Literary Critical Theories:

Ways of Analyzing Text(overview)

Mr. Watson, AP Lit & Comp

What are Literary Critical Theories?

• Different “schools” of criticism• Each emerged at different historical points

(almost all in the 20th century)• Definition: “ideas [that] act as different

lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and . . . culture”

• Lit Crit is different perspectives of analysis.

Formalism / New Criticism

• The work stands alone, outside of author’s experience or historical context.

• Concentrates on the formal elements of a work, such as language, structure, style, and tone.

• Sample question: How does the work use imagery to develop symbolism?

Psychological/Psychoanalytic• Uses Freudian strategies to analyze work

(Oedipus/Electra complex, id/ego/superego, unconscious desires)

• Analyzes motivations of characters, psychological symbols; may analyze author’s motivations or a reader’s psychological response to text

• Sample question: Are there prominent words or symbols in the piece that could have hidden meanings?

Mythological/Archetypal

• Finds “underlying, recurrent patterns in literature that reveal universal meanings and basic human experiences”

• Carl Jung (archetypes), Joseph Campbell (Hero’s Journey/Heroic Cycle)

• Sample question: How does the main protagonist’s story follow the steps of the Heroic Cycle?

Marxist• Analyzes how text reinforces or portrays:

socio-economic class divisions, the conflict between those classes, the “status quo,” and/or who benefits from how story and characters are depicted

• More concerned with content and theme than literary form. All texts are “political.”

• Sample question: What social classes do the characters represent?

Reader-Response• Focuses on the reader, rather than the work

itself• Reading is not passive; it is the reader (not

the author or text in a vacuum) that brings meaning to the text.

• Sample question: How does the interpretation of the text reveal information about the interpreter (reader)?

Feminist Criticism• Concerned with “the ways … literature …

reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women”

• The influence of patriarchy marginalizes women in all aspects.

• Biology determines sex (male/female), but feminists examine how culture determines gender (masculine/feminine)

• Sample question: How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?

Structuralism vs. Deconstruction

• A structuralist looks for patterns in a design of a text that would reveal “truth” and clear interpretation. However . . .

• A deconstrucionist would think seeking a single Truth in a text is absurd; it doesn’t exist.

Deconstruction

• Realities are plural; structures are by nature unstable or contradictory.

• Most narratives are unrealistic; our experiences are not simply chronological. Post-modern authors exploit this.

• The author is “dead,” and matters much less than the reader.

Deconstruction (continued)

• Whatever the reader, the author or the text seems to find or say, a deconstructionist can “prove” the opposite.

• Sample questions: How does a work fulfill or move outside the established conventions of its genre? What is left out of the text that if included might undermine the goal of the work?

Deconstruction “freeplay”• Jacques Derrida’s “freeplay”: language does

not have fixed meaning.• “Time flies like an arrow” means what?• Time (noun) flies (verb) like an arrow

(adverb clause): Time passes quickly.• Time (verb) flies (object) like an arrow

(adverb clause): Get out your stopwatch and time the speed of flies as you would an arrow’s flight.

Post-Colonial Criticism• Concerned with works produced by colonial

powers (formerly or currently) OR by those that were/are colonized.

• Analyzes issues such as power, religion, culture, and economics, particularly when viewing the Western colonizers’ control of the colonized.

• Sample question: How does post-colonialism affect the work explicitly (ex: plot, character motivation) and implicitly (ex: accurate portrayal of author’s own culture vs. “the other”)?

Other Lit Crit Theories

• African-American• GBLTQ / Gender (how is gender and sexual

identity portrayed?)• Hispanic/Latino• New Historicism (full historical context:

time of setting, time written, time read)

Final Thoughts• There is no one way to interpret text.• Texts may support multiple Lit Crit theories,

but rarely can they all be applied well! Usually, a few “naturally” apply.

• Recognize how your own personal experience and bias informs your reading.

• Use these Lit Crit theories for more ways to discuss, write about, and analyze text.