Literary Criticism

Psychoanalytic Criticism
Psychoanalytic literary criticism is a way of analyzing and interpreting literary works that relies on
psychoanalytic theory. Psychoanalytic theory was developed by Sigmund Freud to explain the workings of
the human mind. In this field of literary criticism, the major concepts of psychoanalytic theory, such as the
idea of an unconscious and conscious mind, the divisions of the id, ego, and superego, and the Oedipus
complex, are applied to literature to gain a deeper understanding of that work.

One of the keystones in psychoanalytic theory is the concept of the unconscious. As Freud writes in his
essay “Psychoanalysis” (1963):
It was a triumph for the interpretative art of psychoanalysis when it succeeded in demonstrating that certain
common mental acts of normal people, for which no one had hitherto attempted to put forward a
psychological explanation, were to be regarded in the same light as the symptoms of neurotics: that is to
say they had a meaning, which was unknown to the subject but which could easily be discovered by analytic
means....A class of material was brought to light which is calculated better than any other to stimulate a
belief in the existence of unconscious mental acts even in people to whom the hypothesis of something at
once mental and unconscious seems strange and even absurd. (pp. 235–236)

The idea of a conscious and an unconscious mind is one of the most important tools in psychoanalytic
literary criticism. Freud theorized that people have a conscious part of the mind, where thinking takes place
and where they are aware of their thoughts. He also proposed the idea of an unconscious part of the mind,
where desires and drives exist that people are not aware of, but that affect them and sometimes cause
psychological problems. One technique in psychoanalytic literary criticism is to treat a work of literature
as though it is a dream. The goal of this technique is to understand the unconscious symbols and desires
through interpretation of the more obvious content. This type of literary criticism uses symbolism and other
forms of analysis to get at the latent content of a work of literature.
Sociological Criticism

Sociological criticism evaluates literature based on its relationship to society. The sociological criticism
method examines the author’s status in their society as well as the effect that the literary work had on its
audience within the society. One form of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism, which examines how
a specific work of literature affirms or rejects oppression within class systems. This form of literary
criticism was introduced by Kenneth Burke, a 20th-century literary and critical theorist, whose article
"Literature As Equipment for Living" outlines the specification and significance of such a critique. There
are many sub classifications of sociological criticism, two of the most prominent being marxist criticism
and feminist criticism.

• Marxist Criticism
Marxism was introduced by Karl Marx. Most Marxist critics who were writing in what could
chronologically be specified as the early period of Marxist literary criticism. According to Marxists,
even literature itself is a social institution and has a specific ideological function, based on the
background and ideology of the author.

• Feminist Criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the
politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of
literature. Feminist criticism defines a literary theory showing how women were portrayed as less
valuable than men in literature throughout history. Usually called feminist literary criticism, it
studies how early writings condoned the oppression of women because men dominated society. It
also explores how women writers were taken less seriously than male authors from a historical
perspective.
Historical Criticism
Historical criticism is a specific kind of literary analysis that looks at a text in its entire historic
context. This kind of analysis is also often called higher criticism. In historic criticism, researchers
often consider comparable texts from the same time period, utilizing other resources to come to a
greater understanding of how a specific text interacted with its environment when it was written.
Historical criticism seeks greater understanding of biblical texts by analyzing the historical and
social contexts in which they developed. The goal of historical criticism, traditionally, has been to
try to understand the text’s meaning in its original context. Historical criticism is not criticism in
the sense of disapproval or the examination of faults and mistakes, but instead is an analysis of the
text in the hope of better understanding it.
https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-psychoanalytic-literary-criticism.htm

https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/5172_Berger_Final_Pages_Chapter_3.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociological_criticism

https://www.languagehumanities.org/what-is-historical-criticism.htm

http://queergrace.com/historical-criticism/