Tuesday January
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th
24
LEQ: How can one text be interpreted by the
reader in multiple ways?
Journal: Think of something you’ve read, heard,
or seen outside of class that particularly struck
you as worth thinking about, perhaps a
billboard, commercial, newspaper article, movie,
etc. What did it make you think about? Was it
shocking, entertaining, odd, etc?
Introduction to
Literary Criticism
English vs. Other Subjects
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Math is concrete.
History is verifiable.
Science is testable.
English is . . .
the encounter with problems that don’t have agreed upon
solutions.
never-ending, reasoned argument.
debate, discussion, and thousands of viewpoints.
Literary Criticism/Theory
Literary Criticism: The interpretation /
explanation of a text.
 Literary Theory: The examination of the
interpretation / explanation and the ideologies
that created them.
 Understand HOW people arrive at different
conclusions.
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Why Study?
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Changes the way you look at literature.
No longer is your interpretation the most
important thing.
What you think is almost irrelevant – we
want to analyze WHY you think it.
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Look at the reasons for your interpretation and
how someone else could be interpret it.
Why Else?
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After high school, the world will judge you on
your ability to think critically.
Literary theory helps develop this ability.
By opening your eyes, you open your mind.
You don’t even know what you’re looking at
until you’ve tried on different lenses.
Literary Theory
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No single theory is necessarily correct or true
above any other
Critical approaches usually derive from personal
discretion or applicability
Some approaches naturally lend themselves to
particular works
It would be tough to talk about Tim O’Brien’s
The Things They Carried without understanding
the historical context.
Basic Techniques
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Reading “with the grain”
Reading “against the grain”
Basic Lenses
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We’ll cover these literary theories:
Formalist
 Biographical
 Cultural Historical
 Feminist
 Marxist
 Psychoanalytic/Freudian
 Mythological
 There are many more for you to explore.
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Formalist
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Sees the reader as essential to the interpretation of
a work.
Each reader is unique, with different educations,
experiences, moral values, opinions, tastes, etc.
 Therefore, each reader’s interaction with a work is
unique.
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Analyzes the features of the text that shape and
guide a reader’s reading.
Emphasizes recursive reading—rereading for new
interpretations.
Formalist
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Overly impressionistic and guilty of the affective
fallacy (too focused on the emotional effect of
the work).
Not “intellectual.”
Now called reception theory.
Formalist
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Reception theory is applied to the general
reading public rather than an individual reader.
Each generation has different experiences,
values, issues, etc.
Each generation will read a work differently.
art for art's sake," "content = form," and "texts
exist in and for themselves."
Biographical Criticism
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Analyzes an author’s life in regard to their work
Can enhance the understanding of a work
Author’s experience SHAPES the creation of
the work
Must be used carefully
Feminist Criticism
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Grew out of the women’s movement that followed
World War II.
Analyze the role of gender in works of literature.
Recover neglected works by women authors through
the ages and creating a canon of women’s writing.
World is saturated with “male-produced” assumptions
Seek to correct imbalance by battling patriarchal
attitudes
Marxist Criticism
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Based on the social and economic theories of Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels. Their beliefs include the
following:
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Value is based on labor.
The working class will eventually overthrow the capitalist
middle class.
In the meantime, the middle class exploits the working class.
Most institutions—religious, legal, educational, and
governmental—are corrupted by middle-class capitalists.
Marxist Criticism
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Apply these economic and social theories to
literature by analyzing:
Ideologies that support the elite and place the
working class at a disadvantage
 Class conflict
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Marxism strongly influenced fiction, particularly
American fiction, in the 1930s.
Marxist Criticism
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Literary work cannot be separated from the social
context in which it was created.
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Social status of author
Social content of a work (values presented)
Role of audience in shaping literature
Examines one of these two aspects:
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Conditions of production, such as schools, magazines,
publishers, and fashions.
Applicability of a given work—fiction especially—in studying
the dynamics of a given society.
Cultural Historical
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View literature as part of history, and as an
expression of forces on history.
Compares literary analysis to a dynamic circle:
The work tells us something about the surrounding
ideology (slavery, rights of women, etc.)
 Study of the ideology tells us something about the
work.
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Cultural Historical
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Takes two forms:
Analysis of the work in the context in which it was
created
 Analysis of the work in the context in which it was
critically evaluated.
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Literature does not exist outside time and place
and cannot be interpreted without reference to
the era in which it was written.
Psychoanalytic
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Analyzes literature to reveal insights about the
way the human mind works.
Based on the work of Sigmund Freud and his
disciples.
Works well as a method of analyzing characters’
actions and motivations, the artist’s motivations,
and/or the effect of the reading on the reader.
Basic Freudian Concepts
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All actions are influenced by the unconscious.
Human beings must repress many of their
desires to live peacefully with others.
Repressed desires often surface in the
unconscious, motivating actions.
Basic Freudian Concepts
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The mind has three major areas of activity:
Id: Area in the unconscious that works for
gratification through the pleasure principle
 Superego: An internal censor bringing social
pressures to bear on the id.
 Ego: Area in the consciousness that mediates among
demands of social pressure, the id, and the superego.
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Mythological Criticism
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Analyzes what in a work evokes a similar response in
people, regardless of culture
Concerned with enduring patterns and how they are
reflected in literature
THE ARCHETYPE
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A symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep
universal response
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“collective unconscious”
Set of primal memories common to the human race (existing below
conscious mind)
Archetypal images (like sun, moon, fire, night, blood) trigger the
“c.u.”
Sample Archetypes
Common Themes:
 Stories of quest and
initiation
 Descents into the
underworld
 Ascents into heaven
 Search for
father/mother
 Fall from innocence
Characters:
 Scapegoat
 Hero/Villain
 Outcast
 Temptress
 Mother/Father
 Mentor
Sample Student Analyses
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http://www.teachingliterature.org/teachinglitera
ture/chapter10/Chapter10Deblinks.pdf