Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism — Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the lecture notes on literary theory and schools of criticism.

Moral Criticism and Dramatic Construction

An approach that evaluates how art teaches morality; focuses on how dramatic form and content convey piety, virtue, or ethical messages.

Formalism

Theory that a literary work’s meaning resides in its intrinsic features and form, not in external context like history or society.

New Criticism

A close-reading, text-centered form of Formalism emphasizing organic unity, imagery, paradox, and the text’s self-contained meaning.

Neo-Aristotelianism (Chicago School of Criticism)

Chicago School approach applying Aristotle’s ideas about poetry, drama, and rhetoric, focusing on ends and purposes of art.

Psychoanalytic Criticism

Literary analysis informed by Freudian psychology, focusing on the unconscious, desires, defenses, and their effects on texts.

Id

In Freudian theory, the part of the mind containing instinctual drives and desires.

Ego

Freudian component that mediates between the id, reality, and defenses; helps regulate behavior.

Superego

Freudian internalized moral conscience and judgment formed in childhood.

Oedipus Complex

Freud’s theory of a child’s unconscious rivalry for the parent’s attention, resolved through identification with the same-sex parent.

Jungian Criticism

Psychoanalytic approach drawing on Carl Jung’s ideas, emphasizing the collective unconscious and archetypes.

Archetype

Universal, inherited symbols or patterns that recur across cultures in myths, literature, and dreams.

Shadow (Jungian)

An archetype representing the darker, hidden aspects of the self.

Anima

Jungian archetype: the feminine inner part of a man’s psyche.

Animus

Jungian archetype: the masculine inner part of a woman’s psyche.

Marxist Criticism

Approach that analyzes literature through class, economic systems, power, and social oppression.

Material Dialectic

Marxist idea that historical change is driven by material economic conditions and class conflicts.

Reader-Response Criticism

Theory asserting that meaning arises from the reader’s interpretation and the text cannot be separated from the reader.

Structuralism

Theory that analyzes underlying structures in language and culture; views human activity as patterned by systems of signs.

Index (Peirce)

A sign that indicates or points to its object through a causal or physical connection.

Symbol (Peirce)

A sign whose relationship to its object is arbitrary and conventional.

Signifier (Saussure)

The form of a sign—its sound or image—that conveys meaning.

Signified (Saussure)

The concept or meaning that a signifier represents.

Semiotics

Study of sign systems and how signs convey meaning within culture and across contexts.

Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction

Movement that argues meanings are unstable, prefers questioning binaries, and emphasizes power/ discourse in shaping knowledge.

Derrida

Key deconstructionist who argued for structural play and the overturning of fixed binary oppositions; emphasizes the instability of language.

Death of the Author

Barthes’ claim that a text’s meaning is produced by readers, not dictated by the author’s intention.