Literary Criticism

1. Literary Criticism • A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that ideas act as different lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture. • Stephen Bonnycastle states: • “The main reason for studying theory at the same time as literature is that it forces you to deal consciously with the problems of ideologies…If you are going to live intelligently in the modern world, you have to recognize that there are conflicting ideologies and that there is not simple direct access to the truth”. • What does he mean? What is an ideology?

2. Reader Response • Describes your own response when moving through a text; personal reaction to a text, subjective.

3. Formalist Criticism • Focuses on close reading, analyzing figures of speech, point of speech, diction, motif as calculated, contributing to work’s unity.

4. Archetypal Criticism

5. Archetypal Criticism • The word archetype is from the Greek arkhetupon, first mold or model, in the meaning of being the initial version of something later multiplied. • In literature and art an archetype is a character, a tradition, an event, a story or an image that recurs in different works, in different cultures and in different periods of time.

6. Archetypes • Archetypal criticism focuses on those patterns in a literary work that commonly occur in other literary works. • These patterns include persistent images, figures, and story patterns shared by people across diverse cultures.

7. Carl Jung • Carl Jung first applied the term archetype to literature. He recognized that there were universal patterns in all stories and mythologies regardless of culture or historical period and hypothesized that part of the human mind contained a collective unconscious shared by all members of the human species, a sort of universal, primal memory, which the part of the unconscious mind that is derived from ancestral memory and experience and is common to all humankind, as distinct from the individual's unconscious.

8. Archetypes There are a number of identifiable archetypes in literature, art and film spanning centuries. Some of the most easily recognizable archetypes in character, situation and symbol include the following:

9. Archetypal Situations • The Task/Trial • The Journey • The Quest • The Loss of Innocence

10. Archetypal Symbols • Light vs. Dark • Water • Mist/Fog (weather in general) • Red (colors in general) • Forest • Stars

11. Archetypal Characters • Hero/Heroine • Sidekick/Helper • Villain • Outcast • Star-Crossed Lovers • “Don Juan” • Underdog • Damsel in Distress • Femme Fatale

12. Archetypal Critical Questions • What images, symbols, figures, are present that are present in other literary works? • What myths, dreams and even ritualized modes of social behavior are present? • What is the significance of these archetypes? What do they reveal about human’s collective unconsious?