Critical Approaches to

Literature
We’ll play Name That Critical
Approach game at the end, so be
ready!
 What is literary criticsm?
 A way of talking about
literature
 The lens through which we
like to examine literature
 For example
• People who believe that
understanding the author’s
life can help readers better
understand his/her work,
often use Biographical
Criticism
 Major Critical Approaches
 There are many critical 1. Formalist
approaches however 2. Biographical
here are some major 3. Historical
ones to which we may 4. Psychological
be referring: 5. Mythological
6. Sociological
7. Gender
8. Reader-Response
9. Deconstructionist
10. Cultural Studies
 Kinds of approaches
 Reader-based
• Literature does not exist separate from those who read it
• An individual’s background and feelings are part of
how they read and interpret literature
 Text-based
• Primarily look at the work itself, separate from context
in which it was written or who wrote it
 Context-based
• Examines the context in which a work was produced
 Formalist Criticism
 Strongly examines  Seeks to examine a work
elements such as plot, in isolation from
character, style and tone, • the reader,
irony, symbol, etc. • the author,
 Believes that studying • the context in which it
these elements is the was written
most significant way to  Do you think this
find meaning about the approach is reader, text,
text or context based?
 Biographical Criticism
 Examines how details  Might examine multiple
and people in author’s drafts to try and
life have affected a work decipher why a writer
 Might examine the crafted the way she did
events of writer’s life,  Danger: often life stories
(Hemingway’s reporting can overwhelm the
about the Spanish Civil literature, making it
war) and use them to difficult to understand or
better understand For examine the work for its
Whom the Bell Tolls own merits
 Historical Criticism
 Seeks to understand a  Less concerned with a
literary work by work’s significance
investigating the social, today than what it meant
cultural, and intellectual in its time
context that produced it  How the time and place
 Context includes of a story’s creation
author’s biography affect its meaning
 Psychological Criticism
 Emphasizes the underlying meaning in
literature in relationship to psychological
components
• Sexual symbols, dreams, repressed feelings, an
individual character’s conscious and/or subconscious
motives, etc.
 The critic might look at a character’s
psychological make-up, sanity, etc.
 Mythological Criticism
 An interdisciplinary approach
 Often draws from anthropology, comparative
religion, history, and psychology
 Explore literature through examination of common
humanity
 Commonly discuss archetypes in literature: symbols
or situations that evoke a universal response
• Coming of age motif
• The hero’s journey
• Good v. evil as seen in light v. dark
 Sociological Criticism
 Examines literature in the cultural, economic,
and political context in which is it written or
received
 Looks at the relationship of the artist and
society
• How the social classes of characters influence their
outcomes
• The political or social statements a work offers
 Gender Criticism
 Examines how sexual  Men’s movement: seeks
identity influences the to examine ideas of
creation and reception of masculinity
literary works  May examine how
 Began with the feminist women are stereotyped
movement or what roles they play
 Often looks at how text in literatureI
by examining “male-  nfluenced by sociology,
produced” assumptions psychology, and
in works anthropology
 Reader-Response Criticism
 Attempts to describe what happens in the
reader’s mind while reading a text
 Acknowledges that different readers come to a
text with different backgrounds that will affect
their interpretations
 Though it rejects the idea that there is a
singular, correct interpretation, it notes that
there are not an infinite number of
interpretations
 Cultural Studies
 No central methodology is used
 Interdisciplinary field
 Primary looks at the nature of social power as
revealed in “texts”
• Cereal boxes
• Commercials
• Literature
 Seeks to identify the overt and covert values
reflected in a cultural practice
 Name That Critical Approach:
 See handout