Week 2 - Introduction to Literary Theory

Question 1

Literary theory

Answer 1

• a large field of scholarship that explores and interprets human writing and meaning.
• a set a practices used to explore and analyze human texts, including stories. It is used by practitioners of the interpretive and critical paradigms of knowledge production in the social sciences and humanities.
• looks for relationships between producers of a text and the audience in reaches

Question 2

Schools of Literary Theory

Answer 2

-Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present)
-Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present)
-Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-present)
-Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
-Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
-Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)

• Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
• New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
• Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)
• Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
  Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)
• Critical Race Theory (1970s-present)
  Critical Disability Studies (1990s-present)

Question 3

Literary Theory Terms

Answer 3

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_terms/index.html

Question 4

More info about Literary Schools of Criticism and their Timelines

Answer 4

http://bentonenglish.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/literary-criticism.pdf

Question 5

Methodology in Literary Theory

Answer 5

https://natureofwriting.com/courses/writing-about-literature/lessons/methodology/

Author
-intentional fallacy

Author’s Background -Class, Politics,Culture, Language,Theology, Family, Nation, Science, Friends

-Form Equals Content (formalism, close reading, new criticism)
-Pattern recognition
-Structural analysis

Audience - Reader Response,catharsis

Question 6

Types of genres

Answer 6

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-are-the-different-genres-of-literature-a-guide-to-14-literary-genres#the-14-main-literary-genres

Question 7

Moral Criticism and Dramatic Construction (c. 360 BC-present)

Answer 7

• if art does not teach morality and ethics, then it is damaging to its audience, and for Plato this damaged his Republic.
• Aristotle believed that elements like “language,
  rhythm, and harmony” as well as “plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle” influence the audience’s catharsis (pity
  and fear) or emotional satisfaction with the work (39)

Question 8

Formalism (1930s-present)

Answer 8

a literary work contains certain intrinsic features, and the theory “defined and addressed the specifically literary qualities
in the text”

• attempts to treat each work as its own distinct piece, free from its environment, era, and even author.

Question 9

Freudian Criticism (1930s-present)

Answer 9

• some critics
  believe that we can “read psychoanalytically … to see which concepts are operating in the text in such a way as to enrich our
  understanding of the work and, if we plan to write a paper about it, to yield a meaningful, coherent psychoanalytic
  interpretation”

Question 10

Jungian Criticism (1930s-present)

Answer 10

• connection between literature and “collective unconscious” of the human race: “racial memory, through which the spirit of the whole human species manifests
• “Jungian criticism is generally involved with a
  search for the embodiment of these symbols within particular works of art.”
  itself” (Richter 504)
• all stories and symbols are based on mythic models from mankind’s past.

Question 11

Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)

Answer 11

this school concerns
itself with class differences, economic and otherwise, as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system
- What is the social class of the author?

Question 12

Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)

Answer 12

considers readers’ reactions to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning
of the text. However, reader-response criticism can take a number of different approaches. A critic deploying reader-response
theory can use a psychoanalytic lens, a feminist lens, or even a structuralist lens. What these different lenses have in common
when using a reader response approach is they maintain “that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does”

Question 13

Structuralism and Semiotics (1920s-present)

Answer 13

Structuralism is used in literary theory; for example, “if you examine the structure of a large number of short stories to
discover the underlying principles that govern their composition … principles of narrative progression … or of
characterization … you are also engaged in structuralist activity if you describe the structure of a single literary work to
discover how its composition demonstrates the underlying principles of a given structural system” (197-198).

Question 14

Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction, Postmodernism (1966-present)

Answer 14

Post-structuralism maintains that frameworks and systems, for example the structuralist systems explained in the
Structuralist area, are merely fictitious constructs and that they cannot be trusted to develop meaning or to give order. In fact,
the very act of seeking order or a singular Truth (with a capital T) is absurd because there exists no unified truth.
p.12

Question 15

New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-present)

Answer 15

New historicists do not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather that we interpret events as products of our
time and culture and that “we don’t have clear access to any but the most basic facts of history … Our understanding of what
such facts mean [is] strictly a matter of interpretation, not fact” (279).

Question 16

Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)

Answer 16

post-colonial critics are concerned with literature produced by colonial powers
and works produced by those who were/are colonized. Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics,
religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to colonial hegemony (western colonizers controlling the
colonized)

Question 17

Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)

Answer 17

concerned with “…the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine
the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women” (Tyson 83).

Question 18

Gender Studies and Queer Theory (1970s-present)

Answer 18

primary concern in gender studies and queer theory is the manner in which gender and sexuality is discussed:

Question 19

The Harlem Renaissance
1915-great depression

Answer 19

period of cultural vibrancy in Black New York, which was a gathering place for African Americans displaced from the ongoing racism of the American south and American society in general. Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City, was the site of a cultural and artistic explosion. African Americans, long oppressed by the systemic and institutional racism of the United States, experienced a golden age of their own art, literature, expression, and performance. This period coalesced in the early 1900s, and reached its height in the 1920s. It was a period defined by the emergence of jazz, theatre, and general optimism. The Harlem Renaissance continued throughout the 1930s.

‘Double consciousness’ (William Dubois) addressed: the conflicting experience and alienation of being Black and American at the same time
the experience of seeing yourself as part of American society, but left out and oppressed by American legal codes and cultural hierarchies.

In addition to challenging racist stereotypes about Blacks during this period by cultivating Black intellectualism, art, and consciousness, African Americans used their resilience, innovation, and creativity to generate an appetite for African American culture and form among global audiences and elites;
the blues and jazz;
film and theatre;
photography;
radio;
illustrations and murals;
literature, including poetry and novels
-African-American cultural forms were quickly adopted by white artists and record labels, taking profits away from the Black artists and intellectuals who birthed the Harlem Renaissance.

Question 20

Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967)

Answer 20

• grew up in Kansas, wrote poems because white students chose him as “class poet”
• African American poet and writer who received great praise for his mixture of traditional poetry with African American forms, including jazz. His poems, novels, and plays made him a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance at the height of the movement in the 1920s.
• chose forms based on African and African American forms - i.e fables, spirituals, children’s rhymes, blues songs
• write in Vernacular everyday language
• “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, “Harlem” (1951)