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LESSON 4: Literary Theories

Vocabulary Development
Literary Criticism is the evaluation, analysis, description, or interpretation of literary
works.
Critique (verb) means to critically evaluate, analyze or give careful judgment in which
you give your opinion about a literary work.
Critique (noun) is a detailed evaluation or analysis of a literary piece.
Critic is a person who judges, evaluates, or analyzes a literary piece.

Literary Theories: A Sampling of Critical Lenses


A. Structuralist/Formalist Criticism—
- This approach regards literature as "a unique form of human knowledge that
needs to be examined on its own terms."
- Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of form—style,
structure, tone, imagery, etc.—that are found within the text.
- A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work
together with the text's content to shape its effects upon readers.
B. Moral/Ethical Criticism—
- The moral/intellectual critical approach is concerned with content and values.
- The approach is as old as literature itself, for literature is a traditional mode of
imparting morality, philosophy, and religion.
- The concern in moral/intellectual criticism is not only to discover meaning but also
to determine whether works of literature are both true and significant.
- To study literature from the moral/intellectual perspective is therefore to
determine whether a work conveys a lesson or message and whether it can help
readers lead better lives and improve their understanding of the world:
- Ideally, moral/intellectual criticism should differ from sermonizing to the degree
that readers should always be left with their own decisions about whether to
assimilate the ideas of a work and about whether the ideas—and values—are
personally or morally acceptable.
C. Marxist Criticism—
- A Marxist critic grounds his or her theory and practice on the economic and
cultural theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, especially on the following claims:
1. The evolving history of humanity, its institutions, and its ways of thinking are
determined by the changing mode of its “material production”—that is, of its basic
economic organization.
2. Historical changes in the fundamental mode of production effect essential
changes both in the constitution and power relations of social classes, which carry on a
conflict for economic, political, and social advantage.
3. Human consciousness in any era is constituted by an ideology—that is, a set of
concepts, beliefs, values, and ways of thinking and feeling through which human beings
perceive, and by which they explain what they take to be reality.
- A Marxist critic typically undertakes to “explain” the literature of any era by revealing
the economic, class, and ideological determinants of the way an author writes.
- A Marxist critic examines the relation of the text to the social reality of that time and
place.
This school of critical theory focuses on power and money in works of literature.
Who has the power/money? Who does not? What happens as a result? For example, it
could be said that “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is about the upper class attempting 8
to maintain its power and influence over the lower class by chasing Ichabod, a lower-
class citizen with aspirations toward the upper class, out of town. This would explain
some of the story’s descriptions of land, wealth, and hearty living that are seen
through Ichabod’s eyes.

D. Feminist Criticism—
- A feminist critic sees cultural and economic disabilities in a “patriarchal” society
that have hindered or prevented women from realizing their creative possibilities,
including woman’s cultural identification as merely a passive object, or “Other,”
and man is the defining and dominating subject.
- There are several assumptions and concepts held in common by most feminist
critics:

 Our civilization is pervasively patriarchal.


 The concepts of “gender” are largely, if not entirely, cultural constructs,
effected by the omnipresent patriarchal biases of our civilization.
 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.
- This type of criticism is somewhat like Marxist criticism, but instead of focusing
on the relationships between the classes it focuses on the
relationships between the genders.
- Under this theory you would examine the patterns of thought, behavior,
values, enfranchisement, and power in relations between the sexes. For
example, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” can be seen as
the story of the malicious dominance men have over women both
physically and psychologically. Connie is the female victim of the role in
society that she perceives herself playing—the coy young lass whose life
depends on her looks.

E. Historical Criticism—
- Using this theory requires that you apply to a text specific historical
information about the time during which an author wrote.
- Historical, in this case, refers to the social, political, economic, cultural, and
intellectual climate of the time. For example, William Faulkner wrote many
of his novels and stories during and after World War II, a fact that helps to
explain the feelings of darkness, defeat, and struggle that pervade much of his
work.

F. Reader-Response Criticism—
- This type of criticism focuses on the activity of reading a work of literature.
- Reader-response critics turn from the traditional conception of a work as an
achieved structure of meanings to the responses of readers to the text.
- By this shift of perspective, a literary work is converted into an activity that
goes on in a reader’s mind, and what had been features of the work itself—
narrator, plot, characters, style, and structure—is less important than the
connection between a reader’s experience and the text.
- It is through this interaction that meaning is made. Students seem most
comfortable with this school of criticism. Proponents believe that literature
has no objective meaning or existence. People bring their own thoughts,
moods, and experiences to whatever text they are reading and get out of it
whatever they happen to, based on their own expectations and ideas.
- For example, if you read “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, and you
have your own troubled younger brother or sister, the story will have
meaning for you that it wouldn’t have for, say, an only child.

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