Literary Analysis
Ms. Bailey
English 12
• Literary theories are like
different lenses on a camera.
• Your job is to choose a lens,
then picture your novel
through it.
Literary Theory 1:
Deconstruction
• Language is not stable; we can never exactly say
what we mean. Literature cannot give a reader
any one single meaning, language is too ambiguous.
Literature cannot provide any outside meaning;
texts cannot represent reality. A
deconstructionist critic will emphasize the
ambiguities of the language and the variety of
meanings and possible readings of a text.
Example Questions for
Analyzing a Text Through
Deconstruction
• What oppositional pairs are found in the
novel? What happens if we reverse them?
• Is it possible that the author doesn’t
want us to believe _____’s story?
• What is left unsaid?
• What tensions/oppositions are in the
story?
Example Text
• Beowulf
• Grendel vs. Beowulf
Literary Theory 2:
Feminist Criticism
• Tries to correct predominantly maledominated critical perspective with a
feminist consciousness; places literature in
a social context. Feminist theories also
attempt to understand representation
from a woman’s point of view (and roles of
women) and analyze women’s writing
strategies in the context of their social
conditions.
Example Questions for
Feminist Criticism
• How are males and females presented in the
novel?
• How does the novel portray men and the effects
they have on the women’s lives? What types of
relationships do they have?
• How do boys and girls perceive the males and
females in the novel? Stereotypes?
• What if _______ was male (or female)?
• Does it matter that the author is a man (or
woman)?
Example Text
• Macbeth
• Cinderella
Literary Theory 3:
Marxist Criticism
• Deriving from the theories of Karl Marx,
Marxist critics insist that all use of
language is influenced by social class and
economics; all language makes ideological
statements about things like class,
economics, race, and power; the function
of literary output is to either support or
criticize the political and economic
structures in place.
Example Questions for
Marxist Criticism
• Who has the power in this story? The
money? Who does not?
• What happens to those with/without
power/money?
• What gives characters power?
Example Text
• Animal Farm
• Hunger Games
Literary Theory 4:
Critical Race
• This is a framework that can be used to
theorize, examine, and challenge the ways
race and racism implicitly and explicitly
impact on social structures, practices, and
discourses. Three tenets: counterstorytelling; property ownership in the US
and the privileging of Whites as a racial
group; the continued manifestation of
racism in contemporary society.
Example Questions for
Critical Race Theory
• How are different racial groups portrayed
in the story?
• Whose values are being presented?
Promoted?
• Whose interests are being served in the
story?
• Who is presented as “normal”? Who isn’t?
Why?
• Who gets to tell their story?
Example Text
• To Kill A Mockingbird
• The Help
Literary Theory 5:
New Historicism
• Focuses on the text as part of a larger
social and historical context and the
reader’s interaction with that work.
Attempts to describe the culture of a
period by paying attention to many
dimensions of a culture (political, social,
economic, aesthetic, etc); texts are not
simply a reflection of the culture that
produced them, but also as productive
New Historicism Cont.
• …of that culture by playing an active role in
the social and political conflicts of an age;
acknowledges and explores various versions
of “history;” the history on which we
choose to focus is colored by our present
perspective.
Example Questions for
New Historicism
• What view of history is proposed?
• What was going on during the time period
this novel was written?
• What view of history is proposed? How is
it presented?
• Why did the author choose to tell the
story this way?
Example Text for New
Historicism
• The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Literary Theory 6:
Border (Culture) Studies
• The dialogue and exchange among groups
of people from different ethnic, racial,
and cultural backgrounds; “multiple
acculturation,” the incorporation of
different heritages into the identity
development process; studies the
intersection of cultures and the resulting
Border Studies Cont.
• …effects; Four tenets: both feet in two
groups; shifting of foreground and
background identities to cross borders
defined by race and ethnicity; new or
revised identities by sitting on a border;
camping in one cultural group for an
extended period of time (root)
Example Questions for
Border Studies
• How do cultural influences effect the
story?
• Do we have any resistance to reading this
text?
• What do we share in common with the
characters?
Example Texts
• The Merchant of Venice
• Coming to America
• Talladega Nights
Literary Theory 7:
Black Feminist
• A process of inquiry by which scholars and
critics read, analyze, and theorize about
literary works by black women writers and
texts in general, regardless of the race,
ethnicity, or gender of the author; a way
to critique and challenge notions of
womanhood, whiteness, blackness, and
“Americanness”; posing questions about
race and gender issues
Example Questions for
Black Feminist Theory
• How do marginalized characters: (1)
redefine, revise, reverse, and resist
stereotypes, beauty standards, notions of
motherhood, womanhood, and education (2)
exercise subjectivity and voice by telling
their own stories (3) recognize the
intersectionality of race, class, and
gender, as marginalized people are often
multiply oppressed (4) find strength in
Questions Cont.
• Community, sisterhood, and brotherhood
through an understanding of the
importance of relationships (5) advocate
social action and political intent in an
effort to improve social conditions
Example Texts
• A Raisin in the Sun
• To Kill A Mockingbird
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
Literary Theory 8:
Reader Response
• 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 reading, not a
“correct” interpretation or what the
author intended; the reader’s individual
experience with the text. There is no
single definitive reading of a text; this
Reader Response Cont.
• …approach is not a rationale for bizarre
meanings or mistaken ones; calls attention
to how we read and what influences our
readings, and what that reveals about
ourselves
Example Questions for
Reader Response
• What personal experiences does this text
remind you of?
• What aspects of the story gave you a
chance to reflect?
• What connections did you find yourself
making with other stories you know?
• Can you make connections to bigger issues
in school, the community, or the world?
Literary Theory 9:
Rhetorical Studies
• Studies why a work affects us the way it
does and takes into account the role of
the reader and the positioning of the
reader relative to the author’s
manipulations of the text
Example Questions for
Rhetorical Studies
• Is the narrator reliable?
• Who is doing the telling? Is he/she
believable?
• What is emphasized in the text?
• Are there clues as to what is more
important in a text?
• What are the values of the narrator? The
author?
Example Text
• Grendel
• “Porphyria’s Lover”
• “My Last Duchess”