Lesson 2 - Uses appropriate

critical approaches in
writing a critique
Activity 1 - Give your own reaction or comment about
the pictures. Write at least three sentences for every
picture.
Critical Approaches are different perspectives
considered when looking at the piece of
literature.
They seek to give us answers to these
questions, in addition to aiding us in
interpreting literature.
1. What do we read?
2. Why do we read?
3. How do we read?
Types Critical Approaches used in
Literature
1. Formalist Criticism emphasizes the form of a
literary work to determine its meaning, focusing on
literary elements and how they work to create
meaning.
• Examine a text as independent from its time period,
social setting and author’s background. A text is an
independent entity.
• Focuses on close reading texts and analysis of the
effects of literary elements and techniques on the
text.
 Two Major Principles of Formalism
1.A literary text exists independent of any
particular reader and, in sense, has a fixed
meaning.
2. The greatest literary text are “timeless”
and “universal”
 Common aspects looked into in formalism:
• The name of the author is not important
• The time in which the author lived is not important
• The political belief of the author is not important
• The actual reader is not important
• The key understanding of a text is through a text itself
• Author’s techniques in resolving contradictions within
the work.
• Relationship of the form and the content
• Unity in the work
2. Feminist Criticism is concerned with the
role, position,
and influence of a women in literary text.
• Asserts the most “literature” throughout time
has been written by men, for men.
• Examines the way that the female
consciousness is depicted by both male and
female writers.
 Common aspects looked into in feminism:
• How culture determines gender.
• How gender equality is presented in the text
• How gender issues are presented in literary
works.
• How women are socially, politically,
psychologically and economically oppressed
by patriarchy.
3. Reader-Response Criticism asserts that a great deal of
meaning in a text lies with how the reader responds to it.
* Focuses on the act of reading and how it affects our
perception of meaning in the text. (how we feel at the
beginning vs. the end)
* Deals more with the process of creating meaning and
experiencing a text as we read. A text is an experience,
not an object
* The text is a living thing that lives in the reader’s
imagination.
 Two important ideas in Reader-
Response
1.An individual reader’s interpretation
usually changes over time.
2. Readers from different generations
and different time periods interpret
tests differently.
4. Deconstraction 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.
• Explains that 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.
• Deconstructionist critic will deliberately emphasize the
ambiguities of the language that produce a variety of
meanings and possible readings of a text.
5. Psychological Criticism views a text as
revelation of its author’s mind and personality.
It is based on the work of Sigmund Freud.
• Focuses on the hidden motivation of literary
characters.
• Looks at literary characters as a reflection of
the writer.
Activity 2 - Think of a social phenomenon or current
event that you deeply care about. Research about it
in newspaper and online sources. If you cannot think
of any topic or current event, you may choose one of
the following:
⮚ a recent calamity
⮚ the COVID19
⮚ a devastating flood
⮚ the Bagong Bayani or OFW
Write a reaction paper about that event.
Make sure that you do the following when writing the
reaction paper.
1. Get readers interest in the event
2. Summarize the event
3. Try to look at the event from different angles
4. Use words for effect, whether this is to emphasize what
you want to say or to be ironic about inconsistencies you
notice
5. Come up with original insights about the event.