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I'm Banny

considering this is a room for literature, it should be okay for you all looking on some theories that are used by some people to criticize certain literary works. some of them below might be well known by some of you, especially for those who are in English Literature Major. by the way, I am majoring Literature, feel free to ask it here even when you feel you out of this thread. but surely, only ask me literature and its connection

theories below are explained briefly, a necessary reduction in their complexity and richness occurs. The information below is meant merely as a guide or introduction to modern literary theories and trends. you can see through websites or library to look for its further explanation. for books, you can browse them, mostly titled "An Introduction to Literature" by some writers. below, I also give you references addressing to the related topic

for your Majesty, Moderators, please notify me if there are some mistakes on me for making this thread

shall we begin? here we go

Literary Trends and Influences

New Criticism

A literary movement that started in the late 1920s and 1930s and originated in reaction to traditional criticism that new critics saw as largely concerned with matters extraneous to the text, e.g., with the biography or psychology of the author or the work's relationship to literary history. New Criticism proposed that a work of literary art should be regarded as autonomous, and so should not be judged by reference to considerations beyond itself. A poem consists less of a series of referential and verifiable statements about the 'real' world beyond it, than of the presentation and sophisticated organization of a set of complex experiences in a verbal form (Hawkes, pp. 150-151). Major figures of New Criticism include I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot, Cleanth Brooks, David Daiches, William Empson, Murray Krieger, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, F. R. Leavis, Robert Penn Warren, W. K. Wimsatt, R. P. Blackmur, Rene Wellek, Ausin Warren, and Ivor Winters.

Key Terms:

Intentional Fallacy - equating the meaning of a poem with the author's intentions.

Affective Fallacy - confusing the meaning of a text with how it makes the reader feel. A reader's emotional response to a text generally does not produce a reliable interpretation.

Heresy of Paraphrase - assuming that an interpretation of a literary work could consist of a detailed summary or paraphrase.

Close reading (from Bressler - see General Resources below) - "a close and detailed analysis of the text itself to arrive at an interpretation without referring to historical, authorial, or cultural concerns" (263).

Further references:

* Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947.
* Brooks, Cleanth and Robert Penn Warren, eds. Understanding Poetry. New York: Holt, 1938.
* Empson, William. Seven Types of Ambiguity. New York, 1955.
* Lentriccia, Frank. After the New Criticism. See chapter 6.
* Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. See chapter 1.
* Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A
Comparative Introduction. See chapter 3.
* Ransom, John Crowe. The New Criticism. New York: New Directions, 1941.
* Richards, I. A. Practical Criticism. London: Routledge & Paul, 1964.
* Wimsatt, W. K., and Monroe C. Beardsley. The Verbal Icon. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1954.


Archetypal/Myth Criticism

A form of criticism based largely on the works of Carl Gustav Jung and Joseph Campbell (and myth itself). Some of the school's major figures include Robert Graves, Francis Fergusson, Philip Wheelwright, Leslie Fiedler, Northrop Frye, Maud Bodkin, and G. Wilson Knight. These critics view the genres and individual plot patterns of literature, including highly sophisticated and realistic works, as recurrences of certain archetypes and essential mythic formulae. Archetypes, according to Jung, are "primordial images"; the "psychic residue" of repeated types of experience in the lives of very ancient ancestors which are inherited in the "collective unconscious" of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in the works of literature (Abrams, p. 10, 112). Some common examples of archetypes include water, sun, moon, colors, circles, the Great Mother, Wise Old Man, etc. In terms of archetypal criticism, the color white might be associated with innocence or could signify death or the supernatural.

Key Terms:

Anima - feminine aspect - the inner feminine part of the male personality or a man's image of a woman.

Animus - male aspect - an inner masculine part of the female personality or a woman's image of a man.

Archetype - (from Makaryk - see General Resources below) - "a typical or recurring image, character, narrative design, theme, or other literary phenomenon that has been in literature from the beginning and regularly reappears" (508). Note - Frye sees archetypes as recurring patterns in literature; in contrast, Jung views archetypes as primal, ancient images/experience that we have inherited.

Collective Unconscious - "a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person's conscious mind" (Jung)

Persona - the image we present to the world

Shadow - darker, sometimes hidden (deliberately or unconsciously), elements of a person's psyche

Further references:
o Bodkin, Maud. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry. London: OUP, 1934.
o Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon Boos, 1949.
o Frazer, J. G.The Golden Bough.
o Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism and Fables of Identity.
o Graves, Robert. Greek Myths and The White Goddess.
o Jung, Carl Gustav. Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature and various other works
o Knight, G. Wilson. The Wheel of Fire: Interpretations of Shakespearean Tragedy.
o Lentriccia, Frank. After the New Criticism. See chapter 1.
o Pratt, Anais. Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.
o Seboek, Thomas A., ed. Myth: A Symposium. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1955.

Psychoanalytic Criticism


The application of specific psychological principles (particularly those of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan [zhawk lawk-KAWN]) to the study of literature. Psychoanalytic criticism may focus on the writer's psyche, the study of the creative process, the study of psychological types and principles present within works of literature, or the effects of literature upon its readers (Wellek and Warren, p. 81). In addition to Freud and Lacan, major figures include Shoshona Felman, Jane Gallop, Norman Holland, George Klein, Elizabeth Wright, Frederick Hoffman, and, Simon Lesser.

Key Terms:

Unconscious - the irrational part of the psyche unavailable to a person's consciousness except through dissociated acts or dreams.

Freud's model of the psyche:

* Id - completely unconscious part of the psyche that serves as a storehouse of our desires, wishes, and fears. The id houses the libido, the source of psychosexual energy.
* Ego - mostly to partially (<--a point of debate) conscious part of the psyche that processes experiences and operates as a referee or mediator between the id and superego.
* Superego - often thought of as one's "conscience"; the superego operates "like an internal censor [encouraging] moral judgments in light of social pressures" (123, Bressler - see General Resources below).

Lacan's model of the psyche:

* Imaginary - a preverbal/verbal stage in which a child (around 6-18 months of age) begins to develop a sense of separateness from her mother as well as other people and objects; however, the child's sense of sense is still incomplete.
* Symbolic - the stage marking a child's entrance into language (the ability to understand and generate symbols); in contrast to the imaginary stage, largely focused on the mother, the symbolic stage shifts attention to the father who, in Lacanian theory, represents cultural norms, laws, language, and power (the symbol of power is the phallus--an arguably "gender-neutral" term).
* Real - an unattainable stage representing all that a person is not and does not have. Both Lacan and his critics argue whether the real order represents the period before the imaginary order when a child is completely fulfilled--without need or lack, or if the real order follows the symbolic order and represents our "perennial lack" (because we cannot return to the state of wholeness that existed before language).

Further references:

* Elliott, Anthony. Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.
* Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. See chapter 5.
* Ellmann, Maud, ed. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. London: Longman, 1994.
* Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams.
* Gay, Peter, ed.The Freud Reader. London: Vintage, 1995.
* Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. See Chapter 5.
* Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection.
* Sarup, Madan. Jacques Lacan. London: Harvester, Wheatsheaf, 1992.
* Weber, Samuel. The Legend of Freud