LITERARY CRITICISM 2ND SEMESTER

LITERARY THEORIES/APPROACHES

1. Reader-response: criticism removes the focus from the text and places it on the reader instead, by attempting to
describe what goes on in the reader’s mind during the reading of a text. Reader-response critics are not interested in
a “correct” interpretation of a text or what the author intended. They are interested in the reader’s individual
experience with a text. Thus, there is no single definitive reading of a text, because the reader is creating, as opposed
to discovering, absolute meanings in texts. This approach is not a rationale for bizarre meanings or mistaken ones,
but an exploration of the plurality of texts. This kind of strategy calls attention to how we read and what influences
our readings, and what that reveals about ourselves.

Reception theory is applied to the general reading public rather than an individual reader. Each generation has
different experiences, values, issues, etc. Therefore, each generation will read a work differently.

2. Historical-Biographical Approach: Historical-Biographical critics see works as the reflection of an author’s life and
times (or of the characters’ life and times). This approach deems it necessary to know about the author and the
political, economical, and sociological context of his times in order to truly understand the work(s).

Advantages: This approach works well for some works--like those of Alexander Pope, John Dryden, and Milton-which
are obviously political in nature.

Disadvantages: New Critics refer to the historical / biographical critic’s belief that the meaning or value of a work
may be determined by the author’s intention as “the intentional fallacy.” Thus, art is reduced to the level of
biography rather than universal.

Historical Critical Questions:

The Historical approach seeks to interpret the work of literature through understanding the times and the culture in
which the work was written. The historical critic is more interested in the meaning the literary word had for its own time
than in the meaning the work might have today.

 When was the work written? When was it published? How was it received by the critics and public and why?
 What does the work’s reception reveal about the standards of taste and value during the time it was published
and reviewed?
 What social attitudes and cultural practices related to the action of the word were prevalent during the time the
work was written and published?
 What kinds of power relationships does the word describe, reflect, or embody?
 How do the power relationships reflected in the literary work manifest themselves in the cultural practices and
social institutions prevalent during the time the work was written and published?
 To what extent can we understand the past as it is reflected in the literary work? To what extent does the work
reflect differences from the ideas and values of its time?

Biographical Critical Questions:

The Biographical Approach investigates the life of an author using primary texts, such as letters, diaries, and other
documents, that might reveal the experience, thought, and feelings that led to the creation of a literary work.

 What influences—people, ideas, movements, events—evident in the writer’s life does the work reflect?
 To what extent are the events described in the word a direct transfer of what happened in the writer’s actual life?
 What modifications of the actual events has the writer made in the literary work? For what possibly purposes?
 What are the effects of the differences between actual events and their literary transformation in the poem,
story, play, or essay?
 What has the author revealed in the work about his/her characteristic modes of thought, perception, or emotion?
What place does this work have in the artist’s literary development and career?

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2. Moral / Philosophical Approach: Critics believe that the larger purpose of literature is to teach morality and to
probe philosophical issues. Practitioners include Matthew Arnold (works must have “high seriousness”), Plato
(literature must exhibit moralism and utilitarianism), and Horace (literature should be “delightful and instructive”).

Advantages: This approach is useful for such works as Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man,” which presents an
obvious moral philosophy. It is also useful when considering the themes of works (for example, man’s inhumanity to
man in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn). Finally, it does not view literature merely as “art” isolated from all moral
implications; it recognizes that literature can affect readers, whether subtly or directly, and that the message of a
work--and not just the decorous vehicle for that message--is important.

Disadvantages: Detractors argue that such an approach can be too “judgmental.” Some believe literature should be
judged primarily (if not solely) on its artistic merits, not its moral or philosophical content.

Moral/Didactic Critical Questions:

 What enduring truth is revealed in the theme of this work?
 How are the actions of the protagonist rewarded and the actions of the antagonist punished?

3. Formalism / New Criticism: A formalistic approach to literature, once called New Criticism, involves a close
reading of the text. Formalistic critics believe that all information essential to the interpretation of a work must be
found within the work itself; there is no need to bring in outside information about the history, politics, or society of
the time, or about the author's life. Formalistic critics spend much time analyzing irony, paradox, imagery, and
metaphor. They are also interested in the work's setting, characters, symbols, and point of view.

Terms Used in New Criticism:

 Tension - the integral unity of the poem which results from the resolution of opposites, often in irony or
paradox
 Intentional fallacy - the belief that the meaning or value of a work may be determined by the author’s
intention
 Affective fallacy - the belief that the meaning or value of a work may be determined by its affect on the
reader
 External form - rhyme scheme, meter, stanza form, etc.
 Objective correlative - originated by T.S. Eliot, this term refers to a collection of objects, situations, or events
that instantly evoke a particular emotion.

Advantages: This approach can be performed without much research, and it emphasizes the value of literature apart
from its context (in effect makes literature timeless). Virtually all critical approaches must begin here.

Disadvantages: The text is seen in isolation. Formalism ignores the context of the work. It cannot account for
allusions. It tends to reduce literature to little more than a collection of rhetorical devices.

Formalistic Critical Questions:

 How is the work structured or organized? How does it begin? Where does it go next? How does it end? What is
the work’s plot? How is its plot related to its structure?
 What is the relationship of each part of the work to the work as a whole? How are the parts related to one
another?
 Who is narrating or telling what happens in the work? How is the narrator, speaker, or character revealed to
readers? How do we come to know and understand this figure?
 Who are the major and minor characters, what do they represent, and how do they relate to one another? What
are the time and place of the work—it’s setting? How is the setting related to what we know of the characters
and their actions? To what extent is the setting symbolic?
 What kind of language does the author use to describe, narrate, explain, or otherwise create the world of the
literary work? More specifically, what images, similes, metaphors, symbols appear in the work? What is their
function? What meanings do they convey?

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4. Psychological Approach: Psychological critics view works through the lens of psychology. They look either at the
psychological motivations of the characters or of the authors themselves, although the former is generally considered
a more respectable approach. Most frequently, psychological critics apply Freudian and/or Jungian (archetypes)
psychology to works.

a. Freudian Approach: A Freudian approach often includes pinpointing the influences of a character’s psyche
(Greek for “soul”), which consists of the:
 Id (reservoir of libido or pleasure principle in the unconscious)
 Superego (the moral censoring agency and repository of conscience/pride that protects society)
 Ego (the rational governing agent of the unconscious that protects the individual).

Freudian critics steer toward the sexual implications of symbols and imagery, since Freud theorized that all human
behavior (drives) derives from libido/sexual energy.

 Concave Images, such as ponds, flowers, cups, and

caves = female symbols.
 Convex Images, such as skyscrapers, submarines,
obelisks, etc. = male symbols
 Actions, such as dancing, riding, and flying = sexual
pleasure.
 Water = birth, the female principle, the maternal, the
womb, and the death wish.
 Oedipus complex = a boy’s unconscious rivalry with his
father for the love of his mother
 The Electra Complex = a girl’s unconscious rivalry with
her mother for the love of her father
 Critics may also refer to Freud’s psychology of child
development, which includes the oral stage (eating), the
anal stage (elimination), and
the genital (reproduction).

Advantages: A useful tool for understanding some works, in which characters manifest clear psychological issues.
Like the biographical approach, knowing something about a writer’s psychological make up can give us insight into his
work.

Disadvantages: Psychological criticism can turn a work into little more than a psychological case study, neglecting to
view it as a piece of art. Critics sometimes attempt to diagnose long dead authors based on their works, which is
perhaps not the best evidence of their psychology. Critics tend to see sex in everything, exaggerating this aspect of
literature. Finally, some works do not lend themselves readily to this approach.

b. Jungian Approach: Jung is also an influential force in myth (archetypal) criticism. Psychological critics are
generally concerned with his concept of the process of individuation (the process of discovering what makes one
different form everyone else). Jung labeled three parts of the self:

 Shadow -- the darker, unconscious self; rarely surfaces, yet must be faced for totality of Self
 Persona -- the public personality/mask (particularly masculine)
 Anima/Animus -- a man’s/woman’s “soul image” (the negative that makes a composite whole)
A neurosis occurs when someone fails to assimilate one of these unconscious components into his conscious and
projects it on someone else. The persona must be flexible and be able to balance the components of the psyche.

Mythological / Archetypal: A mythological / archetypal approach to literature assumes that there is a

collection of symbols, images, characters, and motifs (i.e., archetypes) that evokes a similar response in all
people. According to the psychologist Carl Jung, mankind possesses a “collective unconscious” (a cosmic
reservoir of human experience) that contains these archetypes and that is common to all of humanity. Myth
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critics identify these archetypal patterns and discuss how they function in the works. They believe that these
archetypes are the source of much of literature's power.
Advantages: Provides a universalistic approach to literature and identifies a reason why certain literature may
survive the test of time. It works well with works that are highly symbolic.

Disadvantages: Literature may become little more than a vehicle for archetypes, and this approach may ignore
the “art” of literature.

Mythological Critical Questions

 What incidents in the work seem common or familiar enough as actions that they might be considered
symbolic or archetypal? Are there any journeys, battles, falls, reversals of fortune, etc.?
 What kinds of character types appear in the work? How might they be classified?
 What creatures, elements of nature, or man-made objects playing a role in the work might be considered
symbolic?
 What changes do the characters undergo? How can those changes be characterized or named? To what
might they be related or compared?
 What religious or quasi-religious traditions might the work’s story, characters, elements, or objects be
compared to or affiliated with? Why?

Other Psychologists:

 Alfred Adler: Birth order was significant to Adler. He felt that the manner in which you are coddled or the manner
in which you are treated has a significant impact on your success as an adult. Adler also felt that based on young
experiences, children develop a narrative about who they are and they live out this narrative.

 Carl Rogers: Examining Self was critical to Rogers. He believed that a healthy person had a closely linked Ideal
Self and Real Self. If a person had a significant discrepancy between the Ideal Self and Real Self then the
individual would have an unhealthy self-image and personality. While it is normal to attempt to live up to your
“ideal person” –it is critical to understand your limitations and the “real” strengths and weaknesses in your
personality. Consider the story, The Necklace, the main character has an unhealthy view of their “Real” self and
act under the illusion that they actually are existing as their “ideal” selves.

 Maslow: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs helps explain how a person’s ability to be emotionally secure is linked with
having a strong, secure foundation that includes a safe home environment and food. Once the basics of life are
secure, then a person can advance to a belonging stage and then it is possible for an individual to work toward a
state of Self-Actualization.

 B.F. Skinner: Skinner was a behaviorist known for developing his theories involving reinforcers. He felt that
individual personality was formed based on positive and negative reinforcers and that using positive and negative
reinforcement could alter an individual’s behavior. Skinner was quoted as saying: “Education is what survives
when what has been learned has been forgotten.” What do you think he means?

Psychological Critical Questions

 What connections can you make between your knowledge of an author’s life and the behavior and motivations
of characters in his or her work?
 How does your understanding of the characters, their relationships, their actions, and their motivations in a
literary work help you better understand the mental world and imaginative life, or the actions and motivations of
the author?
 How does a particular literary work—its images, metaphors, and other linguistic elements—reveal the
psychological motivations of its characters or the psychological mindset of its author?
 To what extent can you employ the concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis to understand the motivations of
literary characters?

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 What kinds of literary works and what types of literary characters seem best suited to a critical approach that
employs a psychological or psychoanalytical perspective? Why?
 How can a psychological or psychoanalytical approach to a particular work be combined with an approach from
another critical perspective—for example, biographical, formalist, or feminist criticism?

5. Sociological Approach: Sociological criticism focuses on the relationship between literature and society.
Literature is always produced in a social context. Writers may affirm or criticize the values of the society in which they
live, but they write for an audience and that audience is society. Through the ages the writer has performed the
functions of priest, prophet, and entertainer: all of these are important social roles.

The social function of literature is the domain of the sociological critic. (example: Charles Dickens, one of the earliest
novelists, wrote short stories and novels that helped reveal social problems in England especially as related to the
crimes of child labor and to the excessive taxing of the middle class)

The sociological critic is interested not only in the stated themes of literature, but also in the hidden themes. Like the
historical critic, the sociological critic attempts to understand the writer’s environment as an important element in the
writer’s work. Like the moral critic, the sociological critic usually has certain values by which he or she judges literary
works.

Common Questions for the Sociological Approach:

 What is the relationship between the characters and their society?

 Does the story address societal issues, such as race, gender, and class?
 How does the story reflect the Great American Dream?
 How does the story reflect urban, rural, or suburban values?
 How do social forces shape the power relationships between groups or classes of people in the story? Who
has the power, and who doesn’t? Why?
 What does the work say about economic or social power? Who has it and who doesn’t? Any Marxist leanings
evident?
 Does the story address issues of economic exploitation? What role does money play?
 How do economic conditions determine the direction of the characters’ lives?
 Does the work challenge or affirm the social order it depicts?
 Can the protagonist’s struggle be seen as symbolic of a larger class struggle?
 How does the microcosm (small world) of the story reflect the macrocosm (large world) of the society in
which it was composed?
 Do any of the characters correspond to types of government, such as a dictatorship, democracy, communism,
socialism, fascism, etc.? What attitudes toward these political structures/systems are expressed in the work?

 Marxist Criticism: Marxist criticism is a type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of
work and whose practitioners emphasize the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate, and even
challenge the prevailing social order. Rather than viewing texts as repositories for hidden meanings, Marxist critics
view texts as material products to be understood in broadly historical terms. In short, literary works are viewed as
a product of work (and hence of the realm of production and consumption we call economics). It assumes that
each society is made up of a set of concepts, beliefs, values, and ways of thinking influenced by
economic and class structures.

Core Marxist Principles & Basic Terms:

 Proletariat: that class of society, which does not have ownership of the means of production.
 Bourgeoisie: wealthy class that rules society.
 Power of the Base: Marx believed that the economic means of production in a society (the base) both
creates and controls all human institutions and ideologies (the superstructure). This superstructure includes

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all social and legal institutions, all political and educational systems, all religions, and all art. These
ideologies develop as a result of the economic means of production, not the reverse.
 Alienation -- Marx believed that capitalist society created three forms of alienation:
– First, the worker is alienated from what he produces.
– Second, the worker is alienated from himself; only when he is not working does he feel truly himself.
– Finally, in capitalist society people are alienated from each other; that is, in a competitive society
people are set against other people.

Checklist of Marxist/Cultural Criticism:

 What is the economic status of the characters?
 What role does power, money, or class play in this work?
 What happens as a result in differences in power/money?
 Relate context of work to social-class of author and/or time period
 What happens to them as a result of this status?
 How do they fare against economic and political odds?
 What other conditions stemming from their class does the writer emphasize? (e.g., poor education, poor
nutrition, poor health care, inadequate opportunity)
 To what extent does the work fail by overlooking the economic, social and political implications of its
material?
 In what other ways does economic determinism affect the work? How should readers consider the story in
today’s modern economic setting (nationally, globally, etc.)?

 Feminist/Gender Approach: Feminist criticism is concerned with the impact of gender on writing and reading.
It usually begins with a critique of patriarchal culture. It is concerned with the place of female writers in the
cannon. Finally, it includes a search for a feminine theory or approach to texts. Feminist criticism is political and
often revisionist. Feminists often argue that male fears are portrayed through female characters. They may argue
that gender determines everything, or just the opposite: that all gender differences are imposed by society, and
gender determines nothing.

Elaine Showalter's Theory: In A Literature of Their Own, Elaine Showalter argued that literary subcultures all
go through three major phases of development. For literature by or about women, she labels these stages the
Feminine, Feminist, and Female:

 Feminine Stage -- involves “imitation of the prevailing modes of the dominant tradition” and “internalization
of its standards.”
 Feminist Stage -- involves “protest against these standards and values and advocacy of minority rights....”
 Female Stage -- this is the “phase of self-discovery, a turning inwards freed from some of the dependency of
opposition, a search for identity.”

Advantages: Women have been underrepresented in the traditional cannon, and a feminist approach to literature
attempts to redress this problem.

Disadvantages: Feminists turn literary criticism into a political battlefield and overlook the merits of works they
consider “patriarchal.” When arguing for a distinct feminine writing style, they tend to relegate women’s
literature to a ghetto status; this in turn prevents female literature from being naturally included in the literary
cannon. The feminist approach is often too theoretical.

Feminist Critical Questions

 To what extent does the representation of women (and men) in the work reflect the place and time in which
the work was written?
 How are the relationships between men and women or those between members of the same sex presented
in the work? What roles do men and women assume and perform and with what consequences?

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 Does the author present the work from within a predominantly male or female sensibility? Why might this
have been done, and with what effects?
 How do the facts of the author’s life relate to the presentation of men and women in the work? To their
relative degrees of power?
 How do other works by the author correspond to this one in their depiction of the power relationships
between men and women?

 Cultural Criticism: Cultural Studies from the beginning has shared concerns and methods of analysis with
Marxist theory. One shared assumption is that culture is dialectical in nature: we make culture and we are
made by culture. Because cultural processes are intimately connected with social relations, especially class,
gender, and racial structural divisions, culture is understood to involve power and helps maintain and create
inequalities within and between social groups. As part of the dialectic of culture, resistance is always present in
that a dominant cultural process will generate its own critical response. Cultural Studies focuses on the relationship
between social practices commonly separated so that culture is seen as a whole way of life, a social totality.

6. Narratology/Archetypes: A form of Structuralism that focuses on the structure of stories. Focuses on the specific
character types that are repeated within all stories—hero, villain, trickster, orphan, mentor etc.

7. Deconstruction/Post-Structuralism: Deconstruction is a school of literary criticism that suggests that language is

not a stable entity, and that we can never exactly say what we mean. Therefore, literature cannot give a reader any
one single meaning, because the language itself is simply too ambiguous. Deconstructionists value the idea that
literature cannot provide any outside meaning; texts cannot represent reality. Thus, a deconstructionist critic will
deliberately emphasize the ambiguities of the language that produce a variety of meanings and
possible readings of a text.

The Main Ideas of Deconstruction

a. Texts produce meanings through the difference upon which the meaning inside them is generated. Literary
works rest on many differences on the phonological, semantic, syntactic, and structural levels.
According to Deconstruction, words themselves produce meanings as a result of their difference with other
words: We know one phoneme or one word because each is different from another, and we know that there is
no innate relationship between a signifier and its signified…It is this free play or undecidability in any system of
communication that Derrida calls writing. Writing can best represent these oppositions. By writing Derrida refers
to the continuous process of free play of meanings. The concept of difference helps to generate meanings and
analyze them at the same time. The text is constructed with the seeds of deconstruction inside it.

b. There is no one particular meaning for the text. Texts supply new meanings at different readings. This is
the main issue of Deconstruction which makes of this theory a postmodern critical discipline. Modern theories,
like Structuralism, insisted on locating a unique meaning for the text built on one specific structure.
Deconstruction demolished all the structural thinking and insisted that there is no particular structure; simply
because structures always deconstruct themselves, and that is the nature of reality which does not have any
particular face: According to Derrida for each center, an opposing center exists. . . We know truth because we
know deception; we know good because we know bad.

c. Whenever a certain meaning is obtained from a text, it soon starts to deconstruct itself because it becomes a
sort of (presence) which will not last long unless it invites its (absence). In other words, reality, according to
Deconstruction is but a moment when it is reached, it is no more reality. The search, then, for the text's "
correct '' meaning or the writer's so-called intentions becomes meaningless. Since meaning is derived from
differences. In a dynamic, context – related, ongoing process, all texts have multiple meanings or
interpretations.

d. Deconstruction values (writing) over (speech). Derrida considered writing a sort of deep structure; speech is
only one representation of it. Speech will be soon lost, and meaning will be also lost with it. Words soon die

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unless they are transferred into written symbols: "writing is actually a precondition for and prior to speech.
According to Derrida language becomes a special type of writing that he calls arche-writing." Derrida considers
writing to be the origin of language. It is a mental process that governs speech which is but a branch of writing.
This philosophy of language is similar to De Saussure's linguistic ideas.