First, see attached for a sample paper Research Paper_Short”. .docx

First, see attached for a sample paper “Research Paper_Short”.
It was submitted by a student of mine last semester and is
shared with you with his permission. Reviewing it should give
you a sense of what you're aiming for with your own work. A
couple things to keep in mind as you work:
· The overview of the six articles (references) is the biggest
portion of your paper. After setting up your general argument in
your intro (which you may not know until you've written the
whole thing, so feel free to write that last), proceed one by one
through the articles you found. It's best to cover these
chronologically. Here you'll want to lead with a succinct,
specific statement of the article's argument. Then you'll unpack
that argument and (objectively) explain how the critic made his
or her case. Avoid quoting from the articles, as that will only
take up space and will draw readers' attention away from your
explanation. This is the time for careful analysis and
explication--what are the premises of the argument, what
assumptions (about literature, about interpretation) does the
author draw on, what seem to be his or her primary concerns
and how do you know? Write about a page for each of your
articles.
· In the next section (3 pages or so), assess and evaluate the
arguments. It's best to organize this section thematically--what
resonances did you see across the arguments; what kinds of
conclusions were drawn, which are the strongest and why,
which the weakest and why; how and why did folks tend to
disagree? Make sure you explain your conclusions when you
talk about the solid or weak interpretations you read or whether
a conclusion is interesting--be sure you unpack what that
means. Still stay away from quoting over-much here. You can
assume your reader is familiar with the articles and the novel;

just be sure you provide enough context so readers can follow
along.
· In the final section (3 pages or so), you'll offer your own
interpretation as derived from your engagement with these
articles and the novel itself. Don't do any additional research
for this portion of your essay. The idea is that after seeing what
others have done with the book, weighing and measuring those
arguments, and with familiarity of the text itself, you should
have drawn your own conclusions about the book--lay them out
here.
With all of this, don't forget about foundational writing
elements like a strong thesis to unify the paper, coherent
paragraphs, engaging style, and proper grammar. Look back
over your returned papers to this point for any feedback I've
offered on these points.
Research
Paper_Short (1).docx
11
Short
Joseph Short
Marybeth Baggett
ENGL603
6 October 2019
From the Postmodern to the Psychoanalytic: Critical Studies of
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1968 novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, is a
relatively recent addition to the literary canon, transitioning
from a censored work—subject to the whims of book burners—
to must-read fiction in its half century on store shelves. Written
in a time when postmodernism and existentialism had found
their place in both the classroom and the writer’s studio and
when psychiatry had taken its place as a noble or ignoble
profession, this novel must be considered in the light of these

societal changes. A critical history, then, will include
approaches to the novel that explain its techniques and others
that examine its purpose in light of them. But these approaches
will complement rather than rival one another and serve to
illustrate the work’s complexity, not only in form but also in
content. Slaughterhouse-Five is not merely an anti-war piece; it
is a deeply compelling work that studies human isolation,
alienation, and the fragility of the human mind when subjected
to repeated and unaddressed traumas. The tragedy of Billy
Pilgrim is that he was damaged long before the war the novel
ostensibly responds to, and that damage festered like an
untreated wound until it destroyed him.
Early criticism refrained from commenting on the protagonist’s
mental state but instead emphasized the satirical nature of the
novel. A function of satire is to confront society with what
causes it discomfort. Attributing the comment to a textbook
publisher, former high school teacher Donald Veix bemoans the
shallow nature of English curriculum in high schools of his day:
“the student never reads about drugs, liquor, love or life” (25).
This extended to banning a novel such as Slaughterhouse-Five,
ostensibly due to its language and sexual references (26),
including the Tralfamadorian statement that male homosexuals
were necessary for human reproduction (Vonnegut 118), a
notion that would have raised a few eyebrows in its day. This
inclusivity, appearing in a single paragraph midway through the
novel’s roughly 200 pages, could alone be enough to draw the
ire of censors. Blatant references to pornography, a scene near
the novel’s end taking place in a “tawdry bookstore” (204), and
at least 15 occurrences of the so-called f-word would only
confirm their disdain. For Veix, however, these are convenient
targets, and the true reason for censorship is the novel’s honest
confrontation of a warmongering western society that holds
slaughter as sacred as long as its cause seems just (26).
Though his article was written less than a decade after the
novel’s initial publication, Veix is already displaying a New
Historicist critical viewpoint, treating the novel as a product of

its time. The anti-war attitudes of the 1960s are in effect with
the United States entrenched in the Vietnam conflict when the
novel was published and winding down when the article was
published. Vietnam is referenced several times in the novel,
with Robert Pilgrim, the protagonist’s son, serving as a Green
Beret, decorated for valor and wounded in action (Vonnegut
194). Notions of American moral superiority and the nobility of
war are challenged in the novel (Veix 30), and their champions
are objects of ridicule who dehumanize anyone who disagrees
(Vonnegut 195).
When teaching Slaughterhouse-Five, Veix suggests immersing
students in the pro-war culture of American life during the time
in which the novel was set. For Veix, this “provid[es] a
balanced view” (30), when juxtaposed with the contemporary
Vietnam-era anti-war message and could be accomplished
through screening films and inviting guest speakers, particularly
those who were involved in World War II. This brings to mind
an image of the novel’s staunchly pro-war Professor Rumfoord,
haranguing students about the justness of the Dresden bombing
(30), but perhaps Veix has a more nuanced approach in mind.
The end of the Vietnam Conflict afforded some historical
distance to critical considerations of the novel, and some critics
began to favor the development of the story itself as a topic
worth consideration. One such critic is T.J. Matheson, who
opens his 1984 article lamenting on the lack of critical
agreement on the very meaning of the novel, particularly its
peculiar opening chapter (228-29). Its pages feature none of the
main characters, and in a move unusual for a novel, their nature
as fictional creations is emphasized (229). Indeed, Matheson
draws great attention to the metafictional aspects of
Slaughterhouse-Five. Of paramount importance, he says, is the
narrator’s attempt to avoid creating another work of escapist
literature; had he done so, he would be the literary equivalent of
a drug dealer, enabling his readers to avoid painful truths by
indulging in action and adventure and glorious war (233). These
metafictional elements appear not only in the opening chapters

but on two occasions in the main “fictional” section of the
work. Twice, the narrator interrupts Billy’s narrative to tell the
reader, “That was I. That was me” (Vonnegut 130, 153),
identifying himself as one of Billy’s fellow prisoners of war.
This does not so much establish the author as a character but
rather serves to emphasize an aspect of the fictive process,
namely the translation of personal experiences into fictional
events.
The New Historicist approach persists in Matheson’s article in
the form of brief analyses of Vonnegut’s references to events
such as the World’s Fair and companies such as Ford and
Disney. To expand on these, Matheson injects a quotation from
Henry Ford on the unreliability of history and evaluates
Disney’s sanitized view of the subject. To Matheson, both
companies are mining history for commercial capital (236).
Recognizing this sets the stage for the narrator’s meeting with
Mary O’Hare and forces him to question his own motives for
writing a book about the war: is he mining the past for profit in
the same way these companies are, and do all writers of
historical novels do the same? (Matheson 237).
Generally, metafictional considerations have more in common
with postmodern interpretations of a text. Matheson, however,
avoids terms commonly associated with postmodernism,
including the very term “metafiction.” This article, then,
symbolizes a shift in the critical paradigm from examining the
novel’s form and function to explorations of theme and
subtextual meaning. A similar transition is the theme of a 1995
article by Hans van Stralen, though this transition has less to do
with evaluation by critics than with two related but distinct
philosophical movements that influenced the author’s mindset.
Stralen identifies characteristics of Slaughterhouse-Five which
seem to establish it as a postmodern novel and lists a number of
articles published in the 1980s that undergird this claim (3).
These postmodern characteristics include the absence of
traditional narrative elements, such as beginning, middle, and
end, the disjointed presentation of the narrative, and the lack of

a moral center for the novel (3). However, Stralen believes that
those who advance the postmodern interpretation neglect the
vital distinction between postmodernism and existentialism (3-
4). He argues that those who fail to see this distinction treat
postmodernism as the literary equivalent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s
existentialism, but this is a mistake because existentialist works
fall into two separate camps. One is dominated by the works of
Sartre and De Beauvoir, and the worlds their characters inhabit
are governed by some form of ethics and a demand that a
commitment be made with they are confronted by an either-or
dilemma. The second camp, influenced by the works of Camus
and Kafka, rejects the notion of moral commitment and accepts
the absurdities and inscrutability of life (Stralen 4). In
Vonnegut’s novel, protagonist Billy Pilgrim is a cog in the
machine—as a chaplain’s assistant, he is not even a proper
soldier (Vonnegut 32)—and incapable of affecting the war in
any meaningful way. This sense of powerlessness is reiterated
by the Tralfamadorian philosophy that every moment in time is
scripted and the players pre-ordained, like “bugs trapped in
amber…trapped in the amber of this moment” (87). This
exemplar philosophy of Slaughterhouse-Five is, according to
Stralen, antithetical to Sartre’s ethical imperative and
disqualifies the novel as a purely postmodern work (Stralen 5-
6).
Stralen’s objections do not seem to have been heeded, however,
as later critics have responded more favorably to the
meaninglessness envisioned by the text and concluded that
Slaughterhouse-Five is “a work of deep moral significance”
(Coleman 642). To Martin Coleman, writing in 2008, the novel
demonstrates a way for the individual to transcend tragedy and
“live honestly and meaningfully” (642). Coleman is able to
draw this conclusion because he searches for internal meaning.
Of the protagonist’s supposed jaunts through space and time,
Coleman writes, “Billy Pilgrim’s experiences are not wrong or
untrue, because the things experienced really are what they are
experienced as—that is, frightening, disorienting, unpredictable,

discontinuous” (685). Billy can and does find personal meaning
in his “so it goes” attitude developed under the supposed
tutelage of the Tralfamadorians. Whether that meaning is based
on events as they really occurred is immaterial (Coleman 688).
This examination of Billy’s internal life as the source of
meaning is rooted firmly in psychoanalytic critical theory,
which sees a character’s present mental and emotional state as
growing from his past. Yet Billy remains unaware of how
deeply the past has damaged him and is unable to connect these
events to their present effects (Coleman 688). Back home, years
after the war, and despite achieving financial and professional
success, Billy would cry “for no apparent reason” (Vonnegut
64). Because he does not understand how his present pain is
directly related to his past experiences—because that
connection eludes him—time loses meaning. In a real sense,
time becomes an enemy; first, he tries to escape it by
convincing himself he can travel through it, and then he begins
to deny its effects on him or anyone else (Coleman 688-91).
This is most evident in a passage Coleman quotes from the
novel wherein the alien Tralfamadorians, due to their ability to
see all moments in time simultaneously, say of corpses that they
are “in a bad condition in that particular moment but…just fine
in plenty of other moments” (qtd. in Coleman 691). Thus,
everyone who died in the war and after, from Wild Bob to
Roland Weary, from the tens of thousands who died in Dresden,
to Billy’s own unloved wife Valencia, is still alive if he can just
“travel to” or envision the right moment.
This psychoanalytic critique of Billy Pilgrim and
Slaughterhouse-Five continued from the 2000s to the early years
of this decade. Kevin Brown introduces his 2011 article, “The
Psychiatrists Were Right: Anomic Alienation in Kurt
Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five,” with an examination of an
article by Susanne Vees-Gulani. She, according to Brown, views
Billy as a sufferer of PTSD who was failed by the inadequate
psychiatric system of his day (Brown 101). Brown agrees but
insists she misses the mark in one respect: that Billy’s problems

extend further back to long before his wartime experiences
(101). Billy’s earliest recorded childhood experience is a
traumatic one, his father tossing him into a YMCA pool to fend
for himself in a bid to “teach” the boy to swim. While Vonnegut
himself seems to mock the psychiatrists, who focus on this
experience to the exclusion of Billy’s wartime trauma, Brown
urges readers against making the opposite mistake (102). The
psychiatrists referenced in the title of this article are not those
of the real world, but rather those of the novel who attributed
Billy’s problems to patterns of trauma begun in his early
childhood. In a sense, they were right to do so. It is not the
individual experience of being thrown into the pool that harmed
him to such an extreme, but rather what it represents—a lack of
real love or connection with his parents or anyone else in his
formative years. This stunted Billy’s emotional growth and
prevented him from forming positive relationships later in life
or even caring about his own survival (103-104). This remains
true even when partnered with a wife who demonstrably loves
and tries to understand him. All Billy can do is fake the part of
a dutiful husband while reflecting disdainfully on his wife’s
appearance and how much he didn’t want to marry her (103-
104). The PTSD triggered by the war is exacerbated by this
existing condition, which prevents him from forming
relationships necessary for its successful treatment. Billy’s only
means of coping is to retreat into a fantasy world he has fooled
himself into thinking is real, populated by characters he can
control (105-106).
The study of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five continues to the
present day and extends throughout the world. Though it began
as a subversive novel, censored by school boards and in at least
one case becoming the target of a book burning (Veix 27), it is
by now the subject of academic papers, such as a dissertation
published as recently as May of this year (2019) by a student in
the Shanghai International Studies University in Shanghai,
China. This dissertation by Jing Shi employs a number of
literary critical techniques and, in this capacity, serves as a

fitting capstone to the present study.
Shi employs a form of author-centric criticism by examining
Vonnegut’s life and background and suggesting that events
within his wartime experiences may form an autobiographical
basis for the story (553). Shi then revisits ground previously
trodden by earlier critics, namely Vonnegut’s use of postmodern
techniques, including metafiction and non-linear structure
(554). Returning to the author as source of the text, Shi
speculates that Vonnegut employed non-linearity because of
“his mental traumas caused by the Dresden Bombing” (555). For
Shi, Slaughterhouse-Five is an intensely autobiographical novel,
and Billy Pilgrim is an embodiment of the author’s need to
express his pain. Shi’s dissertation is the least refined of the
articles examined. It reads more as a research paper than an
attempt to say anything new about Vonnegut’s work. Yet this
serves to illustrate the progress of the novel through the
decades; much as its subject matter—psychological trauma, the
myths of American infallibility, the notion that all’s fair in
war—it has gone from a book that must be burned to a
profoundly influential work that is burned into the minds of
those who read it.
Synthesizing the critical approaches scholars have taken toward
Slaughterhouse-Five is a fairly straightforward task. Typically,
Vonnegut is viewed as a postmodern writer, and even those who
seek to refine that label to something like existentialist admit to
the postmodern trappings of the work (Stralen 4). Postmodern
techniques recognized by the authors of these articles include
nonlinear narrative, collage, parodies (Shi 554, 556, 559), and
satire (Matheson 228). Two of the critics examined, Shi and
Stralen, identify the novel as essentially postmodern, while a
third, Matheson, avoids using the term. However, the themes he
explores in relation to Vonnegut’s work thoroughly belong to
that school of thought. A fourth writer, Viex, who penned the
earliest article examined herein, focuses on the satirical nature
of the piece as a reason that censors targeted the book in his
day. The only two writers who stay away from any postmodern

interpretation of the novel entirely (Brown and Coleman) have a
separate but noncontradictory purpose in mind: a psychoanalytic
examination of the text. Shi also verges on the psychoanalytic at
one point by speculating on the author’s mindset when writing
the novel and his motives for doing so (555).
A point of contention among scholars is how closely Vonnegut
should be associated with his persona in the novel. Shi’s
purporting to analyze the author’s own mind places her in the
camp that sees the narrator in chapters one and ten as a direct
analogue to Vonnegut (Shi 556). While acknowledging the lack
of agreement among critics as to whether the narrator is
Vonnegut or a pastiche of himself carefully crafted to set up the
story, Matheson favors the latter interpretation (230). However,
his reasoning for doing so seems questionable at best, treating
the narrator’s self-effacement on the quality of his novel as a
straightforward statement—if he says the novel is “lousy,” he
must be telling the truth, and “he would surely not publish it in
a form he found unsatisfactory” (Matheson 230). A further
proof Matheson raises is the narrator’s reference to himself as
“an old fart” (Vonnegut 4, 9) being at odds with the author’s
actual age—46—at the time of publication. Matheson insists
that 46 cannot be considered old (230-31). This is by no means
compelling evidence, as nonspecific terms such as “old fart”
can be highly subjective, and the narrator has Billy muse,
“‘Where have all the years gone?’” when he is aged 44
(Vonnegut 59). Shi provides a counter to Matheson’s arguments
by stating that, “all the clear publicly-available content that the
author revealed to readers aims at exposing his identity as the
author” (556). Coleman likely agrees, characterizing
Slaughterhouse-Five as autobiographical (682).
Both critical approaches employed by these articles are valid.
The postmodern approach examines the form the novel takes
and the literary devices the author uses to develop the story,
while the psychoanalytic approach explores the possible
motivations for using that form. Of the four articles that posit a
postmodern interpretation, Stralen’s is the most intriguing since

its methodology is the most specific. By dividing postmodern
works into additional categories and differentiating those
inspired by Sartre and De Beauvoir from those inspired by
Camus and Kafka (Stralen 3-4), he establishes the moral tone of
the novel and circumvents what Vonnegut tries to avoid—the
glorifying of war. A work written in the vein of Sartre might
well demand its protagonist take a stand, casting Billy Pilgrim
as John Wayne in direct defiance of the wishes of the novel’s
Mary O’Hare: “You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies,
and you’ll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John
Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old
men. And war will look just wonderful…” (Vonnegut 16). By
establishing Vonnegut in the tradition of Camus instead, Stralen
presents the novel’s moral outlook as bleak and its lead’s
overriding character trait the acceptance of his powerlessness
and ultimately inability to change circumstances. While a
character played by John Wayne might attempt to save his
fellow soldiers, Billy Pilgrim merely shrugs and repeats as a
refrain the Tralfamadorians’ lackadaisical response to death,
“So it goes” (Vonnegut 29).
Not all critics accept this characterization of Vonnegut as a
“conscienceless escapist” (Tilton qtd. in Coleman 682). Martin
Coleman recognizes a positive moral quality in the novel,
interpreting it as a philosophical work with a goal of “making
sense of experience rather than discovering ultimate reality”
(683-84). Coleman employs a psychoanalytic approach to
Vonnegut’s work, though he and fellow critic Kevin Brown
differ in the subject of their examination. In labeling
Slaughterhouse-Five an autobiographical novel (681, 682),
Coleman attempts to probe the psyche of the author. Brown, on
the other hand, treats protagonist Billy Pilgrim as the patient on
the proverbial psychiatric couch. He is even careful to
differentiate between Vonnegut the author and Vonnegut the
character in the novel, referring to the latter as “the Vonnegut
of the introduction” (Brown 107). As critics are divided on how
self-referential the novel is, Brown’s seems the safer approach.

It is also the more thorough. In tracking Billy’s development
from childhood to the novel’s present day, Brown gives a full
account of the repeated traumas that formed in him the mental
construct of Tralfamadore and refrains from wholly attributing
his mental problems to the war. In effect, Brown avoids the
opposite mistake that Billy’s psychiatrists make when they
eliminate the war as a contributing factor (102). Tracing Billy’s
psychosis to his inability to form human connections elevates
Slaughterhouse-Five from a mere anti-war diatribe to an
examination of the deleterious effects of solitude in the midst of
a crowd.
Despite the by-and-large agreement of critics, Slaughterhouse-
Five is no easy text to interpret. Merely tracing the plotline is
troublesome since events are presented out of order. Even the
first chapter, written in the voice of a possibly fictionalized
version of Vonnegut, is chaotic, introducing readers to the same
character, “an old war buddy, Bernard V. O’Hare,” twice in the
first six pages (3, 6), almost as if the narrator forgot he
introduced him the first time. The same meandering from event
to event, careless of the years that pass in between or their
chronological placement is reflected in both the first chapter
and the story proper, though it is far more noticeable in the
main story. Including this narrative disconnect in the first
chapter does serve to prepare the reader for Billy’s wandering
mind and offers a clue that his supposed time travel can easily
be replicated by thoughtful reflection on the past.
The storyline is simple: Billy, a young chaplain’s assistant is
captured behind enemy lines during World War II and becomes
a prisoner of war. He is transported to a prisoner of war camp
and then put to forced labor in the city of Dresden, where he is
present for the Allied bombing that destroys the city. Following
the war, he briefly stays in a mental hospital before finishing
his optometry degree, marrying a woman he does not love and
rising to prominence as a prosperous civic leader. Years later,
he is the sole survivor of a plane crash, wherein he fractures his
skull. His grief-stricken wife dies on her way to visit him in the

hospital. Billy then begins writing letters to the newspaper and
goes on the radio claiming he can travel through time and has
been abducted by aliens. Ignoring his daughter’s pleas to stop,
he plans to continue spreading his message.
The average reader may scoff at the notion of time travel or
alien abduction, but must this be the automatic response? By
framing Billy’s story as a fictional account, Vonnegut exempts
the reader from having to ask whether such fantastical
occurrences are possible. Billy Pilgrim and most of the
characters that inhabit chapters two through nine are inventions
of the narrator. By creating his own world, he allows for the
possibility that time travel and Tralfamadorians exist within its
confines. The astute reader of this novel-within-a-novel may
even spot a medical reason for Billy’s condition: it could be
inherited. A quarter of the way through the novel, Billy flashes
forward to a time when he visits his aged mother in a nursing
home and the following description is given: “…she gathered
energy from all over her ruined body… At last she had
accumulated enough to whisper this complete sentence: ‘How
did I get so old?’” (Vonnegut 47). On the surface, this seems
little more than an aged woman confronting her own mortality.
Then, several trips and a mere twelve pages later, a slightly
younger Billy asks himself, “‘Where have all the years gone?’”
(60). The similarity of these reactions begs the question of
whether Billy and his mother might not share a similar genetic
condition that causes both to mentally travel through time.
Another clue pointing to the genuineness of Billy’s story is that
other characters stumble upon him seemingly entranced while
on one of his trips. This first occurs when Billy travels from
World War II to a New Year’s Eve Party in 1961 to find himself
drunkenly cheating on his wife. Billy is shaken awake by a
fellow soldier during the war, still feeling the effects of the
alcohol and upset over something that occurred in the future
(48-50). This seems significant because there is no reference to
Billy consuming alcohol during the wartime scenes and no
reasonable explanation for why he is thinking about events that

had yet to happen.
This does not prove the authenticity of Billy’s testimony about
time travel. Equally plausible, if not more so, is that the entire
narrative of chapters two through nine is seen through the lens
of a Billy who has already survived the plane crash. His
fractured skull may have been accompanied by a traumatic brain
injury that is distorting his memory. Vonnegut seems to allow
this when relating the injury: “Billy had a fractured skull, but
he was still conscious. He didn’t know where he was. His lips
were working, and he whispered to [the golliwog] his address:
‘Schlachthof-fünf’” (Vonnegut 160). His lips moving without
Billy knowing where he is may be a statement about his entire
story: he is speaking without understanding. This is how Billy’s
daughter interprets his behavior. According to her, Billy “never
mentioned any of this before the airplane crash” (32). The “any
of this” refers to his supposed time travel and abduction by
aliens from Tralfamadore. In fact, every major element of
Billy’s fantastical story can be traced to one scene in the novel,
which occurs during his trip to New York following his post-
crash hospitalization. In Times Square, Billy spots four
paperback science fiction novels written by his friend Kilgore
Trout in the display window of an adult bookstore. Going
inside, he peruses two of the novels. The first depicts a man and
woman abducted by aliens and placed in their zoo; the second is
an account of a man who builds a time …
USING
CRITICAL
THEORY
How to Read and Write About Literature
S E C O N D E D I T I O N

L O I S T Y S O N
Using Critical Theory
“I know of no other book on critical theory for beginning and
intermediate
students that offers the same depth and breath. It offers
thorough and clear
applications of each theory while its rhetorical tone puts
students at ease as they
attempt to think about the world in new and different ways …
[this] is the
perfect text for students new to critical theory and stands in a
league of its own.”
Gretchen Cline, Muskegon Community College, USA
Explaining both why theory is important and how to use it, Lois
Tyson introduces
beginning students of literature to this often daunting area in a
friendly and
approachable style. The new edition of this textbook is clearly
structured with
chapters based on major theories that students are expected to
cover in their studies.
Key features include:
� coverage of all major theories including psychoanalysis,
Marxism, feminism,
lesbian/gay/queer theories, postcolonial theory, African
American theory,
and a new chapter on New Criticism (formalism)
� practical demonstrations of how to use these theories on short

literary
works selected from canonical authors including William
Faulkner and
Alice Walker
� a new chapter on reader-response theory that shows students
how to use
their personal responses to literature while avoiding typical
pitfalls
� new sections on cultural criticism for each chapter
� new “further practice” and “further reading” sections for each
chapter
� a useful “next-step” appendix that suggests additional literary
examples for
extra practice.
Comprehensive, easy to use, and fully updated throughout,
Using Critical
Theory is the ideal first step for students beginning degrees in
literature,
composition, and cultural studies.
Lois Tyson is Professor of English at Grand Valley State
University, USA.
She is the author of Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly
Guide (2nd edition,
Routledge, 2006).
Using Critical Theory

How to read and write about literature
Second edition
Lois Tyson
First edition published as Learning for a Diverse World 2001
by Routledge
This edition published as Using Critical Theory 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2001, 2011 Lois Tyson
The right of Lois Tyson to be identified as author of this work
has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tyson, Lois, 1950-
Using critical theory: how to read and write about literature /
Lois Tyson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Criticism. 2. Critical theory. I. Title.
PN98.S6T973 2011
801’.95 – dc22
2011008274
ISBN: 978-0-415-61616-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-61617-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-80509-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books

For Mac Davis and the late Stephen Lacey,
who both know that a good teacher is one
who remains a good student.
Contents
Preface for instructors xiv
Acknowledgments xviii
Permissions xix
1 Critical theory and you 1
What does critical theory have to do with me? 1
What will I learn about critical theory from this book? 3
Critical theory and cultural criticism 6
Three questions about interpretation most students ask 9
My interpretation is my opinion, so how can it be wrong? 9
Do authors deliberately use concepts from critical theories when
they write literary works? 10
How can we interpret a literary work without knowing what
the author intended the work to mean? 11
Why feeling confused can be a good sign 11
2 Using concepts from reader-response theory
to understand our own literary
interpretations 13
Why should we learn about reader-response theory? 13
Response vehicles 15

Personal identification 15
The familiar character 15
The familiar plot event 15
The familiar setting 15
Response exercises 16
Personal-identification exercise 16
Familiar-character exercise 18
Familiar-plot-event exercise 21
Familiar-setting exercise 23
How our personal responses can help or hinder interpretation 26
The “symbolic leap” 27
The difference between representing and endorsing
human behavior 28
Using our personal responses to generate paper topics 29
Food for further thought 31
Thinking it over 31
Reader-response theory and cultural criticism 32
Taking the next step 35
Exercises for further practice 35
Suggestions for further reading 36
3 Using concepts from New Critical theory to
understand literature 38
Why should we learn about New Critical theory? 38
Basic concepts 41
Theme 41

Formal elements 41
Unity 43
Close reading and textual evidence 44
Interpretation exercises 45
Appreciating the importance of tradition: Interpreting
“Everyday Use” 45
Recognizing the presence of death: Interpreting “A Rose
for Emily” 51
Understanding the power of alienation: Interpreting
“The Battle Royal” 57
Respecting the importance of nonconformity: Interpreting
“Don’t Explain” 63
Responding to the challenge of the unknown: Interpreting
“I started Early—Took my Dog” 69
Thinking it over 74
New Critical theory and cultural criticism 76
Questions for further practice 78
4 Using concepts from psychoanalytic theory to
Why should we learn about psychoanalytic theory? 81
Basic concepts 83
viii Contents

The family 83
Repression and the unconscious 83
The defenses 83
Core issues 84
Dream symbolism 85
Analyzing characters’ dysfunctional behavior: Interpreting
Exploring a character’s insanity: Interpreting “A Rose
for Emily” 91
Understanding dream images in literature: Interpreting
Recognizing a character’s self-healing: Interpreting “Don’t
Explain” 99
Using psychoanalytic concepts in service of other theories:
Interpreting “The Battle Royal” 103
Thinking it over 104
Psychoanalytic theory and cultural criticism 106
5 Using concepts from Marxist theory to understand
literature 110

Why should we learn about Marxist theory? 110
Basic concepts 112
Classism 112
Capitalism 113
Capitalist ideologies 114
The role of religion 116
Understanding the operations of capitalism: Interpreting
“Everyday use” 116
Recognizing the operations of the American Dream: Interpreting
Analyzing the operations of classism: Interpreting “A Rose
for Emily” 124
Resisting classism: Interpreting “Don’t Explain” 128
Learning when not to use Marxist concepts: Resisting the
temptation to interpret “I started Early—Took
my Dog” 131
Contents ix
Marxist theory and cultural criticism 134

6 Using concepts from feminist theory to understand literature
139
Why should we learn about feminist theory? 139
Basic concepts 141
Patriarchy 141
Traditional gender roles 142
The objectification of women 142
Sexism 143
The “cult of ‘true womanhood’” 143
Rejecting the objectification of women: Interpreting
Resisting patriarchal ideology: Interpreting “Don’t Explain”
147
Recognizing a conflicted attitude toward patriarchy:
Interpreting “Everyday Use” 151
Analyzing a sexist text: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily” 155
Understanding patriarchy’s psychological oppression
of women: Interpreting “I started Early—Took my Dog” 162
Feminist theory and cultural criticism 167
7 Using concepts from lesbian, gay, and queer theories

to understand literature 172
Why should we learn about lesbian, gay, and queer
theories? 172
Basic concepts 175
Heterosexism 175
Homophobia 175
Homosocial activities 176
The woman-identified woman 176
Homoerotic imagery 177
Queer theory 177
x Contents
Rejecting lesbian stereotypes: Interpreting “Don’t
Explain” 178
Analyzing homophobia: Interpreting “The Battle
Royal” 182
Recognizing the woman-identified woman in a heterosexual
text:
Interpreting “Everyday Use” 185
Using queer theory: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily” 191
Drawing upon context: Interpreting “I started Early—Took
my Dog” 194
Lesbian, gay, and queer theories and cultural criticism 200

8 Using concepts from African American theory to
Why should we learn about African American theory? 206
Basic concepts 209
African American culture and literature 209
Racism 211
Forms of racism 211
Double consciousness 213
Analyzing the overt operations of institutionalized racism:
Interpreting
Recognizing the “less visible” operations of institutionalized
racism:
Interpreting “Don’t Explain” 217
Understanding the operations of internalized racism:
Interpreting
Exploring the function of black characters in white literature:
Interpreting “A Rose for Emily” 228
Learning when not to use African American concepts:
Resisting the temptation to interpret “I started Early—Took
my Dog” 234

African American theory and cultural criticism 239
Contents xi
9 Using concepts from postcolonial theory to
Why should we learn about postcolonial theory? 245
Basic concepts 248
Colonialist ideology 248
The colonial subject 249
Anticolonialist resistance 250
Understanding colonialist ideology: Interpreting “The Battle
Royal” 251
Analyzing the colonial subject: Interpreting “Everyday Use”
257
Exploring the influence of cultural categories: Interpreting “A
Rose for
Emily” 264
Appreciating anticolonialist resistance: Interpreting “Don’t
Explain” 268

Recognizing the othering of nature: Interpreting “I started
Early—Took my Dog” 273
Postcolonial theory and cultural criticism 279
10 Holding on to what you’ve learned 285
A shorthand overview of our eight critical theories 285
A shorthand overview of our literary interpretation exercises
286
“A Rose for Emily” 290
“Don’t Explain” 291
A shorthand overview of the range of perspectives offered by
each
theory 293
Critical theory and cultural criticism revisited 297
Critical theory and an ethics for a diverse world 300
Appendices
Appendix A: “I started Early—Took my Dog” (Emily
Dickinson,
c. 1862) 302

Appendix B: “A Rose for Emily” (William Faulkner, 1931) 303
xii Contents
Appendix C: “The Battle Royal” (Ralph Ellison, 1952) 311
Appendix D: “Everyday Use” (Alice Walker, 1973) 323
Appendix E: “Don’t Explain” (Jewelle Gomez, 1987) 330
Appendix F: Additional literary works for further practice 338
Index 344
Contents xiii
Preface for instructors
If you’re planning to use this book in your undergraduate
classroom, then you
know that critical theory is no longer considered an abstract
discipline for a select
group of graduate students, as it was fifteen or twenty years
ago. Personally,
I don’t think critical theory should ever have been limited to
that mode of
thinking or to that audience. In its most concrete and, I think,
most meaningful
form, critical theory supplies us with a remarkable collection of
pedagogical
tools to help students, regardless of their educational
background, develop
their ability to reason logically; to formulate an argument; to
grasp divergent

points of view; to make connections among literature, history,
the society in
which they live, and their personal experience; and of special
importance on
our shrinking planet, to explore human diversity in its most
profound and
personal sense: as diverse ways of defining oneself and one’s
world. From this
perspective, critical theory is an appropriate pedagogical
resource not only for
advanced literature courses, but for the kinds of meat-and-
potatoes courses that
many of us teach: foundation-level literature courses;
introduction-to-literary-
studies courses; diversity courses; and composition courses that
stress critical
thinking, social issues, or cultural diversity.
Creating pedagogical options
For most of us who see the pedagogical potential of critical
theory, the question
then becomes: “How can I adapt critical frameworks to make
them useful to
students new to the study of literature and to the social issues
literature raises?”
That is precisely the question Using Critical Theory attempts to
answer by
offering you: (1) a reader-response chapter to help students
recognize and make
interpretive use of their personal responses to literature; (2)
seven carefully
selected theoretical approaches to literary interpretation—
introducing the
fundamentals of New Critical, psychoanalytic, feminist,
lesbian/gay/queer, African

American, and postcolonial theories—from which to choose;
and (3) five
different ways to use each of these approaches through the
vehicle of our
“Interpretation exercises,” the step-by-step development of
sample inter-
pretations of the five literary works reprinted at the end of this
book. Now,
the key word here is choice. I think we do our best teaching
when we adapt
our materials to our own pedagogical goals and teaching styles.
For example,
you can employ Using Critical Theory to structure an entire
course, to create a
unit or units on specific theoretical approaches, or to
supplement the teaching
of specific literary works with an increased repertoire of
possible interpreta-
tions. To provide maximum flexibility, each chapter is written
to stand on its
own, so you can choose which of the selected theoretical
frameworks you
want to use. Each interpretation exercise is also written to stand
on its own, so
you can choose which of the selected literary works you want to
use.
I hope the structure of these chapters will facilitate your own
creation of
classroom activities and homework assignments. For example,
students can work
in small groups to find the textual data required by a given
interpretation

exercise, and that activity can be organized in a number of
ways. Each group
can work on a different section of the same interpretation
exercise, thereby each
contributing a piece of the puzzle to a single interpretation. Or
each group can
work on a different interpretation exercise from a single
chapter, thereby using
concepts from the same theory to complete interpretation
exercises for dif-
ferent literary works. Or if students feel they fully understand a
given inter-
pretation exercise, you might invite them to develop one of the
alternative
interpretations suggested in the “Focusing your essay” section
at the end of
each interpretation exercise or to develop an interpretation of
their own.
Finally, once the class has become acquainted with a few
different theories,
different groups of students can use different theoretical
approaches to collect
textual data from the same literary work, thereby getting an
immediate sense
of the ways in which concepts from different critical theories
can foreground
different aspects of the same literary work or foreground the
same aspect of a
literary work for different purposes.
Similarly, the “Basic concepts” sections of Chapters 3 through 9
can be used
to generate activities by having students apply these concepts to
short literary
works other than those used in this book. For example, students
can be

given—singly, in pairs, or in small groups—one of the basic
concepts of a
single theory and asked to find all the ways in which that
concept is illustrated
in or relevant to any literary work you assign. Or you might
allow students to
select one of the basic concepts of a theory the class is studying
and explain to
their classmates how an understanding of that concept helps
illuminate the
lyrics of a song of their own choosing, a magazine
advertisement, a video
game, or some other production of popular culture.
To whatever uses you put this book, I think you’ll find that the
seven
theoretical approaches it introduces, taken in any combination,
provide a
comparative experience, a sense of how our perceptions can
change when we
change the lens through which we’re looking. In this way, these
theories, all
of which are in current academic use, can help students develop
a concrete,
productive understanding of the diverse world in which we live.
Our five
literary works—Emily Dickinson’s “I started Early—Took my
Dog” (c. 1862),
Preface for instructors xv
William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” (1931), Ralph Ellison’s
“The Battle
Royal” (1952), Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” (1973), and

Jewelle Gomez’s
“Don’t Explain” (1987)—were chosen because each lends itself
to our selected
theories in ways that are accessible to novices and that are
typical of the kinds
of perspectives on literature each theory offers us. Thus, each
interpretation
exercise serves as a template for future literary analysis. In
addition, our five
literary works are heavily weighted in favor of fiction because I
have found that
most novices respond most readily to stories and, indeed, most
of the drama
and much of the poetry we offer our introductory-level
literature and compo-
sition students have a perceptible narrative dimension. Thus, the
interpretive
skills and strategies students learn here will carry over to the
interpretation of
works from other literary genres, genres which are represented
in each chapter’s
“Questions for further practice” and in the “Literary works for
further practice”
provided in Appendix F.
Responding to pedagogical challenges
Of course, Using Critical Theory is not intended as a complete
introduction-to-
literature textbook: for example, it does not define such basic
literary vocabulary
as plot, character, setting, stage directions, rhyme, or meter.
Nevertheless, the book
addresses several common problems encountered by students
new to the study
of literature, problems which I suspect you’ve encountered in

the classroom
many times. For example, Chapter 1, “Critical theory and you,”
explains,
among other things, the difference between an opinion and a
thesis, the purpose
of a literary interpretation, and how we can analyze the meaning
of a literary
work without knowing what the author intended. Chapter 2,
“Using
concepts from reader-response theory to understand our own
literary inter-
pretations,” includes an explanation of the difference between a
symbolic
interpretation justified by the literary work and a symbolic
interpretation
arbitrarily imposed by a reader’s personal response to the work.
This same
chapter also explains the difference between a text’s
representation of human
behavior and its endorsement of that behavior, which students’
personal
responses to a literary work often lead them to confuse. Chapter
3, “Using
concepts from New Critical theory to understand literature,”
aims to solidify
students’ understanding of thesis-and-support argumentation,
which remains
an area of pedagogical frustration for many of us. Moreover, the
interpretation
exercises provided in Chapters 4 through 9, in addition to their
primary
function as sample literary applications of our remaining
selected theories, are
all lessons in close reading, for each exercise guides students
through the process
of collecting textual evidence to support the interpretation at

hand. Students
are thus encouraged to see the equal importance of two aspects
of current
critical practice that they often mistakenly believe are mutually
exclusive: (1)
that there is more than one valid interpretation of a literary text;
and (2) that
every interpretation requires adequate textual support. The goal
here is to
xvi Preface for instructors
correct a misconception you’ve probably encountered in the
classroom all too
often: once students have accepted that there is no single
correct interpretation of
a literary work, they frequently conclude that their own
interpretations do not
need to be supported with textual evidence. Finally, Chapter 10,
“Holding on
to what you’ve learned,” in addition to its other functions,
brings students
back to the kind of personal connection that opens Chapter 1:
how their
study of critical theory can help them understand, develop, and
articulate their
personal values within the context of the changing world in
which they live.
Perhaps you will find, as I have, that this last connection—
between students’
sense of themselves as individuals and the cultures that shape
them—is the
most valuable connection the study of critical theory can help

students make.
For it is a connection that has the capacity to spark imaginative
inquiry in
every domain of their education. And it seems to me that few
things motivate
students more thoroughly—if we can just find the keys that
open those
doors—than their own imaginations.
Preface for instructors xvii
Acknowledgments
My sincere gratitude goes to the following friends and
colleagues for their
many and varied acts of kindness during the writing of this
book: the late
Forrest Armstrong, Kathleen Blumreich, Brent Chesley, Patricia
Clark, Dianne
Griffin Crowder, Michelle DeRose, Milt Ford, Roger Gilles,
Chance Guyette,
Michael Hartnett, Avis Hewitt, Rick Iadonisi, Regina Salmi,
Christopher
Shinn, Gary Stark, Veta Tucker, and Brian White.
Special thanks also go to Dean Frederick Antczak; to Grand
Valley State
University for its generous financial support of this project; and
to my editors
at Routledge, Emma Nugent and Polly Dodson.
Finally, the deepest appreciation is expressed to Hannah
Berkowitz, Jeremy
Franceschi, Gretchen Cline, and, especially, Mac Davis for

service above and
beyond the call of friendship—and to Lenny Briscoe for his
untiring and
invaluable support.
Permissions
“I started early—took my dog” by Emily Dickinson – Reprinted
by permission
of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The
Poems of Emily
Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The
Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983
by the President
and Fellows of Harvard College.
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner – Reproduced with
permission of
Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Estate of
William Faulkner,
Copyright © William Faulkner 1931.
“Rose for Emily”, copyright © 1930 and renewed 1958 by
William Faulkner,
from Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William
Faulkner. Used by permission
of Random House, Inc.
“A Rose for Emily”. Copyright 1930 & renewed 1958 by
William Faulkner,
from Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William
Faulkner. Used by permission
of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

“Battle Royal”, copyright © 1948 by Ralph Ellison, from
Invisible Man by
Ralph Ellison. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
“Everyday Use” from In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black
Women, copyright
© 1973 by Alice Walker, reprinted by permission of Harcourt,
Inc.
Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright
holders. The
publishers would be pleased to hear from any copyright holders
not acknowl-
edged here, so that this acknowledgements page may be
amended at the earliest
opportunity.
Chapter 1
Critical theory and you
If you’re reading this textbook, then you’ve probably got a lot
on your plate
right now. You might be preparing to enter college. Or you
might be in your
first or second year of undergraduate studies. Perhaps you’re
taking your first
literature course. If you’re specializing in literary studies, at
this point you
might be a bit concerned about what you’ve gotten yourself
into. If you’re

not specializing in literary studies, you might be wondering if
you can get
away with skipping this part of the course or putting forth a
minimal effort.
After all, you might be thinking, “What does critical theory
have to do with
me?” As I hope this book will show you, critical theory has
everything to do
with you, no matter what your educational or career plans might
be.
What does critical theory have to do with me?
First, most of my students find that the study of critical theory
increases their
ability to think creatively and to reason logically, and that’s a
powerful com-
bination of vocational skills. You will see, for example, how the
skills fostered
by studying critical theory would be useful to lawyers in
arguing their cases
and to teachers in managing the interpersonal dynamics that
play out in their
classrooms. In fact, as you read the following chapters I think
you will find
that critical theory develops your ability to see any given
problem from a
variety of points of view, which is a skill worth having no
matter what career
you pursue.
As important, if not more important, than your future role on
the job
market is your future role as a member of the global community.
Many
people are coming to realize that the numerous and diverse

cultures inhabiting
planet Earth each has its own history of struggle and
achievement as well as its
own part to play on the modern stage of national and world
events. However,
while each culture has its own unique heritage, we share the
need to learn to
live together, to learn to work with and for one another, if we
want our
planet to survive. And the issue becomes more complex when
we realize that
cultures don’t occupy tidy bins determined by race or ethnicity
alone. In
reality, cultures consist of patchworks of overlapping groups
that define
themselves in terms of many factors, including race, ethnicity,
religion, gender,
sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class.
It’s easy for each of us to think ourselves tolerant of cultural
groups other
than our own, to believe that we are unbiased, without
prejudice. But it’s not
meaningful to say that we are tolerant of groups about which we
know little
or nothing. For as soon as our tolerance is tested we might find
that the tol-
erance we thought we had doesn’t really exist. For example,
take a minute
to think about the schools you attended before you entered
college. Didn’t
the student population of at least one of those schools, if not all
of them,

divide itself into social groups based largely on the kinds of
cultural factors
listed above? If your school had a diverse student body, didn’t
students tend to
form close bonds only with members of their own race? Didn’t
students from
wealthy, socially prominent families tend to stick together?
Didn’t students
from poorer neighborhoods tend to stick together as well?
Didn’t students
with strong religious ties tend to be close friends with students
of the same
religion? If your school environment was safe enough for gay
students to
identify themselves, wasn’t there a social group based on gay
sexual orientation,
which may have been subdivided into two more groups: gay
male and …
LITERARY THEORY
THE BASICS
Now in its third edition, Literary Theory: The Basics is a clear
and
engaging introduction to this core area of study. Exploring a
broad
range of topics, from the New Criticism of the 1930s to the
Ecocriticism and Posthumanism of the twenty-first century, it
guides the reader through the sometimes confusing world of
literary
theory to answer such questions as:

� Why is theory so important?
� Can I use modern theories to analyse texts from other
periods?
� What are issues like gender or race doing in literary theory?
� How do I decide which theory to use and must I pick just
one?
� What comes after theory?
Now with updated case studies and suggestions for further
reading,
Literary Theory: The Basics is a must read for anyone wishing
to approach the many debates and theories in this field with
confidence.
Hans Bertens is Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht
University, the Netherlands.
The Basics
ACTING
Bella Merlin
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
Nancy Stanlick
ANTHROPOLOGY
Peter Metcalf
ARCHAEOLOGY (SECOND EDITION)
Clive Gamble
ART HISTORY
Grant Pooke and Diana Newall

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Kevin Warwick
THE BIBLE
John Barton
BUDDHISM
Cathy Cantwell
THE CITY
Kevin Archer
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Suman Gupta
CRIMINAL LAW
Jonathan Herring
CRIMINOLOGY (SECOND EDITION)
Sandra Walklate
DANCE STUDIES
Jo Butterworth
EASTERN PHILOSOPHY
Victoria S. Harrison
ECONOMICS (SECOND EDITION)
Tony Cleaver
EDUCATION
Kay Wood
EUROPEAN UNION (SECOND EDITION)
Alex Warleigh-Lack

EVOLUTION
Sherrie Lyons
FILM STUDIES (SECOND EDITION)
Amy Villarejo
FINANCE (SECOND EDITION)
Erik Banks
FREE WILL
Meghan Griffith
HUMAN GENETICS
Ricki Lewis
HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Andrew Jones
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Peter Sutch and Juanita Elias
ISLAM (SECOND EDITION)
Colin Turner
JOURNALISM STUDIES
Martin Conboy
JUDAISM
Jacob Neusner
LANGUAGE (SECOND EDITION)
R.L. Trask
LAW
Gary Slapper and David Kelly

LITERARY THEORY (THIRD EDITION)
Hans Bertens
LOGIC
J.C. Beall
MANAGEMENT
Morgen Witzel
MARKETING (SECOND EDITION)
Karl Moore and Niketh Pareek
MEDIA STUDIES
Julian McDougall
THE OLYMPICS
Andy Miah and Beatriz Garcia
PHILOSOPHY (FIFTH EDITION)
Nigel Warburton
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
Joseph Holden
POETRY (SECOND EDITION)
Jeffrey Wainwright
POLITICS (FOURTH EDITION)
Stephen Tansey and Nigel Jackson
THE QUR’AN
Massimo Campanini

RACE AND ETHNICITY
Peter Kivisto and Paul R. Croll
RELIGION (SECOND EDITION)
Malory Nye
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
Philip Clayton
RESEARCH METHODS
Nicholas Walliman
ROMAN CATHOLICISM
Michael Walsh
SEMIOTICS (SECOND EDITION)
Daniel Chandler
SHAKESPEARE (THIRD EDITION)
Sean McEvoy
SOCIAL WORK
Mark Doel
SOCIOLOGY
Ken Plummer
SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS
Janice Wearmouth
TELEVISION STUDIES
Toby Miller
TERRORISM
James Lutz and Brenda Lutz

THEATRE STUDIES (SECOND EDITION)
Robert Leach
WOMEN’S STUDIES
Bonnie Smith
WORLD HISTORY
Peter N. Stearns
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LITERARY THEORY
THE BASICS
Third edition
Hans Bertens
Third edition published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2014 Hans Bertens

The right of Hans Bertens to be identified as author has been
asserted by him in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Whilst every effort has been made to trace copyright holders,
this has not been possible in all cases. Any omissions brought
to our attention will be remedied in future editions.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First published 2001 by Routledge
Second edition published 2008 by Routledge
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bertens, Johannes Willem.
Literary theory : the basics / Hans Bertens. – Third edition.
pages cm. – (The Basics; 3)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Criticism–History–20th century. 2. Literature–History and

criticism–Theory, etc. I. Title.
Pn94.B47 2013
801’.950904–dc23
2013010557
ISBN: 978-0-415-53806-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-53807-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-48883-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence (1922, Penguin) reproduced
by permission of Pollinger Limited
and The Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli.
The work of Louise Bennett Coverley is copyrighted, and
permission to use said material has
been obtained from the Executors of the Louise Bennett
Coverley (LBC) Estate, messrs: Judge
Pamela Appelt ([email protected]) and Fabian Coverley B.Th
([email protected]).
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 Reading for meaning: practical criticism and New
Criticism 4
2 Reading for form I: formalism and early structuralism,
1914–60 28
3 Reading for form II: French structuralism, 1950–75 46

4 Political reading: class, gender, and race in the 1970s
and 1980s 67
5 The poststructuralist revolution: Derrida and
deconstruction 102
6 Poststructuralism continued: Foucault, Lacan, French
feminism, and postmodernism 123
7 Literature and culture: cultural studies, the new
historicism, and cultural materialism 150
8 Postcolonial criticism and theory 168
9 Sexuality, literature, and culture 195
10 Posthumanism, ecocriticism, and animal studies 213
11 Conclusion 233
Bibliography 240
Index 259
This page intentionally left blank
INTRODUCTION
There was a time when the interpretation of literary texts and
lit-
erary theory seemed two different and almost unrelated things.
Interpretation was about the actual meaning of a poem, a novel,
or
a play, while theory seemed alien to what the study of literature
was really about and even presented a threat to the reading of
individual poems, novels, and other literary texts because of its

reductive generalizations. In the last thirty years, however,
inter-
pretation and theory have moved closer and closer to each other.
In
fact, for many people involved in literary studies, interpretation
and
theory cannot be separated at all. They would argue that when
we
interpret a text we always do so from a theoretical perspective,
whether we are aware of it or not, and they would also argue
that
theory cannot do without interpretation.
The premise of Literary Theory: The Basics is that literary
theory and
literary practice – the practice of interpretation – can indeed not
be
separated very well and certainly not at the more advanced level
of
academic literary studies. One of its aims, then, is to show how
theory and practice are inevitably connected and have always
been
connected. Although the emphasis is on the 1970s and after, the
first
three chapters focus on the most important views of literature
and
of the individual literary work of the earlier part of the
twentieth
century. This is not a merely historical exercise. A good
understanding of, for instance, the New Criticism that
dominated
literary criticism in the United States from the mid-1930s until
1970

is indispensable for students of literature. Knowing about the
New
Criticism will make it a lot easier to understand other, later,
modes of
reading. More importantly, the New Criticism has by no means
disappeared. In many places, and especially in secondary
education, it
is still very much alive. Likewise, an understanding of what is
called
structuralism makes the complexities of so-called
poststructuralist
theory a good deal less daunting and has the added value of
offering
an instrument that is helpful in thinking about culture in
general.
This book, then, is both an introduction to literary theory and an
admittedly somewhat sketchy history of theory. But it is a
history
in which what has become historical is simultaneously still
actual: in
the field of literary studies a whole range of approaches and
theo-
retical perspectives, those focused on meaning and those
focused on
form, those that are political and those that are (seemingly)
apoli-
tical, the old and the new, operate next to each other in
relatively
peaceful coexistence. In its survey of that range of positions
Literary
Theory: The Basics will try to do equal justice to a still actual
tradi-
tion and to the radical character of the new departures of the
last
four decades. We still ask, ‘What does it mean?’ when we read a

poem or novel or see a play. But we have additional questions.
We
ask, ‘Has it always had this meaning?’ or, ‘What does it mean
and to
whom?’ and, ‘Why does it mean what it means?’ Or, perhaps
surprisingly, ‘Who wants it to have this meaning and for what
reasons?’ As we will see, such questions do not diminish
literature.
On the contrary, they make it even more relevant.
In recent years, a number of critics have expressed a certain
impatience with what is now simply called ‘theory’ – and which
has, as we will see, ventured far beyond strictly literary
territory.
There is no denying that theory, in its eagerness to uncover
hidden
patterns and bring to light hidden assumptions, has sometimes
pushed things to rather implausible extremes or that theory’s
desire
to be radical has occasionally seemed a goal in itself. Especially
after
9/11 and subsequent events theory’s more extravagant claims
seemed to some commentators armchair exercises that had little
or
no relation to what happened in the real world.
But a return to modes of critical interpretation that are not, in
one way or another, informed by some form of theory is
INTRODUCTION2
impossible. As I have already noted, most literary critics would
claim that all interpretation is governed by certain assumptions
and

that interpretation can seem theory-free only if we are unaware
of
those assumptions – if we are, in effect, blind to what we are
doing.
If we prefer awareness, our interpretational practice will
inevitably
be marked by the theoretical interventions of the last forty
years.
We could, of course, choose to work with the assumptions of
tra-
ditional interpretation, but we would (ideally) have thought long
and hard about them and have realized that these assumptions,
taken together, in themselves constitute theories with regard to
reading and literary value. We can’t go home again. Or, to be
more
precise, perhaps we can go home again, but not with the illusion
that our home is theory-free.
Theory, then, is here to stay and the great majority of literary
academics would not want it otherwise. They believe that theory
has dramatically sharpened and widened our understanding of a
great many fundamental issues and expect that theory, in its
restless
grappling with ever new issues, will continue to enhance our
understanding (even if it may in the process also come up with
things that severely test our intellectual patience). A case in
point is
the relatively new field of ecocriticism, which also illustrates
theory’s flexibility. More than earlier theoretical ventures, it
recog-
nizes the importance of empirical, even scientific, evidence for
its
political project, in this case that of raising our ecological con-
sciousness.
This new edition of Literary Theory: The Basics has been
revised,

brought up to date, and expanded with discussions of
posthuman-
ism, animal studies, and very recent developments such as
‘world
literature’. And, like the earlier editions, it casts its net rather
wide.
Since the theories that have emerged within literary studies
have
been so thoroughly assimilated by various other disciplines, a
book
on literary theory has much to say about the wider world of the
humanities and beyond.
INTRODUCTION 3
�1
READING FOR MEANING
PRACTICAL CRITICISM AND NEW
CRITICISM
ENGLISH MEANING
If we want to understand English and American thinking about
literature in the twentieth century a good starting-point is the
nineteenth-century figure of Matthew Arnold (1822–88),
English
educator, poet (once famous for his rather depressing but much
anthologized ‘Dover Beach’), and professor of poetry at Oxford
University. Arnold’s views, which assigned a very special role
to
literature, and further enhanced its prestige, were not wholly
new.
In fact, his central idea that, apart from its aesthetic and

pleasing
qualities, literature also had important things to teach us was
already
familiar in antiquity and we see it repeated time and again over
the
ages. So we find Thomas Jefferson, future president of the
future
United States of America, observing in a 1771 letter that ‘a
lively
and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on
the
mind of a son or daughter by reading “King Lear” than by all
the
dry volumes of ethics and divinity that were ever written’.
However, Arnold is not interested in the more practical aspects
of
the idea that literature is a source of instruction – moral or
other-
wise – but places it in a spiritual context.
Writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, Arnold saw
English culture as seriously threatened by a process of
secularization
that had its origins in the growing persuasiveness of scientific
thinking and by a ‘Philistinism’ that was loosened upon the
world
by the social rise of a self-important, money-oriented, and
utterly
conventional middle class, which is characterized by
‘vulgarity’,
‘coarseness’, and ‘unintelligence’. With the spiritual comforts
of
religion increasingly questionable now that the sciences – in

parti-
cular Darwin’s theory of evolution – seemed set on undermining
the authority of Bible and Church, Arnold foresaw a crucial,
semi-
religious role for poetry especially:
More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to
poetry to
interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry,
our
science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes
with us
for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.
(Arnold [1880] 1970: 340)
‘The future of poetry’, Arnold tells his readers, ‘is immense,
because
in poetry … our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer
and
surer stay.’ This radical claim for poetry – made in an 1880
essay
called ‘The Study of Poetry’ – is in fact the culmination of
claims
that Arnold had for decades been making on behalf of what he
called
‘culture’ and which in a book called Culture and Anarchy
(1869) he
had defined as ‘the best that has been thought and said in the
world’
(Arnold [1869] 1971: 6). As this makes clear, that ‘best’ is not
necessarily confined to poems, but there is no doubt that he saw
poetry as its major repository. The special importance that he
accords
to poetry is not as surprising as it may now seem. It accurately
reflects

the status of pre-eminent literary genre that poetry, especially in
its lyrical form, enjoyed in Arnold’s time. Moreover, in giving
poetry
this illustrious, almost sacred, function, Arnold builds on ideas
that
earlier in the nineteenth century had been formulated by
Romantic
poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), who had
attributed a
special, visionary status to poetry, and on a long tradition,
going back
to the classics, that likewise gives literature, and especially
poetry,
special powers. It was only natural, then, for Arnold to put
forward
poetry as the major embodiment of ‘culture’.
What does Arnold have in mind with ‘the best that has been
thought and said in the world’? Strangely enough, Culture and
Anarchy is very outspoken, but not very clear on this point.
Arnold
READING FOR MEANING 5
has no trouble making clear by what forces and in which ways
that
‘best’ is threatened: the evil is summarized by the ‘anarchy’ of
his title, which includes the self-centred unruliness of the
working
class and ‘the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class
Protestantism’ (63). He is, however, not very precise in his
defini-
tions of ‘the best’. This is partly because he assumes that his
readers

already know: he does not have to tell them because they share
his educational background and his beliefs. But it is also due to
its
elusiveness. Arnold can tell us where to find it, for instance in
Hellenism – the Greek culture of antiquity, with its ‘aerial ease,
clearness, and radiancy’ (134) – but can only describe what it
expresses: an attitude towards life, a way of being in the world.
Included in this attitude we find ‘freedom from fanaticism’,
‘deli-
cacy of perception’, the ‘disinterested play of consciousness’,
and an
‘inward spiritual activity’ that has ‘for its characters increased
sweetness, increased light, increased life, increased sympathy’
(60–64).
What culture would seem to amount to is a deeply sympathetic
and
self-effacing interest in, and contemplation of, the endless
variety
that the world presents. For Arnold, poetry probes life more
deeply,
is more sympathetic towards its immensely various
manifestations,
and is less self-serving than anything else, and so we must turn
to
poetry ‘to interpret life for us’. Because poetry has the power
to interpret life, we can also turn to it if we want to be consoled
or
to seek sustenance. With the persuasiveness of religious
explanations
seriously damaged, poetry has the now unique power of making
sense of life, a sense from which we can draw comfort and
strength.
Moreover – and here we see the idea of ‘instruction’ – culture
allows us to ‘grow’, to become more complete and better human
beings. As Arnold puts it in Culture and Anarchy: ‘Religion
says, The

kingdom of God is within you; and culture, in like manner,
places
human perfection in an internal condition, in the growth and
predominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from our
animality’ (47).
CONTINUITY OR CHANGE?
Let me for a moment turn to one of Arnold’s major examples of
the culture he extols: ‘Hellenism’, the complex of intellectual
and
emotional attitudes expressed in the civilization of ancient
Greece.
READING FOR MEANING6
Like all university-educated people of his time, Arnold was
thor-
oughly familiar with classical history and literature. So
familiar, in
fact, that in some ways he sees Greek epics and plays that are
more
than 2,000 years old as contemporary texts. The classics and the
ideal of culture that they embody are timeless for Arnold. This
is a
vitally important point: ‘the best that has been thought and said
in
the world’, whether to be found in the classics or in later
writers, is
the best for every age and every place.
From Arnold’s perspective, this makes perfect sense. After all,
culture and its major means of expression – poetry – must take
the

place of a religion that equally was for every age and every
place.
But this introduces what many literary academics now see as a
ser-
ious problem. Arnold does not consider the possibility that what
is
‘the best’ for one age may not be ‘the best’ for another, when
cir-
cumstances have completely changed, or that what within a
given
period is ‘the best’ for one party (say, the aristocracy) is not
neces-
sarily ‘the best’ for another (poverty-stricken peasants, for
instance).
Arnold’s culture and the poetry that embodies it demand an
intel-
lectual refinement and sensitivity, and a disinterested
otherworldli-
ness that under a good many historical circumstances must have
been a positive handicap. Arnold would probably not deny this
but
he would argue that, all things being equal, there is only one
cul-
tural ideal – embodied in ‘the best’ – for which we should all
strive.
The way I am presenting this – with peasants pitted against the
aristocracy – could easily create the impression that Arnold is
an
elitist snob. But that is not necessarily the case. Arnold’s ideal
of
culture is certainly exclusive, in the sense that it defines itself
against
money-grubbing vulgarity, narrow-minded fundamentalism,
upper-
class arrogance, and so on; but it does not seek to exclude

anyone
on principle. If we allow ourselves to come under the influence
of
‘culture’, we can all transcend the limitations imposed on us by
class, place, and character, and acquire the cultured sensitivity
and
respectful, even reverent, attitude towards the world that
‘culture’
holds up for us. In fact, this is what Arnold would like all of us
to
do: to escape from the place and the time we live in and
transform
ourselves into citizens of an ideal world in which time does, in
a
sense, not pass and in which we are in some ways – the ways
that
count – all the same. After all, in Arnold’s view ‘culture’ is of
all time:
it exists in an autonomous sphere where time- and place-bound
personal, political, or economic considerations have been left
behind.
We can fully enter the realm of culture only if we choose, at
least
temporarily, to disregard the here and now of personal ambition,
political manoeuvring, and economic gain.
LIBERAL HUMANISM
Although that may not be immediately clear, this view of
culture
has important implications. Arnold is of course aware that

culture
will always reflect (to some extent) its time and place of origin
– in
the sense that, for instance, medieval and early modern
literature
will assume that the Sun revolves around a static Planet Earth –
but
with regard to what it really has to tell us it stands apart from
time
and place; that is, from history. With regard to its essence,
culture
transcends history. We must assume, then, that its creators – the
poet
supreme among them – also transcend time and place, at least as
long as the act of creation lasts. A timeless culture must be the
creation of timeless minds; that is, of minds that can at least
tem-
porarily disregard the world around them. This brings us to an
important question: where does a creative mind that has
tempora-
rily soared free of its mundane environment find the insights
that
will allow it to contribute to ‘the best that has been thought and
said’? The answer must be that the source of that wisdom can
only
be the individual creator. Poets find what is valuable and has
real
meaning in themselves; they just know.
Arnold was by no means unique in his view of the creative
individual. It was shared by the large majority of his
contemporaries
and by the countless writers and critics who in the course of the
twentieth century would more or less consciously follow his
lead.
More importantly, it is still the prevailing view of the

individual –
not just the creative ones – in the Western world. This view of
the
individual – or subject, to use a term derived from philosophy –
is
central to what is called liberalism or liberal humanism, a
philosophical/
political cluster of ideas in which the ultimate autonomy and
self-
sufficiency of the subject are taken for granted. Liberal
humanism
assumes that all of us are essentially free and that we have – at
least to
some extent – created ourselves on the basis of our individual
experiences. It is easy to see that this view of the subject is
perva-
sively present in our culture and in our social institutions. The
legal
READING FOR MEANING8
system, for instance, starts from the assumption that we have a
certain
autonomy. If your lawyer succeeds in convincing the court that
the
murder you thought you could get away with was not a
conscious
act that you could have decided against, but was ordered by
those
voices in your head, you will be declared insane. Likewise,
democ-
racies do not set up elections with the expectation that people
will
wander mindlessly into a voting booth and make a completely

arbi-
trary choice between the candidates. Our social institutions
expect us
to be reasonable and to be reasonably free. Because of that
freedom,
we ourselves are supposedly the source of the value and the
meaning
we attach to things. As liberal subjects we are not the sum of
our
experiences but can somehow stand outside experience: we are
not
defined by our circumstances but are what we are because our
‘self ’
has been there all along and has, moreover, remained
remarkably
inviolate and stable.
Not surprisingly, in much of Western literature, and especially
in
lyric poetry and realistic fiction, individuals present
themselves, or
are portrayed, along these lines. In the realistic novels of the
mid-
nineteenth century, characters again and again escape being
defined
by their social and economic situation because they are
essentially
free. Since what they are – their ‘self ’ – is largely independent
from
their situation, the circumstances in which they find themselves
can
be transcended. Realism suggests that the characters that it
presents
find the reasons for their actions and decisions inside
themselves.
Because this liberal humanist view of the individual is as

pervasively
present in our world as it was in the nineteenth century, it also
characterizes much of our contemporary literature.
For many present-day critics and theorists this is a deeply pro-
blematic view. In the later chapters of this book we will
encounter
various objections to this liberal humanist perspective. Let me
here
just point at one possible problem. What if access to Arnold’s
‘the
best’ depends, for instance, on education? If that is the case,
Arnold’s campaign for a ‘culture’ that supposedly has universal
validity begins to look like arrogance: we would have the
educated
telling the uneducated that they are barbarians. Arnold might
object
that ideally all of us should get the same – extended –
education.
And he might also point out that education does not benefit
those
who refuse to be educated – after all, Culture and Anarchy does
not
hesitate to group the English aristocracy and the Anglican
establishment with the ‘Barbarians’. But he would have to admit
that educational opportunities are not evenly distributed over
this
world; there are, even within every nation, sharply different
levels
in education. A sceptic might easily see Arnold’s campaign for
his idea of culture as a move in a struggle for power and status:

for the power to define culture, to decide what the ‘best’ is, and
for
membership of the cultural elite. In fact, even if we grant
Arnold’s
claim and accept that his idea of culture does indeed represent
the
most humane, most tolerant, most morally sensitive perspectives
that human civilization has come up with, we would still have a
problem. Would we have the right to impose that culture on
people who couldn’t care less?
In short, there are serious problems with Arnold’s humanist
con-
ception of culture and poetry. I should, in all fairness to Arnold,
say
that it has taken almost a hundred years for these problems
really to
register and that even now his views are still seductive. Isn’t it
true
that many of us, at least at some point in our lives, want to see
lit-
erature as a high-minded enterprise by and for sensitive and
fine-
tuned intellectuals that is somehow several steps removed from
the
trivial push-and-pull of ordinary life? It is an alluring prospect:
to
have a place to go where in a hushed silence, the sort of silence
that
we very appropriately find in a library, we meet with the
kindred,
equally sensitive people who have written the works we read. It
is a
place where time does not pass and where in some ways – the
ways
that count – we are all the same. ‘The best books’, the American

philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) tells us in his
famous
essay ‘The American Scholar’ (1837), ‘impress us ever with the
con-
viction that one nature wrote and the same reads’ (Emerson
[1837]
2007: 1142). We, the readers, are of course only the passive
con-
sumers of what they, the writers, have actively produced, but
doesn’t
that difference tend to fall away? Especially so since the texts
we read
are, in the act of reading, lifted out of their historical context
and so
to a certain extent cut loose from their creators?
It is too good to be completely true, even if it is not necessarily
wholly untrue. How can we, apart from everything else,
possibly
know whether the seemingly kindred spirits that we meet in that
timeless place do indeed share our perspectives and concerns?
What
guarantee is there that we do not see our concerns in such sharp
relief only because we ignore what we do not want to see? …
1
6
19-APR-2020 Annotated Bibliography
Will, Barbara. "" The Great Gatsby" and the Obscene
Word." College Literature (2005): 125-144. Comment by
Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): When there are quotes
within something larger quoted (like a title), use single
quotation marks: “‘The Great Gatsby’. . .” Comment by
Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Looks like you’re using old
MLA; see updated here:
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla

_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_electronic_sourc
es.html (article in online database)You found these articles in
databases, right? Be sure to cite them
This article is centered around on and examines an important
scene that occurs later on in The Great Gatsby. The particular
scene stages Gatsby's final redemption and exemplification as
an American icon. The author throughout the scene aims to
highlight the process through which Gatsby's character is
extenuated for Gatsby's story to become America's story. In an
attempt to illustrate the whitewashing process, Barbara Will
identifies a central uncertainty within the scene which is linked
to the historical context of the novel. The author presents his
her suspicions about the old American nobility discernment of
greatness. Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English):
Italicize title of novel (throughout your paper)Also, don’t
justify margins; just left-hand align Comment by Baggett, Mary
Elizabeth (English): What does this mean in this context?
Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Can you
begin this whole section with a succinct, specific statement of
Will’s argument? That would be helpful for each of your
summaries—and it’s something you’ll want to do in your
research paper
This is Aa provocative article by Barbara Will focusing on the
final paragraphs of this story. This article contributes vastly to
the literature of The Great Gatsby as it stands out by focusing
on the most important final scenes of the novel. The author
accurately succeeds in transforming the story of Jay Gatsby
which is filled by life failures and loss into becoming an iconic
figure consists of original American hope and greatness. Will
has critically examined the intermediate scene immediately
preceding the last four paragraphs of the text revealing its
significance to building the plot. The author’s bias is on
obscene word doodled n Gatsby’s steps Comment by Baggett,
Mary Elizabeth (English): Will or Fitzgerald? Comment by
Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Good and be explicit about

what makes this a solid interpretation (which I think is what
you’re suggesting here) Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth
(English): Not a finished thought, but I actually think this just
needs to be cut because it veers off into another direction.
Kerr, Frances. "Feeling" Half Feminine": Modernism and the
Politics of Emotion in The Great Gatsby." American
Literature 68.2 (1996): 405-431. Comment by Baggett, Mary
Elizabeth (English): Use hanging indent (second and
consecutive lines indented half an inch)
This article centers around the works of Fitzgerald and in
particular The Great Gatsby in which Gatsby is referred to as a
clown by critics. In this article, Kerr examines the rhetorical
features and scarcely inconspicuous paranoia centered around a
gendered female in early modernist thoughts of art and the
imaginative process. The author highlights these features in The
Great Gatsby’s narrative structure as well as in the narrator’s
psychology. Kerr attempts to provide insight into the narrative
structure consistent with Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in
addition to the psychology of its narrator who is Nick Carraway.
Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Centers
on is the right phrasing Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth
(English): This sentence is somewhat awkward; has lots going
on, hard to follow Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth
(English): Get a little more control of your presentation; you
shift, without clear reason or much signaling to your readers,
between general and specific, between talk of the novel and talk
of broader context—keep each sentence focused on one idea.
This is an in-depth analysis of The Great Gatsby and it offers an
interesting insight into the narrative structure as well as the
femininity of Scott Fitzgerald. Kerr is biased on offering
awareness about the paranoia surrounding the main character
Gatsby and his perception to be viewed as feminine. The author
presents a critical analysis of Fitzgerald's femininity and
Gatsby's femininity concluding that the author's femininity led
to the feminization of his characters. The author's work

contributes to the literature on the subject by focusing on the
modernism acts of metaphorical sex whereby the poet renews a
feminized emotional and intellectual strength. Comment by
Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Do you think this is a
weakness of the article?
Hanzo, Thomas A. "The Theme and the Narrator of" The Great
Gatsby"." Modern Fiction Studies (1956): 183-190. Comment by
Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): indent
The author disputes that Fitzgerald uses Nick as the narrator to
reconnoiter American morality. Gatsby is a deviation of the
American success story whereas Nick is an model of an
American's career in a civilization that is more refined than they
are used to. Hanzo highlights how Fitzgerald was able to
combine The Great Gatsby theme and the narrator's identity
through the use of first-person narration. On one hand, Nick is
highlighted as the moral center of the book while Gatsby is his
contrast. The author makes a very convincing argument on how
the theme of morality would be absent without Nick.
Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): use words
you’re more comfortable with; make sure readers can easily
follow along.
The author is biased on presenting the distinction in characters
between Nick and Gatsby. On one hand, Gatsby is alone,
secretive, passionate while Nick makes friends easily, he leads
an ordinary life and is quite sane. Similarly, the Hanzo
accurately argues that Fitzgerald uses Nick as the speaker to
search American morality through the combined use of first-
person narration. The author's tone is accurate in providing
sufficient evidence from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
supporting Gatsby's lack of conscience and the narrator's life of
moral scrutiny. Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English):
Not sure what you mean by this—just state what the strengths
and weaknesses are; do you not think there’s a justification for
distinguishing between Nick and Gatsby? Explain that.

MacKendrick, Paul L. "The Great Gatsby and Trimalchio." The
Classical Journal 45.7 (1950): 307-314. Comment by Baggett,
Mary Elizabeth (English): Indent
This classical journal article is centered around Scott
Fitzgerald's intent to give the title Trimalchio to his novel The
Great Gatsby. but hHe was finally deterred because the name
was quite difficult for the public to pronounce and spell. The
author argues that the ancient and modern world. In chapter 7 of
the novel, Trimalchio talks about a character in the novel The
Satyricon named Moby Petronius. The Trimalchio of the novel
is a flamboyant man, which is a direct correlation to Jay
Gatsby’s character. Also, Trimalchio is a former slave, but later
on, he attains a life much different from his prior meager means
which is similar to Jay Gatsby’s character, thus two different
men, in two eras striking for the same acceptance by others.
Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Not sure
the import of this adjective Comment by Baggett, Mary
Elizabeth (English): What’s the conclusion MacKendrick draws
regarding this original title/name?
The author's tone indicates their bias to see the ancient and
modern world within one view. MacKendrick attempts to
interpret ancient authors to students of modern literature by
delving into the misty side streets of literature. The author
accurately identifies and compares the similar traits shared by
both Gatsby and Trimalchio. MacKendrick general emphasis on
the similarities of two men existing into different periods is an
important contribution to the literature of the subject. The
author's bias is that Fitzgerald was accurate in his intent to
name his novel Trimalchio as he was in naming it The Great
Gatsby since they both referenced the same basic ideas and
character traits. Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth
(English): Is this good or bad? (cut the “bias” talk—doesn’t
communicate much to your reader)

Wolfsdorf, Adam. "Mourning and Melancholia in The Great
Gatsby." The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 17.1 (2019): 233-247.
This article is centered on Wolfsdorf’s insight on the aspects of
melancholy and mourning surrounding the character’s
personality. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is both formed and
wrecked by the passionate personality intensifying his feelings
for Daisy. At the beginning of the novel, Gatsby has not seen
Daisy for five years, nonetheless, the power of his inebriating
infatuations has grown substantially although Daisy has moved
on with her life. The author sheds a light on Gatsby's
pathological state of grief which enslaves him and subsequently
demonstrates how Gratz’s premature immorality is a prequel to
Gatsby’s inescapable demise.
Wolfsdorf effectively examines the distinction and understand
the experiences of social remembrance between melancholy and
mourning. The author's tone is that the novel does not submit to
a melancholy impulse without a struggle. Two major points
emerge from this analysis, first, the author describes his sense
of the problem with the rehabilitation of melancholia both in the
implicit and descriptively generalized form. The author's bias is
that the more political versions of the argument have yoked
melancholia. The article suggests that the novel is a
representation of a prevailing strand of American novelty which
has distressing similarities with modern-day notions about
mourning. Nonetheless, this works contributed to the literature
of the subject is significant as melancholia is the visual means
via which Fitzgerald changes an emerging critique of present
entrepreneurship and misogyny into a submissive submission of
both. Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Of
what? Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Is
Wolfsdorf the subject for this? Comment by Baggett, Mary
Elizabeth (English): Is tone the right word here? Comment by
Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): Wordy—the argument is
significant. . .

Boyle, Thomas E. "Unreliable Narration in The Great
Gatsby." Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language
Association 23.1 (1969): 21-26. Comment by Baggett, Mary
Elizabeth (English): indent
The Great Gatsby is a novel by Scott Fitzgerald whereby a
character by the name Nick Carraway narrates the story in first-
person narrated story. Nick is not a reliable narrator thus does
not do a great job of telling the story. First, the unreliability of
Nick is revealed when he leads the reader to become suspicious
of the facts he omits. Due to the overtness of his deception a
little suspicion is created revealing the fact that they live in a
world with an overflow of hypocrisy. Fitzgerald approach of
creating unreliable narrators allows the reader to assertively
reach their own conclusion pertaining the narrator. Comment by
Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): no need for this background
info about the story; just cut to the discussion of the article
Comment by Baggett, Mary Elizabeth (English): not sure
what Boyle’s argument is from reading this?
The author’s tone in reference to the narrator hints of
dishonesty thus causing the reader to anticipate an occurrence
of a bad thing or not so as to provide evidence of what he is.
The creation of doubt is an indicator that Nick is an unreliable
narrator since the reader is allowed to imagine different
outcomes without a hint of which event is true and which is
false. Therefore, according to Boyle the reliability of Nick is
dependent on the reader. His words and actions aren't
contradicted by the words and actions of others yet. And like in
the article, we may not find out Nick is unreliable until the end.

Works Cited
Will, Barbara. "" The Great Gatsby" and the Obscene
Word." College Literature (2005): 125- 144.
Kerr, Frances. "Feeling" Half Feminine": Modernism and the
Politics of Emotion in The Great Gatsby." American
Literature 68.2 (1996): 405-431.
Hanzo, Thomas A. "The Theme and the Narrator of" The Great
Gatsby"." Modern Fiction Studies (1956): 183-190.
MacKendrick, Paul L. "The Great Gatsby and Trimalchio." The
Classical Journal 45.7 (1950): 307-314.
Wolfsdorf, Adam. "Mourning and Melancholia in The Great
Gatsby." The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 17.1 (2019): 233-247.
Boyle, Thomas E. "Unreliable Narration in The Great
Gatsby." Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language
Association 23.1 (1969): 21-26.
Quality of Articles16

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