Literary Criticism

A Brief Guide to Major Branches

What is Literary Criticism?

• The study of literary works through various theoretical “lenses.” (The Branches)

• Every work of literature can be analyzed in a different way by each reader/critic.

• Not every branch applies to every work.

Genre Criticism

• Argues how a work conforms to, and rejects, the guidelines of a particular genre.

• Best applied to a work that is not clearly in one genre. – Example- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has

been recommended for and also banned from schools and can be argued to be a realist novel or a romantic novel.

Author Criticism

• Analyzes a work of literature according to the author’s life experience.

• This lens looks to see what happened to an author that influenced him/her to write the work as a whole, major elements of it including tone and style.– Ex. Herman Melville's experience as a whaler led

to his writing of Moby Dick and the character of Capt. Ahab.

(New) Historicism

• This approach asks critics to examine the era in which a work was written to see what elements influenced its creation.

• Elements from the time period are referred to as Historical Context. This could include other novels, artwork, music, poetry, philosophy and political events.– Example- The industrial revolution was exploding

when Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly wrote Frankenstein.

Marxist Criticism

• Named for social philosopher Karl Marx who examined class relationships and peoples’ relationship to money and property (capital)

• Critics are to look at the relationship of how characters start and end up according to capital and how each class is regarded by the author.– In The Great Gatsby, the rich characters are

unfeeling to the emotions of the poor and Gatsby dies for the sin of trying to be wealthy though not born to it.

Psychoanalytical Criticism

• Approach asks readers to look at the emotional and psychological issues that characters demonstrate as though they were real people.

• Diagnoses characters based on “symptoms” displayed.– Example-Susie Salmon in The Lovely Bones,

though dead, deals with the psychological effects of rape in the same way a real victim would.

Gender Criticism

• Examines the role of women in a work of literature in terms of their actions, treatment from other characters and outcome.

• The absence of women from various roles, or altogether, can reveal as much as their presence at times.– Example- In most early Disney movies the female

lead was only to be a loyal daughter, cook , clean, look pretty, and to be rescued and then married.

Gender Criticism (Queer Theory)

• This branch of gender criticism searches for secret (and often times not so secret) homosexual or homoerotic themes in literature.

• Looks at same gendered relationships to see if there are possibly other interpretations for their behavior and feelings.– In the Iliad, were Achilles and Patroclus just really

close friends or something more?

Mythological/Archetype Criticism

• Analyzes characters and stories versus prep-established archetypes from literature.

• Compares characters, settings, symbols and even plots to archetypes from human history.– Piggy from Lord of the Flies fulfills the archetypal

role of outcast in the novel due to his personal traits and mannerisms. (politeness, weight, glasses etc.)