What are the approaches to literature?

Critical Approaches to Literature

Formalist Criticism: This approach regards literature as a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be
examined on its own terms. All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work
itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of formstyle, structure, tone, imagery, etc.that
are found within the text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with
the texts content to shape its effects upon readers.
Biographical Criticism: This approach begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual
people and that understanding an authors life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work. Hence, it
often affords a practical method by which readers can better understand a text. However, a biographical critic must
be careful not to take the biographical facts of a writers life too far in criticizing the works of that writer: the
biographical critic focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the
authors life.... Biographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant material.
Historical Criticism: This approach seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and
intellectual context that produced ita context that necessarily includes the artists biography and milieu. A key
goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers.
Gender Criticism: This approach examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary
works. Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches,
including the so-called masculinist approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism,
however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought
have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature full of unexamined male-produced assumptions.
Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combatting such attitudesby questioning,
for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeares play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to
murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include analyzing how sexual identity influences
the reader of a text and examining how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the
social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality.
Psychological Criticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon both literature and
literary criticism. Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalytic
theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment,
sexuality, the unconscious, and repression as well as expanding our understanding of how language and symbols
operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires; and Carl Jung, whose theories about
the unconscious are also a key foundation of Mythological Criticism. Psychological criticism has a number of
approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three approaches:
1.

An investigation of the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how
does it relate to normal mental functions?

2.

The psychological study of a particular artist, usually noting how an authors biographical
circumstances affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior.

3.

The analysis of fictional characters using the language and methods of psychology.

Sociological Criticism: This approach examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which
it is written or received, exploring the relationships between the artist and society. Sometimes it examines the
artists society to better understand the authors literary works; other times, it may examine the representation of
such societal elements within the literature itself. One influential type of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism,
which focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature;
because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status

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quo, it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet
critics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James,
because he illustrated the principles of class struggle more clearly. Nonetheless, Marxist criticism can illuminate
political and economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook.
Mythological Criticism: This approach emphasizes the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary
works. Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion, mythological
criticism explores the artists common humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols
common to different cultures and epochs. One key concept in mythological criticism is the archetype, a symbol,
character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response, which entered literary criticism from Swiss
psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a collective unconscious, a set of primal
memories common to the human race, existing below each persons conscious mindoften deriving from
primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood, archetypes according to Jung trigger the
collective unconscious. Another critic, Northrop Frye, defined archetypes in a more limited way as a symbol,
usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of ones literary
experience as a whole. Regardless of the definition of archetype they use, mythological critics tend to view literary
works in the broader context of works sharing a similar pattern.
Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that literature exists not as an artifact
upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader. It attempts to describe
what happens in the readers mind while interpreting a text and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative
process. According to reader-response critics, literary texts do not contain a meaning; meanings derive only from
the act of individual readings. Hence, two different readers may derive completely different interpretations of the
same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads a work years later may find the work shockingly different.
Reader-response criticism, then, emphasizes how religious, cultural, and social values affect readings; it also
overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with different assumptions.
Though this approach rejects the notion that a single correct reading exists for a literary work, it does not consider
all readings permissible: Each text creates limits to its possible interpretations.
Deconstructionist Criticism: This approach rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately
represent reality. Deconstructionist critics regard language as a fundamentally unstable mediumthe words tree
or dog, for instance, undoubtedly conjure up different mental images for different peopleand therefore, because
literature is made up of words, literature possesses no fixed, single meaning. According to critic Paul de Man,
deconstructionists insist on the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with what has to be
expressed, of making the actual signs [i.e., words] coincide with what is signified. As a result, deconstructionist
critics tend to emphasize not what is being said but how language is used in a text. The methods of this approach
tend to resemble those of formalist criticism, but whereas formalists primary goal is to locate unity within a text,
how the diverse elements of a text cohere into meaning, deconstructionists try to show how the text
deconstructs, how it can be broken down ... into mutually irreconcilable positions. Other goals of
deconstructionists include challenging the notion of authors ownership of texts they create (and their ability to
control the meaning of their texts and focusing on how language is used to achieve power, as when they try to
understand how a some interpretations of a literary work come to be regarded as truth.
Source: Critical Approaches to Literature olemiss.edu. Web. 12, September 2016. Retrieved from,
http://home.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/spring97/litcrit.html
Quotations are from X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioias Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Sixth
Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pages 1790-1818.

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What are the elements of short story?

SETTING - The time and location in which a story takes place is called the setting.
For some stories the setting is very important, while for others it is not. There are
several aspects of a story's setting to consider when examining how setting
contributes to a story (some, or all, may be present in a story):

Place - geographical location. Where is the action of the story taking place?
Time - When is the story taking place? (Historical period, time of day, year,
etc)
Weather Conditions - Is it rainy, sunny, stormy, etc?
Social Conditions - What is the daily life of the characters like? Does the
story contain local color (writing that focuses on the speech, dress,
mannerisms, customs, etc. of a particular place)?
Mood or Atmosphere - What feeling is created at the beginning of the
story? Is it bright and cheerful or dark and frightening?

PLOT - The plot is how the author arranges events to develop his basic idea; It is
the sequence of events in a story or play. The plot is a planned, logical series of
events having a beginning, middle, and end. The short story usually has one plot so
it can be read in one sitting. There are five essential parts of plot:

Introduction - The beginning of the story where the characters and the
setting is revealed.
Rising Action - This is where the events in the story become complicated
and the conflict in the story is revealed (events between the introduction and
climax).
Climax - This is the highest point of interest and the turning point of the
story. The reader wonders what will happen next; will the conflict be resolved
or not?
Falling action - The events and complications begin to resolve themselves.
The reader knows what has happened next and if the conflict was resolved or
not (events between climax and denouement).
Denouement - This is the final outcome or untangling of events in the story.

It is helpful to consider climax as a three-fold phenomenon: [A] the main character

receives new information [B] accepts this information (realizes it but does not
necessarily agree with it) [C] acts on this information (makes a choice that will
determine whether or not he/she gains his objective).
CONFLICT - Conflict is essential to plot. Without conflict there is no plot. It is the
opposition of forces which ties one incident to another and makes the plot move.
Conflict is not merely limited to open arguments, rather it is any form of opposition
that faces the main character. Within a short story there may be only one central
struggle, or there may be one dominant struggle with many minor ones.
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There are two types of conflict:

External - A struggle with a force outside one's self.
Internal - A struggle within one's self; a person must make some decision,
overcome pain, quiet their temper, resist an urge, etc.
There are four kinds of conflict:
Man vs Man (physical) - The leading character struggles with his physical
strength against other men, forces of nature, or animals.
Man vs Circumstances (classical) - The leading character struggles against
fate, or the circumstances of life facing him/her.
Man vs Society (social) - The leading character struggles against ideas,
practices, or customs of other people.
Man vs. Himself/Herself (psychological) - The leading character struggles
with himself/herself; with his/her own soul, ideas of right or wrong, physical
limitations, choices, etc.
CHARACTER - There are two meanings for the word character:
The person in a work of fiction.
The characteristics of a person.
Persons in a work of fiction
Short stories use few characters. One character is clearly central to the story with
all major events having some importance to this character - he/she is the
PROTAGONIST. The opposer of the main character is called the ANTAGONIST.
The Characteristics of a Person In order for a story to seem real to the reader its characters must seem real.
Characterization is the information the author gives the reader about the characters
themselves. The author may reveal a character in several ways:
His/her physical appearance
What he/she says, thinks, feels and dreams
What he/she does or does not do
What others say about him/her and how others react to him/her
Characters are convincing if they are: consistent, motivated, and life-like (resemble
real people)
Characters are:
Individual - round, many sided and complex personalities.
Developing - dynamic, many sided personalities that change, for better or
worse, by the end of the story.
Static - Stereotype, have one or two characteristics that never change and
are emphasized e.g. brilliant detective, drunk, scrooge, cruel stepmother, etc.
POINT OF VIEW - is defined as the angle from which the story is told.

Innocent Eye - The story is told through the eyes of a child (his/her
judgment being different from that of an adult).

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Stream of Consciousness - The story is told so that the reader feels as if

they are inside the head of one character and knows all their thoughts and
reactions.
First Person - The story is told by the protagonist or one of the characters
who interacts closely with the protagonist or other characters (using
pronouns I, me, we, etc). The reader sees the story through this person's
eyes as he/she experiences it and only knows what he/she knows or feels.
Omniscient - The author can narrate the story using the omniscient point of
view. He can move from character to character, event to event, having free
access to the thoughts, feelings and motivations of his characters and he
introduces information where and when he chooses. There are two main
types of omniscient point of view:
a. Omniscient Limited - The author tells the story in third
person (using pronouns they, she, he, it, etc). We know
only what the character knows and what the author allows
him/her to tell us. We can see the thoughts and feelings of
characters if the author chooses to reveal them to us.
b. Omniscient Objective The author tells the story in the
third person. It appears as though a camera is following
the characters, going anywhere, and recording only what
is seen and heard. There is no comment on the
characters or their thoughts. No interpretations are
offered. The reader is placed in the position of spectator
without the author there to explain. The reader has to
interpret events on his own.

THEME - The theme in a piece of fiction is its controlling idea or its central insight.
It is the author's underlying meaning or main idea that he is trying to convey. The
theme may be the author's thoughts about a topic or view of human nature. The
title of the short story usually points to what the writer is saying and he may use
various figures of speech to emphasize his theme, such as: symbol, allusion, simile,
metaphor, hyperbole, or irony.
Some simple examples of common themes from literature, TV, and film
are:
Things are not always as they appear to be
Love is blind
Believe in yourself
People are afraid of change
Don't judge a book by its cover
Source: Ms. Engram, SHORT STORY ELEMENTS Web. 12, September 2016.
Retrieved from,
http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/engramja/elements.html

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Areta, Daniella Mariz B.

BSGE 2E