Critical Lenses Review

What is a collection of ideas and methods we use to understand literature?

• Literary Theory

• Literature

• Literary Technique

• Literary Elements

Which of the following sentence is FALSE?

• The intention of the author in writing a literary text in writing a literary analysis.

• Authors convey messages both intentionally and unintentionally, so intent is irrelevant.

• A creator’s intentions for their work are separate from the work itself.

• We don’t need to know their intentions in order to analyze their work; the work exists independently.

All questions are asked in literary analysis except ____________?

• What happens when you look at the text in this way?

• What meanings emerge?

• What are the multiple meanings supported by the text?

• What is the intention of the writer in writing the text?

Attempts to understand how we are affected by cultural perceptions of race and how we are better able to represent ourselves to counter prejudice.

• Critical Race Theory

• Psychoanalytic

• Marxist

• New Criticism

Attempts to treat each work as its own distinct piece, free from its environment, era, and even author. Assumes that the keys to understanding a text exist within "the text itself", or its "form".

• Moral Criticism

• Formalism

• Psychoanalytic Criticism

• Marxist Criticism

Considers readers' reactions to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text. They maintain "...that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does" to the reader.

• Formalism

• Moral Criticism

• New Historicism

• Reader-Response

Seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time. Assumes every work is the product of the time it was written.

• New Historicism

• Postmodern Criticism

• Post-Colonial Criticism

• Formalism

Concerned with "the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women."

• Formalism

• Feminist Criticism

• Postmodern Criticism

• Gender Studies

Looks at a text through the ideas of the "father of modern psychology", Sigmund Freud. Particularly concerned with the repressed and subconscious messages a text sends, about either the author or characters.

• Formalism

• Gender Studies

• Postmodern Criticism

• Psychoanalytic Criticism

Concerned with literature produced by colonial powers and works produced by those who were/are colonized.

• New Historicism

• Postmodern Criticism

• Post-Colonial Criticism

• Formalism