21 Century

st ENG S211

Literature from
the Philippines
and the World
Approaches in
Appreciating
Literature
LESSON 2
 t i s …
Wha
Literary
Criticism
&
Literary
Theory
 Literary Theory
✘ Literary theory is the process of understanding
what the nature of literature is, what functions it
has, what the relation of text is to author, to
reader, to language, to society, to history.
✘ It is not judgment but understanding of the
frames of judgment.
 Literary Criticism
✘ Literary Criticism is the study, evaluation, and
interpretation of a literary text, and finding
out what makes it outstanding.
 Literary Theory
✘ Author-dependent
approach
✘ Text-dependent
Approach
✘ Reader-dependent
Approach
 Author-dependent approach
✘ Historical- Biographical Approach
✗ Assumes that a text is a reflection of the
author’s life and times.
✗ “What does the work reveal about the
author or the history?”
 Author-dependent approach
✘ Moral- Philosophical Approach
✗ An approach as old as classical Greek and Roman critics
✗ The larger function of literature is to teach morality
✗ Judges the value of literature on its moral or ethical
teaching:
✗ Literature that is ethically sound and encourages virtue
is praised;
✗ Literature that misguides and/or corrupts is condemned.
 Text-Dependent Approach
✘ A style of inquiry that focuses on the
features of the literary text itself.
Formalism ✘ Emphasis on the FORM.
✘ Evaluates inherent features of a text.
 Text-Dependent Approach
✘ Structuralism
✗ Ferdinand de Saussure
✗ Identifies textual feature (grammatical rather
than rhetorical) of a literary text
✗ Semiotics– study of signs
Sign= Signifier
Signified
 Reader-Dependent Approach
✘ Reader-dependent approach
✗ The “meaning” is an interpretation created or constructed or
produced by the reader (informed readers or competent
readers).
✗ Reader response theorists like to ask questions like:
✗ How do we feel when we read a certain poem or a
passage from a novel?
✗ Why do we feel that way?
Other Schools of
Criticism
 Feminism
✘ Analyzes how sexual identity influences the reader of
the text.
✘ Examines how the images of men and women in
imaginative literature reflect or reject the social
forces that have historically kept the sexes from
achieving equality.
 Gender Criticism
✘ Examines how sexual identity influences the creation
and reception of literary works.
✘ Originally an offshoot of Feminism.
 Marxism
✘ Focuses on the economic and political elements of
art, often emphasizing the ideological content of
literature.
✘ Illuminate political and economical dimensions of
literature other approaches overlook.
 Psychological Criticism
✘ Notable figure of psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud
who introduced the idea of “wish-fulfillment,
sexuality, unconscious, and repression” and the idea
of “id, ego, and superego.”
 References
**See the attached transcript for the references.