A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature 6th Edition

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A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature
6th Edition
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The Precritical Response

• Deals with the senses and the emotions of the
  common reader
• Focuses on initial responses not on technical
  skills of criticism
• May be characterized as the fuel that sparks the
  critical response

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Chapter 1

• Literature not taught in universities until
  19th
• century
• Does literary criticism ruin the fun of
  reading?
• Yes Sontag, Fieldler erotics and estatics
  No Morse, Berthoff, Touster, Ciardi, Eagleton
• Defense of beauty Steiner, Scarry
• Las Meniñas by Velázquez and Picasso versions

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Chapter 1

• I. Setting
• A. Precritical responses to films and paintings
  parallel precritical responses to literature
• B. How do the very different settings of our six
  works compare and contrast?

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Chapter 1

• II. Plot
• A. Conflict between protagonist and antagonist
• B. Freytags pyramid
• 1. exposition
• 2. rising action
• 3. climax
• 4. falling action
• 5. dénouement
• C. Reading Las Meniñas by Velázquez (1656)

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Chapter 1

• III. Character
• A. Analyzing characters values and motivations
• B. Role of ambiguity in characters
• IV. Structure
• A. Long, complex structures versus poems
• B. Classical tragedy
• C. Ambivalent structures such as Adventures of
• Huckleberry Finn and Young Goodman Brown

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Chapter 1

• V. Style
• A. Realism versus stylization
• B. Diction high or low? Young Goodman Brown
  versus Everyday Use or Frankenstein
• C. Dialect Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• D. Blank verse and soliloquies of Hamlet
• E. Technical matters versification, prose
  style,
• rhyme and rhythm, allusion

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Chapter 1

• VI. Atmosphere
• A. To His Coy Mistress politeness, romance,
  courtly love, wit, but also philosophy,
  sexuality, and obsession with death and violence
• B. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn diction,
  character, costume, racist expressions, slavery
• C. Frankenstein Eerie atmosphere appropriate to
• horror fiction Alpine wastes, castles with
  mysterious laboratories, thunder and lightning,
  dark rural hovels

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Atmosphere, cont.

• D. Hamlet Atmosphere of foreboding in opening
  scenes
• E. Young Goodman Brown Melodrama of witches
  Sabbath New England forest and Puritan gloom
• F. Everyday Use tension between rural and city

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Chapter 1

• VII. Theme
• A. Should discuss theme only after assessing
  other narrative elements
• B. Themes can be simple or complex, and can be
  felt or thought less likely to be part of a
  precritical response
• C. There is never a single theme to explain a
  work

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To His Coy Mistress

• Had we but world enough, and time,
• This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
• We would sit down and think which way
• To walk and pass our long loves day.
• Thou by the Indian Ganges side
• Shouldst rubies find I by the tide
• Of Humber would complain. I would
• Love you ten years before the Flood,
• And you should, if you please, refuse
• Till the conversion of the Jews.
• My vegetable love should grow
• Vaster than empires, and more slow
• An hundred years should go to praise
• Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze
• Two hundred to adore each breast,
• But thirty thousand to the rest

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• An age at least to every part,
• And the last age should show your heart.
• For, Lady, you deserve this state,
• Nor would I love at lower rate.
• But at my back I always hear
• Times wingèd chariot hurrying near
• And yonder all before us lie
• Deserts of vast eternity.
• Thy beauty shall no more be found,
• Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
• My echoing song then worms shall try
• That long preserved virginity,
• And your quaint honor turn to dust,
• And into ashes all my lust

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• The graves a fine and private place,
• But none, I think, do there embrace.
• Now therefore, while the youthful hue
• Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
• And while thy willing soul transpires
• At every pore with instant fires,
• Now let us sport us while we may,
• And now, like amorous birds of prey,
• Rather at once our time devour
• Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
• Let us roll all our strength and all
• Our sweetness up into one ball,
• And tear our pleasures with rough strife
• Thorough the iron gates of life
• Thus, though we cannot make our sun
• Stand still, yet we will make him run.