LITERARY THEORIES AND CRITICISM IN READING A LITERARY TEXT Flashcards
are needed to support the reader in understanding the texts. Literary critics clustered these theories into five groups.
Literary Theories
Literary Theories
- Mimetic Theory
- Authorial Theory
- Reader Response Theory
- Literary Tradition Theory
- Textual Analysis Theory
- based on the classical ARISTOTELIAN idea that literature IMITATES or reflects the real world or the world of ideal concepts or things from which the subject of literature is derived
- The work and the world that imitates is how others call this theory.
MIMETIC THEORY
- holds that the AUTHOR ISNTHE SOLE SOURCE of meaning
- One studies literature with one eye set on literary text and another eye on the AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY.
- The work in relation to its author insists on very private expression of the writer’s feelings, imagination, inspiration, and intention.
AUTHORIAL THEORY
- Some call this as the work and its readers.
- It permits varied and numerous INTERPRETATIONS of the literary texts FROM as many READERS.
READER RESPONSE THEORY
Reader Response Theory is also known as effective or _______
PRAGMATIC THEORY
- relates the work to its literacy history by IDENTIFYING THE TRADITION to which it belongs.
LITERARY TRADITION THEORY
- also known as the WORK AS AN ENTITYVOF ITSELF.
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS THEORY
lt refers to the individual’s way of reading a literary text.
LITERARY CRITICISM
New Criticism or Formalist Criticism is considered new in the ______
1930s
Seeks to make literary criticism a SCIENTIFIC STUDY.
NEW CRITICISIM / FORMALIST CRITICISM
Insists that each literary work shows function as a HARMONIOUS possessing a UNIVERSAL MEANING, which suggests that there is only one “correct” way of reading.
NEW / FORMALIST CRITICISM
Meaning is revealed by “DISSECTING” the literary text, by EXAMINING the literary ELEMENTS and by determining how it contributed to the essential unity of the literary piece
NEW / FORMALIST CRITICISM
STRENGTH: calls for a CAREFUL and THOROUGH reading of a text.
WEAKNESS: IGNORES RELATIONSHIP of one story to another, the interconnection of literature, the influence of society to literature, and the importance of the author’s individualism.
NEW / FORMALIST CRITICISM
This Denies the impact of the reader’s personal experience
NEW / FORMALIST CRITICISM
Who influenced Archetypal Criticism
Carl Gustav Jung’
- influenced by Carl Gustav Jung’s belief in the collective UNCONSCIOUSNESS of all the people of the world.
ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM
• Identifies certain archetypes, which are SIMPLE REPEATED PATTERNS or images of human experience: the changing seasons, the cycle of birth, death, rebirth, and heroic quest.
• Depends heavily on SYMBOLS and PATTERNS operating on a universal scale.
ARCHETYPAL CRITICISM
Archetypal Criticism Uses ________ assertion that literature consists of variation on a great MYTHIC THEME that contains the following elements.
Northrop Frye’s
The creation and life are a paradise:
garden
A displacement from a paradise:
alienation
A time trial and tribulation, usually a wandering:
a journey
A self-discovery as a result of the struggle:
an epiphany
A return to paradise:
either the original or improved one
examines the CULTURE and SOCIETY from which literature is produced, and how their influence affect literature.
HISTORICISM
STRENGTH: enriches one’s understanding of literature because a KNOWLEDGE OF THE HISTORICAL TIMES in which a piece is written.
WEAKNESS: OVERLOOKS the literary elements and structure as well as the author’s individual contribution.
HISTORICISM
has the longest history being a 20th century phenomenon
MARXIST CRITICISM
• Argues that literature is a product of real, social and economic existence.
• Views literature to be ideologically determined, usually of dominant social class.
MARXIST CRITICISM
Marxist Criticism uses _________’s ideas that literature must answer.
Moa Tse Tung
Whom to serve:
The working people, the masses.
How to serve:
Awaken and arouse the masses and impel them to unite and struggle to change their environment.
STRENGTH: provides functional cultural and political agenda of literature.
WEAKNESS: Opens up the possibility of prioritizing content over form, ideological criterion over artistic.
MARXIST CRITICISM
combines several critical methods while focusing on the questions on how GENDER affects a literary work, writer, or reader.
FEMINIST CRITICISM
STRENGTH: enriches a reading by showing awareness of the complexity of human interaction.
WEAKNESS: ultimately culturally criticism.
FEMINIST CRITICISM
based on linguistic theories of Ferdinand Saussure and cultural theories of Claude Levi-Strauss.
STRUCTURALISM
Structuralism is based on linguistic theories of __________
Ferdinand Saussure
Structuralism is cultural theories of ________.
Claude Levi-Strauss
Language is a well contained system of signs.
Ferdinand Saussure
Culture, like languages, could be viewed as system of signs and could be analyzed in terms of the structural relations among their elements.
Claude levi-Strauss
• Views literary text as systems of interlocking signs which are ARBITRARY .
• Seeks to make explicit the “grammar” (the rules and codes or system of organization).
• Uses the concept of BINARY OPPOSITIONS (sign-signifier, parole-langue, performance-competence).
• Believes that A SIGN (something which stands to somebody for something) CAN NEVER HAVE DEFINITE MEANING, because the meaning must be continuously qualified.
STRUCTURALISM
STRENGTH: allows intertextuality and links literary text to systems of signs that exist even before the work is written.
WEAKNESS: denies author’s individual contribution.
STRUCTURALISM
- initiated by Jacques Derrida in the late 1960’s.
DECONSTRUCTION
Deconstruction is initiated by ______ in the late 1960’s.
Jacques Derrida
• Assumes that language refers only to itself rather than to an extra-textual reality.
• Asserts multiple CONFLICTING INTERPRETATIONS to a text.
• Bases interpretations on the philosophical, political or social implications of the use of language in a text rather than on the author’s intentions.
DECONSTRUCTION
• Involves the questioning of the many hierarchical oppositions (binary oppositions) in order to expose the bias of privilege terms.
• Taken apart the LOGIC OF LANGUAGE in which author make their claims.
• Reveals how all texts undermine themselves in that every text includes unconscious “traces” of other positions exactly opposite to that which it sets out to uphold.
DECONSTRUCTION
STRENGTH: DEBUNKS the idea of the arbitrariness of the verbal sign and loosens up language from concepts and referents.
WEAKNESS: views that the “meaning” of the text bears only ACCIDENTAL RELATIONSHIPS to the author’s conscious intentions.
DECONSTRUCTION
TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM
- New / Formalist Criticism
- Marxist Criticism
- Archetypal Criticism
- Feminist Criticism
- Structuralism
- Deconstruction
- Historicism
