Critical Strategies for Reading

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Critical Strategies for Reading

• How many ways can you analyze a story?

2
Formalist Strategies

• Focuses on language, structure, and tone
• Intrinsic Reading vs. Extrinsic
• Formalists study relationship between literary
  devices and meaning

3
Biographical Strategies

• Analyze how a work might follow actual events in
  an authors life.
• Analyze how characters may be based on people
  known by the author.
• Sometimes it can answer questions or further
  confuse the reader.
• Can at the very least serve as a control on
  interpretation.

4
Psychological Strategies

• Sigmund Freud- The founder of psychoanalytic
  theories.
• Dreams
• Unconscious Desires
• Sexual Repression
• Aspects of Psyche
• Id
• Ego
• Superego

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Psychological Strategies

• Oedipus Complex- a boys unconscious rivalry with
  his father for his mothers love and his desire to
  eliminate his father in order to take his fathers
  place with his mother.
• Electra complex- a daughters unconscious rivalry
  for her father.

6
The Historical Strategies

• Historical critics use literature as a window
  into the past because literature often provides
  hints of the past that are not available in other
  sources.
• This strategy uses history as a means of
  understanding a work of literature better.
• Historical critics see literature as a product of
  their times, shedding light on historical
  situations and times.

7
Literary History Criticism

• This category claims that literature may
  transcend time to the extent that it may concern
  readers over the years, even centuries. Followers
  of this category understand that it remains a
  part of the past in which it was made, a past
  that can reveal more fully a works language,
  purposes and ideas.

8
Marxist Criticism

• Marxist readings hold the heightened interest in
  radical reform. These critics look at literature
  as a means of aiding the proletarian social and
  economic goals.
• Marxist critics focus on the ideological content
  of a story or book. They focus upon what takes
  place within the book, implicit and explicit
  values and assumptions about matters such as
  culture, race, class, and power.
• They stress that all criticism is political in
  some way, and that even if it attempts to ignore
  class struggles, it is politicized, because it
  supports that status quo.

9
New Historicist Criticism

• Emphasizes the interaction between the historical
  context of the literature and the modern readers
  understanding interpretation of the text
• Read the historical period in all dimensions
• Stresses that the history we read is
  reconstructed

10
Cultural Criticism

• Like New Historicists, but pays particular
  attention to popular ideas present within the
  work
• Focus upon what the literary works reveal about
  the culture their values, their norms, and what
  they believed in
• Use eclectic strategies taken from New
  Historicism, Psychology, Gender Studies, and
  Deconstructionism
• Analyze not only literature, but radio talk
  shows, comic strips, calendar art, commercials,
  travel guides, baseball cards, etc.

11
Postcolonial Criticism

• Postcolonial Criticism is the study of cultural
  behavior and expression in relation to the
  formerly colonized world.
• Refers to the analysis of literary works written
  by writers who lived in countries that were at
  one time controlled by a colonial power.
• The term also refers to the analysis of literary
  works written about colonial cultures by writers
  from the colonizing power.

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Gender Criticism

• Ask what is masculine and what is feminine
• A type of Gender Criticism is Feminist, which
  places literature in a social context like
  Marxism. It explains how images of women in
  literature reflect patriarchal social forces that
  impede full equality.

13
Mythology

• Also referred to as archetypal
• Interpret hopes, fears, and expectations of a
  culture
• Focus on how humans account for their lives
  symbolically
• Since myths try to explain universal experiences,
  they follow similar patterns
• Look for underlying, recurrent patterns

14
Readers Response

• What is in readers mind not in the writing
• Meaning evolves with reader, writing does not
  have a formula or pattern
• About readers feelings not about meaning
• About how a readers experiences, memories, and
  impressions shape the meaning of the text

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Deconstructionist View

• Literary works do not have fixed meanings
• Disestablish meaning rather than establish
• Focus on gaps, ambiguity, patterns
• Argues that close examination will reveal
  conflicting, contradictory impulses that
  "deconstruct" or break down its apparent unity