Literary Theories
A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture.
What is Literary Theory?
Reading a text for personal meaning
What is Reader Response Lens?
The protagonist in the movie.
Who is McMurphy?
Double-space, 12 pt & Times New Roman fonts, and setting all margins to 1 inch on all sides are some general guidelines for an MLA Style paper.
What is General Formatting?
This citation style is the most commonly format for manuscripts in the social sciences
What is APA Style?
A text is the way it is because of how readers look at it, so any explanation of a text's meaning needs to take into account the ways different people react to the text.
What is Reader Response Theory?
Reading a text for its socio-economic issues.
What is Socio-Economic Lens?
The Antagonist in the movie is the force that McMurphy had to overcome to achieve his need/goal to be free and out of the ward.
Who is Nurse Ratched?
This page is the list of sources you referenced in your paper.
What is Works Cited?
The first page that includes the title, your name, course name & number, instructors name, and assignment due date.
What is Title Page?
Texts make sense without reference to outside sources. So, any questions about a text can be answered by looking closely at how different Parts of the text relate to each other.
What is New Criticism?
Reading a text for its contextual significance. This would include information about the author, his or her historical moment, or the systems of meaning available at the time of writing.
What is Historical Lens?
A mental institution in Oregon in the early 1960s.
What is Setting?
This style formatting is often used in various humanities disciplines.
What is MLA?
Following In-Text Citation guidelines, APA style uses this method when quoting or when you are paraphrasing someone else's work in your paper.
What is Author-date method?
Texts are written by authors, who are heavily influences by the events in their lives and in the world, they live in. So, any questions about a text should be answered by referring to outside information about the life of the author or the history and culture in which the author lives or lives.
What is Historical/Biographical Criticism?
Reading a text for patterns in human behavior. While everyone’s formative history is different in particulars, there are basic recurrent patterns of development for most people.
What is Psychological Lens?
Individual behavior and social control, emasculation and misogyny, and freedom and captivity are some specific examples of the central idea or insight that emerges from the movie.
What are Themes?
This method involves providing relevant source information in parentheses whenever a sentence uses a quotation or paraphrase.
What is In-text citations?
This page is the list of sources you referenced in your paper.
What is a Reference page?
This kind of criticism looks at the way male and female characters act in a story and analyzes how that behavior reflects the authors cultural context and how those portrayals might affect readers perceptions of gender. This kind if criticism also looks at what texts leave out: for instance, if there are only stupid men in a story, a gender critic would analyze why.
What is Feminist or Gender Criticism?
Reading a text for the unity and complexity of its form. The focus should be on the text itself.
What is New Criticism Lens?
Rebellion is a central organizing principle for McMurphy. Rebellion is the act of transgressing the predominate rules, and McMurphy is always trying to wriggle free of the restrictions placed on him throughout the film. His acts of rebellion include stealing the bus from the hospital, stealing the boat, punching through the glass of the nurse's office, and inviting the outsiders into the ward for a party. These are examples of an image, idea, or phrase that recurs from time to time in a text or runs throughout it.
What is Motif?
Lucas, George, director. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Twentieth Century Fox, 1977.
What is Works Cited: Movie?
Stoneman, R. (2008). Alexander the Great: A life in legend. Yale University Press.
What is Reference Book?