Literary Theory – Comprehensive Bullet-Point Notes

Literary Theory – Core Definition

  • A toolbox of interpretive principles used to explain, evaluate, and contextualise literary texts.

  • Literary criticism = interpretation + evaluation.

  • All schools of criticism ask two master-questions:

    • How does the work mean? (method, form, devices)

    • What does the work mean? (values, themes, politics)

Pre-critical Response & the “Common Reader”

  • Coined by Dr Samuel Johnson – readers who seek pleasure, not scholarly insight.

  • Characterised by:

    • Immediate emotion (“How did that make me feel?”).

    • Instinctive judgements shaped by personal values, culture, politics, gender.

  • Example grid using Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”:

    • Conservative/religious readers → speaker = immoral seducer.

    • Feminist readers → see manipulation & objectification.

    • General readers → admire wit, rhetoric.

  • Importance: supplies the raw data out of which criticism later builds.

Is Criticism Necessary? – Classic Debate

  • Anti-critical voices

    • Susan Sontag → calls for an “erotics of art”; theory kills the spark.

    • Leslie Fiedler → values “ecstatics”, temporary escape from reason.

  • Pro-critical voices

    • Terry Eagleton → theory (Marxism) reveals social forces; pre-critical response too subjective.

    • Morse, Berthoff, Touster, Ciardi → purely emotional readings = permissive & dull.

  • Compromise method

    1. Feel first.

    2. Analyse later.

Seven Foundational Elements of Literary Analysis

Setting

  • Where/when; anchors mood & reader empathy.

  • Limitation: unfamiliar settings may hide nuance.

  • Examples: Gothic New England forest (Young Goodman Brown) → mystery; aristocratic garden (Coy Mistress) → privacy & sensuality.

Plot

  • Plot=Events+Conflict\text{Plot} = \text{Events} + \text{Conflict}.

  • Conflict types: Man vs Man / Nature / Society / Fate / Self.

  • Ambiguous conflict: Is Brown’s satanic meeting literal or imagined?

Character

  • Built through action, dialogue, and others’ reactions.

  • Static vs dynamic, stereotype vs complex.

  • Silence can be a character trait (the Lady in Coy Mistress; Maggie in Everyday Use).

Structure

  • Traditional pyramid (exposition → climax → dénouement).

  • Stream-of-consciousness (Woolf, Joyce) – disjointed internal flow.

  • Ambivalent structures leave reality vs dream unresolved (Young Goodman Brown).

Style

  • Word choice, syntax, rhythm, allusion, dialogue.

  • Puritan cadence in Hawthorne; metaphysical conceits in Marvell.

Atmosphere (Mood)

  • Fusion of setting + style + plot pacing.

  • Hamlet → gloom & political rot; Coy Mistress → mix of romance & mortality.

Theme

  • Abstract idea discovered after analysing prior six elements.

  • Multiplicity: “faith & doubt”, “hypocrisy”, “carpe diem”.

Traditional Approaches

Historical / Biographical

  • Reads text through author’s life & era.

  • Strength: recovers context; e.g.

    • Hawthorne’s ancestral guilt (Salem trials) explains obsession with sin.

    • Puritan theology unlocks Young Goodman Brown’s symbolism.

  • Weakness: can replace the work with the background.

Moral / Philosophical

  • Seeks ethical import; e.g. Frankenstein as warning against irresponsible science.

Textual Criticism (Preparatory, not interpretive)

  • Establishes the most reliable text.

  • Sources of corruption: author slips, copyist errors, editorial “improvements”, competing editions.

  • Cases:

    • Variant “glew/lew/dew” in Coy Mistress.

    • Q1/Q2/F1Q1/Q2/F1 versions of Hamlet.

    • 1818 vs 1831 Frankenstein.

  • Analogy: textual critic = anaesthetist prepping for surgery.

Formalistic / New Criticism

  • Motto: “the text itself.”

  • Practices close reading; ignores author & reader intention (intentional / affective fallacies).

  • Key principles

    • Organic unity – every device supports total meaning.

    • Paradox, irony, tension – generate complexity.

    • Speaker ≠ poet; identify narrative voice.

  • Sample mini-readings

    • Wordsworth’s “A Slumber…” → two-stanza time shift; sibilant /s/ alliteration = hush of death.

    • Marvell’s Coy Mistress → three-stanza rhetorical arc (if… but… therefore…).

Psychological Approaches

Freudian Lens

  • Mind triad: id↔ego↔superego\text{id} \leftrightarrow \text{ego} \leftrightarrow \text{superego}.

  • Oedipus / Electra complexes to explain parent-focused desire & rivalry.

  • Literary uses

    • Hamlet’s delay linked to Oedipal identification with Claudius.

    • Coy Mistress imagery (“vegetable love”, “birds of prey”) exposes sublimated libido.

Jungian Lens

  • Collective unconscious filled with archetypes (hero, shadow, anima/us, wise old man, mandala, journey).

  • Individuation = integrating shadow + anima for wholeness.

  • Applications

    • Forest in Goodman Brown = descent into collective shadow.

    • Creature in Frankenstein = Victor’s projected shadow; failure of individuation.

    • Mabel (New Dress) blinded by persona vs shadow conflict.

Mythological / Archetypal Criticism

  • Pioneers: Frazer (Golden Bough), Jung, Campbell, Frye.

  • Looks for timeless narrative patterns:

    • Creation, fall, quest, initiation, sacrifice, resurrection.

    • Seasonal mythoi (Frye): Spring-comedy, Summer-romance, Autumn-tragedy, Winter-satire.

  • Ritual sacrifice model (Frazer): dying king → land renewed. Hamlet follows this arc: corrupt Claudius → sacrificial deaths → Fortinbras restores order.

  • Symbol bank

    • Water = birth/renewal.

    • Desert = spiritual barrenness (2nd stanza Coy Mistress).

    • Pink (Faith’s ribbon) = purity (white) + passion (red).

Feminist, Womanist & Intersectional Criticism

  • Core aims

    1. Unmask patriarchal ideology in texts & canon.

    2. Recover suppressed women’s writing.

    3. Analyse how gender intersects race, class, sexuality.

  • Historical milestones

    • Mary Wollstonecraft “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792).

    • Virginia Woolf “A Room of One’s Own” – space & money as artistic prerequisites.

    • Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett: 20th-century waves.

  • Key concepts

    • Male gaze (Mulvey) – woman as spectacle.

    • Écriture féminine – non-linear, fluid female writing (Cixous).

    • Silence as strategy (Showalter): Maggie, Ophelia.

  • Womanism (Alice Walker)

    • “Purple to lavender” metaphor – broader than mainstream feminism; embeds race & culture.

    • Loves struggle, folk heritage, community; seeks solidarity not gender war.

Application to Canonical Texts

Hamlet

  • Psychological: Oedipal tension; Claudius = Hamlet’s projected shadow.

  • Mythic: Dying-king rite; Fortinbras as rebirth.

  • Feminist: Gertrude split into saint/whore; Ophelia’s silence & madness = patriarchal pressure.

Young Goodman Brown (Hawthorne)

  • Setting: Puritan forest night – externalises inner temptation.

  • Jungian: ego (Brown) vs shadow (elder traveller) vs superego (village church).

  • Mythic initiation & failure – returns “a stern, sad, darkly meditative” man.

To His Coy Mistress (Marvell)

  • Formalist: syllogistic 3-part structure mirrors persuasion.

  • Mythic: Cronus devouring time; chariot = death’s psychopomp.

  • Feminist: voiceless lady, grave imagined as female body; rhetoric = erotic coercion.

  • Freudian: escalation from idealised flattery to aggressive libido (birds of prey).

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

  • Biographical: daughter of Wollstonecraft; losses of children colour maternal themes.

  • Feminist: male usurpation of childbirth, silenced women (Elizabeth, Justine, Safie).

  • Psychological: Creature as shadow; Victor’s repression leads to catastrophe.

  • Mythic: Prometheus overreaching, punished for stealing fire of life.

Everyday Use (Alice Walker)

  • Feminist/Womanist: Mother (good-mother archetype) vs Dee (empowered but deracinated) vs Maggie (silenced history).

  • Mythic symbol: quilts = female ancestral memory, cyclical time.

  • Formalist tension: tangible heritage (use) vs decorative heritage (display).

The New Dress (Virginia Woolf)

  • Formalist: stream of consciousness; mirror motif; ascent/descent structure.

  • Jungian: persona (dress) vs shadow (insecurity); partial individuation by story’s close.

  • Feminist: interior female voice resists external beauty surveillance.

Inter-Approach Synergies

  • Textual criticism first ensures reliable text; pre-critical response supplies affective data.

  • Formalism uncovers how, psychology and myth reveal why, feminism exposes for whom and at whose expense.

  • Eclectic critics (Oscar Cargill) argue for combinatory method: choose whatever clarifies the work without forcing it.

Ethical, Philosophical & Real-World Relevance

  • Frankenstein anticipates AI & cloning ethics: creator’s duty toward creation.

  • Hamlet models political legitimacy, surveillance, mental health.

  • Feminist & womanist readings influence curricula, publishing, and social justice discourse.

  • Myth-ritual patterns illuminate modern scapegoating and cycles of violence (e.g.
    contemporary conflicts, pandemic blame).

Study Tips for Exam

  • Always begin with pre-critical impression, then label which formal element or theory explains it.

  • When given a passage, try a 3-layer read:

    1. Formal device you see (metaphor, irony, structure).

    2. Psychological or mythic function of that device.

    3. Social/political (e.g., feminist) implication.

  • Remember fallacies: avoid “the poet must have meant…” (intentional) and “it made me sad, so it means grief” (affective) unless you link to textual evidence.

  • Be ready to illustrate each theory with at least one concrete example line from the set texts.