Literary Theory and Criticism
Archetypal Criticism:
A form of criticism based largely on the works of C. G. Jung (YOONG) and Joseph Campbell (and myth itself). Some of the school'smajor figures include Robert Graves, Francis Fergusson, Philip Wheelwright, Leslie Fiedler, Northrop Frye, Maud Bodkin, and G. Wilson Knight. These critics view the genres and individual plot patterns of literature, including highly sophisticated and realistic works, as recurrences of certain archetypes and essential mythic formulae. Archetypes, according to Jung, are "primordial images"; the "psychic residue" of repeated types of experience in the lives of very ancient ancestors which are inherited in the "collective unconscious" of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in the works of literature (Abrams, p. 10, 112). Some common examples of archetypes include water, sun, moon, colors, circles, the Great Mother, Wise Old Man, etc. In terms of archetypal criticism, the color white might be associated with innocence or could signify death or the supernatural.
Archetypes are universal symbols—images, characters, motifs, or patterns that recur in the myths, dreams, oral traditions, songs, literature, and other texts of peoples widely separated by time and place. Archetypal criticism deals with the similarities of these patterns in the literature of widely diverse cultures. For example, most cultures have stories that present the hero’s journey. This approach to literature stems from the notion that texts ultimately point out the universality of human experience. Built largely on the psychology of Carl Jung, Archetypal criticism contends that there are certain shared memories that exist in the collective unconscious of the human species, a storehouse of images and patterns, vestigial traces of which inhere in all human beings and which find symbolic expression in all human art, including its literature. (Think, for example, of the spontaneous associations you have while watching a sunset. They are not unique.) Practitioners such as Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell have discerned a complex and comprehensive correspondence between the basic story patterns of humans – comedy, romance, tragedy and irony – and the myths and archetypal patterns associated with the seasonal cycle of spring, summer, fall and winter. The death/rebirth theme is said to be the archetype of archetypes.
Some common assumptions in the use of Archetypal criticism:
Recurring Question: What universal patterns of human experience are evidenced and are being explored in the text?
Feminist Criticism:
To speak of "Feminism" as a theory is already a reduction. However, in terms of its theory (rather than as its reality as a historical movement in effect for some centuries) feminism might be categorized into three general groups:
An examination of a text through the lens of Gender criticism focuses on relationships between genders and the social labels of femininity and masculinity. This interpretation investigates the patterns of thought, behaviour, values, enfranchisement, and power in relations between and within the sexes—and explores how categories of gender are constructed by society, rather than biology. A Gender-focused reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God, for example, may examine the novel as an example of a heroine’s journey.
Some common assumptions in the use of Gender criticism:
Marxist Criticism:
A sociological approach to literature that viewed works of literature or art as the products of historical forces that can be analyzed by looking at the material conditions in which they were formed. In Marxist ideology, what we often classify as a world view (such as the Victorian age) is actually the articulations of the dominant class. Marxism generally focuses on the clash between the dominant and repressed classes in any given age and also may encourage art to imitate what is often termed an "objective" reality. Contemporary Marxism is much broader in its focus, and views art as simultaneously reflective and autonomous to the age in which it was produced. The Frankfurt School is also associated with Marxism (Abrams, p. 178, Childers and Hentzi, pp. 175-179). Major figures include Karl Marx, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, Louis Althusser (ALT-whos-sair), Walter Benjamin (ben-yeh-MEEN), Antonio Gramsci (GRAWM-shee), Georg Lukacs (lou-KOTCH), and Friedrich Engels, Theordor Adorno (a-DOR-no), Edward Ahern, Gilles Deleuze (DAY-looz) and Felix Guattari (GUAT-eh-ree).
Social Power criticism asserts that economics provides the foundation for all social, political, and ideological reality. This is criticism inspired by the historical, economic and sociological theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The presence of economic inequalities is a power structure that drives history and influences differences in religion, race, ethnicity, and gender. For example, status in the community of Of Mice and Men can be examined from an economic point of view.
Some common assumptions in the use of Social Power criticism:
Recurring Question: Who has the power/money in society? Who does not? What happens as a result?
Key Terms (note: definitions below taken from Ann B. Dobie's text, Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism - seeGeneral Resources below):
Commodificaion - "the attitude of valuing things not for their utility but for their power to impress others or for their resale possibilities" (92).
Conspicuous consumption - "the obvious acquisition of things only for their sign value and/or exchange value" (92).
Dialectical materialism - "the theory that history develops neither in a random fashion nor in a linear one but instead as struggle between contradictions that ultimately find resolution in a synthesis of the two sides. For example, class conflicts lead to new social systems" (92).
Material circumstances - "the economic conditions underlying the society. To understand social events, one must have a grasp of the material circumstances and the historical situation in which they occur" (92).
Reflectionism - associated with Vulgar Marxism - "a theory that the superstructure of a society mirrors its economic base and, by extension, that a text reflects the society that produced it" (92).
Superstructure - "The social, political, and ideological systems and institutions--for example, the values, art, and legal processes of a society--that are generated by the base" (92).
New Criticism:
“The text, the text, and nothing but the text” is the motto of Formalist criticism. The basic commitment of Formalism is to adhere to a close reading of literary texts. Formalist critics argue that in analyzing a work, the only evidence worth considering is that which isintrinsic to the text (within the work itself) and nothing extrinsic (outside the work), need be considered. Formalist critics explore questions of technique as an entrée into meaning. They seek to understand how an author or poet employs figures of speech, symbolism, narrative frames, and the other literary tools at her or his disposal to achieve an artistic “unity of effect.” In sum, the Formalist says that a work of literature must stand or fall on its own merits.
Some common assumptions in the use of Formalist criticism:
Psychological and Psychoanalytical Criticism:
The application of specific psychological principles (particularly those of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan [zhawk lawk-KAWN]) to the study of literature. Psychoanalytic criticism may focus on the writer's psyche, the study of the creative process, the study of psychological types and principles present within works of literature, or the effects of literature upon its readers (Wellek and Warren, p. 81). In addition to Freud and Lacan, major figures include Shoshona Felman, Jane Gallop, Norman Holland, George Klein, Elizabeth Wright, Frederick Hoffman, and, Simon Lesser.
Criticism that analyzes literature from the position that texts express the inner workings of the human mind provides the thrust of Psychological criticism; this approach often focuses on the choices of humans as moral agents. Leo Tolstoy, the accomplished Russian novelist, believed that the purpose of literature was “to make humans good by choice.” Literature through the power of story has the ability to engage the individual imaginatively in other worlds and other times. It invites the reader to put him or herself in the position of other human beings; to empathize. The Psychological critic is interested in every phase of human interaction and choice as developed in the text. Literature constantly informs us about and leads us to question what it means to be a human being. The Psychological critic closely follows these revelations and takes them as a central subject for analysis.
Some common assumptions in the use of Psychological criticism:
Key Terms:
Unconscious - the irrational part of the psyche unavailable to a person's consciousness except through dissociated acts or dreams.Freud's model of the psyche:
Reader-Response Criticism:
Reader Response theory notes that a literary text is not separate and closed-off; rather, its meaning is completed when the individual reader comes in contact with it and in the course of reading constructs a new version of what the text is saying. Reader Response theory notes that reading is ultimately a personal and idiosyncratic activity. For this very reason, this undoubtedly true “theory” does not qualify as a “critical lens” because it preeminently champions the undoubted right of each individual to his or her own opinion about a piece of writing without the need to justify or otherwise defend one’s perceptions. In school, you are often invited to respond to a text subjectively. This happens, for example, when you are asked to “make connections” between the text and your own experience and knowledge of the world. Reader response is how most people spontaneously react to literature. It is healthy, indispensable, and inherently subjective and, for that reason, not what you should focus on when writing a literary analysis paper.
Recurring Question: How did you like the book?
Historical Criticism:
While acknowledging the importance of the literary text, the Historical approach recognizes the significance of historical information in interpreting literature. This perspective assumes that texts both influence and are influenced by the times in which they were created. For example, an interpretation of The Crucible by Arthur Miller may be enhanced by an understanding of the effects of McCarthyism on 1950’s American life.
Some common assumptions in the use of Historical criticism:
Recurring Question: How does the text in question influence contemporary events, and how do contemporary events influence the author’s creative choices?
Structuralism:
Structuralism is a way of thinking about the world which is predominantly concerned with the perceptions and description of structures. At its simplest, structuralism claims that the nature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself, and in fact is determined by all the other elements involved in that situation. The full significance of any entity cannot be perceived unless and until it is integrated into the structure of which it forms a part (Hawkes, p. 11). Structuralists believe that all human activity is constructed, not natural or "essential." Consequently, it is the systems of organization that are important (what we do is always a matter of selection within a given construct). By this formulation, "any activity, from the actions of a narrative to not eating one's peas with a knife, takes place within a system of differences and has meaning only in its relation to other possible activities within that system, not to some meaning that emanates from nature or the divine" (Childers & Hentzi, p. 286.). Major figures include Claude Lévi-Strauss (LAY-vee-strows), A. J. Greimas (GREE-mahs), Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes (bart), Ferdinand de Saussure (soh-SURR or soh-ZHOR), Roman Jakobson (YAH-keb-sen), Vladimir Propp, and Terence Hawkes.
A form of criticism based largely on the works of C. G. Jung (YOONG) and Joseph Campbell (and myth itself). Some of the school'smajor figures include Robert Graves, Francis Fergusson, Philip Wheelwright, Leslie Fiedler, Northrop Frye, Maud Bodkin, and G. Wilson Knight. These critics view the genres and individual plot patterns of literature, including highly sophisticated and realistic works, as recurrences of certain archetypes and essential mythic formulae. Archetypes, according to Jung, are "primordial images"; the "psychic residue" of repeated types of experience in the lives of very ancient ancestors which are inherited in the "collective unconscious" of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in the works of literature (Abrams, p. 10, 112). Some common examples of archetypes include water, sun, moon, colors, circles, the Great Mother, Wise Old Man, etc. In terms of archetypal criticism, the color white might be associated with innocence or could signify death or the supernatural.
Archetypes are universal symbols—images, characters, motifs, or patterns that recur in the myths, dreams, oral traditions, songs, literature, and other texts of peoples widely separated by time and place. Archetypal criticism deals with the similarities of these patterns in the literature of widely diverse cultures. For example, most cultures have stories that present the hero’s journey. This approach to literature stems from the notion that texts ultimately point out the universality of human experience. Built largely on the psychology of Carl Jung, Archetypal criticism contends that there are certain shared memories that exist in the collective unconscious of the human species, a storehouse of images and patterns, vestigial traces of which inhere in all human beings and which find symbolic expression in all human art, including its literature. (Think, for example, of the spontaneous associations you have while watching a sunset. They are not unique.) Practitioners such as Northrop Frye and Joseph Campbell have discerned a complex and comprehensive correspondence between the basic story patterns of humans – comedy, romance, tragedy and irony – and the myths and archetypal patterns associated with the seasonal cycle of spring, summer, fall and winter. The death/rebirth theme is said to be the archetype of archetypes.
Some common assumptions in the use of Archetypal criticism:
- Certain images recur in texts from diverse cultures that share a common interpretation—water, sun, colours, the tree, settings such as the garden, the desert.
- Certain characters recur—the hero, the trickster, the great mother, the wise old man, the prodigal son.
- Certain motifs and patterns recur—creation stories, the quest, voyage to the underworld, journey, initiation.
Recurring Question: What universal patterns of human experience are evidenced and are being explored in the text?
Feminist Criticism:
To speak of "Feminism" as a theory is already a reduction. However, in terms of its theory (rather than as its reality as a historical movement in effect for some centuries) feminism might be categorized into three general groups:
- theories having an essentialist focus (including psychoanalytic and French feminism);
- theories aimed at defining or establishing a feminist literary canon or theories seeking to re-interpret and re-vision literature (and culture and history and so forth) from a less patriarchal slant (including gynocriticism, liberal feminism); and
- theories focusing on sexual difference and sexual politics (including gender studies, lesbian studies, cultural feminism, radical feminism, and socialist/materialist feminism).
An examination of a text through the lens of Gender criticism focuses on relationships between genders and the social labels of femininity and masculinity. This interpretation investigates the patterns of thought, behaviour, values, enfranchisement, and power in relations between and within the sexes—and explores how categories of gender are constructed by society, rather than biology. A Gender-focused reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God, for example, may examine the novel as an example of a heroine’s journey.
Some common assumptions in the use of Gender criticism:
- A persuasively patriarchal society conveys the notion of male dominance through the images of women in its texts.
- Many literary texts lack complex female figures and deem the female reader as an outsider or require her to assume male values in terms of perception, feelings, and actions.
- Issues of gender and sexuality are central to artistic expression.
- Fictional portrayals of female characters often reflect and create stereotypical social and political attitudes toward women.
- Texts authored by women may have different viewpoints than texts authored by men.
Marxist Criticism:
A sociological approach to literature that viewed works of literature or art as the products of historical forces that can be analyzed by looking at the material conditions in which they were formed. In Marxist ideology, what we often classify as a world view (such as the Victorian age) is actually the articulations of the dominant class. Marxism generally focuses on the clash between the dominant and repressed classes in any given age and also may encourage art to imitate what is often termed an "objective" reality. Contemporary Marxism is much broader in its focus, and views art as simultaneously reflective and autonomous to the age in which it was produced. The Frankfurt School is also associated with Marxism (Abrams, p. 178, Childers and Hentzi, pp. 175-179). Major figures include Karl Marx, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, Louis Althusser (ALT-whos-sair), Walter Benjamin (ben-yeh-MEEN), Antonio Gramsci (GRAWM-shee), Georg Lukacs (lou-KOTCH), and Friedrich Engels, Theordor Adorno (a-DOR-no), Edward Ahern, Gilles Deleuze (DAY-looz) and Felix Guattari (GUAT-eh-ree).
Social Power criticism asserts that economics provides the foundation for all social, political, and ideological reality. This is criticism inspired by the historical, economic and sociological theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The presence of economic inequalities is a power structure that drives history and influences differences in religion, race, ethnicity, and gender. For example, status in the community of Of Mice and Men can be examined from an economic point of view.
Some common assumptions in the use of Social Power criticism:
- All aspects of humanity are based on the struggle for economic power.
- The basic struggle in human society is between the haves and the have-nots.
Recurring Question: Who has the power/money in society? Who does not? What happens as a result?
Key Terms (note: definitions below taken from Ann B. Dobie's text, Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism - seeGeneral Resources below):
Commodificaion - "the attitude of valuing things not for their utility but for their power to impress others or for their resale possibilities" (92).
Conspicuous consumption - "the obvious acquisition of things only for their sign value and/or exchange value" (92).
Dialectical materialism - "the theory that history develops neither in a random fashion nor in a linear one but instead as struggle between contradictions that ultimately find resolution in a synthesis of the two sides. For example, class conflicts lead to new social systems" (92).
Material circumstances - "the economic conditions underlying the society. To understand social events, one must have a grasp of the material circumstances and the historical situation in which they occur" (92).
Reflectionism - associated with Vulgar Marxism - "a theory that the superstructure of a society mirrors its economic base and, by extension, that a text reflects the society that produced it" (92).
Superstructure - "The social, political, and ideological systems and institutions--for example, the values, art, and legal processes of a society--that are generated by the base" (92).
New Criticism:
“The text, the text, and nothing but the text” is the motto of Formalist criticism. The basic commitment of Formalism is to adhere to a close reading of literary texts. Formalist critics argue that in analyzing a work, the only evidence worth considering is that which isintrinsic to the text (within the work itself) and nothing extrinsic (outside the work), need be considered. Formalist critics explore questions of technique as an entrée into meaning. They seek to understand how an author or poet employs figures of speech, symbolism, narrative frames, and the other literary tools at her or his disposal to achieve an artistic “unity of effect.” In sum, the Formalist says that a work of literature must stand or fall on its own merits.
Some common assumptions in the use of Formalist criticism:
- Texts possess meaning in and of themselves; therefore, analyses should emphasize intrinsic meaning over extrinsic meaning
- The best readers are those who look most closely at the text and are familiar with literary conventions and have an ample command of the language
- Meaning within the text is context-bound. This means that readers must be ready to show how the parts of the text relate to form a whole.
- The best interpretations are those which seek out ambiguities in the text and then resolve these ambiguities as a part of demonstrating the organic unity of the text
Psychological and Psychoanalytical Criticism:
The application of specific psychological principles (particularly those of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan [zhawk lawk-KAWN]) to the study of literature. Psychoanalytic criticism may focus on the writer's psyche, the study of the creative process, the study of psychological types and principles present within works of literature, or the effects of literature upon its readers (Wellek and Warren, p. 81). In addition to Freud and Lacan, major figures include Shoshona Felman, Jane Gallop, Norman Holland, George Klein, Elizabeth Wright, Frederick Hoffman, and, Simon Lesser.
Criticism that analyzes literature from the position that texts express the inner workings of the human mind provides the thrust of Psychological criticism; this approach often focuses on the choices of humans as moral agents. Leo Tolstoy, the accomplished Russian novelist, believed that the purpose of literature was “to make humans good by choice.” Literature through the power of story has the ability to engage the individual imaginatively in other worlds and other times. It invites the reader to put him or herself in the position of other human beings; to empathize. The Psychological critic is interested in every phase of human interaction and choice as developed in the text. Literature constantly informs us about and leads us to question what it means to be a human being. The Psychological critic closely follows these revelations and takes them as a central subject for analysis.
Some common assumptions in the use of Psychological criticism:
- The text is as an expression of the secret, repressed life of its author, explaining the textual features as symbolic of psychological struggles in the writer. (Similar to a Biographical criticism approach.)
- The critical reader should look not to the author but to characters in the text, applying psychoanalytical theory to explain their hidden motives or psychological makeup.
- The text can reveal ways in which specific readers reveal their own obsessions, neuroses, etc. as they read a particular text. (Similar to a Reader Response approach.)
Key Terms:
Unconscious - the irrational part of the psyche unavailable to a person's consciousness except through dissociated acts or dreams.Freud's model of the psyche:
- Id - completely unconscious part of the psyche that serves as a storehouse of our desires, wishes, and fears. The id houses the libido, the source of psychosexual energy.
- Ego - mostly to partially (<--a point of debate) conscious part of the psyche that processes experiences and operates as a referee or mediator between the id and superego.
- Superego - often thought of as one's "conscience"; the superego operates "like an internal censor [encouraging] moral judgments in light of social pressures" (123, Bressler - see General Resources below).
- Imaginary - a preverbal/verbal stage in which a child (around 6-18 months of age) begins to develop a sense of separateness from her mother as well as other people and objects; however, the child's sense of sense is still incomplete.
- Symbolic - the stage marking a child's entrance into language (the ability to understand and generate symbols); in contrast to the imaginary stage, largely focused on the mother, the symbolic stage shifts attention to the father who, in Lacanian theory, represents cultural norms, laws, language, and power (the symbol of power is the phallus--an arguably "gender-neutral" term).
- Real - an unattainable stage representing all that a person is not and does not have. Both Lacan and his critics argue whether the real order represents the period before the imaginary order when a child is completely fulfilled--without need or lack, or if the real order follows the symbolic order and represents our "perennial lack" (because we cannot return to the state of wholeness that existed before language).
Reader-Response Criticism:
Reader Response theory notes that a literary text is not separate and closed-off; rather, its meaning is completed when the individual reader comes in contact with it and in the course of reading constructs a new version of what the text is saying. Reader Response theory notes that reading is ultimately a personal and idiosyncratic activity. For this very reason, this undoubtedly true “theory” does not qualify as a “critical lens” because it preeminently champions the undoubted right of each individual to his or her own opinion about a piece of writing without the need to justify or otherwise defend one’s perceptions. In school, you are often invited to respond to a text subjectively. This happens, for example, when you are asked to “make connections” between the text and your own experience and knowledge of the world. Reader response is how most people spontaneously react to literature. It is healthy, indispensable, and inherently subjective and, for that reason, not what you should focus on when writing a literary analysis paper.
Recurring Question: How did you like the book?
Historical Criticism:
While acknowledging the importance of the literary text, the Historical approach recognizes the significance of historical information in interpreting literature. This perspective assumes that texts both influence and are influenced by the times in which they were created. For example, an interpretation of The Crucible by Arthur Miller may be enhanced by an understanding of the effects of McCarthyism on 1950’s American life.
Some common assumptions in the use of Historical criticism:
- A text cannot be separated from its historical context, which consists of a web of social, cultural, personal, and political factors.
- An understanding of a text is enhanced by the study of beliefs and artifacts such as diaries, films, paintings, and letters in existence when the text was created.
Recurring Question: How does the text in question influence contemporary events, and how do contemporary events influence the author’s creative choices?
Structuralism:
Structuralism is a way of thinking about the world which is predominantly concerned with the perceptions and description of structures. At its simplest, structuralism claims that the nature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself, and in fact is determined by all the other elements involved in that situation. The full significance of any entity cannot be perceived unless and until it is integrated into the structure of which it forms a part (Hawkes, p. 11). Structuralists believe that all human activity is constructed, not natural or "essential." Consequently, it is the systems of organization that are important (what we do is always a matter of selection within a given construct). By this formulation, "any activity, from the actions of a narrative to not eating one's peas with a knife, takes place within a system of differences and has meaning only in its relation to other possible activities within that system, not to some meaning that emanates from nature or the divine" (Childers & Hentzi, p. 286.). Major figures include Claude Lévi-Strauss (LAY-vee-strows), A. J. Greimas (GREE-mahs), Jonathan Culler, Roland Barthes (bart), Ferdinand de Saussure (soh-SURR or soh-ZHOR), Roman Jakobson (YAH-keb-sen), Vladimir Propp, and Terence Hawkes.