Karl Marx developed the theory of Marxism which argues that the material conditions and mode of production in a society determine its social, political, and cultural relations. He saw capitalism exploiting workers by forcing them to sell their labor to capitalists who own the means of production. Friedrich Nietzsche believed that truth is subjective and values are created by individuals rather than derived from God. He advocated for the Übermensch who could create their own values. Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalytic theory which views the mind as having conscious, preconscious, and unconscious aspects. He believed dreams and literature reveal unconscious desires like the Oedipus complex. Carl Jung disagreed with Freud's sexual interpretations, arguing dreams include collective archetypes expressing shared human experiences

1. Ideological
Theories of
the Modern
Age

2. 1- Karl
Marx
(1818-1883)

3. Marxism
Karl Marx: philosopher, social theorist, and an
economist.
He lays out the theory of capitalism, communism and
class struggle. His Books:
• The Communist Manifesto - by Marx and Friedrich
Engels
• Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political
Economy)
• Key concepts: historical materialism, Capitalism,
class, commodities/ Commodification, exploitation.

4. Marxism
• Materialism: the material condition or the
mode of production in any society determines
its social, political and cultural relations.
• Capitalism: a social and economic system
based on private ownership of the means of
production.
• pre-capitalism: producers enjoy full access to
their means of substance/production (no rent
land or waged employment to survive).

5. Marxism: Class
1- Capitalists own and control the resources
(means of Production). They produce
commodities to maximize profit and to stay
competitive.
2- workers forced to sell their labor. They are
working for and exploited by capitalists.
• Inequality: economic imbalance contributes to
power imbalance.
• Exploitation and commodification
• Social Revolution

6. Marxist literary criticism
• Analyzes literature in terms of the historical
conditions which produce it and it needs to be
aware of its historical conditions.
• Investigates literature’s role in the class struggle,
and the link that functions between capitalism and
literature.
• The analysis of any historical material within a
politicized framework, looking at the historical
aspects that have been discarded or silenced in other
narratives of history.

7. 2-
Friedrich
Nietzsche
(1844–1900)

8. Nietzsche: Truth
• Truth is a matter of perspective, not
fundamental reality.
• Perspectivism: the view that
perception, experience, culture, and
reason change according to the
viewer's perspective and
interpretation.

9. Nihilism: God
• Nihilism is characteristic of the modern age.
• The belief that all values are baseless and that there
are no morality derived from God because “God is
dead.”
• Christianity crushes the human soul with all its
restrictions and demands to conform.
• The death of God: Scientific Revolution, middle
class individualism, communism, Darwinism, and
positivism.
• “a condition of tension, as a disproportion between
what we want to value (or need) and how the world
appears to operate.”

10. Nihilism: reason
• The excessive development of the reason at the
expense of human will and instinct made man
corrupt, weak.
• life is not governed by rational principles.
• full of cruelty, injustice, uncertainty and absurdity.
• There are no absolute standards of good and evil
• describes nihilism as emptying human existence
of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or
essential value.
• Values are no longer based on objective, universal
facts; but on one’s perspective (perspectivism).

11. Übermensch
• The ideal superior man who could rise
above conventional morality to create
his own values.
• casts off all established values of the
modern-industrial-scientific-
bourgeois-Christian civilization.
• overcomes uniformity, socialism,
democracy, progress, enlightenment
and all the other ills so consistent with
western civilization.
• creates his own values based on
human instincts, drive and will.

12. Psychoanalytic Criticism
Freud & Jung

13. 3- Sigmund
Freud (1856-
1939)
The Unconscious Mind

14. Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud asserts that our
minds are a dichotomy
consisting of the
conscious (rational)
and unconscious (the
irrational).
The conscious perceives
and records external
reality and is the
reasoning part of our
mind.
The unconscious
receives and stores our
hidden desires,
ambitions, fears passions,
and irrational thoughts.
Freud argues that it is
the unconscious that
governs a large part of
our actions.

15. The Psyche
• Freud divides the psyche into three parts:
1. The id: the irrational, unknown, instinctual,
and unconsciousà Pleasure principle
2. The ego: the rational, logical, and waking
part of the mind à Reality principle
3. The superego: an internal censor causing us
to make moral judgments in light of social
pressures à Morality principle (punishment,
guilt and fear)

16. Psychoanalysis Criticism
Psychoanalysis is a method of treating emotional and psychological disorders.
Freud treated his patients by leading them to talk freely about their childhood
experiences and dreams.
When we apply the same methods to our interpretation of literature, we
engage in psychoanalytic criticism.
According to psychoanalytic criticism, a literary work is the external expression of the
author’s unconscious mind. We can apply psychoanalytical techniques to uncover the
author’s hidden motivations, repressed desires and wishes (Bressler 126).

17. The Oedipus Complex
One of Freud’s most significant contributions to
psychoanalytic criticism and literary criticism.
Freud borrows the name from the play Oedipus Rex
by the Greek dramatist Sophocles.
Oedipus, the protagonist, is prophesied to kill his
father and marry his mother. His attempt to abort
the prophecy fails and the events occur as predicted.
According to Freud, the essence of Oedipus’s story
is universal human experience.

18. The Significance of Dreams
The unconscious will then redirect and reshape these concealed wishes into
acceptable social activities, presenting them in the form of images or
symbols in our dreams and/or writings.
In The Interpretation of Dreams (1950), Freud asserts that the unconscious
will express its suppressed wishes and desires. Even though the conscious
mind has forced them into the unconscious, such wishes may be too hard for
the conscious psyche to handle without producing feelings of self-hatred or
rage.

19. 4- Carl G. Jung(1875-
1961)
Collective Unconscious

20. Jung & Freud
• Jung is Freud’s most famous student and
appointed by Freud as his successor.
• Jung broke away with his teacher, Freud, over
their differences concerning the
interpretations of dreams and the model of
human psyche as he stated in his Symbols of
Transformations (1912).
• Jung disagreed with Freud that all human
behavior, including dreams, is sexually driven.
Freud interpreted dreams almost always in
sexual terms linking the to the Oedipus or
Electra complexes.
• Jung argues that dreams include mythological
imagery as well as sexual ones.

21. The three
parts of
human
psyches
according to
Jung
1. The personal conscious: or waking state is that
image or thought of which we are aware at any given
moment.
2. The personal unconscious: the images and thoughts
that disappear from the personal conscious but are
stored and remembered in the personal unconscious.
3. The collective unconscious: it houses the
cumulative knowledge, experiences, and images of
the entire human species. All people respond to
certain myths and stories in the same way because of
the shared species memories of humanity’s past.

22. Archetype
These memories exist in the
form of archetypes: patterns
or images of repeated human
experience—such as birth,
death, rebirth, the four
seasons, and motherhood, to
name a few—that express
themselves in our stories,
dreams, religions, and
fantasies.
Archetypes are inherited
making up an identical
collective
unconsciousness for all
humankind.