AP Literature Class
Marissa Strenkert
 Literary Theory
 What makes something Literary?
 Deeper meaning
 Historical significance
 Skill/style
 Elicits thought
 Symbolisms
 Famous
 Lasting
 Context
 Society accepted
 Experts
 Author intent
 Personification
 Giving the attributes of a human being to an animal/object/concept
 Ex) Mother Nature, Death, Father Time, Uncle Sam
 Anthropomorphisms
 Human qualities to nonhuman objects
 Foregrounding
 Language (technique) is in the background
 Most writing is for communication of a message
 In Literature:
 technique/artistry is foregrounded
 message may be less important than form
 Integration of Language:
Authors carefully integrate the form of the piece with the meaning of the
piece using sound, shape of words/poems, etc.…
(Moomora)
(Kankara)
*Yes, I am aware that these are pokemon.
 Fictionalization
 Author has authority over text, but the reader interprets the words and builds their
version of the world
 Writer gives up authority over the book when it is read by someone else
 Both reader and writer exercise authority over the text
**The speaker of the poem is never the author of the poem**
 Cooperative Principle of Literature
 Conversation is understood
 Ex) “Do you want to have lunch?” ---“I just ate.”
AP Literature Class
Marissa Strenkert
 Hyper-Protected
 For things labeled as Art or Lit. they are worth it
 Communication Theory of Art
 All pieces are meant to communicate a message (sometimes an emotional
message)
 Opposite of Aestheticism
 Why do some pieces not successfully communicate?
 Artist was bad
 Reader lacks skill or knowledge
 Aestheticism
 Rejects CTA entirely
 “Beauty” is real, universal, and the ultimate goal of art
 “Beauty is truth, truth [is] beauty.”
 Aesthetics bridge the gap between the corporal and the spiritual
 A physical thing can skip your brain (no message, no thought, no meaning)
and touch you with Beauty
 They don’t mean…..they are.
 Intertextuality
 All writing is built on what came before (originality is impossible)
 Authors: a product of their society, history, socioeconomics
 Isaac Newton: building on the ideas of others
 Self-Reflexivity
 All art is, in some sense, an argument about art itself (many works talk about their
own creation)
 Properties vs. Consequences
 Properties
 Art has properties that make it art
 Consequences
 We call something art because we treated it as art and created the properties we
claim it has
 Defamiliarization
 To make the familiar unfamiliar
 Why?  Habitualization
 We become desensitized to life through habit
 We stop thinking and criticizing because of habit
 Context:
 Where you encounter it
 Decontextualize:
 Break/deform an object (toilet in a museum)
 Artist want us to think critically about life
AP Literature Class
Marissa Strenkert

Legitimation:
 Process by which words/phrases/images become habit and are accepted by us
 Various ways:
 Political:
 Official language (enhanced interrogation techniques) (job creators)
 Corporation
 CD, iPod, Kleenex
 Peers
 “swag, tweet, LOL, ratchet, etc…”
 Authority figures
 Societal norms
 Prose Meaning (theme)
 Statement a piece makes about its subject
 Summary and paraphrase (“war is evil”)
 Total Meaning
 The subjective (individual’s own) total experience of a piece
 Reader response criticism
 Meaning (AP)
1. Message communicated (theme, prose meaning)
2. Emotional effect intended
3. Integration of form with message
4. Intertextuality and self-reflexivity
5. Total meaning