Formalist: The formalist strategy tends to focus on the formal aspects of a piece of work. A formalist critic views literature as a work of art rather than a reflection of the author. This strategy is helpful when analyzing drama and fiction because the words and images shape the work itself. When analyzing a more complex story, a formalist critic will raise questions about the complexities. Formalist strategies reveal meaning and reinforce the theme of a text.
Biographical: Biographical simply means of or pertaining to a person’s life. Various authors base their writings on the events that they have experienced in their own lives. Therefore, the use of biographical strategies, or knowledge of an author’s life, can result in a more suitable understanding of a piece of literature. While this particular strategy will not sharpen a particular piece of work, it has the potential to clarify the author’s beliefs to the reader. However, knowledge of the events in an author’s life can also raise challenging questions about their writings which would be left open to the interpretation of the reader.
Psychological: Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories have been used to investigate many elements of literature, such as: the motives of a character, the symbolic meaning of events in a piece of literature, the conscious or unconscious motives of an author, and the readers response to a text. For example, Freud's concept of the Oedipus complex led to an examination by Earnest Jones of Hamlet’s delay in the avenging of his father’s death. Jones thus determined that Hamlets unconscious motives led to his delay. Through psychological strategies, one can better explore both conscious and unconscious motives of the writer and the characters...
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...ritics believe that there are many ways of interpreting a text, they believe that a reader create meanings in literature. Reader-response critics are concerned with a readers experience with literature. This criticism does not aim to determine the meaning of a text, but to draw to our attention the ways in which we read and our influences on our reading.
Deconstructionist: Deconstructionist critics simply believe that there is no singular meaning to a text. They feel that language is not a precise tool, that it is open to endless interpretations. This particular strategy is not like any other form of criticism, for, it aims to disestablish meanings. Deconstructionists reveal instabilities, conflicts, and contradictions found within the language of a literature. A deconstructionist critic intensionally seeks ways to question the meanings of a piece of literature.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic novel written by Harper Lee. The novel is set in the depths of the Great Depression. A lawyer named Atticus Finch is called to defend a black man named Tom Robinson. The story is told from one of Atticus’s children, the mature Scout’s point of view. Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, the Finch Family faces many struggles and difficulties. In To Kill a Mockingbird, theme plays an important role during the course of the novel. Theme is a central idea in a work of literature that contains more than one word. It is usually based off an author’s opinion about a subject. The theme innocence should be protected is found in conflicts, characters, and symbols.
“Often fear of one evil leads us into a worse”(Despreaux). Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux is saying that fear consumes oneself and often times results in a worse fate. William Golding shares a similar viewpoint in his novel Lord of the Flies. A group of boys devastatingly land on a deserted island. Ralph and his friend Piggy form a group. Slowly, they become increasingly fearful. Then a boy named Jack rebels and forms his own tribe with a few boys such as Roger and Bill. Many things such as their environment, personalities and their own minds contribute to their change. Eventually, many of the boys revert to their inherently evil nature and become savage and only two boys remain civilized. The boys deal with many trials, including each other, and true colors show. In the end they are being rescued, but too much is lost. Their innocence is forever lost along with the lives Simon, a peaceful boy, and an intelligent boy, Piggy. Throughout the novel, Golding uses symbolism and characterization to show that savagery and evil are a direct effect of fear.
With all the different types of literature we have in our world, we also have a similar amount of interpretations of those pieces of literature. Each interpretation is as valid as the other. Literature not only allows the writer to create a wonderful world and a story, it allows the reader to fully embrace the story and find meaning out of it. There are also many different types of literary criticisms. These criticisms are vehicles or guidelines for us to use to understand the reading in a very specific way and really pinpoint the issues and overall theme of the story.
A traditional method assumes that the criticism involves both explication of what actually went on when the speaker engaged his or her audience, and an evaluation of how well the speaker performed the task of changing the audiences’ perspective of reality. It is also assumed that the traditional method will create a feeling of identification and sense of relatedness between the speaker or writer and the
Deconstruction or poststructuralist is a type of literary criticism that took its roots in the 1960’s. Jacques Derrida gave birth to the theory when he set out to demonstrate that all language is associated with mental images that we produce due to previous experiences. This system of literary scrutiny interprets meaning as effects from variances between words rather than their indication to the things they represent. This philosophical theory strives to reveal subconscious inconsistencies in a composition by examining deeply beneath its apparent meaning. Derrida’s theory teaches that texts are unstable and queries about the beliefs of words to embody reality.
Literary; associated with literary works or other formal writing; having a marked style intended to create a particular emotional effect. Term; a word or phrase used to describe a thing or to express a concept, especially in a particular kind of language or branch of study. Device; a thing made or adapted for a particular purpose. Literary terms/devices is defined as the typical structures used by writers in their works to convey his or her messages in a simple manner to the readers. When employed properly, the different literary devices help readers to appreciate, interpret and analyze a literary work. Hello, I am Miya Cole and today I will explain to you my four literary terms/devices.
According to A Handbook of Critical Approaches, the Formalistic Approach is one “with a methodology.” The Formalistic Approach requires a critic to examine the structure, or form, of a literary work. For example, studying the imagery of a literary
In Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Fall of the House of Usher, the character Roderick Usher exhibits severe mental illness. Most of Poe’s writings are psychological in nature. The Fall of the House of Usher is a great example of this. Poe’s life was filled with many tragic events. The unpleasant outcome of his early years resulted in a great Gothic Romantic writer. He is a master of writing psychological thrillers, adding suspense and mystery in his stories. The topics of his writings are a concoction of unpleasant, austere, and grotesque things, thus the reader can be left feeling squeamish and susceptible. We are drawn into Poe’s stories by our intrinsic human nature of curiosity and intrigue. This paper gives examples of Poe’s literary style as we examine Roderick’s metal state through his words and appearance.
Poverty and homelessness are often, intertwined with the idea of gross mentality. illness and innate evil. In urban areas all across the United States, just like that of Seattle. in Sherman Alexie’s New Yorker piece, What You Pawn I Will Redeem, the downtrodden. are stereotyped as vicious addicts who would rob a child of its last penny if it meant a bottle of whiskey.
This was by far my least favorite paper of all of them simply because "The Dubliners" is incredibly hard to understand when you don't have enough time to read back through it like I had previously to understand the other stories. "The Dead" and "The Sister's" are two different stories. "The Dead" is the longest story in "The Dubliners" and the most difficult to understand because of the many different themes running through it. While "The Sisters" is much shorter than the latter, with an easier storyline.
Everyone comes from their own background, and has their own opinions about the world around them. They bring those thoughts and prejudices with them into every text they read, meaning they see what they expect to see. The author claims that close reading leads to ethical reading, ethical reading meaning the reader is listening to the author’s voice within the text, truly understanding and listening to that which the author is saying. Close reading forces the reader to temporarily abandon their preconceptions and “by concentrating on the details, we disrupt our projection; we are forced to see what is really there” (Gallop p.11). The author provides some historical context, in relation to the “new criticism” method of teaching. Between the 1950’s and 1970’s new criticism, “allowed students to appreciate the complexity of literary writing, to see the artful work, rather than merely themes and ideas.” (Gallop p.13). The issue with new criticism being that only “great” works or authors were considered “worthy” of analysis in that manner. Unfortunately, most work that was considered “great” within that period were written by men of European descent. Within the past few decades the multicultural movement has made reading lists in schools more diverse, making understanding the voice of authors more important than ever, as to not reinforce stereotypes and
Essay 2 Psychoanalysis is the method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts (“Psychoanalysis”). This transfers to analyzing writing in order to obtain a meaning behind the text. There are two types of people who read stories and articles. The first type attempts to understand the plot or topic while the second type reads to understand the meaning behind the text. Baldick is the second type who analyzes everything.
Academically, I have learned many new ways to look at literature. My high school teachers did not expose us to many literary theories or how to apply them. Indeed, we learned about romanticism, realism, transcendentalism, etc. but never really related them to our writing. Most of the writing we did was simply based upon our own opinions. We hardly ever used secondary sources. I believe that deconstructionist theory was the most helpful theory I learned this year for analyzing literature. Breaking a poem up line by line or image by image or even a story into small sections made it a lot easier to grasp the main concepts of the work. Most of the time during this semester, however, I took a formalist point of view.
I enjoy criticism, sometimes for the purpose of learning something new and (factual and) exciting that I originally wasn't aware of in the text. Sometimes it is just fun to see where the critic's academic flight of fancy has taken them. Sometimes, and this is often true, a cigar is just a cigar…
The gay and lesbian criticism is an approach to literature that focuses on how homosexuals are represented in literature, how they read literature, and whether sexuality, as well as gender, is culturally constructed or innate