ENGV 311

Literary Lenses and

the Interpretation of
Fairy Tales
 Pertinent Questions
•Why should literature teachers have knowledge
of literary lenses?
•How does the application of literary lenses assist
in the analysis of different texts?

2
 Introduction
Watch the following video on literary theories and take notes:

https://youtu.be/FKGcwY9TyNE

3
 Outcomes

At the end of the study unit, you should be able to:

• discuss the functions of literary theories in the study of literature;
• apply literary theories in your reading, interpretation, and analysis of
short stories;
• analyse different Fairy Tales focusing on literary lenses; and
• collaborate in a group to apply different lenses to the short stories and
use your knowledge in a classroom as a teacher.
4
 Literary theory
• Literary theory is all of the different
focuses that scholars and teachers
use to analyse literature.
• Some schools of literary theory
focus on the author’s life.
• Others focus on the reader’s
reaction to the text.

5
What is a
literary lens?
• A literary lens is an idea or a
theory that frames the way
we read and interpret a text.

• Literary lenses are based on

theory and offer us multiple
ways to read a text.

• They help readers to

examine a text from a
different perspective.
6
 The different literary lenses
• It is the responsibility of teachers to create
active learning tasks to engage learners
with different lenses.
• Literary lenses can be grouped into
telescopes and spyglasses.

7
In this context, what is a telescope?
• The text is used “as a springboard for thinking about the world beyond the
text” (Carrol, 2006:74).
What is a spyglass?
• Focus is on the text… learners “notice how seemingly independent
elements – the author’s tone, for example, contribute to the overall effect
and impact of the literary work”.
• They learn to recognise which features are most compelling for them, like
dialogue, setting, and so forth, and begin to pay careful attention to those
when reading’’ (Carroll, 2006:74).
8
 Activity 3.1.1
• Work through the notes and the article on eFundi and summarise the main
lenses and their importance for an English teacher in a mind map for
yourself in the space provided in the EP.

9
Why is it important to learn about literary
lenses?
• VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

•IT PROVIDES THE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERARY INTERPRETATIONS

• DEVELOPS CRITICAL THINKING, ESPECIALLY WHEN READING

Presentation title 10
 Types of lenses
Marxism
Feminism
New Historicism
Psychoanalytical
Post-colonialism
Reader-Response
Deconstruction
Structuralism
Post-Structuralism
11
 Class exercise
Read the article Telescopes and Spyglasses on eFundi and define the following lenses:
Marxism
Feminism
New Historicism
Psychoanalytical
Post-colonialism
Reader-Response
Deconstruction
Structuralism
Post-Structuralism

12
 Deconstruction
• Deconstruction – created and profoundly influenced by the French
philosopher, Jacques Derrida.
• Deconstruction involves the close reading of texts in order to demonstrate
that any given text has irreconcilably contradictory meanings, rather than
being a unified, logical whole (Miller, 1976).
• The approach is linked to the discovery of what opposes the underlying
meaning or structure of the texts (Brooks, 1992).
• Deconstructive reading focuses on immersing oneself in the texts and
unravelling the contradictions within these texts.

13
 DECONSTRUCTION

Relationship between
text and meaning
14
 "I have no simple and formalisable response to this
question” (Derrida, 1985:4).

Derrida believes that the term deconstruction is

necessarily complicated and difficult to explain since it
actively criticises the very language needed to explain
it.
Presentation title 15
 • Texts are read with a view to demonstrate that the text is
not a discrete whole, instead containing several
irreconcilable, contradictory meanings.

• It shows that any text has more than one interpretation;

that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably;
that the incompatibility of these interpretations is
irreducible; and, thus, that interpretative reading cannot go
beyond a certain point.

Presentation title 16
 For the reader, there is effectively an act of translation
involved in extracting a signification from the signifiers
of language.

To decide what words mean in a particular text, against

a particular background, is, therefore, an act of
interpretation (Disgrace p.112: David says to Lucy: Do
you think you can expiate the crimes of the past by
suffering in the present?)

Presentation title 17
 ▰ Words are not self-sufficiently meaningful
but only meaningful as part of a larger
structure that makes meaning possible.

▰ Individual words or sentences in a text can

only be properly understood in terms of how
they fit into the larger structure of the text
and language itself.
Presentation title 18
 Reader Response
• Rooted in the cognitive-constructivist view of learning, reader response
theory emerged in the 1930s and gained prominence in the 1960s and
1970s (Powell & Kalina, 2009; Roen & Karolides, 2005).
• A critical theory that stresses the importance of the role of the reader in
constructing the meaning of a work of literature (Larson, 2009).
• The central component of reader response involves giving learners
opportunities to make meaningful, authentic connections with the texts they
are reading (Graves, Juel, Graves & Dewitz, 2011:359).

https://images.saymedia-content.com/.image/t_share/MTc0MTI3MzI4MDgxNzQ5MzA3/how-to-write-a-reading-
response-essay.jpg
19
Reader Response
Interaction between the reader and the text

How can we, as readers, relate to the text?

How does the text make you feel?
How can you relate to the characters, plot, setting,
language, etc.?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F350647520985004051%2F&psig=AOvVaw2V6Su66kd_UxUAWZWeKUTw&ust=1589727213770000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCIjPgMfRuOkCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAX

20
 Feminism
• Provides the female experience in texts.
• There are different interpretations to this theory. Different countries
formulate their different interpretations. As a result, the Marxist and
psychoanalytical approaches are differently applied by feminists.
• “British Feminists take a Marxist approach, drawing on the idea that women
are an oppressed class in the patriarchy”.

https://www.nicepng.com/png/detail/910-9103147_an- 21
illustration-of-a-woman-with-fist-raised.png
 Continued…
• “French Feminists take a Psychoanalytic approach, drawing on Lacan to focus
on how the structure of language, specifically in the Symbolic Order,
socialises women into accepting an inferior status.”
• “American Feminism centers on gynocriticism, a movement that examines
the distinctive characteristics of the female experience. These feminists look
at the way culture has internalized stereotypes about women, causing
women to internalize this sexism and accept their lesser status as the truth”
(Rains, 2015:19).

22
POSTCOLONIALISM

What is “Postcolonialism...
colonialism? involves a studied
engagement with
Colonialism is a practice the experience of
of domination, which
involves the subjugation colonialism and its
of one people to another past and present
(Kohn & Reddy, 2017). effects” (Quayson,
2019)

Presentation title 23
 Postcolonialism applied to short stories
“Postcolonial studies are deeply engaged with place and displacement and the tremendously
complex phenomenon of culture and multiculturalism, while being inherently attached to the
postcolonial crisis of identity” (Hafsi, 2017:99).

“To love him as he played “My husband

• “The translated all this for
perspective of backgammon with his
father in the evening, the me and said things
a displaced to her which I came
Western slam of counters and the
clatter of dice resounding to understand
female subject meant that
towards Egypt, on the patio while, at the
dining-room table, his tomorrow I would
its inhabitants get used to their
and its sister showed me how to
draw their ornate, circular ways” (Soueif,
culture” (Hafsi, 2012:372)
2017:102)
Presentation title
script” (Souief, 2012:371) 24
 Marxism
•Marxism is an expression of contemporary class
struggle. It is not simply a matter of personal
expression or taste, but social or political
conditions of the time.

Presentation title 25
 New Historicism
•New Historicism understands intellectual history
through literature, and literature through its
cultural context – authors, time, and cultural
situation.

Presentation title 26
 Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
•Structuralism challenges the belief that a work of
literature reflects a given reality.

•Post-structuralism explains that there is a radical

uncertainty of knowledge and posits that “truth”
is not a fixed concept, but instead constantly
changes based on your position in the world.
Presentation title 27
 Psychoanalysis
•Psychoanalysis expresses the secret unconscious
desires and anxieties of the author. There is a
manifestation of the author’s own neuroses.

Presentation title 28
 PSYCHOANALYSIS
• The Imaginary
“This order is
marked by a sense of unity
with the world around us”
(Rains, 2015:9).
“…where we all lack wholeness because we
have accepted the rules of our society and
our culture” (Rains, 2015:9).
• The Symbolic • The Real
“This means that they “Entering into The Real would require
are nothing but privileged us to recognize our lack and our loss,
discursive elements: making us even more fragmented than
specific traits and we were to start with. The Real is the
characteristics of others space beyond signification; beyond
that arrest a subject’s ideology, language, and culture, there
attention, and are is nothing. Entering into The Real
unconsciously adopted causes us to recognize this, an
to the extent that they experience that is inherently
are considered to imply traumatic” (Rains, 2015:9).
an answer to the riddle of
the other’s desire”
(Vanheule & Verhaeghe,
2009:398)

Presentation title 2929

 “After the Mirror Stage, the subject is aware
The Mirror Stage that the concept of the coherent self is an illusion…” (Rains,
2015:10)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbodyimagecsun.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F05%2F07%2Flacan-mirror-stages-with-body-image-and-dorian-
gray%2F&psig=AOvVaw2igveyOq-20Nul6Y5PWfMh&ust=1589617929804000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCIjRw8W8tekCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcoetzeejm.wordpress.com%2Fauthor%2Fcoetzeejm%2F&psig=AOvVaw1z_LqJnCJOB3qza0mYC_3l&ust=158961824
7123000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCLiwmcq7tekCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAl

Presentation title 30 30
Apply at least three lenses to the Fairy Tales
that follow on the next slides.

31
 Goldilocks and The Three Bears
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks.
She went for a walk in the forest. Pretty soon, she came
upon a house. She knocked and, when no one answered,
she walked right in.
At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of
porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge
from the first bowl.
“This porridge is too hot!” she exclaimed.
So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.
“This porridge is too cold,” she said.
So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.
“Ahhh, this porridge is just right, she said happily and ate it
all up.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2F1.

32
 The Frog Prince
Once upon a time, there lived a princess whose favourite
toy in the world was a golden ball.
One day she was playing by the pond. The golden ball fell from her
hands into the pond.
The pond was very deep. “Oh dear! I will never find it again!” the princess
said.
Suddenly she heard a voice.
“What is the matter, beautiful princess? Why are you crying?” said the voice.
The princess looked down and saw a green frog.
“I am sad because my golden ball fell into the pond,” said the princess.
“I can get it for you,” said the frog. “But what will you give me?
“Whatever you like, frog. How about a golden crown?” the princess asked.

33
 Beauty and the Beast
Once upon a time there lived a rich merchant and his three
daughters. The merchant spent much of his time away; making
deals and gathering his fortune. When he was far from home, his
two eldest daughters filled their time spending his hard-earned
money on fancy dresses and the finest jewellery. Unfortunately,
when he did return home, they seldom remembered to thank
their father for his hard work.
On the other hand, the merchant’s youngest daughter dearly
missed her father when he was away on business. One spent
most of her time in the library, reading books and escaping to
adventurous lands, for she found time passed quickly when she
read.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fhyperpix.net%
2Ffonts%2Fbeauty-and-the-beast-font%
34
 Activity 3.1.2: Group activity
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2
Ffuzeinteriors.co.nz%2Foffice-design-effective-
teamwork%
• Work in a group of 8 people and choose another fairy tale or folktale and create
a PPP. Your analysis should include at least THREE different lenses. Choose lenses
that best suit your fairy tale/folktale.
• Remember to provide a summary of the plot of the fairy tale/folktale as part of
your presentation. The plot consists of the exposition, rising action, climax, falling
action, and resolution.
• Be prepared to present your slides in the next
session. Your presentation should be between 8
minutes long. Each student should speak (NOT read!)
at least 1 minute.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/what-is-plot-definition 35
 Activity 3.1.3: Individual work
• Complete the activity in your EP and submit as indicated by your lecturer.

36
 Reflection
• Do you consider knowledge of different lenses as of importance in the
study of literature? Elaborate.
• Teaching of literary lenses is not covered in the CAPS document. How will
you emphasise the need to introduce them in a classroom environment?

https://images.pexels.com/photos/268533/pexels-photo-268533.jpeg?cs=srgb&dl=pexels-pixabay-268533.jpg&fm=jpg

37
Thank you