Other Critical Theories

Lit Crit: Quick and Dirty

Looking Outside the Work

• Some critical frameworks look at the outside influences on a work

• The view is how the external affects the work

Looking outside the work

• These forms of literary criticism look at how outside conditions affect a work:– Marxist Criticism– Feminist Criticism– Historical/Biographical Criticism– Psychological Criticism

• Including Archetypal Criticism

The Reader

• A slightly different perspective of literary criticism also considers an outside influence – the reader

• Reader Response Criticism focuses on how the reader affects and is affected by a work

• The text has no literal meaning outside the reader’s acting upon in

• The reader actively constructs the meaning of the text instead of just finding it

Reader Response Criticism

• Do not take this to mean there is no “right” way to interpret a text, as even the reader’s reaction must be plausible and supported by the text.

• Students are lead to a reader response criticism unknowingly by English teachers everywhere with questions such as:What would you do if you were in this situation?

or How did you react when X happened in the novel?

orHave you also experienced X?

Finding Answers in the Text Alone

• Other forms of literary criticism insist that the best way to understand a work of literature in to examine the work itself

– Formalist– New Criticism– Deconstructionist (Post –Modern)

Formalism

• Focuses on the formal elements of a work such as language, structure (plot) and tone

• Examine the relationship between the form and the meaning

• Read literature as an independent work of art rather than a reflection of the author’s mind or a representation of a social or historical time – ignores anything outside the work itself

Formalist Criticism

• Diction• Irony• Paradox• Metaphor• Symbol

• Plot• Characterization• Narrative

viewpoint

•Focus on the following elements:

•Every time you are asked a question about the above to get to the meaning of a story, you have been using formalist critical analysis

New Criticism

• Evolved out of Formalist Criticism• Suggest that detailed analysis of the

language in a literary work will reveal the meaning of the work

• Downplays outside influences on the work and concentrates on close textual analysis

Deconstructionist

• Involves a close reading of the text• Suggests that language is arbitrary as

words can have many meanings and there is no real connection between the way a word is understood and the thing the word signifies (only a word game)

• Aim is to deconstruct (or take apart) our acceptance that language or literature can be taken at “face value”

Deconstructionist Criticism

• Looks for the dichotomy in literature• Assumes irony (as all things can

have more than one meaning)• Is interested in the juxtaposition of

opposites– Good and evil– Black and white

Deconstructionist Questions

• If you have considered the following questions, you have applied deconstructionist theory:– How might different people see the

narrator differently?– How can your reconcile the narrator’s

statement with her actions at the end of the story?

Pardon the oversimplification…

Your power point loving teacher, Liana Cote

Montminy