Introduction to Literary Criticism

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Introduction to Literary Criticism

• ENG4UI

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• Can you read this mans mind?

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• How about this mans?

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• Or this womans?

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The old way

• This was the old way of reading
• Authors were seen as sole proprietors of the
  meaning of their writing
• Readers took it at face value

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• Romanticism
• centered on the artist and creative genius
• text was indebted to previous writers and ideas
• the power of the natural world

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Romanticism centered on the artist and creative
genius text was indebted to previous writers and
ideas The power of the natural world
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• Realism
• art should replicate the world around us
• literature represents the times it is written

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• Modernism
• overturn traditional modes of representation and
  express the new sensibilities of their time
• the Artist as savior
• "irrationality at the roots of a supposedly
  rational world
• Michel-André Bossy

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• Postmodernism
• resist definition or classification
• the artist is impotent, and the only recourse
  against "ruin" is to play within the chaos
• death of the author

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Literary Criticism and Theory

• Any piece of text can be read with a number of
  different sets of glasses, meaning you are
  looking for different things within the text
• Literary Criticism helps readers understand a
  text in relation to the author, culture, and
  other texts

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The Most Common Critical Stances for Literature

• Formalistic
• Marxist
• Feminist/Gender
• Psychological
• Archetypical
• Biographical
• Historical/Cultural
• Deconstructionist

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What is theory?

• Interdisciplinary
• Speculative
• Thinking about thinking

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The Author is Dead

•  The reader's role active agent who imparts
  "real existence to the work and completes its
  meaning through interpretation

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Questioning?

• Dispute common sense meanings
• Literary theory suggests that we cannot know what
  the writer had in mind
• The text holds no truths
• Instead there are various ways of reading a text
  and interpreting a text
• Be suspicious of that which we find natural

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Your Assignment

• At the end of the unit, you will choose one of
  the four main theories we look at and apply this
  theory to a childrens story
• We will use The Three Little Pig as a an
  example throughout this unit

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Formalist Criticism

• A formalist (aka New Criticism) reading of a text
  focuses on symbol, metaphor, imagery, and so on
• Formalism ignores the authors biography and
  focuses only on the interaction of literary
  elements within the text
• Its what you do most often in English literature

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A Formalist Reading of The Three Little Pigs

• What does the wolf symbolize?
• Notice the consonance of Ill huff and Ill
  puff
• How does the story foreshadow the final fate of
  the pigs?
• What does the wolfs dialogue tell us about his
  character?

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Marxist Criticism

• Capitalism is a social system based on the
  principle of individual rights and means of
  production are privately owned
• Key points
• exploitation of an entire class
• of society by another
• the ruling class controls the means of
• production
• Subjectification of working class

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Questions Marxist theorists ask

• Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is
  accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
• What is the social class of the author?
• Which class does the work claim to represent?
• What values does it reinforce?
• What values does it subvert?
• What conflict can be seen between the values the
  work champions and those it portrays?
• What social classes do the characters represent?
• How do characters from different classes interact
  or conflict?

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The Hunger Games

• How would a Marxist view these novels/films?

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The Three Little Pigs

• How would a Marxist look at this story?
• How could we alter this story to demonstrate our
  understanding of the Marxist theory?

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Gender Criticism

• Gender criticism analyzes literature through the
  lens of socially-constructed gender roles
• The largest part of gender criticism is feminism,
  which critiques and seeks to correct womens
  subordination to men in society
• In its purist form, feminism is about equality

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Gender Criticism Feminism

• Belief in the social, political, and economic
  equality of the sexes
• An example of a marginalized groups attempt to
  re-appropriate meaning

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• Concerned with the ways in which literature
  reinforces or undermines the economic, political,
  social, and psychological oppression of women
• Inherently patriarchal

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• Patriarchal ideology is the primary means by
  which women are politically, economically,
  psychologically or socially oppressed
• Women as other she is marginalized, defined
  only by her difference from male norms and values
• All of western (Anglo-European) civilization is
  deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology, for
  example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the
  origin of sin in the world
• Biology determines our sex (male or female)
  culture determines our gender (masculine or
  feminine)

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Questions Feminist theorists ask

• How is the relationship between men and women
  portrayed?
• What are the power relationships between men and
  women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
• How are male and female roles defined?
• What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
• How do characters embody these traits?
• Do characters take on traits from opposite
  genders? How so? How does this change others
  reactions to them?
• What does the work reveal about the operations
  (economically, politically, socially, or
  psychologically) of patriarchy?
• What does the work imply about the possibilities
  of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
• What does the history of the work's reception by
  the public and by the critics tell us about the
  operation of patriarchy?
• What role the work play in terms of women's
  literary history and literary tradition?

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Gender Criticism Queer Theory

• A newer segment of gender criticism is queer
  theory, which looks for the influence of
  homosexuality within texts
• Research of this type is fairly difficult
  because, as youve learned, homosexuality was
  largely suppressed in Europe and America, and it
  hasnt been openly discussed until the last few
  decades

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Gender Studies/Queer Theory

• What elements of the text can be perceived as
  being masculine (active, powerful) and feminine
  (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters
  support these traditional roles?
• What sort of support (if any) is given to
  elements or characters who question the
  masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those
  elements/characters?
• What elements in the text exist in the middle,
  between the perceived masculine/feminine binary?
  In other words, what elements exhibit traits of
  both (bisexual)?
• What are the politics (ideological agendas) of
  specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how
  are those politics revealed in...the work's
  thematic content or portrayals of its characters?
• What does the work contribute to our knowledge of
  queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history,
  including literary history?
• How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in
  texts that are by writers who are apparently
  homosexual?
• What does the work reveal about the operations
  (socially, politically, psychologically)
  homophobic?
• How does the literary text illustrate the
  problems of sexuality and sexual "identity?

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The Three Little Pigs

• How would a Gender theorist look at this story?
• How could we alter this story to demonstrate our
  understanding of the Gender theory?

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Psychological Criticism

• Psychological critical theory applies the
  theories of psychology to a text to better
  understand its characters
• Based largely on Freud, this theory hinges on an
  examination of peoples (characters) unconscious
  desires

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Psychological Criticism

• Drives governing human behaviour
• Id the animal nature that says, Do what feels
  good.
• Ego the reality-based part of your personality
  that makes decisions to satisfy the Id and
  Superego
• Superego the socialized conscience that tells
  you whats right or fair

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Psychological Criticism

• Oedipus Complex Every boy has the unconscious
  desire to have sex with their mother
  consequently, sons are deeply afraid of their
  fathers, and fathers are deeply threatened by
  their sons.
• Elektra Complex Every daughter has the
  unconscious desire to have sex with their father
  consequently, daughters are deeply afraid of
  their mothers, and mothers are deeply threatened
  by their daughters.

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Psychological Criticism

• Of course, these complexes have their origins in
  literature and mythology
• Psychological criticism is a way to understand
  characters, not diagnose them

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Questions Psycho-analytical theorists ask

• How do the operations of repression structure or
  inform the work?
• Are there any oedipal dynamics - or any other
  family dynamics - at work here?
• How can characters' behaviour, narrative events,
  and/or images be explained in terms of
  psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for
  example...fear or fascination with death,
  sexuality - which includes love and romance as
  well as sexual behaviour - as a primary indicator
  of psychological identity or the operations of
  ego-id-superego)?
• What does the work suggest about the
  psychological being of its author?
• What might a given interpretation of a literary
  work suggest about the psychological motives of
  the reader?
• Are there prominent words in the piece that could
  have different or hidden meanings? Could there be
  a subconscious reason for the author using these
  "problem words"?

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A Psychological Reading of Macbeth

• Macbeth kills King Duncan because he
  unconsciously recognizes the king as a
  father-figure. Hence, Duncan is a rival for power
  and the affections of the people.
• In the latter acts of the play, Macbeth has
  indulged his id so often that his ego has lost
  the ability to restrain it.

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The Three Little Pigs

• How would a Psychoanalyst look at this story?
• How could we alter this story to demonstrate our
  understanding of the Psychological theory?

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Archetypical Criticism

• This stance is not about mythology
• It is about the universal elements of human life
  common in all cultures
• Like ancient mythology, all literature is a
  window to creating meaning for human life
• In other words, stories make us feel like our
  lives are more significant

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Archetypical Criticism

• Central to the Archetypical theory is the concept
  of archetypes
• Simply put, archetypes are those universal
  elements present in the literature of all
  cultures

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Archetypical Criticism

• Common Archetypes
• The Hero Beowulf, Spiderman, Luke Skywalker,
  Braveheart
• The Outcast Macbeths clown, Grendel, Cain
• The Quest LOTR, Star Wars, Beowulf
• Sacrificial King Jesus, The Lion the Witch and
  the Wardrobe, LOTR
• Evil Personified Wicked Witch of the West, the
  Devil, the Emperor in SW, the Borg

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Archetypical Criticism

• The goal of Archetypical Criticism seeks to
  understand how the story constructs meaning in
  the human existence through archetypes

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The Three Little Pigs

• How would an Archetypical theorist look at this
  story?
• How could we alter this story to demonstrate our
  understanding of the Archtypical theory?

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More Literary Theory

• New ways of viewing literature (and the world)
  continue to develop, but these are the main
  theories youll come in contact with