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Comentario de Textos Literarios en Lengua Inglesa
1º Grado en Estudios Ingleses: Lengua, Literatura y Cultura
Facultad de Filología
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
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Comentario de Textos Literarios en Lengua Inglesa
UNIT 1: APPROACHING LITERARY TEXT IN ENGLISH
This unit 1 is an introduction to Literary Studies. We’ll analyze the very concept of Literature.
MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Literature?

- Literary Genres
- Literary Periods and Movements
- How do we approach the literary text?
- Introduction to Literary Criticism
UNIT 2: ANALYZING NARRATIVE TEXTS

This Unit includes aspects related to Literary Theory, the reading and analysis of a novel and Literary Criticism.
MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Prose Fiction? Elements of Fiction.

- Textual Analysis: Kate Chopin The Awakening
- Literary Criticism; “Feminism Criticism”
- Critical authors: Fragment by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar “Infection in the sentence: The
woman writer and the anxiety of authorship”.
UNIT 3: ANALYZING POETIC TEXTS
This Unit includes aspects related to Literary Theory, the reading and analysis of a poem and Literary Criticism.
MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Poetry? Elements of Poetry.

- Textual Analysis: Dylan Thomas “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a child in London”
(poem).
- Literary Criticism; “Poststructuralism and deconstruction”
- Critical authors: Fragment by Jacques Derrida On Grammatology.
UNIT 4: ANALYZING DRAMATIC TEXTS
This Unit includes aspects related to Literary Theory, the reading and analysis of a play and Literary Criticism.
MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Prose Drama? Elements of Drama.

- Textual Analysis: Brian Frield Translations (drama).
- Literary Criticism; “Postcolonialism”
- Critical authors: Fragment by Edward Said, Orientalism.
UNIT 5: ANALYZING NARRATIVE TEXTS
This Unit includes the Reading of excerpts of literary texts and the analysis by critical authors.
Excerpts from the following literary text and practical activities: 1. Tony Morrison, The Bluest Eye
2. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
3. Elizabeth Bishop, “Roosters”.
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UNIT 1: APPROACHING LITERARY TEXT IN ENGLISH (This unit is meant to be instructory)
This unit 1 is an introduction to Literary Studies. We’ll analyze the

very concept of Literature.
MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Literature?

- Literary Genres
- Literary Periods and Movements
- How do we approach the literary text?
- Introduction to Literary Criticism
1. Introduction
2. What is Literature?
2.1. Introduction to Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory.
2.2. Activity
3. Classifying Literature: Genres, Literary Periods and
Movements.
3.1.The Literary Genres. Narrative texts.
Poetry.
Drama.
3.2. Activity
3.3. Literary Periods and Movements.
3.4. Activity
4. How do we approach the Literary Text? Literary Criticism,

Critical Theories.
4.1. Theoretical approaches to Literature
Comprehension versus Interpretation.
5. Introduction to Literary Critical Schools
6. Activities
7. References
8. Further Resources
2. WHAT IS LITERATURE?
Nevertheless, before the 14th c. the etymological root of literature, littera (“letter”), simply meant anything in print,
“whatever is written or printed” (closer to the contemporary understanding of “written text”). The word literature
was coined in English for the first time in the 14th c. as the study and knowledge of books (related to the Spanish
filología). In the 17th c. it came to signify the profession of writing and the corpus of works related to a period or
culture (Amorós 21). From the mere “printed letter” to the “writing having excellence of form and expression and
expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest” we see an evolution from a “descriptive” to an “evaluative”
perception of literature (Amorós 20).
What makes literature what it is, is also very much related to the way we look at texts. Literary works are above all
“texts”.
One of the conclusions that we can draw about literature is that, above all, it is an experience, or a way of reading
“literarily” and giving a particular “attention” to texts.
(“The difference between pragmatic and literary reading in other words, resembles the difference between a
journey that is only about reaching a destination and one that is just as much about fully experiencing the ride”).
Reading literature is to “experience” through imagination, senses, feelings and intellect because, as the Greek
etymology of “poetry”, the verb poiein (“to make” or “to do”), “words do not simply describe, but actually do things:
they engage, entice, convince, seduce”.
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One characteristic that literary works such as stories, poems and plays have is that “they help us move beyond
abstraction by giving us concrete, vivid particulars. Rather than talking about things, they bring them to life for us by
representing experience, and so they become an experience for us—one that engages our emotions, our
imagination, and all of our senses, as well as our intellects”.
(Our purpose as students of literature is to be able to analyze and communicate this experience through the
methods and terminology from the discipline of literary studies).
Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory. (2008). → What is literature? There have been various attempts to define
literature. You can define it, for example, as 'imaginative' writing in the sense of fiction - writing which is not literally
true. But even the briefest reflection on what people commonly include under the heading of literature suggests that
this will not do (autobiographies, historical writings,…). [The authors of Genesis are now read as 'fact' by some and 'fiction'
by others].
Another different kind of approach is that literature is definable not according to whether it is fictional or
'imaginative', but because it uses language in peculiar ways (Russian Formalists). I know that I am in the presence of
the literary because of the texture, rhythm and resonance of your words are in excess of their abstractable meaning.
Formalism was essentially the application of linguistics to the study of literature. Far from seeing form as the
expression of content, they stood the relationship on its head: content was merely the 'motivation' of form, an
occasion or convenience for a particular kind of formal exercise. [Don Quixote is not 'about' the character of that name:
the character is just a device for holding together different kinds of narrative technique]. The Formalists, then, saw literary
language as a set of deviations from a norm, a kind of linguistic violence: literature is a 'special' kind of language, in
contrast to the 'ordinary' language we commonly use. This focusing on the “way of talking”, rather than on the
reality of “what is talked about”, is sometimes taken to indicate that we mean by literature a kind of self-referential

language, a language which talks about itself.
Literature, then, we might say, is 'non-pragmatic' discourse. It serves no immediate practical purpose, but is to be
taken as referring to a general state of affairs. This focusing on the “way of talking”, rather than on the reality of
“what is talked about”, is sometimes taken to indicate that we mean by literature a kind of self-referential language,
a language which talks about itself.
There are, however, problems with this way of defining literature too. But even if treating discourse 'non
pragmatically' is part of what is meant by 'literature', then it follows from this 'definition' that literature cannot in
fact be 'objectively' defined. It leaves the definition of literature up to how somebody decides to read, not to the
nature of what is written.
There is no 'essence' of literature whatsoever. Any bit of writing may be read 'non-pragmatically', if that is what
reading a text as literature means, just as any writing may be read 'poetically'. Reading a novel for pleasure obviously
differs from reading a road sign for information, but how about reading a biology textbook to improve your mind?
Perhaps the simple answer is that the first three are examples of 'fine writing', whereas the last three are not. This
answer has the disadvantage of being largely untrue, at least in my judgement, but it has the advantage of
suggesting that by and large people term 'literature' writing which they think is good. An obvious objection to this is
that if it were entirely true there would be no such thing as 'bad literature'.
The term 'fine writing', or “belles lettres”, is in this sense ambiguous: it denotes a sort of writing which is generally
highly regarded, while not necessarily committing you to the opinion that a particular specimen of it is 'good'. With
this reservation, the suggestion that 'literature' is a highly valued kind of writing is an illuminating one. But it has one
fairly devastating consequence. It means that we can drop once and for all the illusion that the category 'literature' is
'objective', in the sense of being eternally given and immutable. Anything can be literature, and anything which is
regarded as unalterably and unquestionably literature - Shakespeare, for example – can cease to be literature.
Just as people may treat a work as philosophy in one century and as literature in the next, or vice versa, so they may
change their minds about what writing they consider valuable.
But it does mean that the so-called 'literary canon', the unquestioned 'great tradition' of the 'national literature', has
to be recognized as a construct, fashioned by particular people for particular reasons at a certain time.

'Value' is a transitive term: it means whatever is valued by certain people in specific situations, according to
particular criteria and in the light of given purposes.
'Our' Homer is not identical with the Homer of the Middle Ages, nor 'our' Shakespeare with that of his
contemporaries; it is rather that different historical periods have constructed a 'different' Homer and Shakespeare for
their own purposes and found in these texts elements to value or devalue, though not necessarily the same ones. All
literary works, in other words, are 'rewritten', if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them.
We may disagree on this or that, but we can only do so because we share certain 'deep' ways of seeing and valuing
which are bound up with our social life, and which could not be changed without transforming that life. [Nobody will
penalize me heavily if I dislike a particular Donne poem, but if I argue that Donne is not literature at all then in certain
circumstances, I might risk losing my job].
The largely concealed structure of values which informs and underlies our factual statements is part of what is meant
by 'ideology'. By 'ideology' I mean, roughly, the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power-
structure and power-relations of the society we live in.
If it will not do to see literature as an 'objective', descriptive category, neither will it do to say that literature is just
what people whimsically choose to call literature. What we have uncovered so far, then, is not only that literature
does not exist in the sense that insects do, and that the value-judgements by which it is constituted are historically
variable, but that these value-judgements themselves have a close relation to social ideologies. They refer in the end
not simply to private taste, but to the assumptions by which certain social groups exercise and maintain power over
others.
[To conclude: 1) Literature is imaginative, 2) Literature expresses thoughts and feelings in special way of words arrangements, 3)

Literature deals with life experiences (of the author), 4) Literature uses words in a powerful, effective, captivating manner (as
“non-pragmatic” discourse), 5) Literature promotes recreation and revelation of hidden facts (“ideology” in literature)].
3. CLASSIFYING LITERATURE: GENRES, LITERARY PERIODS AND MOVEMENTS

Literary studies have attempted to organize and structure works, classifications that have taken into account the
genre (that is, the type of text); the literary period (that is, the historical moment to which the text belongs); and the
artistic-literary movement to which it adheres.
The classification of literary works into different genres has been a major concern of literary theory. Recent
classifications prefer the terms fiction, drama, and poetry as designations of the three major literary genres.
(Three other major genres that cross the borders between fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction are parody, pastoral, and
romance).
3.1 The Literary Genres

We generally tend to categorize literary works in two ways: (1) on the basis of contextual factors, especially historical
and cultural context— that is, when, by whom, and where it was produced, and (2) on the basis of formal textual
features. The key term is genre: ‘a particular style or category of works of art; a type of literary work characterized
by a particular form, style, or purpose.
Genre refers to the largest categories, subgenre applies to smaller divisions within a genre, and kind to divisions
within a subgenre. The way we classify a work depends on which aspects of its form or style we concentrate on, and
categories may overlap.
Below we suggest a brief outline of each of the three literary genres as defined by Pugh, Johnson and Mays. They are
narrative text (prose fiction), poetry and drama.

3.1.1. Narrative texts
The essence of prose fiction, as opposed to drama, is narration, the recounting or telling of a sequence of events or
actions.
Narrative texts or prose fiction can be classified into different subgenres. Short stories focus on a few characters,
who, given the genre’s compressed form, achieve a key, if partial, insight by the narrative’s end. The vast scope of
novels allows for more complex storylines and numerous rich, fully developed characters whose motivations readers
come to understand. Novellas typically run about one hundred pages and feature deeper complexity than short
stories but do not share the expansive scope of novels.
Despite the variety of these forms of prose fiction, they share numerous key features uniting them into a coherent
subsection of literature, including plot structure, point of view, characters and characterization, setting, theme, and
style and tone.
3.1.2. Poetry
Poetry invites readers to revel in the inherent beauty of language, to luxuriate in its rhythm and flow while
pondering the author’s themes and insights.
Poems may be classified into subgenres based on various characteristics, including their length, appearance, and

formal features (patterns of rhyme and rhythm, for example); their subject; or even the type of situation and setting
(time and place) they depict.
A single poem might well represent multiple subgenres or at least might contain elements of more than one.
3.1.3. Drama
Plays must be performed in front of audiences to achieve their artistic potential. “a play in a book is only 13 the
shadow of a play and not even a clear shadow of it…”.
The performative aspect of plays, in that a director, actors, and crew must bring to life the playwright’s vision,
separates the theatre from other literary forms, which do not require intermediaries between author and reader.
When plays are performed in a theatre, the audience engages through multiple senses as the story comes alive
before them.
At the same time, plays include similar narrative and aesthetic elements as fiction and poetry: like fiction, plays
need characters, settings, and plots. Like poetry, plays pay detailed attention to language and its oral presentation.
Like both poetry and fiction, plays employ symbols and themes to communicate the deeper significance of their
storylines.
3.3. Literary Periods and Movements
Literature is also ordered according to historical periods in which different artistic expressions usually share
common characteristics and are grouped in what we know as literary movements.
The following survey encompasses the most important movements of literatures written in English in their
historical succession. The criteria for classification derive from fields such as the history of the language, national
history, politics and, and art.
Periods of English literature Periods of American literatura

Old English period 5th-11th century Colonial or Puritan age 17th-18th century
Middle English 12th-15th century Romantic period and 1st half of 19th cent
period Transcendentalism
Renaissance 16th-17th century Realism and naturalism 2nd half of 19th cent
Eighteenth century 18th century Modernism WW1 to WW2
Romantic period first half of 19th cent Postmodernism 1960s and 1970s
nd
Victorian age 2 half of 19th cent.
Modernism WW1 to WW2
Postmodernism 1960s and 1970s
The Old English or Anglo-Saxon period, the earliest period of English literature, is regarded as beginning with the
invasion of Britain by Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) tribes in the fifth century AD and lasting until the French invasion
under William the Conqueror in 1066. The true beginnings of literature in England, however, are to be found in the
Latin Middle Ages, when monasteries were the main institutions that preserved classical culture. (Among the most
important Latin literary texts is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (AD 731) by Beda Venerabilis (673–735).
The earliest texts, written between the eighth and the eleventh centuries, are called Old English or “Anglo-Saxon.”
The number of texts which have been handed down from this period is very small (Beowulf (c. 8th century)).
When the French-speaking Normans conquered England in the eleventh century, a definite rupture occurred in
culture and literature. From the later half of this Middle English period, a number of texts from various literary
genres have been preserved. However, among the most striking literary innovations of the later Middle English
period are mystery and miracle plays.
[The long list includes lyric poetry and epic “long poems” with religious contents, such as Piers Plowman (c. 1367–70), which has
been attributed to William Langland. The romance, a new genre of a secular kind, developed in this period and includes the
anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (fourteenth century) and Thomas Malory’s (c. 1408– 71) Le Morte d’Arthur (1470).
This form indirectly influenced the development of the novel in the eighteenth century. Middle English literature also produced
cycles of narratives, such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1387), similar to Giovanni Boccaccio’s II Decamerone (c.
1349–51) in Italy and comparable works of other national literatures, which are important models for the short story of the
nineteenth century].
The English Renaissance is also called the early new English period, a term which focuses on the history of the
language, and the Elizabethan age (Queen Elizabeth I) or Jacobean age (King James), divisions based on political rule.
The prohibition of drama for religious reasons and the closure of public theaters during the “Puritan interregnum”

greatly influenced English literary history. (The outstanding literary oeuvres of this time were written by John Milton (1608–
74), whose political pamphlets and religious epics (Paradise Lost, 1667 and Paradise Regained, 1671) mark both the climax and
the end of English Renaissance). In literary history the era after the Commonwealth is also referred to as the
Restoration or sometimes— rather vaguely—as Baroque.
The eighteenth century is commonly regarded as an independent epoch.

[In this period, classical literature and literary theory were adapted to suit contemporary culture. Authors such as John Dryden,
Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison (1672–1719), and Jonathan Swift wrote translations, theoretical essays, and literary texts in a
variety of genres. This was also a time of influential changes in the distribution of texts, including the development of the novel
as a new genre and the introduction of newspapers and literary magazines […]. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), Samuel
Richardson’s Pamela (1740–41) and Clarissa (1748–49), Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram
Shandy (1759–68) marked the beginning of the novel as a new literary genre]. It soon assumed the privileged position
previously held by the epic or romance and became one of the most productive genres of modern literary history.
Much of the literary writing in America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is religiously motivated and
therefore may be subsumed under the rubric Puritan age or colonial age. This period can be seen as the first literary
phenomenon on the North American continent. Early American texts reflect, in their historiographic and theological
orientation, the religious roots of American colonial times.
Romanticism may be seen as a reaction to the Enlightenment and political changes throughout Europe and America
at the end of the eighteenth century. In America, Romanticism and transcendentalism more or less coincide.
In transcendentalism, nature provides the key to philosophical understanding. (Man must not be satisfied with natural
phenomena, but rather transcend them in order to gain a philosophically holistic vision of the world). Subsequent to this
period, America and England generally followed the course of the most important international literary movements.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, representatives of realism and naturalism can be found in both
countries. (Realism is often described as the movement that tries to truthfully describe “reality” through language. Naturalism,
on the other hand, concentrates on the truthful portrayal of the determining effects of social and environmental influences on
characters).

English and American modernism can be seen as a reaction to the realist movements of the late nineteenth century.
Modernism discovered innovative narrative techniques such as stream-of consciousness, or structural forms such as
collage and literary cubism. “Modernism” is a blanket term which encompasses the 16 extensive literary innovations
in the first decades of the twentieth century which manifest themselves under the influence of psychoanalysis and
other cultural-historical phenomena.
In postmodernism, modernist issues regarding innovative narrative techniques are taken up again and adapted in an
academic, sometimes formalistic way.
In the 1980s, many of which seem exaggerated today, were overshadowed by women’s and “minority” literatures,
that is literature written by marginalized groups including women, gays, or ethnic minorities, the latter mostly
represented by African Americans, Chicanos, and Chicanas.
4. LITERARY CRITICISM, CRITICAL THEORIES. HOW DO WE APPROACH THE LITERARY TEXT?
4.1. Theoretical Approaches to Literature
In this part we are going to look at the theoretical tools used to interpret a literary text (origins, influences and main
elements of some common approaches to textual analysis and interpretation).
Historically speaking, the systematic analysis of texts developed in the magic or religious realm, and in legal
discourse. The interpretation of encoded information in a text is important to all religions (it usually centers on the
analysis or exegesis of canonicals texts).
This religious and magical origin of textual studies can be traced from preliterate eras all the way to contemporary

theology and has always exerted a major influence on literary studies. Legal discourse also had a decisive impact on
textual studies. Religious and legal discourses have constantly coincided.
Literary criticism derived its central term interpretation from two areas of textual study (religious and legal). The
exegesis of religious and legal texts was based on the assumption that the meaning of a text could only be retrieved
through the act of interpretation (Biblical scholarship coined the term hermeneutics).
most disciplines are subject to a number of variable factors including ideologies, sociopolitical conditions, and
fashions. The humanities in general and literary studies in particular are characterized by a multiplicity of approaches
and methodologies. Literary theory has developed as a distinct discipline influenced by philosophy. Literary theory
analyses the philosophical and methodological premises of literary criticism. The following theoretical schools can be
subsumed under these four basic rubrics:
TEXT AUTHOR READER CONTEXT

PHILOLOGY BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM RECEPTION THEORY LITERARY HISTORY
RHETORIC PSYCHOANALYTIC RECEPTION HISTORY MARXIST LITERARY
CRITICISM THEORY
FORMALISM AND PHENOMENOLOGY READER-RESPONSE FEMINIST LITERARY
STRUCTURALISM CRITICISM THEORY
NEW CRITICISM NEW HISTORICISM AND
CULTURAL STUDIES.
SEMIOTICS AND POST-COLONIALISM
DECONSTRUCTION ECOCRITICISM
The text-oriented approach is primarily concerned with questions of the “materiality” of texts, including editions of
manuscripts, analysis of language and style, and the formal structure of literary works. Author-oriented schools put
the main emphasis on the author, trying to establish connections between the work or art and the biography of its
creator. Reader-oriented approaches focus on the reception of texts by their audiences and the texts’ general impact
on the reading public. Contextual approaches try to place literary texts against the background of historical, social, or
political developments while at the same time attempting to classify texts according to genres as well as historical
periods.

Comprehension versus Interpretation
We often tend to confuse comprehension with interpretation and vice versa.
Comprehension concerns the conceptual assembly of textual information in a way that is precise and literally

accurate. (In order to discuss a literary work, the critic needs to know how personages are described and characterized, how
settings are depicted and what details they include and possibly exclude, what actions take place and in what order, and what
sorts of figural details and narrative devices the author has included). A good comprehension of a literary work will also
include the ability to identify points of view, major themes, and key allusions (references to historical occurrences,
myths, or passages in other influential texts, for example, the Bible). Everything that falls under the term
comprehension has to do with gathering and assembling of evidence that can be used for justifying interpretations.
Interpretation exceeds mere literal comprehension and requires the ability to see problems and offer hypotheses.
[For example, why is the order of events in a story told in a sequence that is unchronological, and why in the case of John
Milton’s Paradise Lost, do we not begin with the materials of Book 6 (Satan’s revolt in heaven), which is much closer to the
epic’s real beginning?]. To answer such questions requires interpretation. Here one is required to perceive a significant
problem, conceptualize that problem, analyze textual evidence, and offer some hypotheses and solutions.
Literary interpretation occurs when critics begin asking questions about what they have observed.
5. INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY CRITICAL SCHOOLS

What is important to emphasize is that the different critical currents we use to analyze literature are forms or
methods of interpretation or study that respond in some way to the cultural and social changes that have occurred
throughout history, as well as to the prevailing ideologies. Likewise, it is important to bear in mind that none of these
schools of thought or criticism are closed compartments; on the contrary, they have been feeding back on each
other. Have a look at these basic concepts outlined by John Peck and Martin Coyle:
- What is literary criticism? The analysis, interpretation and evaluation of literary works.
- What are the basic guidelines? Criticism involves spotting the general themes of the work and then seeing
how the text presents and develops these themes. In a sense you have to 'look through' the text and see what
kind of common experience, feeling or problem is being examined. Your critical account becomes something
more substantial than a mere summary the moment you begin to highlight some of the distinctive ways in
which the author handles his theme.
- Is there a correct view of what a text is about? No, there is not, and it is this fact that makes the study of
literature both difficult and fascinating.
- What are the main features of twentieth-century criticism? (REVISAR)

- What Is critical theory? Critical theory is concerned with establishing general principles about how literature
works and how criticism works.
[The following are excerpts from manuals summarizing some of the main schools of literary criticism of the 20th
century. The intention of this section should not be for you to learn each and every one of their characteristics, but
to see that there exists a variety of positions regarding literary criticism and understand the principal approaches. In
the following units we will study some of them in greater depth --Feminism, Poststructuralism and Postcolonialism.
5.1. Russian Formalism

Russian formalism was a movement which emerged in Russia during the second decade of the twentieth century.
The Formalists rejected the subjectivism in the approach to criticism and, thus, believed that literature could be
approached scientifically and objectively. They were interested in examining the internal mechanics of literature, as
opposed to the semantics or the extraliterary systems (such as ideology, politics, economics, etc.):
The Russian Formalists of the early years of the twentieth century stressed that critics should concern themselves
with the literariness of literature: the verbal strategies that make it literary, the foregrounding of language itself,
and the ‘making strange’ of experience that they accomplish. Redirecting attention from authors to verbal ‘devices’,

they claimed that ‘the device is the only hero of literature’. (Roman Jakobson, Boris Eichenbaum, and Victor Shklovsky are
three key figures in this group which reoriented literary study towards questions of form and technique).
Roman Jakobson, Boris Eichenbaum, and Victor Shklovsky are three key figures in this group which reoriented
literary study towards questions of form and technique.
5.2. New Criticism

New Criticism is a movement in literary criticism that arose in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Its
emergence reacted against extrinsic approaches to the literary text. New Critics believed in the evaluation of the
literary text without its context and promoted the use of tools such as close reading:
What is called the ‘New Criticism’ focused attention on the unity or integration of literary works. New Criticism
treated poems as aesthetic objects rather than historical documents and examined the interactions of their verbal
features and the ensuing complications of meaning rather than the historical intentions and circumstances of their
authors. The task of criticism was to elucidate individual works of art. (The New Criticism left as enduring legacies
techniques of close Reading).
5.3. Phenomenology
Phenomenology arises from the work of the early twentieth-century philosopher Edmund Husserl. For this
philosophy, the lived experience of human beings is the ultimate source of all meaning:
Phenomenology seeks to bypass the problem of the separation between subject and object, consciousness and the
world, by focusing on the phenomenal reality of objects as they appear to consciousness. A work is an answer to
questions posed by a ‘horizon of expectations. The interpretation of works should, therefore, focus not on the
experience of an individual reader but on the history of a work’s reception and its relation to the changing aesthetic
norms and sets of expectations that allow it to be read in different eras.
5.4. Structuralism
Structuralism is a theory of culture that focuses on the relationship between different elements as they form a
broader structure, or a system. Basically, how meaning is produced:
Structuralism originated in opposition to phenomenology: instead of describing experience, the goal was to identify
the underlying structures that make it possible. Because of its interest in how meaning is produced, structuralism
often treated the reader as the site of underlying codes that make meaning possible and as the agent of meaning. In
literary studies structuralism promotes a poetics interested in the conventions that make literary works possible; it
seeks not to produce new interpretations of works but to understand how they can have the meanings and effects
that they do.
5.5. Poststructuralism and Deconstruction/Deconstructivism
Poststructuralism is understood as a radical development in literary theory that emerged in response to some of the
main events of the second half of the twentieth century, such as the World Wars and the advent of new
technologies. Poststructuralism is concerned with the indeterminate and complex nature of meaning and the
arbitrariness of the constructions of knowledge, putting great emphasis on the workings that ideology and power
have on human subjectivity:
There is a critique of notions of objective knowledge and of a subject able to know him or herself.
5.5. Feminist Theory
Feminist theory aims at locating and describing the different ways in which literary texts reproduce the structures of
male domination embedded in societies. It is closely related to post-structuralism:
On the one hand, feminist theorists champion the identity of women, demand rights for women, and promote
women’s writings as representations of the experience of women. On the other hand, feminists undertake a
theoretical critique of the heterosexual matrix that organizes identities and cultures in terms of the opposition
between man and woman. (Feminism has effected a substantial transformation of literary education in the United States and
Britain, through its expansion of the literary canon and the introduction of a range of new issues).
5.6. Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis as a set of theories and treatment techniques was famously developed at the end of the nineteenth
century by Sigmund Freud.

Psychoanalytic theory had an impact on literary studies both as a mode of interpretation and as a theory about
language, identity, and the subject. On the one hand, along with Marxism it is the most powerful modern
hermeneutic: an authoritative meta-language or technical vocabulary that can be applied to literary works, as to
other situations, to understand what is ‘really’ going on. This leads to a criticism alert to psychoanalytic themes and
relations. But on the other hand, the greatest impact of psychoanalysis has come through the work of Jacques Lacan,
a renegade French psychoanalyst who set up his own school outside the analytic establishment and led what he
presented as a return to Freud. The truth of the patient’s condition emerges not from the analyst’s interpretation of
the patient’s discourse but from the way analyst and patient are caught up in replaying a crucial scenario from the
patient’s past.
5.7. Marxism
A Marxist interpretation of literature understands its object of study as an expression of class struggle. A text is
therefore understood to be intrinsically connected to the social and political realities of its time. According to
Marxism, literature is a social institution with a specific ideological function connected to the identity and
background of the author. It is based, obviously, on the theories of Karl Marx.
The texts belong to a superstructure determined by the economic base. The social formation is not a unified totality
with the mode of production at its centre but a looser structure in which different levels or types of practice develop
on different time-scales. Social and ideological superstructures have a ‘relative autonomy’. This conjunction is the
basis of much theoretical debate in Britain, in political theory as well as literary and cultural studies.
5.8. New Historicism/Cultural Materialism

New historicism is a method of literary analysis that is based on the reading of literary and non-literary texts side-by-
side. “New historicism refuses to ‘privilege’ the literary text: instead of a literary ‘foreground’ and a historical
‘background’ it envisages and practises a mode of study in which literary and non-literary texts are given equal
weight and constantly inform or interrogate each other”:
On the one hand, there is British cultural materialism, defined by Raymond Williams as ‘the analysis of all forms of
signification, including quite centrally writing, within the actual means and conditions of their production’. In the

United States, New Historicism, which is less inclined to posit a hierarchy of cause and effect as it traces connections
among texts, discourses, power, and the constitution of subjectivity, has also been centred on the Renaissance.
5.9. Post-Colonial Theory

Postcolonialism is the name given to the study of the legacy and impact of colonialism-- whether cultural, political, or
economic. It primarily focuses on the problems and consequences of the exploitation of colonized peoples and their
lands by imperial powers (usually European), from colonial times to their contemporary aftermath.
Post-colonial theory and writing has become an attempt to intervene in the construction of culture and knowledge,
and, for intellectuals who come from post-colonial societies, to write their way back into a history others have
written.
5.10. Minority Discourse
Minority discourse in literature refers to the study of texts created by ethnic minorities traditionally marginalized
from the cultural canon:
The main effort has been to revive and promote the study of black, Latino, Asian-American, and Native American
writing.
5.12. Queer Theory

Queer theory in literature studies and theorizes the presence of gender and sexual practices existing outside of cis-
heterosexuality, often with the aim of challenging the understanding of heterosexual desire as ‘the norm’:

Like deconstruction and other contemporary theoretical movements, Queer theory uses the marginal to analyse the
cultural construction of the centre: heterosexual normativity.
5.13. Ecocriticism
Ecocriticism refers to the use of ecological concepts in the study of literature. It illustrates environmental concerns
and examines the way literary texts portray nature:
What all the perspectives on the field have in common is that they are interested in examining the relationship of
literature and nature as a way to renew a reader’s awareness of the nonhuman world and his or her responsibility to
sustain it. Sharing the fundamental premise that all things are interrelated, they are actively concerned about the
impact of human actions on the environment. “Consciousness raising” is ecocriticism’s most important task. To them,
nature really exists as a force that affects human beings and which human beings can affect. It can be said that
ecocriticism stands apart from literary theory in general because instead of focusing on writers, texts, and the world,
as most critical approaches do, ecocriticism attempts to examine writers, texts, and the entire ecosphere.
Finally, once we have read about some of the most important critical theories of the 20th and 21st century, it is
important to keep in mind that, literary theories help readers to ask questions and thus to develop interpretations of
texts. It is less useful to identify oneself as an adherent of a particular critical school and to follow its tenets single-
mindedly than to move nimbly among these many interpretive frameworks, using their various perspectives.


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Comentario de Textos Literarios en Lengua Inglesa

1º Grado en Estudios Ingleses: Lengua, Literatura y Cultura

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MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Literature?

UNIT 2: ANALYZING NARRATIVE TEXTS

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MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Prose Fiction? Elements of Fiction.

UNIT 3: ANALYZING POETIC TEXTS

MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Poetry? Elements of Poetry.

UNIT 4: ANALYZING DRAMATIC TEXTS

MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Prose Drama? Elements of Drama.

UNIT 5: ANALYZING NARRATIVE TEXTS

This unit 1 is an introduction to Literary Studies. We’ll analyze the

MAIN CONTENTS: - What is Literature?

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3. CLASSIFYING LITERATURE: GENRES, LITERARY PERIODS AND MOVEMENTS

3.1 The Literary Genres

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Periods of English literature Periods of American literatura

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The eighteenth century is commonly regarded as an independent epoch.

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TEXT AUTHOR READER CONTEXT

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5. INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY CRITICAL SCHOOLS

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5.1. Russian Formalism

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5.2. New Criticism

5.5. Feminist Theory

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5.8. New Historicism/Cultural Materialism

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5.9. Post-Colonial Theory

5.12. Queer Theory

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