LESSON 1: LITERARY CRITICISM

Reader's Response Criticisms

It attempts "to describe what happens in the reader's mind while interpreting a text" and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process.

Biographical Criticisms

Focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the author's life

Historical Criticisms

Investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it- a context that necessarily includes the artist's biography and milieu

Sociological Criticisms

Examines literature in the cultural, political, and economic context in which it is written or received, exploring the relationship between the artist and the society

Marxist Criticisms

Focuses on money, power, control, and social institutions such as the government and the family. these critics are interested on how the lower or working classes are oppressed in everyday life and in literature

Cultural Criticisms

Deals with the investigation of the text's cultural context. This form of criticism examines how different religions, ethnicity, class identifications, political beliefs, and views affect the ways in which text is created and interpreted.

Gender Criticisms

Examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works

Formalism

Particular interest to the critic are the elements of form- style, structure, tone, imagery, etc- that are found within the text. A primary goal for these critics is to determine how such elements work together with the text's content to shape its effects upon reader

Structuralism

The analysis on how a literary text arrives at their meanings rather than the meaning themselves. it has particular interest in choice of words, punctuation marks, italics, capitalization, grammar and others.

Psychological Criticisms

Seeks to analyze the author's unintended message. The author desires to state his emotions, mental feeling, and flow of thoughts through producing characters that would explain his longings or feelings.

Psychological Criticisms

The main goal is to understand how language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears and desires. Furthermore, this approach believes that texts help the readers to process and release their emotions.

Mythological Criticisms

Explores the artist's common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs.

Mythological Criticisms

One key concept in ______________ ____________ is the archetype, "a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response

Literary Criticisms

This is the comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/ or evaluation of literary works

-To enhance the enjoyment of our reading
-To understand what is essential about the text

-To allow us to see the relationship between the authors, readers, and text

Give 3 reasons how literary criticism helps us

-To form general principles for the examination of works of literature

-To analyze, study, and evaluate works of literature

Give 2 functions of literary criticism

Carl Jung

According to______ ______, all individuals share a “collective unconscious” , a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person’s conscious mind

Karl Marx

A 19th-century German philosopher, economist, and political theorist, developed the foundational ideas of Marxism.

Sigmund Freud

The founder of psychoanalysis, significantly influenced psychological criticism.

Freudian Ideas

Explores the psychological motivations of characters, symbols, and themes in literature, seeking to uncover hidden desires, conflicts, and unconscious elements within the text.