nine literary critical ways of looking

7/27/2019 Nine Literary Critical Ways of Looking

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Nine Lit Crit Ways of Looking at

The Great Gatsby . . .and the rest of the world

Facilitated by a great many quotes from Donald E. Halls Literary and Cultural Theory Presented by Dr. Rita D. Jacobs at the MSU Institute for the Humanities

sessions on The Great Gatsb y, 4 February 2011


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A New Critical Approach

The task of the New Critic is to exploreprecisely how, through language and form,meanings are expressed and powerfullyimpressed upon readers.

Discussions of Form and genre

Close textual reading Narrative style and frame


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A Reader-Response Analysis

Reader-response analysis is a rigorous probingof the response process itself, and it has awide variety of possible analytical focuses.

The meaning of a text is not wholly intrinsic tothe text.

Emphasis is placed on the subjective nature of reading in that texts never exist in vacuums.


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Marxist and MaterialistAnalysis

This kind of analysis is rooted in historicalresearch and changing social contexts forunderstanding literary and other cultural

texts. Marxist critics are motivated by a sense of

political and economic urgency and attempt toreveal how unwitting participation in class-based ideologies has concrete effects on thequality of human life.


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Psychoanalytic Analysis An examination of the hidden forces, desires and fears

that exert influence over characters in ways beyondtheir knowledge and control.

Makes use of the frames of reference we use in

discussing selfhood and identity, e.g. id, ego, super-ego. Essential tenets:

--Human activity is not reducible to conscious

intent--Characters in texts may also have a complexpsychology

--Texts may have a psychological impact on readers


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Structuralism and Semiotics The signified is the concept to which a word refers The signifier is that word, image or representation that is

used to designate the signified The sign is the combination of the signifier and the signified Example: a box of chocolates on Valentines Day represents

the affection one feels for another person. The box of chocolates is the signifier, the affection is that which issignified and the box of chocolates as affection iscommonly recognized as a complex cultural sign.

Meaning can be made through a juxtaposition of oppositesor binaries


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Feminist Analysis The key to all feminist analysis is a recognition of

the different degrees of social power that aregranted to and exercised by women and men.

Language, institutions and social powerstructures have reflected patriarchal intereststhroughout much of history; this has had a

profound impact on women yet, at the sametime, women have resisted and subvertedpatriarchal oppression in a variety of ways.


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Gay/Lesbian/Queer Analysis

All gay/lesbian/queer analysis focuses onsexuality as a particulary importantcomponent of human identity, socialorganization and textual representation.

All notions of normality sexual, gender

related, and otherwise are appropriatesubjects for critique and historicalrepresentation.


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Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Analysis

Categories of race and ethnicity have beenused in ways that have empowered andoppressed

The differentiation of peoples is reflected inand reinforced by language and metaphor

The differentiation of peoples and its political

consequences are reflected not only in literaryand other forms of representation but also inour very notion of literature


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The New Historicism andPluralistic Cultural Analysis

An examination of the work by analyzing theinterplay between text and context.

There are numerous possible stories and historiesthat offer different insights into the ways peopleslives reflect their time, place, race, gender,sexuality and economic situation.

Literary and other cultural texts are connected incomplex ways to the time periods in which theywere created.

No reading of a literary or cultural text isdefinitive.

nine literary critical ways of looking

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