Literary Criticism and Theory
Grade 12 · English · Study Guide
Explore the major schools of literary criticism — the lenses through which scholars read, analyze, and debate the meaning of texts. Understanding these frameworks transforms you from a passive reader into an active interpreter.
Literary criticism is not about telling you what a text 'means' — it is a set of analytical frameworks that illuminate different aspects of a text's language, context, and effects. Different critical schools ask fundamentally different questions: a formalist asks 'how does the text work?' while a Marxist critic asks 'whose interests does it serve?' and a feminist critic asks 'how does it construct gender?'
New Criticism (mid-20th century) argued that a text should be analyzed on its own terms, independent of the author's intentions or historical context — the 'close reading' method that still underlies most high school and undergraduate English instruction. The author's intentions are irrelevant (Barthes' 'death of the author'); what matters is the text itself and the 'intentional fallacy.'
Post-structuralism and deconstruction (Derrida) challenged the idea that texts have stable, fixed meanings, arguing that language is inherently unstable and meanings are always deferred. Feminist criticism examines how texts construct and perpetuate gender norms — who speaks, whose stories are told, how women are represented. Postcolonial criticism (Said's Orientalism) examines how literature has produced and perpetuated colonial power structures. Each framework is a lens: it illuminates some things and may obscure others, which is why sophisticated analysis often draws on multiple approaches.
| School | Key Question | Key Figure(s) | Core Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Criticism | How does the text work as a self-contained object? | Brooks, Warren, Wimsatt | Close reading; irony/tension/ambiguity |
| Feminist Criticism | How does the text construct or challenge gender? | Showalter, Gilbert & Gubar | Gender analysis; recovery of women's writing |
| Marxist Criticism | Whose ideology does the text serve? | Eagleton, Jameson | Class analysis; ideology critique |
| Postcolonial Criticism | How does the text represent the colonized Other? | Said, Spivak, Bhabha | Power analysis; discourse analysis |
| Psychoanalytic Criticism | What unconscious desires does the text reveal? | Freud, Lacan | Symbol analysis; repression; desire |
| Reader-Response Theory | How does the reader create meaning? | Fish, Iser | Reader's experience; interpretive communities |
Key terms
- New Criticism
- Mid-20th century school emphasizing close reading of the text itself, independent of authorial intent or historical context.
- Close reading
- Careful, detailed analysis of a text's language, structure, imagery, and techniques — the foundational skill of literary analysis.
- Death of the author
- Roland Barthes' concept that once published, a text's meaning is independent of the author's intentions — the reader creates meaning.
- Deconstruction
- Derrida's approach that exposes the instability and contradictions within texts — meanings are never fixed or fully present.
- Feminist criticism
- Critical approach examining how texts construct gender, silence women's voices, or perpetuate patriarchal ideology.
- Postcolonial criticism
- Critical approach examining how literature reflects and reproduces colonial power structures and the representation of 'the Other.'
- Marxist criticism
- Critical approach examining literature in relation to class, power, ideology, and economic conditions.
Flashcards
- New Criticism
- Close reading of the text as a self-contained object — authorial intent and historical context are irrelevant.
- Close reading
- Careful detailed analysis of language, structure, and imagery — the foundational skill of literary study.
- Death of the author
- Barthes' concept: meaning is made by readers, not determined by the author's intentions.
- Deconstruction
- Derrida's approach exposing textual instabilities and contradictions — no text has a fixed, stable meaning.
- Feminist criticism
- Examines how texts construct gender, who is silenced, and how patriarchal ideology operates in literature.
- Postcolonial criticism
- Examines how literature reflects and perpetuates colonial power — Said's Orientalism is the founding text.
Practice questions
New Criticism argues that literary analysis should:
- Focus primarily on the author's biography and intentions
- Analyze the text on its own terms, independent of context or authorial intent
- Examine how texts serve dominant class ideology
- Recover the voices of marginalized groups silenced by the canon
Show answer
Answer: Analyze the text on its own terms, independent of context or authorial intent
New Critics like Cleanth Brooks and W.K. Wimsatt argued that importing biography or history was the 'intentional fallacy' — the text must stand alone and be read closely.
Roland Barthes' 'death of the author' means that once a text is published, meaning is created by readers, not determined by the author's intentions.
Show answer
Answer: True
Barthes argued that the reader's encounter with the text produces meaning — 'the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.' Texts are not locked safes where only one key (the author's intent) opens them.
A critic who examines how Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre challenges or reinforces Victorian gender norms is using which critical approach?
- Marxist criticism
- New Criticism
- Feminist criticism
- Deconstruction
Show answer
Answer: Feminist criticism
Feminist criticism asks exactly this kind of question: how does the text position women? Does it reproduce or challenge the dominant ideology of gender? Jane Eyre is a major feminist critical text.
Edward Said's landmark work ___ (1978) launched postcolonial criticism by examining how Western texts constructed a distorted image of the East to justify imperial power.
Show answer
Answer: Orientalism
Said's Orientalism showed how European literature and scholarship created a systematic, distorted representation of 'the Orient' that served to justify colonial domination — a foundational work in postcolonial studies.
Psychoanalytic criticism applies Freudian concepts like repression, the unconscious, and desire to interpret literary texts and characters.
Show answer
Answer: True
Psychoanalytic critics read literary characters and symbols through Freudian lenses — repression, the unconscious, the Oedipus complex, desire — finding in literature what the culture has pushed underground.
Fun facts
- Roland Barthes' essay 'The Death of the Author' (1967) is one of the most cited — and most debated — essays in 20th-century literary theory.
- Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) effectively launched the field of postcolonial studies by showing how Western literature constructed a distorted, exotic 'Orient' to justify imperial power.
- Jacques Derrida coined the term 'deconstruction' — which has since been so widely misused that he complained it had been reduced to meaning 'analysis.'
- The word 'canon' in 'literary canon' comes from the Greek for 'rule' or 'measuring stick' — postcolonial and feminist critics have challenged whose works get to be the measuring stick.
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