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Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism

BSEd English (Nueva Vizcaya State University)

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I. UNIT TITLE/CHAPTER TITLE:

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism

II. LESSON TITLE:

1. An Overview of Literature
2. Definition of Literary Theory and Criticism
3. Functions of Literary Criticism
4. Importance of Literary Criticism

III. LESSON OVERVIEW:

IV. DESIRED LEARNING OUTCOMES: At the end of the chapter, the students are expected to:

1. Differentiate literary theory and literary criticism;

2. Determine the relationship between literary theory and literary criticism;
3. Demonstrate deeper understanding of the nature of literary criticism and the role of a literary critic;
4. Explain how analyzing the elements of a literary text build a deeper understanding of a text; and
5. Use the critical variables of literary theory and criticism to extract meaning and analyze literary
works.

V. LESSON CONTENT

What is Literature?

 Literature is derived from the Latin word “litera” which means “letters”.
 It is also associated with the French phrase “Belles Letres” which means “beautiful writings”.
 “Literature illuminates life.”
 “It is a product of life and about life. A good piece of literature presents a slice of life; and makes
the reader capture truth and beauty.”
 “Literature appeals to man’s needs – spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and creative. Like all other
forms of art, literature entertains and gives pleasures; it fires man’s imagination and arouses his
noble emotions.”
 Literature present human life and experience not by telling the reader but by showing it through
a medium called language.

Standards of Literature

The following standards are used scholarly by persons and professionals in writing and
reviewing to assess a literary piece that makes it reading worthy:

1. Universality – a fictional work that is ageless and sensible. It is relevant, it appeals to all,
anytime and anywhere because it deals with an array of the perception of each individuals as
well as orientation toward fundamental truths and universal conditions.
2. Suggestiveness – literature should carry many associations that lead beyond the sentence
meaning. The reader is led to establish what the author is suggesting and this captures the
reader’s imagination by thinking about what they are reading, thus engaging them more into the
story.
3. Style – it is unique way in which an author sees life, form his or her ideas and express them.
4. Spiritual value – a literary work should present values required for us to reflect an eventually
inspire us to become a better individual.
5. Permanence – a great literary work should not be transient or merely a passing hype to the
audience; it should be long-lasting.
6. Intellectual beauty – each literary piece should enrich our mental life by making us understand
about the fundamental truths toward life and human nature.
7. Artistry – the literature should be well-written and appeal to our creative sides with beautifully
crafted phrases and sentences.

Literature is divided into two main genres: fiction and non-fiction

FICTION NON-FICTION

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1. Drama 1. Narrative nonfiction

 Stories composed in verse or prose and  It is presented in a format which tells a
are usually presented or performed in story that is based on fact.
theater where conflict and emotion are
expressed with dialogue and action.
2. Poetry 2. Essays
 Written in verse imagery with rhythm  The author’s personal view about a
writing that evokes the reader an particular subject or theme. This literary
emotional response in the reader. composition in prose is generally
speculative, interpretative or analytic.
3. Fable 3. Biography
 It is a narration intended to enforce a  A composition or historic account of the
useful truth and in which animals speak series of events in a person’s life. When
and act like human beings. the chronicler or writer is also the subject
of the historical account it is called an
autobiography.
4. Fairy tales 4. Speech
 Stories about fairies or any magical  Speaking power or oral communication
creatures that is exclusively written for with an ability to express his/her thoughts
children. and emotions
5. Fantasy
 Written in fiction which invites suspension
of reality that forms mental images with
strange or other worldly settings or
characters.
6. Humor
 Stories that are amusing or comical and
are fun to read.
7. Science Fiction
 A literary composition that attempts to
depict settings and events in highly
advanced and futuristic themes.
8. Short story
 A prose or narrative that is shorter than a
novel and has less subplots.
9. Realistic fiction
 A story that can actually happen and is
true to real life.
10. Folklore
 Songs, stories, myths and proverbs of a
person’s folk that is widely held but false
and based on unsubstantiated beliefs.
11. Historical fiction
 Fictional characters and events in a
historical setting stories.
12. Horror
 A literary composition that is terrifying,
shocking or revolting.
13. Tall tale
 Blatant exaggerations, swaggering
heroes who can do impossible in a
humorous story.
14. Legend
 A national or folk hero that is based on
fact but with imaginative material.
15. Mystery
 A literary composition where characters
solve a crime or are part of unraveling
secrets.
16. Mythology
 Legend or traditional narrative based on
historical events that reveals human
behavior and natural phenomena.
17. Fiction in verse

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 Full-length novels with plot, subplots and

themes with major and minor characters.

Elements of Literature

1. Character – refers to a textual representation of a human being (or occasionally another

creature. Characters can be categorized as the following depending on their level of
development and the extent to which they change in the course of the story.
 Protagonist – the main character, the lead figure
 Antagonist – a character that deceives, frustrates, or works against the protagonist
 Antihero – a protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of
hero
 Tragic hero – a protagonist who comes to a bad end
 Stock/type – a stereotyped character and is known by having one personality
 Flat – a character who is the same person at the end of the story
 Dynamic – a character who undergoes a permanent change in the story
 Round – a character who is complex and convincing perhaps even contradictory
 Foil – a character who contrasts and parallels the main character

2. Setting – the story’s time and place including location, topography, scenery, and such physical
arrangements, occupations and daily manner of living, the time or period in which action takes
place, and the general environment.

3. Conflict – is the essence of fiction. It makes plot. The contentions we experience can typically
be distinguished as one of four sorts.

 Man versus Man: Clash that sets one individual against another.
 Man versus Nature: This includes a keep running in with the powers of nature. From
one viewpoint, it communicates the irrelevance of a solitary human life in the infinite
plan of things. Then again, it tests the points of confinement of a man’s quality and will
to live.
 Man versus Society: The qualities and traditions by which other people lives are being
tested. The character may arrive at an inconvenient end as an aftereffect of his/her
feelings. The character may, then again, convey others around to a thoughtful
perspective, or it might be chosen that society was directly truth to be told.
 Man versus Self: Inner clash. Not all contention includes other individuals. Some of the
time individuals are the cause all their own problems. An interior clash is a decent test of
a character’s qualities. Does he/she offer into enticement or transcend it? Does he/she
request the most from him/herself or settle for something less? Does he/she much try to
battle? The inward clashes of a character and how they are determined are great
intimations to the character’s internal quality.

4. Plot – refers to the series or sequence of events that give a story its meaning and effect. The
plot is built around a series of events that take place within a definite period. According to
Freytag, a drama is divided into five parts:
 exposition – creates the tine, gives the setting, introduces the characters, and supplies
other facts necessary to understanding a work of literature
 rising action – the rising action where the character begins to grapple with the story’s
main conflict
 climax – is the point of highest interest where the reader makes the greatest emotional
response
 falling action – is the part after the climax containing events caused by the climax and
contributing to the resolution
 denouement – is the final unraveling of a plot; the living solution of a mystery; an
explanation or outcome.

5. Point of View – refers to the source and scope of the narrative voice.
 First-person POV – usually identifiable by the use of the pronoun “I”, a character in the
story does the narration.
 Second-person POV – in which the narrator refers to the reader as “you”, therefore
making the audience member feel as if he/she is a character within the story.
 Third-person POV – the narrative voice can render information from anywhere,
including the thoughts and feelings of any of the characters.

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6. Tone – refers to the mood or attitude that the author creates toward the story’s subject matter
and its audience.

7. Theme – is the meaning or concept we are left with after reading a piece of fiction. It is the
central and unifying concept of the story that adheres to the following requirements:
 It must account for all the major details of the story.
 It must not be contradicted by any detail of the story.
 It must not rely on supposed facts – facts not actually stated or clearly implied by the
story.

What is Literary Criticism?

 Literary Criticism is the study, evaluation and interpretation of literature. Thus, literature is the
subject of literary criticism.
 The history of literature is the history of literary criticism. (Balogun, 2011)
 “Literary criticism is the study, and evaluation of imaginative literature. Everyone who expresses
an opinion about a book, a song, a play, or a movie is a critic, but not everyone’s opinion is
based upon thought, reflection, analysis or consistently articulated principles.” (Lund, 1996)
 Literary criticism is not “reading between the lines”, rather it is the act of reading the lined
carefully, in a disciplined, and informed manner.
 In the discipline of literary criticism, it was originally assumed that meaning resides with the
author. Thus, the purpose of interpretation then was to discern the author’s intention which
would unlock the textual meaning of the work. However, with time, critics began to focus more
concertedly on the text itself, hence meaning came to be seen as residing with the reader.

Origin of Literary Criticism

 Greeks- 5th Century inaugurated the formal study of

 literary criticism.
 Plato- 427-347 BC morality (rationality)
 Aristotle- 384-322 BC structure (Objectives)
 Horace- 65-8 BC “The best writings teach and delight”
 Longinus- 1st Century A.D. First comparative critic
 Dante Aligheiri- language (vernacular)
 Sir Philip Sidney- Eclectic in Criticism

Nature of Literary Criticism

 According to Griffith (2002), prior to the 20th century, the investigation of the nature and value of
literature had had a long and distinguished history beginning with Plato and Aristotle and
continuing into modern times. However, their investigations focused primarily on
evaluation, not interpretation. They explored what literature is and praised and condemned
works that failed to meet whichever standards they deemed essential.
 Over the ages, literary theories have been the weapons for the realization of the crucial
obligation of literary criticism.
 According to Eagleton (1996), the emergence of theory was a ‘way of emancipating literary
works from the stranglehold of a ‘civilized sensibility’, and throwing them open to a kind of
analysis in which, in principle at least, anyone could participate.’ He further argued that, theory
is he body of ideas and methods used in the practical reading of literature. For him, theories
reveal what literature can mean.
 Literary criticism tries to explain the literary work to us: its production, its meaning, its design,
and its beauty.
 Literary criticism refers to a set of principles evolved for the evaluation of works of literature.

What is Literary Theory?

 Generally, a theory is a body of rules or principles used to appraise works of literature. It tries to
explain the assumptions and values upon which various forms of literary criticism rest.
 Literary theory is a school of thought or style of literary analysis that gives readers a means to
critique the ideas and principles of literature.

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 Literary theory does not refer to the meaning of a work of literature but to the theories that
reveal what literature can mean.
 It is literary theory that formulates the relationship between author and work; literary theory
develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary study, both from the standpoint
of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts.

Literary Theory and Literary Criticism

 When we interpret a literary text, we are doing literary criticism; when we examine the criteria
upon which our interpretation rests, we are applying literary theory.
 Literary criticism is the application of a literary theory to a literary text, whether or not a given
critic is aware of the theoretical assumptions informing his or her interpretation.
 Literary theory and criticism is an unavoidable part of studying literature.
 Literary theory and criticism aim to explain, entertain, stimulate, and challenge the student of
literature.
 Literary theory and criticism helps to achieve a better understanding of literature.

Who is a Literary Critic?

 The literary critic is concerned with what the writer has tried to say in his work and how
successful he has been able to express it.
 The literary critic gives life to a literary text by bringing out the hidden meanings embedded in
the work.
 It should be noted that a critic does not prescribe which realities are valid, but identifies the
nature of the individual experience and the aesthetic means used to express that experience.
 A literary critic approaches a work according to established codes, doctrines or aesthetic
principles.
 A literary critic is a mediator between the work and the reading public.
 A literary critic analyzes and evaluates what a writer has written, comments on and evaluates
the quality of both the author’s literary composition and his vision of, or insight into human
experience.

Functions of Literary Criticism

 To study literary criticism is to seek to understand exactly how readers (critics) interpret
(criticize) texts.
 Literary criticism deals with analyzing, classifying, expounding and evaluating a work of art in
order to form one’s opinion.
 Most scholars today would agree that there is no single meaning waiting to be simply found in
any text. Meaning is produced, that is, it is a function of the different interpretative strategies
which various readers bring to bear upon a text.
 A cardinal rule of modern literary criticism may be summed up as: the answers you get from a
text depend entirely upon the kind of questions you put to it.
 The rule above implies that the same text legitimately means different things to different people.
To put it simply, the four critical variables of literary theory and criticism would largely dictate the
meaning and interpretation of the literary critic, depending on the literary theory that he/she
would use to critic a text.

THE CRITICAL VARIABLES OF

LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

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 As mentioned earlier, literary criticism uses various literary theories to study a literary text.
These literary theories use each of the four critical variables of literary theory and criticism: 1)
the world, 2) the author, 3) the text, and 4) the reader as principal objects of critical
investigation.
 For example, a literary critic who wishes to use the historical approach to literary criticism would
rely heavily on the author in order to understand his intention and to make sense of his work.
The critic would need to understand the author and his age, his beliefs, prejudices, time, and
past in order to gain full understanding of his work.
 If you can notice, the text is placed at the center of the diagram. This is because all of the
literary theories/approaches must deal, to some extent, with the text itself.

The following are the theories of literature that we will use as literary lenses as we go through this
course:

1. Formalist Theory and Criticism

2. Structuralist Criticism
3. Post Structuralism
4. Deconstructionism
5. Marxist Theory and Criticism
6. Biographical Criticism
7. Historical Criticism
8. Post-colonial Criticism
9. Psychoanalysis Criticism
10. Reader-Response Criticism
11. Feminist/Gender Criticism

In conclusion, as a student of literary criticism, some of the questions to ask yourself include:

 Am I reading a literary text in order to measure how accurate its representation of reality is?
 Am I reading a literary text for insights into the life and mind of its writer?
 As the reader, is my role a passive or an active role?
 Is meaning simply found in a literary text or is it constructed or produced by the reader?

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