Critical Approaches in Writing A Critique

How do you critique a material?

-based on its technical aspect

-its approach to gender

-your reaction as the audience

-through its portrayal of class struggle

-social structure

FORMALISM
-understanding a text through the text itself
-focuses on literary elements and how they work to create meaning.

Major principles of formalism

A literary text exists independent of any particular reader; it has a fixed meaning.

The greatest literary texts are “timeless” and “universal.”

FEMINIST CRITICISM
-is concerned with the role, position, and influence of women in literary texts.
-reveals how aspects of our culture are patriarchal.

READER RESPONSE CRITICISM

-concerned with the reviewer’s action as an audience
A text does not have meaning until the reader reads it and interprets it.

Two Important Ideas in Reader-Response

An individual reader’s interpretation usually changes over time.
Readers from different generations and time periods interpret texts differently.

MARXIST CRITICISM
-concerned with differences between economic classes and implications of a capitalist system.
-attempts to reveal that the ultimate source of people’s experience is the socioeconomic system.

It examines literature to see how it reflects

1. The way in which dominant groups exploit the subordinate groups
2. The way in which people become alienated from one another through power, money and politics.