This document provides an overview of several critical literary theories that analyze works from both internal and external perspectives. It discusses theories that examine outside influences on a work, such as Marxist, feminist, historical/biographical, and psychological criticism. It also covers reader response theory, which focuses on how readers interact with and construct meaning from a text. Finally, it outlines theories that insist on only examining the work itself, including formalism, New Criticism, and deconstructionism. Formalism analyzes elements like language, structure, and tone. New Criticism emphasizes close reading and textual analysis. Deconstructionism questions assumptions about language and meaning through techniques like identifying dichotomies and irony.

1. Other Critical Theories
Lit Crit: Quick and Dirty

2. Looking Outside the Work
• Some critical frameworks look at the
outside influences on a work
• The view is how the external affects the
work

3. Looking outside the work
• These forms of literary criticism look at how
outside conditions affect a work:
– Marxist Criticism
– Feminist Criticism
– Historical/Biographical Criticism
– Psychological Criticism
•Including Archetypal Criticism

4. The Reader
• A slightly different perspective of literary
criticism also considers an outside influence –
the reader
• Reader Response Criticism focuses on how the
reader affects and is affected by a work
• The text has no literal meaning outside the
reader’s acting upon in
• The reader actively constructs the meaning of
the text instead of just finding it

5. Reader Response Criticism
• Do not take this to mean there is no “right” way to
interpret a text, as even the reader’s reaction must be
plausible and supported by the text.
• Students are lead to a reader response criticism
unknowingly by English teachers everywhere with
questions such as:
What would you do if you were in this situation?
or
How did you react when X happened in the novel?
or
Have you also experienced X?

6. Finding Answers in the Text Alone
• Other forms of literary criticism insist that
the best way to understand a work of
literature in to examine the work itself
– Formalist
– New Criticism
– Deconstructionist (Post –Modern)

7. Formalism
• Focuses on the formal elements of a work
such as language, structure (plot) and tone
• Examine the relationship between the
form and the meaning
• Read literature as an independent work of
art rather than a reflection of the author’s
mind or a representation of a social or
historical time – ignores anything outside
the work itself

8. Formalist Criticism
• Diction
• Irony
• Paradox
• Metaphor
• Symbol
• Plot
• Characterization
• Narrative viewpoint
•Focus on the following elements:
•Every time you are asked a question about
the above to get to the meaning of a story, you
have been using formalist critical analysis

9. New Criticism
• Evolved out of Formalist Criticism
• Suggest that detailed analysis of the
language in a literary work will reveal the
meaning of the work
• Downplays outside influences on the
work and concentrates on close textual
analysis

10. Deconstructionist
• Involves a close reading of the text
• Suggests that language is arbitrary as
words can have many meanings and there
is no real connection between the way a
word is understood and the thing the
word signifies (only a word game)
• Aim is to deconstruct (or take apart) our
acceptance that language or literature can
be taken at “face value”

11. Deconstructionist Criticism
• Looks for the dichotomy in literature
• Assumes irony (as all things can have
more than one meaning)
• Is interested in the juxtaposition of
opposites
– Good and evil
– Black and white

12. Deconstructionist Questions
• If you have considered the following
questions, you have applied
deconstructionist theory:
– How might different people see the narrator
differently?
– How can your reconcile the narrator’s
statement with her actions at the end of the
story?

13. Pardon the
oversimplification…
Your power point loving teacher,
Liana Cote Montminy