Tuesday January 24 th

1. Tuesday January 24th • LEQ: How can one text be interpreted by the reader in multiple ways? • Journal: Think of something you’ve read, heard, or seen outside of class that particularly struck you as worth thinking about, perhaps a billboard, commercial, newspaper article, movie, etc. What did it make you think about? Was it shocking, entertaining, odd, etc?

2. Introduction to Literary Criticism

3. English vs. Other Subjects • Math is concrete. • History is verifiable. • Science is testable. • English is . . . the encounter with problems that don’t have agreed upon solutions. never-ending, reasoned argument. debate, discussion, and thousands of viewpoints.

4. Literary Criticism/Theory • Literary Criticism: The interpretation / explanation of a text. • Literary Theory: The examination of the interpretation / explanation and the ideologies that created them. • Understand HOW people arrive at different conclusions.

5. Why Study? • Changes the way you look at literature. • No longer is your interpretation the most important thing. • What you think is almost irrelevant – we want to analyze WHY you think it. • Look at the reasons for your interpretation and how someone else could be interpret it.

6. Why Else? • After high school, the world will judge you on your ability to think critically. • Literary theory helps develop this ability. • By opening your eyes, you open your mind. • You don’t even know what you’re looking at until you’ve tried on different lenses.

7. Literary Theory • No single theory is necessarily correct or true above any other • Critical approaches usually derive from personal discretion or applicability • Some approaches naturally lend themselves to particular works • It would be tough to talk about Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried without understanding the historical context.

8. Basic Techniques • Reading “with the grain” • Reading “against the grain”

9. Basic Lenses • We’ll cover these literary theories: • Formalist • Biographical • Cultural Historical • Feminist • Marxist • Psychoanalytic/Freudian • Mythological • There are many more for you to explore.

10. Formalist • Sees the reader as essential to the interpretation of a work. • Each reader is unique, with different educations, experiences, moral values, opinions, tastes, etc. • Therefore, each reader’s interaction with a work is unique. • Analyzes the features of the text that shape and guide a reader’s reading. • Emphasizes recursive reading—rereading for new interpretations.

11. Formalist • Overly impressionistic and guilty of the affective fallacy (too focused on the emotional effect of the work). • Not “intellectual.” • Now called reception theory.

12. Formalist • Reception theory is applied to the general reading public rather than an individual reader. • Each generation has different experiences, values, issues, etc. • Each generation will read a work differently. • art for art's sake," "content = form," and "texts exist in and for themselves."

13. Biographical Criticism • Analyzes an author’s life in regard to their work • Can enhance the understanding of a work • Author’s experience SHAPES the creation of the work • Must be used carefully

14. Feminist Criticism • Grew out of the women’s movement that followed World War II. • Analyze the role of gender in works of literature. • Recover neglected works by women authors through the ages and creating a canon of women’s writing. • World is saturated with “male-produced” assumptions • Seek to correct imbalance by battling patriarchal attitudes

15. Marxist Criticism • Based on the social and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Their beliefs include the following: • Value is based on labor. • The working class will eventually overthrow the capitalist middle class. • In the meantime, the middle class exploits the working class. • Most institutions—religious, legal, educational, and governmental—are corrupted by middle-class capitalists.

16. Marxist Criticism • Apply these economic and social theories to literature by analyzing: • Ideologies that support the elite and place the working class at a disadvantage • Class conflict • Marxism strongly influenced fiction, particularly American fiction, in the 1930s.

17. Marxist Criticism • Literary work cannot be separated from the social context in which it was created. • Social status of author • Social content of a work (values presented) • Role of audience in shaping literature • Examines one of these two aspects: • Conditions of production, such as schools, magazines, publishers, and fashions. • Applicability of a given work—fiction especially—in studying the dynamics of a given society.

18. Cultural Historical • View literature as part of history, and as an expression of forces on history. • Compares literary analysis to a dynamic circle: • The work tells us something about the surrounding ideology (slavery, rights of women, etc.) • Study of the ideology tells us something about the work.

19. Cultural Historical • Takes two forms: • Analysis of the work in the context in which it was created • Analysis of the work in the context in which it was critically evaluated. • Literature does not exist outside time and place and cannot be interpreted without reference to the era in which it was written.

20. Psychoanalytic • Analyzes literature to reveal insights about the way the human mind works. • Based on the work of Sigmund Freud and his disciples. • Works well as a method of analyzing characters’ actions and motivations, the artist’s motivations, and/or the effect of the reading on the reader.

21. Basic Freudian Concepts • All actions are influenced by the unconscious. • Human beings must repress many of their desires to live peacefully with others. • Repressed desires often surface in the unconscious, motivating actions.

22. Basic Freudian Concepts • The mind has three major areas of activity: • Id: Area in the unconscious that works for gratification through the pleasure principle • Superego: An internal censor bringing social pressures to bear on the id. • Ego: Area in the consciousness that mediates among demands of social pressure, the id, and the superego.

23. Mythological Criticism • Analyzes what in a work evokes a similar response in people, regardless of culture • Concerned with enduring patterns and how they are reflected in literature • THE ARCHETYPE • A symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response • “collective unconscious” • Set of primal memories common to the human race (existing below conscious mind) • Archetypal images (like sun, moon, fire, night, blood) trigger the “c.u.”

24. Sample Archetypes Common Themes: • Stories of quest and initiation • Descents into the underworld • Ascents into heaven • Search for father/mother • Fall from innocence Characters: • Scapegoat • Hero/Villain • Outcast • Temptress • Mother/Father • Mentor

25. Sample Student Analyses • http://www.teachingliterature.org/teachingliterature/chapter10/Chapter10Deblinks.pdf