Literary Criticism: Approaches & Analysis

• Literary criticism involves the study, analysis, and evaluation of imaginative literature.
• Literary criticism helps solve reading problems and enables informed judgments about literature.

Literary Criticism Approaches

• Reader-Response Criticism: Meaning is derived from the reader's response, focusing on the act of reading and its impact on meaning.
• Individual interpretations change and readers from different generations interpret texts differently.
• Formalist Criticism: Meaning is determined by the literary work's form, focusing on literary elements independent of context.
• Psychological Criticism: Texts are viewed as revelations of the author's mind, based on Sigmund Freud's work.
• Sociological Criticism: Social contexts are essential when analyzing a text, focusing on values reflected within.
• Marxist Criticism: Examines the roles of power, politics, and money in literary texts, influenced by Karl Marx's theory.
• Feminist Criticism: Focuses on the role and influence of women in literature, examining the depiction of female consciousness.
• Biographical Criticism: An author's life and background are crucial for understanding a text.
• Historical Criticism: Interprets literature by understanding the times and culture in which it was written.
• Sociocultural Criticism: Centers on the culture and traditions that affect characters' decisions.

21st Century Literature

• New literary works created within the last decade.
• Written by contemporary authors.
• Deals with current themes, issues, and reflects technological culture.
• Often breaks traditional writing rules.
• Readers are adept at using technology and interpreting digital formats and media messages.
• Readers possess technological skills like keyboarding, internet navigation, coded language interpretation, and graphics deciphering.

21st Century Literary Genres

• Media: Encompasses movies, films, websites, commercials, billboards, and radio programs.
• Media literature serves to educate, entertain, advertise, and/or persuade.
• Text-Talk Novels: Narratives in blog, e-mail, and Instant Messaging formats simulate social network exchanges.
• Blog/Vlog: Websites containing short articles or posts that are regularly updated with different opinions, interests, and experiences.
• Chick Lit: Fiction addressing issues of modern womanhood, featuring a female protagonist.
• Flash Fiction: Fictional literature of extreme brevity, ranging from a word to a thousand.
• Includes six-word flash fiction, Twitterature, dribble (50 words), drabble (100 words), sudden fiction (750 words), and flash fiction (1000 words).
• Hyperpoetry: Digital poetry using hypertext mark-up with variable arrangements.
• Text Tula: Filipino poem, such as a tanaga, consisting of four lines with seven syllables each with the same rhyme.
• Digi-Fiction: Combines book, movie/video, and internet website.
• Full story accessed through navigation, reading, viewing.
• Illustrated Novels: The narrative is 50% image/graphic-based.
• Graphic Novels: Narrative using comic form.
• Doodle Fiction: Incorporates doodle drawings and handwritten graphics.
• Manga: Japanese word for comics, encompassing artistic and storytelling style.
• Podcasts/Vodcasts: Episodic digital audio or video files downloaded and often available by subscription.
• Vodcasts are video podcasts.
• Science Fiction: Speculative fiction explores futuristic science, space travel, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life.
• Creative Non-Fiction: Employs literary styles to create factual, accurate narratives.

Figures of Speech

• Alliteration: Repetition of initial sounds for musical effect.
• Allusion: Indirect reference to an event or figure.
• Anaphora: Repetition of a word/phrase at clause beginnings.
• Anastrophe: Inverted word order.
• Antithesis: Contrasting ideas for heightened effect.
• Apostrophe: Addressing a nonexistent person/object.
• Assonance: Similarity in vowel sounds.
• Chiasmus: Balanced expression with reversed parts.
• Epistrophe: Repetition at the end of sentences.
• Euphemism: Substituting an inoffensive term.
• Hyperbole: Extravagant exaggeration.
• Imagery: Language appealing to the five senses.
• Irony: Conveying the opposite of the literal meaning.
• Metaphor: Implied comparison.
• Metonymy: Substituting closely associated words.
• Onomatopoeia: Words imitating sounds.
• Oxymoron: Contradictory terms.
• Paradox: Self-contradictory statement.
• Personification: Giving human qualities to inanimate objects.
• Sarcasm: Bitterly ironic statement.
• Simile: Comparison using "like" or "as".
• Symbolism: Using symbols for ideas.
• Synecdoche: Part represents the whole.