Lietrary Theories

Literary Criticism

Quarter 3 Week 6

After going through this module, you are expected to:

• read samples of literary interpretation; 

• conduct a close reading of a literary work; and

• write a critique of a literary work based on a particular critical approach. 

Multiple Select

Marxist approach focuses on the representation of class struggle as well as the reinforcement of class distinction through literature.

• True

• False

Multiple Select

Formalist approach focuses on the form and structure of a literary work.

• True

• False

Multiple Select

Since criticism based on the reader-response approach relies heavily on the critic’s personal opinions and experiences, there can be many differing but equally valid interpretations of the same text.

• True

• False

Multiple Select

Reader-Response approach examines the historical, political, social, and cultural events that influenced a literary text.

• True

• False

Multiple Select

One of the tenets of feminism is that women should not be defined by the idea of superiority established by the patriarchal society.

• True

• False

Multiple Select

Historical approach finds meaning in the act of reading itself and focuses on the reader’s individual perception and experience of the text.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

What does Marxism Critical Literary Theory focus on?

• Prosperity through economic, social, and political advantage.

• Understanding the world.

• The life of Karl Marx.

• Struggle through economic, social, and political advantage.

Multiple Choice

Who was influential in Psychoanalytic Theory?

• Mary Wollstonecraft

• Karl Marx

• Shrek

• Sigmund Freud

Multiple Choice

Feminist Criticism depicts and questions which of the following?

• Social classes

• Gender roles and equality

• Psychology

• Effects of colonization

Literary Theories

Literary theories were developed as a means to understand the various ways people read texts. The proponents of each theory believe their theory is the theory, but most of us interpret texts according to the "rules" of several different theories at a time. All literary theories are lenses through which we can see texts. 

Archetypal Criticism

• the word "archetype" is from the Greek 'arkhetupon', first mold or model, in the meaning of being the initial version of something multiplied,

• In literature and art, an archetype is a character, a tradition, a story, an event, or an image that recurs in different works, in different works, in different culture, and in different periods of time.

Underdog

Characters who are always in the wrong place at the wrong time but who usually win something of value in the end.

Star-crossed Lovers

two lovers were forbidden to be together because of the rules of society or family; often ends tragically

Feminist Criticism

• A feminist critic sees cultural and economic disabilities in a "patriarchal" society that have hindered or prevented women from realizing their creative possibilities and women's cultural identification as a merely negative object,

• The concepts of "gender" are large, if not entirely, cultural constructs, affected by the omnipresent patriarchal biases of our civilization. 

Marxist Criticism

• A Marxist critic grounds theory and practice on the economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, especially on the following claims:

• A Marxist critic typically undertakes to "explain" the literature in any era by revealing the economic, class, and ideological determinants of the way an author writes and examining the relation of the text to the social reality of that time and place. 

New Criticism/ Formalism

• is directed against the prevailing concern of critics with the lives and psychology of authors, with social background, and with literary history.

• The distinctive procedure of the New Critic is explication or close reading: The detailed and subtle analysis of the complex interrelations and ambiguities of the components within a work. 

Psychological and Psychoanalytic Criticism

• deals with a work of literature primarily as an expression, in fictional form, of the personality, state of mind, feelings, and desires of its author

• The assumption of psychoanalytic critics is that a work of literature is correlated with its author's mental traits.

Reader-Response Criticism

• This type of criticism does not designate any one critical theory but focuses on the activity of reading a work of literature.

• By this shift of perspective a literary work is converted into an activity that goes on in a reader's mind, and what had been features of the work itself-including narrator, plot, characters, style; and structure-are less important than the connection between a reader's experience and the text. 

Deconstruction Criticism

• Deconstruction is, by far, the most difficult critical theory for people to understand.

• The story may have one meaning for the ordinary unsophisticated reader and another for the reader who responds to the subsurface ironies.

Historical Criticism

• Using this theory requires that you apply to a text specific historical information about the time during which an author wrote.

• History, in this case, refers to the social, political, economic, cultural, and/or intellectual climate of the time.

Structuralism Criticism

• is a theory that concentrates completely on the text, bringing nothing else to it.

• On the most basic level, however, structuralism investigates the kinds of patterns that are built up and broken down within a text and uses them to get at an interpretation of that text.