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Title: The Worlds of Critical Theory:


1
The Worlds of Critical Theory
  • Shine a Light on Literature, Music, Film, More

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Why Critical Theory?
  • Basic Background
  • Since theres been literature, theres been
    theory of it (think Aristotles Poetics),
  • But it became esp. prevalent during the Age of
    Enlightenment (Edgar Allan Poe was a critic)
  • During the 1900s it was an established scholarly
    practice
  • Why the need for theory?
  • The way we see and understand the world (our
    paradigms) are all perceptions interpretation
    (even history is not all fact history is
    written by the victors)
  • Thus, critical theory challenges our paradigms
    and allows us to interpret what we read, hear,
    and see in a myriad of ways
  • But you have to learn how to do this in order to
    be able to see what is not so apparent

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The Modes (well, the major ones the ones you
should know)
  • Formalist
  • Historical
  • Biographical
  • Structuralism
  • Post-structuralism /Deconstructionist
  • Psychological
  • Mythological
  • Sociological Marxist, Feminist, Postcolonial
  • Postmodern

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Myriad Approaches
  • Important 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

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For example
  • Any work by Edgar Allan Poe would naturally lend
    itself to a biographical approach
  • It would be tough to talk about Animal Farm
    without understanding the historical context

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Formalist Criticism
  • Pure Theory

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Formalist Criticism (aka New Criticism)
  • Regards literature as a unique form of human
    knowledge to be regarded in its own terms
  • Apart from or above biographical, social,
    historical, or cultural influences
  • Literature is understood through its intrinsic
    literary features
  • TEXT-CENTERED focus on words (think TIQATIQA)

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Formalist contd
  • Close Reading
  • Focus on intense relationships in a work
  • Form and content cannot be meaningfully separated
  • Interdependence of form and content make a text
    literary

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Biographical Criticism
  • The authors life impacts their work

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Biographical Criticism
  • Considers that literature is written by actual
    people
  • Understanding of authors life helps comprehend
    the work
  • Authors experience SHAPES the creation of the
    work
  • Practical advantage illuminates text
  • Be judicious--base interpretation on what is in
    the text itself

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Historical Criticism
  • The authors time period affects their work

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Historical Criticism
  • Investigation of social, cultural, and
    intellectual contexts that produced the work
  • Necessarily includes authors biography and
    milieu
  • Impact and meaning on original audience (as
    opposed to todays)
  • How a texts meaning has changed over time
  • Connotations of words, images (1940, America)

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Structuralism Moving beyond meaning
  • The authors language system affects their work

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Structuralism
  • Began with the French anthropologist Claude
    Levi-Strauss
  • Through studying myth, culture, and language, he
    concluded that language is a binary system
  • Binary because it could be divided into two
    competing categories
  • Nature vs. culture
  • Raw vs. cooked
  • From this, he deduced that in language there are
    no identities, only differences
  • Differences makes identity possible
  • Then, Michel Foucault took this understanding and
    explained how meaning of language changes over
    time creating a new picture of the world

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Structuralism
  • Key Terms Ideas
  • Semiotics study of signs symbols
  • Binary System a contrasting duality that
    struggle for prevalence
  • Sign sound / word
  • Signifier sound image
  • Signified mental concept (object)
  • Other a word has meaning through what it is
    not, not any kind of natural relation to the
    object
  • Why is a cat called cat?

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Structuralism in Literature
  • Texts were analyzed and reduced to a binary
    system of themes, such as
  • Man vs. woman
  • Love vs. hate
  • Destiny vs. freewill (ring a bell?)

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Deconstruction / Post-structuralist Criticism
Moving beyond the beyond
  • The authors language system is unstable and thus
    their work has no meaning or many meanings?

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Post-structuralism / Deconstructionist Criticism
  • This took the binary system a step further and
    stated that language is inaccurate
  • Language fundamentally unstable
  • Literary texts, therefore, have no fixed meaning
  • Mostly credited to the word of Jacques Derrida
    who elaborated upon the idea that if language is
    made up of differences, then so is the word
  • Thus, if language is continuously changing and
    has no identity, neither does the world nor how
    we understand the world

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Key Terms
  • Deconstruction to break down/reverse
  • Differance presence/arises out of differences
  • Paradox seemingly contradictory but true
    statement Language has no identity but makes
    identity possible?
  • Micro-narratives understanding of the world is
    broken up into smaller stories from varying
    perspectives

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Deconstructionist contd..
  • Attention shifts from what is being said to how
    language is being used in a text
  • Paradox Deconstructionist criticism often
    resembles formalist
  • Both involve close reading
  • BUT decon. critics break text down into mutually
    irreconcilable positions

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Deconstructionist contd..
  • REJECTION of myth that authors control language
  • Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault call for the
    death of the author
  • No author, no matter how brilliant, can fully
    control the meaning of a text
  • No truths only rival interpretations
  • In textual studies, this theory is used to
    reverse the binary systems and investigate the
    myriad stories within the larger story.

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Pscyhoanalytical Criticism
  • The authors mommy/daddy issues affect their work

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Psychological Criticism
  • Owes much to the work of Sigmund Freud
  • Analysis of Oedipus--considered Sophocles
    insight into human mind influential
  • Painful memories (esp. from childhood) repressed,
    stored in subconscious
  • Freud and followers (including Carl Jung)
    believed that great literature truthfully
    reflects life

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Key Terms
  • Repressed desires, feelings, memories that are
    controlled and remained locked in subconscious
  • Oedipus Complex the innate (but repressed)
    desire to marry your mother and kill your father
  • Id pleasure principle (seeks immediate
    gratification of desires)
  • Ego reality principle (understands there are
    certain social behaviors that need to be
    followed)
  • Superego conscience

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Visualization of Id, Ego, Superego
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Freuds Main Principles
  • Oedipus Complex (this is how he famously analyzed
    Hamlet)
  • Id/Ego/Superego heroes or villains can be
    analyzed through their repressed desires and how
    they either control them or revel in them
  • Dreams they reveal repressed desires and novels
    can be interpreted as dreams
  • These can be used to analyze the author, the
    characters, or the art itself

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Mythological Criticism
  • The authors work is a new version of the same
    story thats been told since time began.

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Mythological Criticism
  • Based on work of Karl Jung and Joseph Campbell
  • In Campbells The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he
    studied religious and literary stories (Jesus,
    Buddha, Gilgamesh, and other myths) and found
    commonalities
  • Seeks recurrent universal patterns
  • Combines insights of many disciplines
  • Anthropology
  • Psychology
  • History
  • Comparative religion

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Key Terms
  • 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)

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Mythological contd
  • Explores artists common humanity (as opposed to
    individual emphasis in pysch. crit.)
  • Important to link text to other texts with
    similar or related archetypal situations
  • Looks for archetypes across mythology, as well as
    in characters whose collective unconscious is
    triggered by common symbols the sun, moon,
    starts, earth, etc.

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Archetypical Themes
  • Death rebirth
  • The Journey Underground
  • The Heavenly Ascent
  • The Search for the father
  • The false father
  • Heaven/hell
  • Rebel-hero
  • The Scapegoat
  • The Earth Goddess
  • The femme fatale

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Campbells Hero Cycle
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Sociological Criticism Marxist, Feminist,
Postcolonial
  • The authors social structure affect their work

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Sociological Criticism
  • Examines literature in the cultural, economic,
    and political context in which it is written or
    received
  • Art not created in a vacuum
  • Relationship between author and society
  • Social status of author
  • Social content of a work (values presented)
  • Role of audience in shaping literature

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Different Fields
  • Marxist
  • Feminist
  • Post-colonial

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MarxistBasic Principles
  • Bourgeoisie rich capitalists oppressed workers
  • Proletariat working class
  • History was subject to change because of economic
    changes
  • Every piece of art reflects its economic and
    class struggles of the historical time period
  • Ex The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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Marxist contd
  • Economic and political elements of art
  • Explores ideological content of literature
  • Content determines form therefore all art is
    political
  • DANGER imposing critics politics on work in
    question can sway evaluation based on how closely
    (or not) the work endorses ideology
  • VALUE illuminates political and economic
    dimensions of literature that other approaches
    may overlook

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Feminist Theory
  • Examines how sexual identity influences the
    creation and reception of literary works
  • Began with feminist movement, but largely
    influenced by Structuralism and Deconstructionism
    (work on Julia Kristeva, pupil of Derrida)
  • Feminist critics see a world saturated with
    male-produced assumptions
  • Seek to correct imbalance by battling patriarchal
    attitudes

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Key Terms
  • Patriarchy system where men are in charge (can
    be in terms of hereditary of simply
    political/economical
  • Phallo-centric centered around man
  • Emasculate to take away a mans power
  • Objectification women are viewed/presented as
    objects of desire by the male gaze
  • Conform meet demands of patriarchy

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Feminist contd
  • Feminist criticism analyzes how an authors
    gender influences ideas
  • Also, how sexual identity influences reader
  • Reader sees text through eyes of his or her sex
  • Examination of social forces responsible for
    gender inequality

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Feminist Theory
  • Originally showcased patriarchal and unequal
    systems within novel that were primarily
    concerned with men
  • In more modern context, still show inequalities,
    but focus more on how women subvert, reject, and
    triumph over these inequalities
  • Think of structuralism and then deconstruction
  • The binary was first man vs. woman but its been
    deconstructed to show how women can triumph or to
    show there is no difference between
  • Instead of conforming, more modern scholars look
    at how women reject the patriarchy or subvert it
    (undermine it from the inside)

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Postcolonialism
  • With the expansion of readership beyond European
    American authors, came a theory that examined
    the more-established literature and world
    literature through the lens of colonialism how
    the authors and characters were affected by their
    countrys imperialist past
  • Greatly impacted by the work of Edward W. Said
    Orientalism Western Representations of the
    Orient

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Postcolonial Criticism Key Terms
  • Imperialism the European colonization of parts
    of the world, which came to an end, starting in
    the 1800s all the way through the 1950s
  • Alterity "lack of identification with some part
    of one's personality or one's community,
    differentness, otherness"
  • Diaspora to refer to any people or ethnic
    population forced or induced to leave their
    traditional ethnic homelands, being dispersed
    throughout other parts of the world
  • Eurocentrism emphasis revolves around European
    (i.e. white) culture and understanding of the
    world.
  • Hybridity a blend of cultures, refusing to
    choose to one or the other

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Postcolonial Main Cornerstones
  • Like feminism, it owes a lot to structuralism and
    deconstruction
  • The Native characters are often considered as
    others and the European characters define
    themselves by how they are different from the
    natives
  • These third world countries (again to separate
    them from first world countries) are still
    feeling the impacts of a past of foreign rule and
    so their characters lack a sense of identity
    are they the colonizer or are they the colonized?
  • More modern texts, resolve this with hybridity
    I am not the colonizer or the colonized I can
    be both.
  • In the US, this is especially central to the work
    of immigrant Americans or Americans of minority
    status
  • Also, important in analyzing African American
    Literature and the lingering impacts of slavery
    and segregation

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Postmodern Criticism
  • The authors work is influenced by everything but
    the kitchen sink on second thought, throw the
    sink in as well (a broken one, though).

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Postmodern Criticism
  • Just like deconstrutionism followed
    structuralism, postmodern criticism developed as
    a an extension and rejection of modern (esp.
    formalism) scholarly work
  • Greatly influenced by the work of Jean
    Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation
  • It argues for a broken view of meaning and an
    exaggerated reality because of the influence of
    media
  • Politically, this can be like anarchy, but when
    it comes to criticism of the arts, its more about
    having a loose approach (it can even be fun like
    pop art)

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Key Terms
  • Simulacra narratives/stories (our paradigms)
    Ex Columbus discovered America
  • Hegemony control or dominating influence by one
    person or group
  • Hyper-reality an inauthentic world that is
    too much (too perfect as in Disneyworld) or too
    saturated with media (like Times Square)
  • Fragmentation broken up, in terms of story,
    body, or voice

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Rejection of Master Simulacra, Celebration of
Many Simulacra
  • Postmodernism rejects one truth, one story, one
    history
  • It embraces a variegated, fragmented view (many
    narratives think of novel w/more than one
    narrator)
  • It also embraces a hyperreality

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Credits
  • Kennedy, X.J. and Gioia, D., eds. Literature An
    Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
    Eighth edition. New York Longman, 2002.
  • All images courtesy of Google Images

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THE END
  • Deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida
  • 1930-2004
  • Or is it?
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