1

676 Critical Approached to Literature

Haneen Al Ibrahim
March, 20th, 2007

Critics at Work

From reading Critics at Work, it's obvious that these scholars find the

motivation for their works from each other, from other critics and old works

and from the society. Like with what happened with the four women critics

Cathy Davidson, Alice Kaplan, Jane Tompkins, and Marianna Torgovnick who

created their own writing group and kept on writing and meeting frequently to

discuss what they wrote and got feedback to improve and proceed their

writings. They also published critical works in which they turned to the

personal as a contemporary criticism trend.

My motivation in this would be the feedback I get when I write a certain piece

and the works of the critics and scholars that I research during the writing

process which if it does anything it motivates me to investigate deeper in the

field and makes me more interested in it.

Obviously, this profession is in a continuous change and development, new

theories are coming to life; new critics are joining in and put their own

opinions and methods in this field. The main and probably the most

important goal for criticism is to interpret the so many kinds of literary

writings and find new and acceptable methods or theories to apply the critical

approaches to them.
 2

One of the concerns for the profession of criticism is whether or not literary

critics and criticism should be detached from society. Stanley Fish argues in

his works that the meaning of literary texts is actually in the interpretations

that are formed in the mind of the reader or the audience and not in the text

itself. Therefore, criticism should not be detached from the society which is

probably the main effect on how criticism would work and which directions it

would take. The goal for criticism is to know and understand how certain

critical theories or approaches would and develop throughout time, and how

does it affect society and the individual.

The critical approach of feminism seems to be one of the important

approaches now for its continuous growth and its flexibility to be applied to

different kinds of literary texts of different times, backgrounds and languages.

This approach would be the most valuable for me to know a deeper knowledge

of because it deals with women issues in different societies; it deals with

gender issues and tries to find solutions for them in a male-dominated world.

And it's important to notice that these kinds of issues always exist no matter

how gender roles change or the society itself changes.

Reading the interviews, I noticed how social and political factors are

important in forming and interpreting criticism. Richard Ohmann stated in

his interview that he looked at the issues of power, wars and racism in

America and how these issues were significant to the field and how they

contributed to his writing of his book English in America.

 3

The political factors like power, revolutions and wars are important are useful

in scholarship and teaching because they can be used as fixed materials on

which we can base the interpretations of some texts, say, texts based on

history. That is, we can give a critical interpretation and understanding of a

certain text in the light of the political events of the past. Social factors are also

important in scholarship and teaching methods. As it's known, each society is

ruled by certain factors and traditions that determine the people's mentality

and viewpoint bout some issues of their time or about how they react and

contribute to a written text or a critical approach. So if we teach a certain text

to two groups of two different societies, the result of interpretation will come

out different from each other.

Identity could be a crucial factor and very important to the field of criticism

too. Reader response criticism depends on the identity of the individual

him\herself in its formation and interpretation, and it helps the person to

understand the written text and criticizing it. I would incorporate this reader

response criticism in my instructions for its significance in engaging the

students with the text and making the most benefit of the reading experience.

I would also include some texts or materials that deal with historical

backgrounds to help understand why a specific text is written in this way and

why it deals with this certain issue.

Another idea that I think would be helpful is to create a sort of writing group

and give short writing exercises to the students in which they write their own

opinion or point of view about a text and how did they understand in the light
 4

of some given critical approaches that might be applied to the text. This idea

seems very interesting and it worked really well with the four women critics

when they were making some writing exercises every week about specific

topics to improve their own writings and imaginations, so it will work the

same if it can be practiced in a classroom.