Literary Approaches and Elements Flashcards
would help reveal how or why a particular work is constructed and what its social and cultural implications are
Critical approaches
most common critical approaches
Structuralism
Gender Criticism
Reader-Response Criticism
Formalist Criticism
Biographical Criticism
Psychological Criticism
Sociological Criticism
It is a theory in which all elements of human culture, including literature, are thought to be parts of a system of signs
Structuralism
its essence is the belief that things cannot be understood in isolation, they have to be seen in the context of larger structures they are part of
Structuralism
suggests the interrelationship between “units” (surface phenomena) and “rules” (the ways in which units can be put together).
Structuralism
Structuralismsuggests the interrelationship between
units and rules
surface phenomena
units
the ways in which units can be put together
rules
In language, units are ___________ and rules are the ____________________________________________
words; forms of grammar which order words.
Structuralists relate the text to some larger containing structure, such as:
a. the conventions of a particular literary genre, or
b. a network of intertextual connections, or
c. a projected model of an underlying universal narrative structure, or
d. a notion of narrative as a complex of recurrent patterns of motifs.
examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary works
Gender Criticism
Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of approaches, including the so-called “_______________” approach recently advocated by poet _____________
masculinist; Robert Bly
The bulk of ______________, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined ‘male-produced’ assumptions.”
gender criticism
Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combatting such attitudes—by questioning, for example in the classic play ____________ by __________, why none of the characters ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery
‘Othello’; Shakespeare
This approach takes a fundamental tenet that “literature” exists not as an artifact upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader.
Reader-Response Criticism
It attempts to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a text” and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process.
Reader-Response Criticism
According to reader-response critics, literary texts do not “contain” a meaning; meanings derive only from the act of __________________
individual readings
emphasizes how religious, cultural, and social values affect readings
individual readings
This approach regards literature as a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms
Formalist Criticism
All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself
Formalist Criticism
A primary goal for ____________ is to determine how such elements work together with the text’s content to shape its effects upon readers.
formalist critics
This approach begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work
Biographical Criticism
focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the author’s life and the biographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant material.
biographical critic
This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon both literature and literary criticism.
Psychological Criticism
Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung
his psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression, as well as expanding our understanding of how language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires
Sigmund Freud
___________, whose theories about the unconscious are also a key foundation of _________________.
Carl Jung; Mythological Criticism
Psychological criticism has a number of approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three approaches:
a. An investigation of the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how does it relate to normal mental functions?
b. The psychological study of a particular artist, usually noting how an author’s biographical circumstances
affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior.
c. The analysis of fictional characters using the language and methods of psychology.
This approach examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received, exploring the relationships between the artist and society
Sociological Criticism
Sometimes it examines the artist’s society to better understand the author’s literary works; other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the literature itself.
Sociological Criticism
One influential type of sociological criticism is
Marxist criticism
focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature
Marxist criticism
reads the text as an expression of contemporary class struggle
Marxism Theory
Literature is not simply a matter of personal expression or taste; it somehow relates to the social and political conditions of the time
Marxism Theory
Marxism Theory could be particularly useful in studying themes in classics such as
‘The American Dream’ in The Great Gatsby or the ‘The Twisted Human Nature’ in Wuthering Heights.
Literary Elements
Short Stories
Poems
Essay
Drama
A story has five basic but important elements. These five components are:
the characters, the setting, the plot, the conflict, and the theme
refer to the participants in the story
Characters
characters according to personality
round or flat
characters according to development
dynamic or static
the time and place of the story
Setting
refers to the series of related events that make up a story.
Plot
It is a planned, logical series of events having a beginning, middle, and end.
Plot
There are five essential parts of a plot:
Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Denouement.
Without ___________ there is no plot.
conflict
is essential to plot
conflict
is not merely limited to open arguments, rather it is any form of opposition that faces the main character
conflict
There are two types of conflict:
external and internal m
a struggle with a force outside one’s self
External
a struggle within one’s self; a person must make some decision, overcome pain, quiet their temper, resist an urge, etc.
External
The __________ in a piece of fiction is its controlling idea or its central insight
theme
It is the author’s underlying meaning or main idea that he is trying to convey
theme
may be the author’s thoughts about a topic or view of human nature
theme
The title of the short story usually points to what the writer is saying and he may use various figures of speech to emphasize his theme, such as:
symbol, allusion, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, or irony.
Elements of poetry include the
sound devices
stylistics devices or figures of speech
sound devices
alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, parallelism, rhythm, etc.
stylistics devices or figures of speech
simile, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron, irony, etc
Important concepts also related to poetry are
enjambment, caesura, imagery, denotation, and connotation.
The elements of an essay include the
tone, thesis, structure, evidence, and conventions
Aristotle considered six things to be essential to good drama:
Plot, Theme, Characters, Dialogue, Music/Rhythm, and Spectacle
the elements of drama may be divided into three units:
The literary, the technical, and the performance elements.
refers to the interdependence of texts in relation to one another (as well as to the culture at large).
Intertextuality
Intertextuality produces
meaning
alluding to other works through ideas, symbols, or styles
implicit reference
when the composer directly mentions, quotes, or references other texts in their work.
explicit reference
it foregrounds notions of relationality, interconnectedness and interdependence in modern cultural life.
intertextuality
is the linguistic strategy of calling attention to certain language features in order to shift the reader’s attention from what is said to how it is said
Foregrounding
In __________________, foregrounding is the linguistic strategy of calling attention to certain language features in order to shift the reader’s attention from what is said to how it is said.
literary studies and stylistics
In ________________________, foregrounding refers to a prominent portion of text that contributes meaning, contrasted with the background, which provides relevant context for the foreground.
systemic functional linguistics
refers to a prominent portion of text that contributes meaning, contrasted with the background, which provides relevant context for the foreground.
foregrounding
has characterized foregrounding as motivated prominence, providing the definition that it is the phenomenon of linguistic highlighting, whereby some features of the language of a text stand out in some way
M.A.K. Halliday
The concept Foregrounding has been developed by _____________________ and according to him the foregrounding of any linguistic or stylistic feature can be accomplished either by ___________ which is _____________ and _____________” which is ________________
Leech (1985); “ regularity “; “ Parallelism” ; Irregularity ; “ deviation “
are used to give attention to linguistic components as they becoms perceptually prominent when deviant.
deviation
holds constant some features (usually structural) wherein parts of the sentence are grammatically the same, or are similar in construction while other elements in the text remain varied.
parallelism
