Critical approaches to literature2

Critical Approaches to Literature... Critical Approaches-used to analyze, question, interpret, synthesize and evaluate literary works, with a specific mindset or “lenses”... New Criticis

Critical Approaches to

Literature

Critical Approaches

-used to analyze, question, interpret,

synthesize and evaluate literary works, with a specific mindset or “lenses”

New Criticism

-contend that literature needs little or no

connection with the author’s intentions, life, or social/historical situation

-everything needed to analyze the work is

contained within the text -examines language and literary conventions; plot, rhyme, meter, dialect, setting, point of view, etc.

Reader-Response Criticism

-studies the interaction of the

reader with the text; holds the

text incomplete until it is read

-examines the readers reactions

and thoughts to a piece of

work

Biographical Criticism

-relates the author’s life and thoughts to their work

-allows one to better understand the elements within a work as well as relate works to authorial intention and audience

Criticism

-concerns itself with the structure of

narrative; how events are constructed and through what point of view

-considers the narrator not necessarily as

a person, but more as a window

through which one sees a constructed reality

Historical Criticism

-perspectives tend to reflect

a concern with the period

in which a text is produced

and/or read

Social Criticism

-recognizes literature as a reflection of the environment through analysis of social structure, power, politics, and agency

Gender/Feminist Criticism

-addresses issues of

masculinity and

femininity as binaries,

sexual orientation,

heterosexism, and

differences in sexes

Anthropological Criticism

-focuses on aspects of

everyday life in various

cultures; using ideas of

folklore, ritual,

celebrations, traditions,

etc

Psychoanalytical

Criticism

-aims at uncovering the workings of the human mind especially that expression of the

unconscious

-analyzing a text like a dream, looking for

symbolism and repressed meaning, the

dominance of unconscious mine of the

conscious

-can be applied to either the author/text

relationship or the reader/text relationship