WRITING A RESPONSE

TO LITERATURE
Overview
• Literature and Literary Criticism
• Some Approaches to Literary Criticism
• Formalism
• Reader-Response
• Historicism
• Marxism
• Feminism
• Writing the Response to Literature
WHAT IS LITERATURE?
• A body of written works
• A form of human expression
• A way to experience a way of life, a time period, a culture,
an emotion, a deed, an event that you are not otherwise
able, willing, or capable of encountering in any other
manner
• Opens doors to new and different life experiences
LITERARY CRITICISM

• Criticism is the analysis of human cultural life.

• Such analysis ranges from the techniques used to make cultural artifacts to
the ideas contained in such artifacts, the world out of which they arise,
and their implications in our lives.
• The specific region of culture that criticism analyzes is stitched into a larger
cultural web.
• Without such culture in the larger sense, there would be no human life on
earth.
• It allows us to manipulate things without laying our hands on them, and it
allows us to make the world work by using symbols or signs. (Ryan, 2012)
SCHOOLS OF LITERARY
THEORY
• A piece of literature can be examined through different
lenses using literary theory.
• A literary theory offers ideas to critics so they could:
• consider a work of art based on certain assumptions
• focus on particular aspects of a work they consider
important
SCHOOLS OF LITERARY
THEORY
• Some schools of literary theory we will be focusing on are
the following:
• Formalism
• Reader-Response
• Historicism
• Marxism
• Feminism
FORMALISM
• A literary work contains certain intrinsic features, and the
theory defined and addressed the specifically literary
qualities in the text.
• It attempts to treat each work as its own distinct piece, free
from its environment, era, and even author.
• It assumes that the keys to understanding a text exist within
the text itself.
TYPICAL QUESTIONS IN
FORMALISM
• How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbols?
• What is the quality of the work's organic unity? In other words, does how the work is put
together reflect what it is?
• How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
• How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
• How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not contribute to the
aesthetic quality of the work?
• How does the author resolve apparent contradictions within the work?
• What does the form of the work say about its content?
• Is there a central or focal passage that can be said to sum up the entirety of the work?
• How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to the meaning or
effect of the piece?
READER-RESPONSE
• It considers readers' reactions to literature as vital to
interpreting the meaning of the text.
• It can take a number of different approaches.
• The role of the reader cannot be omitted from our
understanding of literature.
• Readers actively make the meaning they find in literature.
TYPICAL QUESTIONS IN
READER-RESPONSE

• How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?

• What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a literary text tell us about the
reading experience pre-structured by (built into) that text?
• Do the sounds/shapes of the words as they appear on the page or how they
are spoken by the reader enhance or change the meaning of the word/work?
• How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's response is, or
is analogous to, the topic of the story?
• What does the body of criticism published about a literary text suggest about
the critics who interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience
produced by that text?
HISTORICISM
• It seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in which it
was produced and identify it with the cultural and political
movements of the time.
• It resists the notion that history is a series of events that have
a linear, causal relationship.
• New Historicism does not believe that we can look at history
objectively, but rather that we interpret events as products of
our time and culture.
• We are hopelessly subjective interpreters of what we observe.
TYPICAL QUESTIONS IN
HISTORICISM
• What language/characters/events present in the work reflect the current events of the author’s day?
• Are there words in the text that have changed their meaning from the time of the writing?
• How are such events interpreted and presented?
• How are events' interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
• Does the work's presentation support or condemn the event?
• Can it be seen to do both?
• How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the day?
• How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical/cultural texts from
the same period?
• How can we use a literary work to "map" the interplay of both traditional and subversive discourses
circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or the cultures in which the work has been
interpreted?
• How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?
MARXISM
• Attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic
system is the ultimate source of our experience
• Interested in answering the overarching question, whom
does it benefit? The elite? The middle class?
• Looks at how the lower or working classes are oppressed - in
everyday life and in literature
• There will always be conflict between the upper, middle, and
lower (working) classes and this conflict will be reflected in
literature.
TYPICAL QUESTIONS IN
MARXISM

• Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/ believed, etc.?

• What is the social class of the author?
• Which class does the work claim to represent?
• What values does it reinforce?
• What values does it subvert?
• What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it
portrays?
• What social classes do the characters represent?
• How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?
FEMINISM
• Refers to the ways in which literature reinforce or
undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological
oppression of women
• Looks at how aspects of our culture are inherently
patriarchal (male dominated) and aims to expose misogyny
in writing about women
• Follows the three waves of feminist history
TYPICAL QUESTIONS IN
FEMINISM
• How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
• What are the power relationships between men and women?
• How are male and female roles defined?
• What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
• How do characters embody these traits?
• Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions
to them?
• What does the work reveal about the operations of patriarchy?
• What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
• What does the work say about women's creativity?
• What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the
operation of patriarchy?
• What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?
WRITING A RESPONSE TO
LITERATURE
• The purpose of a response to literature is to persuade the
readers that your analysis and interpretation of the work
are valid, reasonable, and logical.
• Before writing your response, you need to know first the
characteristics of the literary genre you are reading.
WRITING A RESPONSE TO
LITERATURE: THE SHORT STORY
• A short story has the following characteristics:
• Limited number of characters
• Single theme/plot
• Can be usually read in one sitting
• Concise information offered
• Usually tries to leave behind a single impression/effect
THE STRUCTURE OF PLOT
READING THE SHORT STORY
• Activating prior knowledge
• Understanding sequence of events
• Answering lead up questions
PREPARING TO WRITE
• Doing a literary analysis by answering questions related to
the following elements:
• Theme
• Setting
• Characterization
• Plot
• Author
• Style
ORGANIZING YOUR WRITING
• Introduction - 1 paragraph
• Hook
• Title of the story and the author
• Short description of the story
• Clear thesis statement
ORGANIZING YOUR WRITING

• Body – 2-3 paragraphs

• Brief summary of the story
• Evidence from the story
• Analysis of elements
} in relation to a school of literary theory
• Personal insights

• Conclusion – 1 paragraph
• Restatement of the thesis
• Overview of points
BUT BE CAREFUL TO…

• Use the present tense when talking about the events in the
story.
• Write a concise summary or synthesis in the introduction.
• Avoid the use of I feel or I think statements.
• Think of a title that is related to your main idea.
References
• Peña, A. & Anudin, A. (2016). Reading and writing. Vibal Group.

• Purdue Online Writing Lab. (n.d.). Writing in literature. Retrieved

June 18, 2020, from https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_
specific_writing/writing_in_literature/

• Ryan, M. (2012). An introduction to criticism: literature, film, culture.

Wiley-Blackwell.