Literary Lenses or Literary Theories
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Recommended Reading |
Archetypal
In criticism, "archetype" signifies narrative designs, character types, or images identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, as well as in myths, dreams, and even ritualized modes of social behavior. The archetypal similarities within these are held to reflect a set of universal, primitive, and elemental patterns. The death/rebirth theme is often said to be the archetype of archetypes. Other archetypal themes are the journey underground, the hero's journey, the heavenly ascent, the search for the father, the paradise-Hades image, the Promethean rebel-hero, the scapegoat, the earth goddess, and the fatal woman.
Typical Questions:
Typical Questions:
- How does this story resemble other stories in plot, character, setting, or symbolism?
- What universal experiences are depicted?
- Are patterns suggested? Are seasons used to suggest a pattern or cycle?
- Does the protagonist undergo any kind of transformation, such as movement from innocence to experience?
- Are the names significant?
- Is there a Christ-like figure in the work?
- Does the writer allude to biblical or mythological literature? For what purpose?
- How does the work reflect the hopes, fears, and expectations of entire cultures (for example, the ancient Greeks)?
- How do myths attempt to explain the unexplainable: origin of man? Purpose and destiny of human beings?
- How do stories from one culture correspond to those of another? (For example, creation myths, flood myths, etc.)
- How does the story reflect the experiences of death and rebirth?
- What archetypal events occur in the story? (Quest? Initiation? Scapegoats? Descents into the underworld? Ascents into heaven?)
- What archetypal images occur? (Water, rising sun, setting sun, symbolic colors)
- What archetypal characters appear in the story? (Mother Earth? Femme Fatal? Wise old man? Wanderer?)
- What archetypal settings appear? (Garden? Desert?)
Biographical
This approach focuses on connection of work to author’s personal experiences.
Typical Questions:
Typical Questions:
- What aspects of the author’s personal life are relevant to this story?
- Which of the author’s stated beliefs are reflected in the work?
- Does the writer challenge or support the values of her contemporaries?
- What seem to be the author’s major concerns? Do they reflect any of the writer’s personal experiences?
- Do any of the events in the story correspond to events experienced by the author?
- Do any of the characters in the story correspond to real people?
Critical Disability
From the OWL at Purdue:
Many critics examine works to understand how representations of disability and “normal” bodies change throughout history, including the ways both are defined within the limits of historical or cultural situations. Disability studies also investigates images and descriptions of disability, prejudice against people with disabilities (ableism), and the ways narrative relates to disability. . . Because of its concern with the body and embodiment, disability studies also intersects other critical schools like gender studies, queer studies, feminism, critical race studies, and more.
Many literary critics in disability studies examine the ways novels and other public spaces reinforce concepts about “normal” individuals. . . Lennard Davis writes about the historical context of the term “normal,” noting that the word’s modern use came into being with the rise of statistics and eugenics in the nineteenth century. At this time, the idea of “the average man” became central to national discourses. For Davis, a normal body is actually a theory or idea based on “the average man,” a concept that ultimately disguises the drastic differences among individuals in a society.
Davis writes, “the very structures on which the novel rests tend to be normative, ideologically emphasizing the universal quality of the central character whose normativity encourages us to identify with him or her”. Therefore, investigating normalcy in literary texts allows one to use a disability studies approach when reading almost any work.
“Narrative prosthesis” refers the ways narrative uses disability as a device of characterization or metaphor, but fails to further develop disability as a complex point of view. Disability is used to mark characters as “unique,” and it is sometimes what prompts a narrative in the first place; however, few works develop complex perspectives about disability (Mitchell and Snyder 10). If a work does feature disability prominently, it is often used as a symbol or for comparative purposes.
Typical Questions:
Many critics examine works to understand how representations of disability and “normal” bodies change throughout history, including the ways both are defined within the limits of historical or cultural situations. Disability studies also investigates images and descriptions of disability, prejudice against people with disabilities (ableism), and the ways narrative relates to disability. . . Because of its concern with the body and embodiment, disability studies also intersects other critical schools like gender studies, queer studies, feminism, critical race studies, and more.
Many literary critics in disability studies examine the ways novels and other public spaces reinforce concepts about “normal” individuals. . . Lennard Davis writes about the historical context of the term “normal,” noting that the word’s modern use came into being with the rise of statistics and eugenics in the nineteenth century. At this time, the idea of “the average man” became central to national discourses. For Davis, a normal body is actually a theory or idea based on “the average man,” a concept that ultimately disguises the drastic differences among individuals in a society.
Davis writes, “the very structures on which the novel rests tend to be normative, ideologically emphasizing the universal quality of the central character whose normativity encourages us to identify with him or her”. Therefore, investigating normalcy in literary texts allows one to use a disability studies approach when reading almost any work.
“Narrative prosthesis” refers the ways narrative uses disability as a device of characterization or metaphor, but fails to further develop disability as a complex point of view. Disability is used to mark characters as “unique,” and it is sometimes what prompts a narrative in the first place; however, few works develop complex perspectives about disability (Mitchell and Snyder 10). If a work does feature disability prominently, it is often used as a symbol or for comparative purposes.
Typical Questions:
- How is disability represented in literature?
- How are “normal” people or bodies constructed? How is normalcy reinforced?
- Is disability a catalyst for the narrative?
- Are people with disabilities gendered differently? As asexual? As feminized?
- In what ways do disability, gender, race, nationality, and class intersect?
- Does the narrative refigure the ways we define the human body? For example, how is prosthesis or technology tied to the body, and how does this change the ways we relate to our environment?
- How are disabilities like blindness tied to “Truth” or deafness to communication within a literary work? What symbolism is attached to disability?
Eco-Critical or Ecocriticism
From the OWL at Purdue:
“Simply put, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment” (Glotfelty xviii). Emerging in the 1980s on the shoulders of the environmental movement begun in the 1960s with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, ecocriticism has been and continues to be an “earth-centered approach” (Glotfelty xviii) to the complex intersections between environment and culture: “human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it” (Glotfelty xix). Ecocriticism is interdisciplinary, calling for collaboration between natural scientists, writers, literary critics, anthropologists, historians, and more. Ecocriticism asks us to examine ourselves and the world around us, critiquing the way that we represent, interact with, and construct the environment, both “natural” and manmade.
Several scholars have divided Ecocriticism into two waves (Buell) (Glotfelty), recognizing the first as taking place throughout the eighties and nineties. The first wave is characterized by its emphasis on nature writing as an object of study and as a meaningful practice (Buell). Central to this wave and to the majority of ecocritics still today is the environmental crisis of our age, seeing it as the duty of both the humanities and the natural sciences to raise awareness and invent solutions for a problem that is both cultural and physical. As such, a primary concern in first-wave ecocriticism was to “speak for” nature (Buell 11).
The second wave is particularly modern in its breaking down of some of the long-standing distinctions between the human and the non-human, questioning these very concepts (Gerrard 5). The boundaries between the human and the non-human, nature and non-nature are discussed as constructions, and ecocritics challenge these constructions, asking (among other things) how they frame the environmental crisis and its solution. This wave brought with it a redefinition of the term “environment,” expanding its meaning to include both “nature” and the urban (Buell 11). Out of this expansion has grown the ecojustice movement, one of the more political of ecocriticism branches that is “raising an awareness of class, race, and gender through ecocritical reading of text” (Bressler 236), often examining the plight of the poorest of a population who are the victims of pollution are seen as having less access to “nature” in the traditional sense.
Tropes and Approaches
Pastoral
Found in much British and American literature, focuses on the dichotomy between urban and rural life. At the forefront of works which display pastoralism is a general idealization of the nature and the rural and the demonization of the urban. Often, such works show a “retreat” from city life to the country while romanticizing rural life, depicting an idealized rural existence that “obscures” the reality of the hard work living in such areas requires (Gerrard 33). Greg Gerrard identifies three branches of the pastoral: Classic Pastoral, “characterized by nostalgia” (37) and an appreciation of nature as a place for human relaxation and reflection; Romantic Pastoral, a period after the Industrial Revolution that saw “rural independence” as desirable against the expansion of the urban; and American Pastoralism, which “emphasize[d] agrarianism” (49) and represents land as a resource to be cultivated, with farmland often creating a boundary between the urban and the wilderness.
Wilderness
This approach examines the ways in which wilderness is constructed, valued, and engaged. Representations of wilderness in British and American culture can be separated into a few main tropes. First, Old World wilderness displays wilderness as a place beyond the borders of civilization, wherein wilderness is treated as a “threat,” a place of “exile” (Gerrard 62). This trope can be seen in Biblical tales of creation and early British culture. Old World wilderness is often conflated with demonic practices in early American literature (Gerrard 62). New World wilderness, seen in portrayals of wilderness in later American literature, applies the pastoral trope of the “retreat” to wilderness itself, seeing wilderness not as a place to fear, but as a place to find sanctuary. The New World wilderness trope has informed much of the “American identity,” and often constructs encounters with the wilderness that lead to a more “authentic existence” (Gerrard 71).
Ecofeminism
Ecofeminism primarily “analyzes the interconnection of the oppression of women and nature” (Bressler 236). Drawing parallels between domination of land and the domination of men over women, ecofeminists examine these hierarchical, gendered relationships, in which the land is often equated with the feminine, seen as a fertile resources and the property of man. The ecofeminism approach can be divided into two camps. The first, sometimes referred to as radical ecofeminism, reverses the patriarchal domination of man over woman and nature, “exalting nature,” the non-human, and the emotional” (Gerrard 24). This approach embraces the idea that women are inherently closer to nature biologically, spiritually, and emotionally. The second camp, which followed the first historically, maintains that there is no such thing as a “feminine essence” that would make women more likely to connect with nature (Gerrard 25). Of course, ecofeminism is a highly diverse and complex branch, and many writers have undertaken the job of examining the hierarchical relationships structured in our cultural representations of nature and of women and other oppressed groups. In particular, studies regarding race have followed in this trend, identifying groups that have been historically seen as somehow closer to nature. The way Native Americans, for instance, have been described as “primitive” and portrayed as “dwelling in harmony with nature,” despite facts to the contrary. Gerrard offers an examination of this trope, calling it the Ecological Indian (Gerrard 120). Similar studies regarding representations and oppression of aboriginals have surfaced, highlighting the misconceptions of these peoples as somehow “behind” Europeans, needing to progress from “a natural to a civilized state” (Gerrard 125).
Typical Questions:
- How is nature represented in this text?
- How has the concept of nature changed over time?
- How is the setting of the play/film/text related to the environment?
- What is the influence on metaphors and representations of the land and the environment on how we treat it?
- How do we see issues of environmental disaster and crises reflected in popular culture and literary works?
- How are animals represented in this text and what is their relationship to humans?
- How do the roles or representations of men and women towards the environment differ in this play/film/text/etc.
- Where is the environment placed in the power hierarchy?
- How is nature empowered or oppressed in this work?
- What parallels can be drawn between the sufferings and oppression of groups of people (women, minorities, immigrants, etc.) and treatment of the land?
- What rhetorical moves are used by environmentalists, and what can we learn from them about our cultural attitudes towards nature?
Feminist
A feminist critic sees cultural and economic disabilities in a "patriarchal" society that have hindered or prevented women from realizing their creative possibilities and women's cultural identification as a merely object, or "other" to man as the defining and dominating "subject."
There are several assumptions and concepts held in common by most feminist critics.
1. Our civilization is pervasively patriarchal.
2. The concepts of "gender" are largely, if not entirely, cultural constructs, effected by the omnipresent patriarchal biases of our civilization.
3. This patriarchal ideology also pervades those writings that have been considered great literature. Such works lack autonomous female role models, are implicitly addressed to male readers, and leave the woman reader an alien outsider or else solicit her to identify against herself by assuming male values and ways of perceiving, feeling, and acting.
Typical questions:
There are several assumptions and concepts held in common by most feminist critics.
1. Our civilization is pervasively patriarchal.
2. The concepts of "gender" are largely, if not entirely, cultural constructs, effected by the omnipresent patriarchal biases of our civilization.
3. This patriarchal ideology also pervades those writings that have been considered great literature. Such works lack autonomous female role models, are implicitly addressed to male readers, and leave the woman reader an alien outsider or else solicit her to identify against herself by assuming male values and ways of perceiving, feeling, and acting.
Typical questions:
- How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
- What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
- How are male and female roles defined?
- What constitutes masculinity and femininity? How do characters embody these traits?
- Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
- What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
- What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
- What does the work say about women's creativity?
- What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy?
- What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?
Freudian/Psychoanalytic
Freud asserted that people's behavior is affected by their unconscious: "...human beings are motivated, even driven, by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware..." (Tyson 14-15). Freud believed that our unconscious was influenced by childhood events. Freud organized these events into developmental stages involving relationships with parents and drives of desire and pleasure where children focus "...on different parts of the body...starting with the mouth...shifting to the oral, anal, and phallic phases." (Richter 1015). These stages reflect base levels of desire, but they also involve fear of loss (loss of genitals, loss of affection from parents, loss of life) and repression (Tyson 15).
To keep all of this conflict buried in our unconscious, Freud argued that we develop defenses: selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among others.
Id, Ego, and Superego
Freud maintained that our desires and our unconscious conflicts give rise to three areas of the mind that wrestle for dominance as we grow from infancy to childhood to adulthood:
Oedipus Complex
Essentially, the Oedipus complex involves children's need for their parents and the conflict that arises as children mature and realize they are not the absolute focus of their mother's attention. Freud argued that both boys and girls wish to possess their mothers, but as they grow older "...they begin to sense that their claim to exclusive attention is thwarted by the mother's attention to the father..." (1016). Children, Freud maintained, connect this conflict of attention to the intimate relations between mother and father, relations from which the children are excluded. Freud believed that "the result is a murderous rage against the father...and a desire to possess the mother" (1016).
In short, Freud thought that "...during the Oedipal rivalry [between boys and their fathers], boys fantasized that punishment for their rage will take the form of..." castration (1016). When boys effectively work through this anxiety, Freud argued, "...the boy learns to identify with the father in the hope of someday possessing a woman like his mother. In girls, the castration complex does not take the form of anxiety...the result is a frustrated rage in which the girl shifts her sexual desire from the mother to the father" (1016).
Freud believed that eventually, the girl's spurned advances toward the father give way to a desire to possess a man like her father later in life. Freud believed that the impact of the unconscious, id, ego, superego, the defenses, and the Oedipus complex was inescapable and that these elements of the mind influence all our behavior (and even our dreams) as adults - of course this behavior involves what we write.
Freud and Literature
So what does all of this psychological business have to do with literature and the study of literature? Put simply, some critics believe that we can "...read psychoanalytically...to see which concepts are operating in the text in such a way as to enrich our understanding of the work and, if we plan to write a paper about it, to yield a meaningful, coherent psychoanalytic interpretation" (Tyson 29). Tyson provides some insightful and applicable questions to help guide our understanding of psychoanalytic criticism.
Typical questions:
To keep all of this conflict buried in our unconscious, Freud argued that we develop defenses: selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among others.
Id, Ego, and Superego
Freud maintained that our desires and our unconscious conflicts give rise to three areas of the mind that wrestle for dominance as we grow from infancy to childhood to adulthood:
- id - "...the location of the drives" or libido
- ego - "...one of the major defenses against the power of the drives..." and home of the defenses listed above
- superego - the area of the unconscious that houses Judgment (of self and others) and "...which begins to form during childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex" (Richter 1015-1016)
Oedipus Complex
Essentially, the Oedipus complex involves children's need for their parents and the conflict that arises as children mature and realize they are not the absolute focus of their mother's attention. Freud argued that both boys and girls wish to possess their mothers, but as they grow older "...they begin to sense that their claim to exclusive attention is thwarted by the mother's attention to the father..." (1016). Children, Freud maintained, connect this conflict of attention to the intimate relations between mother and father, relations from which the children are excluded. Freud believed that "the result is a murderous rage against the father...and a desire to possess the mother" (1016).
In short, Freud thought that "...during the Oedipal rivalry [between boys and their fathers], boys fantasized that punishment for their rage will take the form of..." castration (1016). When boys effectively work through this anxiety, Freud argued, "...the boy learns to identify with the father in the hope of someday possessing a woman like his mother. In girls, the castration complex does not take the form of anxiety...the result is a frustrated rage in which the girl shifts her sexual desire from the mother to the father" (1016).
Freud believed that eventually, the girl's spurned advances toward the father give way to a desire to possess a man like her father later in life. Freud believed that the impact of the unconscious, id, ego, superego, the defenses, and the Oedipus complex was inescapable and that these elements of the mind influence all our behavior (and even our dreams) as adults - of course this behavior involves what we write.
Freud and Literature
So what does all of this psychological business have to do with literature and the study of literature? Put simply, some critics believe that we can "...read psychoanalytically...to see which concepts are operating in the text in such a way as to enrich our understanding of the work and, if we plan to write a paper about it, to yield a meaningful, coherent psychoanalytic interpretation" (Tyson 29). Tyson provides some insightful and applicable questions to help guide our understanding of psychoanalytic criticism.
Typical questions:
- How do the operations of repression structure or inform the work?
- Are there any Oedipal dynamics - or any other family dynamics - at work here?
- How can characters' behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, fear or fascination with death, sexuality - which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior - as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
- What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?
- What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader?
- Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using these "problem words"?
Historical
This approach focuses on connection of the work to the historical period in which it was written; literary historians attempt to connect the historical background of the work to specific aspects of the work.
Typical Questions:
Typical Questions:
- How does the work reflect the time in which it was written?
- How accurately does the story depict the time in which it is set?
- What literary or historical influences helped to shape the form and content of the work?
- How does the story reflect the attitudes and beliefs of the time in which it was written or set? (Think beliefs and attitudes related to race, religion, politics, gender, society, philosophy, etc.)
- What other literary works may have influenced the writer?
- What historical events or movements might have influenced this writer?
- How would characters and events in this story have been viewed by the writer’s contemporaries?
- Does the story reveal or contradict the prevailing values of the time in which it was written? Does it provide an opposing view of the period’s prevailing values?
- How important is it the historical context (the work’s and the reader’s) to interpreting the work?
Marxist
Based on the theories of Karl Marx, this school concerns itself with class differences, economic and otherwise, as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system: "Marxism attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experience" (Tyson 277). Theorists working in the Marxist tradition, therefore, are interested in answering the overarching question, whom does it [the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.] benefit? The elite? The middle class? Marxists critics are also interested in how the lower or working classes are oppressed - in everyday life and in literature.
Typical questions:
Typical questions:
- Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
- What is the social class of the author?
- Which class does the work claim to represent?
- What values does it reinforce?
- What values does it subvert?
- What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays?
- What social classes do the characters represent?
- How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?
Post-Colonial
From the OWL at Purdue:
Post-colonial critics are concerned with literature produced by colonial powers and works produced by those who were/are colonized. Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to Western colonizers controlling the colonized.
Post-colonial criticism questions the role of the Western literary canon and Western history as dominant forms of knowledge making. The terms "First World," "Second World," "Third World" and "Fourth World" nations are critiqued by post-colonial critics because they reinforce the dominant positions of Western cultures populating First World status. This critique includes the literary canon and histories written from the perspective of First World cultures. So, for example, a post-colonial critic might question the works included in "the canon" because the canon does not contain works by authors outside Western culture.
Typical questions:
Post-colonial critics are concerned with literature produced by colonial powers and works produced by those who were/are colonized. Post-colonial theory looks at issues of power, economics, politics, religion, and culture and how these elements work in relation to Western colonizers controlling the colonized.
Post-colonial criticism questions the role of the Western literary canon and Western history as dominant forms of knowledge making. The terms "First World," "Second World," "Third World" and "Fourth World" nations are critiqued by post-colonial critics because they reinforce the dominant positions of Western cultures populating First World status. This critique includes the literary canon and histories written from the perspective of First World cultures. So, for example, a post-colonial critic might question the works included in "the canon" because the canon does not contain works by authors outside Western culture.
Typical questions:
- How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of colonial oppression?
- What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity, including the relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as double consciousness and hybridity?
- What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How are such persons/groups described and treated?
- What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?
- What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the ways in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?
- How does the text respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or assumptions of a canonized (colonialist) work?
- Are there meaningful similarities among the literatures of different post-colonial populations?
- How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist ideology through its representation of colonialization and/or its inappropriate silence about colonized peoples? (Tyson 378-379)
Queer or LGBT
Queer theory explores issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized populations (woman as other) in literature and culture. A primary concern in queer theory is the manner in which gender and sexuality is discussed. Therefore, a critic working in gender studies and queer theory might even be uncomfortable with the binary established by many feminist scholars between masculine and feminine. Many critics working with gender and queer theory are interested in the breakdown of binaries such as male and female, for example, how cultural definitions of sexuality and what it means to be male and female are in flux.
Typical questions:
Typical questions:
- Which identities are given voice and which identities are silent or absent?
- What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters support these traditional roles?
- What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
- What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both (bisexual, gender fluid)?
- What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed in...the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters?
- What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer work?
- What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history?
- How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who are homosexual?
- What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically, psychologically) of homophobia?
- How does the literary text illustrate the problems of sexuality and sexual "identity," the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual?