Professional Documents
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Intro To Theory Pres
Intro To Theory Pres
Literary Theory
A discussion of theory, why we use it,
and how it helps us understand what
we read.
What is modern theory?
Theory is a way to approach a text to gain a
better understanding of its meaning
Theory changes with time and new theories
are always being added to the traditional
Theory tries to explain why authors and
texts exist and what messages they are
sending to readers
New Criticism
Takes a text as an Suggested
autonomous object, Websites:
non-related to the "New Criticism Explain
author, the culture, or ed" by Dr. Warren Hedg
es (Southern Oregon Un
the event it stems from iversity)
Explores the “world”
within the text "Definition of the New
Criticism" - virtuaLit (B
Started in 1920’s and eford-St. Martin's Reso
1930’s urce)
KEY TERMS: Heresy of Paraphrase
- assuming that an
Intentional Fallacy - interpretation of a
equating the meaning of literary work could
a poem with the consist of a detailed
author's intentions. summary or paraphrase.
Affective Fallacy - Close reading "a close
confusing the meaning and detailed analysis of
of a text with how it the text itself to arrive at
makes the reader feel. A an interpretation
reader's emotional without referring to
response to a text historical, authorial, or
generally does not cultural concerns"
produce a reliable (Bressler)
interpretation.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages Disadvantages
- Do not have to know -Text seen in isolation
the author’s -Cannot account for
background allusions
-Do not have to be -Ignores context of
familiar with historical work
context -Reduces literature to
-Can analyze language a series of rhetorical
and imagery… devices
Example:
Using Poisonwood Bible, what would this
critical approach (new criticism) focus on
and what would it leave out?
Marxism
Sees art and literature Suggested Websites:
as forced by the "Definition of Marxist C
riticism" - virtuaLit (Be
conditions that existed dford-St. Martin's resou
rce)
in history
Deals with clash Marxist Theory and Crit
between classes icism - from the Johns
Hopkins Guide to Litera
Articulation of ry Criticism
dominant class
"Marxism and Ideology"
Art reflects age in by Dr. Mary Klages - U
niversity of Colorado at
which it was created Boulder
Key Terms: Material circumstances
- the economic conditions
underlying a society
Commodification – Reflectionism - the
Wanting thing not for their superstructure of a society
use but their ability to mirrors its economic base
impress others or to sell and, by extension, that a
text reflects the society that
Conspicuous
produced it
consumption – Getting
things merely for selling or Superstructure - The
trading social, political, and
ideological systems and
Dialectical materialism
institutions that are
– the eternal struggle to generated by the people
find a solution among
conflicting ideologies to
bring about change
Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages Disadvantages
Look at the work in Have to be aware of
the context it was the culture and
written economic system in
Allows you to place when written
research and Have to assume “the
understand the culture man” was out to get
more the people
Can see multiple Has to be a class
perspectives from conflict, not race or
dominant and gender (class matters
dependent classes most)
Example
What is a major class conflict that you have
seen in a movie or read in literature
recently? What was the dominant class’
point of view? What was the inferior class’
point of view? Briefly analyze how this
conflict was resolved or how it should have
been resolved using Marxist theory.
Reader-Response Theory
Analyzes reader’s role Suggested Websites:
in production of
"Reader Response: Vari
meaning ous Positions" - Dr. Joh
n Lye - Brock University
Text itself means
nothing until someone Reader Response Theor
reads it y and Criticism - Johns
Hopkins Guide to Litera
Reading is a function ry Theory & Criticism
of personal identity
"The Author, the Text, a
Authors use strategies nd the Reader" - Clariss
to elicit responses a Lee Ai Ling, The Lond
on School of Journalism
from readers
Key Terms:
Interpretive communities -
Horizons of expectations a concept, articulated by
- a reader's "expectations" or Stanley Fish, that readers
within an "interpretive
frame of reference is based
community" share reading
on the reader's past strategies, values and
experience of literature and interpretive assumptions
what preconceived notions Transactional analysis - a
about literature the reader concept developed by Louise
possesses Rosenblatt asserting that
meaning is produced in a
Implied reader - the transaction of a reader with a
implied reader is "a text. As an approach, then, the
hypothetical reader of a critic would consider "how the
text”, a construct that is reader interprets the text as
unrelated to the “real” reader well as how the text produces a
response in her"
-Developed by Wolfgang Iser
Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages Disadvantages
No one interpretation Can be too subjective
Interpretations change No clear criteria to
over time account for differences
from one reader to the
next
Highly personal at
times
Postmodernism
For Jean Baudrillard, postmodernism
marks a culture composed "of disparate
fragmentary experiences and images
that constantly bombard the individual
in music, video, television, advertising
and other forms of electronic media.
The speed and ease of reproduction of
these images mean that they exist only
as image, devoid of depth, coherence, or
originality"
Postmodernist Theories:
Deconstruction
Hermeneutics
Semiotics
Deconstruction:
Sees literature as fluid parts and not one
whole, with multiple meanings and ways to
look at and not one large meaning.
Infinite number of signifiers
Deconstruction - Stanford University
Deconstruction - Johns Hopkins Guide t
o Literary Theory & Criticism
Hermeneutics:
Sees interpretation as a circular process
whereby valid interpretation can occur by
seeing the literary work as a whole and as a
combination of its parts
Can analyze the historical authorial intent and
at the same time the language within the text
to gain understanding
Phenomenology Online - page developed by
Max van Manen
Semiotics:
The science of signs
Proposes that human actions and productions
have shared meaning to a group of people
Linguistics is a branch of semiotics
"Semiotics for Beginners" - Dr. David Ch
andler (University of Wales)