LITERARY CRITICISM

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FORMALISM
• Formalism is a method of criticism which “examines a literary
text or artwork through its aesthetic composition such as
form, language, technique and style” (Formalism, 2018).
Formalism began in Russia during the 20th century by a
group of linguists who desired a straightforward analysis to
text examination.

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• Formalistic critics believe that all information essential to the
interpretation of a work must be found within the work
itself; there is no need to bring in outside information about
the history, politics, or society of the time, or about the
author's life.

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• Formalistic critics spend much time analyzing irony,
paradox, imagery, and metaphor. They are also
interested in the work's setting, characters, symbols,
and point of view.

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• American critics (such as John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn
Warren, and Cleanth Brooks) adapted formalism and termed
their adaptation “New Criticism.”

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A Checklist of Formalist Critical Questions
• How is the work structured or organized?
• How does it begin?
• Where does it go next?
• How does it end?
• What is the work’s plot?
• How is its plot related to its structure?
• What is the relationship of each part of the work to the work as a
whole?
• How are the parts related to one another?
• Who is narrating or telling what happens in the work? 6
• How is the narrator, speaker, or character revealed to readers?
• How do we come to know and understand this figure?
• Who are the major and minor characters, what do they represent, and how
do they relate to one another?
• What are the time and place of the work – its setting?
• How is the setting related to what we know of the characters and their
actions?
• To what extent is the setting symbolic?
• What kind of language does the author use to describe, narrate, explain, or
otherwise create the world of the literary work?
• More specifically, what images, similes, metaphors, symbols appear in the
work?
• What is their function? What meanings do they convey? 
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• Note the writer’s use of paradox, irony, symbol, plot,
characterization, and style of narration.
• What effects are produced? Do any of these relate to one another
or to the theme?
• Is there a relationship between the beginning and the end of the
story?
• What tone and mood are created at various parts of the work?
• How does the author create tone and mood? What relationship is
there between tone and mood and the effect of the story?
• How do the various elements interact to create a unified whole?

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MARXISM
• This theory aims to explain literature in relation to society –
that literature can only be properly understood within a
larger framework of social reality.

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• Marxist literary criticism maintains that a writer’s social class
and its prevailing ‘ideology’ (outlook, values, tacit
assumptions, etc.) have a major bearing on what is written
by a member of that class. The writers are constantly
formed by their social contexts.

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Core Marxist Principles & Basic Terms:
• Proletariat: that class of society, which does not have
ownership of the means of production.
• Bourgeoisie: wealthy class that rules society.
• Power of the Base: Marx believed that the economic means
of production in a society (the base) both creates and controls
all human institutions and ideologies (the superstructure)..

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Alienation -- Marx believed that capitalist
society created three forms of alienation:
• First, the worker is alienated from what he produces;
• Second, the worker is alienated from himself; only when he is
not working does he feel truly himself;
• Finally, in capitalist society people are alienated from each
other; that is, in a competitive society people are set against
other people.
• Marx believed that the solution was communism, which would
allow the development of our full “potentialities as a human.”

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A Checklist of Marxism Critical Questions
• Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is
accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
• What is the social class of the author?
• Which class does the work claim to represent?
• What values does it reinforce?
• What social classes do the characters represent?
• How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

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• Who are the powerful people in the text? Who are the
powerless? Who receives the most attention?
• Why do the powerful have the power? Why are the
powerless powerless?
• Do the powerful in the text suppress the powerless? How?
• What can you infer from the setting about the distribution of
wealth?
• What happens to them as a result of this status?
• What other conditions stemming from their class does the
writer emphasize? (e.g., poor education, poor nutrition, poor
health care, inadequate opportunity)

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FEMINISM
• This is a specific kind of political discourse; a critical and
theoretical practice committed to the struggle against
patriarchy and sexism. Broadly, there are two kinds of
feminist criticism: one is concerned with unearthing,
rediscovering or re-evaluating women’s writing, and the
other with re-reading literature from the point of view of
women.

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• Feminism asks why women have played a subordinate role to
men in the society. It is concerned with how women’s lives
have changed throughout history and what about women’s
experience is different from men

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 To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
Robert Herrick

I III
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles to-
day,
To-morrow will be dying.
II
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race will run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse and the
worst
Times still succeed the former.
IV
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry. 18
 A Checklist of Feminism Critical Questions
 
• How are women’s lives portrayed in the work?
• Is the form and content of the work influenced by the writer’s
gender?
• How do male and female characters relate to one another? Are
these relationships sources of conflict? Are these conflicts
resolved?
• Does the work challenge or affirm traditional views of
women?

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• How do the images of women in the story reflect patriarchal
social forces that have impeded women’s efforts to achieve
full equality with men?
• What marital expectations are imposed on the characters?
What effect do these expectations have?
• What behavioral expectations are imposed on the characters?
What effect do these expectations have?
• If a female character were male, how would the story be
different (and vice versa)?
• How does the marital status of a character affect her
decisions or happiness?

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PSYCHOANALYTIC
• This theory applies the ideas of Freudian psychology to
literature. Freud sees the component parts of the psyche as
three groups of functions: the id, directly related to the
instinctual drives; the ego, an agency which regulates and
opposes the drives; and the superego, another part of the
ego with a critical judging function.

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• It encourages the reader/critic to be creative in speculating
about the character’s or author’s motivations, drives, fears,
or desires. The belief here is that creative writing is like
dreaming – it disguises what cannot be confronted directly –
the critic must decode what is disguised. A direct relation
between the text and the author is presupposed and made
the center of inquiry.

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Freudian Approach: A Freudian approach often includes
pinpointing the influences of a character’s psyche (Greek for
“soul”), which consists of the:
• Id
• Ego
• Superego

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 Id

• According to Freud, id is one of the most important parts of the human
personality based on primitive impulses like hunger, thirst, the desire
for gratification and anger. Humans are born with their id, and it
allows them to acquire their basic needs.

• Id is directly related to pleasure principal and compels humans to seek

anything that feels good at a particular time without considering any
restrictions of the situation. Freud believed that id has a power to
influence ego and can easily maneuver human’s behavior to bring self-
pleasure.

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Ego

• Ego is another significant part of the human’s personality that aims to

maintain a balance between conscience (superego) and impulses (id).
The ego scaffolds on the reality principle, and understands the desires
and needs of other people. It knows that being impulsive is equal to
being selfish and can hurt people sometimes.
• Ego carries a great responsibility to understand the needs of impulses
while considering the situation’s reality. To put it simply, Ego’s job is
to balance the superego and id.

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Superego

• The superego is the moral part of human personality, representing

conscience. The development of superego relies on ethical and moral
restraints placed on every human being by his/her caregiver. Not only
does it influence human personality, but also dictates his/her moral
beliefs, (right or wrong). The superego is synonymous to the good
angel sitting on the shoulder, telling people to control ego’s behavior.

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Freudian critics steer toward the sexual implications of symbols and imagery, since
Freud theorized that all human behavior (drives) derives from libido/sexual energy.

• Concave Images, such as ponds, flowers, cups, and caves = female symbols.
• Convex Images, such as skyscrapers, submarines, obelisks, etc. = male
symbols
• Actions, such as dancing, riding, and flying = sexual pleasure.
• Water = birth, the female principle, the maternal, the womb, and the death
wish.
• Oedipus complex = a boy’s unconscious rivalry with his father for the love
of his mother
• The Electra Complex = a girl’s unconscious rivalry with her mother for the
love of her father

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Jungian Approach: Jung is also an influential force in myth (archetypal)
criticism. Psychological critics are generally concerned with his concept of the
process of individuation (the process of discovering what makes one different form
everyone else). Jung labeled three parts of the self:

•Shadow -- the darker, unconscious self; rarely surfaces, yet

must be faced for totality of Self
•Persona -- the public personality/mask (particularly
masculine)
•Anima/Animus -- a man’s/woman’s “soul image” (the
negative that makes a composite whole)

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A Checklist of Psychoanalytic Critical
Questions
• How can a character’s behavior be explained in terms of psychoanalytic
concepts of any kind (for example, regression, projection, fear of death,
sexuality - as a primary indicator of psychological identity, or the
operations of id, ego, superego?)
• How does the work reflect the writer’s personal psychology?
• What do the characters’ emotions and behaviors reveal about their
psychological states?
• How does the work reflect the unconscious dimensions of the writer’s
mind?
• How does the reader’s own psychology affect his response to the work?
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CULTURAL CRITICISM
• This form of criticism examines how different religions,
ethnicities, class identifications, political beliefs, and views
affect the ways in which texts are created and interpreted.
Cultural Criticism suggests that being a part of—or excluded
from—a specific group or culture contributes to and affects
our understanding of texts.

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• Cultural Criticism focuses on the elements of culture and
how they affect one’s perceptions and understanding of
texts.

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A Checklist of Cultural Criticism Critical
Questions
• Does the author use any words from his Native language in
the text? What are they and what do they mean?
• What do you think of when you think of culture?
• What kinds of behavior, does this work seem to enforce?
• Are there differences between my values and the values in
the work I am reading?
• Upon what social understandings does the work depend?

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• What does the literary work suggest about the experience of
groups of people who have been ignored, underrepresented,
or misrepresented by traditional history (for example,
laborers, prisoners, women, people of color, lesbians and gay
men, children, the insane, and so on?)

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STRUCTURALISM
• This theory draws from the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de
Saussure. Language is a system or structure. Our perception
of reality, and hence the ways we respond to it are dictated
or constructed by the structure of the language we speak.

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• This theory assumes that literature, as an artifact of culture,
is modeled on the structure of language. The emphasis is on
‘how’ a text means, instead of the ‘what’ of the American
New Criticism.

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• The structuralists argue that the structure of language
produces reality, and meaning is no longer determined by
the individual but by the system which governs the
individual. Structuralism aims to identify the general
principles of literary structure and not to provide
interpretations of individual texts (Vladimir Propp and
Tzvetan Todorov).

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 The structuralist approach to literature assumes three dimensions in the
individual literary texts:

• the text as a particular system or structure in itself

(naturalization of a text)
• texts are unavoidably influenced by other texts, in terms of
both their formal and conceptual structures; part of the
meaning of any text depends on its intertextual relation to
other texts
• the text is related to the culture as a whole (binary oppositions)
•  

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A Checklist of Structuralism Critical
Questions
• What is the text's genre?
• What are the patterns of the text that make it fit in with a specific genre?
• .What are the elements of the work – words, stanzas, chapters, parts, for
example – and how can these be seen as revealing “difference”?
• How do the characters, narrators, speakers, or other voices heard in the
work reveal difference?
• How do the elements of the work’s plot or overall action suggest a
meaningful pattern? What changes, adjustments, transformations, shifts
of tone, attitude, behavior, or feeling do you find?
• How are the work’s primary images and events related to one another?
What elements of differentiation exist, and what do they signify?
• What system of relations could be used to link this work with different
kinds of things with which it shared some similarities? 38
MYTHOLOGICAL/ARCHETYPAL
• This approach to literary study is based on Carl Jung’s theory
of the collective unconscious. Repeated or dominant images
or patterns of human experience are identified in the text:
the changing of seasons, the cycle of birth, death and
rebirth, the heroic quest, or immortality.

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• Myths are universal although every nation has its own
distinctive mythology. Similar motifs or themes may be
found among many different mythologies, and certain
images that recur in the myths of people separated in time
and place tend to have a common meaning, elicit
comparable psychological responses, and serve similar
cultural functions. Such motifs and images are called
archetypes.

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This approach also uses Northrop Frye’s assertion that
literature consists of variations on a great mythic theme
that contains the following:

• The creation and life in paradise: garden

• Displacement or banishment from paradise: alienation
• A time of trial and tribulation, usually a wandering:
journey
• A self-discovery as a result of struggle: epiphany
• A return to paradise: rebirth/resurrection

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• Lam-ang – archetype of immortality
• Superman in the movie Superman Returns – death and
rebirth archetype
• Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings – wise old man archetype

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A Checklist of Mythological/ Archetypal
Critical Questions
• What common human concerns are revealed in the story?
• How does the story reflect the experiences of death and rebirth?
• What archetypal events occur in the story? (Quest? Initiation?
Scapegoating? Descents into the underworld? Ascents into heaven?)
• What archetypal images occur? (Water, rising sun, setting sun,
symbolic colors)
• What archetypal characters appear in the story? (Mother Earth?
Femme Fatal? Wise old man? Wanderer?)
• What archetypal settings appear? (Garden? Desert?)

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• How does this story resemble other stories in plot, character,
setting, or symbolism?
• What universal experiences are depicted?
• Does the protagonist undergo any kind of transformation, such as
movement from innocence to experience, that seems archetypal?
• Is there a Christ-like figure in the work?
• Does the writer allude to biblical or mythological literature? For
what purpose?
• What aspects of the work create deep universal responses to it?
• How does the work reflect the hopes, fears, and expectations of
entire cultures (for example, the ancient Greeks)?
• How do myths attempt to explain the unexplainable: origin of
man? Purpose and destiny of human beings? 44
HISTORICAL-BIOGRAPHICAL AND
MORAL-PHILOSOPHICAL
• The Historical- Biographical approach sees a literary work
chiefly, if not exclusively, as a reflection of its author’s life
and times or the life and times of the characters in the
work. A historical novel is likely to be more meaningful
when either its milieu or that of its author is understood

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• A historical approach relies heavily on the author and his
world. In the historical view, it is important to understand
the author and his world in order to understand his intent
and to make sense of his work. In this view, the work is
informed by the author's beliefs, prejudices, time, and
history, and to fully understand the work, we must
understand the author and his age.

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• On the other hand, the Moral-Philosophical approach
emphasizes that the larger function of literature is to teach
morality and to probe philosophical issues. Literature is
interpreted within a context of the philosophical thought of a
period or group.

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A Checklist of Historical Critical Questions
• How does it reflect the time in which it was written?
• How accurately does the story depict the time in which it is set?
• How does the story reflect the attitudes and beliefs of the time in which it was
written or set?
• (Consider beliefs and attitudes related to race, religion, politics, gender,
society, philosophy, etc.)
• What historical events or movements might have influenced this writer?
• Does the story reveal or contradict the prevailing values of the time in which
it was written?
Does it provide an opposing view of the period’s prevailing values?
• How important is it the historical context (the work’s and the reader’s) to
interpreting the work?
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A Checklist of Biographical Critical
Questions
• What aspects of the author’s personal life are relevant to this story?
• Which of the author’s stated beliefs are reflected in the work?
• Does the writer challenge or support the values of her contemporaries?
• What seem to be the author’s major concerns? Do they reflect any of
the writer’s personal
• experiences?
• Do any of the events in the story correspond to events experienced by
the author?
• Do any of the characters in the story correspond to real people?
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• What view of life does the story present? Which character best articulates
this viewpoint?
• According to this work’s view of life, what is mankind’s relationship to God?
To the universe?
• What moral statement, if any, does this story make? Is it explicit or implicit?
• What is the author’s attitude toward his world? Toward fate? Toward God?
• What is the author’s conception of good and evil?
• What does the work say about the nature of good or evil?
• What does the work say about human nature?
• What enduring truth is revealed in the theme of this work?
• How are the actions of the protagonist rewarded and the actions of the
antagonist punished?

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READER RESPONSE
• Concerned with how the work is viewed by the audience. In
this approach, the reader creates meaning, not the author or
the work.

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• A response to a literary work always helps us find out
something about ourselves. Every act of response, he
continues, reflects the shifting motivations and perceptions
of the reader at the moment. Readers undergo a process of
‘negotiation’ with a community of readers to seek a common
ground.

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• For the believers of reader-response theories (Rosenblatt,
Bleich, Fish), the object of observation appears changed by
the act of observation. ‘Knowledge is made by people, not
found,’ according to David Bleich (1978). Writing about
literature should not involve suppressing readers’ individual
concerns, anxieties, passions, enthusiasms.

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Three (3) important questions need to be asked by the reader:

• How do I respond to this work?

• How does the text shape my response?
• How might other readers respond?

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• What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with
your life (past, present or future)? It is not acceptable to write
that the text has NOTHING to do with you, since just about
everything humans can write has to do in some way with
every other human.
• How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the
world, and what you consider right and wrong? Use several
quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what
you think about the world, about right and wrong, and about
what you think it is to be human.   Use quotes and examples
to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about
the world and about right and wrong.

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• What did you learn, and how much were your views and
opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all?  Did the
text communicate with you? Why or why not?  Give examples
of how your views might have changed or been strengthened
(or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it
is). Please do not write “I agree with everything the author
wrote,” since everybody disagrees about something, even if it
is a tiny point. Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge,
or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold.

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• How well does the text address things that you, personally,
care about and consider important to the world? How does it
address things that are important to your family, your
community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or
social class or background, or your faith tradition?  If not,
who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the “Who cares?”
test?  Use quotes from the text to illustrate.

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• How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or
as a work of art? Use quotes or examples to illustrate the
quality of the text as art or entertainment. Of course, be
aware that some texts are not meant to be entertainment or
art: a news report or textbook, for instance, may be neither
entertaining or artistic, but may still be important and
successful

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For the conclusion, you might want to discuss:

• your overall reaction to the text;

• whether you would read something else like this in the
future;
• whether you would read something else by this author; and
• if would you recommend read this text to someone else and
why.

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• ADIEU

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1. It is the approach that sees literary work as a reflection of its author’s life.
2. It is the approach that emphasizes the larger function of literature which is to
teach morality and probe philosophical issues.
3. Method of criticism which examines literary text through its aesthetic
composition.
4. This theory applies the ideas of Freudian psychology.
5. The wealthy class that rules society
6. It is the public personality or mask
7. Form of criticism that examines how different religions, ethnicities, political
beliefs, and views affect the ways in which the text is interpreted.
8. This theory draws from the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure.
9-10. Give the two kinds of feminist criticism.
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