Submitted by: James Alexander M.

Deza Subject: Literary Criticism

Submitted to: Dr. Myra O. Medrano Reflective Essay

Deconstruction, New Historical, and Post-Modern Criticism

Critical Approaches to Literature

The 5th week’s discussion was full of mind-blowing insights and learnings from the
reporters. It was a thorough yet interesting topic to learn. Literary criticism can broaden a
reader's understanding of an author's work by summarizing, interpreting, and exploring its
value. There are a lot of approaches that can be used in literature, three of those are
Deconstruction, New Historical, and Post-Modern Criticism.
Deconstruction, new historicism, and post-modernist critical approaches are three
distinct but interrelated methods used to interpret and analyze literature, art, and culture.
Each of these approaches offers unique insights into how meaning is constructed and
understood, and they provide valuable tools for interrogating the underlying assumptions
and power dynamics at play in various texts and contexts.
Deconstruction, pioneered by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, is perhaps the
most well-known of these critical approaches. It is a method of literary analysis that seeks to
uncover the hidden assumptions and contradictions within a text by examining its language
and syntax. Derrida argued that language is inherently unstable and that meaning is always
deferred, or constantly in flux. In other words, there are no fixed or absolute meanings in a
text, and instead, meaning is always contingent on the reader's interpretation.
Deconstruction aims to reveal how a text's language undermines its claims to authority and
coherence and to show how different interpretations can be equally valid.
New historicism, on the other hand, places a strong emphasis on the historical and
cultural contexts in which a text was produced and received. It draws on the work of
historians and anthropologists to situate work within its specific historical moment, and to
illuminate how it reflects or challenges the social, political, and cultural conditions of its time.
New historicist critics argue that literature and art are always embedded within larger
structures of power and ideology and that they can offer valuable insights into the dynamics
of oppression and resistance in a given society.
Post-modernist critical approaches, meanwhile, reject the idea that there is any
objective or universal truth, and instead focus on how knowledge and meaning are
constructed through language, power, and culture. Post-modernism is characterized by a
skepticism towards grand narratives and meta-narratives and a suspicion of totalizing or
essentialist claims about the world. Post-modernist critics are interested in exploring how
texts and genres can be subverted and reinterpreted, and in challenging traditional
hierarchies of knowledge and value.
Each of these critical approaches offers valuable insights into how meaning is
constructed and contested, and they provide useful tools for critically engaging with texts
and the world in which they are situated. Deconstruction encourages us to question the
stability and authority of language and to recognize how texts can undermine their claims to
truth. New historicism helps us to understand how literature and art are shaped by their
social and historical contexts, and how they can be used to shed light on the complexities of
the past. Post-modernist critical approaches push us to question our assumptions about
reality and meaning and to recognize how knowledge and power are always contingent and
contested.