Chapter 1

LITERARY CRITICISM

Definition of Literary Criticism

Literary Criticism is defined as the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. It draws
philosophical discussions, for its methods and goals, from literary theory whose concepts
and principles are being applied in the process.
To some sources, like the “Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism,” there is
no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, using the terms together to
describe the same concepts. But some critics classify literary criticism as a practical
application of literary theory, which is more general and abstract.
Literary criticism has probably existed for as long as literature. In the 4th century BC Aristotle
wrote the “Poetics,” a typology and description of literary forms with many specific
criticisms of contemporary works of arts. “Poetics” developed for the first time the concepts
of mimesis and catharsis, which are still crucial in literary study.
The older theories had paved the way and became the basis for the contemporary ones. They
had specific views of meaning in relation to the texts. Mimetic theory argued that textual
meaning is just imitated from reality. Objective theory believed that meaning is provided only
by the text. Expressive theory assumed that meaning comes only from the author. And the
pragmatic theory tool meaning as the readers’ creation.
Some of the general objectives of literary criticism are the following:
- To investigate the human nature and condition
- To think critically and with understanding about literary texts
- To broaden and deepen the ability to write effectively in academic and
professional settings and for personal growth
 - To practice the forms of professional writers, use and learn the technology needed
to make writing a profession
- To reflect on ethical and philosophical issues raised whenever one reads a
creative, explanatory, or persuasive text
- To engage in creative thought, in collaboration with other students, thus
generating new possibilities for thinking, dreaming, and challenging structures in
society
A literary criticism course focuses on critical theory as it applies to literature and culture. It
reviews a classical Greek origin of issues concerning the nature of literature and applications:
historical, formalist, archetypal, psychoanalytic, Marxist, reader-response, New Historicist,
feminist, postcolonial, American multicultural, structuralist and various post-structuralist
perspective.
The objectives of a literary criticism course usually are as follows:
1. Students will be able to articulate the broader ways in which literary theory applies
to their own culture, global culture, and their own lives;
2. Students will demonstrate through written work and in-class comments their ability
to apply various theories to works of literature and aspects of contemporary culture.
3. Students will write a substantive paper that shows their ability to compare
and synthesize the theories presented;
4. Students will demonstrate their ability to articulate theoretical concepts orally by
their class participation and formal presentation of their final paper; and
5. Student will locate, cite, and intelligently incorporate several sources (including
print materials) into their final paper and literary essays.
All this eventually provide a sense of direction and substance for this book. It exposes the
students to various literary theories; it allows them to apply those theories in their own
critiques; and it guides them how to do literary analysis through specific questions to answer
and a number of well-written papers to emulate.

THEORIES AND CRITICAL APPROACHES

Literary theories serve as lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even
culture. These different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain
assumptions within a school of theory. They also facilitate focus on particular aspects of a
literary work deemed to be important.
If a critic works on Marxist theories, s/he might focus on how the characters in a story
interact based on their economic situation. It is with a post-colonial theory, s/he might
consider the same story but look at how characters from colonial powers (Britain, France,
and even America) treat characters from, say, Africa o the Caribbean.
The schools of literary criticism and their explanations included here are, by no means, the
only ways of distinguishing these separate areas of theory. Critics use tools from two or more
schools in their work. Some would define differently or greatly expand the (very) general
statements given here. Explanations here are meant only as starting points for an investigation
here are meant only as starting points for investigation into literary theory. Readers may use
the list of scholars and works provided for each school to further understanding of these
theories.
These secondary sources are also recommended for study of literary theory:
- The Critical Tradition: Classical Texts and Contemporary Trends, 1998, edited by
David H. Richter
- Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 1999, by Lois Tyson
- Beginning Theory, 2002, by Peter Barry
- Although philosophers, critics, educators and authors have been writing about
literature since ancient times, contemporary schools of literary theory have cohered
from these discussions and now influence how scholars look at and write about
literature.

1.1 MORAL CRITICISM AND DRAMATIC CONSTRUCTION (360 BC-Present)

1.1.1 Plato
In Book X of his “Republic,” Plato may have given us the first volley of detailed and lengthy
literary criticism. The dialog between Socrates and two of his associates shows the
participants of this discussion concluding that art must play a limited and very strict role in
the perfect Greek Republic. Richter provides a nice summary of this point: “…poets may
stay as servants of the state if they teach piety and virtue, but the pleasures of art are
condemned as inherently corrupting to citizens…” (19).
One reason Plato included these ideas in his Socratic dialog is because he believed that art
was a mediocre reproduction of nature: “…what artists do… is hold the mirror up to nature:
They copy the appearances of men, animals, and objects in the physical world… and the
intelligence that went into its creation need involve nothing more than conjecture” (Richter
19). So, in short, if art does not teach morality and ethics, then it is damaging to its audience,
and for Plato this damaged his Republic.
Given this controversial approach to art, it is easy to see why Plato’s position has an impact
on literature and literary criticism even today (though scholars who critique work based on
whether or not the story teaches a moral are few – virtue may have an impact on children’s
literature, however).

1.1.2 Aristotle
In Poetics, Aristotle breaks with his teacher (Plato) in the consideration of art. Aristotle
considers poetry (and rhetoric), a productive science, where as he thought logic and physics
to be theoretical sciences, and ethics and politics practical sciences (Richter 38). Because
Aristotle saw poetry and drama as means to an end (for example, an audience’s enjoyment)
he established some basic guidelines for author to follow to achieve certain objectives.
To help authors achieve objectives, Aristotle developed elements of organization and
methods for writing effective poetry and drama known as the principles of dramatic
construction (Richter 39). Aristotle believed that elements like “…language, rhythm, and
harmony…” as well as “… plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle…” influence
the audience’s katharsis (pity and fear) or satisfaction with the work (Richter 39). And so
here we see one of the earliest attempts to explain what makes an effective or ineffective
work of literature.
Like Plato, Aristotle’s views on art heavily influenced Western thought. The debate between
Platonists and Aristotelians continued “… in the Neoplatonists of the second century AD,
the Cambridge Platonists of the latter seventeenth century, and the idealists of the romantic
movement” (Richter 17). Even today, the debate continues, and this debate is no more
evident than in some of the discussions between adherents to the schools of criticism
contained in this resource.

1.2 FORMALISM (1930S-PRESENT)

1.2.1 Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelianism
Formalists disagreed about what specific elements make a literary work “good” or “bad”; but
generally, Formalism maintains that a literary work contains certain intrinsic features, and the
theory “…defined and addressed the specifically literary qualities in the text” (Richter 699).
Therefore, it’s easy to see Formalism’s relation to Aristotle’s theories of dramatic
construction.
Formalism attempts to treat each work as its own distinct piece, free from its environment,
era, and even author. This point of view developed in reaction to “…forms of ‘extrinsic’
criticism that viewed the text as either the product of social and historical forces or a
document making an ethical statement” (699). Formalists assume that the keys to
understanding a text exist within “the text itself,” (…”the battle cry of the New Critical
effort…” and thus focus a great deal on, you guessed it, form (Tyson 118).
For the most part, Formalism is no longer used in the academy. However, New Critical
theories are still used in the academy. However, New Critical theories are still used in
secondary and college level instructions in literature and even writing (Tyson 115).

Guide Questions:
- How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbosl? (i.e. making a certain
road stand for death by constant association)
- What is the quality of the work’s organic unity “… the working together of all the
parts to make an inseperable whole…” (Tyson 121)? In other words, does how
the work is put together reflect what it is?
- How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
- How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
- How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not contribute to the
aesthetic quality of the work?
- How does the author resolve apparent contradictions within the work?
- What does the form of the work say about its content?
- Is there a central or focal passage that can be said to sum up the entirety of the work?
 - How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to the meaning
or effect of the piece?
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further you understanding of this
theory:
- Victor Shklovsky
- Roman Jakobson
- Victor Erlich-Russion Formalism: History – Doctrine, 1955
- Yuri Tynyanov
New Criticism
- John Crowe Ransom – The New Criticism, 1938
- I.A. Richards
- William Empson
- T.S. Eliot
- Allen Tate
- Cleanthes Brooks

New Aristotelianism (Chicago School of Criticism)

- R.S. Crane – Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, 1952
- Elder Olson
- Norman Maclean
- W.R. Keast
- Wayne C. Booth – The Rhetoric of Fiction, 1961

1.3 PSYCHOANALYTIC CRITICISM (1930S-PRESENT)

1.3.1 Sigmund Freud
Psychoanalytic criticism builds on Freudian theories of psychology. While we don’t have the
room here to discuss all of Freud’s work, general overview is necessary to explain
psychoanalytic literary criticism.
The Unconscious, The Desires, and the Defenses
Freud began his psychoanalytic work in the 1880s while attempting to treat behavioral
disorders in his Viennese patients. He dubbed the disorders “hysteria” and began treating
them by listening to his patients talk through their problems. Based on this work, Freud
asserted that people’s behavior is affected by their unconscious: “… the notion that human
beings are motivated, even driven, by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are
unaware…” (Tyson, 14-15).
Freud believed that our unconscious was influenced by childhood events. Freud organized
these events into developmental stages involving relationships with parents and drives of
desire and pleasure where children focus “…on different parts of the body… starting with the
mouth… shifting to the oral, anal, and phallic phases…” (Ritch 1015). These stages reflect
base levels of desire, but they also involve fear of loss (loss genitals, loss of affection from
parents, loss of life) and repression: “…the expunging from consciousness of these unhappy
psychological events” (Tyson 15).
Tyson reminds us, however, that “…repression doesn’t eliminate our painful experiences and
emotions… we unconsciously behave in ways that will allow us to ‘play out’ … our
conflicted feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress” (15). To keep all
of this conflict buried in our unconscious, Freud argued that we develop defenses: selective
perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy,
and fear of death, among others.

Id, Ego, and Superego

Freud maintained that our desires and our unconscious conflicts give rise to three areas of the
mind that wrestle for dominance as we grow from infancy, to childhood, to adulthood:
- Id – “… the location of the drives” or libido
- Ego – “… one of the major defenses against the power of the drives…” and home of
the defenses listed above
- Superego – the area of the unconscious that houses judgment (of self and others)
and “… which begins to form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex”
(Richte 1015-1016)

Oedipus Complex
Freud believed that the Oedipus complex was “…one of the most powerfully determinative
elements in the growth of the child” (Richter 1016). Essentially, the Oedipus complex
involves children’s need for their parents and the conflict that arises as children mature and
realize they are not the absolute focus of their mother’s attention: “the Oedipus complex
begins in a late phase of infantile sexuality, between the child’s third and sixth year, and it
takes a different form in males than it does in females.” (Ritcher 1016)
Freud argues that both boys and girls wish to possess their mothers, but as they grow older
“… they begin to sense that their claim to exclusive attention is thwarted by the mother’s
attention to the father…” (1016). Children, Freud maintained, connect this conflict of
attention to the intimate relations between mother and father, relations from which the
children are excluded. Freud believed that the “results is a murderous rage against the
father… and a desire to possess the mother” (1016).
Freud pointed out, however, that “…the Oedipus complex differs in boys and girls… the
functioning of the related castration complex” (1016). In short, Freud thought that “... during
the Oedipal rivalry [between boys and their fathers], boys fantasized that punishment for their
rage will take the form of …” castration (1016). When boys effectively work through this
anxiety, Freud argued, “… the boy learns to identify with the father in the hope of someday
possessing a woman like his mother. In girls, the castration complex does not take the form of
anxiety… the results are frustrated rage in which the girl shifts her sexual desire from the
mother to the father” (1016).
Freud believed that eventually, the girls’ spurned advanced toward the father give way to a
desire to possess a man like her father later in life. Freud believed that the impact of the
unconscious, id, ego, superego, the defenses, and the Oedipus complexes was inescapable
and that these elements of the mind influence all our behavior (and even our dreams) as
adults – of course this behavior involves what we write.
Freud and literature
So, what does all this psychological business have to do with literature and the study
of literature? Put simply, 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”. (Tyson 29). Tyson provides some insightful and applicable
questions to help guide our understanding of psychoanalytic criticism.
Guide questions:
 How do the operations of repression structure or inform the works?
 Are there any oedipal dynamics – or any other family dynamics – are work here?
 How characters’ behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of
psychoanalytic concepts of any kinds (for example…fear or fascination with death ,
sexuality – which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior – as a
primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego – id – superego)?
 What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
 What might a given interpretation of a literary works suggest about
psychological motives of the reader?
 Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden meanings?
Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using these
“problem words”?
Here is a list of scholars you can explore to further your understanding of this theory:
 Harold Bloom – A theory of Poetry, 1973; Poetry and Repression: Revisionism
from Blake to Stevens, 1976
 Peter Brooks
 Jacque Lacan – The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis,
1988; “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud” (from
Écrits: A Selection, 1957)
 Jane Gallop – Reading Lacan, 1985
 Julia Kristeva – Revolution in Poetic Language, 1984
 Marshall Alcorn – Changing the Subject in English Class: Discourse and the
Construction of Desire, 2002
Carl Jung
Jungian criticism attempts to explore the connection between literature and what Carl
Jung (a student of Freud) called the “collective unconscious” of the human race: “… racial
memory, through which the spirit of the whole human species manifests itself” (Richer 504).
Jungian criticism, closely related to Freudian theory because of its connection to
psychoanalysis, assumes that all stories and symbols are based on mythic models from
mankind’s past.
 Based on these commonalities, Jung developed archetypal myths, the Syzygy: “… a
quaternion composing whole, the unified self of which people are in search” (Richer 505).
These archetypes are the shadow, the Anima, the Animus, and the spirit “…beneath… [the
shadow] is the Anima, the feminine side of the male Self, and the Animus, the corresponding
masculine side of the female Self” (Richer 505).
In literary analysis, Jungian critic would look for archetypes (also see the discussion
of Northrop Frye in the Structuralism section) in creative works: “Jungian criticism is
generally involved with a search for the embodiment of these symbols within particular
works of arts.” (Richer 505). When dealing with this sort of criticism, it is often useful to
keep a handbook of mythology and a dictionary of symbols on hand.
Guide questions:
 What connections can we make between elements of the text and the
archetypes? (Mask, Shadow, Anima, Animus).
 How do the characters in the text mirror the archetypal figures? (Great Mother or
nurturing Mother, Whore, destroying Crone, Lover, Destroying Angel)
 How does the text mirror the archetypal narrative patterns? (Quest, Night – Sea –
Journey)
 How symbolic is the imagery in the work?
 Does the “hero” embark on a journey in either a physical or spiritual sense?
 Is there a journey to an underworld of land of the dead?
 What trials or ordeals does the protagonist face? What is the reward for
overcoming them?

Here is a list of scholars you can explore to further your understanding of this theory:

 Maud Bodkin – Archetypal Pattern in Poetry, 1934

 Carl Jung – The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9, Part 1
Collected Works. 2nd ed. Trans. R.F.C. Hull, 1968
 Bettina Knapp – Music, Archetype and the Writer: A Jungian View, 1988
 Richard Sugg – Jungian Literary Criticism, 1993

Marxist Criticism (1930s – Present)

Based on the theories of Karl Marx (and so influenced by philosopher Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel), this school concerns itself with class differences, economics and otherwise,
as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system: “Marxism attempts to
reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate is the ultimate source of
our experience” (Tyson 277).
Theorists working in the Marxist tradition, therefore, are interested in answering the
overarching question, whom does it [the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.] The elite?
The middle class? And Marxists critics are also interested in how the lower or working
classes are oppressed in everyday life and in literature.

Material Dialectic
 The Marxist school follows a process of thinking called the material dialectic. This
belief system maintains that “…what drives historical chance are the material realities of the
economic base of society, rather than the ideological superstructure of politics, law,
philosophy, religion, and the art that is built upon that economic base” (Richer 1088).
Marx asserts that “…stable societies develop sites of resistance: contradictions build
into the social system that ultimately lead to social revolution and the development of a new
society upon the old” (1088). This cycle of contradiction, tension, and revolution must
continue there will always be conflict between the upper, middle, and lower (working)
classes and this conflict will be reflected in literature and other forms of expression – art,
music, movies, etc.
The Revolution
The continuing conflict between the classes will lead to upheaval and revolution by
oppressed peoples and form the groundwork for a new order of society and economics where
capitalism is abolished. According to Marx, the revolution will be led by working class
(others think peasants will lead the uprising) under the guidance of intellectuals. Once the
elite and middle class overthrown, the intellectuals will compose an equal society where
everyone owns everything (socialism – not to be confused with Soviet or Maoist
Communism).
Though a staggering number of different nuances exist within this school of literary
theory, Marxist critics generally work in areas covered by the following questions.
Guide questions:
 Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
 What is the social class of the author?
 Which class does the work claim to represent?
 What values does it reinforce?
 What values does it subvert?
 What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those
it portrays?
 What social classes do the characters represent?
 How do the characters from different classes interact or conflict?

Here is a list of scholars to explore to further your understanding of this theory:

 Karl Marx – (with Friedrich Engels) The Communist Manifesto, 1848; Das
Kapital, 1867; “Consciousness Derived from Material Conditions” from The
German Ideology, 1932; “On Greek Art in Its Time” from A Contribution to
the Critique of political Economy, 1859
 Leon Trotsky – “Literature and Revolution,” 1923
 Georg Lukács – “The Ideology of Modernism,” 1956
 Walter Benjamin – “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,”
1936
 Theodor W. Adorno
 Louis Althusser – Reading Capital, 1965
 Terry Eagleton – Marxism and Literacy Criticism, Criticism and Ideology, 1976
 Frederic Jameson – Marxism and Form. The Political Unconscious, 1971
  Jürgen Habermas – The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1990

Reader – Response Criticism (1960s – present)

At its most basic level, reader response criticism 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” (Tyson 154).
Tyson explains that “…reader – response theorist share two beliefs: 1) that the role of
the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and 2) that readers do not
passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they
actively make them the meaning they find in literature” (154). In this way, reader – response
theory shares common ground with some of the deconstructionists discussed in the Post –
structural area when they talk about “the death of the author,” or her displacement as the
(author) itarian figure in the text.
Guide questions:
 How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?
 What does a phrase – by – phrase analysis of a short literary text, or a key portion of
a longer text, tell us about the reading experience prestructured by (built into) that
text?
 Do the sound/shapes of the words as they appear on the page or how they are spoken
by the reader enhance or change the meaning of the word/works?
 How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader’s response is, or
is analogous to, the topic of the story?
 What does the body of criticism published about a literary text suggested about the
critics who interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience produced by
that text? (Tyson 191)
Here is a list of scholars to explore further your understanding of this theory:
 Peter Rabinowitz – Before Reading, 1987
 Stanley Fish – Is There A Text in This Class? – The Authority of
Interpretive Communities, 1980
 Elizabeth Freund – The Return of the Reader: Reader – Response Criticism, 1987
 David Bleich
 Norman Holland – The Dynamics of Literary Response, 1968
 Louise Rosenblatt
 Wolfgang Iser – The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction
from Bunyan to Beckett, 1974
 Hans Rober Jauss

Structuralism and Semiotics (1920s – Present)

Linguistic Roots
The structuralist school emerges from theories of language and linguistics, and it
looks for underlying elements in culture and literature that can be connected so that
critics can
develop general conclusions about the individual works and the systems from which they
emerge. In fact, structuralism maintains that “… practically everything we do that is
specifically human is expressed in language” (Richer 809). Structuralists believe that these
language symbols extend far beyond written or oral communication,
For example, codes that represent all sorts of things permeate everything we do: “the
performance of music requires complex notation…our economic life rests upon the exchange
of labor and goods for symbols, such as cash, checks, stock, and certificates… social life
depends on the meaning gestures and signals of ‘body language’ and revolves around the
exchange of small, symbolic favors: drinks, parties, dinners” (Richer 809).
Pattern and Experience
Structuralist assert that, since language exists in patterns, certain underlying elements
are common to all human experiences. Structuralist believe we can observe these experiences
through pattern: “…if you examine the physical structures of all buildings built in urban
America in 1850 to discover the underlying principles that govern their composition, for
example, principles of mechanical construction or pf artistic form…” you are using a
structuralist lens (Tyson 197).
Moreover, “you are also engaged in structuralist activity if you examine the structure
of a single building to discover how its composition demonstrates underlying principles of
structural system. In the first example…you’re generating structural system of classification;
In the second, you’re demonstrating that an individual item belongs to a particular structural
class” (Tyson 197).
Structuralism in Literacy Theory
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 underlying principles of a given structure system” (Tyson 197 – 198).
Northrop Frye, however, takes a different approach to structuralism by exploring
ways in which genres of Western literature fall into his four mythoi (also see Jungian
criticism in the Freudian Literary Criticism resource):
1. Theory of modes, or historical criticism (tragic, comic, and thematic);
2. Theory of symbols, or ethical criticism (literal/descriptive, formal, mythical, and
anagogic);
3. Theory of myths, or archetypal criticism (comedy, romance, tragedy, irony/satire);
4. Theory of genres or rhetorical criticism (epos, prose, drama, lyrics) (Tyson 240).
Peirce and Saussure
Two important theorists form the framework of structuralism: Charles Sanders Peirce
and Ferdinand de Saussure. Peirce gave structuralism three important ideas for analyzing the
sign systems that permeate and define our experiences:
1. “Iconic signs, in which the signifier resembles the thing signified (such as the stick
figures on washroom doors) that signify ‘Men’ or ‘Women’;
2. Indexes, in which the signifier is a reliable indicator of the presence of the signified
(like fire and smoke);
 3. True symbols, in which the signifier’s relation to the thing signified is completely
arbitrary and conventional [just as the sound /kat/ or the written word cat are
conventional signs for the familiar feline]” (Richer 810)
These elements become very important when we move into deconstruction in the
Postmodernism resource. Peirce also influenced the semiotic school of structuralist theory
that uses sign systems.
Sign System
The discipline of semiotics plays an important role in structuralist literary theory and
cultural studies. Semioticians “…appl[y] structuralist insights to the study of …sign
systems…a non – linguistic object or behavior…that can be analyzed as it were a language”
(Tyson 205). Specifically, “…semiotics examines the ways non – linguistics objects and
behaviors ‘tell’ us something.
For example, the picture of the reclining blond beauty in the skin – tight, black velvet
dress on the billboard… ‘tell’ us that those who drink this whiskey (presumably male) will be
attractive to…beautiful women like the one displayed here” (Tyson 205). Lastly, Richer
states, semiotics takes off from Peirce – for whom language is one numerous sign systems –
and structuralism takes off from Saussure, for whom language was a sign system par
excellence” (810).
Guide questions:
 Using a specific structuralist framework (like Frye’s mythoi) …how should the text
be classified in terms of its genre? In other words, what patterns exist within the
text that make it part of other works like it?
 Using specific structuralist framework … analyze the text’s narrative operations…
can speculate about the relationship between the…[text]…and the culture from which
the text emerged? In other words, what patterns exist within the text that make it a
product of a larger culture?
 What patterns exist within the text that connect it to the larger “human” experience?
In other words, can we connect patterns and elements within the text to other texts
from other cultures to map similarities that tell us more about the common human
experience? This is a liberal humanist move that assumes that since we are all
human, we all share basic human commonalities.
 What rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized in order to make sense
of the text?
 What is the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or ‘text,’ such as
high – school football games, television and/or magazine ads for particular brand
of perfume…or even media coverage of an historical event? (Tyson 225)
Here is a list of scholars to explore to further your understanding of this theory:
 Charles Sanders Peirce
 Ferdinand de Saussure – Course in General Linguistics, 1923
 Claude Lévi – Strauss – The Elementary Structure Kinship, 1949; “The
Structural Study of Myth,” 1955
 Northrop Frye – Anatomy of Criticism Four Essays, 1957
 Noam Chomsky – Syntactic Structures, 1957; Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, 1965
 Roland Barthes – Critical Essays, 1964; Mythologies, 1957; Image, Music, Text 1977
 Umberto Eco – The Role of the Reader, 1979
Can the center hold?
This approach concerns itself with the ways and places where systems, frameworks,
definitions, and certainties break down. Post – 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 singular Truth (with a
capital T) is absurd because there exists no unified truth.
Post – Structuralism holds that there are many truths, that frameworks must bleed, and
that structures must become unstable or decentered. Moreover, structures or hegemonies and
power how these elements contribute to and/or maintain structures to enforce hierarchy.
Therefore, post – structural theory carries implications far beyond literary criticism.
Meaning’s Meaning
By questioning the process of developing meaning, post – structural theory strikes at
the very heart of philosophy and reality and throws knowledge making into what Jacques
Derrida called “free play”: “The concept of centered structure…is contradictorily coherent…
the concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a free play which is constituted upon
a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude, which is itself beyond the reach of the
free play” (qtd.in Richter, 878 - 879).
Derrida first posited these ideas in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University, when he
delivered “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”: “Perhaps
something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called ‘event,’
if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural –
or structuralist – thought to reduce or to suspect. But let me use the term “term” anyway,
employing it with caution and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this event will have the
exterior form of a rupture and a redoubling” (qtd. In Richter, 878). In his presentation,
Derrida challenged structuralism’s most basic ideas.
Can Language Do That?
Post – Structural theory can be tied to moved against Modernist/Enlightenment ideas
(philosopher’s: Immanuel Kant, Réne Descartes, John Locke, etc.) and Western religious
beliefs (neo – Platonism, Catholicism, etc.) An early pioneer of this resistance was
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In his essay, “On Truth and Lies in an Extra – moral Sense”
(1873), Nietzsche rejects even basis of our knowledge making, language, as a reliable system
of communication: “The various languages, juxtaposed, show that words are never concerned
with truth, never with adequate expression…” (248)
Below is an example, adapted from the Tyson text, of some language free play and
simple form of deconstruction:
Time (noun) flies (verb) like an arrow (adverb clause). = Time passes quickly.
Time (verb) flies (object) like an arrow (adverb clause) = Get out your stopwatch and time
the speed of files as you would time an arrow’s flight.
Time flies (noun) like (verb) an arrow (object) =
Time flies are fond of arrows (or at least of one arrow).
So, post – structuralists asserts that if we cannot trust language systems to convey
truth, the very bases of truth are unreliable and the universe – or at least the universe we have
constructed – becomes unraveled or de – centered. Nietzsche uses language slip as a base to
move into slip and shift of truth as a whole: “What is truth …truths are an illusion about
which it has been forgotten that they are illusions…” (On Truth and Lies 250).
This returns us to the discussion in the structuralist area regarding signs, signifiers,
and signified. Essentially, post – structuralism holds that we cannot trust the sign = signifiers
+ signified formula, that there is a breakdown of certainty between sign/signifier, which
leaves language systems hopelessly inadequate for relaying meaning so that we are (returning
to Derrida) in eternal free play or instability.
What’s Left?
Important to note, however, is that deconstruction is not just about tearing down – this
is a common misconception. Derrida, in “Signature Event Context,” addressed this limited
view of post – structural theory: “Deconstruction cannot limit or proceed immediately to a
neutralization: it must…practice an overturning of the system. It is only on this conditions
that deconstruction will provide itself the means with which to intervene in the field of
oppositions that criticizes, which is also field of nondiscursive forces” (328).
Derrida reminds us through deconstruction we can identify the in – between and the
marginalized to begin interstitial knowledge building.
Modernism vs. Postmodernism
With the resistance to traditional forms of knowledge making (science, religion,
language), inquiry communication, and building meaning take on different form to the post –
structuralist. We can look at this difference as a split between Modernism and
Postmodernism. The table below, excerpted from theorist Ihab Hassan’s The
Dismemberment of Orpheus (1998), offers us a way to make sense of some differences
between modernism, dominated by Enlightenment ideas, and postmodernism, a space of free
play and discourse.
Keep in mind that even the author, Hassan, “…is quick to point out how the
dichotomies are themselves insecure, equivocal” (Harvey 42). Though post – structuralism is
uncomfortable with binaries, Hassan provides us with some interesting contrasts consider:
Modernism vs. Postmodernism

Modernism Postmodernism
Romanticism/Symbolism Paraphysics/Dadaism

Form (conjunctive, closed) Anti – form (disjunctive, open)

Purpose Play

Design Chance

hierarchy Anarchy

Mastery/logos Exhaustion/silence

Art objective/finished work/logos Process/performance/antithesis

Centering Absence
 Genre/boundary Text/intertext

Semantics Rhetoric Text/intertext

Metaphor Metonymy

Root/depth Rhizome/surface

Signified Signifier

Narrative/Grande histoire Anti – narrative/petite histoire

Genital/phallic Polymorphous/androgynous

Paranoia Schizophrenia

Origin/cause Difference – difference/trace

God the Father The Holy Ghost

Determinacy Inter determinacy

Transcendence Immanence

Post – Structuralism and Literature

If we are questioning/resisting the methods we use to build knowledge (science,
religion, language), then traditional literary notions are also thrown into free play. These
include the narrative and the author:
Narrative
The narrative is a fiction that locks readers into interpreting text in a single,
chronological manner that does not reflect our experiences. Postmodern texts may not adhere
to traditional notions of narrative. For example, in his seminal work, Naked Lunch, William
S. Burroughs explodes the traditional narrative structure and critiques almost everything
Modern: modern government, modern medicine, modern law – enforcement. Other examples
of authors playing with narrative include John Fowles; in the final sections of The French
Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles steps outside his narrative to speaks with the reader directly.
Moreover, grand narratives are resisted. For example, the belief that through science
the human will improve is questioned. In addition, metaphysics is questioned. Instead
postmodern knowledge building is local, situated, slippery, and self – critical (i.e. it
questions itself and its role). Because post – structural critics even look for ways texts
contradict themselves (see typical questions below).
Author
The author is displaced as absolute author(ity), and the reader plays a role in
interpreting the text and developing meaning (as best as possible) from the text. In “The
Death of Author,” Roland Barthes argues that the idea of singular authorship is a recent
phenomenon. Barthes explains that the death of author shatters Modernist notions of
authority and knowledge building (145).
Lastly, he states that once the author is dead and the Modernist idea of singular
narrative (and thus authority) is overturned, texts become plural, and the interpretation of text
becomes collaborative process between author and audience: “…a text is made of multiple
writings, drawn from many cultures entering into mutual relations of dialogue…but there is
one place where this multiplicity is focused and that placed is the reader” (148). Barthes ends
his essay by empowering the reader: “Classical criticism has never paid any attention to the
reader…the writer is the only person in literature…it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the
birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author” (148).
Guide questions:
 How is the language thrown into free play or questioned in work? For example,
note how Anthony Burgess plays with language (Russian vs English) in a
Clockwork Orange, or how Burroughs plays with names and language in Naked
Lunch.
 How does the work undermined or contradict generally accepted truths?
 How does the author (or character) omit, change, reconstruct memory and identity?

 How does a work fulfill or move outside the established conventions of its genre?
 How does the work deals with the separation (or lack thereof) between writer,
work, and reader?
 What ideology does the text seem to promote?
 What is left out of the text that if included might undermine the goal of the work?
 If we changed the point of view of the text – say from one character to another, or
multiple characters – how would the story changed? Whose story is not told in
the text? Who is left and why might the author have omitted this character’s
tales?
Here is the list of scholars to explores to further your understanding this theory:
 Immanuel Kant – “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”,
1784 (as baseline to understand what Nietzsche was resisting)
 Friedrich Nietzsche – “On Truth and Lies in Extra – moral Sense,” 1873; The
Gray Science, 1882; Thus, Spoke Zarathustra, A Book for All and None, 1885
 Jacques Derrida – “Structure Sign and Play in Discourse of Human Sciences,”
1966; of Grammatology, 1967; “Signature Even Context,” 1972
 Roland Barthes – “The Death of the Author,” 1967
 Deleuze and Guattari – “Rhizome,” 1976
 Jean-Francois Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition, 1979
 Michele Foucault – The Foucault Reader, 1984
 Stephen Toulmin – Cosmopolis, 1990
 Martin Heidegger – Basic Writings, 1993
 Paul Cilliers – Complexity and Postmodernity, 1993
 Ihab Hassan – The Dismemberment of Orpheus, 1998; From Postmodernism
to Postmodernity: The Local/Global Context, 2001
Postmodern Literature
 William S. Burroughs – Naked Lunch, 1959
 Angela Carter – Burning Your Boats, Stories from 1962-1993 (first published as a
collection in 1995)
  Kathy Acker – Blood and Guts in High School, 1978
 Paul Auster – City of Glass (volume one of the New York City Trilogy), 1985 (as a
graphic novel published by Neon Lit, a division of Avon Books, 1994)
 Lynne Tillman – Haunted Houses, 1987
 David Wojnarowicz – The Waterfront Journals, 1996
New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
This school, influenced by structuralist and post-structuralist theories, seeks to
reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with cultural
and political movements of the time (Michael Foucault’s concept of episteme). New
Historicism assumes that every work is a product of historic moment that created it.
Specifically, New Historicism is “…a practice that has developed out of contemporary
theory, particularly the structuralist realization that all human systems are symbolic and
subject to the rules of language, and the deconstructive realization that there is no way of
positioning oneself as an observer outside the closed circle of textuality” (Richter 1205).
A helpful way of considering New Historical theory, Tyson explains, is to think about
the retelling of history itself: “…questions asked by traditional historians and by new
historicists are quite different…traditional historians ask, ‘What happened?’ and ‘What does
the event been interpreted?’ and ‘What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?’
(278). So New Historicism resist the notion that “…history is a series of events that have a
linear, causal relationship: event A caused event B; event B caused event C; and so on”
(Tyson 278).
New Historicist do not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather that
we interpret events as a product 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). Moreover, New Historicism
holds that we are hopelessly subjective interpreters of what we observe.
Guide questions:
 What language/characters/events present in the work reflect the current events of
the author’s day?
 Are there words in the text that have changed their meaning from the time of
the writing?
 How are such events interpreted and presented?
 How are events’ interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
 Does the work’s presentation support or condemn the event?
 Can it be seen to do both?
 How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of
the day?
 How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with
other historical/cultural texts from the same period…?
 How can we use a literary work to “map” the interplay of both traditional and
subversive discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or
the cultures in which the work has been interpreted?
 How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?
Here is a list of scholars you are encouraged to explore to further your understanding of this
theory:
 Michel Foucault – The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human
Sciences, 1970; Language, Counter-memory, Practice, 1977.
 Clifford Geertz – The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973; “Deep Play: Notes on the
Balinese Cockfight,” 1992
 Hayden White – Metahistory, 1974; “The Politics of Historical
Interpretation: Discipline and De-sublimation,” 1982
 Stephen Greenblatt – Renaissance self-Fashioning: From More to
Shakespeare, 1980
 Pierre Bourdieu – Outline of a Theory of Practice, 1977; Homo
Academicus, 1984; The Field of Cultural Production, 1993
Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)

Victors write history

Post-colonial criticism is similar to cultural studies, but it assumes a unique
perspective on literature and politics that warrants a separate discussion. Specifically, 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).
Therefore, a post-colonial critic might be interested in work such as Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe where colonial ‘…ideology [is] manifest in Crusoe’s colonialist attitude
toward the land upon which he’s shipwrecked and toward the black man he ‘colonizes’ and
names Friday” (Tyson 377). In addition, post-colonial theory might point out that “…despite
Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) obvious anti-colonist agenda, the novel points to the
colonized population as the standard of savagery to which Europeans are contrasted” (Tyson
375). Post-colonial criticism also takes the form of the literature composed by authors that
critique Euro-centric hegemony.

A Unique Perspective on Empire

Seminal post-colonial writers such as Nigerian author Chinua Achebe and Kenyan
author Ngugi wa Thiong’o have written a number of stories recounting the suffering of
colonized people. For example, in Things Fall Apart, Achebe details the strife and
devastation that occurred when British colonist began moving inland from the Nigerian coast.

Rather than glorifying the exploratory nature pf European colonist as they expanded
their sphere of influence, Achebe narrates the destructive events that led to the death and
enslavement of thousands of Nigerians when the British imposed their Imperial Government.
In turn, Achebe points out the negative effects (and shifting ideas of identity and culture)
caused by the imposition of western religion and economics on Nigerians during colonial rule
Power, Hegemony, and Literature

Post-colonial criticism also questions the role of the western literary canon and
western history as dominant forms of knowledge making. The terms “first-world”, “second
world”, “third world”, “fourth world”, nations are critiqued by post-colonial critics because
they reinforce the dominant positions of western cultures populating first world status. This
critique includes the literary canon an history written from the perspective of first-world
cultures. So, for example, a post-colonial critic might question the works included in “the
canon” because the canon does not contain works by authors outside western culture.
Moreover, the authors included in the canon often reinforce colonial hegemonic
ideology, such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart Darkness. Western critics might consider Heart of
Darkness an effective critique of colonial behavior. But post-colonial theorist and authors
might disagree with this perspective: “…as Chinua Achebe observes, the novel’s
condemnation of European is based on a definition of Africans as savages: beneath their
veneer of civilization, the Europeans are, the novel tells us, barbaric as the Africans. And
indeed, Achebe notes, the novel portrays Africans as a pre-historic mass of frenzied, howling,
incomprehensible barbarians…” (Tyson 374-375).
Guide questions:
 How does the literacy text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects
pf colonial oppression?
 What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity, including
the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issue as double
consciousness and hybridity?
 What person(s) or groups does the work identity as “other” or stranger? How are
such persons/groups described and treated?
 What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist
resistance?
 What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference – the ways in
which race. Religion, class, gender, sexual, orientation, cultural beliefs and customs
combine to form individual identity – in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others,
and the world in which we live?
 How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, theme, or
assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
 Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures or different post-colonial
populations?
 How does a literacy text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist
ideology through its representation of colonialization and/or its inappropriate
silence about colonized peoples? (Tyson 378-379)
Here is the list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this
theory:
Criticism
 Edward Said-Orientalism, 1978; Culture and Imperialism, 1994
 Kamau Brathwaite - The History of the Voice, 1979
 Gayatri Spivak - In other word: Essays in Cultural Politic, 1987
  Dominick LaCapra – The Bounds of Race: Perspective on Hegemony and Resistance,
1991
 Homi Bhabha – The Location of Culture, 1994
Literature and non-fiction
 Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart, 1958
 Ngugi wa Thiong’o – The River Between, 1965
 Sembene Ousman – God’s Bits of Wood, 1962
 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – Heat and Dust, 1975
 Buchi Emecheta – The Joys and Motherhood, 1979
 Keri Hulme – The Bone People, 1983
 Robertson Davies – What’s Bred in the Bone, 1985
 Kazuo Ishiguro – The remains of the Day, 1988
 Bharati Mukherjee – Jasmine, 1989
 Jill Ker Conway – The Road from Coorain, 1989
 Helena Norberg-Hodge – Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, 1991
 Michael Ondaatje – The English Patient, 1992
 Gita Mehta – A River Sutra, 1993
 Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things, 1997
 Patrick Chamoiseau – Texaco, 1997

Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)

S/he
Feminist criticism is concerned with “…the ways in which literature (and other
cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and
psychological oppression of women” (Tyson). This school of theory looks at how aspects of
ours culture are inherently patriarchal (male dominated) and “…this critique strives to expose
the explicit and implicit misogyny, in the male writing about women” (Richter 1346). This
misogyny, Tyson reminds us, can extend into diverse areas of our culture: “Perhaps the most
chilling example…is found in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for
both sexes often have been tested on male subjects only” (83).
Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization
such as the exclusion of women critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a
tendency to under-represent the contribution of women writers” (Tyson 82-83).
Common Space in Feminist Theories
Though a number of different approaches exist in feminist criticism, there exist
some areas of commonality. This list is excerpted from Tyson:
1. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and
psychologically; patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept
so
 2. In every domain where patriarchy reigns, woman is other: she is
marginalized, defined only by her difference from male norms and values
3. All Western (Anglo-European) civilizations is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideology,
for example, in the biblical portrayal of Eve as the origin of sin and death in the
world
4. While biology determines our sex (male or female), culture determines our gender
(masculine or feminine)
5. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and literacy criticism, has as
its ultimate goal to change the world by prompting gender equality
6. Gender issues play a part in every aspect of human production and experience,
including the production and experience of literature, whether we are
consciously aware of these issues or not (91).
Feminist criticism has, in ways, followed what some theorist calls the three waves of
feminism:
1. First Wave Feminism – late 1700s-early 1900’s: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft
(A vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the
sexes. Activities like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the
women’s suffrage in 1920 with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment

2. Second Wave Feminism – early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working
conditions necessary in American during World War II, movements such as the
National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political
activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le deuxieme sexe, 1972) and Elaine
Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theorist dove-
tailed with the American Civil Rights movement

3. Third Wave Feminism – early 1990s-pesent: resisting the perceived essentialist

(over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle
class focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-
structural and contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on
marginalized populations’ experience. Writers like Alice Walker work to “…
reconcile it [feminism] with the concerns of the black community…[and] the
survival and wholeness of her people, men and women both, and for the promotion
of dialog and community as well as for the valorization of women and of all the
varieties of work women perform” (Tyson 97).
Guide questions:
 How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
 What are the power relationship between men and women (or characters assuming
male/female role defined?
 How are male and female roles defined?
 What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
 How do characters embody these traits?
 Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this
change others’ reactions to them?
 What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially,
or psychologically) of patriarchy?
 What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of
resisting patriarchy?
 What does the work say about women’s creativity?
  What does the history of works reception by the public and by the critics tell us
about the operation of patriarchy?
 What role the work play in terms of women’s literary history and literary
tradition? (Tyson)
Here is the list of the scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of
this theory:
 Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1972
 Simone de Beauvoir – Le deuxieme sexe, 1972
 Julia Kristeva – About Chinese Women, 1977
 Elaine Showalter – A literature of Their Own, 1977; “Towards a Feminist
Poetics,” 1979
 Deborah E. McDowell – “New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism,” 1980
 Alice Walker – In a Search of Our Mother’s Gardens, 1983
 Lillian S. Robinson – “Treason out Text: Feminist Challenges to the Literary
Canon,” 1983
 Camille Paglia – Sexual Personae: The Androgyne in Literature and Art, 1990
Gender Studies and Queer Theory (1970s-present)

Gender(s), Power, and Marginalization

Gender studies and queer theory explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized
populations (woman as other) in literature and culture. Much of the work in gender studies
and queer theory, while influenced by feminist criticism, emerges from post-structural
interest in fragmented, de-centered knowledge building (Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault),
language (the breakdown of sign-signifier), and psychoanalysis (Lacan)
A primary concern in gender studies and queer theory is the manner in which gender
and sexuality is discussed: “Effective as this work [feminism] was in changing what teachers
taught and what the students read, there was a sense on the part of some feminist critics
that…it was still the old game that was being played, when what its needed was anew game
entirely. The argument posed was that in order to counter patriarchy, it was necessary not
merely to think about new texts, but to think about them in radically new ways” (Richter
1432).
Therefore, a critic working in gender studies and queer theory might even be
uncomfortable with the binary established by many feminist scholars between masculine and
feminist scholars between masculine and feminine: “Cixous (following Derrida in Of
Grammatology) sets sun/moon…father/mother, logos/pathos). Each pair can be analyzed as a
hierarchy in which the former term represents the positive and masculine and the latter the
negative and feminine and masculine and the latter the negative and feminine principle”
(Richer 1433-1434)
In – Between
Many critics working in gender and queer theory are interested in the breakdown of
the binaries such as male and female, the in-betweens (also following Derrida’s interstitial
knowledge building). For example, gender studies and queer theory maintains that cultural
definitions of sexuality and what it means to be male and female are in flux: “…the
distinction between “masculine” and “feminine” activities and behavior is constantly
changing, so that women who wear baseball caps and fatigues…can be perceived as more
piquantly sexy by some heterosexual man than those women who wear white frocks and
gloves and look down demurely” (Richter 1437).
Moreover, Richter reminds us that as we learn more about our genetic structure, the
biology of male/female becomes increasingly complex and murky: “even the physical
dualism of sexual genetic structures and bodily parts breaks down when one considers those
instances – XXY syndromes, natural sexual bimorphisms, as well as surgical transsexuals –
that defy attempts at binary classification” (1437).
Guide questions:
 What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful)
and feminine (passive marginalized) and how do the characters support these
traditional roles?
 What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or character who question
the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
 What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived
masculine/feminine binary? In the other words, what elements exhibit traits of
both (bisexual)?
 How does the author present the text? Is it a more hesitant or even collaborative?
 What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer
works, and how are those portrayals of its characters?
 What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or
queer works?
 What does the work contribute to knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience
and history, including literary history?
 How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who
are apparently homosexual?
 What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically,
psychologically) homophobic?
 How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual
“identity,” that is the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the
separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual?

Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this
theory:
 Luce Irigaray – Speculum of the Other Woman, 1974
 Helene Cixous – “The Laugh of the Medussa,” 1976
 Laura Mulvey – “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 1975; “Afterthoughts
on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 1981
 Michele Foucault – The History of Sexuality, Volume I, 1980
 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – Epistemology of the Closet, 1994
 Lee Edelman – “Homographies,” 1989
 Michael Warner
 Judith Butler – “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 1991

Ecocriticism (1960-Present)
 Ecocriticism is umbrella term under which a variety of approaches fall; this can make
it a difficult term to define. As Eco critic Lawrence Buell says, ecocriticism is an
“increasingly heterogeneous movement” (1). But, “simply put, ecocriticism is the study of
the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (Glotfelty xvii) the
complex intersections between environment and culture, believing that “human culture is
connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it “(Glotfelty xix). Ecocriticism
is interdisciplinary, calling for collaboration between natural scientists, writers, literary
critics, anthropologist, historians and more. Ecocriticism asks us to examine ourselves and
the world around us, critiquing the way that we represent, interact with, and construct the
environment, both “natural” and manmade. At the heart of ecocriticism, many maintain, is “a
commitment to environmentality from whatever critical vantage point” (Buell 11). The
“challenge” for Eco critics is “keep[ing] one eye on the ways in which ‘nature’ is always
[…] culturally constructed, and the other on the fact that nature really exist” (Gerrard 10).
Similar to critical traditions examining gender and race, ecocriticism deals not only with the
socially – constructed, often dichotomous categories we create for reality, but with reality
itself.

First and Second Waves

Several scholars have divided Ecocriticism into two waves (Buell)(Glotfelty),

recognizing the first as taking place throughout the eighties and nineties. The first wave is
characterized by its emphasis on nature writing as an object of study and as a meaningful
practice (Buell). Central to this wave and to the majority of Eco critics still today is the
environmental crisis of our age, seeing it as the duty of both the humanities and the natural
sciences to raise awareness and invent solution for a problem that is both cultural and
physical. As such, a primary concern in first-wave ecocriticism was to “speak for” nature
(Buell 11). This is, perhaps, where ecocriticism gained its reputation as an “avowedly
political mode of analysis” (Gerrard 3). This wave, unlike its successor, kept the cultural
distinction between human and nature, promoting the value of nature.

The second wave is particularly modern in its breaking down of some of the long-
standing distinctions between the human and the non-human, questioning these very concepts
(Gerrard 5). The boundaries between the human and the non-human, nature and non-nature
are discussed as constructions, and Eco critics challenge these constructions, asking (among
other things) how they frame the environmental crisis and its solution. This wave brought
with it a redefinition of the term ‘environment,” expanding its meaning to include both
“nature” and the urban (Buell 11). Out of this expansion has grown the ecojustice movement,
one of the more political of ecocriticism branches that is “raising an awareness of class, race,
and gender through ecocritical reading of text “ (Bressler 236), often examining the plight of
the poorest of a population who are the victims of population are seen as having less access
to “nature” in the traditional sense.

These waves are not exactly distinct, and there is debate over what exactly
constitutes the two. For instance, some ecocriticism will claim activism has been a defining
feature of ecocriticism from the beginning, while others see activism as a defining feature of
primary the first wave. While the exact features attributed to each wave may be disputed, it
is clear that Ecocriticism continues to evolve and has undergone several shifts in attitude and
direction since its conception.

Tropes and Approaches

Pastoral
 This trope, found in much British and American literature, focuses on the dichotomy
between urban and rural life, is “deeply entrenched in Western culture” (Gerrard 33). At the
forefront of works which display pastoralism is a general idealization of the nature and the
rural and the demonization of the urban. Often, such works show a “retreat “from city life to
the country while romanticizing rural life, depicting an idealized rural existence that
“obscures” the reality of the hard work living in such areas requires (Gerrard 33). Greg
Gerrard identifies three branches of the pastoral : Classic Pastoral, “characterized by
nostalgia” (37) and an appreciation of nature as a place for human relaxation and reflection;
Romantic Pastoral, a period after the Industrial Revolution that saw “rural” independence” as
desirable against the expansion of the urban; and American Pastoralism, which
“emphasize[d] agrarianism” (49) and represents land as a resource to be cultivated, with
farmland often creating a boundary between the urban and the wilderness.

Wilderness

An interesting focus for many ecocriticism is the way that wilderness is represented
in literature and popular culture. This approach examines the ways in which wilderness is
constructed, valued, and engaged. Representations of wilderness in British and American
culture can be separated into a few main tropes. First, Old World wilderness displays
wilderness as a place beyond the borders of civilization, wherein wilderness is treated as a
“threat,” a place of “exile” (Gerrard 62). This trope can be seen in Biblical tales of creation
and early British culture. Old World wilderness is often conflated with demonic practices in
early American literature (Gerrard 62). New World wilderness, seen in portrayals of
wilderness in later American literature, applies the pastoral trope of the “retreat” to
wilderness itself, seeing wilderness not as a place to find sanctuary. The New World
wilderness trope has informed much of the “American identity,” and often constructs
encounters with the wilderness that lead to a more “authentic existence” (Gerrard 71).

Ecofeminism

As a branch of ecocriticism, ecofeminism primarily “analyzes the interconnection of

the oppression of women and nature” (Bressler 236). Drawing parallels between domination
of land and the domination of men over women, ecofeminists examine these hierarchical,
gendered relationships, in which the land is often equated with the feminine, seen as a fertile
resource and the property of man. The first, sometimes referred to as radical ecofeminism,
reverses the patriarchal domination of man over woman and nature, “exalting nature,” the
nonhuman, and the emotional” (Gerrard 24). This approach embraces the idea that women
are inherently closer to nature biologically, spiritually, and emotionally. The second camp,
which followed the first historically, maintains that there is no such thing as a “feminine
essence” that would make women more likely to connect with nature (Gerrard 25). Of
course, ecofeminism is a highly diverse and complex branch, and many writers have
undertaken the job of examining the hierarchical relationships structured in our cultural
representations of nature and women and other oppressed groups. In particular, studies
regarding race have followed in this trend, identifying groups that have been historically seen
as somehow closer to nature. The way Native Americans, for instance, have been described
as “primitive” and portrayed as “dwelling in harmony with nature,” despite facts to the
contrary. Gerrard offers an examination of this trope, calling it the Ecological Indian
(Gerrard 120). Similar studies regarding representations and oppression of aboriginals have
surfaced, highlighting the misconceptions of these peoples as somehow “behind” Europeans,
needing to progress from “a natural to a civilized state” (Gerrard 125).
Guide questions:

Taking an ecocritical approach to a topic means asking questions not only of a

primary source such as literature but asking larger questions about cultural attitudes towards
and definitions of nature. Generally, ecocriticism can be applied to a primary source by
either interpreting a text through an ecocritical lens, with an eye towards nature, or
examining an ecocritical trope within the text. The questions below are examples of
questions you might ask both when working with a primary source and when developing a
research questions that might have a broader perspective.

 How is nature represented in this text?

 How has the concept of nature changed over time?
 How is the setting of the play/film/text related to the environment?
 What is the influence on metaphors and representations of the land and
the environment on how we treat it?
 How do we see issues of environmental disaster and crises reflected in popular
culture and literary works?
 How are animals represented in this text and what is their relationship to humans?
 How do the roles or representations of men and women towards the environment
differ in this play/film/text/etc.
 Where is the environment placed in the power hierarchy?
 How is nature empowered or oppressed in this work?
 What parallels can be drawn between the sufferings and oppression of groups
of people (women, minorities, immigrants, etc.) and treatment of the land?
 What rhetorical moves are used by environmentalists, and what can we learn
from them about our cultural attitudes towards nature?
There are many more questions than these to be asked, and a large variety of approaches
already exist that are asking different questions. Do some research to check on the state of
ecocritical discussion in your own area of interest.

Further Resources

There are many more approaches to analyzing interactions between culture and
nature, many of which are interdisciplinary. The following texts are recommended to help
you start exploring other avenues of Ecocriticism.

Theory and Criticism

 Lawrence Buell – “The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing,

and the Formation of American Culture” (1995) and “Toxic Discourse,” 1998
 Charles Bressler – Literacy criticism: an introduction to theory and
practice, 1999
 Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm – The Ecocriticism Reader:
Landmarks in Literary Ecology, (1996)
 Greg Gerrard – Ecocriticism, 2004
 Donna Haraway – “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-
Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” (1991)
 ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environmental (Journal)
 Joseph Makus – The Comedy of Survival: literary ecology and a play
ethic, (1972)
  Leo Marx – The machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal
in America, (1964)
 Raymond Williams – The Country and the city, (1975)

Critical Race Theory (1970s-present)

Critical Race Theory, or CRT, is a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the
appearance of race and racism across dominant culture modes of expression. In adopting this
approach, CRT scholars attempts to understand how victims of systemic racism are affected
by cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themselves to counter
prejudice.

Closely connected to such fields as philosophy, history, sociology, and law, CRT
scholarship traces racism in America through the nation legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights
Movements, and recent events. In doing so, it draws from work by writers like Sojourner
Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others studying law,
feminism, and post-structuralism. CRT developed into its current form during the mid-1970s
with scholars like Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and Richard Delgado, who responded to what
they identified as dangerously slow progress following Civil Rights in the 1960s.

Prominent CRT scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, and Patricia
Williams share an interest in recognizing racism as a quotidian component of American life
(manifested in textual sources like literature, film, law, etc.). In doing so, they attempt to
confront the beliefs and practices in order to seek liberation from systemic racism.

As such, CRT scholarship also emphasizes the importance of finding a way for
diverse individuals to share their experiences. However, CRT scholars do not only locate an
individual’s identity and experience of the world in his or her racial identifications, but also
their membership to a specific class, gender, nation, sexual orientation, etc. They read these
diverse cultural texts as proof of the institutionalized inequalities racialized groups and
individuals experience every day.

As Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explain their introduction to the third edition
of Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge, “Our social world, which its rules, practices, and
assignments of prestige and power, is not fixed; rather, we construct with it words, stories
and silence. But we need not acquiesce in arrangements that are unfair and one-sided. By
writing and speaking against them, we may hope to contribute to a better, fairer world” (3).
In this sense, CRT scholars seek tangible, real-worlds end through the intellectual work they
perform. This contributes to many CRT scholars’ emphasis on social activism and
transforming everyday notions of race, racism, and power.

More recently, CRT has contributed to splinter groups focused on Asian American,
Latino, and Indian racial experiences.

Guide questions:

 What is the significance of race in contemporary American society?

 Where, in what ways, and to what ends does race appear in dominant
American culture and shape the ways we interact with one another?
  What types of text and other cultural artifacts reflect dominant culture’s
perceptions of race?
 How can scholars convey that racism is a concern that affects all members of society?
 How can we combat racism to ensure that all members of American society
experience equal representation and access to fundamental rights?
 How can we accurately reflect the experiences of victims of racism?

Why Use This Approach?

As we can see, adopting a CRT approach to literature or other modes of cultural

expression includes much more than simply identifying race, racism, and racialized
characters in fictional works. Rather, it (broadly) emphasizes the importance of examining
and attempting to understand the socio-cultural forces that shape how we and others
perceive, experience, and respond to racism. This scholar treats literature, legal documents,
and other cultural works as evidence of American culture’s collective values and beliefs. In
doing so, they trace racism as a dually theoretical and historical experience that affects all
members of a community regardless of their racial affiliations or identifications.

Most CRT scholarship attempts to demonstrate not only how racism continues to be a
pervasive component throughout dominant society, but also why this persistent racism
problematically denies individuals many of the constitutional freedoms they are otherwise
promised in the United States’ governing documents. This enables scholars to locate how
texts develop in and through the cultural contexts that produced them, further demonstrating
how pervasive systemic racism truly is. CRT scholars typically focus on both the evidence
and the origins of racism in American culture, seeking to eradicate it at its roots.

Additionally, because CRT advocates attending to the various components that shape
individual identity, it offers a way for scholars to understand how race interacts with other
identities like gender and class. As scholars like Crenshaw and Williams have shown, CRT
scholarship can and adapting theories from related fields like women’s studies, feminism, and
history. In doing so, CRT has evolved over the last decades to address the various concerns
facing individuals affected by racism.

Interestingly, CRT scholarship does not only draw attention to and address the
concerns of individual affected by racism, but also those who perpetrate and are seemingly
unaffected by racial prejudice. Scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois, Peggy McIntosh, Cheryl
Harris, and George Lipsitz discuss white privilege and notions of whiteness throughout
history to better understand how American culture conceptualizes race (or the seeming
absence of race).

Important Terms

 White privilege: Discussed by Lipsitz, Lee, Harris, McIntosh, and other CRT
scholars, white privilege refers to the various social, political, and economic
advantages white individuals’ experiences in contrast to non-white citizens based on
their racial membership. These advantages can include both obvious and subtle
differences in access to power, social status, experiences pf prejudice, educational
opportunities, and much more. For CRT scholars, the notion of white privilege
offers a way to discuss dominant culture’s tendency to normalize white individuals’
experiences and ignore the experiences of non-whites. Fields such as CRT and
 whiteness studies have focused explicitly on the concept of white
privilege to understand how racism influences white people.
 Microaggressions: Microaggressions refer to the seemingly minute,
often unconscious, quotidian instances of prejudice that collectively
contribute to racism and the subordination of racialized individuals
by dominant culture. Peggy Davis discusses how legal discourse
participates in and can counteract the effects of microaggressions.
 Institutionalized Racism: This concept, discussed extensively by
Camara Phyllis Jones, refers to the systemic ways dominant society
restricts a racialized individual or group’s access to opportunities. These
inequalities, which include an individual’s access to material conditions
and power, are not only deeply imbedded in legal institutions, but have
been absorbed into American culture to such a degree that they are often
invisible or easily overlooked.
 Social construction: In the context of CRT, “social construction” refers
to the notion that race is a product of social thought and relations. It
suggests that race is a product of neither biology nor genetics but is
rather a social invention.
 Intersectionality and anti-essentialism: These terms refer to the
notion that one aspect of an individual’s identity does not necessarily
determine other categories of membership. As Delgado and Stefancic
explain, “Everyone has potentially conflicting, overlapping identities,
loyalties, and allegiances” (CRT: An Introduction 10). In other words,
we cannot predict an individual’s identity, beliefs, or values based on
categories like race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, etc; instead,
we must recognize that individuals are capable of claiming membership
to a variety of different (and oftentimes seemingly contradictory)
categories and belief system regardless of the identities outsiders
attempt to impose upon them.

CHAPTER 2

Literary Terms

Listed below are the literary terms that can help you interpret critique, and respond to a variety of
different written works. This list is by no means comprehensive, but instead offers a primer to the
language frequently used by scholars and students researching literary works. This list and the terms
included in it can help you begin to identify central concerns or elements in a work that might help you
facilitate your interpretation, argumentation and analysis.

THE BASICS

• Characterization: The ways individual characters are represented by the narrator or author of a
text. This includes descriptions of the characters' physical appearances, personalities, actions, interactions
or dialogue.
• Dialogue: spoken exchanges between characters in a dramatic or literary work usually between
two or more speakers.
• Genre: a kind of literature. For instance, comedy, mystery, tragedy, satire, elegy, romance, and
epic are all genres. Text frequently draw elements from multiple genres to create dynamic narratives.
Alastair Fowler uses the following elements to define genres: organizational features (chapters, acts,
scenes, stanzas); length; mood (the gothic novel tends to be moody and dark); style (a text can be high
and low or in between depending on its audience); the reader's role (readers of a mystery are expected to
interpret evidence); and the author's reason for writing (an epithalamion is a poem composed for
marriage) (Mickics 132-3)
• Imagery: A term used to describe an author's use of vivid descriptions " that evoke sense
impressions by literal or figurative reference to perceptible or 'concrete' objects, scenes, actions or states
(Baldick 121). Imagery can refer to the literal landscape or characters described in a narrative or the
theoretical concepts and author employs.
• Plot: the sequence of events that occur through a word to produce a coherent narrative or story.
• Point of View: The perspective (visual, interpretive, bias, etc.) a text takes when presenting its
plot and narrative. For instance, an author might write a narrative from a specific character's point of
view, which means that that character is our narrative and readers experience events through his or her
eyes.
• Style: comprised of an author's diction, syntax, tone, characters, and other narrative techniques,
"style" is used to describe the way an author uses language to convey his or her ideas and purpose in
writing. An author's style can also be associated to the genre or mode of writing the author adopts, such as
in the case of a satire or elegy we would adopt a satirical or elegiac style of writing.
• Symbol(ism): an object or element incorporated into a narrative to represent another concept or
concern. Broadly, representing one thing with another. Symbols typically recur throughout a narrative and
offer critical, though often overlooked, information about events, characters, and the authors primary
concerns in telling the story.

• Theme: According to Baldick, a theme may be defined as "a salient abstract idea that emerges
from a literary work's treatment of its subject matter; or topic recurring in a number or literary works"
(Baldick 258). themes in literature tend to differ depending on author, time period, Genre, style, purpose,
etc.
• Tone: a way of communicating information (in writing, images, or sound) that conveys an
attitude. Authors conveyed through a combination of word choice, imagery, perspective, style, and
subject matter. By adopting a specific tone, authors can help readers accurately interpret meaning in a
text.
• Types of Narrative: generator is the voice telling the story or speaking to the audience. However,
this voice can come from a variety of different perspectives, including:

o First Person: a story told from the perspective of one or several characters, each of the whole
typically uses the word "I". this means that readers "see" or experience events in the story through the
narrator's eyes.
o Second Person: a narrative perspective that typically addresses the audience using "you".
o Third Person: describes a narrative told from the perspective of an outside figure who does not
participate directly in the events of story. This mode uses "he", "she", and "it" to describe events and
characters.

Prose Texts

• Bildungsroman: this is typically a type of novel that depicts an individual's coming-of-age

through self-discovery and personal knowledge. Such stories often explore the protagonist's psychological
and moral development. Examples include Dickens' Great Expectation and Joyce's A Portrait of Artist as
a Young Man.
• Epistolary: a novel comprised primarily of letters sent and received by its principle characters.
this type of novel was particularly popular during the eighteenth century.
• Essay: according to Baldick, "a short written composition in prose that discusses a subject or
proposes an argument without claiming to be complete or thorough exposition" (Baldick 87). A notable
example of the essay form is Jonathan Swift's "A modest proposal, " which uses satire to discuss 18th
century economic and social concerns in Ireland.
• Novella: an intermediate - length (between a novel and a short story) fictional narrative.

Authorial Voice

• Apology: conclusion of a text, the term "apology" refers to an instance which the author or
narrator justifies his or her goals in producing the text.
• Irony: typically refers to saying one thing and meaning the opposite, often to check audiences and
emphasized the importance of the truth.
• Satire: a style of writing that mocks, ridiculous, or pokes fun at a person, belief, or group of
people in order to challenge them. Often, texts employing satire use sarcasm, irony, or exaggeration to
assert their perspective.
• Stream of Consciousness: a mode of writing in which the author traces his or her thoughts
verbatim into the text period typically, this style offers a representation of the author's exact thoughts
throughout the writing process and can be used to convey a variety of different emotions or as a form of
pre-writing.

Characters

• Antagonist: a character or characters in a text to whom the protagonist opposes.

• Anti-hero: a protagonist of a story who embodies none of the qualities typically assigned to
traditional heroes and heroines. Not to be confused with antagonist of a story, the anti-hero is a
protagonist whose feelings are typically used to human as him or her and convey a message about the
reality of human existence.
• Archetype: "a resonant figure or mythic importance, whether a personality, place, or situation,
found in diverse cultures and different historical periods" (Mickics 24). Archetypes differ from allegories
because they tend the reference broader or commonplace (often termed "stock") character types, plot
points, and literary conventions. Paying attention to archetypes can help readers identify what an author
may posit as " universal truths" about life society, human interaction, etc. based on what other authors or
participants in a culture may have said about them.
• Epithet: According to Taafe, " an adjective, noun, or phase expressing some characteristic quality
of a thing or person or a descriptive name applied to a person, as Richard the lion- Hearted" (Taafe 58).
An epithet usually indicates some notable quality about the individual with whom it addresses, but it can
also be used ironically to emphasize qualities that individual might actually lack.
• Personification: the use of a person to represent a concept, quality, or object. Personification can
also refer to "a person who is considered a representative type of a particular quality or concept" (Taafe
120).
• Protagonist: the primary character in a text, often positioned as "good" or the character with
whom readers are expected to identify. Protagonist usually oppose an antagonist.

Word Choice, Dialogue, and Speech

• Alliteration: according to Baldick, "The repetition of the same sounds-usually initial consonants
of words or of stressed syllabus-in any sequence of neighboring words" (Baldick 6). Alliteration is
typically used to convey a specific tone or message.
• Apostrophe: this figure of speech refers to an address to "a dead or absent person, or an
abstraction or inanimate object" and is "usually employed for emotional emphasis, can become ridiculous
(or humorous) when misapplied" (Baldick 17).
• Diction: word choice, or the specific language and author, narrator, or speaker uses to describe
events and interact with other characters.

The Plot

• Climax: the height of conflict and intrigue in a narrative. this is when events in the narrative and
characters and destines' are most unclear; the climax often appears as a decision the protagonist must
make for a challenge he or she must overcome in order to for the narrative obtain resolution.
• Denouement: The "Falling Action" of a narrative, when the climax and central conflict are
resolved and a resolution is found. in a play, this is typically the last act and in a novel it might include
the final chapters.
• Deus Ex Machina: According to Taafe, "literally, in Latin, the 'god from the machine'; a deity in
Greek and roman drama I was brought in by the stage machinery to intervene in the action; hence, any
character, event, or device suddenly introduced to resolve the conflict" (43).
• Exposition: usually located at the beginning of a text, this is a detailed discussion introducing
characters, setting, background information, etc. Readers might need to know in order to understand the
text that follows. information in a relatively small space.
• Frame Narrative: a story that an author encloses around the central narrative in order to provide
background information and context. This is typically referred to as "a story within a story" or a "tale
within a tale." Famous stories are usually located in place and time from the narratives they surround.
Examples of stories with frame narratives include Canterbury Tales, Frankenstein, and Wuthering
Heights.
• In media res: beginning in "the middle of things", or when an author begins at text in the midst of
action. This often functions as a way to both incorporate the reader directly into the narrative and secure
his or her interest in the narrative that follows.

Layers of Meaning

• Allegory: a literary mode that attempts to convert abstract concepts, values, beliefs or historical
events into characters or other tangible elements in the narrative. Example include, Gulliver's Travels,
The Faerie Queens, Pilgrim's Progress, and Paradise Lost.
• Allusion: when a text references, incorporates, or responds to an earlier piece (including
literature, art, music, film, event, etc.). T. S. Elliott's The Waste Land (1922) offers an extensive example
of allusion in literature. According to Baldick "The techniques of Allusion is an economical means of
calling upon the history of the literary tradition that author and reader are assumed to share" (7).
• Hyperbole: exaggerated language, description, or speech that is not meant to be taken literally,
but is used for emphasis. For instance, "I've been waiting here for ages" or "This bag weighs a ton."
• Metaphor: a figure of speech that refers to one thing by another in order to identify similarities
between the two (and therefore define each in relation to one another).
• Metonymy: a figure of speech that substitutes one aspect or attribute for the whole itself. For
instance, referring to a woman as "a skirt", or the sea as "the deep". Doing so can not only evoke a
specific tone (determined by the attribute being emphasized or the thing to which it refers), but also
comments on the importance of the specific element that is doing the substituting.
• Parody: a narrative work or writing style that mocks or mimics another genre for work. Typically,
perilous exaggerate and emphasize elements from the original work in order to ridicule, comment on, or
criticize their message.
• Simile: a figure of speech that compares two people, objects, elements, or concepts using "like"
or “as".

Works Cited
.
Baldick, Chris. Oxford Dictionary Literary Terms. Oxford
Oxford University Press, 2001
Mikics, David. A New Handbookof Literary Terms. New Haven:
Yale University Press. Print.
Taafe, James G. A Students Guide to Literary Terms.
Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1967. Print.

CHAPTER 3

Writing Literary Essay

What makes a good Literature Essay?

An argument

When you write an extended literary essay, often one requiring research, you are essentially
making an argument. You are arguing that your perspective-an interpretation, an evaluative judgement, or
a critical evaluation-is a valid one.

A debatable thesis statement

Like any argument paper you have ever written for a composition course, you must have specific,
detailed thesis statement that reveals your perspective, and, like any good argument, your perspective
must be one which is debatable.

Examples

You would not want to make an argument of this sort:

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a play about a young man who seeks revenge.

That doesn’t say anything-it’s basically just a summary and is hardly debatable.

A better thesis would be this:

Hamlet experiences internal conflict because he is in love with his mother.

That is debatable, controversial even. The rest of a paper with this argument as its thesis will be
an attempt to show, using specific examples from the text and evidence from scholars, (1) how Hamlet is
in love with his mother (2) why he’s in love with her, and (3) what implications there are for reading the
play in this manner.
 You also want to avoid a thesis statement like this:

Spirituality means different things to different people. King Lear, The Book of Romans, and Zen and The
Art of Motorcycle Maintenance each view the spirit differently.

Again, that says nothing that’s not already self-evident. Why bother writing a paper about that? You’re
not writing an essay to list works that have nothing in common other than a general topic like
“spirituality”. You want to find certain works or authors that, while they may have several differences, do
have some specific, unifying point. That point is your thesis.

A better thesis would be this:

Lear, Romans and Zen each view the soul as the center of human personality.

Then you prove it, using examples from the texts that show that the soul is the center of
personality.

Literature Topics and Research

The best topics are ones that originate out from your own reading of a work literature, but here
are some common approaches to consider:

• A discussion of a work’s characters: are they realistic, symbolic, historically-based?

• A comparison or contrast of the choices different authors or characters make in a work
• A reading of a work based on an outside philosophical perspective (Ex. How would a Freudian
read a Hamlet?)
• A study of the sources or historical events that occasioned a particular work (Ex. Comparing G.
B. Shaw’s Pygmalion with the original Greek myth of Pygmalion)
• An analysis of a specific image occurring in several works (Ex. The use of moon imagery in
certain plays, poems, novels)
• A “deconstruction” of particular work (Ex. Unfolding an underlying racist worldview in Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness)
• A reading from a political perspective (Ex. How would a Marxist read William Blake’s
“London”?)
• A study of social, political or economic context in which a work was written – how does the
context influence the work?

How do I start research?

• The Internet

Once you have decided on an interesting topic and work (or works), the best place to start is probably the
Internet. Here you can usually find basic biographical data on authors, brief summaries of works, possibly
some rudimentary analyses, and even bibliographies of sources related to your topic.

• The Library

The Internet, however, rarely offers serious direct scholarship; you will have to use sources found in the
library, sources like journal articles and scholarly books, to get information that you can use to build your
own scholarship- your literary paper. Consult the library’s on-line catalog and the MLA Periodical Index.
Avoid citing dictionary or encyclopedic sources in your final paper.

How do I use the information I find?

The secondary sources you find are only to be used as an aid. Your thoughts should make up
most of the essay. As you develop your thesis, you will bring in the ideas of the scholars to back up what
you have already said.

For example, say you are arguing that Huck Finn is a Christ figure; that’s your basic thesis. You
give evidence from the novel that allows this reading, and then, at the right place, you might say the
following, a paraphrase:

According to Susan Thomas, Huck sacrifices himself because he wants to set Jim free (129).

If the scholar states an important idea in a memorable way, use a direct quote.

“Huck’s altruism and feelings of compassion for Jim force him to surrender to the danger”
(Thomas 129).

Either way, you will then link that idea to your thesis.

Formatting

What about MLA format?

All research papers on literature use MLA format, as it is the universal citation method for the
field of literary studies. Whenever you use a primary or secondary source, whether you are quoting or
paraphrasing, you will make parenthetical citations in the MLA format [Ex. (Smith 67).] Your Works
Cited list will be the last page of your essay.

Note, however, the following minor things about MLA format:

• Titles of books, plays, or works published singularly (not anthologized) should be italicized
unless it is a handwritten document, in which case underlining is acceptable. (Ex. Hamlet, Great
Expectations)
• Titles of poems, short stories, or works published in an anthology will have quotation marks
around them. (Ex. “Ode on a Nightingale,” “The Cask of Amontillado”)
• All pages in your essay should have your last name the page number in the top right hand corner.
(Ex. Jones 12)

Tip
If you’re using Microsoft Word, you can easily include your name and the page number on each page by
following these steps:

1. Open “View” (on the top menu).

2. Open “Header and Footer.” (A box will appear at the top of the page you’re on. And a “Header
and Footer” menu box will also appear).
3. Click on the “align alright” button at the top of the screen. (If you’re not sure which button it is,
hold the mouse over the buttons and a small window should pop up telling you which button you’re on.)
4. Type in your last name and a space.
5. Click on “#” button which is located on the “Header and Footer” menu box. It will insert the
appropriate page number.
6. Click “Close” on the “Header and Footer” window.

That’s all you need to do. Word will automatically insert your name and the page number on every page
of your document.

What else should I remember?

• Don’t leave a quote or paraphrase by itself- you must introduce it, explain it, and show how it
relates to your thesis.
• Block format all quotations of more than four lines.
• When you quote brief passages of poetry, line and stanza divisions are shown as a slash (Ex.
“Roses are red, / Violets are blue / You love me / And I like you”)

Pre writing activities

1. Freewrite
Without offering to the text or your notes, right for 5 to 10 minutes on all the images (for the device you
have chosen to) you can recall. This will provide an initial list which will make up your body of evidence.

2. Review
Look back through the text and your notes to further identify evidence, keeping focused on the particular
device you want to discuss.
3. Research
Once you've identified enough textual evidence to support your thesis, you may want to see what other
writers have had to say about your topic. this kind of appeal to other authorities help you backup and
interpret your reading of the work.
4. Evaluate
You will probably generate more evidence than you can use. One way to decide which evidence to take
and which to leave is to limit your choices to the best, most illustrative examples you can find. Focus on
how the devices are used to develop major characters, the major scenes, and major turning points in the
work.
Drafting your essay
You've read and annotated the work, developed a thesis, and identified or evidence. Now you are ready to
work your evidence into your draft. Here are some effective techniques.
11. Quoting
What is a quote?
Quoting involves taking a word, phrase, for passage directly from the story, novel, for critical essay and
working it grammatically into your discussion. Here's an example:

In his novel, The Secret Agent, Conrad describes Verloc as "and demonstrative and burly in a fat- pig
style" (69). The pig image suggests that Verloc this is not a lean, zealous anarchist, what is actually a
corrupt, complacent middle class man who is interested in preserving his comfortable status.

Notice three things about the example above:

• The passage for the novel is enclosed in quotes and the page number is indicated in parentheses.
For more help, see our handouts on MLA and APA.
• The passage is introduced in a coherent grammatical style; it reads like a complete, correct
sentence. For more help, see our handout on using quotation marks.
• The quote is interpreted not patched on the left for the reader to figure out what it means.

When should I quote?

To make particularly important point

When a passage or point is particularly well written
To include a particularly authoritative source

How should l quote?

All quotes must be introduced, discussed, and woven into the text. As you revise, make sure you don't
have to quotes end-to-end
A good rule of thumb: don't let your costs exceed 25% of your text.

12. Paraphrasing

What is paraphrasing?
• This is using your own words to say what the author said. Try to paraphrase to the statement:

Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.

When should I paraphrase?

• Paraphrasing is useful in general discussion (introduction or conclusion) or when the author's
original style is hard to understand.
• Again, you would need to interpret the paraphrase just as you would a quote.

13. Summarizing

What is summarizing?
• This is taking larger passages from the original work and summing them up in a sentence or two.
Use the example below:
• Conrad uses pig imagery to describe Verloc's character.

When should I summarize?

• Like paraphrasing, summary is useful in general discussion which leads up to a specific point and
when you want to introduce the work and present the thesis.
 CHAPTER 4

Critiquing Fiction

Close Reading a Text and Avoiding Pitfalls

Writing about a story or novel can be difficult because fiction is generally very complex and usually
includes several points or themes. To discover this interwoven meanings, you must read the work closely.
below are three techniques for reading fiction actively and critically. Close reading takes more time,
superficial reading, but doing a close reading will save you from a lot of frustration and anxiety when you
begin to develop your thesis.

Close Reading a Text

Use this "tracking" methods to yield a richer understanding of the text and lay a solid ground work for
your thesis.

1. Use a highlighter, but only after you've read for comprehension. the point of highlighting at this
stage is to note key passages, phrases, turning points in the story.

Pitfalls:
Highlighting too much

Highlighting without notes in the margins

2. Write marginal notes in the text.

This should be questions, comments, dialogue with the text itself. A paragraph from Doris Lessing’s short
story "A woman on your roof" serves as an example:

The second paragraph could have a note from the reader like this:

Marginal Notes Text

Why is the man annoyed by the sunbather? Is Lessing commenting on sexist attitudes? Then they saw
her, Between chimneys, about 50 yards away. She lay face down on a brown blanket. They could see the
top of her: black hair, arms spread out.

"She's stark naked," said Stanley, sounding annoyed.

3. Keep a notebook for freewrite summaries and response entries.

Write quickly after your reading: ask questions, attempt answers and make comments about whatever
catches your attention. A good question to begin with when writing a response entry is, "what point does
the author seem to be making?"
4. Step back After close reading and annotating, can you now make a statement about the story's
meaning? Is the author commenting on a certain type of a person or situation? What is that comment?

Avoiding Pitfalls

These for common assumptions on writing about fiction interfere with rather than help the writer. Learn
to avoid them.
1. Plot Summary Syndrome

Assumes that the main task is simply recalling what happened in detail. plot summary is just one of the
requirements of writing about fiction, not the intended goal.

2. Right Answer Roulette

Assumes that a writing about fiction is a "no win" game in which of the student writer is forced to try to
guess the RIGHT ANSWER that only the professor knows.

3. The "Everything Is Subjective" Shuffle

Assumes that an interpretation of ANY literary piece is purely whimsy or personal taste. It ignores the
necessity of testing each part of an interpretation against the whole text, as well as the need to validate
each idea by reference two specifics from the text or quotations and discussion from the text.

4. The "How Can You Write 500 Words About One Short Story?" Blues

Assumes that writing the paper is only a way of stating the answer rather than an opportunity to explore
an idea or explain what your own ideas are and why you have them. This sometimes leads to "padding,"
repeating the same idea in different words or worse, in discriminate "expert" quoting: using too many
quotes or quotes that are too long with little or no discussion.

Developing a Thesis

1. Once you've read the story or novel closely, look back over your notes for patterns of questions or
ideas that interest you. Have most of your questions in about the characters, how they develop or change?

For example: If you are reading Conrad's The Secret Agent, do you seem to be most interested in what the
author has to say about the society? choose a pattern of ideas and express it in the form of a question and
an answer such as the following:
Question: What does Conrad seem to be suggesting about early 20th century London society his novel
The Secret Agent?
Answer: Conrad suggests that all classes of society are corrupt.

Pitfalls:
Choosing to many ideas.
Choosing an idea without any support.

2. Once you have some general points to focus on, write your possible ideas and answer the
questions that they suggest.

For example:
Question: how does Conrad develop the idea that all classes of society are corrupt?
Answer: he uses images of beast and cannibalism whether his describing socialites, policeman or secret
agents.

3. To write your thesis statement, all you have to do is to turn the question and answer around.
answer, now I just put it in a sentence (or a couple of sentences) so that the thesis of your paper is clear.
For example: characters and their relationships to each other. this pattern of images suggests that Conrad
so corruption in every level of early 20th century London society.

4.

Now that you're familiar with the story or novel and have developed a thesis statement, you're ready to
choose the evidence used to support your thesis. there are a lot of good ways to do this, but all of them
depend on a strong thesis for their direction.

For example: Here's a student's thesis about joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent.

In his novel, The Secret Agent, Conrad uses beast and cannibal imagery to describe the characters and
their relationships to each other. this pattern of images suggests that Conrad saw corruption in every level
of early 20th century London society. This thesis focuses on the idea of social corruption and the device
of imagery. to support this thesis, we would mean to find images of these and cannibalism within the text.