Literary Criticism Power Point Handout.pdf - Ms. Arnold's Wiki

ARNOLD Literary Criticism Introduction.notebook
December 04, 2011
Literary Criticism
Using lenses to analyze literature
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*What is literary criticism?
*How is it used?
*What ever happened to simply reading stories?
http://www.emperorsnewsuit.com/en/
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Reader Response Theory
• places the reader at the very center of interpreting, acknowledging the
“baggage” brought to any text by any reader.
• begins by asking:
“How did this work strike me and why?"
“Where am I in relation to this text?”
“What factors in my life influence my reactions to this text?
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ARNOLD Literary Criticism Introduction.notebook
December 04, 2011
Cultural Materialist/ Marxist Lens
• concerns with the historical, political, economic, and social context.
• questions the material world of the characters, especially the physical labor of
such characters.
• concerns with class issues and economic issues.
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Psychoanalytic Theory
• uses work of Freud and his successors, insisting that literary works are mirrors into
an author’s psyche.
• reflects central aspects of family origin and childhood.
• stresses sexual development issues .
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Jungian Theory
• makes use of the work of Carl Jung
• “archetypal symbols” reveal deep cultural messages across time and space.
• universal “stories,” retold through the ages, evoking predictable responses.
• for example, the hero’s journey
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ARNOLD Literary Criticism Introduction.notebook
December 04, 2011
Feminist Theory
• focuses on lives and works of women .
• More recently, challenges the assumptions about language itself as well as
revisiting canonical (traditional) texts.
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Post Colonial Theory
• acknowledges imperialistic nature of much of western culture, especially British and
American.
• attempts to expose the underside of 'white, male, Eurocentric' writing and scholarship.
• attempts to show readers who was being expelled or shunned by those in power, what was
being taken away from indigenous peoples in order to have "civilized" culture.
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Modernist and Post Modernist Theory
• relates to reactions among philosophers and artists to World War I.
• stresses brokenness of human beings, inventing new techniques
• post‐modernism associated with World War II
• took the splintered views of modernism
• stresses absences, contradictions, and inability of language
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ARNOLD Literary Criticism Introduction.notebook
December 04, 2011
Deconstructionist Theory
• centers around the belief contemporary society is a product of cultural construction.
• literature should “deconstruct” back to its basis.
• critiques everything found in the text, and questions the ability of language to show what an
author might be trying to say.
• novels are puzzles to be decoded.
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Trauma Theory
• focuses on violent actions that have occurred to characters and/or to their creators
• central tenets include:
trauma makes people withdraw and to seek close relationships simultaneously;
victims act out of isolation OR a clinging to others;
victims tend to have intense but unstable relationships with partners;
witnesses caught between the victim and perpetrator
• victims display:
no sense of safety in the world around them;
sense of violation;
sense of being invaded, defiled, and out of control;
doubt of self and others;
a sense that any community or faith system has been damaged
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Formalist/Structuralist Theory
• Focuses on tone, plot, structure
• concerns with who is telling the story .
• asks how a story is packaged, i.e. is there a frame or is there just one narrative
line throughout.
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ARNOLD Literary Criticism Introduction.notebook
December 04, 2011
Cultural Continuance
• particularly suited for application to Native American literature, African American
literature or literature from any group systematically suppressed group
• stereotypes freeze Native American culture in a romanticized past.
• stresses the lives and cultural work of Native Americans living today, triumph
over levels of repression
• family, kinship, the land, and a deep capacity for survival figure largely
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Ecocriticism
• asserts nature exists apart from us
• nature is not reducible to a concept and may be fatally altered by humans.
• changes focus from the inner to the outer, so something like “setting” is brought from the
margins to the critical center
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