Literature
• Choose six of the following approaches and find one article for each approach.
• Writing:
 One page per article
 2 pgs summary
Critical approaches important in the study of literature:
MORAL/INTELLECTUAL
• Concerned with content and values
• Used not only to discover meaning, but also to determine whether works of literature are both true and significant.
• To study lit from this perspective is to determine whether a work conveys a lesson or a message and whether it can help readers lead better lives and improve their understanding of the world.
• Answer these questions:
 What ideas does the work contain?
 How strongly does the work bring forth its ideas?
 What application do the ideas have to the work’s characters and situations?
 How may the ideas be evaluated intellectually? Morally?
TOPICAL/HISTORICAL
• Stresses the relationship of lit to its historical period
• Investigates relationships of this sort, including the elucidation of words and concepts that today’s readers may not immediately understand.
• Common criticism is that in the extreme, it deals with background knowledge rather than with lit itself.
NEW CRITICAL/FORMALIST
• Focuses on literary texts as formal works of art, and for this reason it can be seen as a reaction against the topical/historical approach.
• Most brilliant in the formal analysis of smaller units such as poems and short passages.
• Discussions of point of view, tone, plot, character, and structure are formal ways of looking at lit from this point of view.
STRUCTURALIST
• Stems from the attempt to find relationships and connections among elements that appear to be separate and discrete.
• Attempts to discover the forms unifying all lit
• Important because it enables critics to discuss works from widely disparate cultures and historical periods.
• Furnishes an ideal approach for comparative lit and the method also enables critics to consolidate genres such as modern romances, detective tales, soap operas and film.
• Best in the analysis of narratives and larger units.
FEMINIST
• Holds that most of lit presents a masculine/patriarchal view in which the role of women is negated or at best minimized.
• Seeks to raise consciousness about the importance and unique nature of women in lit.
ECONOMIC DETERMINIST/MARXIST
• Features individuals in the grips of the class struggle.
• Often called proletarian lit
• Emphasizes persons of the lower class – the poor and oppressed who spend their lives in endless drudgery and misery, and whose attempts to rise above their disadvantages usually result in renewed suppression.
PSYCHOLOGICAL/PSYCHOANALYTIC
• Provided a new key to the understanding of character by claiming that behavior is caused by hidden unconscious motives.
• Treat lit somewhat like information about patients in therapy.
ARCHETYPAL/SYMBOLIC/MYTHIC
• Presupposes that human life is built up out of patterns, or archetypes, that are similar throughout various cultures and historical times.
Women have faced oppression in the literary community throughout history. Whether they are seen as hysterical or unreliable, women writers seem to be faulted no matter the topics of their literature. However, Anne Bradstreet and Margaret Fuller faced their critics head-on. Whether it was Bradstreet questioning her religion or Fuller discussing gender fluidity, these two women did not water down their opinions to please others. Through their writings, Bradstreet and Fuller made great strides for not just women writers, but all women.
Virginia Woolf, an original, thought-provoking feminist author, influenced women to fight for equality and to question the opportunities for women in literature. With her diaries, novels and poems, she stunned her readers with something they have not seen much before: women rebelling. Woolf was frustrated with women and the untouched and suppressed skills they harbor. She once said, “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their created force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics” (Feminist 595). Woolf sought to eliminate the perceived ideas of women and enlighten readers of the skills that women possess.
Treichler, Paula A. “Language and Ambiguity.” The Awakening, A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Margo Culley.
Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
Tan, Amy. “Two Kinds.” Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing About Fiction, Poetry, Drama and The Essay.4th e. Ed. Frank Madden. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. 253-261. Print.
Throughout most of literature and history, the notion of ‘the woman’ has been little more than a caricature of the actual female identity. Most works of literature rely on only a handful of tropes for their female characters and often use women to prop up the male characters: female characters are sacrificed for plot development. It may be that the author actually sacrifices a female character by killing her off, like Mary Shelly did in Frankenstein in order to get Victor Frankenstein to confront the monster he had created, or by reducing a character to just a childish girl who only fulfills a trope, as Oscar Wilde did with Cecily and Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. Using female characters in order to further the male characters’
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
Butler (271) defines gender performativity as the product of repeated actions over time, which forms an individual’s sense of gender identity. In this regard, the repeated stylization of the human body through a set of acts that are repeated within a regulatory frame that is highly rigid generates the appearance of the substance of the natural being. In
Do you remember your favorite “School Lunch”? I do, I essentially had two favorites; pizza and hamburgers with fries. Think back, wasn’t there at least one school lunch that the lunch ladies made that everyone was so excited to eat. Kids that habitually brought their super hero lunch box with thermos would leave it at home and be in line for pizza or burgers and fries. We could also go back for “seconds”, it was the best meal of the week including what was served at home. The federal government has been involved in the NSLP (National School Lunch Program) since 1946 with the implementation of the National School Lunch Act. These initial programs developed the commodity distribution program for schools, institutions, needy households, summer
Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003. Print. The. Bailey, Carol. "
In order for us to deal with how a consideration of femininity can effect our understanding of a literary text, we must also be able to grasp the notion of `feminism' and `Feminist Literary Theory'. A dictionary definition of `feminism' is: `the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes.' Although this leans towards feminism in the historical sense of the word, it still provides the grounds, or foundations, from which feminist literary theories were created. Feminists argue against the stereotyping and social construction of female norms, seeing them as created by men in order to establish their own sense of power. It is thought that while males suggest that gender is sex and not actually a construct, the female role will become much more passive, stereotyped and controlled.
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
Everyone is born a certain way, with his or her own gender. Gender can affect everything in our lives. A show I enjoy to watch, “I Am Cait,” is televised on E news. The show is about a celebrity I admire, Caitlyn Marie Jenner originally known as William Bruce Jenner. Jenner, an American television personality and retired athletic champion is now a transgender woman. Caitlyn confessed, “People look at me differently. They see you as this macho male, but my heart and my soul and everything that I do in life--it is part of me. That female side is part of me. That’s who I am.” Jenner is significant to me because she demonstrates her leader personality, bravery, dynamic, determined and independent status.
Literature has many purposes, and opens doors to unique worlds. Through Literature, we discover ourselves and world time and again.