Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism
Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism
Literary Theory and Schools of Criticism
A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as
different 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 that school of theory. The different lenses also allow critics
to focus on particular aspects of a work they consider important.
For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories, s/he might
focus on how the characters in a story interact based on their 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) treat characters from, say, Africa or the Caribbean.
The Critical Tradition: Classical Texts and Contemporary Trends, 1998, edited by David H. Richter
Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 1999, by Louis Tyson
Beginning Theory, 2002, by Peter Barry
Although philosophers, critics, educators and authors have been writing about writing since ancient times, contemporary
schools of literary theory have cohered from these discussions and now influence how scholars look at and write about
literature. The following sections overview these movements in critical theory. Though the timeline below roughly follows a
chronological order, we have placed some schools closer together because they are so closely aligned.
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
Moral Criticism and Dramatic
Construction (~360 BC-present)
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 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's 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).
Aristotle
In Poetics, Aristotle breaks with his teacher (Plato) in the consideration of art. Aristotle considers poetry (and rhetoric), a
productive science, whereas 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 authors to follow to achieve certain objectives.
To help authors achieve their 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 influence 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.
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
Formalism (1930s-present)
Form Follows Function: 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 secondary
and college level instruction in literature and even writing (Tyson 115).
Typical questions:
How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbols? (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 inseparable
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 your understanding of this theory:
Russian Formalism
Victor Shklovsky
Roman Jakobson
Victor Erlich - Russian Formalism: History - Doctrine, 1955
Yuri Tynyanov
New Criticism
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
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..." (Richter 1015). These stages reflect base
levels of desire, but they also involve fear of loss (loss of 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.
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:
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" (Richter 1016).
Freud argued 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 result 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 result is a frustrated rage in which the girl shifts her
sexual desire from the mother to the father" (1016).
Freud believed that eventually, the girl's 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.
Typical questions:
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to 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 Constructions 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" (Richter 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 a whole, the unified
self of which people are in search" (Richter 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" (Richter 505).
In literary analysis, a 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 art." (Richter 505). When dealing with this sort of criticism, it is often useful to keep and handbook of
mythology and a dictionary of symbols on hand.
Typical 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?
How does the protagonist reflect the hero of myth?
Does the “hero” embark on a journey in either a physical or spiritual sense?
Is there a journey to an underworld or 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 we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:
Maud Bodkin - Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, 1934
Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Vol. 9, Part 1 of Collected Works. 2nd ed. Trans.
R.F.C. Hull, 1968
Bettina Knapp - Music, Archetype and the Writer: A Jungian View, 1988
Ricahrd Sugg - Jungian Literary Criticism, 1993
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
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.] benefit? 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.
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 the working class (others think peasants will lead the uprising) under the guidance of intellectuals. Once the elite
and middle class are 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.
Typical questions:
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 Literary Criticism, Criticism and Ideology, 1976
Frederic Jameson - Marxism and Form, The Political Unconscious, 1971
Jürgen Habermas - The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, 1990
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
Tyson explains that "...reader-response theorists 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 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.
Typical questions:
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
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" (Richter 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 meaningful gestures and signals of 'body language' and revolves around the exchange
of small, symbolic favors: drinks, parties, dinners" (Richter 809).
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 a structural system. In the first example...you're generating a structural
system of classification; in the second, you're demonstrating that an individual item belongs to a particular structural class"
(Tyson 197).
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. "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]" (Richter 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 Systems
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 if it were a
language" (Tyson 205). Specifically, "...semiotics examines the ways non-linguistic 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...'tells' us that
those who drink this whiskey (presumably male) will be attractive to...beautiful women like the one displayed here" (Tyson
205). Lastly, Richter states, "semiotics takes off from Peirce - for whom language is one of numerous sign systems - and
structuralism takes off from Saussure, for whom language was the sign system par excellence" (810).
Typical 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 a part of other works like it?
Using a specific structuralist framework...analyze the text's narrative operations...can you 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 are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or 'text,' such as high-school football games,
television and/or magazine ads for a particular brand of perfume...or even media coverage of an historical event?
(Tyson 225)
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction,
Postmodernism (1966-present)
Note: Structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralism are some of the most complex literary theories to understand. Please
be patient.
Post-structuralism holds that there are many truths, that frameworks must bleed, and that structures must become unstable or
decentered. Moreover, post-structuralism is also concerned with the power structures or hegemonies and power and how
these elements contribute to and/or maintain structures to enforce hierarchy. Therefore, post-structural theory carries
implications far beyond literary criticism.
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 an '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 “event” 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.
Below is an example, adapted from the Tyson text, of some language freeplay and a 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 flies 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 particular arrow).
So, post-structuralists assert 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 the 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 = signifier + 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 freeplay 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 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).
Derrida reminds us that through deconstruction we can identify the in-betweens 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 forms 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 freeplay 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 to
consider:
Modernism vs Postmodernism
Modernism Postmodernism
romanticism/symbolism paraphysics/Dadaism
form (conjunctive, closed) antiform (disjunctive, open)
purpose play
design chance
hierarchy anarchy
mastery/logos exhaustion/silence
art object/finished work/logos process/performance/antithesis
centering absence
genre/boundary text/intertext
semantics rhetoric
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 interdeterminacy
transcendence immanence
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 speak with the reader
directly.
Moreover, grand narratives are resisted. For example, the belief that through science the human race 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 work is self-critical, 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 the Author,” Roland Barthes argues that the idea of singular authorship is a
recent phenomenon. Barthes explains that the death of the 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 texts becomes a collaborative process between author and audience: “...a text is
made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue...but there is one place
where this multiplicity is focused and that place 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).
Typical questions:
How is language thrown into freeplay or questioned in the 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 undermine or contradict generally accepted truths?
How does the author (or a character) omit, change, or reconstruct memory and identity?
How does a work fulfill or move outside the established conventions of its genre?
How does the work deal 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 change? Whose story is not told in the text? Who is left out and why might the author have omitted this
character's tale?
Here is a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:
Theorists
Immanuel Kant - "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?", 1784 (as a baseline to understand what
Nietzsche was resisting)
Friedrich Nietzsche - “On Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral Sense," 1873; The Gay Science, 1882; Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, A Book for All and None, 1885
Jacques Derrida - "Structure Sign and Play in the 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-François 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, 1998
Ihab Hassan - The Dismemberment of Orpheus, 1998; From Postmodernism to Postmodernity: The Local/Global
Context, 2001
Postmodern Literature
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
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 tell us about history?' In contrast, new historicists ask, 'How has the event been
interpreted?' and 'What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?'" (278). So New Historicism resists 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 historicists do not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather that we interpret events as products 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.
Typical 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 we encourage you 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
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
Therefore, a post-colonial critic might be interested in works 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's (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 literature composed
by authors that critique Euro-centric hegemony.
Rather than glorifying the exploratory nature of European colonists 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" and "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 and histories 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 of
Darkness. Western critics might consider Heart of Darkness an effective critique of colonial behavior. But post-colonial
theorists 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, as 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).
Typical questions:
How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial oppression?
What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity, including the relationship between
personal and cultural identity and such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?
What person(s) or groups does the work identify 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, themes, or assumptions of a canonized (colonialist)
work?
Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial populations?
How does a literary 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 a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:
Criticism
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
Feminist criticism is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization such as the exclusion of women writers from
the traditional literary canon: "...unless the critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to under-
represent the contribution of women writers" (Tyson 82-83).
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 of western (Anglo-European) civilization 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 literary 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 many ways, followed what some theorists call 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. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull
contribute to the women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal 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
America 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 deuxième sexe, 1972) and Elaine Showalter
established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights
movement
3. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: 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' experiences. 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).
Typical questions:
How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
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 the work's 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 a list of scholars we encourage you to explore to further your understanding of this theory:
This resource will help you begin the process of understanding literary theory and schools of criticism and how they are used
in the academy.
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 it needed was a new 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 feminine: "Cixous (following Derrida in Of Grammatology) sets up a series
of binary oppositions (active/passive, 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 principle" (Richter
1433-1434).
In-Betweens
Many critics working with gender and queer theory are interested in the breakdown of 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 men 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).
Typical 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 characters 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 other words,
what elements exhibit traits of both (bisexual)?
How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? Is it secure and forceful? Or is it more hesitant or
even collaborative?
What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics
revealed in...the work's thematic content or 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 our 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:
Copyright ©1995-2011 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University.