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Critical Reading Approaches

The document outlines different approaches to critical reading of literature, including deconstruction, feminist criticism, Marxist criticism, new criticism, new historicism, psychological criticism, queer theory, reader-response criticism, historical-biographical criticism, and moral-philosophical criticism. Each approach is defined by focusing on different elements such as language, social class, reader experience, and more.

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355 views3 pages

Critical Reading Approaches

The document outlines different approaches to critical reading of literature, including deconstruction, feminist criticism, Marxist criticism, new criticism, new historicism, psychological criticism, queer theory, reader-response criticism, historical-biographical criticism, and moral-philosophical criticism. Each approach is defined by focusing on different elements such as language, social class, reader experience, and more.

Uploaded by

ivan dave aliasot
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Critical Reading Approaches

to Literature

Deconstruction suggests
 that language is not a stable entity;

 that we can never exactly say what we mean;

 that literature cannot give a reader any one single meaning, because the

language itself is simply too ambiguous;


 that literature cannot provide any outside meaning; and

 that texts cannot represent reality.

Feminist Criticism tries


 to correct predominantly male-dominated critical perspective with a

feminist consciousness; and


 to understand representation from a woman’s point of view and analyze

women’s writing strategies in the context of their social conditions.

Marxist Criticism insists


 that all use of language is influenced by social class and economics;

 that the function of literary output is to either support or criticize the

political and economic structures in place;


 the use literature to describe the competing socioeconomic interests that

advance capitalistic interests such as money and power over socialist


interests such as morality and justice; and
 on content and theme rather than form.

New Criticism (Formalist Criticism) suggests


 that the text is a self-contained entity;

 that everything that the reader needs to know to understand it is

already in the text;


 close textual analysis with the elements of a text only – irony, paradox,

metaphor, symbol, plot, and so on.

New historicism
 focuses on the literary text as part of a larger social and historical

context, and the modern reader’s interaction with that work.


 attempt to describe the culture of a period by reading many different
types of texts and paying attention to many different dimensions of a
culture, including political, social, economic, and aesthetic concerns.
 regards texts as not simply a reflection of the culture that produced them
but also as productive of that culture by playing an active role in the
social and political conflicts of an age.
 explores various versions of “history,” sensitizing us to the fact that the
history on which we choose to focus is colored by being reconstructed by
our present perspective.

Psychological criticism
 uses psychoanalytic theories, especially those of Freud and Jacques Lacan,

to understand more fully the text, the reader, and the writer.
 analyzes the idea of the existence of a human consciousness – those
impulses, desires, and feelings about which a person is unaware but which
influence emotions or behavior.
 explores the motivations of characters and the symbolic meanings of
events, while biographers speculate about a writer’s own motivations –
conscious or unconscious – in a literary work.

Queer theory, or gender study


 insists that gender is not a fixed identity that shapes actions and

thoughts, but rather a “role” that is “performed.”


 challenges the notion that there is such a thing as “normal,” because that

assumes the existence of a category for “deviant.”


 studies and challenges the idea that gender categories exist at all, but

particularly in terms of sexual activities and identities.

Reader-response criticism
 removes the focus from the text and places it on the reader instead, by

attempting to describe what goes on in the reader’s mind during the


reading of a text.
 is not interested in a “correct” interpretation of a text or what the author

intended.
 is interested in the reader’s individual experience with a text.

 calls attention to how we read and what influences our readings, and

what that reveals about ourselves.


Historical-Biographical.
 sees a literary work as a reflection of the author’s life and times or the life

and times of the characters in the work.


 investigates how plot details, settings, and characters of the work reflect

or are representative of events, settings, and people in the author’s life or


a direct outgrowth of — or reaction to– the culture in which the author
lived.

Moral-Philosophical.
 takes the position that the larger function of literature is to teach morality

and probe philosophical issues, such as ethics, religion, or the nature of


humanity.
 interprets within the context of the philosophical thought of a period or

group, such as Christianity, Existentialism, Buddhism, etc.


 sees in the work allusions to other works, people, or events from this

perspective, or see the work as allegorical.

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