LITERARY THEORY

AND CRITICISM

ANN BEVERLY CORONA-VERBOSIDAD

College of Teacher Education
NORSU Bayawan-Sta. Catalina Campus
Literary Theory: The What (MasterClass, 2021)

✓ a school of thought or style of literary

analysis that gives readers a means to
critique the ideas and principles of literature

✓ hermeneutics: applies to the interpretation

of a piece of literature
Literary Theory: The What (MasterClass, 2021)

✓ examines a cross section of literature from a

specific era, geographic location, or from
writers of specific backgrounds or identities
to draw conclusions about the similarities
and differences in similar kinds of literary
works
Literary Theory: The What (MasterClass, 2021)

✓ helps readers gain a deeper understanding

while reading literature by drawing on a
critical theory to gain further insight into
literary texts
Literary Theory: The What (MasterClass, 2021)

✓ enables a broad appreciation of global

literature

Reading a text through the lens of literary

theory provides a new perspective to better
understand literature, learn more about
different authors' intentions, and generally
improve the quality of literature for both
authors and readers.
Literary Theory: The What (MasterClass, 2021)

✓ can also influence literature, challenging

texts to evolve into new territory
Literary Theory: The What (Brewton, n.d.)

✓ the body of ideas and methods we use in the

practical reading of literature

✓ a description of the underlying principles

(tools) by which we attempt to understand
literature
Literary Theory: The What (Brewton, n.d.)

✓ does not refer to the meaning of a work of

literature but to the theories that reveal what
literature can mean
✓ formulates the relationship between author
and work

✓ develops the significance of race, class, and

gender for literary study, both from the
standpoint of the biography of the author and
an analysis of their thematic presence within
texts

(Brewton, n.d.)
✓ offers varying approaches for understanding
the role of historical context in interpretation
as well as the relevance of linguistic and
unconscious elements of the text

✓ in recent years has sought to explain the

degree to which the text is more the product
of a culture than an individual author and in
turn how those texts help to create the culture

(Brewton, n.d.)
✓ “critical theory,” or “theory,” and now
undergoing a transformation into “cultural
theory” within the discipline of literary
studies

✓ the set of concepts and intellectual

assumptions on which rests the work of
explaining or interpreting literary texts

(Brewton, n.d.)
✓ refers to any principles derived from internal
analysis of literary texts or from knowledge
external to the text that can be applied in
multiple interpretive situations

(Brewton, n.d.)
All critical practice regarding literature
depends on an underlying structure of ideas in
at least two ways: theory provides a rationale
for what constitutes the subject matter of
criticism—“the literary”—and the specific
aims of critical practice—the act of
interpretation itself.

(Brewton, n.d.)
Examples (Brewton, n.d.):

✓ to speak of the “unity” of Oedipus the King

explicitly invokes Aristotle’s theoretical
statements on poetics

✓ to argue, as does Chinua Achebe, that Joseph

Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness fails to grant
full humanity to the Africans it depicts is a
perspective informed by a postcolonial
literary theory that presupposes a history of
exploitation and racism
Examples (Brewton, n.d.):

✓ critics that explain the climactic drowning

of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening as a
suicide generally call upon a supporting
architecture of feminist and gender theory
The structure of ideas that enables criticism of
a literary work may or may not be
acknowledged by the critic, and the status of
literary theory within the academic discipline
of literary studies continues to evolve.

(Brewton, n.d.)
Types

✓ Formalism and New Criticism

✓ Marxism and Critical Theory
✓ Structuralism and Poststructuralism
✓ New Historicism and Cultural Materialism
✓ Ethnic Studies and Postcolonial Criticism
✓ Gender Studies and Queer Theory
✓ Cultural Studies

(Brewton, n.d.)
Structuralism

✓ attends to matters of literary form (i.e.

structure) rather than social or historical
content
✓ an extension of formalism that sought to
bring to literary studies a set of objective
criteria for analysis and a new intellectual
rigor

(Brewton, n.d.)
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Practical criticism
✓ encourages readers to examine the text
without regarding any of the outside
context—like the author, the date and place
of writing, or any other contextual
information that may enlighten the reader
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Cultural studies
✓ in direct opposition to practical criticism,
cultural theory examines a text within the
context of its socio-cultural environment
✓ cultural critics believe a text should be
read entirely through the lens of the text's
cultural context
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Formalism
✓ compels readers to judge the artistic merit
of literature by examining its formal
elements, like language and technical skill
✓ favors a literary canon of works that
exemplify the highest standards of
literature, as determined by formalist
critics
Formalism

✓ attends to matters of literary form (i.e.

structure) rather than social or historical
content

(Brewton, n.d.)
Barrot
&
Sipacio
(2016)
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Reader-response
✓ rooted in the belief that a reader's reaction
to or interpretation of a text is as valuable a
source of critical study as the text itself
Barrot & Sipacio (2016)
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

The new criticism

✓ new critics focused on examining the
formal and structural elements of
literature, as opposed to the emotional or
moral elements
✓ pioneers: Poet T.S. Eliot and critics Cleanth
Brooks and John Crowe Ransom
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Psychoanalytic criticism
✓ using Sigmund Freud’s principles of
psychoanalysis—like dream
interpretation—psychoanalytic criticism
looks to the neuroses and psychological
states of characters in literature to
interpret a text's meaning
✓ other notable psychoanalytic critics:
Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Marxist theory
✓ examines literature along the lines of class
relations and socialist ideals
✓ Karl Marx: a socialist thinker who
established this branch of literary theory
alongside Marxism, his political and
sociological ideology
Barrot & Sipacio (2016)
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Post-modernism
✓ most commonly understood as rejecting
modernist ideas of unified narrative
✓ emerged in the middle of the twentieth
century to reflect the fractured and
dissonant experience of twentieth-century
life
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Post-structuralism
✓ abandoned ideas of formal and structural
cohesion, questioning any assumed
“universal truths” as reliant on the social
structure that influenced them
✓ Roland Barthes: the father of semiotics, or
the study of signs and symbols in art—one
of the writers who shaped post-structuralist
theory
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Deconstruction
✓ deconstructionists pick apart a text’s ideas
or arguments, looking for contradictions
that render any singular reading of a text
impossible
✓ proposed by Jacques Derrida
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Postcolonial theory
✓ challenges the dominance of Western
thought in literature, examining the
impacts of colonialism in critical theory
✓ Edward Said's book Orientalism: a
foundational text of postcolonial theory
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Feminist criticism
✓ literary critics began looking to gender studies
for new modes of literary criticism as the
feminist movement gained steam in the mid-
twentieth century
✓ Virginia Woolf in her seminal essay “A Room of
One's Own”: one of the earliest proponents of
feminist criticism
✓ other notable feminist critics include Elaine
Showalter and Hélène Cixous
Barrot &
Sipacio
(2016)
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Queer theory
✓ followed feminist theory by further
interrogating gender roles in literary
studies, particularly through the lens of
sexual orientation and gender identity
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Critical race theory

✓ primarily concerned with examining the
law, criminal justice, and cultural texts
through the lens of race
✓ emerged during the civil rights movement
in the United States
✓ Kimberlé Crenshaw and Derrick Bell:
some leading critics of CRT
15 Types of Literary Criticism
(MasterClass, 2021)

Critical disability theory

✓ critical disability theorists believe racist
and ableist views go hand-in-hand and
seek to examine ableist societal structures
✓ one of a growing number of intersectional
fields of critical study
LITERARY CRITICISM

✓ the comparison, analysis, interpretation,

and/or evaluation of works of literature.
Literary criticism is essentially an
opinion, supported by evidence, relating to
theme, style, setting or historical or
political context (Dickinson College, n.d.)
LITERARY CRITICISM (Dickinson College, n.d.)

✓ usually includes discussion of the work’s

content and integrates your ideas with
other insights gained from research

✓ may have a positive or a negative bias and

may be a study of an individual piece of
literature or an author’s body of work
LITERARY CRITICISM (Dickinson College, n.d.)

✓ may include some (of the following) elements

in order to support an idea, literary criticism is
NOT a plot summary, a biography of the
author, or simply finding fault with the
literature
✓ researching, reading, and writing works of
literary criticism helps in making better sense
of the work, form judgments about literature,
study ideas from different points of view, and
determine on an individual level whether a
literary work is worth reading
Some Types of LITERARY CRITICISM
(Dickinson College, n.d.)

✓ Biographical
✓ Comparative ✓ Pragmatic
✓ Ethical ✓ Psychological
✓ Expressive ✓ Social
✓ Feminist ✓ Textual
✓ Historical ✓ Theoretical
✓ Mimetic
References:

Barrot, J. and Sipacio, P.J. (2016). Communicate today: English for academic and
professional purposes for senior high school. Quezon City: C & E Publishing.
Brewton, V. (n.d.). Literary theory. https://iep.utm.edu/literary/#H1
Dickinson College. (n.d.). Criticism: literature, film & drama: literature criticism.
https://libguides.dickinson.edu/criticism#:~:text=Literary%20criticism%20
is%20the%20comparison,or%20historical%20or%20political%20context.&tex
t=Examples%20of%20some%20types%20of,Biographical
MasterClass. (2021). Literary theory: understanding 15 types of literary criticism.
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/literary-theory-explained#what-is-
the-importance-of-literary-theory
Writeawriting.com. (n.d.). Literature-Types [.jpg].
https://www.writeawriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/LIterature-
Types.jpg