Basic Literary Approaches Flashcards
What are the 8 Types of Basic Literary Approaches?
- Formalism
- Reader-Response
- Historical
- Feminist
- Post-colonial
- Marxist
- Psychoanalytic
- Ecocriticism
Focuses on a literary text itself, aside from questions about its author or the historical and cultural contexts of its creation.
Formalism
Takes a story, poem, or play “on its own terms,” viewing it as a self-contained unit of meaning.
Formalism
The critic tries to understand the meaning by paying attention to the specific form of the text.
Formalism
A particular kind of Formalism that arose in the mid-twentieth century and enjoyed great influence for a time.
New Criticism
“How does the structure of the work reveal its meaning?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Formalism
“How do the form and content of the work illuminate each other? What recurring patterns are there in the form, and what is their effect?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Formalism
“How does use of imagery, language, and various literary devices establish the work’s meaning?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Formalism
“How do the characters (if any) evolve over the course of the narrative, and how does this interact with the other literary elements?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Formalism
Emphasizes the reader as much as the text.
Reader-response
It seeks to understand how a given reader comes together with a given literary work to produce a unique reading.
Reader-response
Criticism that rests on the assumption that literary works don’t contain or embody a stable, fixed meaning but can have many meanings depending on the reader.
Reader-response
Literature scholar Lois Tyson said that “reader-response theorists share two beliefs.” These include:
- (1) that the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature; and
- (2) that readers actively make the meaning they find in literature and don’t passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text
“Who is the reader? Also, who is the implied reader (the one “posited” [assumed] by the text)?”
These questions are asked in what approach?
Reader-response
“What kinds of memories, knowledge, and thoughts does the text evoke from the reader?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Reader-response
“How exactly does the interaction between the reader and the text create meaning on both the text side and the reader side? How does this meaning change from person to person, or if the same person rereads it?”
These questions are asked in what approach?
Reader-response
Focuses on the historical and social circumstances that surrounded the writing of a text.
Historical
It may examine biographical facts about the author’s life (which can therefore connect this approach with biographical criticism).
Historical
It may consider the influence of other literary works, as well as the influence of social, political, national, and international events.
Historical
A particular type of historical criticism wherein it focuses on the ways historical facts and events are remembered and interpreted, and the way this interpreted historical memory contributes to the interpretation of literature.
New Historicism
“How (and how accurately) does the work reflect the historical period in which it was written?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Historical
“What specific historical events influenced the author?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Historical
“How important is the work’s historical context to understanding it?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Historical
“How does the work represent an interpretation of its time and culture?”
This question is asked in what approach?
New Historicism
Focuses on prevailing societal beliefs about women in an attempt to expose the oppression of women on various levels by patriarchal systems, both contemporary and historical.
Feminist
It also explores the marginalization of women in the realm of literature itself.
Feminist
“How does the work portray the lives of women?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Feminist
“How are female characters portrayed? How are the relationships between men and women portrayed? Does this reinforce sexual and gender stereotypes or challenge them?”
These questions are asked in what approach?
Feminist
“How does the specific language of a literary work reflect gender or sexual stereotypes?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Feminist
Focuses on the impact of European colonial powers on literature.
Post-colonial
It seeks to understand how European hegemonic [dominant] power (political, economic, religious, etc.) have shaped the portrayals of the relationship and status differentials between Europeans and colonized people in literature written both by the colonizers and the colonized.
Post-colonial
“How does the text’s worldview, as evinced in plot, language, characterization, and so on, grow out of assumptions based on colonial oppression?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Post-colonial
“Which groups of people are portrayed as strangers, outsiders, foreign, exotic, “others”? How are they treated in the narrative?”
These questions are asked in what approach?
Post-colonial
“How does the work portray the psychology and interiority of both colonizers and colonized?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Post-colonial
“How does the text affirm (either actively or by silence) or challenge colonialist ideology?”
This question is asked in what approach?
Post-colonial
Studies the social class to which an author belongs and the effects of the author on her/his society.
Marxist
It explores how the author has interpreted the society, culture and political systems.
Marxist
It emphasizes on the social reality, it does not give importance to the aesthetics of a text.
Marxist
One of the most well-known literary theories; it focus on the relationship between literature, the unconscious mind and our conscious actions and thoughts.
Psychoanalytic
Psychoanalytic literary criticism focuses on…
- The Mind of the Author
- The Mind of the Characters
- The Mind of the Audience
- The Text
A psychoanalytic reading may attempt to relate certain aspects of a text to its author’s life to give the text a psychoanalytically biographical meaning.
The mind of the Author
Psychoanalytic literary criticism treats the work of the author as a manifestation of their own unconscious desires.
The mind of the Author
Psychoanalytic literary criticism can be used to analyze and explain the motivations and actions of certain characters in an author’s work.
The Mind of the Characters
Psychoanalytic literary criticism can be used to explain why certain works are very appealing to a wide audience, as it appeals to the universal unconscious mind.
The Mind of the Audience
Psychoanalytic literary criticism can be used to analyze why certain linguistic and symbolic choices are made by the author to be used in a text.
The Text
A critical study in literature that investigates humanity’s relationship to the environment.
Ecocriticism
It explores how literature portrays nature, environmental issues, and humanity’s connection to the natural world.
Ecocriticism
Aims to evaluate how humans interact with the natural world with the goal of improving how we treat the environment.
Ecocriticism
