Literary Theory Fundamentals

Literary Theories

• Literary theory, sometimes called critical theory or simply theory, is evolving into cultural theory within literary studies.
• It's a set of concepts and assumptions used to explain and interpret literature.
• Principles come from internal text analysis or external knowledge, applicable to various interpretations.
• Theory provides methods and ideas for reading literature, revealing its potential meanings.
• It defines the relationship between author and work, and the significance of race, class, and gender in both author biography and text.
• Different approaches analyze historical context, linguistics, and the unconscious within the text.
• Theoretical movements trace the development of literary genres (narrative, drama, lyric, novel, short story).
• They explore how cultural contexts influence texts and how texts shape culture.

Cultural Materialism

• Analyzes how dominant forces in society use canonical texts (e.g., Shakespeare, Austen) to validate certain values.
• Considers historical, social, economic, and political contexts that influence literary themes, characters, and symbols.

Cultural Studies

• Incorporates influences of New Historicism and Cultural Materialism, embracing diverse perspectives (media studies, social criticism, anthropology).
• Developed to analyze the expanding global culture industry (entertainment, advertising, publishing).
• Examines the connections and politics within various cultural forms, and consumption patterns.
• Emphasized pop culture and music in recent decades, building upon Frankfurt School ideas about mass culture.
• Is interdisciplinary and anti-disciplinary, questioning current cultural categories.

Deconstruction

• A set of approaches to understand text-meaning relationships, focusing on contradicting ideas within a text.
• Makes multiple interpretations possible, and reveals the limitations of singular interpretations.

Ethnic/Minority Studies

• Focuses on literature from marginalized ethnic groups, examining the relationship between cultural and individual identity in oppressive historical contexts.

Formalism

• A literary criticism and theory approach focusing on the structure of a specific text.
• Analyzes language, technique, and form without external influences to evaluate the artistic merit.
• Favors a literary canon of high standards, based on formal merit.
• Emphasizes form, literary devices, and the formal elements within the text.
• Emphasizes literary form, and literary devices, as opposed to moral and emotional elements.

Gender Theories

• Studies masculine, feminine, and gender-nonconforming behaviour, in literature, history, etc.
• Originally feminist, now includes broader investigation of gender and sexual identities.

Feminist Literary Criticism

• Developed in the mid-20th century.
• Critiques literature through feminist theory and ideology.
• Examines language in literature using feminist principles.

Masculine Gender Theory

• Focuses on social, literary, and historical accounts of male gender and identity.

Queer Theory

• Challenges gender and sex binaries, hierarchies, and social inequalities through diverse mediums.
• Questions the perceived normativity of cisgender and heterosexual identities.
• Reexamines literary analysis, philosophy, and politics with a queer perspective.
• Critiques fixed sexual identity categories.
• "Queering" is a critical act that challenges and reinterprets norms.

Historical-Biographical Criticism

• Examines literature through the historical context of the author.
• Suggests the importance of historical context in understanding the work.

Moral-Philosophical Criticism

• Evaluates literature based on its ethical merits, focusing on moral statements and judgments in characters and authorship.

New Criticism

• A formalist movement in literary theory, dominant in the 1930s and 40s.
• Emphasized close reading to understand literature as a self-contained aesthetic object.
• Focused on form, structure, paradox, ambiguity, and metaphor.
• Strived for intellectual rigor in literary studies.

New Historicism

• A theory emerging in the 1980s, focusing on the connection between literature and its cultural context.
• Aims to understand intellectual history through literature and literature through its context.
• Emphasizes the relationship between literary and non-literary texts for understanding power dynamics.
• Considers how texts reveal social and economic realities, including representations of marginalized groups.

Postcolonial Theory

• Analyses literature from colonized or formerly colonized countries, including literature from colonizers about colonies.
• Examines the colonizer-colonized relationship after colonization.
• Critiques colonial ideology and challenges Orientalist perspectives.
• Provides insights regarding colonial peoples' contributions to modern European nations.

Postmodern Literature

• A form of literature characterized by fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators, unrealistic plots, games, parody, dark humor, and authorial self-reference

Post-Structuralism

• Rejects the singular meaning or existence of a text.
• Instead, emphasises the diverse interpretations produced by each reader.
• Questions assumed universal truths and focuses on individual reader interpretation.

Practical Criticism

• This approach examines a text without considering external factors such as author information.

Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism

• Applies the theories of psychoanalysis to literary analysis, focusing on character psychology.
• Examines literature through the unconscious desires and neuroses.

Reader-Response Criticism

• Focuses on the reader's experience of a literary work.
• Values reader reactions as a source for critical interpretation.

Structuralism

• Views literature as a system of interconnected signs, where meaning is constructed within context.
• Compares words and structures to understand their meanings.
• Sought objective criteria and rigor in literary studies.
• Examines the underlying structures that generate meaning.

Sociological Criticism

• Analyzes literature's relationship with society.
• Considers the author and their social context.

Marxist Literary Theory

• Examines the role of economic and social power in cultural works.
• Examines class conflict and reinforcement within literature.
• Prioritizes the social and political meanings of literature over aesthetics.

Traditional Literary Criticism

• Tracks literary influences, establishes a literary canon, clarifies historical context and allusions.
• Includes literary biography, moral criticism, and genre studies.