Literary Lens

Question 1

Feminist

Answer 1

• concerned with the roles of female characters within works
• may argue that gender determines everything, or just the opposite: that all gender differences are imposed by society, and gender determines nothing

Question 2

Historical/Biographical

Answer 2

• views literature as the reflection of an author’s life and times (or of the characters’ life and times).
• it is necessary to know about the author and the political, economical, and sociological context of his times in order to truly understand his works.

Question 3

Moral / Philosophical

Answer 3

• asserts that the larger purpose of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues
• authors intend to instruct the audience in some way

Question 4

Formalism / New Criticism

Answer 4

• involves a close reading of the text
• all information essential to the interpretation of a work must be found within the work itself
• focuses on analyzing irony, paradox, imagery, and metaphor
• also interested in the work’s setting, characters, symbols, and point of view.

Question 5

Psychoanalytical

Answer 5

• views works through the lens of psychology
• looks either at the psychological motivations of the characters or of the authors themselves
• most frequently applies Freudian psychology to works, but other approaches also exist.

Question 6

Freudian Approach to Personality

Answer 6

• the id: the instinctual, pleasure seeking part of the mind
• the superego: the part of the mind that represses the id’s impulses
• the ego: the part of the mind that controls but does not repress the id’s impulses, releasing them in a healthy way

Question 7

Oedipus Complex

Answer 7

a boy’s unconscious rivalry with his father for the love of his mother

Question 8

Electra Complex

Answer 8

a girl’s unconscious rivalry with her mother for the love of her father (a.k.a. “daddy issues”)

Question 9

Archetypal

Answer 9

• assumes that there is a collection of symbols, images, characters, and motifs (i.e. archetypes) that evokes basically the same response in all people
• identifies these patterns and discusses how they function in the works
• asserts that these archetypes are the source of much of literature’s power.

Question 10

Marxist

Answer 10

• Karl Marx perceived human history to have consisted of a series of struggles between classes–between the oppressed and the oppressing (“the haves” and “the have-nots”).
• Marx thought that materialism was the ultimate driving force in history

Question 11

Reader Response Criticism

Answer 11

• analyzes the reader’s role in the production of meaning
• lies at the opposite end of the spectrum from formalism
• the text itself has no meaning until it is read by a reader
• The reader creates the meaning.
• can take into account the strategies employed by the author to elicit a certain response from readers
• denies the possibility that works are universal (i.e. that they will always mean more or less the same thing to readers everywhere)
• makes someone’s reading a function of personal identity.