APPROACHES IN

LITERARY CRITICISM
1. STRUCTURALIST
 PROPONENTS: Claude Levi-Strauss, Roman Jakobsen Northrop Frye
 Focuses on the underlying “structures” such as characterization, plot and how these
patterns could be used to develop conclusions
 Examples:
1. An apple is crisp, sweet, juicy and round.
2. Describing your experience at the ocean by saying it is windy, salty, cold but
rejuvenating.
2. MORALIST

 PROPONENT: PLATO IN 360 B.C.

 A tendency to judge literary works according to moral rather than formal principles
 Judges work by ethical teachings
 The misguides and the corrupts are condemned
3. MARXIST

 PROPONENT: KARL MARX

 Views a literary work as somethings that mirrors culture, race, class and power.
 Literature is not a result of divine inspiration or pure artistic endeavor but that it arises out
of the economic and circumstances surrounding it.
 A reflection of the author’s own class
4. HISTORICAL

 PROPONENTS: DESIDERIUS ERASMUS AND BENEDICT SPINOZA

 Literary criticism in the light of historical evidence or based on the context in which work
was written, including facts about the author’s life and the historical and social
circumstances of the time
5. FEMINIST

 PROPONENTS: VIRGINIA WOOLF, ELAINE SHOWALTER, HELENE CIXOUS

 Explores the portrayal or condition of women in literature
 Feminist literary critics show that writers of traditional literature have ignored women and
have transmitted misguided and biased views of them
6. READER-RESPONSE

 PROPONENT: LOUISE ROSENBLATT

 Attempts to describe what happens in a reader’s mind while interpreting a text.
 The easiest way to explain this approach is to relate it to the common experience of
rereading a favorite book after many years.