LITERARY CRITICISM

Literary Criticism

• comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of works of literature

• opinion supported by evidence, relating to theme, style, setting, or historical or political context

• help you to make better sense of the work, form of judgements about literature, and study ideas from different points of view

Criticism

• is meant to see what has not seen before

• to say what has not been said before

• to change what needs to be changed

Literary Criticism can also be a…

• reasoned consideration: focused on the text and theme or issues.

• argument: proven using the text and the culture or context the text was written in or for.

• practical criticism: could talk about the biographical questions, bibliography, historical knowledge, sources and influences.

Importance of Literary Criticism

• enables a broad appreciation of global literature and generally improves the quality of literature

• provides a new perspective to better understand the literature

Understanding Literary Criticism

• for many centuries, literary criticism has been limited to some basic approaches involving historical, moral and biographical perspectives. 

• but during the 20th century, critical approaches have become much more varied due to the huge increase of educated people and their widely diverse reactions to literature.

• as the meaning of what literature is and can be or should be has changed, so has the critics' responses to it

Purpose of Writing Literary Criticism

• “think of each theory as a new pair of eyeglasses through which certain elements of our world are brought into focus while others… fade into the background.”

• each critical/theoretical approach provides a set of tools, in the form of specialized concepts and vocabulary, for thinking and talking meaningfully about literature.

• once you’ve learned the right concepts and terminology, you’re better equipped with the tools to think and talk about literature in a rich and deep way.

Feminist Criticism

• a type of literary criticism that combines several critical methods while focusing on the questions on how gender affects a literary work, the writer, or the reader.

• strength: enriches reading by showing awareness of the complexity of human interaction 

• weakness: culturally criticism

Structuralism

• is a criticism based on the linguistic theories of Ferdinand Saussure and cultural theories of Claude Levi-Strauss.

• Saussure says: language is a well contained system of signs.

• Strauss says: culture, like languages, could be viewed as a system of signs and could be analyzed in terms of the structural relations among their elements.

• this type of criticism views text as a system of interlocking signs which are arbitrary. this seeks to make explicit the "grammar".

• strength: allows intertextuality and links of different literary works through the system of signs that existed even before the literature is written 

• weakness: denies author's individual's contribution

Literary Critical Theory

• is a tool that helps you find meaning in stories, poems, and plays

• we read literature to learn more about

  • the human condition

  • the experience of loss and death

  • the structure of power in society and how it is implemented (including the issues that surround race and gender)

  • the psychology of characters and individuals in general

  • the sociology and history of cultures that produce specific pieces of literature

How and why did literary theories develop?

• literary theories emerged as ways to explain different people's views and responses to literature. 

• rather than insisting that one view is the best or correct view, literary theory attempts to find value in all views that are based on a careful study of the literature.