonstraight people can belong.
queer criticism
racial idealism: the conviction that racial equality can be achieved by changing people’s
(often unconscious) racist attitudes.
Racialism - refers to the belief in racial superiority, inferiority, and purity based on the
conviction that moral and intellectual characteristics.
Racism refers to the unequal power relations that grow from the sociopolitical domination of
one race by another
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GLOSSARY
one race by another
one race by another.
reason as the opposite of emotion
Same-sex “doubles”— form of gay and lesbian signs consists of same‑sex characters who
look alike, act alike, or have parallel experiences.
Second World (2) the white populations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and southern
Africa (and, for some theorists, the former Soviet bloc);
self- positioning - new historicists be as aware of and as forthright as possible about their
own psychological and ideological positions relative to the material they analyze so that their
readers can have some idea of the human “lens” through which they are viewing the
historical issues at hand.
Self-regulation - means that the transformations of which a structure is capable never lead
beyond its own structural system.
Semiotic codes - the underlying structural components that carry a nonverbal cultural
message.
semiotics expands the signifier to include objects, gestures, activities, sounds, images—in
short, anything that can be perceived by the senses
Separatists - They disassociate themselves as much as possible from all men, including gay
men, and from heterosexual women as well.
signified is the concept to which the signifier refers.
signifying - refers to various indirect, clever, ironic, and playful ways of giving your opinion
about another person.
social constructionism - homosexuality and heterosexuality are products of social, not
biological, forces.
states (unstable attributes, such as happiness and unhappiness)
Story consists of the succession of events being narrated.
Structuralism - a method of systematizing human experience that is used in many different
fields of study: for example, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and literary
studies.
Structuralist Criticism
Structure - is any conceptual system that has the following three properties: wholeness,
transformation, and self‑regulation.
stud for a man who sleeps with many women.
subalterns, or people of inferior status,
subjective is merely the source of opinion.
Surface phenomena - all the countless objects, activities, and behaviors we observe,
participate in, and interact with every day.
Synchronically - as a structural system of relationships among words as they are used at a
given point in time.
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GLOSSARY
Tense is the arrangement of events in the narrative with respect to time.
The “savage” is usually considered evil as well as inferior (the demonic other).
The rule of metaphorical coherence is the requirement that the two components of a
metaphor…
The rule of significance is the assumption that the literary work expresses a significant
attitude about some important problem.
The rule of thematic unity is the chief reason why there is a rule of metaphorical coherence,
for the rule of thematic unity is our expectation that the literary work has a unified, coherent
theme, or main point.
The Social Construction of Race—How can we define race as a matter of physical features
when the physical differences between light‑skinned blacks and dark‑skinned whites.
the use of European culture as the standard to which all other cultures are negatively
contrasted—is called Eurocentrism.
Third World (3) the technologically developing nations, such as India and those of Africa,
Central and South America, and Southeast Asia;
Transformation - means that the system is not static; it’s dynamic, capable of change.
two oft‑used words that refer to same‑sex relationships are homoerotic.
under erasure writing them and then crossing them out.
universalizing views - Ways of understanding gay and lesbian experience that focus on the
homosexual potential in all people.
voice of color - implies that because some people are born with black or brown skin, they are
born with some kind of natural racial insight into the operations of oppression.
Voice refers to the voice of the narrator.
White privilege - the myriad of social advantages, benefits, and courtesies that come with
being a member of the dominant race”
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REFERENCES
MAIN Purdue Writing Lab. (n.d.). Introduction to Literary Theory // Purdue Writing Lab. Retrieved
REFERENCES from
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_an
d_schools_of_criticism/index.html
Culler, J. (2011). Literary Theory. doi: 10.1093/actrade/9780199691340.001.0001
Alice Walker - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, 1983

Bettina Knapp - Music, Archetype and the Writer: A Jungian View, 1988
Camille Paglia - Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, 1990
Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9, Part 1 of Collected
SUGGESTED Works. 2nd ed. Trans. R.F.C. Hull, 1968
READINGS Claude Lévi-Strauss - The Elementary Structure of Kinship, 1949; "The Structural Study of
AND Myth," 1955
REFERENCES Clifford Geertz - The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973; "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight," 1992
Deborah E. McDowell - "New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism," 1980
Elaine Showalter - A Literature of Their Own, 1977; "Toward a Feminist Poetics," 1979
Elizabeth Freund - The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism, 1987
Feminist Theory -- An Overview (1996). (1996). Retrieved from
http://www.victorianweb.org/gender/femtheory.html
Ferdinand de Saussure - Course in General Linguistics, 1923
Georg Lukács - "The Ideology of Modernism," 1956
Habib, R. (2011). A History of Literary Theory and Criticism from Plato to the Present: An
Introduction. Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/31371572/Literary_Criticism_from_Plato_to_the_Present_Literar
y_Criticism_from_Plato_to_the_Present_An_Introduction
Hayden White - Metahistory, 1974; "The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and
De-Sublimation," 1982
Lillian S. Robinson - "Treason out Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," 1983
Louis Althusser - Reading Capital, 1965
Maud Bodkin - Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, 1934
Michel Foucault - The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, 1970;
Language, Counter-memory, Practice, 1977
Noam Chomsky - Syntactic Structures, 1957; Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965
Northrop Frye - Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, 1957
Richard Sugg - Jungian Literary Criticism, 1993
Roland Barthes - Critical Essays, 1964; Mythologies, 1957; S/Z, 1970; Image, Music, Text,
1977
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EL 118 Literary Criticism Module FINAL TERM 2020

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Provides students the opportunities to study the basic approaches

This course is designed to expose students to

Course Content/Subject Matter

B. Introduction to the Course

Week 2-3 C. Psychoanalytic Criticism

Week 4 D. Marxist Criticism

Week 5-6 E. Feminist Criticism

Week 7 F. New Criticism

Week 8 G. Reader-response Criticism

Week 9-10 H. Structuralist Criticism

Week 11 I. Midterm Exam

Week 12 J. Deconstructive Criticism

Week 13 K. New Historical and Cultural Criticism

Week 14-15 L. Lesbian, Gay, Queer Criticism

Week 16 N. African American criticism

Week 17 O. Postcolonial Criticism

Week 18 P. Final Exam

What can you expect to

Historical and Cultural

Lesbian, Gay, Queer

• Racial issues and African American literary

EL 113- LITERARY CRITICISM is designed to expose students to

At the end of the semester, a student completing this course should be

3 Chapter 10: Lesbian, Gay & Queer 25

4 Chapter 11: African American 41

5 Chapter 12: Postcolonial 51

HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW?

2. A dynamic, unstable, fluid, and

3. This is the concept or idea that a A B C D E

4. This is the word itself. C

Distinguish the theory and determine its function.

Deconstruction’s theory of language

Love --- Hate

Another example: A Box of Chocolates on Valentine’s Day

Deconstruction did not originate as a form of literary criticism. It began as a criticism of

There is no standard, objective form of cat of which

HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?

Main References and Suggested Readings

Culler, J. (2011). Literary Theory.

Nance, T. (2015). Deconstructive criticism. Retrieved 2020, from

Alberhasky, M. (2014). Deconstruction Theory. Retrieved 2020, from

Echols, C. (2015). Literary Deconstruction - A Simplified Definiton. Retrieved 2020, from

Yalecourses, N. (2009). 10. Deconstruction 1. Retrieved 2020, from

Bolton, C. (2012). Animating Post structuralism. Retrieved 2020, from

HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW?

1. This is a process, not a product; it is a

Historical and Cultural Criticism

Distinguish the theory and determine its function.

New Historical Criticism differs from Traditional

HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?

Siegel, K. (2006, January). Introduction to Modern Literary Theory. Retrieved from

Nance, T. (2015). What is Historical Criticism? Retrieved 2020, from

Hall, A. (2015). New historicism part 1. Retrieved 2020, from

HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW?

Direction: Locate the listed words beside the puzzle by drawing a

Lesbian, Gay, & Queer Criticism

Determine the theory and explicate its function.

heterosexual. Building on deconstruction’s insights into human subjectivity (selfhood) as a fluid,

create a homoerotic atmosphere even in an otherwise heterosexual text, as we saw in the

HOW MUCH DO YOU REMEMBER?

Siegel, K. (2006, January). Introduction to Modern Literary Theory. Retrieved from

Foreman, K. (2018). What is Queer Theory? Youtube.Com.

Montilla, A. (2016). Queer Theory. Youtube.Com. https://youtu.be/Lhk_Cc0tgSo