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.
