Literary Criticism
A Brief Guide to Major Branches
What is Literary Criticism?
• The study of literary works through various
theoretical “lenses.” (The Branches)
• Every work of literature can be analyzed in a
different way by each reader/critic.
• Not every branch applies to every work.
Genre Criticism
• Argues how a work conforms to, and rejects,
the guidelines of a particular genre.
• Best applied to a work that is not clearly in
one genre.
– Example- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has
been recommended for and also banned from
schools and can be argued to be a realist novel or
a romantic novel.
Author Criticism
• Analyzes a work of literature according to the
author’s life experience.
• This lens looks to see what happened to an
author that influenced him/her to write the
work as a whole, major elements of it
including tone and style.
– Ex. Herman Melville's experience as a whaler led
to his writing of Moby Dick and the character of
Capt. Ahab.
(New) Historicism
• This approach asks critics to examine the era
in which a work was written to see what
elements influenced its creation.
• Elements from the time period are referred to
as Historical Context. This could include other
novels, artwork, music, poetry, philosophy and
political events.
– Example- The industrial revolution was exploding
when Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly wrote
Frankenstein.
Marxist Criticism
• Named for social philosopher Karl Marx who
examined class relationships and peoples’
relationship to money and property (capital)
• Critics are to look at the relationship of how
characters start and end up according to capital
and how each class is regarded by the author.
– In The Great Gatsby, the rich characters are unfeeling
to the emotions of the poor and Gatsby dies for the
sin of trying to be wealthy though not born to it.
Psychoanalytical Criticism
• Approach asks readers to look at the
emotional and psychological issues that
characters demonstrate as though they were
real people.
• Diagnoses characters based on “symptoms”
displayed.
– Example-Susie Salmon in The Lovely Bones,
though dead, deals with the psychological effects
of rape in the same way a real victim would.
Gender Criticism
• Examines the role of women in a work of
literature in terms of their actions, treatment
from other characters and outcome.
• The absence of women from various roles, or
altogether, can reveal as much as their
presence at times.
– Example- In most early Disney movies the female
lead was only to be a loyal daughter, cook , clean,
look pretty, and to be rescued and then married.
Gender Criticism (Queer Theory)
• This branch of gender criticism searches for
secret (and often times not so secret)
homosexual or homoerotic themes in
literature.
• Looks at same gendered relationships to see if
there are possibly other interpretations for
their behavior and feelings.
– In the Iliad, were Achilles and Patroclus just really
close friends or something more?
Mythological/Archetype Criticism
• Analyzes characters and stories versus prepestablished archetypes from literature.
• Compares characters, settings, symbols and
even plots to archetypes from human history.
– Piggy from Lord of the Flies fulfills the archetypal
role of outcast in the novel due to his personal
traits and mannerisms. (politeness, weight,
glasses etc.)