Literary Criticism

1. LITERARY THEORY (A Subset of Literary Criticism)

 is the systematic study of literature; it is application of established canons like Marxism,
post- colonialism, new historicism, psychoanalysis, travel theory, trauma theory and
feminism to works of literature.
 is multidisciplinary because most ideas stem from fields outside literature.
 Example, Marxism emanates from the political and economic fields of knowledge;
psychoanalysis is a branch of psychology, postcolonialism is quite political while
feminism is both sociological and political
 Literary theory is practical. When literary critics and writers espouse theory, they think
differently about issues that affect society. Theory brings common sense notions under
detailed scrutiny.
 According to Sigmund Freud, writing is a mental illness which enables the writer to
express his or her forbidden wishes. In his work Interpretation of Dreams, Freud
observed that there is a tight relationship between the creative action and the artist and
the neuroses and the role of the unconscious in the artistic creation must be determined.
There is a close relationship between the artist and dreaming and for that reason, the artist
is sort of mentally ill
 Literary theory is reflexive as it encourages critics to think deeply about subjects.
Proponents of stylistics grapple with what really is literature as opposed to language.
Wales K. (2001) defines stylistics as the study of literary style. He notes that the main
aim of stylistics is not just description of the formal features of a text but “to show the
functional significance for the interpretation of a text” (437). Wales therefore suggests
that literary writers use style to express their subjects and themes.
 Literary language is therefore much different from language as it contains fragrant
violation of linguistic norms. Literature is a speech act or textual event that elicits a
certain kind of attention. It is aesthetic, and for Kant E. (1892), the aesthetic value has a
purposiveness without a purpose,” [12]. Kant possibly means that the end result of a work
of art is nothing but art itself.
 Literary theory describes different approaches to studying literature. Essentially, literary
theories are lenses that a reader can apply in order to view a text in a new light. Imagine
that you have a collection of glasses
made up of different colors. One
pair lets you see everything in blue,
another in red, etc.

Nothing Gold Can Stay Dreams

by Robert Frost by Langston Hughes

Nature's first green is gold, Hold fast to dreams

Her hardest hue to hold. For if dreams die
Her early leaf's a flower; Life is a broken-winged bird
But only so an hour. That cannot fly.

Then leaf subsides to leaf. Hold fast to dreams

So Eden sank to grief, For when dreams go
So dawn goes down to day. Life is a barren field
Nothing gold can stay. Frozen with snow.
2. NEW CRITICISM
 It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature
functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.
 The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New
Criticism. The work of English scholar I. A. Richards, especially his Practical Criticism
and The Meaning of Meaning, which offered what was claimed to be an empirical,
scientific approach, were important to the development of New Critical methodology.
 Also very influential were the critical essays of T. S. Eliot, such as "Tradition and the
Individual Talent" and "Hamlet and His Problems", in which Eliot developed his notion
of the "objective correlative". Eliot's evaluative judgments, such as his condemnation of
Milton and Shelley, his liking for the so_x0002_called metaphysical poets, and his
insistence that poetry must be impersonal, greatly influenced the formation of the New
Critical canon.
 T. S Eliot is one of the brilliant ornaments as well as founders of this movement. Eliot
defined criticism as a rational analysis of literature. He is an analytical critic who rejected
impressionistic criticism. Eliot, like his contemporary I.A. Richards, sought to elevate
criticism to the level of objectivity in science. This attitude prompted Eliot to reject both
liberalism and romanticism.
 –Tradition and Individual Talent
a) Literary tradition is not final and irrevocable but is constantly being rearranged by the
appearance of new works; in effect the past culminates in the present and is itself altered
by the present.
b) Art is not an expression of personality, but an expression of a particular medium
 One of the most influential movements in modern critical scholarship, the New
Criticism is a philosophy of literary interpretation that stresses the importance of studying
literary texts as complete works of art in themselves.
 Although the term New Criticism was first coined in the nineteenth century, it was not
until American critic and poet John Crow Ransom, founder of the Kenyon Review wrote
a book titled The New Criticism (1941) that it became established in common academic
and literary usage.
 Most studies of New Criticism identify it as a formalist mode of critical interpretation,
focusing on a close reading of the technicalities, structure, themes, and message of the
literary text.
 New Critics believed the structure and meaning of the text were intimately connected and
should not be analyzed separately. In order to bring the focus of literary studies back to
analysis of the texts, they aimed to exclude the reader's response, the author's intention,
historical and cultural contexts, and moralistic bias from their analysis. These goals were
articulated in Ransom's "Criticism, Inc." and Allen Tate's "Miss Emily and the
Bibliographers."
 For Wimsatt and Beardsley, the words on the page were all that mattered; importation of
meanings from outside the text was considered irrelevant, and potentially distracting.
 Studying a passage of prose or poetry in New Critical style required careful, exacting
scrutiny of the passage itself. Formal elements such as rhyme, meter, setting,
characterization, and plot were used to identify the theme of the text. In addition to the
theme, the New Critics also looked for paradox, ambiguity, irony, and tension to help
establish the single best and most unified interpretation of the text.
 The New Criticism is a type of formalist literary criticism that reached its height during
the 1940s and 1950s and that received its name from John Crowe Ransom ‘s 1941 book
The New Criticism. New Critics treat a work of literature as
 
Special attention is paid to repetition, particularly of images or symbols, but also of
sound effects and rhythms in poetry.
 New Critics especially appreciate the use of literary devices, such as irony, to achieve a
balance or reconciliation between dissimilar, even conflicting, elements in a text.
 Because it stresses close textual analysis and viewing the text as a carefully crafted,
orderly object containing formal, observable patterns, the New Criticism has sometimes
been called an "objective" approach to literature
 New Criticism Commonalities among the Followers
 Poetry should be appreciated and interpret for its poetic values; literary criticism
must be objective; Intentional
 Fallacy should not mislead us or should not be under the influence of Affective
Fallacy
 In criticizing a literary work, we should restrain ourselves from the impact of the
author’s life, the social circumstances, moral and psychological impact on
readers and so on.
 Should simplify and read the text precisely to analyze and elucidate structural
components of the text, the fragile and scrutinizing relation of the components,
explaining the ambiguity of the terms and as well as to clarify and explain the
meaning of the phrase
 The foundation of New Criticism is not to focus on linguistic issues. Literature is
a special and unique form of language its characteristics can be found by
comparing it with ordinary and logical language.
 In New Criticism the segregation of various literary forms is not required or
fundamental activity. In each literary work its structural components whether,
they are narrated or represented or so on, are mainly words, images, and symbols.
 Smolova (2004) argues that Formalism (New Criticism) is mainly concerned
with ‘what the text says and how it says it,’ and summarizes its fundamental
tenets as follows:
 Literary texts are finished ‘knowable’ products;
 Interpretations are based solely on the properties inherent in texts;
 Everything necessary for understanding of a text is already in the text;
 The emphasis is on close, rigorous, and analytical reading;
 Classical values and norms are to be maintained in literature;
 The text is approached empirically (the type of meter, number of lines in
the stanzas, sound effects, syntax, tropes, imagery, etc.);
 The parts of a text are analyzed for their contribution to the overall
meaning.
3. POETRY

What is Poetry?
 Poetry is a form of literature which allows the writers who called to be “poets” to express their
thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas about a particular theme or topic.When reading a poem, it is
common that we get confuse between poet and persona. Remember that poet is the author of the
poem or literary piece while persona is the SPEAKER or narrator of the poem.
 Poetry is recognizable by its greater dependence on at least one more parameter, the line, than
appears in prose composition. It will be easy for us to identify if the literary piece is under poetry.
 Poetry is cast in lines. It uses forms and elements and does not use ordinary syntax.
 We do not use ordinary sentence formation since there are elements and techniques used by the
poets.
  Basically, poetry has significant elements that can be used by the poets to strengthen their
techniques and sustain it for recognition of poetic styles.
 Elements will help the poets to address the message of the literary pieces to the audience or
readers.

Here are some of the elements of poetry as categorized into six sub-elements namely, structure, sound,
imagery, figurative language, fictional elements, and poetic forms.

 Theme is the lesson about life or statement about human nature that the poem expresses.
 Though related to the concept of a moral, or lesson, themes are usually more
complicated and ambiguous.
 To describe the theme of a poem is to discuss the overarching abstract idea or
ideas being examined in the poem.
 A major theme is an idea that a writer repeats in his work, making it the most
significant idea in a literary work.
 A minor theme, on the other hand, refers to an idea that appears in a work briefly
and gives way to another minor theme.
 Presentation of Themes
– the feelings of the main character about the subject written about
– through the thoughts and conversations of different characters
– the experiences of the main character in the course of a literary work
– the actions and events taking place in a narrative
 Functions of Themes
– binds together various other essential elements of a poem
– is a truth that exhibits universality and stands true for people of all cultures
– gives readers better understanding of the main character’s conflicts,
experiences, discoveries, and emotions
– gives readers an insight into how the world works or human life can be viewed

 Theme Vs Subject
– A poem’s subject is the topic of the poem, or what the poem is about
– The theme is an idea that the poem expresses about the subject or uses the subject to explore

Example:
– So, for example, in the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The Raven”, the subject is the raven, who
continually repeats a single word in response to the speaker’s questions.
– The theme of the poem, however, is the irreversibility of death—the speaker asks the raven, in a
variety of ways, whether or not he will see his dead beloved again, to which the raven always
replies “nevermore.” 2223

 Tone
 In fact, it suggests two attitudes: one concerning the people you’re addressing
(your audience) and the other concerning the thing you’re talking about (your
subject).
 That’s what the term tone means when it’s applied to poetry as well. Tone can
also mean the general emotional weather of the poem.

– the attitude expressed in a poem that a reader sees and feels

– the writer’s attitude toward the subject or audience
A. STRUCTURE

1. Form is the appearance of the words on the page of the reference. It may be different nowadays
since layout artist may simply adjust and create the desired form of poem.
2. Poetic Line or Line is a group of words that form a single line of poetry.
Example: “„Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house” is the wellknown first
poetic line of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore.

Kinds of Metrical Lines/Numbers of Feet

 monometer = one foot on a line
 dimeter = two feet on a line
 trimeter= three feet on a line
 tetrameter = four feet on a line
 pentameter = five feet on a line
 hexameter = six feet on a line
 heptameter = seven feet on a line
 octometer = eight feet on a line

Almost all accentual-syllabic poetry in English, except for isolated lines in lyrics, will have four or five
feet in the line. Probably trimeter through hexameter will be all the terms you will ever have to use.

3. Stanza is a section of a poem named for the number of lines it contains.

Example: A couplet is a stanza of two lines. The first stanza from “Barbara Frietchie” by John
Greenleaf Wittier is a couplet:
Up from the meadows rich with corn,
Clear in the cool September morn,

Kinds of Stanza
 Couplet = a two line stanza
 Triplet (Tercet) = a three line stanza
 Quatrain = a four line stanza – This is the usual kind of stanza
 Quintet = a five line stanza
 Sestet (Sextet) = a six line stanza
 Septet = a seven line stanza
 Octave = an eight line stanza

4. Enjambment is when there is no written or natural pause at the end of a poetic line, so that the
word-flow carries over to the next line. It affects the forms of the poem on a page. It can create
certain form relevant to a poem’s content.
5. The general rules of Capitalization and Punctuation in poetry are not always followed; instead,
they are at the service of the poet’s artistic vision.
6. Verse is a line in traditional poetry that is written in meter.
Example: In “When I do count the clock that tells the time” from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet Number
Twelve,” the underlined syllables are accented, giving the line a metric pattern known as an
iambic pentameter (see Meter).

Traditional Form
 Poems with rhyme and with meter.
Free Verse:
  Unlike metered poetry, free verse poetry does NOT have any repeating patterns of stressed and
unstressed syllables. Does NOT have rhyme.
 Free verse poetry is very conversational - sounds like someone talking with you. A more modern
type of poetry.
Blank Verse:
 Written in lines of iambic pentameter but does NOT use end rhyme.
 With METER without end RHYME

Which of the structural examples do you think common?

B. SOUND
1. Rhythm is the basic beat in a line of a poem.
Example: “Whose woods these are, I think I know” is the first line from “Stopping by Woods on
a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. Notice that the accented words (underlined) give the line a
distinctive beat.
2. Meter is a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. Meter happens when the stressed and
unstressed syllables of the words in a poem are arranged in a repeating pattern. In meter, when
poets write, they need to count out the number of stressed (strong) syllables and unstressed
(weak) syllables for each line. They repeat the pattern throughout the poem.
2.1. FOOT is a unit of meter.
 A foot can have two or three syllables.
 Usually consists of one stressed and one or more unstressed syllables.

TYPES OF FEET
The types of feet are determined by the arrangement of stressed and
unstressed syllables.
1. trochee (adjective form, trochaic) stressed-unstressed
a. Never/ never/ never/ never/ never
b. In the/ spring a/ young man's/ fancy/ lightly/ turns to/ thoughts of/ love. (In spite of a few feet
where the stress is debatable, especially foot 3, this poem is generally trochaic, as a look at the
rest of it would show. It is very common to omit the final unstressed syllable in this meter; see c.
under accentual syllabic above.)

2. anapest (anapestic) unstressed-unstressed-stressed

a. It was man/y and man/y a year/ ago (The variation in the last foot is common.)
b The Assyr/ian came down/ like a wolf/ on the fold,
And his co/horts were gleam/ing in purp/le and gold.

3. dactyl (dactylic) stressed-unstressed-unstressed

a. This is the/ forest pri/meval, the/ murmuring/ pines and the/ hemlocks (The two stressed syllables in the
last foot are required by the classical Greek form of the epic, which Longfellow is imitating.)
b. What if a/ much of a/ which of a/ wind

4. spondee (spondaic) stressed-stressed

 The spondee appears in isolated feet and never as a dominant meter in an entire poem. It
is a convenient way of describing feet in which it is hard to determine which syllable is
stressed (e. g., young man's and hemlocks above) and of describing passages like the
following from sonnets, where Donne uses the spondees to hammer home the woes
 people can face in life and Hopkins uses them along with internal rhyme, assonance, and
alliteration for an unusual sound effect.
a. All whom/ war, death,/ age, ag/ues, tyr/annies,
Despair,/ law, chance,/ hath slain,/ and you/ whose eyes
Shall be/hold God
b. Crushed. Why/ do men/ then now/ not reck/ his rod?

5. pyrrhic (pyrrhic) unstressed-unstressed. See 6 d. below for an example.

 At the/ round earth's/ ima/gined cor/ners blow.
 The beginning of this line from Donne has a Pyrrhic Foot followed by a Spondee. This
combination (called a Double or Ionic Foot) often appears at the beginning of a line.

6. iamb (iambic) unstressed-stressed

 The iamb is far and away the most common foot in English, comprising as much as 90-95
percent of English verse. It is also the most conversational of the feet and therefore the
most flexible and most susceptible to variations. One such variation, as illustrated in the
previous two quotes, is the substitution of spondees for iambs.

Others are listed below:

a. Five years/ have passed,/ five sum/mers with/ the length
Of five/long wint/ers! . . .
In addition to the spondees in the first line, the word with receives what is called a
courtesy accent; that is, it must be given more than normal conversational stress to fill out the
line. Critics have argued that the basic rhythm of spoken English usually dictates about four
stresses per line (the form of Old English verse) and that lines of poetry with five feet will
therefore contain one courtesy accent. This example also shows how a poet can manipulate meter
for effect. Wordsworth stresses the sense of the time lapse by repeating five and long (and its
noun form length) and stressing these words in normally unstressed positions.
b. Scoffing/ his state/ and grin/ning at/ his pomp.
In addition to the courtesy accent in the fourth foot, Shakespeare includes a trochee in the
first foot. A trochee in an iambic line is called a reversed foot. In iambic pentameter verse, a
reversed foot occurs frequently in the first foot, sometimes in the third and fourth, and almost
never in the second and fifth.
c. To be/ or not/ to be;/ That is/ the question.
The extra unstressed syllable at the end of the line, though not common, is still a possible
variation in an iambic line. Note the fourth foot is reversed (unless you 2526 startle people by saying
"That IS the question," as Peter O'Toole is said to have done in one production of Hamlet).
d. At the/ round earth's/ ima/gined cor/ners blow.
The beginning of this line from Donne has a Pyrrhic Foot followed by a Spondee. This
combination (called a Double or Ionic Foot) often appears at the beginning of a line.
e. Of all/ that in/solent Greece/ or haught/y Rome,
An anapest in an iambic line is more common in some ages and poets (here, Jonson) than in
others.
f. And my/ tears make/ a heaven/ly Lethe/an flood.
This line by Donne shows such a wide range of variations that we might not call it iambic if it
were not in a sonnet with other iambic lines. As a clergyman, Donne almost certainly pronounced heaven
as one syllable (the way it is in hymns), and he appears to have stressed the second syllable of Lethean.
The line thus contains three regular feet, a spondee, and an anapest. Donne generally makes his "Holy
Sonnets" very irregular to combine powerful emotion and a oratorical effect as in a sermon. But the point
is that knowing what the regular meter was supposed to be helps us identify and describe the effect Donne
creates.
There are some other exotic feet such as the amphibrach (unstressed-stressedunstressed), but for all
practical purposes, these six are the ones you need to know).

3. Rhythm is the beat created by the sounds of the words in a poem. It can be created by meter,
rhyme, alliteration, and refrain.

There are five types of rhythm, but we will just focus with Accentual-syllabic.
The number of syllables and the number of accents is both counted, and the stressed and
unstressed syllables are usually alternated in a consistent pattern. When we think of poetry in English, this
is the form we think of, and it is the most common form from the time of Chaucer to the advent of free
verse in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:
a. And justify the ways of God to men. (5 accents, 10 syllables)
b. And malt does more than Milton can (4 accents, 8 syllables)
To justify God's ways to man.
c. Wake: the silver dusk returning (4 accents, 8 syllables with final
Up the beach of darkness brims. unstressed syllables in lines 2 & 4
And the ship of sunrise burning omitted, a common variation)
Strands upon the eastern rims.

HOW TO FIND A METER IN ACCENTUAL-SYLLABIC VERSE

1. Find syllables that would ordinarily be accented in a dictionary and in
conversation. In the line "And justify the ways of God to men," for example, the first syllable in justify
and the syllables comprising ways, God, and man would receive stress in normal conversation. There is a
problem: although in the dictionary and in analyzing meter, we usually talk as if there were only two
levels of stress (stressed and unstressed), linguists suggest that there may be as many as four in actual
spoken English. Thus, in the word justify, the just is stressed more than i or fy, but fy is stressed more
than i. Nevertheless, if you look at enough lines, you should be able to get an overall sense of the meter.
The important thing to remember is that skillful poets will have a meter, which fits a pattern, but which is
also true to the actual rhythms of spoken English; their work should sound natural.

2. Because poets want their work to sound natural, the meter of a given line, or even passage, may vary
slightly from the basic pattern; therefore, you need to go over 27 several lines assigning the stresses
where they would fall in normal conversation. If you look at enough lines, a general pattern should
emerge.

3. A stressed syllable will be accompanied by some unstressed syllables, and in English they usually
(though not always) come before the stressed syllable. A stressed syllable and the unstressed syllable(s),
which go with it, are called a Foot.

If you look at several lines, it should become clear whether the unstressed syllables precede or follow the
stressed.

After you have found the stressed and unstressed syllables, you may then put strokes between the feet to
determine the meter. The meter depends on the Type and Number of feet in a line. In the example below,
the type of foot has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed, and there are five such feet. The meter
would therefore be labeled iambic pentameter (iambic for the type of foot and pentameter for the
number).
The cur/ few tolls/ the knell/ of part/ ing day.

End Rhyme has same or similar sounds at the end of words that finish different lines.
 Example: The following are the first two rhyming lines from “The King of Cats Sends a Postcard
to His Wife” by Nancy Willard:
Keep your whiskers crisp and clean,
Do not let the mice grow lean,
Hector the Collector
Collected bits of string.
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not ring.

Internal Rhyme has same or similar sounds at the end of words within a line.
Example: A line showing internal rhyme from
When they said the time to hide was mine,
- “The Rabbit” by Elizabeth Maddox Roberts
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.
- “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

4. Rhyme Scheme is a pattern of rhyme in a poem. A rhyme scheme is a pattern of rhyme (usually
end rhyme, but not always).
Example: A quatrain – a stanza of four lines in which the second and fourth lines rhyme –
has the following rhyme scheme: abcb (see Quatrain).

The Germ by Ogden Nash

A mighty creature is the germ, a

Though smaller than the pachyderm. a
His customary dwelling place b
Is deep within the human race. b
His childish pride he often pleases c
By giving people strange diseases. c
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm? a
You probably contain a germ. A

5. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds within words in a line. Example: A line showing
assonance (underlined) from “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore:
The children were nestled all snug in their beds
Sounds of a for words like Lake Fate Base Fade

6. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds within words in a line.

Example: A line showing consonance (underlined) from “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”
by Clement Clarke Moore: Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse “silken, sad,
uncertain, rustling . . “

7. Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words.

Example: Notice the alliteration (underlined) in “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would
Not Take the Garbage Out” by Shel Silverstein.
Tongue Twisters are perfect examples of Alliteration
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers
did Peter Piper pick?

8. Onomatopoeia are words that sound like their meaning.

Example: buzz, swish, hiss, gulp
 9. Repetition is sounds, words, or phrases that are repeated to add emphasis or create rhythm.
Parallelism is a form of repetition.
Examples: Two lines from “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll showing
parallelism:
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Read the poem “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe and listen to the way the repetition of the
word “bells” adds rhythm and creates an increasingly ominous and morbid mood.

10. Refrain is a line or stanza repeated over and over in a poem or song.
Example: In “Jingle Bells,” the following refrain is repeated after every stanza:
Jingle Bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way!
Oh, what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh!

11. Word Play is to play with the sounds and meanings of real or invented words.
Example: Two lines from the poem “Synonyms” by Susan Moger:
Claptrap, bombast, rodomontade,
Hogwash, jargon, and rant

ELEMENTS OF FICTION
 (Poems may contain some or all elements of fiction. For example, a narrative poem (a poem that
tells a story) may contain all elements.)

1. Setting is the time and place where a story or poem takes place.
2. Point of View / Narrative Voice is the person narrating a story or poem (the story/poem could
be narrated in first person (I, we), second person (you), or third person limited or omniscient
(he/she, they).
3. Characterization is the development of the characters in a story or poem (what they look like,
what they say and do, what their personalities are like, what they think and feel, and how they
are referred to or treated by others).
4. Dialog or Dialogue is the conversation between the characters in a story or poem.
5. Dialect or Colloquial Language is the style of speaking of the narrator and the characters in a
story or poem (according to their region, period, and social expectations).
6. Conflict is the problem or situation a character or characters face in a story or poem.
7. Plot is the series of events in a story or poem.
8. Tone and Voice are the distinctive, idiosyncratic way a narrator has of telling a story or poem
(tone and voice depend on the intended audience, the purpose for writing, and the way the
writer or poem feels about his/her subject).
9. Style is the way a writer uses words to craft a story or poem.
10. Mood is the feelings and emotions the writer wants the reader to experience.
11. Theme and Message are the main topic of a story or poem, and the message the author or poet
wants to convey about that topic.

4. MARXISM
 Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels. Marxism (sometimes called “political
economy”) provides anthropology with fundamental theoretical concepts, especially with
regard to deep human history and social change, conflict, social inequality, economics,
and labor.
 Karl Marx was a 19th century German thinker most famous for developing a notion of
communism in The Communist Manifesto. His notion of communism was not simply a
utopia presented in a vacuum; it was a political program meant to critique the social
conditions of capitalism.
 Marx and Engels
 were revolutionaries, whose theory and empirical work was developed in an
explicitly activist context. They aimed to understand the world emerging in front
of them, wage labor capitalism, but their work provided not just characterization
but also critique.
 Their critique exposed systematically hidden dimensions and pointed out ways in
which the social world could be arranged differently.
 Marx and Engels began with an analysis of wage labor capitalism.
 Wage labor capitalism is a relationship between unequal opposites, capitalists
and workers; there are no capitalists without workers and vice versa. Through
historical processes of dispossession, workers’ productive resources are no more
than their own labor. To obtain goods needed for reproduction, daily renewal,
and renewal across generations, abject workers must sell themselves, though they
imagine themselves to be free.
 Marxism
 It seeks to change the capitalist society based on private ownership in different
ways, and finally achieve the liberation of the proletariat and human beings and
the free and all-round development of human beings
 is, above all, a theory of continuous struggle. Conflict is fundamental and
creative. Marx and Engels had, in most regards, a simple stage theory of history,
with periods characterized by specific class relations and particular kinds of
struggle, changing to new arrangements through revolutionary leaps
 Workers, in reality full human beings, become nothing more than a commodity
bought and sold on the market. This foundational moment of “commoditization”
then extends across nature, consumption, culture, and so forth. Capitalists
monopolize the productive resources but they require workers to turn those
resources into products. This labor is compensated with wages but the final
product is more valuable than the wages and other inputs (e.g., commodities
stripped from nature). This added value is taken by capitalists as private profit
but in fact it is the beneficial surplus produced by the entire collectivity of society
and nature—creators, managers, laborers, solar energy, biophysical stocks and
flows, and so forth. It is a social product and socialism involves various designs
for sharing this collective benefit
 The privately captured surplus is invested in new productive resources, again
owned privately, and reproducing the potential to employ labor. This cycle of
building up capital, “capital accumulation,” is also a cycle of building up power
since capital effectively exists only because it can command abject labor and
defenseless nature.
 Capital accumulation can return to the same locations, production processes, and
social groups but it also can undergo abrupt, creative, and destructive shifts as it
pulls out of one role and into another.
 In one place, massive groups of workers are thrown into the streets and in others
urgently recruited; youth, women, and men come and go from the labor market;
migrants make desperate journeys in order to offer themselves for exploitation;
new technologies are invented and others forgotten; famous cities, even
countries, are abandoned while novel regions launch on chaotic booms; and
biophysical resources are stripped before moving on to a new site, leaving a trail
 of degradation and disequilibrium. Hence the history of any one people or place
forms part of a global network of relations and transformations, past and present
 Classes are not data classifications or separate sets of people but rather power
relations combining apparently contrastive social groups. These relations are
historically experienced by communities of people. People bring inherited
frameworks of meaning and action into the disruptive and transformative
maelstrom of capitalism, resisting change or inventing new responses
 Marxism Key Terms

 Class - a grouping of people with a similar social situation with regard to labor
and exchange. The proletariat, for example, are a social class defined by their
need to sell their labor power because they do not have sufficient property to
generate income.
 The proletariats, they are the 'have-nots.' The bourgeoisie, on the other
hand, are a social class defined by owning the means of production, and
they have sufficient property to generate wealth without needing to labor.
 Alienation - The concept of alienation is meant to capture the ways in which
workers are separated from the fruits of their labor and from others. When a
worker creates something, but they cannot take pride in their work, their work
only puts them in competition with others, and they receive no profits from the
quality of their work. In this case, they are alienated laborers.
 Ideology is a system of values and beliefs of a society or group. Ideology tends to
be explicit, or at least have a significant explicit component, and it serves to
protect the material conditions of a society by distorting them. For instance,
capitalist ideology includes the value of self-reliance and being 'self-made,' while
also insisting on free competition. This obscures the fact that those who are born
into rich families have a significant edge in competition.
 What is Marxist Criticism?
 is an approach to diagnosing political and social problems in terms of the
struggles between members of different socio-economic classes. Drawing from
this approach, criticism does not aim at the flaws of particular individuals, even if
they have attained positions of power. Instead, such an approach focuses on how
social life is structured by class oppositions that are determined by laboring
relationships. Or in other words, Marxist criticism seeks to show how the
economically powerful exploit and dominate the economically disadvantaged.
Moreover, Marxist criticism also points to how class conflict is obscured and
hidden in ideology.
 Marxist literary criticism is valuable because it enables readers to see the role
that class plays in the plot of a text.
 
Criticism of that art has taken it as its task to diagnose and illuminate the social
oppression that informs the work. In other words, literary works may consciously
or unconsciously present the contradictions inherent in a society's seemingly
neutral or impartial superstructures and its oppressive material base. The Marxist
literary theory involves criticism that makes those contradictions explicit and
analyzes them.
 Foundational Questions of Marxist Criticism
 1. What classes, or socioeconomic statuses, are represented in the text?
 2. Are all the segments of society accounted for, or does the text exclude a
particular class?
 3. Does class restrict or empower the characters in the text?
 4. How does the text depict a struggle between classes, or how does class
contribute to the conflict of the text?
 5. How does the text depict the relationship between the individual and the state?
 6. Does the state view individuals as a means of production, or as ends in
themselves?
5. FEMINISM
 Feminist perspective
 Feminist believe that women should enjoy the same rights in society as men and
that should share equally in society’s opportunities.
 Feminist represents an attempt to give a voice to women and the female
perspective.
 Feminism as a movement
 Feminism gained potential in the twentieth century, marking the culmination of
two centuries’ struggle for cultural roles and socio-political rights — a struggle
which first found its expression in Mary Wollstonecraft ‘s Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792).
 The movement gained increasing prominence across three phases/waves — the
first wave (political), the second wave (cultural) and the third wave (academic).
 Incidentally Toril Moi also classifies the feminist movement into three phases —
the female (biological), the feminist (political) and the feminine (cultural)
 FIRST WAVE (political)
 The first wave of feminism, in the 19th and 20th centuries, began in the US and
the UK as a struggle for equality and property rights for women, by suffrage
groups and activist organizations. These feminists fought against chattel
marriages and for political and economic equality. An important text of the first
wave is Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929), which asserted the
importance of woman’s independence, and through the character Judith
(Shakespeare’s fictional sister), explicated how the patriarchal society prevented
women from realising their creative potential.
 The First Wave, also called liberal feminism, usually refers to the social
movement that women fought for their legal vote right and the basic civil rights
in American and Britain from 1890 to 1920
 Women had successfully strived for their civil rights and the opportunity of
attending higher education and finding jobs in the specific industry areas
 SECOND WAVE
 Second-wave feminism is closely linked to the radical voices of women’s
empowerment and differential rights and, during the 1980s to 1990s, also to a
crucial differentiation of second-wave feminism itself, initiated by women of
color and third-world women
  Also known as Women’s Liberation Movement
 Gynocriticism, or gynocritics, is the study of women’s writing. Derived from the
Greek gyne, 𝛾𝜐𝜈 ́𝜂, meaning woman, the term gynocritics was coined by Elaine
Showalter in her essay “Toward a Feminist Poetics” (1979), where it refers to a
form of feminist literary criticism that is concerned with women as writers as
opposed to women as readers – the feminist critique of male writers.
o Gynocriticism, to construct a female framework for the analysis of
women’s literature, to develop new models based on the study of female
experience, rather than to adapt male models and theories” (Showalter
1979, 28).
 The second wave of feminism in the 1960s and ’70s, was characterized by a
critique of patriarchy in constructing the cultural identity of woman.
 Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) famously stated, “One is not
born, but rather becomes a woman” – a statement that highlights the fact that
women have always been defined as the “Other”, the lacking, the negative, on
whom Freud attributed “penis-envy.”
 A prominent motto of this phase, “The Personal is the political” was the result of
the awareness of the false distinction between women’s domestic and men’s
public spheres. Transcending their domestic and personal spaces, women began
to venture into the hitherto male-dominated terrains of career and public life.
Marking its entry into the academic realm, the presence of feminism was
reflected in journals, publishing houses and academic disciplines.
 THIRD WAVE
 “The Third Wave is buoyed by the confidence of having more opportunities and
less sexism” (Baumgardner & Richards, 2000, p. 83).
 Young feminists now reclaim the term “girl” in a bid to attract another
generation, while engaging in a new, more self-assertive—even aggressive—but
also more playful and less pompous kind of feminism
 Third-wave feminism is also inspired by and bound to a generation of the new
global world order characterized by the fall of communism, new threats of
religious and ethnic fundamentalism, and the dual risks and promises of new
info- and biotechnologies. A common American term for third-wave feminism is
“grrl feminism,” and in Europe it is known as “new feminism.”
 This new “new” feminism is characterized by local, national, and transnational
activism, in areas such as violence against women, trafficking, body surgery,
self-mutilation, and the overall “pornofication” of the media. While concerned
with new threats to women’s rights in the wake of the new global world order, it
criticizes earlier feminist waves for presenting universal answers or definitions of
womanhood and for developing their particular interests into somewhat static
identity politics.
 Third-wave feminism is tied up with the effects of globalization and the complex
redistribution of power, which challenge feminist theory and politics. It also
mirrors the diversification of women’s interests and perspectives and the
breakdown of master stories of oppression and liberation.
 In the (post 1980), Feminism has been actively involved in academics with its
interdisciplinary associations with Marxism, Psychoanalysis and
Poststructuralism, dealing with issues such as language, writing, sexuality,
representation etc. It also has associations with alternate sexualities,
 postcolonialism (Linda Hutcheon and Spivak) and Ecological Studies (Vandana
Shiva)
 The present day feminism in its diverse and various forms, such as liberal
feminism, cultural/ radical feminism, black feminism/womanism,
materialist/neo-marxist feminism, continues its struggle for a better world for
women. Beyond literature and literary theory, Feminism also found radical
expression in arts, painting (Kiki Smith, Barbara Kruger), architecture(Sophia
Hayden the architect of Woman’s Building) and sculpture (Kate Mllett’s Naked
Lady).
 Gender theorist Judith Butler signaled this paradigmatic feminist shift in her
books Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993). She fueled new
emergent movements such as queer and transgender politics, which take an
interest in the intersections of gender and sexuality and helped articulate
“performance third-wave feminism” as a theoretical framework of the politics of
transgression. Central to this perspective is the understanding of gender as a
discursive practice that is both a hegemonic, social matrix and a “performative
gesture” with the power to disturb the chain of social repetition and open up new
realities.
 Feminist Literary Criticism
 feminist literary criticism is a kind of literary criticism on the basis of feminist
theory or the politics of feminism more precisel.
 This school of thought seeks to describe and analyze the ways in which literature
portrays the narrative of male domination in regard to female bodies by exploring
the economic, social, political, and psychological forces embedded within
literature
 This literary criticism is based on the reflection of women’s situation by
themselves in a long term and achievement of their specific and practical action
 Key Terms of Feminist Literary Criticism
 There are many classic and far-reaching feminist works created by those rather
wise, serious and important feminists.
 Such as The Second Sex (Simone de Beauvoir), Sexual Politics (Kate Millet),
Thinking About Women (Mary Ellman), The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on
Women, Literature and Theory (Elaine Showalter) and other feminist classics
created by other feminist pioneers all made a great contribution to the
development and maturity of feminist literary criticism.
 Patriarchy
 Feminists consider that it is a social system in which men are the
principal authority figures who are the central to social organization,
control of property, occupy leading roles of moral authority, political
leadership and where male family members hold authority over women
and children in household.
 It also refers the institutions of male rule and female subordination. The
patriarchal societies are also patrilineal which means that title and
property can only be inherited by the male lineage
 Patriarchy refers to the role of males in the society in which men take the
chief responsibility over the community welfare by and large. The word
"patriarch" derived from two Greek words: “patira,” and “archy” which
means family and rule respectively.
  “Traditionally, patriarchy granted the father nearly total ownership over
wife or wives and children” “classically, as head of the family the father
is both begetter and owner in a system in which kinship is property".
(Millet, 1970:67)
 The patriarchal ideology also can be called masculinist or androcentric
which is prevailing in most great classical literary writings that were
mainly created by male for male up to now. In these works, male writers
usually describe female characters, neglecting female their own
characteristics but using the male values and ways of thinking, emotion
and action
 Patriarchy idea prevailing in all social areas and rejecting patriarchy is
the key step to the liberation of the female.
 The Other
 It refers to those alienated human being who hasn’t or has lost the self-
awareness, is under control of other people or surroundings, acts as an
object position and loses subject personalities. It is a tradition that men
decide themselves to be the subject, perform the male domination in all
social aspects and defines human beings by their will. No wonder that
female regards the androphany as the positive or standard but treats
feminine as the unimportant or negative.
 De Beauvoir Published the Second Sex which regarded as the Bible of
feminism and classic of feminism theory. In this book, Simone de
Beauvoir used the existentialism to analyze and study female issue.
 Beauvoir also bitterly pointed out that the western society was totally
male-dominated, and female in this society are “the second sex”, the
“other” of men: “She is defined and differentiated with reference to man
and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as
opposed to the essential. he is the subject, he is eh Absolute—she is the
Other.” (De Beauvoir, 1968 :59)
 Concerning about the discussion of gender differences, exactly as
Beauvoir had once said “woman is just a uterus”. That is to say, female’s
fate was decided on this anatomy and when facing this Nature Order, all
the efforts which attempt to challenge the female’ unfair treatment of
gender discrimination melt into thin air
 The Second Sex (1949), de Beauvoir claims that feminity is not inherent
but a social construct developed through the long process of
socialization. She says that the inferiority of women was mainly due to
the three factors.
 Three Factors
o First women were always taught to help men and thus
derive their existence in relation to them.
o Secondly, women were encouraged to externalize the
aspects of feminity such as docility, selflessness, beauty
to validate themselves in a society.
o Thirdly, women have enjoyed lesser rights than men.
 Therefore, she argues that it was not women’s inferiority that rendered
women as historically insignificant rather it is the historical
insignificance that doomed women to an inferior state. According to her
 women is not born but made into women through the process of
socialization which is predominately male centric and that has reduced
women to second sex and to the inferior and subordinate state. Simone
de Beauvoir notes: One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.
 No biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that
he human female presents in society; it is civilization as a whole that
produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is
described as feminine
 Kate Millet, a famous feminist, had also declared the similar sense of the
other in her classic work—Sexual Politics. She announced “patriarchy
has already been established and the male has already set themselves as
the human form, the subject and referent to which is the female is ‘other’
or alien”
 This term is the replacement of the “female” or “woman”. She pointed
out that women always define themselves “I am a woman” while men
never bother but position them as the representative of human beings,
which indicates that “men” and “women” are definitely not the
symmetrical terms. She noticed that the lawyers, priests, philosophies,
writers and scientists kept trying to show that female’s attachment state
was formed by fate and contributed to well-being of humanity—“One is
not born, but rather becomes, women”. In other words, because of the
inferior nature of women, equalities between sexes will be a mirage
forever
 Final Goal of Feminist Criticism
 According to Lisa Tuttle, the final goal of feminist criticism is
 “to develop and uncover a female tradition of writing,” “to analyze
women writers and their writings from a female perspective",
 “to rediscover old texts", “to interpret symbolism of women's writing so
that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view”
 “to resist sexism in literature and to increase awareness of the sexual
politics of language and style". (Lisa Tuttle: 1986, 184)