LITERATURE, LITERARY

THEORY, LITERARY CRITICISM

Justin Niccolo M. Cabato
 CULLER ON LITERARY THEORY
 Theory is not a set of definitive answers, but a way of asking questions and
challenging common sense assumptions.
That language is a transparent medium that conveys the truth or reality of things.
That human behavior is governed by innate and universal traits or instincts.
That research can be easily translated into practice without considering the context
and barriers that affect implementation.
 Theory is not a specialized discourse, but a general reflection on language,
culture, and human experience.
 Theory is what allows for variations and possibilities of interpretation and
meaning.
 ORIENTATION OF CRITICAL
THEORIES
 “Theory” as genre
 paradigms and methods that
can be deployed to guide the
reading of literature
Body of concepts and ideas that
orient our approach to the texts
Various perspectives from which
to regard certain texts
• “Criticism”- application of theory in
the analysis of particular texts
GENERAL ORIENTATION OF CRITICAL
THEORIES
• Mimetic- art/text as representation of the
world/universe, emphasis on “universal truths”
• Pragmatic- emphasize reader’s relation to the
world, literature’s effects on the audience
(aesthetic pleasure, instruction, “use”)
• Expressive- emphasis on relationship between
the work and the author/artist, art as product
of author’s feelings
• Objective- focus is on the text itself, its
“mechanical features and manner of” creation
 5 BASIC QUESTIONS IN LITERARY THEORY
 Question on specificity of literary text (intrinsic
study of formal elements)
 Question on the relationship between the literary
REALITY
text , authorial intention and positionality (e.g,
class, gender, racial/ethnic position)
AUTHOR TEXT READER
 Questions on the role reader plays in interpretation
 Questions that seek to establish connections
LANGUAGE/
between the text and context (psychological,
SIGNIFYING social, philosophical realities outside literature
PRACTICE
 Question that the role of language/signifying
practices in the literary production (Is language
simply a matter of style, or does it constitute the
ground of meaning?)
All readings are valid, but some readings are
more valid than others.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND READER
RESPONSE THEORY
 BIOGRAPHICAL OR HISTORICAL
CRITICISM
 Dominant framework for literary interpretation prior to the rise of
the New Critics (up until the 19th and early 20th century)
 Operates on the premise that the text and author cannot truly be
separated
 The life, milieu, and historical context of the author are seen as
being inextricably linked to the interpretation and “correct”
analysis of the text
 Not linked to a particular literary philosophy- it is merely an
approach.
 BIOGRAPHICAL OR HISTORICIST
INQUIRIES
 What verifiable aspects of the author’s biography show up in his
or her work?
 Do places where the author grew up appear in his or her work?
 How does the author weave aspects of his or her familial life into
the world of the literary text? Does the author address
relationships with parents, siblings, or significant others? If so,
how do these relationships create meaning in the text?
 What distinguishes the author from his or her persona in the
text? Is there a distinction? How can you tell?
DEMONSTRATIVE EXAMPLE:
HOWARD PHILIPS “H.P ”LOVECRAFT
• Born in Providence, Rhode Island, to a formerly
wealthy aristocratic family from the UK that
moved to New England in the United States
• Lost his father, who was institutionalized due to
Syphilitic madness
• Impoverished, reclusive, and deeply phobic of:
• The Sea and Creatures within it, Minorities
and Immigrants, “Tainted” Blood, the terrible
potential of the Sciences
SOCIOHISTORICAL CONTEXT

 Post WWI
 Scientific Rationalism
 The Roaring Twenties
COMMON ELEMENTS IN
LOVECRAFTIAN WORKS
 Setting (almost always set
somewhere in America, but
particularly in New England,
Lovecraft’s Hometown)
 Protagonists are almost always
aging academics, scientists,
nobles, or men of letters
 The protagonist’s encounter with
a terrible truth or revelation drives
them mad (or nearly mad)
 “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a
placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity,
and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences,
each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us
little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated
knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of
our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad
from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and
safety of a new dark age.”

-H.P Lovecraft
COMMON THEMES IN
LOVECRAFTIAN WORKS
 Cosmicism: A literary philosophy which states
that "there is no recognizable divine presence,
such as a god, in the universe, and that humans
are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme
of intergalactic existence.“
 Stories often center around aristocratic, blue-
blooded academics encountering creatures and
horrors beyond comprehension, usually through
some form of Weird Science
 Monsters/Antagonists are not evil, they are
indifferent
 HOW TO CONDUCT BIOGRAPHICAL
CRITICISM
1. Examine the author’s life.
2. Note down/create a timeline of major historical
events and possible pieces of biographical
information that will help inform your analysis.
3. Identify a theme in the works/body of works,
something that might point to “clues” from a given
time period.
4. Ask what conclusions can be drawn from this.
 READER RESPONSE
CRITICISM
(Or Specifically, Stanley Fish’s notion of Interpretive
Communities)
 READER RESPONSE CRITICISM

 Focuses, as the name implies, on the Reader’s response to the literary text.
 Emphasizes our own reading processes, and how they relate to, among
other things, specific specific elements in the texts we read, our life
experiences, and the intellectual community of which we are a member.
 Beliefs shared by most Reader Response Theorists:
 The role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of
literature
 Readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by
an objective literary text, rather, they actively create the meaning they
find in literature.
TEST DRIVE: READER RESPONSE (P.43)

Jacobs–Rosenbaum
Levin
Thorne
Hayes
Ohman (?)
Most recurring
letters in the
poem are S, O,
and N.
THE TRUTH
Names listed were random sociologists and
linguists
Fish experimented- if he presented a list of
names as if it was a poem, would that affect
the way it was read?
THE TRUTH
 A written text is not an object, despite its physical existence, but an event
that occurs within the reader whose response is of PRIMARY
IMPORTANCE in creating the text.
 Ex: a poem about bulldogs
 Reading Types
 Efferent (reading for information)
 Aesthetic (reading while trying to connect to the text)
 Text Types:
 Stimulus (to which the reader responds)
 Blueprint (we can use to correct an interpretation that has wandered too
far)
 ON “ALL INTERPRETATIONS ARE
VALID”
 Different readers come up with a range of acceptable
interpretations because the text allows for a range of
acceptable meanings, that is, a range of meanings for
which textual support is available.
 Because there is a real text involved in this process to
which we must refer to justify or modify our responses, not
all readings are acceptable, and some more so than others.
READER + TEXT = MEANING
 SOCIAL READER-RESPONSE THEORY
 Pioneered by
Stanley Fish
 Interpretive
Communities
 Is your
response to
the text purely
your own?
 EMPLOYING READER RESPONSE
THEORY
 How does the interaction of the text and reader create
meaning? How exactly does the text lead us to correct our
interpretation as we read?
 What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary
text or a key portion of a longer text, tell us about the
reading experience prestructure by (or built into) that text?
 How might we interpret a literary text to show that the
reader’s response is, or is analogous to, the topic of the
story?
 EMPLOYING READER RESPONSE
THEORY
 Drawing on a broad spectrum of thoroughly
documented biographical data, what seems to be a
given author’s identity theme, and how does that theme
express itself in the sum of his or her literary output?
 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?
 REQUIREMENT REMINDERS
 Group Forum on Historical and Biographical Approach
 Paper 1: Analyze the text The Summer Solstice by Nick
Joaquin. Copies will be provided in the VLE.
 Try using a combination of the Historical, Biographical,
and Reader Response approaches in writing your
critique/analysis of the poem. You will need to do a bit of
research for this, but keep in mind to carefully select the
details from historical or biographical research that you
can bring in to support your analysis.