Introduction to
Literary Criticism
ENG4U
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Says…
• Criticism: the art of evaluation or analyzing
works of art or literature; also: writings
expressing such evaluation or analysis
<an anthology of literary criticism>
• Critical Thinking: exercising or involving
careful judgment or judicious evaluation
What is literary criticism?
Perspectives
• “A very basic way of thinking about literary
theory is that these ideas act as different
lenses critics use to view and talk about
art, literature, and even culture. These
different lenses allow critics to consider
works of art based on certain
assumptions within that school of theory.
The different lenses also allow critics to
focus on particular aspects of a work
they consider important.”
(Purdue Online Writing Lab, 2010)
Why literary criticism?
• Shirley Staton (1987) states that contemporary
theory “holds that there is no such thing as an
innocent, value-free reading. Instead, each of
us has a viewpoint invested with presuppositions
about “reality” and about ourselves, whether we
are conscious of it or not. People who deny
having a critical stance, who claim they are
responding “naturally” or being completely
“objective” do not know themselves”.
(Appleman 8)
Why literary criticism?
• Need to read texts with an eye on the ideology
that is inscribed in those texts
• Helps us to develop a more complex way of
thinking
• Allows us to recognize our own reactions by
providing the contexts we need to understand
them
• Provides interpretive tools we need to recognize
and “read” cultural forces
• Reminds us that we do not live in isolation, nor
do we read and interpret in isolation
(Appleman 8-9)
Timeline (most of these overlap)
• Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BCpresent)
• Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)
• Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism
(1930s-present)
• Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism (1930spresent)
• Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
• Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
• Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
• New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
• Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)
• Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
• Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)
(Adapted from Purdue Online Writing Lab, 2010)
Some types of criticism we will
study:
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Reader-response
Archetypal
Formalist
Biographical
Historical
• Social
class/Marxist
• Psychological/
psychoanalytical
• Feminist
• Postcolonial
Reader-Response
• Focuses on the activity of reading a work of
literature
• Turns away from traditional idea that a literary
work is an artifact with meaning built into it;
instead, attention is on the responses of
individual readers
• Meaning of a text is constructed by readers as
they bring their own thoughts, moods and
experiences to whatever text they are reading.
(Appleman 141)
Archetypal
• In literary criticism, archetype signifies a recognizable
pattern or model.
• Can be used to describe story designs, character
types or images found in a wide variety of works of
literature.
• Can be applied to myths, dreams, social rituals
• Archetypal similarities between texts and behaviours
are thought to reflect universal or primitive ways of
seeing the world.
• E.g. themes: heroic journey, search for a father figure;
images: heaven/hell, river as sign of life or movement,
mountains as places of enlightenment; characters:
rebel-hero, scapegoat, villain, goddess. (Appleman
141-142)
Formalist
• Two related meanings
• Form- a structure’s shape that we can recognize and
therefore, make associations
• Set of conventions or accepted practices (e.g. formal poetry
has meter, rhyme, stanzas and other predictable features
shared with poems of the same type)
• Pays attention to these issues of form and
convention
• Methods used are those pertaining to close
reading, i.e. detailed and subtle analysis of the
formal components, meanings and interactions
of words, figures of speech and symbols.
(Appleman
142)
Biographical
• As authors tend to write what they know, events
and circumstances of their lives tend to be
reflected in the literary works they create
• Using a biographical lens may be “helpful and
dangerous”.
• Can provide insight into themes, historical
references, social oppositions or movements
and the creation of fictional characters.
• Not safe to assume that biographical details
from an author’s life can be transferred to a story
or character; some biographical details may be
completely irrelevant to the interpretation of that
writer’s work. (Appleman 142-143)
Historical
• Viewing a literary text in its historical context
• Specific historical information is key: information
about the time in which an author wrote or about
the time in which the text is set, about ways in
which people of the period saw and thought
about the world in which they lived
• Refers to the social, political, economic, cultural
and intellectual climate of the time
(Appleman 143)
Social Class/Marxist
• Human history, institutions and ways of thinking are
determined by the ways our societies are organized
• Two primary factors shape our schemes of organization:
economic power and social-class membership
• “Reveal ways our socio-economic system is ultimate
source of our experience “ (Purdue Online Writing Lab,
2010)
• Class determines our degree of economic, political and
social advantage; thus, classes invariably conflict with
one another
• Membership in a social class impacts our beliefs, values,
perceptions and ways of thinking and feeling
• This perspective helps us understand how
people from different social classes
understand the same circumstances in very
different ways (Appleman 143)
Psychological/Psychoanalytical
• Sigmund Freud
• Began his work in 1880’s
• 3 areas of the mind: id (“location of the drives” or libido),
ego (one of the major defenses against the power of the
drives), superego (area of unconscious that houses
judgment)
• Defenses: selective perception, selective memory,
denial, displacement, projection, regression,
fear of intimacy, fear of death, etc.
• Oedipus complex- anxiety vs. frustrated rage
• Which concepts are operating in the text in such a way
as to enrich our understanding of the work and to yield a
meaningful, coherent psychoanalytic interpretation?
(Purdue Online Writing Lab, 2010)
Psychological/Psychoanalytical
Continued
• Carl Jung (one of Freud’s students)
• Jungian criticism attempts to explore the connection
between literature and what Jung called “the collective
unconscious” … racial memory, through which the spirit
of the human species manifests itself
• Assumes that all stories and symbols are based on
mythic models from mankind’s past
• A Jungian critic looks for archetypes in creative works,
e.g. the Persona, the Shadow, the Anima (feminine side
of the male Self), the Animus (masculine side of the
female Self), and the Spirit
(Purdue Online Writing Lab, 2010)
Feminist
• As gender is a way of viewing the world, people of different
genders see things differently.
• “...this critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit
misogyny in male writing about women“ (Purdue Online
Writing Lab, 2010)
• A feminist critic might see cultural and economic disparities as
the products of a “patriarchal” society, shaped and dominated
by men, which has prevented womyn from realizing creative
possibilities, including womyn’s cultural identification as
merely a passive object.
• Societies often tend to see the male perspective as the
default one; as a result, womyn are seen as the “Other”, the
deviation or the contrasting type
• We examine patterns of thought, behaviour, value and power
in interactions between the genders. (Appleman 143, 145)
• Gender vs. sex; cultural constructs
Feminist continued…
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Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there
exist some areas of commonality. This list is excerpted from Tyson:
1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially,
and psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which
they are kept so
2. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is
marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values
3. All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply rooted in patriarchal
ideology, for example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and
death in the world
4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines
our gender (masculine or feminine)
5. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as
its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality
6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and
experience, including the production and experience of literature, whether
we are consciously aware of these issues or not (91).
(Purdue Online Writing Lab, 2010)
Feminist continued…
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Feminist criticism has followed the three waves of feminism:
First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary
Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the
inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria
Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads to
women’s right to vote in 1920.
Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal
working conditions necessary in USA during WWII and movements advocating
feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le deuxième sexe,
1972) and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination
of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement
Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived
essentialist (over-generalized, over-simplified) ideologies and a white,
heterosexual, middle class focus of second wave feminism, third wave
feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender and race
theories to expand on marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like Alice
Walker work to "...reconcile [feminism] with the concerns of the black
community...and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the
valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform" (Tyson
97).
(Purdue Online Writing Lab, 2010)
Post-colonial
• Colonialism is a powerful, often destructive historical
force that shapes not only the political futures of the
countries involved but also the identities of colonized and
colonizing people.
• Successful colonizing depends on a process of “Othering” the people colonized, who are seen as dramatically
different from and lesser than the colonizers.
• Literature written in colonizing cultures often distorts the
experiences and realities of colonized people; literature
written by colonized people often includes attempts to
articulate more empowered identities and reclaim
cultures in the face of colonization. (Appleman 151)
• Term is typically used inclusively, reflective of
immigration/emigration experiences as well
Helpful Links
• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource
/722/01/
• http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary
/headerindex.html
• http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/our
ConceptCT.cfm
• http://www.religiousworlds.com/fondarosa/j
ung03.html
Works Cited
• Appleman, Deborah. Critical Encounters in High
School English: Teaching Literary Theory to
Adolescents, Second Edition. New York:
Teachers College, Columbia University, 2009.
Text.
• Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. “Critical”.
Springfield: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2010. Web.
• Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. “Criticism”.
Springfield: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2010. Web.
• Purdue Online Writing Lab. “Literary Theory and
Schools of Criticism”. USA: The Writing Lab,
Purdue University, 2010. Web.