Approaches to Literature

1. Critical Approaches to
Literature

2. Critical Approaches
-used to analyze, question, interpret,
synthesize and evaluate literary works,
with a specific mindset or “lenses”

3. New Criticism
-contend that literature needs little or no
connection with the author’s intentions, life, or
social/historical situation
-everything needed to analyze the work is
contained within the text
-examines language and literary conventions;
plot, rhyme, meter, dialect, setting, point of
view, etc.

4. Reader-Response Criticism
-studies the interaction of the
reader with the text; holds the
text incomplete until it is read
-examines the readers reactions
and thoughts to a piece of
work

5. Biographical Criticism
-relates the author’s life and
thoughts to their work
-allows one to better
understand the elements
within a work as well as
relate works to authorial
intention and audience

6. Narratological
Criticism
-concerns itself with the structure of
narrative; how events are constructed
and through what point of view
-considers the narrator not necessarily as
a person, but more as a window through
which one sees a constructed reality

7. Historical Criticism
-perspectives tend to reflect
a concern with the period
in which a text is produced
and/or read

8. Social Criticism
-recognizes literature as a reflection of the
environment through analysis of social
structure, power, politics, and agency

9. Gender/Feminist Criticism
-addresses issues of
masculinity and
femininity as binaries,
sexual orientation,
heterosexism, and
differences in sexes

10. Anthropological Criticism
-focuses on aspects of
everyday life in various
cultures; using ideas of
folklore, ritual,
celebrations, traditions,
etc.

11. Psychoanalytical
Criticism
-aims at uncovering the workings of the human
mind especially that expression of the
unconscious
-analyzing a text like a dream, looking for
symbolism and repressed meaning, the
dominance of unconscious mine of the
conscious
-can be applied to either the author/text
relationship or the reader/text relationship