Literary Theory/Schools of Criticism Practice

Literary theory

Ideas that act as different lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture.

Do critics commonly only use one school of literary theory to analyze works?

No, many use tools from two or more schools in their work.

Moral Criticism/Dramatic Construction (360 BC-present)

A type of literary critique that judges the value of the literature based on its moral lessons or ethical teachings.

Plato's moral criticism of literature

If art does not teach morality and ethics, it is damaging to its audience.

Aristotle's moral criticism of literature

Principles of dramatic construction: different literary elements influence audience's catharsis or satisfaction with the work. Poetry and drama is a "means to an end".

Formalism/New Criticism/Neo-Aristotelianism (1930s-present)

Maintains that a literary work contains certain intrinsic features, and the theory attempts to treat each work as its own distinct piece, free from its context. They assume that the keys to understand a text exist within the text itself.

Is formalism still used?

Not for the most part; New Critical theories are still used in secondary & college level instruction in literature and writing.

Psychoanalytic Criticism (1930s to present)

A form of criticism that uses the insights of Freudian psychology to illuminate a work.

Three areas of the mind that wrestle for dominance, according to Freud:

Id: location of the drives (libido)

Ego: one of the major defenses against the power of the drives

Superego: the area of the unconscious that houses Judgment

Oedipus Complex

Boys wish to possess their mothers; girls wish to possess their fathers

Jungian Criticism

Explores connection between literature and "collective unconsciousness." Assumes that all stories/symbols are based on mythic models.

Describe terminology associated with Jung's archetypal myths.

Shadow, Anima, Animus, and the Spirit; Great Mother, Lover, destroying Crone; Quest, Night-Sea-Journey

3 multiple choice options

Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)

Concerned with class differences, economic and otherwise; as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system.

What is the "Marxist" cycle of conflict?

Contradiction, tension, and revolution. There will always be tension between the upper, middle, and lower classes.

Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)

Considers readers' reactions to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text. What a text is cannot be separated from what it does.

Two beliefs that reader-response theorists employ:

1) The role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature

2) Readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature.

Structuralism and Semiotics (1920s-present)

Emerges from theories of language and linguistics, and it looks for underlying codes/symbols/elements in culture and literature that can be connected so that critics can develop general conclusions about the individual works and the systems from which they emerge.

Theory of modes/historical criticism

tragic, comic, and thematic

Theory of symbols/ethical criticism

literal/descriptive, formal, mythical, and anagogic

Theory of myths/archetypal criticism

comedy, romance, tragedy, irony/satire

Theory of genres/rhetorical criticism

epos, prose, drama, lyric

Three important ideas given by Peirce & de Saussure about structuralism:

iconic signs, indexes, true symbols

What is semiotics?

Examines the ways non-linguistic objects and behaviors tell us something.

Post Structuralism (1966-present)

Maintains that frameworks and systems are merely fictuous constructs and that they cannot be trusted to develop meaning or to give order. There exists no unified Truth.

Freeplay

Meaning in language is not stable but exists in an unending system of differences and deferrals.

Who was a post-structuralist?

Friedrich Nietzsche

Deconstruction (1966-present)

Popularized by Jacques Derrida, it can identify the in-betweens and the marginalized to begin interstitial knowledge building. Texts have unlimited meanings.

Modernism vs Postmodernism

Modernism is associated with Enlightenment ideas; postmodernism is associated with freeplay & discourse.

2 multiple choice options

New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)

Seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time.

Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)

Looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial hegemony (western colonizers controlling the colonized). Also questions the merit of the first-world literary canon.

Feminist Criticism (1960s to present)

Concerned with the ways in which literature reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppressions of women. This critique strives to expose the explicit and implicit misogyny in male writing about women.

First-wave feminism

late 1700s-early 1900s; suffrage movement, nineteenth amendment. Mary Wollstonecraft, Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Woodhull.

Second-wave feminism

early 60s-late 70s. NOW, Simone de Beauvoir, Elaine Showalter, Civil Rights Movement

Third-wave feminism

early 90s to present. Resisting essentialist ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus. Alice Walker, contemporary gender & race theories.

Gender Studies/Queer Theory (1970s to present)

Explores issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized populations (woman as other) in literature and culture

Archetypal Criticism

There is a realm of human experiences expressed in myths that goes deeper than any rational or intellectual thinking. Identifies mythic elements that give a work of literature this deeper resonance.

What is at the heart of all archetypes?

The heroic quest that connects a personal journey of self-discovery to a sense of responsibility for making society a better place.