English for Academic and Professional Purposes Common aspects to investigate using Formalism:

Module 3 – Critical Approaches

• Author’s technique in resolving contradictions within
Critical approaches . . . are different perspectives we consider the work
when looking at a piece of literature. They seek to give us • Central passage that sums up the entirety of the
answers to these questions, in addition to aiding us in work
interpreting literature. • Aesthetic quality of the work
• Relationship of form and content
• What do we read? • Unity in the work
• Why do we read? • Rhythm, irony, symbols, or imagery
Example:
• How do we read?
The Road Not Taken
There are various ways or standpoints by which you can analyze by Robert Frost
and critique a certain material. You can critique a material based And both that morning equally
Two roads diverged in a yellow lay
on its: wood, In leaves no step had trodden
And sorry I could not travel both black.
• Technical aspect - Formalism And be one traveler, long I stood Oh, I kept the first for another
• Approach to gender - Reader’s Response And looked down one as far as I day!
• Your reaction as the audience - Feminism could Yet knowing how way leads on
• Portrayal of class struggle - Marxism / Marxist To where it bent in the to way,
undergrowth; I doubted if I should ever
come back.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better I shall be telling this with a
Approaches for Literary Criticism claim, sigh
Because it was grassy and wanted Somewhere ages and ages
FORMALISM (Technical Aspect) wear; hence:
Though as for that the passing Two roads diverged in a wood,
• This approach emphasizes the form of a literary work to there and I—
determine its meaning, focusing on literary elements and Had worn them really about the I took the one less traveled by,
same, And that has made all the
how they work to create meaning.
difference.
• Claims that literary works contain intrinsic properties for it
concentrates on the work itself, independent of its writer
and writer’s background, and also treats each work as a Formalist Approach in Analyzing “The Road Not Taken”
distinct work of art.
The interpretations of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not
• The key to understanding the text is the TEXT ITSELF.
Taken”, vary from reader to reader, but the essential implication of
the poem deals with choices in life. The poem consists of 20 lines
and a formal rhyme scheme. It is written in the first-person point
of view.
 The poem illustrates a traveler who encounters a fork in the Common aspects to investigate using Feminism:
road, where “Two roads diverge in a yellow wood”. The fork
symbolizes the decisions we face, and the two roads represent • How culture determines gender
metaphors for the two possibilities or options. With multiple • How gender equality is presented in the text
options, we are constantly faced with choices. Many times, the • How women are socially, politically,
possibilities are evident, but other times it does not seem as psychologically, and economically oppressed by
though there is a second option at all. patriarchy
•
READER’S RESPONSE (Your reaction as the audience)
MARXISM (Portrayal of class struggle)
• This is concerning the viewer’s reaction as an audience of a
• This criticism is concerned with the differences between
work. This approach claims that the reader’s role cannot be
economic classes and implications of a capitalist system
separated from the understanding of the work.
• Attempts to reveal that the ultimate source of people’s
• Readers are considered not passive and distant but rather
experience is the socio-economic system
are active consumers of the material presented to them.
• It is based on the political theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich
• It asserts that a text is a living thing that lives in the
Engels
reader’s imagination.
Common aspects to investigate using Marxist Criticism
READING+READING SITUATION+TEXT = MEANING
Common aspects to investigate using Reader’s Response: • Social class as represented in the work
• Social class of the writer/ creator
• Interaction between the reader and the text in • Social class of the characters
creating meaning • Conflicts and interactions between economic classes
• The impact of the reader’s delivery of sounds and • Role of power, politics, and money
visuals on enhancing and changing meaning
• Text as an experience, not an object
REMEMBER!

We will never look at a text strictly from one standpoint or another,

FEMINISM (Approach to gender)
ignoring all other views. We should always keep our focus on the
• This focuses on how literature presents women as subjects text and use these critical approaches to clarify our understanding
of socio- political, psychological, and economic oppression. of a text and develop an interpretation of it.
• It reveals how aspects of our culture are patriarchal.
References:
• It asserts that most literature throughout time has been
written by men, for men. • Critical Approaches to Literature Theory (slideshare.net)
• It also examines the way that the female consciousness is
depicted by both male and female writers.
Prepared by: Miss Sarah Lee Yulatic