What is it1
attempt to evaluate and understand the creative writing, the literature of an author.
Literary criticism
is a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression.
CRT-Critical Race Theory
is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment”
Ecocriticism
How does the interaction of text and reader create meaning?
What does a phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary text, or a key portion of a longer text, tell us about the reading experience prestructured by (built into) that text?
Do the sounds/shapes of the words as they appear on the page or how they are spoken by the reader enhance or change the meaning of the word/work?
How might we interpret a literary text to show that the reader's response is, or is analogous to, the topic of the story?
What does the body of criticism published about a literary text suggest about the critics who interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience produced by that text?
reader response
How is nature represented in this text?
How has the concept of nature changed over time?
How is the setting of the play/film/text related to the environment?
What is the influence on metaphors and representations of the land and the environment on how we treat it?
How do we see issues of environmental disaster and crises reflected in popular culture and literary works?
How are animals represented in this text and what is their relationship to humans?
How do the roles or representations of men and women towards the environment differ in this play/film/text/etc.
Where is the environment placed in the power hierarchy?
How is nature empowered or oppressed in this work?
What parallels can be drawn between the sufferings and oppression of groups of people (women, minorities, immigrants, etc.) and treatment of the land?
What rhetorical moves are used by environmentalists, and what can we learn from them about our cultural attitudes towards nature?
Ecocriticism
different perspectives through which the reader can “view” a text”
Critical Lenses
What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters support these traditional roles?
What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?
What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both (bisexual)?
How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? Is it secure and forceful? Or is it more hesitant or even collaborative?
What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed in...the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters?
What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer works?
What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history?
How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who are apparently homosexual?
What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically, psychologically) homophobic?
How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual "identity," that is the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual?
gender and queer
Whom does it benefit if the work or effort is accepted/successful/believed, etc.?
What is the social class of the author?
Which class does the work claim to represent?
What values does it reinforce?
What values does it subvert?
What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays?
What social classes do the characters represent?
How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?
marxiest
What is the significance of race in contemporary American society?
Where, in what ways, and to what ends does race appear in dominant American culture and shape the ways we interact with one another?
What types of texts and other cultural artifacts reflect dominant culture’s perceptions of race?
How can scholars convey that racism is a concern that affects all members of society?
How does racism continue to function as a persistent force in American society?
How can we combat racism to ensure that all members of American society experience equal representation and access to fundamental rights?
How can we accurately reflect the experiences of victims of racism?
CRT
Examines the portrayals of social class and power structures within the text
Marxiest
explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized populations
Gender and Queer theory
Using a specific structuralist framework (like Frye's mythoi)...how should the text be classified in terms of its genre? In other words, what patterns exist within the text that make it a part of other works like it?
Using a specific structuralist framework...analyze the text's narrative operations...can you speculate about the relationship between the...[text]... and the culture from which the text emerged? In other words, what patterns exist within the text that make it a product of a larger culture?
What patterns exist within the text that connect it to the larger "human" experience? In other words, can we connect patterns and elements within the text to other texts from other cultures to map similarities that tell us more about the common human experience? This is a liberal humanist move that assumes that since we are all human, we all share basic human commonalities.
What rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized in order to 'make sense' of the text?
What are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or 'text,' such as high-school football games, television and/or magazine ads for a particular brand of perfume...or even media coverage of an historical event? (Tyson 225)
structuralism
is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment”
ecocriticism
Examines the gender roles and power structures at play in the literature
Feminist
"...if you examine the structure of a large number of short stories to discover the underlying principles that govern their composition...principles of narrative progression...or of characterization...you are also engaged in structuralist activity if you describe the structure of a single literary work to discover how its composition demonstrates the underlying principles of a given structural system" (Tyson 197-198).
structuralism
How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
How are male and female roles defined?
What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
How do characters embody these traits?
Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change others’ reactions to them?
What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?
What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting patriarchy?
What does the work say about women's creativity?
What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy?
What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary tradition?
Feminist
At its most basic level, reader-response criticism considers readers' reactions to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text.
reader-response
maintains that a literary work contains certain intrinsic features, and the theory "...defined and addressed the specifically literary qualities in the text"
formalism
How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbols? (i.e. making a certain road stand for death by constant association)
What is the quality of the work's organic unity "...the working together of all the parts to make an inseparable whole..." (Tyson 121)? In other words, does how the work is put together reflect what it is?
How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not contribute to the aesthetic quality of the work?
How does the author resolve apparent contradictions within the work?
What does the form of the work say about its content?
Is there a central or focal passage that can be said to sum up the entirety of the work?
How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to the meaning or effect of the piece?
formalism
with this lens, the reader approaches the text and determines meaning based on the time period during which the author wrote, or when the text takes place - the setting. It is important to consider the social, political, economic, cultural, and intellectual climate of the time.
Historical