Transcript Literary Criticism - Holman's AP English IV

Literary Criticism
“Often literary theories change our views of
a work of literature by proposing new
distinctions or new categories for looking at
the work. This is a bit like putting on a new
set of glasses: suddenly you see things
more clearly.”
- Stephen Bonnycastle
In Search of Authority
“Literary criticism is nothing more than
discourse – spoken or written – about
literature. Literary critics have borrowed
concepts from other disciplines, such as
philosophy, history, linguistics,
psychology, and anthropology, to analyze
imaginative literature more perceptively.
Literary theory tries to formulate general
principles rather than discuss specific
texts.”
- X. J. Kennedy

There are 9 approaches we will look at
– Formalist
– Biographical
– Historical
– Psychological
– Mythological
-
Sociological
Gender
Deconstructionist
Cultural
“Studying theory means you can take your own
part in the struggles for power between
different ideologies. It helps you to discover
elements of your own ideology, and
understand why you hold certain values
unconsciously. It means no authority can
impose a truth on you in a dogmatic way –
and if some authority does try, you can
challenge that truth in a powerful way, by
asking what ideology it is based on…Theory
is subversive because it puts authority in
question.”
- Stephen Bonnycastle
“A man with one theory is lost. He needs
several of them, or lots! He should stuff
them in his pockets like newspapers.”
- Bertolt Brecht
“Everything we do in life is rooted in
theory.”
- bell hooks
Formalistic Approach (New
Criticism)
Close reading and analysis of elements
such as setting, irony, paradox, imagery,
and metaphor
 Reading stands on its own
 Awareness of denotative and connotative
implications
 Alertness to allusions to mythology,
history, literature

Formalistic Approach (New
Criticism)
Sees structure and patterns
 Primarily used during the first two-thirds of the
20th Century
 This is the “AP” style of analysis, involving a
close reading of a text and the assumption that
all information necessary to the interpretation of
a work must be found within the work itself.
 A literary work should be treated as an
independent and self-sufficient object

Formalistic Approach (New
Criticism)

Advantage
– Performed without research
– Emphasizes value of literature apart from its context

Disadvantages
–
–
–
–
Text is seen in isolation
Ignores context of the work
Cannot account for allusions
Tends to reduce literature to just a few narrow
rhetorical devices, such as irony, paradox and
tension.
Formalistic Approach (New
Criticism)

Strategies and questions
– Read closely. You can assume that every aspect is carefully
calculated to contribute to the work’s unity – figures of speech,
point of view, diction recurrent ideas or events, everything.
– How is the work structured or organized? How does it begin?
Where does it go next? How does it end? What is the work’s
plot? How is its plot related to is structure?
– What is the relationship of each part of the work as a whole?
How are the parts related to one another?
– Who is narrating or telling what happens in the work? How is
the narrator, speaker, or character revealed to readers? How do
we come to know and understand this figure?
– Who are the major and minor characters? What do they
represent? How do they relate to one another?
Formalistic Approach (New
Criticism)

Strategies and questions cont.
– What are the time and place of the work – it’s
setting? How is the setting related to what we know
of the characters and their actions? To what extent is
the setting symbolic?
– What kind of language does the author use to
describe, narrate, explain, or otherwise create the
world of the literary work? More specifically, what
images, similes, metaphors, symbols appear in the
work? What is their function? What meanings do
they convey?
Gender Criticism
“The study of gender, within literature, is of
general importance to everyone.”
- Judith Spector
“I have a male mind with male experiences.
Therefore I see things through the perception of
a man. I couldn’t relate to some of Virginia
Woolf’s views and I despised the way she
pushed her viewpoint on the reader. This was
brought on by my masculinity, I feel.”
-Bill, 12th Grade
Gender Criticism
Sees the exclusion of women from the literary canon as
a political as well as aesthetic act.
 Works to change the language of literary criticism
 Examines the experiences of women from all races,
classes, cultures
 Feminist criticism reasserts the authority of experience
 Exposes patriarchal premises and resulting prejudices to
promote discovery and reevaluation of literature by
women
 Feminist literary criticism has most developed since the
women’s movement beginning in the early 1960’s.

Gender Criticism






Examines social, cultural, and psychosexual contexts of
literature and criticism.
In the production of literature and within stories
themselves, men and women have not had equal access.
Men and women are different: they write differently,
read differently, and write about their reading
differently. These differences should be valued.
Describes how women in texts are constrained in culture
and society.
Gender is conceived as complex cultural idea and
psychological component rather than as strictly tied to
biological gender
Always political and always revisionist
Gender Criticism

This patriarchal ideology pervades those
writings that have been considered great
literature. Such works lack autonomous
female role models, are implicitly
addressed to male readers, and shut out
the woman reader as an alien outsider or
solicit her to identify against herself by
assuming male values and ways of
perceiving, feeling, and acting.
Gender Criticism

Advantages
– Women have been somewhat underrepresented in
the traditional canon; a feminist approach to literature
helps redress this problem

Disadvantages
– Feminist critics turn literary criticism into a political
battlefield and overlook the merits of works they
consider “patriarchal.”
– When arguing for a distinct feminine writing style,
feminist critics tend to regulate women’s literature to
ghetto status; this in turn prevents female literature
from being naturally included in the literary canon
– Often too theoretical
Gender Criticism

Strategies and questions
– To what extent does the representation of gender in
the work reflect the place and time in which the work
was written?
– How are the relationships between gender presented
in the work? What roles do men and women assume
and perform and with what consequences?
– Does the author present the work from within a
predominantly male or female sensibility? Why might
this have been done, and with what effects?
– How do the facts of the author’s life relate to the
presentation of men and women in the work? To
their relative degrees of power?
Gender Criticism

Strategies and questions cont.
– How do other works by the author correspond to this
one in their depiction of the power relationships
between men and women?
– What role does gender or sexuality play in this work?
– Specifically, observe how sexual stereotypes might be
reinforced or undermined. Try to see how the work
reflects or distorts the place of women (men) in
society.
– Look at the effects of power drawn from gender
within the plot or form.
Psychological Criticism
Most controversial, most abused, least appreciated form
 Associated with Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) and his
followers
 Creative writing (like dreaming) represents the
(disguised) fulfillment of a (repressed) wish or fear
 Everyone’s formative history is different in its particulars,
but there are basic recurrent patterns of development
for most people. These particulars and patterns have
lasting effects.
 In reading literature, we can make educated guesses
about what has been repressed and transformed.

Psychological Criticism






Emphasis on the unconscious aspects of the human
psyche
Experimental and diagnostic; closely related to biological
science
All human behavior is motivated ultimately by the prime
psychic force, libido
Because of the powerful social taboos attached to sexual
impulses, many of our desires and memories are
repressed
Concave images are female symbols and images of
length are male symbols
Such activities as dancing, riding, and flying are symbols
of sexual pleasures
Psychological Criticism

Advantages
– Helpful for understanding works whose characters
have psychological issues
– A valuable tool in understanding human nature,
individual characters, and symbolic meaning

Disadvantages
– Psychological criticism can turn a work into little more
than a psychological case study, neglecting to view it
as a piece of art.
– Critics tend to see sex in everything, exaggerating
this aspect of literature. Some works simply do not
lend themselves to this approach
– Often simplify and distort
Psychological Criticism

Strategies and questions
– What connections can you make between your
knowledge of an author’s life and the behavior and
motivations of characters in his/her work?
– How does your understanding of the characters, their
relationships, their actions, and their motivations in a
literary work help you better understand the mental
world and imaginative life, or the actions and
motivations of the author?
– How does a particular literary work – its images,
metaphors, and other linguistic elements – reveal the
psychological motivations of its characters or the
psychological mindset of its author?
Psychological Criticism

Strategies and questions cont.
– To what extent can you employ the concepts of
Freudian psychoanalysis to understand the
motivations of literary characters?
– What kinds of literary works and what types of
literary characters seem best suited to a critical
approach that employs a psychological or
psychoanalytical perspective? Why?
– How can a psychological or psychoanalytical approach
to a particular work be combined with an approach
from another critical perspective?
Sociological Criticism
Karl Marx argued that the way people think and behave
in any society is determined by basic economic factors.
He believed those groups of people who owned and
controlled major industries could exploit the rest
 Marxist critics examine literature for its refection of how
dominant elites exploit subordinate groups, how people
become “alienated” from each other, and how middleclass/bourgeois values lead to the control and
suppression of the working class
 See literature’s value in promoting social and economic
revolution
 Such changes would include the overthrow of the
dominant capitalist ideology and the loss of power by
those with money and privilege

Sociological Criticism



Concerned with understanding the role of politics,
money, and power in literary works, and with redefining
and reforming the way society distributes its resources
among the classes
Marxist critics generally approach literary works as
products of their era, especially as influenced, even
determined by the economic and political ideologies that
prevail at the time of their composition
The literary work is a “product” in relation to the actual
economic and social conditions that exist at either the
time of the work’s composition or the time and place of
the action it describes.
Sociological Criticism

Advantages
– Frequently evaluative and judges some literary work
better than others on an ideological basis
– Can illuminate political and economic dimensions of
literature that other approaches overlook

Disadvantages
– May impose critic’s personal politics on the work in
question and then evaluating it according to how
closely it endorses that ideology
– There is a tendency that can lead to reductive
judgment because an author may illustrate the
principles of class struggle more clearly and will be
judge superior because of this
Sociological Criticism

Strategies and questions
– Explore the way different groups of people are
represented in texts. Evaluate the level of social
realism in the text and how society is portrayed
– Consider how the text itself is a commodity that
reproduces certain social beliefs and practices.
Analyze the social effect of the literary work
– Look at the effects of power drawn from economic or
social class
– What social forces and institutions are represented in
the work? How are these forces portrayed? What is
the author’s attitude toward them?
Sociological Criticism

Strategies and questions cont.
– What political economic elements appear in the work? How
important are they in determining or influencing the lives of the
characters?
– What economic issues appear in the course of the work? How
important are economic facts in influencing the motivation and
behavior of the characters?
– To what extent are the lives of the characters influenced or
determined by social, political, and economic forces? To what
extent are the characters aware of these forces?
– Best way to look at it – who has the power/money? Who does
not? What happens as a result?
Biographical Criticism
Authors typically write about things they know
well, the events and circumstances of their lives
are often reflected in their works.
 The context for a literary work includes
information about the author
 Interpretation of the work should be based on
an understanding of its context
 Focuses on explicating the literary work by using
the insight provided by knowledge of the
author’s life

Biographical Criticism

Advantages
– Helps to illuminate the text; provide insight into
themes historical references, social oppositions and
the creation of fiction characters

Disadvantages
–
–
–
–
Some biographical details may be irrelevant
Writers often revise facts
Can overwhelm and distort the work
Requires knowledge of the author
Biographical Criticism

Questions and strategies
– Research the author’s life and relate that
information to the work
– Research the author’s time and relate that
information to the work
– What elements of the author’s life come out in
the work? Why?
– How might the work came into being? How
did the author change it from its
autobiographical origins?
Historical Criticism
When reading a text, you have to place it within
its historical context
 Historical refers to the social, political, economic,
cultural, and intellectual climate of the time
 Less concerned with explaining a work’s literary
significance for today’s readers than with helping
us understand the work by recreating the exact
meaning and impact it had on its original
audience

Historical Criticism

Advantages
– There have been so many social, cultural, and
linguistic changes that some older texts are
incomprehensible without this criticism
– Even simple historical analysis can help with analysis

Disadvantages
– Requires research and prior knowledge
– May be missed if knowledge isn’t present
– Often ignores the other types of analysis
Historical Criticism

Strategies and Questions
– What information about the time the author
wrote is important to the work?
– What information about the time the work is
set in is important to the work?
– What ways did the people of that period see
and think about the world in which they lived
– Research the fundamental historical events of
the period in which the author wrote
Historical Criticism

Strategies and Questions, cont.
– Consider the fundamental historical events of
the period in which the literary work is set if it
is different from the period in which the
author wrote
– View the text as part of a larger context of
historical movements, and consider how it
both contributes to and reflects certain
fundamental aspects of human history? How
does this effect the story?
Deconstructionist Criticism





The most difficult. There can be no absolute knowledge about
anything because language can never say what we intended it to
mean.
Developed by some very unconventional thinkers, who declared that
literature means nothing because language means nothing.
In other words, we cannot say that we know what the “meaning” of
a story is because there is no way of knowing.
Language is irretrievably self-contradictory and self-destroying.
Through a careful analysis of a text’s language, deconstructionist
unravel the text by pointing to places where it is ambivalent,
contradictory, or otherwise ambiguous.
Deconstructionist Criticism

Strategies and Questions
– What oppositions exist in the work?
– What textual elements (descriptive details, images,
incidents, passages) suggest a contradiction or
alternative to the privileged or more powerful term.
Meaning…how these elements can offer multiple
meanings
– What is the prevailing ideology or set of cultural
assumptions in the work? Where are these
assumptions most evident?
– What passages of the work most reveal gaps,
inconsistencies, or contradictions?
Deconstructionist Criticism

Strategies and Questions, cont.
– How stable is the text?
– How are the “truths” in the story provisional
and contradictory?
– While a formalist tries to demonstrate how
the diverse elements of a text cohere into
meaning, the deconstructionist attempts to
show how the text can be broken down.
– Look for gaps where meaning breaks down.
Cultural Criticism







Does not offer a single way of analyzing literature – will borrow concepts
from deconstruction, Marxist, gender, race and psychology theories
Looks at culture for its dissensions and conflicts
A chief goal is to understand the nature of social power as reflected in
“texts”.
The relevant mission of cultural studies is to identify both the overt and
covert values reflected in a cultural practice.
Tries to trace out and understand the structures of meaning that hold those
assumptions in place and give them the appearance of objective
representation.
Seeks to portray social, political and psychological conflicts it masks
Often asks questions about what social class created a work of art and what
class(es) served as its audience.
Cultural Criticism






Concern with social inequality between the sexes and races.
A political enterprise that views literary analysis as a means of furthering
social justice
Notion of boundaries is one of the more helpful metaphors for thinking
about cultural studies.
An additional area of cultural studies deals with gender criticism –
specifically gay and lesbian studies. This examines the representation of
sexual orientation a text, and with the social and cultural implications of
these representations. Will examine a text for themes of heterosexual
privilege, sexual identity and affiliation, homoerotic imagery and power
imbalances based on sexual orientation.
Also looks to race and how it is represented in the text. Will examine for
racial stereotypes, themes of inequalities based on race or ethnicity, and
racial identity and affiliation.
What one sees most clearly are a commitment to examining issues of class,
race, and gender
Cultural Criticism

Advantages

Provides new social, political, and historical insights

Disadvantages

Notorious for its complex intellectual analysis of mundane materials
No single way of analysis

Cultural Criticism

Strategies and Questions
– What cultural conflicts are suggested by or embodied in the
work?
– What kinds of gender identity, behavior, and attitudes are
reflected in the work? Is there any overtly or covertly expressed
view of race, homosexuality or lesbianism?
– With what kinds of social, economic, and cultural privileges (or
lack thereof) are same-sex unions or relationships depicted?
With what effects and consequences?
– What stereotypes of race are depicted? Are inequalities are
based on race, ethnicity or sexual orientation are depicted in the
text?