CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE

Formalist Criticism: This form of criticism emphasizes the form of the work, with "form" meaning the genre
or type of work. This approach regards literature as "a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be
examined on its own terms."1 All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the
work itself. From the stance of the formalist critic you will look at such elements of a work as form-style,
structure, tone, imagery, etc.-that are found within the text. Your primary goal as a formalist critic is to
determine how such elements work together with the text's content to shape its effects upon readers.

Objective Correlative
A term introduced by T.S Eliot in his essay “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919). Eliot observes that there is
something in Hamlet which Shakespeare cannot “drag into the light, contemplate, or manipulate into art” , at least
not in the same way that he can with Othello's jealousy, or Coriolanus' pride. He goes on to deduce that “the only
way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative'; in other words, a set of
objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the
external facts, which must terminate in a sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”

Biographical Criticism: This approach "begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by
actual people and that understanding an author's life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work." 
Biographical critics contend that by understanding the life and experiences of writer readers can better
understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to take the biographical facts of a writer's
life too far in criticizing the works of that writer.  As a biographical critic your task is to explicate the text by
using insights gained from knowing details about the author's life.  The focus is still on the text, but in light of
biography--not the other way around.

Psychological Criticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon both literature
and literary criticism. It is akin to biographical criticism as it looks at the author--this time from a
psychoanalytic stance. Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include Sigmund Freud, whose
"psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas like
wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression" as well as expanding our understanding of how
"language and symbols operate by demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires"; and Carl
Jung, whose theories about the  unconscious are also a key foundation of mythological criticism (see below).
Psychological criticism has a number of approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three
approaches:

     1. An investigation of "the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and how does it
relate to normal mental functions?" 
     2. The psychological study of a particular artist, usually noting how an author's biographical circumstances
affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior. 
     3. The analysis of fictional characters using the language and methods of psychology. 

Historical Criticism: This approach "seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural,
and intellectual context that produced it-a context that necessarily includes the artist's biography and milieu." A
key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original readers.  Another
focus may be how the times in which a writer lived influenced him or her. Was he or she in step or working
against the popular culture of the day? is one question you might ask. Again your focus from a historical
perspective is on the work: how is the work better understood through the lens of historical context.

Sociological Criticism: One type of historical criticism is this approach which "examines literature in the
cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received," exploring the relationships between
the artist and society. Sometimes it examines the artist's society to better understand the author's literary works;
other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the literature itself. One
influential type of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism, which focuses on the economic and political
elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature. Because Marxist criticism often argues
that all art is political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status quo, it is frequently evaluative and
judgmental, a tendency that "can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London better
than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the
principles of class struggle more clearly."  Nonetheless, Marxist criticism "can illuminate political and
economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook." Indeed, Marxist criticism sees history centered
on a struggle between socioecenomic classes; therefore it sees literature as a result or at least coming about from
the context of the struggle.  
  

Gender Criticism: This approach "examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of
literary works." Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of
approaches, including the so-called "masculinist" approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. It also takes
in lesbian and gay criticism. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept
that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously,
in literature "full of examined 'male-produced' assumptions." Feminist criticism attempts to correct this
imbalance by analyzing and combatting such attitudes-by questioning, for example, why none of the characters
in Shakespeare's play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other
goals of feminist critics include "analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text" and "examin[ing]
how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have
historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality." From a feminist vantage point you might assume that
because the experiences of the sexes differ, their values and ideas differ, and therefore the way men write and
read texts and the way women write and read texts also differs.

Mythological Criticism or Archetypal Criticism: This approach emphasizes "the recurrent universal patterns
underlying most literary works." Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and
comparative religion, mythological criticism "explores the artist's common humanity by tracing how the
individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and epochs." One key concept in
mythlogical criticism is the archetype, "a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal
response," which entered literary criticism from Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all
individuals share a "`collective unconscious,' a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing
below each person's conscious mind"-often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire,
night, and blood, archetypes according to Jung "trigger the collective unconscious." Another critic, Northrop
Frye, defined archetype in a more limited way as "a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in
literature to be recognizable as an element of one's literary experience as a whole."  Regardless of the definition
of archetype they use, mythological critics tend to view literary works in the broader context of works sharing a
similar pattern. 

Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that "literature" exists not as an
artifact upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader. It attempts
"to describe what happens in the reader's mind while interpreting a text" and reflects that reading, like writing,
is a creative process.  According to reader-response critics, literary texts do not "contain" a meaning; meanings
derive only from the act of individual readings. Hence, two different readers may derive completely different
interpretations of the same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads a work years later may find the work
shockingly different. It helps to borrow from biographical and historical criticism and understand the context
from which the text came and compare to your situation. The characters and worlds we find in literature are
more often than not very different from ourselves in significant ways; how we as readers make connections,
appreciate or challenge a work has much to do with our response, that is to say, our bringing our own
experiences to the text to bridge the gap.  What assumptions and values do you as a reader have?  What
assumptions and values might the author have had? Reader-response criticism, then, emphasizes how "religious,
cultural, and social values affect readings; it also overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and
women read the same text with different assumptions." Though this approach rejects the notion that a single
"correct" reading exists for a literary work, it does not consider all readings permissible: "Each text creates
limits to its possible interpretations."

Deconstructionist Criticism: This approach "rejects the traditional assumption that language can accurately
represent reality." Deconstructionist critics regard language as a fundamentally unstable medium-the words
"tree" or "dog," for instance, undoubtedly conjure up different mental images for different people-and therefore,
because literature is made up of words, literature possesses no fixed, single meaning. It is oppositional to
Formalist criticism. According to critic Paul de Man, deconstructionists insist on "the impossibility of making
the actual expression coincide with what has to be expressed, of making the actual signs [i.e., words] coincide
with what is signified." As a result, deconstructionist critics tend to emphasize not what is being said but how
language is used in a text. The methods of this approach tend to resemble those of formalist criticism, but
whereas formalists' primary goal is to locate unity within a text, "how the diverse elements of a text cohere into
meaning," deconstructionists try to show how the text "deconstructs," "how it can be broken down ... into
mutually irreconcilable positions." Other goals of deconstructionists include (1) challenging the notion of
authors' "ownership" of texts they create (and their ability to control the meaning of their texts) and (2) focusing
on how language is used to achieve power, as when they try to understand how a some interpretations of a
literary work come to be regarded as "truth." So this approach has some in common with Sociological criticism
in that it holds that a text is constructed within a social context.

    Mimetic criticism seeks to see how well a work accords with the real world.  Then, beyond the real world are
approaches dealing with the spiritual and the symbolic--the images connecting people throughout time and
cultures (archetypes). This is mimetic in a sense too, but the congruency looked for is not so much with the real
world as with something beyond the real world--something tying in all the worlds/times/cultures inhabited by
man.

Freudian Approach:

A Freudian approach often includes pinpointing the influences of a character's id (the instinctual,
pleasure seeking part of the mind), superego (the part of the mind that represses the id's impulses) and the ego
(the part of the mind that controls but does not repress the id's impulses, releasing them in a healthy way).
Freudian critics like to point out the sexual implications of symbols and imagery, since Freud's believed that all
human behavior is motivated by sexuality. They tend to see concave images, such as ponds, flowers, cups, and
caves as female symbols; whereas objects that are longer than they are wide are usually seen as phallic
symbols. Dancing, riding, and flying are associated with sexual pleasure. Water is usually associated with birth,
the female principle, the maternal, the womb, and the death wish. Freudian critics occasionally discern the
presence of an Oedipus complex (a boy's unconscious rivalry with his father for the love of his mother) in the
male characters of certain works, such as Hamlet. They may also refer to Freud's psychology of child
development, which includes the oral stage, the anal stage, and the genital stage.

 Feminist Approach

Feminist criticism is concerned with the impact of gender on writing and reading. It usually begins with
a critique of patriarchal culture. It is concerned with the place of female writers in the cannon.  Finally, it
includes a search for a feminine theory or approach to texts. Feminist criticism is political and often revisionist.
Feminists often argue that male fears are portrayed through female characters. They may argue that gender
determines everything, or just the opposite: that all gender differences are imposed by society, and gender
determines nothing.

Elaine Showalter's Theory:

(1) Feminine Stage - involves "imitation of the prevailing modes of the dominant tradition" and "internalization
of its standards."
(2) Feminist Stage - involves "protest against these standards and values and advocacy of minority rights...."
(3) Female Stage - this is the "phase of self-discovery, a turning inwards freed from some of the dependency of
opposition, a search for identity."

Major authors, critics: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), John Stuart
Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869); Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845); Virginia
Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929); Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949); Mary Ellman, Thinking
about Women (1968); Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (1969); Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader (1978);
Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own (1977); Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the
Attic (1979) Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous

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