A Handbook of Critical
Approaches to Literature
6th Edition
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The Precritical Response
 Deals
with the senses and the emotions of the
“common reader”
 Focuses on initial responses not on technical
skills of criticism
 May be characterized as the fuel that sparks
the critical response
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Chapter 1
“Literature” not taught in universities until 19th
century
 Does literary criticism “ruin” the fun of reading?
 *Yes: Sontag, Fieldler: erotics and estatics *No:
Morse, Berthoff, Touster, Ciardi, Eagleton
 Defense of beauty: Steiner, Scarry
 Las Meniñas by Velázquez and Picasso versions
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Chapter 1
I. Setting
A. Precritical responses to films and paintings
parallel precritical responses to literature
B. How do the very different settings of our six
works compare and contrast?
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Chapter 1
II. Plot
A. Conflict between protagonist and antagonist
B. Freytag’s pyramid
1. exposition
2. rising action
3. climax
4. falling action
5. dénouement
C. Reading Las Meniñas by Velázquez (1656)
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Chapter 1
III. Character
A. Analyzing characters’ values and motivations
B. Role of ambiguity in characters
IV. Structure
A. Long, complex structures versus poems
B. Classical tragedy
C. Ambivalent structures such as Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn and “Young Goodman Brown”
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Chapter 1
V. Style
A. Realism versus stylization
B. Diction: high or low? “Young Goodman
Brown” versus “Everyday Use” or Frankenstein
C. Dialect: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
D. Blank verse and soliloquies of Hamlet
E. Technical matters: versification, prose style,
rhyme and rhythm, allusion
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Chapter 1
VI. Atmosphere
A. “To His Coy Mistress”: politeness, romance,
courtly love, wit, but also philosophy, sexuality,
and obsession with death and violence
B. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: diction, character,
costume, racist expressions, slavery
C. Frankenstein: Eerie atmosphere appropriate to
horror fiction: Alpine wastes, castles with
mysterious laboratories, thunder and lightning,
dark rural hovels
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Atmosphere, con’t.
D. Hamlet: Atmosphere of foreboding in opening
scenes
E. “Young Goodman Brown”: Melodrama of
witches’ Sabbath; New England forest and
Puritan gloom
F. “Everyday Use”: tension between rural and city
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Chapter 1
VII. Theme
A. Should discuss theme only after assessing
other narrative elements
B. Themes can be simple or complex, and can
be felt or thought; less likely to be part of a
precritical response
C. There is never a single theme to “explain” a
work
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“To His Coy Mistress”
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
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An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
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The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
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