Basic Literary Approaches

Question 1

What are the 8 Types of Basic Literary Approaches?

Answer 1

• Formalism
• Reader-Response
• Historical
• Feminist
• Post-colonial
• Marxist
• Psychoanalytic
• Ecocriticism

Question 2

Focuses on a literary text itself, aside from questions about its author or the historical and cultural contexts of its creation.

Answer 2

Formalism

Question 3

Takes a story, poem, or play “on its own terms,” viewing it as a self-contained unit of meaning.

Answer 3

Formalism

Question 4

The critic tries to understand the meaning by paying attention to the specific form of the text.

Answer 4

Formalism

Question 5

A particular kind of Formalism that arose in the mid-twentieth century and enjoyed great influence for a time.

Answer 5

New Criticism

Question 6

“How does the structure of the work reveal its meaning?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 6

Formalism

Question 7

“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?

Answer 7

Formalism

Question 8

“How does use of imagery, language, and various literary devices establish the work’s meaning?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 8

Formalism

Question 9

“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?

Answer 9

Formalism

Question 10

Emphasizes the reader as much as the text.

Answer 10

Reader-response

Question 11

It seeks to understand how a given reader comes together with a given literary work to produce a unique reading.

Answer 11

Reader-response

Question 12

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.

Answer 12

Reader-response

Question 13

Literature scholar Lois Tyson said that “reader-response theorists share two beliefs.” These include:

Answer 13

• (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

Question 14

“Who is the reader? Also, who is the implied reader (the one “posited” [assumed] by the text)?”

These questions are asked in what approach?

Answer 14

Reader-response

Question 15

“What kinds of memories, knowledge, and thoughts does the text evoke from the reader?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 15

Reader-response

Question 16

“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?

Answer 16

Reader-response

Question 17

Focuses on the historical and social circumstances that surrounded the writing of a text.

Answer 17

Historical

Question 18

It may examine biographical facts about the author’s life (which can therefore connect this approach with biographical criticism).

Answer 18

Historical

Question 19

It may consider the influence of other literary works, as well as the influence of social, political, national, and international events.

Answer 19

Historical

Question 20

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.

Answer 20

New Historicism

Question 21

“How (and how accurately) does the work reflect the historical period in which it was written?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 21

Historical

Question 22

“What specific historical events influenced the author?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 22

Historical

Question 23

“How important is the work’s historical context to understanding it?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 23

Historical

Question 24

“How does the work represent an interpretation of its time and culture?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 24

New Historicism

Question 25

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.

Answer 25

Feminist

Question 26

It also explores the marginalization of women in the realm of literature itself.

Answer 26

Feminist

Question 27

“How does the work portray the lives of women?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 27

Feminist

Question 28

“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?

Answer 28

Feminist

Question 29

“How does the specific language of a literary work reflect gender or sexual stereotypes?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 29

Feminist

Question 30

Focuses on the impact of European colonial powers on literature.

Answer 30

Post-colonial

Question 31

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.

Answer 31

Post-colonial

Question 32

“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?

Answer 32

Post-colonial

Question 33

“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?

Answer 33

Post-colonial

Question 34

“How does the work portray the psychology and interiority of both colonizers and colonized?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 34

Post-colonial

Question 35

“How does the text affirm (either actively or by silence) or challenge colonialist ideology?”

This question is asked in what approach?

Answer 35

Post-colonial

Question 36

Studies the social class to which an author belongs and the effects of the author on her/his society.

Answer 36

Marxist

Question 37

It explores how the author has interpreted the society, culture and political systems.

Answer 37

Marxist

Question 38

It emphasizes on the social reality, it does not give importance to the aesthetics of a text.

Answer 38

Marxist

Question 39

One of the most well-known literary theories; it focus on the relationship between literature, the unconscious mind and our conscious actions and thoughts.

Answer 39

Psychoanalytic

Question 40

Psychoanalytic literary criticism focuses on…

Answer 40

• The Mind of the Author
• The Mind of the Characters
• The Mind of the Audience
• The Text

Question 41

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.

Answer 41

The mind of the Author

Question 42

Psychoanalytic literary criticism treats the work of the author as a manifestation of their own unconscious desires.

Answer 42

The mind of the Author

Question 43

Psychoanalytic literary criticism can be used to analyze and explain the motivations and actions of certain characters in an author’s work.

Answer 43

The Mind of the Characters

Question 44

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.

Answer 44

The Mind of the Audience

Question 45

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.

Answer 45

The Text

Question 46

A critical study in literature that investigates humanity’s relationship to the environment.

Answer 46

Ecocriticism

Question 47

It explores how literature portrays nature, environmental issues, and humanity’s connection to the natural world.

Answer 47

Ecocriticism

Question 48

Aims to evaluate how humans interact with the natural world with the goal of improving how we treat the environment.

Answer 48

Ecocriticism