LITERARY CRITICISM

“Literary criticism involves the reading, interpretation, and commentary of a specific text or texts which
have been designated as literature.”

“Literary criticism is evaluation of literary works. This includes the classification by genre, analysis of
structure, and judgement of value."

"Literary criticism asks what literature is, what it does, and what it is worth."

“ Literary criticism is the method used to interpret any given work of literature. The different schools of
literary criticism provide us with lenses which ultimately reveal important aspects of the literary
work.’’

Literary Criticism helps us in 3 ways:

1. It helps us understand what is essential about the text.

2. It allows us to see the relationship between the author, reader, and text

3. It enhances the enjoyment of our reading of the literary work.

The Basic Idea of Literary Criticism

 The point of criticism is to argue your point of view on a work of literature.

 You don’t have to “criticize” a text (but you can)
 You do have to analyze a text and support your assertions with specific evidence from experts
and the text.
 It’s crucial to go beyond plot development and into more abstract, higher-level thinking like
theme, tone, purpose, etc.
 There are many different approaches we can take to critical analysis
 Literary theories provide a framework for our discussion of a text
 We don’t have to identify the theory we’re using, though.
 We use it as a starting point for our own ideas and
opinions

LITERARY THEORIES/ APPROACHES

FEMINISM- DOES NOT just refer to the experience of women

- It is not just about advancing the rights and equality of women.

- is really about bringing BOTH of the sexes to an equal level in terms of political power,
economic power, and social freedom/ liberation
- This is usually the mental image that we often have of what it means to be a feminist.
- Stereotypes harm both men and women.

Feminist Approach- We may look at the author’s messages and ideologies we can find in the text that
are related to the dynamics between the genders: the political, economic, and social inequality of the
sexes
 - This school of thought seeks to analyze the ways in which literature portrays the narrative
of male domination by exploiting the economic, social, political, and psychological forces
embedded within literature.

- In particular, it analyzes textual representations from the woman’s perspective, such as

those that involve the stereotyping and “objectification” of womanhood.

TYPICAL QUESTIONS:

 How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?

 What are the power relationships between men and women ( or characters assuming men and
women roles)
 How are male and female roles defined?
 What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
 How do characters embody these traits?
 How are the relationships between men and women presented in the work?
 Does the author present the work from within a predominantly male or
female perspective?

MARXIST CRITICISM (KARL MARX) Karl Marx (1818-1883) was primarily a theorist and a
historian. After examining social organization in a scientific way (thereby creating a methodology for
social science: political science), he perceived human history to have consisted of a series of struggles
between classes—between the oppressed and the oppressing.

-Tend to focus on the representation of class conflict as well as the reinforcement of class distinctions

-What is the economic situation of the characters, and what happens to them as a result of this status?

-To what extent are the lives of characters influenced or determined by social (i.e. how an individual is
expected to behave in a given circumstance), political (i.e. the directives of the state), and economic
(i.e. the interplay between production, supply, and demand) forces?

-What social forces and institutions are represented in the work?

Reader Response Criticism

Reader-response critics focus on what texts do; but instead of regarding texts as self-contained entities,
reader-response criticism asks( what do texts do in the minds of the readers) $ the systematic
e#amination of the aspects of the text that arouse, shape, and guide a reader*s response. According to
reader-response criticism, the reader is a producer rather than a consumer of meanings. In this sense, a
reader is a hypothetical construct of norms and expectations that can be derived projected or
extrapolated from the work and may even be said to inhere in the work. Because expectations may be
violated or fulfilled, satisfied or frustrated, and because reading is a temporal process involving memory,
perception, and anticipation, the charting of reader-response is extremely difficult and perpetually
subject to construction and reconstruction, vision, and revision. In the reader-response critical approach,
the primary focus falls on the reader and the process of reading rather than on the author or the text.

Characteristics of Reader-Response Criticism

1. Reader response criticism places strong emphasis on the reader’s role in producing the meaning of a
literary work.
2. It is in some senses an opposite approach from that of formalism.

3. Whereas formalists treat meaning as objectively inherent in the text, in reader response criticism, the
text has no meaning until it is read by a reader who creates the meaning.

4. Unlike the formalist critical approach, this type of literary criticism insists that works are not universal,
that is, that they will not always mean more or less the same thing to readers everywhere.

Typical Questions to be Asked when Reading as Reader-Response Critic

▪ 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 pre-structured by (built into) that text?

▪ Do the sounds/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/work?

▪ 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 suggest about the critics who
interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience produced by that text? (Tyson 191)

How to write a Reader-Response Criticism?

When using reader response criticism as a tool of analysis, you may:

1. write about how the author evokes a particular reaction in you as the reader
2. what features of your own identity influence you in creating your interpretation; and
3. how another reader in a different situation might interpret the work differently.

FORMALISM CRITICISM
• Formalist Critics (or New Critics) focus on the formal elements of a work - its language, structure, and
tone; they offer intense examinations of the relationship between form and meaning within a work,
emphasizing the subtle complexity of how a work is arranged. i.e.: how such things as diction, irony,
paradox, metaphor, symbolism, plot, characterization, rhyme, or narrative technique develop the overall
meaning of the piece.

-A formalist reads literature as an independent work of art rather than as a reflection of the author’s
state of mind or as a representation of a moment in history. Such things as biography, history, politics,
and economics, for example, are considered far less important than the writing’s form. Words and image
shape the work itself.

Applying Formalism in Analyzing a Literary Text

Step 1. The first step in the formalist approach is to read with an active and critical mind and paying
attention to the details of the poem.

Step 2. Next carefully examine how it is written in narrative form, or in stanzas.

Step 3. Note the word that appeals to the senses, more specifically look for images, similes, metaphors
and symbols used in the literary text.

Step 4. Study who is narrating or telling what happens, who are the characters in the literary piece and
how are these characters revealed to the readers.

Step 5. Finally, how these parts work together will tell you the theme and the message it conveys. It
answers the question what it is about.

Formalist point of view of Dead Stars:

In Paz Marque Benitez’s masterpiece “Dead Stars”, published in 1925, a formalistic approach was
used to show the forms of imagery, symbolism, and theme depicting the mixed emotions of an over
thirty years old bachelor, Alfredo Salazar whose love and passion for his fiancé started to fade for he was
attracted to another woman named Julia Salas. “Dead Stars” was a narrative story and it was written in a
third-person point of view.

Upon analyzing the text, a vast amount of imagery can be seen, which helps bring aspects of the
text to life. One of which was the image of Julia Salas as described by Alfredo, “There was a breeze from
the water. It blew the hair away from her forehead and whipped the tucked-up skirt around her straight,
slender figure. The girl had grace, and distinction. Her face was not notably pretty; yet she had a
tantalizing charm, all the more compelling because it was an inner quality.”

It is also clear that the ending, when both Alfredo and Julia meet again after eight years,
insinuates symbolism. As Alfredo finds her different from what he perceived in the past and all the past
years, he realizes that the love they had, had already faded, symbolized by a “dead star”; emitting an
illusion of light and spark when it was already dead long ago.

One theme conveyed in the story is forbidden love which infers that a person can meet
somebody whom he thinks is perfect for him even when he is already committed to somebody else.
Until such time that the person realizes the wrong moves he did, and the damage has already been
done. The underlying theme suggests that people do change, no matter the circumstances, as shown in
the ending when Alfredo walks up to Julia and realizes that she had already changed and so did he.