Transcript Introduction to Literary Criticism

Introduction to Literary
Criticism
ENG4UI
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Can you read this
man’s mind?
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How about this
man’s?
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Or this woman’s?
The old way
This was the old
way of reading
 Authors were
seen as sole
proprietors of the
meaning of their
writing
 Readers took it at
face value
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Romanticism
 centered on the artist
and creative genius
 text was indebted to
previous writers and
ideas
 the power of the
natural world
Romanticism
centered on the artist and creative genius
text was indebted to previous writers and
ideas
The power of the natural world
Realism
 art should replicate the
world around us
 literature represents the
times it is written
Modernism
 overturn traditional modes of
representation and express the new
sensibilities of their time
 the Artist as savior
 "irrationality at the roots of a supposedly
rational world“
Michel-André Bossy
Postmodernism
 resist definition or classification
 the artist is impotent, and the only
recourse against "ruin" is to play within
the chaos
 death of the author
Literary Criticism and Theory
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Any piece of text can
be read with a number
of different sets of
“glasses,” meaning
you are looking for
different things within
the text
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Literary Criticism helps
readers understand a
text in relation to the
author, culture, and
other texts
The Most Common Critical Stances
for Literature
Formalistic
 Marxist
 Feminist/Gender
 Psychological
 Archetypical
 Biographical
 Historical/Cultural
 Deconstructionist
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What is theory?
Interdisciplinary
 Speculative
 Thinking about thinking
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The Author is Dead
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The reader's role: active agent who
imparts "real existence“ to the work and
completes its meaning through
interpretation
Questioning?
Dispute “common sense” meanings
 Literary theory suggests that we cannot
know what the writer “had in mind”
 The text holds no “truths”
 Instead there are various ways of
reading a text and interpreting a text
 Be suspicious of that which we find
“natural”
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Your Assignment
At the end of the unit, you will choose
one of the four main theories we look at
and apply this theory to a children’s story
 We will use “The Three Little Pig” as a
an example throughout this unit
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Formalist Criticism
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A formalist (aka New Criticism) reading of a text
focuses on symbol, metaphor, imagery, and so on
Formalism ignores the author’s biography and focuses
only on the interaction of literary elements within the
text
It’s what you do most often in English literature
A Formalist Reading of “The Three
Little Pigs”
What does the wolf symbolize?
 Notice the consonance of “I’ll huff and I’ll
puff…”
 How does the story foreshadow the final
fate of the pigs?
 What does the wolf’s dialogue tell us
about his character?
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Marxist Criticism
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Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of
individual rights and means of production are privately
owned
Key points
exploitation of an entire class
of society by another
 the ruling class controls the means of
production
 Subjectification of working class
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Questions Marxist theorists ask…
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Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is
accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
 What is the social class of the author?
 Which class does the work claim to represent?
 What values does it reinforce?
 What values does it subvert?
 What conflict can be seen between the values the
work champions and those it portrays?
 What social classes do the characters represent?
 How do characters from different classes interact or
conflict?
The Hunger Games
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How would a Marxist view these
novels/films?
“The Three Little Pigs”
How would a Marxist look at this story?
 How could we alter this story to
demonstrate our understanding of the
Marxist theory?
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Gender Criticism
Gender criticism analyzes literature
through the lens of socially-constructed
gender roles
 The largest part of gender criticism is
feminism, which critiques and seeks to
correct women’s subordination to men in
society
 In its purist form, feminism is about
equality
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Gender Criticism: Feminism
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Belief in the social,
political, and economic
equality of the sexes
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An example of a
marginalized group’s
attempt to reappropriate meaning
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Concerned with the ways in which
literature reinforces or undermines the
economic, political, social, and
psychological oppression of women
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Inherently patriarchal
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Patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which
women are politically, economically, psychologically or
socially oppressed
Women as “other”: she is marginalized, defined only
by her difference from male norms and values
All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is deeply
rooted in patriarchal ideology, for example, in the
biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin in the world
Biology determines our sex (male or female); culture
determines our gender (masculine or feminine)
Questions Feminist theorists ask…
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How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters
assuming male/female roles)?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
How do characters embody these traits?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this
change others’ reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially,
or psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of
resisting patriarchy?
What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell
us about the operation of patriarchy?
What role the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?
Gender Criticism: Queer Theory
A newer segment of gender criticism is
“queer theory,” which looks for the
influence of homosexuality within texts
 Research of this type is fairly difficult
because, as you’ve learned,
homosexuality was largely suppressed in
Europe and America, and it hasn’t been
openly discussed until the last few
decades
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Gender Studies/Queer Theory
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What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful)
and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters support these
traditional roles?
What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the
masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived
masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both
(bisexual)?
What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer
works, and how are those politics revealed in...the work's thematic content or
portrayals of its characters?
What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian
experience and history, including literary history?
How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who
are apparently homosexual?
What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically,
psychologically) homophobic?
How does the literary text illustrate the problems of sexuality and sexual
"identity”?
“The Three Little Pigs”
How would a Gender theorist look at this
story?
 How could we alter this story to
demonstrate our understanding of the
Gender theory?
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Psychological Criticism
Psychological critical theory applies the
theories of psychology to a text to better
understand its characters
 Based largely on Freud, this theory
hinges on an examination of people’s
(characters’) unconscious desires
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Psychological Criticism
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Drives governing
human behaviour
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Id – the animal nature
that says, “Do what
feels good.”
Ego – the reality-based
part of your personality
that makes decisions to
satisfy the Id and
Superego
Superego – the
socialized “conscience”
that tells you what’s
right or fair
Psychological Criticism
Oedipus Complex – Every boy
has the unconscious desire to
have sex with their mother;
consequently, sons are
deeply afraid of their fathers,
and fathers are deeply
threatened by their sons.
Elektra Complex – Every
daughter has the unconscious
desire to have sex with their
father; consequently,
daughters are deeply afraid of
their mothers, and mothers
are deeply threatened by their
daughters.
Psychological Criticism
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Of course, these
complexes have
their origins in
literature and
mythology
 Psychological
criticism is a way to
understand
characters, not
diagnose them
Questions Psycho-analytical
theorists ask…
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How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?
Are there any oedipal dynamics - or any other family dynamics - at work
here?
How can characters' behaviour, narrative events, and/or images be
explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for
example...fear or fascination with death, sexuality - which includes love
and romance as well as sexual behaviour - as a primary indicator of
psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the
psychological motives of the reader?
Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or
hidden meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author
using these "problem words"?
A Psychological Reading of
Macbeth
Macbeth kills King Duncan because he
unconsciously recognizes the king as a
father-figure. Hence, Duncan is a rival for
power and the affections of the people.
 In the latter acts of the play, Macbeth
has indulged his id so often that his ego
has lost the ability to restrain it.
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“The Three Little Pigs”
How would a Psychoanalyst look at this
story?
 How could we alter this story to
demonstrate our understanding of the
Psychological theory?
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Archetypical Criticism
This stance is not about mythology
 It is about the universal elements of
human life common in all cultures
 Like ancient mythology, all literature is a
window to creating meaning for human
life
 In other words, stories make us feel like
our lives are more significant
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Archetypical Criticism
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Central to the Archetypical theory is the
concept of archetypes
 Simply put, archetypes are those universal
elements present in the literature of all cultures
Archetypical Criticism
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Common Archetypes
The Hero = Beowulf, Spiderman, Luke
Skywalker, Braveheart
 The Outcast = Macbeth’s clown, Grendel,
Cain
 The Quest = LOTR, Star Wars, Beowulf
 Sacrificial King = Jesus, The Lion the Witch
and the Wardrobe, LOTR
 Evil Personified = Wicked Witch of the
West, the Devil, the Emperor in SW, the
Borg
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Archetypical Criticism
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The goal of
Archetypical Criticism
seeks to understand
how the story
constructs meaning in
the human existence
through archetypes
“The Three Little Pigs”
How would an Archetypical theorist look
at this story?
 How could we alter this story to
demonstrate our understanding of the
Archtypical theory?
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More Literary Theory
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New ways of viewing literature (and the world)
continue to develop, but these are the main
theories you’ll come in contact with