Types of Literary

Criticism
ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM

● It is a critical theory that interprets a text by

focusing on symbols, images, and character
types in literary works that is used to discuss in
plot, character or situation. It recognizes
conscious and unconscious symbols that
relates to emotions, values, feelings to specific
images. It encourages the readers to examine
basic beliefs, fear, and anxieties
CULTURAL CRITICISM
● It focuses on the elements of culture and how they affect one's
perceptions and understanding of texts.

FOUR ASSUMPTIONS:

● Ethnicity, religious beliefs, social class, etc. are cracial components

in formulating plausible interpretation of text.

● While the emphasis is on diversity of approach and subject matter,

Cultural Criticism is not the only means of understanding ourselves
and our art.

● An examination or exploration of the relationship between dominant

cultures and the dominated is essential.

● When looking at a text through the perspective of marginalized

peoples, new understandings emerge.
FEMINIST CRITICISM

● It is a product of the feminist movement of the

1960's and 1970's. It is the representation of
women in literature as an expression of the
social norms about women and their social
roles and as a means of socialization. It focused
on the images of the women in books by male
writers to expose the patriarchal ideology and
how women characters are portrayed.
PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM

● It is based on Sigmund Freud ID, ego and

superego, the author's own childhood effects
the book and character. It is a type of criticism
that uses theories of psychology to analyze
literature. It focuses on the author's state of
mind or the state of the mind of fictional
character. Psychoanalytic criticism uses two
different approaches: psychoanalysis of the
author and psychoanalysis of the character.
MARXIST CRITICISM

● It applies political science and economics to

the study of literature. Grew out of writings of
Karl Marx, who was highly critical of the
capitalist system of economics and politcs. It
concerned with the issues of class conflict and
materialism, wealth, work, and the various
ideologies that surrounds these things. It
connotes higher class do control arts,
literatures, and ideologies.
Marxism As Compared To Feminist and New
Historicism
● Like feminist critics, it investigates how
literature can work as a force for social
change or as a reaffirmation of existing
conditions.
● Like New Historicism. it examines how
history influences literature: the
difference is that Marxism focuses on
the lower class
How to do Marxist Reading
1. Look for examples of oppression, had working
conditions, class struggles and other related issues.
2. Search for the "cover" meaning underneath the
"oven" which is about class struggles, historical
Mages, and economic conditions.
3. Relate the context of a work to the social-class status
of the author.
4. Relate the literary work to the social conditions of its
time period.
5. Explain an entire genre in terms of its social period.
6. Show how literature is shaped by political, economic,
labor, and class conditions.
NEW CRITICISM
(FORMALISM/STRUCTURALISM)
● New criticism was a formalist movement in
literary theory that dominated in American
literary criticism in the middle decades of the
20th century which emphasized close reading
particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of
literature functioned as a selfcontained, self-
referential aesthetic object.
FORMALISM
● It refers to critical approaches that
analyze, interpret, or evaluate the
inherent features of a text. These
features include not only the grammar
and syntax but also literary devices
such as a meter and figures of speech.
It reduces the importance of a text's
historical biographical and cultural
context.
NEW HISTORICISM

● It was first developed in 1980 by the

American critic Stephen Greenbelts. It is
based on the idea that literature should
be studied and interpreted within a
wide context examining both how the
author's time, in turn recognizing that
current cultural contexts color that
critic's conclusion.
POST-STRUCTURALISM

● It offers a way of studying how knowledge is

produced and critiques structuralism premise. It
rejects the idea of a literary text having a single
purpose, a single meaning, or one singular
existence. It argues to understand object (eg. a
text), it is necessary to study both the object
itself and the systems of knowledge that
produced the object.
POST-STRUCTURALISTIC CRITIC

● It must be able to utilize a variety of

perspectives to create a multifaceted
interpretation of a text, even if these
interpretations conflict with one
another.
READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM (RR)

● Critic believes that a reader's interaction with

the text give its meaning. The text cannot exist
without the reader. It focuses on the reader or
audience and the experience of a literary work
rather than the author or the context and form
of work. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is
around to hear, does it make a noise? If a text
sits on the shelf in a bookstore and no one is
around to read it, does the text have meaning?
ROLE OF THE READER RESPONSE CRITICISM

● The role of the reader pivotal in the

understanding of literature they can
use a psychoanalytical, structural,
feminist. etc approach to formulate
their criticism (anything goes). Readers
are active in the reading process. They
cannot read literature passively but
must react and therefore bring
meaning to the text.
Thanks for
listening...