LITERARY THEORY

ideas acting as different lenses to view literature, culture, and art

Prepared by Kim Haglund, M.Ed: TLC Coordinator; Alison Holliman, Lead Tutor; Corrine Lussier, Lead Tutor

BACKGROUND INFO
A very basic way of thinking about
literary theory is that these ideas act as
different lenses critics use to write and

talk about art, literature, and even

culture. These different lenses allow
critics to consider works of art based
on certain assumptions. Those

assumptions come from the theories

and decide what particular aspects of
a work are important.

EXAMPLE
For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories,
s/he might focus on how the characters in a story are created by an
economic situation.
If a critic is working with post-colonial theories, s/he might

consider the same story but look at how characters from colonial
powers (Britain, France, and even America) construct characters
from, say, Africa or the Caribbean.

A L L L I T E R A RY T H E O R I E S C A N B E C AT E G O R I Z E D B Y
HOW THEY VIEW THE WORLD OUTSIDE THE TEXT

Formal Critics

Cultural Critics

Looks at only the text and how well

Always look at a work as a

it is dressed- at the form of the text

construct of the society that created it.

itself.
Seeks a static, unchanging universal
Truth within the text.
Everything outside the text is
irrelevant because it is not static.
The Mona Lisa has an
enigmatic smile whether one is
male, female; young, old; Asian,
European.

Andy Warhols soup cans only

mean something if you have
grown up in a consumer
culture.
The song YMCA
incorporates cultural
assumptions that give it one
particular meaning

A devoutly conservative
Christian will have a different
interpretation of the song
than the producer who wrote
it or the Santa Clarita teen
who danced to it

NEW CRITICISM
A form of Liberal Humanism, the text reveals the meaning of the overall piece
through the resolution of some contradiction.
Uses themes, characters, and symbols

This is a closed system in that the relationship between the text and meaning is
autonomous.
This theory dismisses authorial intent and instead derives meaning from the text

itself.
Canonical approach

Form of traditional/formal literary criticism

It is infinitely teachable.
Theres a right answer and critical reading skills illuminate that right answer

NEW CRITICISM, CONT.

It fits into the broad sweep of a humanities curriculum.
The role of the individual response is dismissed as an
affective fallacy.
The misconception that arises from judging a piece of
literature by the emotional effect that it produces in the
reader

Instead, there is an objective corollary, that the tension at

the core of the text inevitably surfaces through the actions of
the characters.
Theory put forward by T.S. Eliot

The role of the critic is to resolve the contradictions to find

the right meaning.

STRUCTURALISM
The meaning of a text is in the
familiar structures it employs.
Based upon the work of
Ferdinand de Saussure

For example, a rose may

symbolize love, or a stick figure

may symbolize a person; however,

literature has a very specific and
important relationship to language.

STRUCTURALISM, CONT.
Signifiers (ideas) take the place of
the signified.
The identity, or meaning, is
relational to the system in which it
operates.

The relationship of one signifier to

another is what provides the context
with which to extrapolate meaning.
Example: Italian Western or
Disneyland

DECONSTRUCTION
A philosophical assumption that all language is vague.
Everything can be misread or making it impossible to interpret
anything in a static/stable way.
Deconstruction cannot limit or proceed immediately to a
neutralization: it mustpractice an overturning of the classical

opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is only on this

condition that deconstruction will provide itself the means with which to
intervene in the field of oppositions that it criticizes, which is also a field
of nondiscursive forces" (328).
French philosopher Jacque Derrida

DECONSTRUCTION, CONT.
A deconstruction tends to be a rather verbose document because it
is aiming for the contradiction of showing the imprecision of
language with precise language.
Almost all deconstructions can be deconstructed themselves.
A theory of reading which aims to undermine the logic of
opposition within texts.
A Dictionary of Critical Theory, London: Blackwell, 1996

DECONSTRUCTION, CONT.
Nothing written can really mean
what we think it means.
Example: Hamlet where Hamlet
asks to be or not to be, that is
the question.
There is no question.
To be is a transitive verbit
requires an object. So, one
cant just say to be or not to
be.
The final meaning of that
passage cannot be what we
think it is.

POST STRUCTURALISM
Form of cultural criticism
Studied by former structuralists Jacque Derrida and Michel Foucault
A reaction to structuralism.

Connects meaning to culture.

Deconstructs signifiers as there are no universal truths, so signifiers/symbolic
constructs cannot be relied upon to give meaning.
A closed system.
Unlike structuralism where symbols, paradigms, and schema are connected to a
universal meaning

In order to have actual meaning, they must become unstable or else they will
simply work to leave hegemonies intact, thus leaving power structures in place.

FEMINIST THEORY
The idea that patriarchal Western
society subsumes the role of women with
the use of language constructs and
representations of society based on male
viewpoints.
Socioeconomic, experiential, and
cultural differences do not lend themselves
to a universal female ideology, and as such
should not be the basis for understanding

any piece of literature.

FEMINIST THEORY, CONT.

New language is needed to
express feminist viewpoints.
Renders patriarchal
hierarchies and ideologies
impotent in literature.

Began as an opposition to
male critical theory
Tended to follow
patriarchal formula

FEMINIST THEORY, CONT.

In A Room of Ones Own Virginia Woolf
posited a hypothetical sister to Shakespeare, who,
given the same conditions, would write works as
good as Shakespeares.
More recent feminist critics have posited a
female voice that fundamentally differs from the
male voice and which does not seek the validation

of male theory.

GENDER/QUEER THEORY
Opens discourse surrounding cultural binaries and binary
oppositional language.
father/mother, man/woman, masculine/feminine

Differs from feminist theory that looks upon woman as Other

GENDER/QUEER THEORY,
CONT.
Cultural ideology at the base of gender and sexuality is everchanging.
Ideas regarding gender and sexuality should not remain static.
In order to remain in flux, hegemonic ideologies and
marginalization of gender/sexuality roles must also remain in flux.

MARXIST THEORY
Tend to focus on the
representation of class conflict as
well as the reinforcement of class
distinctions.
Use traditional techniques of
literary analysis but subordinate
aesthetic concerns to the final social
and political meanings of literature.

MARXIST THEORY, CONT.

Champions authors sympathetic to the working
classes and authors whose work challenges
economic equalities found in capitalist societies.
Theories arising from the Marxist paradigm

have sought new ways of understanding the

relationship between economic and cultural
production as well as literature.

MARXIST THEORY, CONT.

Marxist analyses of society and history
have had a profound effect on literary
theory and practical criticism.
Most notably in the development of

New Historicism and Cultural

Materialism.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY-HYBRID
Made popular by Himi K. Bhabha
Suggests that a culture can never return to its pre-colonized ways.
A culture does not stay, or become, stagnant because it has been
colonized.
An idea Western culture places upon other cultures.

Instead, cultures merge and become part of the colonized culture.

The result of a colonized people adapting to survive under new
culture rules.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
HYBRID, CONT.
In order to survive, cultures mimic things such as clothes, music,
education, and food.
In turn makes the other become more like the colonized.

Although a mimic is almost the same, but not white, the other
starts to become more like the dominant culture as it shakes the
confidence in the colonizers ideas of their own universal truth, thus
destabilizing colonialism itself.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY-NEGRITUDE
Coined by Aime Cesaire.
Purports that black people
from all over the world share a
collective personality that is

different from that of European

personality.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
NEGRITUDE, CONT.
Calls for pride in ones culture
and independence from
European barbarians.
Leaders of this movement

rejected the savage tag and

exposed the savagery of the
colonists.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
NEOCOLONIALIS M
Splitting the profits between local oligarchs and colonial powers
updates the ravages of colonialism.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY-ORIENTALISM
Theory put forward by Edward Said.
The West has come up with ideas about the orient in an attempt to

describe and distance it from Western ideas.

If Orient is lazy and cruel, the West is
produced as hard working and kind.
It shows how the West, in its
construction of the Orient, allows for
Western ideas to be seen as universal truths.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
ORIENTALISM, CONT.
By making these truths right and natural, it makes the Orient into
the other.
It also justifies the colonization of the people.
The colonized may not have been physically colonized, but

colonized by being studied.

Being the object of something someone else sought to understand.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY-SUBALTERN
The idea that a people without power, can actually be speaking for
the system of ideologies put in place, which may or may not be their
own beliefs.
Can be speaking out for themselves or speaking for groups.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
SUBALTERN, CONT.
Marginalized others do not have access to imperial colonialists
experience and culture.
Others operate within the confines of the oppressive group.

POST ANALYTIC THEORY

Prompted by Freuds work focusing on the Id, Ego, Superego,
Desire, the Unconscious, and Defenses.
A broad spectrum of viewpoints inhabit this theory.

One can understand the text by psychoanalyzing motives,

characters, symbols, actions, or any number of literary devices in
order to discover meaning.

READER RESPONSE
The text is completely
subjective and authorial intent
means nothing.
Meaning is discovered

through the readers reaction to

what they have read, or the
relationship between the reader

and the text.

READER RESPONSE
Each reader may bring a
different interpretation based on
his/her ideology and experience.