Critical Approaches To Literature

Critical Approaches to Literature
Plain text version of this document.
Described below are nine common critical approaches to the literature. Quotations are from X.J.
Kennedy and Dana Gioia’s Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Sixth
Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pages 1790-1818.
 Formalist Criticis m: 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 form—style, 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 text’s content to shape its effects upon readers.
 Biographical Criticis m: This approach “begins with the simple but central insight that
literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author’s 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 writer’s 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 author’s life.... Biographical data should
amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant material.”
 Historical Criticis m: This approach “seeks to understand a literary work by
investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it—a context that
necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu.” A key goal for historical critics is
to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers.
 Gende r Criticis m: 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 attitudes—by questioning, for example,
why none of the characters in Shakespeare’s 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 “examin[ing] 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 Criticis m. 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 author’s
biographical circumstances affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior.
3. The analysis of fictional characters using the language and methods of
psychology.
 Sociological Criticis m: 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 artist’s society to better understand the
author’s 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 criticis m, 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 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 Criticis m: 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 artist’s common
humanity by tracing how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to
different cultures and epochs.” One key concept in mythlogical 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 person’s conscious mind”—often 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 one’s 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 tra nsaction between the physical text
and the mind of a reader. It attempts “to describe what happens in the reader’s 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 Criticis m: This approach “rejects the traditional assumption that
language can accurately represent reality.” Deconstructionist critics regard language as a
fundamentally unstable medium—the words “tree” or “dog,” for instance, undoubtedly
conjure up different mental images for different people—and 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 (1) challenging the notion of authors’ “ownership” of texts they create (and their
ability to control the meaning of their texts) and (2) 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.”
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Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

Summary:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of
criticism and how they are used in the academy.
Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism

Introduction
A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics
use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture. These different lenses allow critics to
consider works of art based on certain assumptions within that school of theory. The different
lenses also allow critics to focus on particular aspects of a work they consider important.
For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories, s/he might focus on how the
characters in a story interact based on their economic situation. If a critic is working with post-
colonial theories, s/he might consider the same story but look at how characters from colonial
powers (Britain, France, and even America) treat characters from, say, Africa or the Caribbean.
Hopefully, after reading through and working with the resources in this area of the OWL, literary
theory will become a little easier to understand and use.
Disclaimer
Please note that the schools of literary criticism and their explanations included here are by no
means the only ways of distinguishing these separate areas of theory. Indeed, many critics use
tools from two or more schools in their work. Some would define differently or greatly expand
the (very) general statements given here. Our explanations are meant only as starting places for
your own investigation into literary theory. We encourage you to use the list of scholars and
works provided for each school to further your understanding of these theories.
We also recommend the following secondary sources for study of literary theory:
 The Critical Tradition: Classical Texts and Contemporary Trends, 1998, edited by David H. Richter
 Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 1999, by Lois Tyson
 Beginning Theory, 2002, by Peter Barry
Although philosophers, critics, educators and authors have been writing about writing since
ancient times, contemporary schools of literary theory have cohered from these discussions and
now influence how scholars look at and write about literature. The following sections overview
these movements in critical theory. Though the timeline below roughly follows a chronological
order, we have placed some schools closer together because they are so closely aligned.
Timeline (most of these overlap)
 Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present)

 Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present)
 Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-present)
 Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
 Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
 Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)
 Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
 New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
 Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)
 Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
 Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)
 Critical Race Theory (1970s-present)
Summary:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theor y and schools of
Moral Criticism and Dramatic Construction

(~360 BC-present)
Plato
In Book X of his Republic, Plato may have given us the first volley of detailed and lengthy
literary criticism. The dialog between Socrates and two of his associates shows the participants
of this discussion concluding that art must play a limited and very strict role in the perfect Greek
Republic. Richter provides a nice summary of this point: "...poets may stay as servants of the
state if they teach piety and virtue, but the pleasures of art are condemned as inherently
corrupting to citizens..." (19).
One reason Plato included these ideas in his Socratic dialog because he believed that art was a
mediocre reproduction of nature: "...what artists do...is hold the mirror up to nature: They copy
the appearances of men, animals, and objects in the physical world...and the intelligence that
went into its creation need involve nothing more than conjecture" (Richter 19). So in short, if art
does not teach morality and ethics, then it is damaging to its audience, and for Plato this
damaged his Republic.
Given this controversial approach to art, it's easy to see why Plato's position has an impact on
literature and literary criticism even today (though scholars who critique work based on whether
or not the story teaches a moral are few - virtue may have an impact on children's literature,
however).
Aristotle
In Poetics, Aristotle breaks with his teacher (Plato) in the consideration of art. Aristotle considers
poetry (and rhetoric), a productive science, whereas he thought logic and physics to be
theoretical sciences, and ethics and politics practical sciences (Richter 38). Because Aristotle saw
poetry and drama as means to an end (for example, an audience's enjoyment) he established
some basic guidelines for authors to follow to achieve certain objectives.
To help authors achieve their objectives, Aristotle developed elements of organization and
methods for writing effective poetry and drama k nown as the principles of dramatic construction
(Richter 39). Aristotle believed that elements like "...language, rhythm, and harmony..." as well
as "...plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle..." influence the audience's katharsis
(pity and fear) or satisfaction with the work (Richter 39). And so here we see one of the earliest
attempts to explain what makes an effective or ineffective work of literature.
Like Plato, Aristotle's views on art heavily influence Western thought. The debate between
Platonists and Aristotelians continued "...in the Neoplatonists of the second century AD, the
Cambridge Platonists of the latter seventeenth century, and the idealists of the romantic
movement" (Richter 17). Even today, the debate continues, and this debate is no more evident
than in some of the discussions between adherents to the schools of criticism contained in this
resource.

Summary:
Formalism (1930s-present)
Form Follows Function: Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelianism
Formalists disagreed about what specific elements make a literary work "good" or "bad"; but
generally, Formalism maintains that a literary work contains certain intrinsic features, and the
theory "...defined and addressed the specifically literary qualities in the text" (Richter 699).
Therefore, it's easy to see Formalism's relation to Aristotle's theories of dramatic construction.
Formalism attempts to treat each work as its own distinct piece, free from its environment, era,
and even author. This point of view developed in reaction to "...forms of 'extrinsic' criticism that
viewed the text as either the product of social and historical forces or a document making an
ethical statement" (699). Formalists assume that the keys to understanding a text exist within
"the text itself," (..."the battle cry of the New Critical effort..." and thus focus a great deal on, you
guessed it, form (Tyson 118).
For the most part, Formalism is no longer used in the academy. However, New Critical theories
are still used in secondary and college level instruction in literature and even writing (Tyson
115).
Typical questions:
 How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbols? (i.e. making a certain road stand
for death by constant association)
 What is the quality of the work's organic unity "...the working together of all the parts to make
an inseparable whole..." (Tyson 121)? In other words, does how the work is put together reflect
what it is?
 How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
 How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
 How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not contribute to the aesthetic
quality of the work?
 How does the author resolve apparent contradictions within the work?
 What does the form of the work say about its content?
 Is there a central or focal passage that can be said to sum up the entirety of the work?
 How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to the meaning or effect of
the piece?
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this
theory:
Russian Formalis m
 Victor Shklovsky
 Roman Jakobson
 Victor Erlich - Russian Formalism: History - Doctrine, 1955
 Yuri Tynyanov
New Criticism
 John Crowe Ransom - The New Criticism, 1938

 I.A. Richards
 William Empson
 T.S. Eliot
 Allen Tate
 Cleanth Brooks
Neo-Aristotelianis m (Chicago School of Criticis m)
 R.S. Crane - Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, 1952

 Elder Olson
 Norman Maclean
 W.R. Keast
 Wayne C. Booth - The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961

Summary:
Psychoanalytic Criticism (1930s-present)

Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalytic criticism builds on Freudian theories of psychology. While we don't have the
room here to discuss all of Freud's work, a general overview is necessary to explain
psychoanalytic literary criticism.
The Unconscious, the Desires, and the Defenses
Freud began his psychoanalytic work in the 1880s while attempting to treat behavioral disorders
in his Viennese patients. He dubbed the disorders 'hysteria' and began treating them by listening
to his patients talk through their problems. Based on this work, Freud asserted that people's
behavior is affected by their unconscious: "...the notion that human beings are motivated, even
driven, by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware..." (Tyson 14-15).
Freud believed that our unconscious was influenced by childhood events. Freud organized these
events into developmental stages involving relationships with parents and drives of desire and
pleasure where children focus "...on different parts of the body...starting with the mouth...shifting
to the oral, anal, and phallic phases..." (Richter 1015). These stages reflect base levels of desire,
but they also involve fear of loss (loss of genitals, loss of affection from parents, loss of life) and
repression: "...the expunging from consciousness of these unhappy ps ychological events" (Tyson
15).
Tyson reminds us, however, that "...repression doesn't eliminate our painful experiences and
emotions...we unconsciously behave in ways that will allow us to 'play out'...our conflicted
feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress" (15). To keep all of this conflict
buried in our unconscious, Freud argued that we develop defenses: selective perception, selective
memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among
others.
Id, Ego, and Supe rego
Freud maintained that our desires and our unconscious conflicts give rise to three areas of the
mind that wrestle for dominance as we grow from infancy, to childhood, to adulthood:
 id - "...the location of the drives" or libido

 ego - "...one of the major defenses against the power of the drives..." and home of the defenses
listed above
 superego - the area of the unconscious that houses Judgment (of self and others) and "...which
begins to form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex" (Richter 1015-1016)
Oedipus Complex
Freud believed that the Oedipus complex was "...one of the most powerfully determinative
elements in the growth of the child" (Richter 1016). Essentially, the Oedipus complex involves
children's need for their parents and the conflict that arises as children mature and realize they
are not the absolute focus of their mother's attention: "the Oedipus complex begins in a late
phase of infantile sexuality, between the child's third and sixth year, and it takes a different form
in males than it does in females" (Richter 1016).
Freud argued that both boys and girls wish to possess their mothers, but as they grow older
"...they begin to sense that their claim to exclusive attention is thwarted by the mother's attention
to the father..." (1016). Children, Freud maintained, connect this conflict of attention to the
intimate relations between mother and father, relations from which the children are excluded.
Freud believed that "the result is a murderous rage against the father...and a desire to possess the
mother" (1016).
Freud pointed out, however, that "...the Oedipus complex differs in boys and girls...the
functioning of the related castration complex" (1016). In short, Freud thought that "...during the
Oedipal rivalry [between boys and their fathers], boys fantasized that punishme nt for their rage
will take the form of..." castration (1016). When boys effectively work through this anxiety,
Freud argued, "...the boy learns to identify with the father in the hope of someday possessing a
woman like his mother. In girls, the castration complex does not take the form of anxiety...the
result is a frustrated rage in which the girl shifts her sexual desire from the mother to the father"
(1016).
Freud believed that eventually, the girl's spurned advanced toward the father give way to a desire
to possess a man like her father later in life. Freud believed that the impact of the unconscious,
id, ego, superego, the defenses, and the Oedipus complexes was inescapable and that these
elements of the mind influence all our behavior (and even our dreams) as adults - of course this
behavior involves what we write.
Freud and Literature
So what does all of this psychological business have to do with literature and the study of
literature? Put simply, some critics believe that we can "...read psychoanalytically...to see which
concepts are operating in the text in such a way as to enrich our understanding of the work and, if
we plan to write a paper about it, to yield a meaningful, coherent psychoanalytic interpretation"
(Tyson 29). Tyson provides some insightful and applicable questions to help guide our
understanding of psychoanalytic criticism.
Typical questions:
 How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?

 Are there any oedipal dynamics - or any other family dynamics - are work here?
 How can characters' behavior, 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 behavior - 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"?
theory:
 Harold Bloom - A Theory of Poetry, 1973; Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to
Stevens, 1976
 Peter Brooks
 Jacque Lacan - The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1988; "The
Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud" (from Écrits: A Selection, 1957)
 Jane Gallop - Reading Lacan, 1985
 Julia Kristeva - Revolution in Poetic Language, 1984
 Marshall Alcorn - Changing the Subject in English Class: Discourse and the Constructions of
Desire, 2002
Carl Jung
Jungian criticism attempts to explore the connection between literature and what Carl Jung (a
student of Freud) called the “collective unconscious” of the human race: "...racial memory,
through which the spirit of the whole human species manifests itself" (Richter 504). Jungian
criticism, closely related to Freudian theory because of its connection to psychoanalysis, assumes
that all stories and symbols are based on mythic models from mankind’s past.
Based on these commonalities, Jung developed archetypal myths, the Syzygy: "...a quaternion
composing a whole, the unified self of which people are in search" (Richter 505). These
archetypes are the Shadow, the Anima, the Animus, and the Spirit: "...beneath...[the Shadow] is
the Anima, the feminine side of the male Self, and the Animus, the corresponding masculine side
of the female Self" (Richter 505).
In literary analysis, a Jungian critic would look for archetypes (also see the discussion of
Northrop Frye in the Structuralism section) in creative works: "Jungian criticism is generally
involved with a search for the embodiment of these symbols within particular works of art."
(Richter 505). When dealing with this sort of criticism, it is often useful to keep a handbook of
mythology and a dictionary of symbols on hand.
Typical questions:
 What connections can we make between elements of the text and the archetypes? (Mask,
Shadow, Anima, Animus)
 How do the characters in the text mirror the archetypal figures? (Great Mother or nurturing
Mother, Whore, destroying Crone, Lover, Destroying Angel)
 How does the text mirror the archetypal narrative patterns? (Quest, Night-Sea-Journey)
 How symbolic is the imagery in the work?
 How does the protagonist reflect the hero of myth?
 Does the “hero” embark on a journey in either a physical or spiritual sense?
 Is there a journey to an underworld or land of the dead?
 What trials or ordeals does the protagonist face? What is the reward for overcoming them?
theory:
 Maud Bodkin - Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, 1934

 Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9, Part 1 of Collected Works. 2nd
ed. Trans. R.F.C. Hull, 1968
 Bettina Knapp - Music, Archetype and the Writer: A Jungian View, 1988
 Ricahrd Sugg - Jungian Literary Criticism, 1993

Summary:
Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)

Whom Does it Benefit?
Based on the theories of Karl Marx (and so influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel), this school concerns itself with class differences, economic and otherwise, as well as the
implications and complications of the capitalist system: "Marxism attempts to reveal the ways in
which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experience" (Tyson 277).
Theorists working in the Marxist tradition, therefore, are interested in answering the overarching
question, whom does it [the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.] benefit? The elite? The
middle class? And Marxists critics are also interested in how the lower or working classes are
oppressed - in everyday life and in literature.
The Material Dialectic
The Marxist school follows a process of thinking called the material dialectic. This belief system
maintains that "...what drives historical change are the material realities of the economic base of
society, rather than the ideological superstructure of politics, law, philosophy, religion, and art
that is built upon that economic base" (Richter 1088).
Marx asserts that "...stable societies develop sites of resistance: contradictions build into the
social system that ultimately lead to social revolution and the development of a new society upon
the old" (1088). This cycle of contradiction, tension, and revolution must continue: there will
always be conflict between the upper, middle, and lower (working) classes and this conflict will
be reflected in literature and other forms of expression - art, music, movies, etc.
The Revolution
The continuing conflict between the classes will lead to upheaval and revolution by oppressed
peoples and form the groundwork for a new order of society and economics where capitalism is
abolished. According to Marx, the revolution will be led by the working class (others think
peasants will lead the uprising) under the guidance of intellectuals. Once the elite and middle
class are overthrown, the intellectuals will compose an equal society where everyone owns
everything (socialism - not to be confused with Soviet or Maoist Communism).
Though a staggering number of different nuances exist within this school of literary theory,
Marxist critics generally work in areas covered by the following questions.
Typical questions:
 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?
theory:
 Karl Marx - (with Friedrich Engels) The Communist Manifesto, 1848; Das Kapital, 1867;
"Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions" from The German Ideology, 1932; "On Greek
Art in Its Time" from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859
 Leon Trotsky - "Literature and Revolution," 1923
 Georg Lukács - "The Ideology of Modernism," 1956
 Walter Benjamin - "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," 1936
 Theodor W. Adorno
 Louis Althusser - Reading Capital, 1965
 Terry Eagleton - Marxism and Literary Criticism, Criticism and Ideology, 1976
 Frederic Jameson - Marxism and Form, The Political Unconscious, 1971
 Jürgen Habermas - The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1990

Summary:
Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)

What Do You Think?
At its most basic level, reader response criticism considers readers' reactions to literature as vital
to interpreting the meaning of the text. However, reader-response criticism can take a number of
different approaches. A critic deploying reader-response theory can use a psychoanalytic lens, a
feminists lens, or even a structuralist lens. What these different lenses have in common when
using a reader response approach is they maintain "...that what a text is cannot be separated from
what it does" (Tyson 154).
Tyson explains that "...reader-response theorists share two beliefs: 1) that the role of the reader
cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and 2) that readers do not passively
consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make
the meaning they find in literature" (154). In this way, reader-response theory shares common
ground with some of the deconstructionists discussed in the Post-structural area when they talk
about "the death of the author," or her displacement as the (author)itarian figure in the text.
Typical questions:
 How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?

 What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary text, or a key portion of a longer text,
tell us about the reading experience prestructured by (built into) that text?
 Do the sounds/shapes of the words as they appear on the page or how they are spoken by the
reader enhance or change the meaning of the word/work?
 How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's response is, or is analogous to,
the topic of the story?
 What does the body of criticism published about a literary text sugge st about the critics who
interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience produced by that text? (Tyson 191)
theory:
 Peter Rabinowitz - Before Reading, 1987

 Stanley Fish - Is There a Text in This Class?-The Authority of Interpretive Communities, 1980
 Elizabeth Freund - The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism, 1987
 David Bleich
 Norman Holland - The Dynamics of Literary Response, 1968
 Louise Rosenblatt
 Wolfgang Iser - The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to
Beckett, 1974
 Hans Rober Jauss

Summary:
Structuralism and Semiotics (1920s-present)

Note: Structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralism are some of the most complex literary
theories to understand. Please be patient.
Linguistic Roots
The structuralist school emerges from theories of language and linguistics, and it looks for
underlying elements in culture and literature that can be connected so that critics can develop
general conclusions about the individual works and the systems from which they emerge. In fact,
structuralism maintains that "...practically everything we do that is specifica lly human is
expressed in language" (Richter 809). Structuralists believe that these language symbols extend
far beyond written or oral communication.
For example, codes that represent all sorts of things permeate everything we do: "the
performance of music requires complex notation...our economic life rests upon the exchange of
labor and goods for symbols, such as cash, checks, stock, and certificates...social life depends on
the meaningful gestures and signals of 'body language' and revolves around the exchange of
small, symbolic favors: drinks, parties, dinners" (Richter 809).
Patterns and Experience
Structuralists assert that, since language exists in patterns, certain underlying elements are
common to all human experiences. Structuralists believe we can observe these experiences
through patterns: "...if you examine the physical structures of all buildings built in urban
America in 1850 to discover the underlying principles that govern their composition, for
example, principles of mechanical construction or of artistic form..." you are using a structuralist
lens (Tyson 197).
Moreover, "you are also engaged in structuralist activity if you examine the structure of a single
building to discover how its composition demonstrates underlying principles of a structural
system. In the first example...you're generating a structural system of classification; in the
second, you're demonstrating that an individual item belongs to a particular structural class"
(Tyson 197).
Structuralism in Literary Theory
Structuralism is used in literary theory, for example, "...if you examine the structure of a large
number of short stories to discover the underlying principles that govern their
composition...principles of narrative progression...or of characterization...you are also engaged in
structuralist activity if you describe the structure of a single literary work to discover how its
composition demonstrates the underlying principles of a given structural system" (Tyson 197-
198).
Northrop Frye, however, takes a different approach to structuralism by exploring ways in which
genres of Western literature fall into his four mythoi (also see Jungian criticism in the Freudian
Literary Criticism resource):
1. theory of modes, or historical criticism (tragic, comic, and thematic);

2. theory of symbols, or ethical criticism (literal/descriptive, formal, mythical, and anagogic);
3. theory of myths, or archetypal criticism (comedy, romance, tragedy, irony/satire);
4. theory of genres, or rhetorical criticism (epos, prose, drama, lyric) (Tyson 240).
Peirce and Saussure
Two important theorists form the framework (hah) of structuralism: Charles Sanders Peirce and
Ferdinand de Saussure. Peirce gave structuralism three important ideas for analyzing the sign
systems that permeate and define our experiences:
1. "iconic signs, in which the signifier resembles the thing signified (such as the stick figures on
washroom doors that signify 'Men' or 'Women';
2. indexes, in which the signifier is a reliable indicator of the presence of the signified (like fire and
smoke);
3. true symbols, in which the signifier's relation to the thing signified is completely arbitrary and
conventional [just as the sound /kat/ or the written word cat are conventional signs for the
familiar feline]" (Richter 810).
These elements become very important when we move into deconstruction in the Postmodernism
resource. Peirce also influenced the semiotic school of structuralist theory that uses sign systems.
Sign Systems
The discipline of semiotics plays an important role in structuralist literary theory and cultural
studies. Semioticians "...appl[y] structuralist insights to the study of...sign systems...a non-
linguistic object or behavior...that can be analyzed as if it were a language" (Tyson 205).
Specifically, "...semiotics examines the ways non- linguistic objects and behaviors 'tell' us
something.
For example, the picture of the reclining blond beauty in the skin-tight, black velvet dress on the
billboard...'tells' us that those who drink this whiskey (presumably male) will be attractive
to...beautiful women like the one displayed here" (Tyson 205). Lastly, Richter states, "semiotics
takes off from Peirce - for whom language is one of numerous sign systems - and structuralism
takes off from Saussure, for whom language was the sign system par excellence" (810).
Typical questions:
 Using a specific structuralist framework (like Frye's mythoi)...how should the text be classified in
terms of its genre? In other words, what patterns exist within the text that make it a part of
other works like it?
 Using a specific structuralist framework...analyze the text's narrative operations...can you
speculate about the relationship between the...[text]... and the culture from which the text
emerged? In other words, what patterns exist within the text that make it a product of a larger
culture?
 What patterns exist within the text that connect it to the larger "human" experience? In other
words, can we connect patterns and elements within the text to other texts from other cultures
to map similarities that tell us more about the common human experience? This is a liberal
humanist move that assumes that since we are all human, we all share basic human
commonalities
 What rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized in order to 'make sense' of the text?
 What are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or 'text,' such as high-school
football games, television and/or magazine ads for a particular brand of perfume...or eve n
media coverage of an historical event? (Tyson 225)
theory:
 Charles Sanders Peirce

 Ferdinand de Saussure - Course in General Linguistics, 1923
 Claude Lévi-Strauss - The Elementary Structure of Kinship, 1949; "The Structural Study of Myth,"
1955
 Northrop Frye - Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, 1957
 Noam Chomsky - Syntactic Structures, 1957; Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965
 Roland Barthes - Critical Essays, 1964; Mythologies, 1957; S/Z, 1970; Image, Music, Text, 1977
 Umberto Eco - The Role of the Reader, 1979

Summary:
Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction,
Postmodernism (1966-present)
Note: Structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralism are some of the most complex literary
theories to understand. Please be patient.
The Center Cannot Hold
This approach concerns itself with the ways and places where systems, frameworks, definitions,
and certainties break down. Post-structuralism maintains that frameworks and systems, for
example the structuralist systems explained in the Structuralist area, are merely fictitious
constructs and that they cannot be trusted to develop meaning or to give order. In fact, the very
act of seeking order or a singular Truth (with a capital T) is absurd because there exists no
unified truth.
Post-structuralism holds that there are many truths, that frameworks must bleed, and that
structures must become unstable or decentered. Moreover, post-structuralism is also concerned
with the power structures or hegemonies and power and how these elements contribute to and/or
maintain structures to enforce hierarchy. Therefore, post-structural theory carries implications far
beyond literary criticism.
What Does Your Meaning Mean?
By questioning the process of developing meaning, post-structural theory strikes at the very heart
of philosophy and reality and throws knowledge making into what Jacques Derrida called
"freeplay": "The concept of centered structure...is contradictorily coherent...the concept of
centered structure is in fact the concept of a freeplay which is constituted upon a fundamental
immobility and a reassuring certitude, which is itself beyond the reach of the freeplay" (qtd. in
Richter, 878-879).
Derrida first posited these ideas in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University, when he delivered
“Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”: "Perhaps something has
occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an 'event,' if this loaded
word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural-or structuralist-
thought to reduce or to suspect. But let me use the term “event” anyway, employing it with
caution and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this event will have the exterior form of a
rupture and a redoubling” (qtd. in Richter, 878). In his presentation, Derrida challenged
structuralism's most basic ideas.
Can Language Do That?
Post-structural theory can be tied to a move against Modernist/Enlightenment ideas

(philosophers: Immanuel Kant, Réne Descartes, John Locke, etc.) and Western religious beliefs
(neo-Platonism, Catholicism, etc.). An early pioneer of this resistance was philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche. In his essay, “On Truth and Lies in an Extra- moral Sense” (1873), Nietzsche rejects
even the very basis of our knowledge making, language, as a reliable system of communication:
“The various languages, juxtaposed, show that words are never concerned with truth, never with
adequate expression...” (248).
Below is an example, adapted from the Tyson text, of some language freeplay and a simple form
of deconstruction:
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 time an arrow's flight.
Time flies (noun) like (verb) an arrow (object) = Time flies are fond of arrows (or at least of one
particular arrow).
So, post-structuralists assert that if we cannot trust language systems to convey truth, the very
bases of truth are unreliable and the universe - or at least the universe we have constructed -
becomes unraveled or de-centered. Nietzsche uses language slip as a base to move into the slip
and shift of truth as a whole: “What is truth? …truths are an illusion about which it has been
forgotten that they are illusions...” (On Truth and Lies 250).
This returns us to the discussion in the Structuralist area regarding signs, signifiers, and signified.
Essentially, post-structuralism holds that we cannot trust the sign = signifier + signified formula,
that there is a breakdown of certainty between sign/signifier, which leaves language systems
hopelessly inadequate for relaying meaning so that we are (returning to Derrida) in eternal
freeplay or instability.
What's Left?
Important to note, however, is that deconstruction is not just about tearing down - this is a
common misconception. Derrida, in "Signature Event Context," addressed this limited view of
post-structural theory: "Deconstruction cannot limit or proceed immediately to a neutralization: it
must…practice an overturning of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the
system. It is only on this condition that deconstruction will provide itself the means with which
to intervene in the field of oppositions that it criticizes, which is also a field of nondiscursive
forces" (328).
Derrida reminds us that through deconstruction we can identify the in-betweens and the
marginalized to begin interstitial knowledge building.
Modernism vs Postmodernism
With the resistance to traditional forms of knowledge making (science, religion, language),
inquiry, communication, and building meaning take on different forms to the post-structuralist.
We can look at this difference as a split between Modernism and Postmodernism. The table
below, excerpted from theorist Ihab Hassan's The Dismemberment of Orpheus (1998), offers us a
way to make sense of some differences between modernism, dominated by Enlightenment ideas,
and postmodernism, a space of freeplay and discourse.
Keep in mind that even the author, Hassan, "...is quick to point out how the dichotomies are
themselves insecure, equivocal" (Harvey 42). Though post-structuralism is uncomfortable with
binaries, Hassan provides us with some interesting contrasts to consider:
Modernism vs Postmodernism
Modernism Postmodernism
romanticism/symbolism paraphysics/Dadaism
form (conjunctive, closed) antiform (disjunctive, open)
purpose play
design chance
hierarchy anarchy
mastery/logos exhaustion/silence
art object/finished work/logos process/performance/antithesis
centering absence
genre/boundary text/intertext
semantics rhetoric
metaphor metonymy
root/depth rhizome/surface
signified signifier
narrative/grande histoire anti-narrative/petite histoire
genital/phallic polymorphous/androgynous
paranoia schizophrenia
origin/cause difference-difference/trace
God the Father The Holy Ghost
determinacy interdeterminacy
transcendence immanence
Post-Structuralism and Literature
If we are questioning/resisting the methods we use to build knowledge (science, religion,

language), then traditional literary notions are also thrown into freeplay. These include the
narrative and the author:
Narrative
The narrative is a fiction that locks readers into interpreting text in a single, chronological
manner that does not reflect our experiences. Postmodern texts may not adhere to traditional
notions of narrative. For example, in his seminal work, Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
explodes the traditional narrative structure and critiques almost everything Modern: modern
government, modern medicine, modern law-enforcement. Other examples of authors playing
with narrative include John Fowles; in the final sections of The French Lieutenant's Woman,
Fowles steps outside his narrative to speak with the reader directly.
Moreover, grand narratives are resisted. For example, the belief that through science the human
race will improve is questioned. In addition, metaphysics is questioned. Instead, postmodern
knowledge building is local, situated, slippery, and self-critical (i.e. it questions itself and its
role). Because post-structural work is self-critical, post-structural critics even look for ways texts
contradict themselves (see typical questions below).
Author
The author is displaced as absolute author(ity), and the reader plays a role in interpreting the text
and developing meaning (as best as possible) from the text. In “The Death of the Author,”
Roland Barthes argues that the idea of singular authorship is a recent phenomenon. Barthes
explains that the death of the author shatters Modernist notions of authority and knowledge
building (145).
Lastly, he states that once the author is dead and the Modernist idea of singular narrative (and
thus authority) is overturned, texts become plural, and the interpretation of texts becomes a
collaborative process between author and audience: “...a text is made of multiple writings, drawn
from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue...but there is one place where
this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader” (148). Barthes ends his essay by
empowering the reader: “Classical criticism has never paid any attention to the reader...the writer
is the only person in literature…it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader
must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (148).
Typical questions:
 How is language thrown into freeplay or questioned in the work? For example, note how
Anthony Burgess plays with language (Russian vs English) in A Clockwork Orange, or how
Burroughs plays with names and language in Naked Lunch.
 How does the work undermine or contradict generally accepted truths?
 How does the author (or a character) omit, change, or reconstruct memory and identity?
 How does a work fulfill or move outside the established conventions of its genre?
 How does the work deal with the separation (or lack thereof) between writer, work, and reader?
 What ideology does the text seem to promote?
 What is left out of the text that if included might undermine the goal of the work?
 If we changed the point of view of the text - say from one character to another, or multiple
characters - how would the story change? Whose story is not told in the text? Who is left out
and why might the author have omitted this character's tale?
theory:
Theorists
 Immanuel Kant - "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?", 1784 (as a baseline to
understand what Nietzsche was resisting)
 Friedrich Nietzsche - “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral Sense," 1873; The Gay Science, 1882;
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None, 1885
 Jacques Derrida - "Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences," 1966; Of
Grammatology, 1967; "Signature Even Context," 1972
 Roland Barthes - "The Death of the Author," 1967
 Deleuze and Guattari - "Rhizome," 1976
 Jean-François Lyotard - The Postmodern Condition, 1979
 Michele Foucault - The Foucault Reader, 1984
 Stephen Toulmin - Cosmopolis, 1990
 Martin Heidegger - Basic Writings, 1993
 Paul Cilliers - Complexity and Postmodernity, 1998
 Ihab Hassan - The Dismemberment of Orpheus, 1998; From Postmodernism to Postmodernity:
The Local/Global Context, 2001
Postmodern Literature
 William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch, 1959

 Angela Carter - Burning Your Boats, stories from 1962-1993 (first published as a collection in
1995)
 Kathy Acker - Blood and Guts in High School, 1978
 Paul Auster - City of Glass (volume one of the New York City Trilogy), 1985 (as a graphic novel
published by Neon Lit, a division of Avon Books, 1994)
 Lynne Tillman - Haunted Houses, 1987
 David Wojnarowicz - The Waterfront Journals, 1996

Summary:
New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-

present)
It's All Relative...
This school, influenced by structuralist and post-structuralist theories, seeks to reconnect a work
with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and politica l
movements of the time (Michel Foucault's concept of épistème). New Historicism assumes that
every work is a product of the historic moment that created it. Specifically, New Historicism is
"...a practice that has developed out of contemporary theory, particularly the structuralist
realization that all human systems are symbolic and subject to the rules of language, and the
deconstructive realization that there is no way of positioning oneself as an observer outside the
closed circle of textuality" (Richter 1205).
A helpful way of considering New Historical theory, Tyson explains, is to think about the
retelling of history itself: "...questions asked by traditional historians and by new historicists are
quite different...traditional historians ask, 'What happened?' and 'What does the event tell us
about history?' In contrast, new historicists ask, 'How has the event been interpreted?' and 'What
do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?'" (278). So New Historicism resists the notion
that "...history is a series of events that have a linear, causal relationship: event A caused event
B; event B caused event C; and so on" (Tyson 278).
New historicists do not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather that we
interpret events as products of our time and culture and that "...we don't have clear access to any
but the most basic facts of history...our understanding of what such facts mean...is...strictly a
matter of interpretation, not fact" (279). Moreover, New Historicism holds that we are hopelessly
subjective interpreters of what we observe.
Typical questions:
 What language/characters/events present in the work reflect the current events of the author’s
day?
 Are there words in the text that have changed their meaning from the time of the writing?
 How are such events interpreted and presented?
 How are events' interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
 Does the work's presentation support or condemn the event?
 Can it be seen to do both?
 How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the day?
 How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical/cultural texts
from the same period...?
 How can we use a literary work to "map" the interplay of both traditional and subversive
discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or the cultures in which
the work has been interpreted?
 How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?
theory:
 Michel Foucault - The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, 1970; Language,
Counter-memory, Practice, 1977
 Clifford Geertz - The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973; "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight," 1992
 Hayden White - Metahistory, 1974; "The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-
Sublimation," 1982
 Stephen Greenblatt - Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, 1980
 Pierre Bourdieu - Outline of a Theory of Practice, 1977; Homo Academicus, 1984; The Field of
Cultural Production, 1993
Summary:
Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)

History is Written by the Victors
Post-colonial criticism is similar to cultural studies, but it assumes a unique perspective on

literature and politics that warrants a separate discussion. Specifically, post-colonial critics are
concerned with literature produced by colonial powers and works produced by those who
were/are colonized. Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion,
and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial hegemony (western colonizers
controlling the colonized).
Therefore, a post-colonial critic might be interested in works such as Daniel Defoe's Robinson
Crusoe where colonial "...ideology [is] manifest in Crusoe's colonialist attitude toward the land
upon which he's shipwrecked and toward the black man he 'colonizes' and names Friday" (Tyson
377). In addition, post-colonial theory might point out that "...despite Heart of Darkness's
(Joseph Conrad) obvious anti-colonist agenda, the novel points to the colonized population as the
standard of savagery to which Europeans are contrasted" (Tyson 375). Post-colonial criticism
also takes the form of literature composed by authors that critique Euro-centric hegemony.
A Unique Perspective on Empire
Seminal post-colonial writers such as Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and Kenyan author Ngugi
wa Thiong'o have written a number of stories recounting the suffering of colonized people. For
example, in Things Fall Apart, Achebe details the strife and devastation that occurred when
British colonists began moving inland from the Nigerian coast.
Rather than glorifying the exploratory nature of European colonists as they expanded their
sphere of influence, Achebe narrates the destructive events that led to the death and enslavement
of thousands of Nigerians when the British imposed their Imperial government. In turn, Achebe
points out the negative effects (and shifting ideas of identity and culture) caused by the
imposition of western religion and economics on Nigerians during colonial rule.
Power, Hegemony, and Literature
Post-colonial criticism also questions the role of the western literary canon and western history
as dominant forms of knowledge making. The terms "first-world," "second world," "third world"
and "fourth world" nations are critiqued by post-colonial critics because they reinforce the
dominant positions of western cultures populating first world status. This critique includes the
literary canon and histories written from the perspective of first-world cultures. So, for example,
a post-colonial critic might question the works included in "the canon" because the canon does
not contain works by authors outside western culture.
Moreover, the authors included in the canon often reinforce colonial hegemonic ideology, such
as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Western critics might consider Heart of Darkness an
effective critique of colonial behavior. But post-colonial theorists and authors might disagree
with this perspective: "...as Chinua Achebe observes, the novel's condemnation of European is
based on a definition of Africans as savages: beneath their veneer of civilization, the Europeans
are, the novel tells us, as barbaric as the Africans. And indeed, Achebe notes, the novel portrays
Africans as a pre-historic mass of frenzied, howling, incomprehensible barbarians..." (Tyson
374-375).
Typical questions:
 How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial
oppression?
 What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity, including the
relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as double consciousness and
hybridity?
 What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How are such
persons/groups described and treated?
 What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?
 What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the ways in which race,
religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form
individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world in which we
live?
 How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or assumptions of a
canonized (colonialist) work?
 Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial populations?
 How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist ideology
through its representation of colonialization and/or its inappropriate silence about colonized
peoples? (Tyson 378-379)
theory:
Criticism
 Edward Said - Orientalism, 1978; Culture and Imperialism, 1994

 Kamau Brathwaite - The History of the Voice, 1979
 Gayatri Spivak - In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, 1987
 Dominick LaCapra - The Bounds of Race: Perspectives on Hegemony and Resistance, 1991
 Homi Bhabha - The Location of Culture, 1994
Literature and non- fiction
 Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart, 1958

 Ngugi wa Thiong'o - The River Between, 1965
 Sembene Ousman - God's Bits of Wood, 1962
 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust, 1975
 Buchi Emecheta - The Joys of Motherhood, 1979
 Keri Hulme - The Bone People, 1983
 Robertson Davies - What's Bred in the Bone, 1985
 Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day, 1988
 Bharati Mukherjee - Jasmine, 1989
 Jill Ker Conway - The Road from Coorain, 1989
 Helena Norberg-Hodge - Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, 1991
 Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient, 1992
 Gita Mehta - A River Sutra, 1993
 Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things, 1997
 Patrick Chamoiseau - Texaco, 1997

Summary:
Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)

S/he
Feminist criticism is concerned with "...the ways in which literature (and other cultural
productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological
oppression of women" (Tyson). This school of theory looks at how aspects of our culture are
inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and "...this critique strives to expose the explicit and
implicit misogyny in male writing about women" (Richter 1346). This misogyny, Tyson reminds
us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example...is found in
the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been tested on
male subjects only" (83).
Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the
exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: "...unless the critical or historical
point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to under-represent the contribution of women
writers" (Tyson 82-83).
Common Space in Feminist Theories
Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist some areas of
commonality. This list is excerpted from Tyson:
1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically;
patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so
2. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is marginalized, defined only by
her difference from male norms and values
3. 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 and death in the world
4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender (masculine or
feminine)
5. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to
change the world by prompting gender equality
6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience, including the
production and experience of literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or
not (91).
Feminist criticism has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three waves of
feminism:
1. First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication
of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the sexes. Activists like Susan
B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads
to National Universal Suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment
2. Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working conditions
necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the National Organization for
Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political activism. Writers like Simone de
Beauvoir (Le deuxième sexe, 1972) and Elaine Showalter established the groundwork for the
dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement
3. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist (over
generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class focus of second
wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural and contemporary gender
and race theories (see below) to expand on marginalized populations' experiences. Writers like
Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community...[and]
the survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion of
dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the varieties of work
women perform" (Tyson 97).
Typical questions:
 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 work say about women's creativity?
 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? (Tyson)
theory:
 Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792

 Simone de Beauvoir - Le deuxième sexe, 1972
 Julia Kristeva - About Chinese Women, 1977
 Elaine Showalter - A Literature of Their Own, 1977; "Toward a Feminist Poetics," 1979
 Deborah E. McDowell - "New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism," 1980
 Alice Walker - In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, 1983
 Lillian S. Robinson - "Treason out Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary Canon," 1983
 Camile Paglia - Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, 1990

Summary:
Gender Studies and Queer Theory (1970s-

present)
Gender(s), Power, and Marginalization
Gender studies and queer theory explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized
populations (woman as other) in literature and culture. Much of the work in gender studies and
queer theory, while influenced by feminist criticism, emerges from post-structural interest in
fragmented, de-centered knowledge building (Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault), language (the
breakdown of sign-signifier), and psychoanalysis (Lacan).
A primary concern in gender studies and queer theory is the manner in which gender and
sexuality is discussed: "Effective as this work [feminism] was in changing what teachers taught
and what the students read, there was a sense on the part of some feminist critics that...it was still
the old game that was being played, when what it needed was a new game entirely. The
argument posed was that in order to counter patriarchy, it was necessary not merely to think
about new texts, but to think about them in radically new ways" (Richter 1432).
Therefore, a critic working in gender studies and queer theory might even be uncomfortable with
the binary established by many feminist scholars between masculine and feminine: "Cixous
(following Derrida in Of Grammatology) sets up a series of binary oppositions (active/passive,
sun/moon...father/mother, logos/pathos). Each pair can be analyzed as a hierarchy in which the
former term represents the positive and masculine and the latter the negative and feminine
principle" (Richter 1433-1434).
In-Betweens
Many critics working with gender and queer theory are interested in the breakdown of binaries
such as male and female, the in-betweens (also following Derrida's interstitial knowledge
building). For example, gender studies and queer theory maintains that cultural definitions of
sexuality and what it means to be male and female are in flux: "...the distinction between
"masculine" and "feminine" activities and behavior is constantly changing, so that women who
wear baseball caps and fatigues...can be perceived as more piquantly sexy by some heterosexual
men than those women who wear white frocks and gloves and look down demurely" (Richter
1437).
Moreover, Richter reminds us that as we learn more about our genetic structure, the biology of
male/female becomes increasingly complex and murky: "even the physical dualism of sexual
genetic structures and bodily parts breaks down when one considers those instances - XXY
syndromes, natural sexual bimorphisms, as well as surgical transsexuals - that defy attempts at
binary classification" (1437).
Typical questions:
 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)?
 How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? Is it secure and forceful? Or
is it more hesitant or even collaborative?
 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 are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer works?
 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 problematics of sexuality and sexual "identity," that is
the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by
the words homosexual and heterosexual?
theory:
 Luce Irigaray - Speculum of the Other Woman, 1974

 Hélène Cixous - "The Laugh of the Medussa," 1976
 Laura Mulvey - "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," 1975; "Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure
and Narrative Cinema," 1981
 Michele Foucault - The History of Sexuality, Volume I, 1980
 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick - Epistemology of the Closet, 1994
 Lee Edelman - "Homographies," 1989
 Michael Warner
 Judith Butler - "Imitation and Gender Insubordination," 1991

Summary:
Ecocriticism (1960-Present)
Ecocriticism is an umbrella term under which a variety of approaches fall; this can make it a
difficult term to define. As ecocritic Lawrence Buell says, ecocriticism is an “increasingly
heterogeneous movement” (1). But, “simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship
between literature and the physical environment” (Glotfelty xviii). Emerging in the 1980s on the
shoulders of the environmental movement begun in the 1960s with the publication of Rachel
Carson’s Silent Spring, ecocriticism has been and continues to be an “earth-centered approach”
(Glotfelty xviii) the complex intersections between environment and culture, believing that
“human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it” (Glotfelty xix).
Ecocriticism is interdisciplinary, calling for collaboration between natural scientists, writers,
literary critics, anthropologists, historians, and more. Ecocriticism asks us to examine ourse lves
and the world around us, critiquing the way that we represent, interact with, and construct the
environment, both “natural” and manmade. At the heart of ecocriticism, many maintain, is “a
commitment to environmentality from whatever critical vantage point” (Buell 11). The
“challenge” for ecocritics is “keep[ing] one eye on the ways in which ‘nature’ is always […]
culturally constructed, and the other on the fact that nature really exists” (Gerrard 10). Similar to
critical traditions examining gender and race, ecocriticism deals not only with the socially-
constructed, often dichotomous categories we create for reality, but with reality itself.
First and Second Waves
Several scholars have divided Ecocriticism into two waves (Buell)(Glotfelty), recognizing the
first as taking place throughout the eighties and nineties. The first wave is characterized by its
emphasis on nature writing as an object of study and as a meaningful practice (Buell). Central to
this wave and to the majority of ecocritics still today is the environmental crisis of our age,
seeing it as the duty of both the humanities and the natural sciences to raise awareness and invent
solutions for a problem that is both cultural and physical. As such, a primary concern in first-
wave ecocriticism was to “speak for” nature (Buell 11). This is, perhaps, where ecocriticism
gained its reputation as an “avowedly political mode of analysis” (Gerrard 3). This wave, unlike
its successor, kept the cultural distinction between human and nature, promoting the value of
nature.
The second wave is particularly modern in its breaking down of some of the long-standing
distinctions between the human and the non-human, questioning these very concepts (Gerrard 5).
The boundaries between the human and the non- human, nature and non- nature are discussed as
constructions, and ecocritics challenge these constructions, asking (among other things) how
they frame the environmental crisis and its solution. This wave brought with it a redefinition of
the term “environment,” expanding its meaning to include both “nature” and the urban (Buell
11). Out of this expansion has grown the ecojustice movement, one of the more political of
ecocriticism branches that is “raising an awareness of class, race, and gender through ecocritical
reading of text” (Bressler 236), often examining the plight of the poorest of a population who are
the victims of pollution are seen as having less access to “nature” in the traditional sense.
These waves are not exactly distinct, and there is debate over what exactly constitutes the two.
For instance, some ecocritics will claim activism has been a defining feature of ecocriticism from
the beginning, while others see activism as a defining feature of primarily the first wave. While
the exact features attributed to each wave may be disputed, it is clear that Ecocriticism continues
to evolve and has undergone several shifts in attitude and direction since its conception.
Tropes and Approaches
Pastoral
This trope, found in much British and American literature, focuses on the dichotomy between
urban and rural life, is “deeply entrenched in Western culture”(Gerrard 33). At the forefront of
works which display pastoralism is a general idealization of the nature and the rural and the
demonization of the urban. Often, such works show a “retreat” from city life to the country while
romanticizing rural life, depicting an idealized rural existence that “obscures” the reality of the
hard work living in such areas requires (Gerrard 33). Greg Gerrard identifies three branches of
the pastoral: Classic Pastoral, “characterized by nostalgia” (37) and an appreciation of nature as a
place for human relaxation and reflection; Romantic Pastoral, a period after the Industrial
Revolution that saw “rural independence” as desirable aga inst the expansion of the urban; and
American Pastoralism, which “emphasize[d] agrarianism” (49) and represents land as a resource
to be cultivated, with farmland often creating a boundary between the urban and the wilderness.
Wilderness
An interesting focus for many ecocritics is the way that wilderness is represented in literature
and popular culture. This approach examines the ways in which wilderness is constructed,
valued, and engaged. Representations of wilderness in British and American culture can be
separated into a few main tropes. First, Old World wilderness displays wilderness as a place
beyond the borders of civilization, wherein wilderness is treated as a “threat,” a place of “exile”
(Gerrard 62). This trope can be seen in Biblical tales of creation and early British culture. Old
World wilderness is often conflated with demonic practices in early American literature (Gerrard
62). New World wilderness, seen in portrayals of wilderness in later American literature, applies
the pastoral trope of the “retreat” to wilderness itself, seeing wilderness not as a place to fear, but
as a place to find sanctuary. The New World wilderness trope has informed much of the
“American identity,” and often constructs encounters with the wilderness that lead to a more
“authentic existence” (Gerrard 71).
Ecofe minis m
As a branch of ecocriticism, ecofeminism primarily “analyzes the interconnection of the

oppression of women and nature” (Bressler 236). Drawing parallels between domination of land
and the domination of men over women, ecofeminists examine these hierarchical, gendered
relationships, in which the land is often equated with the feminine, seen as a fertile resources and
the property of man. The ecofeminism approach can be divided into two camps. The first,
sometimes referred to as radical ecofeminism, reverses the patriarchal domination of man over
woman and nature, “exalting nature,” the non-human, and the emotional” (Gerrard 24). This
approach embraces the idea that women are inherently closer to nature biolo gically, spiritually,
and emotionally. The second camp, which followed the first historically, maintains that there is
no such thing as a “feminine essence” that would make women more likely to connect with
nature (Gerrard 25). Of course, ecofeminism is a highly diverse and complex branch, and many
writers have undertaken the job of examining the hierarchical relationships structured in our
cultural representations of nature and of women and other oppressed groups. In particular,
studies regarding race have followed in this trend, identifying groups that have been historically
seen as somehow closer to nature. The way Native Americans, for instance, have been described
as “primitive” and portrayed as “dwelling in harmony with nature,” despite facts to the co ntrary.
Gerrard offers an examination of this trope, calling it the Ecological Indian (Gerrard 120).
Similar studies regarding representations and oppression of aboriginals have surfaced,
highlighting the misconceptions of these peoples as somehow “behind” Europeans, needing to
progress from “a natural to a civilized state” (Gerrard 125).
Typical Questions
Taking an ecocritical approach to a topic means asking questions not only of a primary source
such as literature, but asking larger questions about cultural attitudes towards and definitions of
nature. Generally, ecocriticism can be applied to a primary source by either interpreting a text
through an ecocritical lens, with an eye towards nature, or examining an ecocritical trope within
the text. The questions below are examples of questions you might ask both when working with
a primary source and when developing a research question that might have a broader perspective.
 How is nature represented in this text?

 How has the concept of nature changed over time?
 How is the setting of the play/film/text related to the environment?
 What is the influence on metaphors and representations of the land and the environment on
how we treat it?
 How do we see issues of environmental disaster and crises reflected in popular culture and
literary works?
 How are animals represented in this text and what is their relationship to humans?
 How do the roles or representations of men and women towards the environment differ in this
play/film/text/etc.
 Where is the environment placed in the power hierarchy?
 How is nature empowered or oppressed in this work?
 What parallels can be drawn between the sufferings and oppression of groups of people
(women, minorities, immigrants, etc.) and treatment of the land?
 What rhetorical moves are used by environmentalists, and what can we learn from them about
our cultural attitudes towards nature?
There are many more questions than these to be asked, and a large variety of approaches already
exist that are asking different questions. Do some research to check on the state of ecocritical
discussion in your own area of interest.
Further Resources
There are many more approaches to analyzing interactions between culture and nature, many of
which are interdisciplinary. The following texts are recommended to help you start exploring
other avenues of Ecocriticsm.
Theory and Criticis m
 Lawrence Buell - “The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation
of American Culture” (1995) and “Toxic Discourse,” 1998
 Charles Bressler - Literary criticism: an introduction to theory and practice, 1999
 Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm – The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology,
(1996)
 Greg Garrard – Ecocriticism, 2004
 Donna Haraway - "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late
Twentieth Century," (1991)
 ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (Journal)
 Joseph Makus - The Comedy of Survival: literary ecology and a play ethic, (1972)
 Leo Marx – The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, (1964)
 Raymond Williams - The Country and The City, (1975)
Lite rature & Literary Figures
Edward Abbey
 Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (1968)

 Appalachian Wilderness (1970)
 The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)
Mary Hunter Austin

 The Land of Little Rain (1903)
Rachel Carson
 Silent Spring (1962)
Aldo Leopold
 A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There (1949)
John Muir
 A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf (1916)

 Studies in the Sierra (1950)
Henry David Thoreau
 Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)
Williams Wordsworth
 Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)

 Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)

Summary:
Critical Race Theory (1970s-present)

Introduction
Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the
appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression. In adopting this
approach, CRT scholars attempt to understand how victims of systemic racism are affected by
cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themse lves to counter prejudice.
Closely connected to such fields as philosophy, history, sociology, and law, CRT scholarship
traces racism in America through the nation’s legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and
recent events. In doing so, it draws from work by writers like Sojourner Truth, Frederick
Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others studying law, feminism, and
post-structuralism. CRT developed into its current form during the mid-1970s with scholars like
Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and Richard Delgado, who responded to what they identified as
dangerously slow progress following Civil Rights in the 1960s.
Prominent CRT scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia Williams share an
interest in recognizing racism as a quotidian component of American life (manifested in textual
sources like literature, film, law, etc). In doing so, they attempt to confront the beliefs and
practices that enable racism to persist while also challenging these practices in order to seek
liberation from systemic racism.
As such, CRT scholarship also emphasizes the importance of finding a way for diverse
individuals to share their experiences. However, CRT scholars do not only locate an individual’s
identity and experience of the world in his or her racial identifications, but also their membership
to a specific class, gender, nation, sexual orientation, etc. They read these diverse cultural texts
as proof of the institutionalized inequalities racialized groups and individuals experience every
day.
As Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explain in their introduction to the third edition of
Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge, “Our social world, with its rules, practices, and
assignments of prestige and power, is not fixed; rather, we construct with it words, stories and
silence. But we need not acquiesce in arrangements that are unfair and one-sided. By writing and
speaking against them, we may hope to contribute to a better, fairer world” (3). In this sense,
CRT scholars seek tangible, real-world ends through the intellectual work they perform. This
contributes to many CRT scholars’ emphasis on social activism and transforming everyday
notions of race, racism, and power.
More recently, CRT has contributed to splinter groups focused on Asian American, Latino, and
Indian racial experiences.
Common Questions
 What is the significance of race in contemporary American society?

 Where, in what ways, and to what ends does race appear in dominant American culture and
shape the ways we interact with one another?
 What types of texts and other cultural artifacts reflect dominant culture’s perceptions of race?
 How can scholars convey that racism is a concern that affects all members of society?
 How does racism continue to function as a persistent force in American society?
 How can we combat racism to ensure that all members of American society experience equal
representation and access to fundamental rights?
 How can we accurately reflect the experiences of victims of racism?
Why Use This Approach?
As we can see, adopting a CRT approach to literature or other modes of cultural expression
includes much more than simply identifying race, racism, and racialized characters in fictional
works. Rather, it (broadly) emphasizes the importance of examining and attemp ting to
understand the socio-cultural forces that shape how we and others perceive, experience, and
respond to racism. These scholars treat literature, legal documents, and other cultural works as
evidence of American culture’s collective values and beliefs. In doing so, they trace racism as a
dually theoretical and historical experience that affects all members of a community regardless
of their racial affiliations or identifications.
Most CRT scholarship attempts to demonstrate not only how racism continues to be a pervasive
component throughout dominant society, but also why this persistent racism problematically
denies individuals many of the constitutional freedoms they are otherwise promised in the United
States’ governing documents. This enables scholars to locate how texts develop in and through
the cultural contexts that produced them, further demonstrating how pervasive systemic racism
truly is. CRT scholars typically focus on both the evidence and the origins of racism in American
culture, seeking to eradicate it at its roots.
Additionally, because CRT advocates attending to the various components that shape individual
identity, it offers a way for scholars to understand how race interacts with other identities like
gender and class. As scholars like Crenshaw and Willams have shown, CRT scholarship can and
should be amenable to adopting and adapting theories from related fields like women’s studies,
feminism, and history. In doing so, CRT has evolved over the last decades to address the various
concerns facing individuals affected by racism.
Interestingly, CRT scholarship does not only draw attention to and address the concerns of
individual affected by racism, but also those who perpetrate and are seemingly unaffected by
racial prejudice. Scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois, Peggy McIntosh, Cheryl Harris, and George
Lipsitz discuss white privilege and notions of whiteness throughout history to better understand
how American culture conceptualizes race (or the seeming absence of race).
Important Terms
 White privilege: Discussed by Lipsitz, Lee, Harris, McIntosh, and other CRT scholars, white
privilege refers to the various social, political, and economic advantages white individuals
experience in contrast to non-white citizens based on their racial membership. These
advantages can include both obvious and subtle differences in access to power, social status,
experiences of prejudice, educational opportunities, and much more. For CRT scholars, the
notion of white privilege offers a way to discuss dominant culture’s tendency to normalize white
individuals’ experiences and ignore the experiences of non-whites. Fields such as CRT and
whiteness studies have focused explicitly on the concept of white privilege to understand how
racism influences white people.
 Microaggressions: Microaggressions refer to the seemingly minute, often unconscious,
quotidian instances of prejudice that collectively contribute to racism and the subordination of
racialized individuals by dominant culture. Peggy Davis discusses how legal discourse
participates in and can counteract the effects of microaggressions.
 Institutionalized Racism: This concept, discussed extensively by Camara Phyllis Jones, refers to
the systemic ways dominant society restricts a racialized individual or group’s access to
opportunities. These inequalities, which include an individual’s access to material conditions and
power, are not only deeply imbedded in legal institutions, but have been absorbed into
American culture to such a degree that they are often invisible or easily overlooked.
 Social construction: In the context of CRT, “social construction” refers to the notion that race is
a product of social thought and relations. It suggests that race is a product of neither biology nor
genetics, but is rather a social invention.
 Intersectionality and anti-essentialism: These terms refer to the notion that one aspect of an
individual’s identity does not necessarily determine other categories of membership. As Delgado
and Stefancic explain, “Everyone has potentially conflicting, overlapping identities, loyalties, and
allegiances” (CRT: An Introduction 10). In other words, we cannot predict an individual’s identity,
beliefs, or values based on categories like race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, etc;
instead, we must recognize that individuals are capable of claiming membership to a variety of
different (and oftentimes seemingly contradictory) categories and belief systems regardless of
the identities outsiders attempt to impose upon them.
Works Cited
Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. New York:
New York University Press, 2012.
Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic, eds. Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. 3rd ed.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013. Print.
Recommended Sources for Additional Research
Bell, Derrick A. “Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory?” University of Illinois Law Review 4
(1995): 893-910.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller, and Kendall Thomas, eds. Critical Race
Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement. New York: The New Press, 1995
Davis, Peggy. “Law as Microaggression.” Yale Law Journal 98 (1989): 1559-1577.
Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Harris, Cheryl. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106.8 (1993): 1707-1791.
hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From the Margins to the Center. Boston: South End Press, 1984.
Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity
Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.
Spillers, Hortense. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Diacritics
17.2 (1987): 64-81.
Williams, Patricia. Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race. New York: Noonday
Press, 1998.
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 Formalist Criticis m: This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/). When

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism

Timeline (most of these overlap)

 Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present)

Moral Criticism and Dramatic Construction

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

 John Crowe Ransom - The New Criticism, 1938

Neo-Aristotelianis m (Chicago School of Criticis m)

 R.S. Crane - Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, 1952

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

Psychoanalytic Criticism (1930s-present)

Id, Ego, and Supe rego

 id - "...the location of the drives" or libido

Freud and Literature

 How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?

 Maud Bodkin - Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, 1934

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)

The Material Dialectic

 Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)

 How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?

 Peter Rabinowitz - Before Reading, 1987

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

Structuralism and Semiotics (1920s-present)

Patterns and Experience

Structuralism in Literary Theory

1. theory of modes, or historical criticism (tragic, comic, and thematic);

Peirce and Saussure

 Charles Sanders Peirce

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

The Center Cannot Hold

Can Language Do That?

Post-structural theory can be tied to a move against Modernist/Enlightenment ideas

form (conjunctive, closed) antiform (disjunctive, open)

art object/finished work/logos process/performance/antithesis

narrative/grande histoire anti-narrative/petite histoire

God the Father The Holy Ghost

Post-Structuralism and Literature

If we are questioning/resisting the methods we use to build knowledge (science, religion,

 William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch, 1959

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-

Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)

Post-colonial criticism is similar to cultural studies, but it assumes a unique perspective on

A Unique Perspective on Empire

Power, Hegemony, and Literature

 Edward Said - Orientalism, 1978; Culture and Imperialism, 1994

Literature and non- fiction

 Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart, 1958

Contributors:Allen Brizee, J. Case Tompkins, Libby Chernouski, Elizabeth Boyle.

Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)

Common Space in Feminist Theories