English 300: Introduction to Literature

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English 300 Introduction to Literature

• Lesson 3 Literary Criticism and Literary
  Theory
• Presented by
• Prof. Mercedes Torres Almodóvar

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Thinking about Literature

• What thoughts come from the work itself?
• Which thoughts have been inspired by it?
• Which thoughts come from our predisposition and
  preconceptions about literature?

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Responding to the story

• Internal factors
• The story itself
• Artful language
• Characters
• Significant actions
• Significant messages

• External factors
• The reader
• The story fits our notions
• The story is related to our personal memories

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Response to literature
Analytic
Emotional
Subjective
Objective
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Questions to be answered before writing about
literature

• Which aspects of the story had the greatest
  impact on me?
• What did they seem to be saying?
• How did they say it? (or what did they make me
  think that seemed new to me?)
• How did they make me think it?
• How did other aspects of the story contribute to
  my response?
• How did these particular aspects of the story
  help create the storys total effect?

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General Format of a Literary Essay

• Literary Essay

Response to the story
Analysis
Overall Impression/ Effect of the story
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Terminology

• Literary Theory
• a term used to describe the assumptions that
  underlie literary study and the presentation of
  its principles and procedures
• Concept of an author
• The makeup of the canon
• The nature of narrative
• The roles of gender, class and race
• The definition of literature

Poetics (fourth century B. C.)
(Edward Quinn, 2006)
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Terminology

• Literary Theory
• refers to the examination of basic principles
  from a variety of perspectives such as
• Biographical criticism
• Formalist criticism
• Mythic criticism
• Freudian criticism
• Marxist criticism
• Feminist criticism
• Readers response criticism
• Subjective criticism
• Deconstructive criticism

(Edward Quinn, 2006)
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Terminology

• Literary Criticism is a general term for the
  analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of
  literature through a particular perspective

(Edward Quinn, 2006)
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Various points of view

• Formalism (formalist criticism)
• Looks at a literary piece as complete within
  itself
• All features of the literary piece work together
  in a unified, meaningful whole
• Structure
• Imagery character development
• Setting
• Language
• Other elements
• Technique (close reading)

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Various points of view

• Historical Approaches
• Emphasizes the writers life in a particular
  period in history
• Events in personal life and in the world affect
  the literature produced
• Examines the work in context of time

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Various points of view

• Historical Approaches
• Biographical criticism
• Draws connections between the writers personal
  experience and his/her work
• Diaries, letters, journals, biographies and
  autobiographies are tools of the critic
• Cultural
• Makes use of materials beyond biographical
  information
• Cultural artifacts
• Advertisements
• Architecture
• Journalism
• Campaign speeches

Poem Aids
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Various points of view

• Historical approaches
• Marxist
• Focus on the historical level seeing economic
  forces as the determinants of human interactions
  and personalities
• Literature is the artifact of history
• Driven by economic and social class forces
• Reflection of values of the privileged class

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Various points of view

• Psychological Approaches
• Human motivation is examined
• Freuds theories
• Characters subconscious motivations, defenses,
  inner conflicts, and symbolic acts
• Conflict between conscious ego and the
  unconscious id

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Various points of view

• Mythological Approaches
• Examines commonalities among dreams, myths,
  legends, religion, visual arts and literature
• Archetypal patterns are identified. An archetype
  is a basic apprehension of, or response to an
  aspect of life embedded within the collective
  unconscious of every human being
• Forest
• Wounded hero

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Various points of view

• Archetypal Approaches
• Associated with the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung
• Collective unconscious
• Universal fictional characters
• The fool
• The wise man
• Gender focus or feminist approach
• How do sex roles, sexual identity and
  relationships between the sexes affect the way a
  work is written?
• Women strategies to cope with their powerlessness
  in the male-oriented world

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Various points of view

• Reader response
• Each person brings his or her own experience and
  points of view to bear while reading
• Projections of the readers own fears
• Subjective criticism
• A form of reader response which argues that the
  personality of the reader is the most important
  element in interpreting a text.
• Deconstruction (Deconstructive criticism)
• Work of literature is unstable
• Look for ways in which the elements contradict
  themselves
• Words cannot accurately express meaning

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The art of reading

• Look closely at what you read
• Analyze the work
• Analyze your response

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References

• Landy, A. (2000). Introduction to Literature.
  New York Houghton Mifflin
• McMahan, E. et.al (2005). Literature and the
  Writing Process. New Jersey Prentice Hall
• Quinn, E. (2006). A Dictionary of Literary and
  Thematic Terms. New York Checkmark Books

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Assignment

• Read Chapter 3 The Art of Narration Giving
  Meaning to Action pp.17-28
• Clever Manka
• The Story of an Hour