Focuses on language, structure, and tone Intrinsic Reading vs. Extrinsic Formalists study relationship between

literary devices and meaning

Analyze how a work might follow actual events in an authors life.

Analyze how characters may be based on people known by the author.

Sometimes it can answer questions or further confuse the reader.

Can at the very least serve as a control on interpretation.

Sigmund Freud- The founder of psychoanalytic theories.• Dreams• Unconscious Desires• Sexual Repression• Aspects of Psyche

• Id• Ego• Superego

• Oedipus Complex- a boys unconscious rivalry with his father for his mothers love and his desire to eliminate his father in order to take his fathers place with his mother.

• Electra complex- a daughters unconscious rivalry for her father.

Historical critics use literature as a window into the past because literature often provides hints of the past that are not available in other sources.

This strategy uses history as a means of understanding a work of literature better.

Historical critics see literature as a product of their times, shedding light on historical situations and times.

Literary History Criticism

This category claims that literature may transcend time to the extent that it may concern readers over the years, even centuries. Followers of this category understand that it remains a part of the past in which it was made, a past that can reveal more fully a work’s language, purposes and ideas.

Marxist Criticism Marxist readings hold the heightened interest in

radical reform. These critics look at literature as a means of aiding the proletarian social and economic goals.

Marxist critics focus on the ideological content of a story or book. They focus upon what takes place within the book, implicit and explicit values and assumptions about matters such as culture, race, class, and power.

They stress that all criticism is political in some way, and that even if it attempts to ignore class struggles, it is politicized, because it supports that status quo.

New Historicist Criticism

Emphasizes the interaction between the historical context of the literature and the modern reader’s understanding & interpretation of the text

Read the historical period in all dimensions

Stresses that the history we read is reconstructed

Cultural Criticism

Like New Historicists, but pays particular attention to popular ideas present within the work

Focus upon what the literary works reveal about the culture; their values, their norms, and what they believed in

Use eclectic strategies taken from New Historicism, Psychology, Gender Studies, and Deconstructionism

Analyze not only literature, but radio talk shows, comic strips, calendar art, commercials, travel guides, baseball cards, etc.

Postcolonial Criticism

Postcolonial Criticism is the study of cultural behavior and expression in relation to the formerly colonized world.

Refers to the analysis of literary works written by writers who lived in countries that were at one time controlled by a colonial power.

The term also refers to the analysis of literary works written about colonial cultures by writers from the colonizing power.

Gender Criticism

Ask what is masculine and what is feminine

A type of Gender Criticism is Feminist, which places literature in a social context like Marxism. It explains how images of women in literature reflect patriarchal social forces that impede full equality.

Also referred to as archetypal Interpret hopes, fears, and expectations

of a culture Focus on how humans account for their

lives symbolically Since myths try to explain universal

experiences, they follow similar patterns Look for underlying, recurrent patterns

What is in reader’s mind not in the writing

Meaning evolves with reader, writing does not have a formula or pattern

About reader’s feelings not about meaning

About how a reader’s experiences, memories, and impressions shape the meaning of the text

Literary works do not have fixed meanings

Disestablish meaning rather than establish

Focus on gaps, ambiguity, patterns Argues that close examination will

reveal conflicting, contradictory impulses that "deconstruct" or break down its apparent unity