Literary Criticism

Reader Response Criticism

Historical Context
 Louise Rosenblatt's influential 1938 work
Literature As Exploration
 reaction to the formalist theories of the New
Critics, who promoted "close readings" of
literature
Definition
 A form of criticism that stresses the
importance of the reader's role in
interpreting texts. Rejecting the idea that
there is a single, fixed meaning inherent in
every literary work, this theory holds that
the individual creates his or her own
meaning through a "transaction" with the
text based on personal associations.
Key terms
 Horizons of expectations
 Implied reader
 Interpretive communities
 Transactional analysis
Objections
 Too subjective
 Fails to account for a text being able to
expand a reader’s understanding
To sum up
 “The Correct Reading” was traditionally the
goal of literary criticism.
 Reader response criticism is a reaction to
this. How one interprets a text is subjective
and is based on time, place, culture, etc.
Literary Criticism
Archetypal Criticism
Historical Context
 Based on works of Carl Jung and Joseph
Campbell (and myth itself)
 Popular in 1950s and ‘60s due to
Canadian, Northrop Frye
Definition
 Archetypal critics believe that literature is
based on recurring images, characters,
narrative designs and themes
 Origins of western literature in Judeo-
Christian scripture and Greco-Roman
mythology
What’s an Archetype
 Arche “first” and typos “form”
 An original model or pattern from which
copies are made
Fundamental plot archetype
 The Journey
 protagonist moves from innocence to experience
 Begins in familiar environment
 Descent into danger
 Battle “monsters” in underworld (task)
 Return home (reunion, marriage)
Key Terms
 Anima
 Animus
 Collective Unconscious
 Persona
 Shadow
Common Archetypal Figures
 The Child
 The Hero
 The Great Mother
 The Wise old man
 The Trickster or Fox
Frye vs Jung
 Frye sees archetypes as recurring patterns
in literature; in contrast, Jung views
archetypes as primal, ancient
images/experience that we have inherited.
Objections
 Limits personal interpretation
 Only analyses one aspect of literature
(archetypes)
In the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel are loved by
their father but resented by their step-mother,
who insists on a journey into the woods with
the intent of losing them. In the woods, the
children meet evil in the guise of a witch who
tries to kill them. But they outwit her, kill her,
and return to their father. Their step-mother in
some versions dies mysteriously at the same
time as the witch. Familiar order is restored.
In groups of 3-4, write a modern version of
this fairy tale. Make sure your modern tale
does not alter the original theme or
message. Note how you used the
archetypes within this tale. Be prepared to
present to the rest of the class.
Literary Criticism
Marxist
Historical Context
 began with Karl Marx, 19th century German
philosopher best known for Das Kapital
(1867), the seminal work of the communist
movement.
 Marx was also the first Marxist literary critic,
writing critical essays in the 1830s on such
writers as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
and William Shakespeare.
Definition
 A sociological approach to literature that
viewed works of literature or art as the
products of historical forces that can be
analyzed by looking at the material
conditions in which they were formed.
Key ideas
 What we think of as world view is actually
the product of the dominant class
 Marxism generally focuses on the clash
between the dominant and repressed
classes
Key Terms
 Commodification
 Conspicuous consumption
 Dialectical materialism
 Material circumstances
 Reflectionism
 Superstructure
Points to Consider
 Literature expresses the ideas, beliefs and
values of a culture
 Literature of any significance actively
engages in controversy or argument
 Literature reveals power struggles (sexual
power, economic power, social power, and
so on) and how this operates and with what
consequences
Points to Consider
 Literature reveals how the author, reader,
and characters demonstrate an awareness
or lack of awareness of their economic and
social situations and what oppresses them
 Literature and authors can manipulate
readers into sympathizing with rather than
critiquing the dominant (and oppressive)
social order.
Strengths
 Encourages a careful reading of the text
 Doesn’t limit reader to view text in isolation
Weaknesses
 Only examines limited aspect of text
 Some people feel threatened by the focus
on “ideology”
 Dismisses the beauty of writing and does
not allow reader to simply enjoy text
Testers
 Huckleberry Finn and Jim need to escape
from their homes in order to recognize the
oppressiveness of their lives
 Three symbols represent youth and
immaturity in the story “Groom Service” are
the drawing, the beaver tail, and the eagle
feathers
Testers
 In David French’s play Leaving Home,
Jacob, Mary , and Kathy are unable to find
true happiness because of the limitations of
their economic situation
Testers
 The snowball incident at the start of Fifth
Business controls the lives of Dunstable
Ramsay, Percy Boyd Stanton, and Paul
Dempster.
Testers
 Romeo and Juliet might have lived if they
had not been controlled by various societal
pressures.
Testers
 The novel Animal Farm demonstrates that
a society cannot succeed if it maintains a
formal class structure.
Applying this Theory to Text
 What or whose ideological values structure the
text? How are these evident?
 Who has power (and what sorts) in the text? How
does this power operate and change as the text
progresses?
 What “master” or dominant social narratives (eg.
The American Dreamare perpetuated or critiqued
and disrupted in the text?
Applying this to a Text
 To what degree does the protagonist or
other characters believe in and live by the
prevailing social order?
 At what point(s) do characters recognize
the oppressiveness of the prevailing social
order?
 How do they respond? What affects their
options for changing things?
Applying this to a Text
 How is social objectification evident and
how does it operate in the text?
 What are the social forces that affect the
author’s writing or the text’s marketing and
reception?
Literary Criticism
Feminist Criticism
History
 Launched in the twentieth century with
Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
(1929)
 1969 Kate Millett examined how women are
represented in text by famous men in
Sexual Politics
Feminist critics examine
 How women write their own experiences
and representations
 How women read about themselves
 How to make feminist readings visible to
readers
Feminist Critics Examine
 How women writers have fared in given
eras
 How traditional texts by women are
subversive of the social order
Key terms
 Ecriture Feminine: “women’s writing”
 Patriarchy: male dominated power
structures
Strengths
 For centuries, women in literature, the roles
of men and women, and how they were
represented was not a focus in literary
criticism
Weaknesses
 If this is the only theory applied to a text, it
can be very limiting
Literary Criticism
Formalism
History
 In the 1920s and 1930s one school of
Formalism developed called “New
Criticism.” It is still a major form of literary
criticism applied to analysing texts in
secondary schools.
Definition
 A form of literary criticism in which the text
is viewed as a complete, isolated unit.
Meaning is found by studying one or more
key elements.
Explanation
 It focuses on the elements of fiction and
emphasizes how these elements work
together to create, in a work of quality, a
coherent whole: unity of plot, theme and
character, through use of tone, point of
view, imagery, purposeful action, dialogue
and description
Key Elements
 language
 Imagery
 Point of view
 Plot structure
 Character development and motivation
Strengths
 Reader does not need any additional
knowledge other than what’s provided in
the text for interpreting the work
Weaknesses
 It ignores author’s intentions
 It assumes that “good” literature is
“coherent” and that a text that is not
coherent by its standards is not “good”
literature.
Weaknesses
 It divorces literature from its larger cultural
context
 It assumes that readers can refrain from
investing emotionally in their reading and
can/should respond objectively to texts.
Literary Criticism
Structuralism
What does this mean?
Or this?
History
 1960s, Swiss linguist Ferdinand de
Saussure influenced this theory through
examination of language as a system of
signs, called semiology
So what’s semiology?
 A sign consists of two parts
 Signifier
 Signified
What’s semiology?
 People know when they see

It means they must stop.

Semiology

I stop my car.
Semiology
 If we think of this linguistically…
Implications
 Symbols or signs are the vehicles through
which we conceptualize things
 So what does this say about the
relationship between language and
thought?
 Can you have thought without language?
Implications
 'The French word mouton may have the same
meaning as the English word sheep; but it does
not have the same value. There are various
reasons for this, but in particular the fact that the
English word for the meat of this animal, as
prepared and served for a meal, is not sheep but
mutton. The difference in value between sheep
and mouton hinges on the fact that in English
there is also another word mutton for the meat,
whereas mouton in French covers both'
Different kinds of signs
 Symbol/symbolic: the signifier does
not resemble the signified. It is
arbitrary - so that the relationship must be
learnt: e.g. language in general
(alphabetical letters, punctuation marks,
words, phrases and sentences), numbers,
morse code, traffic lights, national flags
Different kinds of signs
 Icon/iconic: the signifier is perceived
as resembling or imitating the
signified (recognizably looking, sounding,
feeling, tasting or smelling like it) e.g. a
portrait, a cartoon, a scale-model,
onomatopoeia, metaphors
Different kinds of signs
 Index/indexical: the signifier is not
arbitrary but is directly connected in
some way (physically or causally) to the
signified - this link can be observed or
inferred
Structuralism
 Structuralists believe that if readers don’t
understand the signs, they may misread a
text.
Strengths
 This theory does focus on the author’s
intent, and does focus on an objective
interpretation without clouding the text with
a subjective or emotional interpretation
Weaknesses
 Difficult to know who controls the meaning
of a text.
 Reader looks only at linguistic structure and
is not permitted to have an emotional
attachment to the text.
 Not open to different interpretations
 Practice
Signifier Signified
A black cat
24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa
Stanley Cup
April 1st
Colour green in traffic light

Nod of head
Questions
 What are three key signifiers in this text that if you
didn’t know what they signified, you wouldn’t
understand the text.
 For each signifier, write down what it signifies
 If you didn’t know what a signifier signified, where
would you go for information?
 What historical information or information about
the author did you need to know to understand
the meaning of the signifiers?