The Quickest Look at Lit Crit You'll Ever Get:
The Example of "The Scarlet Letter"
N.B.: The examples below are only that – examples. A prominent literary critic
has been designated to “model” the arguments of the various schools or
approaches. These critics have traditionally professed these approaches.
However, most, but not all, of these critics have written on The Scarlet Letter.
Historical Criticism:
classifies literature by period and movement
Hyatt Waggoner: "The Scarlet Letter" is the locus classicus of American
romanticism and shows the clear influence of British romanticism on its
subject and theme.
Biographical Criticism:
tries to understand literature by its author's intentions and audience, often
emphasizing methods of composition and sources.
Randall Stewart: References in "The Custom-House" to NH's aesthetics
exist because NH intended "The Scarlet Letter" to be part of a longer
single volume that would contain other tales and sketches.
New Criticism/Formalism:
The author's personal experience and the historical context of a work does not
affect its interpretation; the text is a "verbal icon."
F.O. Matthiessen:
Leland Schubert:
overall pattern
the symmetrical design of the scaffold scenes
motifs of repeated images (colors, words) contribute to
Richard Harter Fogle: emotional and spiritual states of the characters
shown by interconnected imagery of lightness and darkness
Hybrid New Criticism:
Combines a formalist approach to structure with a use of literary history and
author biography
Darrel Abel: Pearl is the Wordsworthian child of nature
Roy Male: the novel is a classic tragedy in the manner of "Oedipus Rex"
Several other schools combine a formalist approach with more specialized
approaches through another discipline.
psychoanalytical
Frederick Crews: In scourging himself, Dimmesdale reindulges
libidinous desire in a disguised and twisted form
The rise of such schools as the psychoanalytical began to suggest that
literature represented and anticipated themes or ideas so fundamental to
human experience that they may find expression in a variety of times,
places, forms. They contain "universal themes."
phenomenological
Harry Levin: Puritanism stands for all the world's religions, which
posit a dichotomy between darkness and light, the darkness providing
unity because it exemplifies an ancient mythology of blackness.
mythological
William Bysshe Stein:
the scholar-alchemist
archetypal
Northrop Frye:
Fall.
Chillingsworth is a latter-day Faust figure,
who learns forbidden knowledge
"The Scarlet Letter" is a version of the myth of the
Structuralism and Post-Structuralism:
Literature is a form of language, or it functions like language and has no
inherent "meaning" beyond its linguistic system (semiotics) or the system of
signs that make up the page
deconstruction:
J. Hollis Miller: The language of "The Scarlet Letter" subverts
itself. It asserts then undercuts its assertions; NH presents
himself in "The Custom House" as "editor" and "imaginative artist,"
a recorder of "facts" that are "of [his] own invention"
reader/response criticism
Stanley Fish: "The Scarlet Letter" exists only so long as there is
a reader actively involved with its text: it dramatizes the act of
interpretation. When the comet passes over the scaffold, the
reader's inability to tell what it suggests is part of the line's
meaning, even though it takes place in the mind, not on the page.
Feminist Criticism
Literature must be viewed through a new "interpretive community," one informed
by female psychology and female values.
Shari Benstock: Hester effectively subverts the patriarchal Puritan
society that reduces her to a letter by both flaunting it and artfully
altering it into unintended meanings, eventually gaining authority over
her own identity.
The New Historicism:
act of interpreting literature as well as the text being interpreted can
be situated historically
Larry J. Reynolds: "The Scarlet Letter" is a 19th-century American
cultural artifact that contains among its many subtexts a warning against
the fruitless dangers of European-style radicalism, epitomized by the
revolutions of 1848/49