Critical Approaches to Literature

Critical Approaches to Literature We’ll play Name That Critical Approach game at the end, so be ready!

What is literary criticsm? • A way of talking about literature • The lens through which we like to examine literature • For example • People who believe that understanding the author’s life can help readers better understand his/her work, often use Biographical Criticism

Major Critical Approaches • There are manycritical approaches however here are some major ones to which we may be referring: • Formalist • Biographical • Historical • Psychological • Mythological • Sociological • Gender • Reader-Response • Deconstructionist • Cultural Studies

Kinds of approaches • Reader-based • Literature does not exist separate from those who read it • An individual’s background and feelings are part of how they read and interpret literature • Text-based • Primarily look at the work itself, separate from context in which it was written or who wrote it • Context-based • Examines the context in which a work was produced

Formalist Criticism • Strongly examines elements such as plot, character, style and tone, irony, symbol, etc. • Believes that studying these elements is the most significant way to find meaning about the text • Seeks to examine a work in isolation from • the reader, • the author, • the context in which it was written • Do you think this approach is reader, text, or context based?

Biographical Criticism • Examines how details and people in author’s life have affected a work • Might examine the events of writer’s life, (Hemingway’s reporting about the Spanish Civil war) and use them to better understand For Whom the Bell Tolls • Might examine multiple drafts to try and decipher why a writer crafted the way she did • Danger: often life stories can overwhelm the literature, making it difficult to understand or examine the work for its own merits

Historical Criticism • Seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it • Context includes author’s biography • Less concerned with a work’s significance today than what it meant in its time • How the time and place of a story’s creation affect its meaning

Psychological Criticism • Emphasizes the underlying meaning in literature in relationship to psychological components • Sexual symbols, dreams, repressed feelings, an individual character’s conscious and/or subconscious motives, etc. • The critic might look at a character’s psychological make-up, sanity, etc.

Mythological Criticism • An interdisciplinary approach • Often draws from anthropology, comparative religion, history, and psychology • Explore literature through examination of common humanity • Commonly discuss archetypes in literature: symbols or situations that evoke a universal response • Coming of age motif • The hero’s journey • Good v. evil as seen in light v. dark

Sociological Criticism • Examines literature in the cultural, economic, and political context in which is it written or received • Looks at the relationship of the artist and society • How the social classes of characters influence their outcomes • The political or social statements a work offers

Gender Criticism • Examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works • Began with the feminist movement • Often looks at how text by examining “male-produced” assumptions in works • Men’s movement: seeks to examine ideas of masculinity • May examine how women are stereotyped or what roles they play in literatureI • nfluenced by sociology, psychology, and anthropology

Reader-Response Criticism Attempts to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while reading a text Acknowledges that different readers come to a text with different backgrounds that will affect their interpretations Though it rejects the idea that there is a singular, correct interpretation, it notes that there are not an infinite number of interpretations

Cultural Studies • No central methodology is used • Interdisciplinary field • Primary looks at the nature of social power as revealed in “texts” • Cereal boxes • Commercials • Literature • Seeks to identify the overt and covert values reflected in a cultural practice

Name That Critical Approach: See handout

Critical Approaches to Literature