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Literary Theories

Critical Analyses and the Lenses through which we conduct them.

​Each one of these people has their own unique perspective through which they would view a work.

Multiple Choice

What does the formalist perspective concentrate on?

• Bourgeoisie

• How the reader responds to the literature

• Forming a list

• Form

Literary Elements

Multiple Choice

Name two other things that a Formalist look for in literature?

• Diction & Unity

• Symbolism & Allusions

• Id, Superego and Ego

• Metaphor & Simile

Open Ended

Express your current mood by typing the lyrics of a song.

The main character in the story that faces a conflict. The reader/audience roots for this character to be successful.  Often, but not always, the “hero” of the story.

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This is our hero

Protagonist

Literary Theories

Literary theories are the lenses and perspectives people developed to understand the variety of ways through which individuals interpret and engage with texts. While proponents of individual theories have a strong bias towards their chosen lens, in reality, most readers will use a variety of different lenses to interpret texts.

Open Ended

Give me an example of a Protagonist

Multiple Choice

Who is the Psychological literary theory based of off?

• Siegfried Roy

• Sigmund Freud

• Figmund Sreud

• Carl Jung

Someone or something that is against the protagonist. It poses the conflict for the protagonist.

The Joker is always trying to stop The Batman

Antagonist

Multiple Choice

What is your purpose when you do literary criticism for investigation?

• to judge the worth

• to uncover unexplored aspects

• to understand the deeper meaning

• to simple enjoy

Criticism using Literary Theories

Criticism does not mean judgement. It means focused analysis and interpretation

• In order to create criticism, we use literary theories.

• Literary theories are not based on common thoughts or conjecture. They are systemized and supported by observable evidence.

• They are a perspective, or lens, through which we can focus our attention and interpret deeper into a text.

• They allow us to understand and pay attention things we may not be aware of or missed entirely beforehand.

Multiple Choice

Which of the following is an example of an Antagonist?

• The Guards in "Night"

• Elie Wiesel in "Night"

• Ronald Weasley

• Frodo Baggins

Multiple Choice

What are the 3 functional aspects to the mind according to Freud?

• Id, Superego, Ego.

• It, Superego, Ego.

• Id, Superduperego, Ego.

• Id, Superego, Eggo.

The dominant emotion created in the reader by a literary passage; a feeling or atmosphere that  a reader senses while reading or listening to a 

work of literature. (mood can be created by word choice, tone, setting, internal monologue,  description, rhythm of language, pacing, repetition, etc.)

​Some text here about the topic of discussion.

Mood

Archetypal Criticism

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

Multiple Choice

Which among the following hashtags is related to a FORMALIST LITERARY APPROACH?

• #Language

• #SocialClasses

• #LessonLearned

• #LiteraryElements

​Some text here about the topic of discussion.

Symbolism

A symbol is a word (person, place, object, or  action) that has meaning in itself but is  used to represent or stand for something else as well. The color green may symbolize greed or 

envy. Spring may symbolize re-birth or "new life.”

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Multiple Choice

What happens when the ID is too strong?

• Feels guilty all the time.

• Turns into the hulk.

• Extremely rational and efficient, but cold, boring, and distant.

• Bound up in self-gratification, selfishness and uncaring towards others.

A reference to a famous person, place, event  or work of literature,

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for ex. “That boy is as strong as Hercules.”

​Allusion

Represented by Little Red Riding Hood above, the archetype of Death and the Maiden is both a story and an art motif that goes back even further. A young, unmarried woman is taken away or undergoes a trial against death. The story of Persephone and Hades is this archetype as well. So is "Where are you going, where have you been?"

Death and the Maiden

Represented here by Romeo and Juliet, this character archetype comprises two lovers forbidden to be together either by family, society, culture, or even space and time. Often ends in tragedy.

​​Star-Crossed Lovers

Multiple Choice

What is this an example of?

• Mood

• Allusion

• Symbolism

Multiple Choice

What happens when the Superego is too strong?

• Becomes the primitive mind.

• Stores and enforces rules.

• Feeling guilty all the time; insufferable saintly personality.

• Becomes the moral part of the mind.

Multiple Choice

T Swift's (Taylor Swift) song 'Romeo' is a reference to which Literary Element

• Allusion

• Mood

• Symbol

Multiple Choice

TRUE OR FALSE:

Structuralism is a literary approach that deals with how capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and other writing mechanics.

• TRUE

• FALSE

Feminist Criticism

• A feminist critic examines gender roles within societies, examining cultural, social, economic, and legal differences across genders.

• The emphasis is also on elevating women's voices, achievements, and creative pursuits across history to the same level as their contemporaries.

Words or details that appeal to the senses and cause a scene to flash before the reader’s eyes. Imagery appeals to the senses. 

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​Imagery

Multiple Choice

What happens when the Ego is too strong?

• Extremely guilty all the time.

• Extremely rational and efficient, but cold, boring, and distant.

• Extremely selfish and uncaring.

• Extremely rational and insufferable.

Multiple Choice

Which among the following is NOT used when interpreting a literary work using the FORMALIST APPROACH?

• Rhyme Scheme

• Author's Purpose

• Type of Character

• Figures of Speech

When an inanimate object is given 

human characteristics, for ex. “The wind whistled

in the trees.”, “The chair sighed under my weight.”

Personification

Marxist Criticism

• based on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, especially the following:

  • interpreting literature by revealing the economic, class, and ideological determinants of the way an author writes

  • examining the relation of the text to the social reality of that time and place.

Point of View

Who is telling the story. We find the  point-of-view by asking “Who is the narrator?”

Multiple Choice

Which among the following statements can be used in MORALIST APPROACH?

• The poem has 5-7-5 syllabication.

• The poem is all about forgiveness.

• The poem tells us that forgiving can set us free,

• The poem uses quatrain as its stanzaic organization.

Multiple Choice

What are the 2 classes of the Marxism theory?

• The Bourgeoisie & The Poor

• The Pourgeoisie & The Boor

• Property Owners & Sales People

• The Bourgeoisie & The Proletariat

The narrator is a character in the story telling the story in his or her own words. The first person pronouns “I”, “me”, “we”, “us” are used.  The reader knows one character’s thoughts (narrator).

First Person

The narrator knows and shares the thoughts and ideas of one character.

Third Person Limited

The narrator does not share the thoughts or ideas of any characters. This narrator only reports on what can be seen or heard. 

​​Third Person Dramatic

The narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of more than one character.

Third Person Omniscient

• Psychoanalytic theory examines literature as an expression of the personality, state of mind, feelings, and desires of its author

  • assumes that a work correlates to an author's mental traits.

• Psychological theory analyses the author of the work or a character in his work. It helps the readers understand the motivations of the writer as well as the characters.

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Several aspects of this school of thought (psychoanalytical) have been debunked. Sigmund Freud did not base his research on facts or science. He would often correlate a work to an author's mental state.

Psychoanalytic and Psychological Criticism

Multiple Choice

Which among the following shows a Marxist analysis?

• The hero is a religious person.

• The hero is a dynamic character.

• The hero is a black American,

The writer’s hints and clues about what is going to happen later in the story.

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Foreshadowing

Multiple Choice

If you were to write an essay about exposing the patriarchal ideology what literary theory would it be?

• Marxism

• Feminism

• Reader Response

• Formalism

An exaggerated statement used for effect; for

      -- ex. “It’s raining cats and dogs.” or “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

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Hyperbole

Reader-Response Criticism

• This theory does not designate any one critical theory but focuses on the individual activity and experience 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. 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.

  • Personal example: I think the Grapes of Wrath is an extremely boring book with flat characters because my experience of reading the book was stressful and in a time crunch. I also had little context for the setting.

I should also note that I no longer think this; I was able to experience the book in a different way once I was in college.

False or misleading information to present a point-of-view. Name-calling, snob appeal, bandwagon.

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Propaganda

Multiple Choice

What does the Reader Response literary theory focus on?

• Focuses on the theoretical framework.

• Focuses on the Bourgeoisie & the Proletariat.

• Focuses on prevailing concepts of gender.

• Focuses upon the active response of the reader to a text.

The author’s attitude toward his or her subject. The author’s tone may be serious, sarcastic, playful, objective, regretful, mournful, etc.

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Tone

• Applying historical information and context about the time during which an author wrote to the work itself.

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

​

New Historicism Criticism

• concentrates solely on the text, bringing nothing else to it. Looks at the work as a singular article.

• It investigates patterns that are built up and broken down within a text and uses them for interpretation

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Structuralism is used on state exams often.

Structuralism Criticism

Multiple Choice

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

• True

• False

Open Ended

Type your interpretation of The Hunger Games using either formalism or Marxism.

Multiple Choice

Who was influential in Psychoanalytic Theory?

• Mary Wollstonecraft

• Karl Marx

• Edgar Allan Poe

• Sigmund Freud

Multiple Choice

Feminist Criticism depics and questions which of the following?

• Social Classes

• Gender roles

• Psychology

• Effects of colonization

Multiple Choice

Which theory focuses on the effects of colonization

• New Historicism

• Marxist Theory

• Post-Colonial Theory

• Feminist Theory

Quizizz

Time!

Multiple Choice

On which part of the critique is the LITERARY APPROACH used?

• DESCRIBE

• ANALYZE

• INTERPRETATION

• ASSESS

Multiple Choice

#LiteraryDevices is related to which Literary Approach?

• STRUCTURALISM

• FORMALISM

• MORALISM

• MARXISM

Multiple Choice

Who is the proponent of MORALISM or the Moralist Approach?

• Claude Levi-Strauss

• John Crowe Ransom

• Plato

• Karl Marx

Multiple Choice

"The sonnet follows the rhyme scheme of ABBAABBA-CDECDE."

• STRUCTURALISM

• FORMALISM

• MORALISM

• MARXISM

Multiple Choice

TRUE OR FALSE:

X-men shows a co-existence struggle between the humans and the mutants in the society = EXAMPLE OF MARXISM

• TRUE

• FALSE

Multiple Choice

The names of the creatures in Pokemon is a reflection of what they are; for an instance, Turtwig is a turtle with a twig on its head.

• STRUCTURALISM

• FORMALISM

• MORALISM

• MARXISM

National Poetry Day