Literary Criticism

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Literary Criticism
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Warm Up

• Word association means developing terms, ideas,
  concepts that go along with certain words.
  Thinking here should be minimal because it may
  hinder your honest associations. Each term
  should build off of the next.
• Consider the following term
• FEMINIST

FEMINISM
FEMININE
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Categorize These Terms

• fashion, football, breadwinner, pilot, strength,
  flower, ambitious, perseverance, compassionate,
  bossy, sexual, helpless, thoughtful, soft,
  brassy, dangerous, perpetrator, victim,
  attractive, opinionated, hostile, emotional,
  sensual, nurturing, battered. Try not to over
  think, go with your first instinct- YOUR
  instinct, not your neighbors!

Both
Neither
Female
Male
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• Literary theories were developed as a means to
  understand the various ways people read texts.
• All literary theories are lenses through which we
  can see texts.
• There is nothing that says that one is better
  than another, or that you should read according
  to any of them, but it is sometimes fun to
  decide to read a text with one in mind because
  you often end up with a whole new perspective on
  your reading.

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Feminist Criticism

• A Feminist Critic sees cultural and economic
  disabilities in a patriarchal (centered around
  men) society which have hindered or prevented
  women from realizing their creative
  possibilities.
• Womens cultural identification is as a merely
  negative object, or Other to man as the
  defining and dominating Subject.

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Some Critics Believe

• Our civilization is, as a whole, patriarchal.
• The concepts of gender are largely, if not
  entirely, cultural constructs, affected by the
  ever-present patriarchal biases of our
  civilization.

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• This patriarchal ideology, or belief, also takes
  over those writings, which have been considered
  great literature.
• Such works lack independent female role models,
  are implicitly addressed to male readers, and
  leave the woman reader an alien outsider or else
  request her to identify against herself by
  assuming male values and ways of perceiving,
  feeling, and acting.
• Female roles in society have historically often
  been based upon (or at least emulated within)
  literature.

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For Example

• One could conduct a feminist analysis of Of Mice
  and Men by examining Curleys wifes role, or
  lack of a role and even a name, in the novel.
  Does this make her more or less important?
• We were able to acknowledge the way in which
  Steinbeck portrayed her in a way that was based
  off of societys view of women and their roles in
  life.

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Warm Up
The study of gender, within literature, is of
general importance to everyone -Judith Spector
Being a feminist is not a gender-specific role.
Erin, Grade 11

• Patriarchal society
• Consider how our patriarchal social influences
  the world we live in. Consider life, art,
  expression, academia, work, etc
• Where do you see the influence of this social
  construct? How? Be specific. Do not focus on
  listing several examples so much as explaining
  one (or a few). This is a statement of
  observation, so also dont be bogged down by
  personal feelings of positivity or negativity.

I have a male mind with male experiences.
Therefore I see things through the perception of
a man. I couldnt relate to some of Virginia
Woolfs views and I despised the way she pushed
her viewpoint on the reader. This was brought on
by my masculinity, I feel. Bill, Grade 12,
after reading A Room of Ones Own
We dont know what womens vision is. What do
womens eyes see? How do they carve, invent,
decipher the world? I dont know. I know my own
vision, the vision of one woman, but the world
seen through the eyes of others? I only know
what mens eyes see. -Viviane Forrester, New
French Feminisms
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Traditional Gender Roles

• Males rational, strong, protective, and
  decisive
• Women emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing
  and submissive.
• Patriarchy by definition is sexist.
• The inborn belief in the inferiority of women is
  a form of biological essentialism because it is
  based on biological difference between the sexes
  that are considered part of our unchanging
  essence as men and women.

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Biological Essentialism

• For example, the word hysteria is derived from
  the Greek word for womb (hystera) and refers to
  psychological disorders deemed peculiar to women
  and characterized by overemotional, extremely
  irrational behavior. Freud believed women could
  be cured of hysteria through hysterectomies.

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Feminism v. Gender

• Feminist celebrate differences between men and
  women but they do not believe they are
  necessarily inferior to men based on biologicals.
• Feminism distinguished between the word sex
  (refers to biological constitution as male or
  female) and gender (refers to cultural
  programming as feminine or masculine)
• AKA women are NOT born feminine and men are NOT
  born masculine, RATHER these gender categories
  are constructed by society this view is referred
  to as social constructionism.

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Developed Through 3 stages

• Feminine (1840-80) Women writers imitated
  dominant male artistic norms and aesthetic
  standards
• Feminist (1880-1920) radical and often separatist
  positions are maintained
• Female (1920 onwards) looked particularly at
  female writing and female experience.

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Drastic Changes

• 1970s- expose patriarchy, the cultural mindset in
  men and women which perpetrated sexual
  inequality. COMBATIVE.
• 1980s- Firstly, became more eclectic, meaning it
  began to draw upon findings and approaches of
  other kinds of criticism- Marxism, structuralism,
  linguistics, and so on. Secondly, switches focus
  from attacking male versions of the world to
  exploring the nature of the female world and
  outlook, and reconstructing the lost or
  suppressed records of female experience.
  Thirdly, attention switched to the need to
  construct a new canon of womens writing by
  rewriting the history of the novel and of poetry
  in such a way that neglected women writers were
  given new prominence.

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French FeminismOne is not born a woman one
becomes one.

• Focuses on 2 forms materialist feminism and
  psychoanalytic feminism.
• Materialist Fem. Is interested in social and
  economic oppression of women.
• Beauvoir strongly believed that marriage trapped
  and stunted womens intellectual growth and
  freedom
• If woman seems to be the inessential being
  which never becomes essential it is because she
  herself fails to bring about this change
• Psychoanalytic Fem. Is interested in the womans
  psychological experience.
• They are also interested in how these two ideas
  interact with each other.

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Materialist Fem.

• Is interested in social and economic oppression
  of women.
• Family is looked at as an economic unit. As the
  lower class are suppressed by the upper class,
  women become subordinates within families.
• Beauvoir strongly believed that marriage trapped
  and stunted womens intellectual growth and
  freedom
• If woman seems to be the inessential being
  which never becomes essential it is because she
  herself fails to bring about this change
• Women have been written out of history and
  therefore have no historical record of shared
  culture, shared traditions, or shared oppression.
• women lack a concrete means for organizing
  themselves into a unit They have no collective
  recorded past no religion of their own they
  live dispersed among the males, attached through
  residence, housework, economic condition, and
  social standing to certain men-fathers or
  husbands-more firmly than they are to other
  women.
• In other words, womens allegiance to men from
  their own social class, race or religion always
  supersedes their allegiance to women from
  different classes, races or religions. In fact,
  it also supersedes their allegiance to women from
  their own class, race, religion.

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Psychoanalytical Fem.

• Repression also at the level of the unconscious
• Psychological liberation comes in the form of
  language because it is within our language that
  detrimental patriarchal notions of sexual
  difference have been defined and exert power.
• Our language, for example, poses a patriarchal
  binary thought in which we see the world in terms
  of polar opposites, and one is superior to the
  other. Ex. Head/heart, father/mother.
• Women will not resist patriarchal thinking by
  becoming part of the power structure in obtaining
  equal status and opportunity. Women are
  themselves the source of energy, of power, and
  therefore need a new, feminine language that
  undermines or eliminates the patriarchal binary
  thinking called ecriture feminine (feminine
  writing).

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Feminine Writing

• Resists patriarchal modes of thinking and
  writing, which generally require presecribed
  correct methods of organization, rationalist
  rules of logic (logic that stays above the neck
  relying on narrow definitions of cognitive
  experience and discrediting many kinds of
  emotional and intuitive experience), and linear
  reasoning (x precedes y, which precedes z)
• Examples of feminine writing Marguerite Duras,
  Colette, and Jean Genet, Clarice Lispector, Toni
  Morrisons Beloved, Virginia Woolfs Mrs.
  Dalloway, James Joyces Finnegans Wake, and
  William Faulker Absalom, Absalom!
• utopian thought has always been a source of
  inspiration for feminists

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Multicultural Feminism

• Studies awareness of ones own subjectivity.
• Cultural operations differ by country, race,
  religion, culture, belief, etc.
• African American feminists reveals that political
  and theoretical limitations inherent in white
  mainstream feminists neglect of cultural
  experience different from their own.
• Sexism and racism go hand in hand. Racism has
  often blinded cultures to sexism by dehumanizing
  and thus de-womanizing- subjects.

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Hey!

• What about the DUDES!?

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We call it GENDER studies for a reason!

• Traditionally, feminist criticism blossomed
  following the womens movement of the 1960s.
  Terms like socialisation and conditioning
  influence feminine images in literature and
  culture.
• However, gender studies is more about the ROLES
  of the different sexes within culture. Men are
  just as likely to succumb to societal, cultural,
  and/or historical pressures such as duty, honor,
  legacy, expectation, ROLE.

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In The End

• The power behind the ideology of gender study
  lies in the way it encompasses fundamental
  cultural and social values pertaining to the
  relations between men and women. The ideology of
  gender determines
• What is expected of us
• What is allowed of us
• What is valued in us
• The manifestation of gender difference can be
  found in the construction of
• Roles (what men and women do)
• Relations (how men and women relate to each
  other)
• Identity (how men and women perceive themselves)

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When You Look At Literature, Art, or Life

• Dont fixate on one idea
• Look at how characters relate to one another.
• Look at how the author presents a character.
• Look at how others perceive a character (readers
  or characters).
• Look at expectations of a character.
• Look at how one character identifies with his or
  herself, or even other characters.
• DO these reflect individual, cultural, and/or
  societal ideals?

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Consider
Refute
Defend

• How does Conrads Heart of Darkness reflect
  patriarchal ideology through Marlows comments
  about and attitude toward women and through his
  sexist representations of the numerous minor
  female characters that populate the novel
  (including his aunt, Kurtzs intended, the
  savage woman, the native laundress, and the
  women in black at the company headquarters in
  Europe)?
• Does the novel invite us to accept or criticize
  Marlows sexism?
• Is the novel even aware of his sexism?

Qualify
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Do You Feel Gender Played a Role in Your
Interpretation of HoD?

• Yes?
• No?
• Why or Why not?

Put the following words into categories male,
female , neither, both voyage, hunter, hunted,
worry, victim, savage, brute, death, affair,
servant, adventure, war, blood, brutal, slave,
master, withhold, secret, darkness, evil
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Biographical
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Biographical Criticism

• Using information about an author's life and
  background to better understand and analyze their
  work. Examining the writer's life may shed light
  on his or her literature and the literature of
  the era. Here are some ways it can help you
  better examine a text

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• It helps the reader to understand elements the
  author uses in his work, such as words,
  allusions, themes, characters, etc.
• The author's background often adds significance
  to the written work.
• It could help the reader to discover the author's
  audience and intention.

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• It is important to remember that you shouldnt
  always assume that the author's life is
  necessarily the same as the work's contents.
  Avoid using unsound sources of information about
  the author's life.

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Psychoanalytical Criticism

• sometimes a cigar is just a cigar

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Psychological and Psychoanalytic Criticism

• Psychological criticism deals with a work of
  literature primarily as an expression, in
  fictional form, of the personality, state of
  mind, feelings, and desires of its author. The
  assumption of psychoanalytic critics is that a
  work of literature is correlated with its
  authors mental traits

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Most Importantly

• There are two popular theories, both stemmed from
  the same seed Freudian Psychoanalysis and
  Lacans Theory of Psychoanalysis.
• Psychoanalytical criticisms deals with the
  concepts of our unconscious and conscious.

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Sigmund Freud

• 1856-1939
• Theory of psyche referred to as classical
  psychoanalysis
• Remember that Freuds ideas we evolved over a
  long period of time, and many of his ideas
  changed as he developed them, additionally a lot
  it was speculative.
• Hoped others would continue to develop and event
  correct certain ideas over time
• View of human behavior is relevant to our
  experience with literature

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1. Origins of the Unconscious

• When we view the world through a psychoanalytic
  lenses we see it is comprised of individual human
  beings, each with a psychological history that
  begins in childhood experiences in the family and
  each with patterns of adolescent and adult
  behavior that are the direct result of that early
  experience.
• Goal of psychoanalysis is to resolve
  psychological problems disorders or dysfunctions
  
• Focus is on patterns of behavior that are
  destructive in some way.
• Our repetitive destructive behavior is proof of
  the unconscious.

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You cant always get what you consciously want,
but you get what you unconsciously need!

• Freuds most radical insight was that we are
  motivated/driven by desires, fears, needs, and
  conflicts of which we are Unaware.
• Unconscious the storehouse for painful
  experiences and emotions, wounds, fears, guilty
  desires, and unresolved conflicts we dont want
  to know about. It is a dynamic entity that
  engages us at the deepest level of our being.

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Role of Family

• We are each products of the roles we are given in
  the family-complex.
• Birth of the unconscious lies in the way we
  perceive our place in the family and how we react
  to this self-definition Im the failure
  Im the perfect child, etc..
• Sibling rivalry is a part of our unconscious.

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Repression

• forgetting or ignoring unresolved conflicts,
  unadmitted desires, or traumatic past events so
  they are forced from the conscious awareness and
  into the unconscious.
• Gives our painful experiences and emotions force
  by making them the organizers of our current
  experience we unconsciously behave in ways that
  will allow us to play out, without admitting it
  to ourselves, our conflicted feelings about the
  painful experience and emotions we repress.

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Sublimation

• Repressed material is promoted into something
  grander or is disguised as something noble.
• For instance, sexual urges may be given
  sublimated expression in the form of intense
  religious experiences or longings.

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Id-Ego-Superego

• ID- our primitive impulses (thirst, anger,
  hunger) and desire for immediate gratification or
  release. Born with it. Allows us to get our
  basic needs met in infancy. Based on pleasure
  principle where id wants whatever feels good at
  the time without considerations for other
  circumstances.

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Superego Ego

• Superego- represents the conscience, our moral
  entity. Develops due to moral and ethical
  restraints placed on us by our caregivers.
  Dictates belief of right or wrong.
• Ego- balances impulse (id) and conscience
  (superego). Based on reality principle,
  understands that people have needs and desires
  and that sometimes being impulsive or selfish can
  hurt us in the end. Ego has to meet the needs of
  the id while taking in the reality of the
  situation.

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Oedipus Complex

• Male conceives the desire to eliminate the father
  and become the sexual partner of the mother.
  Three stages oral, anal, and phallic. Phallic
  symbols. Role of phallus in development penis
  envy and fear of castration
• Eventually abandoned out of fear of castration
  (when a boy realizes females are castrated and
  imagines this may be his fate if he does not
  subordinate his desire for his mother).
  Represses desire and adjusts to reality
  principle until he can become the patriarch.
  Boy identifies his father as a symbol of manhood.
  

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Oedipus Complex

• According to Freud female sexuality is a dark
  continent and therefore a mystery.
• However, ONE idea is that females abandon this
  notion after first realizing she is castrated
  and thus inferior and so rejecting her mother and
  seducing her father, then upon failure she
  returns to the mother and feminine role.
  However, she still envies the phallus that she
  will never have so she unconsciously substitutes
  a desire to have her fathers baby.

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2. The defenses, Anxiety, Core Issues

• Unconscious desires not to recognize or change
  our destructive behaviors are served by our
  defenses. Defenses are the processes by which
  the contents of our unconscious are kept in the
  unconscious. (aka- keeps the repressed
  repressed)
• Selective perception
• Selective memory
• Denial- believing that the problem doesnt exist
• Projection- ascribing our fear/problem on someone
  else then taking it out on them.
• Screen Memory- trivial memory whose function is
  to obliterate a more significant one.
• Freudian Slip- Repressed material in the
  unconscious finds its way out through a slip of
  the tongue, pen, unintended action, etc

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Cont.d

• Transference- redirect recalled emotions on
  another.
• Avoidance- staying away
• Regression- return to former psychological state
• Through which we can actually experience Active
  reversal
• Dream Work
• Displacement- symbolic substitution one person
  is represented by another because of some link or
  association.
• Condensation- A number of people/events are
  combined and represented as one image/dream.

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Anxiety

• When defenses break down.
• Reveals core issues
• Fear of intimacy (chronic and overpowering
  feeling that emotional closeness will hurt or
  destroy us and we remain emotionally safe through
  distance)
• Fear of abandonment (physical/emotional
  abandonment)
• Fear of betrayal (nagging feeling that
  friends/loved ones cant be trusted in any
  circumstances)
• Low self-esteem (belief you are less worthy)
• Insecure or unstable sense of self (inability to
  sustain a sense identity or knowing onesself)
• Oedipal fixation (complex) (dysfunctional bond
  with a parent of the opposite sex that we dont
  outgrow and thus affects our relationships with
  peers)
• Most are interchangeable, core issues are also
  defenses. Some even result from the development
  of others.

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Whats it All Mean?

• Our defenses keep us unaware of our unconscious
  experience, and our anxiety (even if it is
  somewhat prolonged or recurrent) doesnt succeed
  in breaking through our repression. SO how can
  we learn the operations of our own unconscious
  without psychotherapy??
• Watch your own patterns unconscious manifests
  clues in our relationships (interpersonal/friendly
  /sexual) through reenactments of unresolved
  conflicts.
• Also through dreams!

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3. Dreams and Dream Symbols

• Dream Displacement our unconscious safely
  emitting our repressed feelings.
• Latent content underlying meaning
• Manifest content what we actually dream
• Primary revision displacement and condensation
  occurring while we dream
• Secondary revision forgetting parts of the
  dream while we are awake.

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4. The Meaning of Death

• Crisis brings into light wounds, fears, guilty
  desires, or unresolved conflicts that I have
  failed to deal with and that demand action.
• Trauma is also a reference to a painful
  experience that scars us psychologically.
• Our relationship to death-whether or not we are
  traumatized by it- is a principal organizer of
  our psychological experience.
• Freud suggests a theory called Death Drive
  which explains high degree of self-destructive
  behaviors physically and mentally, and in whole
  nations (conflict). His conclusion was that
  there must be something in the biological makeup
  to explain this death work (psychological and
  physical self-destruction)

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4. The Meaning of Death

• For many of us, death keys into our fear of
  abandonment. Death is the ultimate abandonment.
  Religious belief comes into play as one of the
  few comforts.
• Fear of abandonment as plays into our fear of the
  death of others.
• Thus, death plays into our fear of intimacy as
  well.
• Fear of death often results in fear of life. If
  I dont feel anything, then I cant be hurt.
• The bigger our fear, the bigger our fascination.
• Media representations of death serve as an outlet
  for us to project our fears and problems onto
  people and events outside of ourselves. This
  becomes a defense.

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Consider

• How might an understanding of the ways in which
  death work can be projected onto the
  environment help us to interpret Marlow in Joseph
  Conrads Heart of Darkness?

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5. The Meaning of Sexuality
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6. Lacanian Theory
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• This theory requires that we investigate the
  psychology of a character or an author to figure
  out the meaning of a text (although to apply an
  authors psychology to a text can also be
  considered biographical criticism, depending upon
  your point of view).

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For example

• A reader could complete a psychoanalytical
  analysis of Abigail in The Crucible by examining
  her possible thought process based on her motives
  and actions. The same can be said for several
  characters in that play. Furthermore, you can
  look deeper into Arthur Millers own
  psychological motives for writing the text based
  on his biographical information.

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Reader Response
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Reader Response

• This type of criticism does not designate any one
  critical theory, but focuses on the activity of
  reading a work of literature. Reader-response
  critics turn from the traditional idea of
  breaking a text apart to gain meaning to the
  responses of readers as their eyes follow a text.
  This form of analysis takes the emphasis away
  from analyzing a texts characters, plot, style,
  and structure and places it on the connection
  between a readers experience and the text. It is
  through this interaction that meaning is made.

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• This is the school of thought most students seem
  to adhere to. Proponents believe that literature
  has no objective meaning or existence. People
  bring their own thoughts, moods, and experiences
  to whatever text they are reading and get out of
  it whatever they happen to, based upon their own
  expectations and ideas.

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In Other Words!

• Meaning is defined as the intersection of text,
  topic, and author and reader- meaning is IN that
  moment of intersection.
• Directly opposed to new criticism excellence in
  literature is defined by group norms (rather than
  an author giving literature meaning, meaning is
  gained when multiple readers think the text is
  worthwhile.)

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For Example

• Several readers are able to experience a sense of
  catharsis when Lennie dies at the end of Of Mice
  and Men based on their human instinct of feelings
  and the attachment they had to him as a
  character. This reactions comes from prior
  experiences and a readers own personal opinions,
  not the analysis of figurative language or
  symbolism.

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Questions to Ask

• What does the text mean to me? What does it mean
  to you? Can we come to a consensus?
• How does the text connect to my personal
  experiences?

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Historical Criticism

• Using this theory requires that you apply to a
  text specific historical information about the
  time during which an author wrote. History, in
  this case, refers to the social, political,
  economic, cultural, and/or intellectual climate
  of the time.

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For Example

• When reading The Crucible, it is easy to
  integrate historical information as a means to
  analyze what happens in that text.

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MORAL/ETHICAL CRITICISM

• Analyzes a text for their moral lessons or to
  demonstrate that the texts present examples of
  ethics to shape the readers life.
• Believes that literature serves the higher
  purposeto teach!
• Excellence comes with the QUALITY of the lessons

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Questions

• What is the authors message?
• What lessons can you learn from this text?
• How could you avoid the tragic ending of the
  character in your own life?

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NEW CRITICISM/STRUCTURALIST CRITICISM

• Includes close readings of the words of a text
  and analysis of the relationship between a texts
  genre and the meaning of that text.
• Most dominant form across the US
• Discussions may center on character development,
  use of metaphor to convey meaning, and the
  function of epic heroes.

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Questions

• How does the authors use of metaphor affect the
  meaning of this text?
• Which words in the text contribute to the tone of
  the text?
• How is theme related to the setting used?

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Literary Analysis Decompression

• Directions Answer the following in complete
  sentences.
• Which literary theory do you feel will be the
  easiest to apply? Why?
• Which literary theory do you feel will be the
  most difficult to apply? Why?
• Write a 3-5 sentence analysis of any text that we
  have read thus far using any of the above
  theories. You may not use my examples as
  answers, but you may use my examples to guide
  your response.

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Your Assignment!

• Using your selected novel, choose one Literary
  Criticism, and in 3-5 paragraphs apply that
  theory to the text. Make sure you use EXAMPLES
  FROM THE TEXT to support your answer. Your ECR
  will be due the Friday you return from Christmas
  break (1/9)if you want to get a jump start!

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Your Assignment!

• Due December 15, 2008.
• A draft should be completed by Monday, December
  8, 2005 for a week long editing process.
• We will be in the computer lab BRIEFLY on 12/3,
  12/5, 12/8 and in the MC 12/4. You will only
  have approximately 30 minutes per day so utilize
  your time wisely!
• Students must bring a copy of their paper to
  school EVERY time we are in the lab, or you will
  be doing SAT practice exams in the classroom.

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MACBETH PAPER

• 1b) Write a persuasive research paper of 4-7
  pages, using a particular critical approach. For
  instance, study the historical period of your
  work and write an historical criticism or analyze
  your text using a feminist point of view.
  Another option is to study the authors life and
  write a biographical criticism. In your paper, be
  sure your thesis persuades the reader to
  interpret the text as you have.