Literary Criticism (5) Flashcards
- Deconstructive Theory
Late 1960s to present/ deconstruction has been a predominant theory started by Jacques Derrida/ He focused closely on reading texts and looking for opposition between the words in the piece’s meaning/ The true meaning comes from examining these contradictions
- Deconstructive Theory critics include
Geoffrey Hartman/ Barbara Johnson
- Feminist Theory
It includes several ideas and approaches to literature that focus on sexual differences described through sexual stereotypes found/ Other critics rediscover female literature of the past to reinterpret it using more modern ideas
- Feminist Theory critics include
Elaine Showalter/ Annette Kolodny/ Virginia Woolf/ Simone de Beauvoir
- Formalist Theory
Was viewed as a dangerous way of digging deeper into literature because its main focus was to help readers defamiliarize themselves with the world around them so they could see it clearly/ Stalin cracked down on formalists in 1930 and prevented much publication
- Formalist Theory critics include
Victor Sklovsky/ Yuri Tynyanov/ Vladimir Propp
- Literary Criticism
Involves interpreting/ analyzing and critiquing an author’s work/ usually according to a specific theory
- Marxist Theory
1970s teachings of Karl Marx guided a new approach to find meaning in literature determined by historic and economic conditions by understanding the time period in which the work was written/ It is still used today especially in connection with deconstruction and feminist theory
- Marxist Theory critics include
Raymond Williams/ Edmund Wilson
- New Criticism Theory
Began at the same time as formalism but saw literature itself as a way to further one’s understanding of the world/ Author’s intended meaning was not important because it was never truly known/ All that mattered was meaning found in the text itself/ New Critics also believed that every text contained multiple meanings that co-existed
- New Criticism Theory critics include
T.S. Eliot/ W.K. Wimsatt/ I.A. Richards
- Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud changed the way people thought of themselves/ He and Carl Jung carried over their ideas of psychoanalysis into the study of literature/ The small tools and concepts apply to evaluating a work’s author/ primary character/ or audiences as one would evaluate a patient
- Psychoanalytic Theory critics include
Sigmund Freud/ Carl Jung/ Northrop Frye/ Jacques Lacan
- Platonic Theory
Based on the opinions of Plato/ especially his words in Phaedrus/ Ion/ and Republic/ Plato/ the pupil of Socrates/ and a teacher to Aristotle/ The theories that we’ve reviewed so far are very modern/ but Platonic Theory is a sense of Neoclassicism
Reader Response Theory
- Became popular in 1940s by theorists who believe the only meaning in a piece of literature is the meaning created by the reader’s interaction with the text.
- Each reader brings his own frame of reference and culture, history, language, and psychology to impact what he gets out of the text
