Literary criticism is kind of interpretation of literary works to make senses of world.

While literary theory is study of principles which informs how critics go about making sense of literary works. Literary criticism and literary theory help both readers and writers understand or know deeply about literary work. In this case by using literary work and literary criticism, writers can get feedback from readers and it could be the base of their works; while for readers literary works and literary criticism can understand about literary works through different point of view. There are five basic ways of interpreting literary works: The most obvious, commonsensical way to think of literature is as a verbal representation of the real world. Literary works, especially prose fiction, are thought to be realistic if they hold a mirror up to life. Literature is to read it for what it reveals about the author and, by extension, the place and time (the social and historical context) in which she or he lived. It is form of selfexpression and literary works (especially lyric poems) are seen as windows into the soul of their writers. Some critics are concerned with the impact, especially of moral kind, which literature has upon the audience. In other words, are readers passive absorbers of the meaning waiting to be found in a given work or do they necessarily impose their subjective point of view, their preferences, their biases and what not on the work in question? To put this way, some theorists argue that literary criticism is not an impersonal, objective affair but a necessarily subjective and perspectival undertaking. Describe the verbal form or structure of the work, in other words, how a given work is put together and, importantly, to what end. It focuses on genre, the development of the work from beginning to end, the diction of the work, especially its figurative language (metaphors, similes, etc.). The final critical approach, for which there is no fancy name per se, attempts to situate each writer and his or her works in relation to what is sometimes termed literary history and, in some cases, the so-called canon.

The purposes of literary criticism are: To help us solve problem in the reading

To help us choose the better of two conflicting readings To enable us to form judgments about literature.

Contemporary Literary Theory is not a single thing but a collection of theoretical approaches which are marked by a number of premises, although not all of the theoretical approaches share or agrees on all of them. Contemporary literary theory is so extensively marked by the vastness of its domain and the extent of its problems, that it is, theoretically and practically speaking, impossible to achieve its full systematization, that is to form the unique epistemological paradigm. Some characteristics of contemporary theory are: 1. Meaning is assumed to be created by difference, not by "presence. Presence means meaning is identified with the object of meaning. The revisionist in here is Freudian Jacques Lacan. He remarks about sign signals. Signs do not directly represent the reality to which they refer, but mean by difference from other words in a concept set. All meaning is only meaning in reference to, and in distinction from, other meanings; there is no meaning in any stable or absolute sense. Meanings are multiple, changing, contextual. 2. There is no foundational 'truth' or reality in the universe (as far as we can know)--no absolutes, no eternalities, no solid ground of truth beneath the shifting sands of history. There are only local and contingent truths generated by human groups through their cultural systems in response to their needs for power, survival and esteem. Consequently, values and identity are cultural constructs, not stable entities. 3. Contemporary theory attempts to explore the implications of levels of meaning in language because language is a much more complex and elusive phenomenon. 4. Language itself always has excessive signification. This excessive signification is created in part by the rhetorical, or tropic, characteristics of language (a way of saying something by saying something else, as in a metaphor, a metonym, or irony), and an inherent opposition between the grammatical and the rhetorical operations of language. 5. It is language itself, not some essential humanness or timeless truth that is central to culture and meaning. Humans 'are' their symbol systems, they are constituted through them, and those systems and their meanings are contingent, relational, dynamic.

6. The meaning that appears as normal in our social life masks, through various means such as omission, displacement, difference, misspeaking and bad faith. The world we do occupy is a construction of ideology, an imagination of the way the world is that shapes our world, including our 'selves', for our use. 7. A text is, as the etymology of the word "text" proclaims, a tissue, a woven thing. It is a tissue woven of former texts, echoes of which it continually evokes. Woven of historical references and practices, and woven of the play of language. A text is not, and cannot be, 'only itself', nor can it properly be reified, said to be 'a thing'; a text is a process of engagements. 8. The borders of literature are challenged by the ideas that all texts share common traits and all experience can be viewed as a text. The borders are constructed of rhetorical, tropic, linguistic and narrative elements while experience insofar as it is knowable is consequently symbolically configured, and human activity and even perception is both constructed and known through the conventions of social practice. 9. The nature of language and meaning is seen as more intricate, potentially more subversive, more deeply embedded in psychic, linguistic and cultural processes, more areas of experience are seen as textual, and texts are seen as more deeply embedded in and constitutive of social processes.

CRITICAL APPROACHES 1. RHETORIC Rhetoric meant the effective use of language, not only to sway the ignorant mob but to persuade one's intellectual peers. And by governing such matters as laying out an argument, presenting the evidence, employing the appropriate syntax and diction, rhetoric was unavoidable in law, politics, literature and everyday life. Rhetoric even disallows thought, predetermining what our public ideologues must say. Perhaps for this reason contemporary poetry has become rather prosaic, even pedestrian, taking for granted that plainness bespeaks sincerity. Rhetoric is not extinct in popular literature. Anyone attending courses on article or feature writing will be taken

through the standard devices, which themselves derive from rhetoric. Rhetoric has always entered into very fabric of literature not only to persuade, but to inform, move, entertain, distract and amuse. Rhetoric organizes language to evoke emotion, persuade by argument, or to distract. The structure of taxis is: Exordium (introduction: appeal to the audience) Narratio (outline of case) Confirmatio (supporting examples, precedents, etc.) Refutatio (anticipating objections) Peroratio (graceful withdrawal) Overall, attract the attention by producing something of immediate personal interest. Make an argument with a few more instances, but not too many, and keep them relevant. Lead to agreement with personal assurances, guarantees, and claims on authority. Conclude by complimenting the audience on their humanity and common sense. Types of Rhetoric - anaphora (first word or phrase repeated) scheme - parison (parallel constructions, often in twos or threes) - hendiadys (two nouns or adjectives of similar or contingent meaning) - oxymoron (juxtaposition of words with contrasted meanings) - epanorthesis (recall of a word to suggest more appropriate expression) - antanaclasis (repetition of a word in an altered sense) Word meaning tropes - simile - metaphor - synecdoche (substitution of part for whole) - personification trope - hyperbole (overstatement) - aporia (affectation of perplexity)

2. READER RESPONSE

Reader response is concerned with how work is viewed by audience. In this approach, the reader creates meaning, not the author or the work. Reader response criticism analyzes the reader's role in the production of meaning. It lies at the opposite end of the spectrum from formalistic criticism. In reader response criticism, the text itself has no meaning until it is read by a reader. The reader creates the meaning. This criticism can take into account the strategies employed by the author to elicit a certain response from readers. It denies the possibility that works are universal (i.e. that they will always mean more or less the same thing to readers everywhere). Norman Holland argues that "each reader will impose his or her 'identity theme' on the text, to a large extent recreating that text in the reader's image." Therefore, we can understand someone's reading as a function of personal identity. In other words, reader response attempts to describe what happens in the readers mind while interpreting a text and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process. Two different readers may derive completely different interpretations of the same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads work years later may find the work shockingly different. Readerresponse criticism, then, emphasizes how religious, cultural, and social values affect readings; it also overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with different assumptions. Though this approach rejects the notion that a single correct reading exists for a literary work, it does not consider all readings permissible: Each text creates limits to its possible interpretations. 3. MODERENISM

Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Arguably the most paradigmatic motive of modernism is the rejection of tradition and its reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms. Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking and also rejected the existence of a compassionate, allpowerful Creator God. In general, the term modernism encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social, and political

conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. Modernism is an encompassing label for a wide variety of cultural movements.

4. FORMALISM

A formalistic approach to literature, once called New Criticism, involves a close reading of the text. This approach regards literature as a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined on its own terms. All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained within the work itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of formstyle, structure, tone, imagery, etc.that are found within the text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with the texts content to shape its effects upon readers. In other words, formalism or New Criticism aims to classify, categorize, and catalog works according to their "formal" attributes. Along the way, formalism wants to pull out and discuss any "universal" truths that literary works might hold concerning what has been popularly called "the human condition." These truths are considered by New Critics to be static, enduring, and applicable to all humanity. New criticism suggests that the text is a self-contained entity, and that everything that the reader needs to know to understand it is already in the text. New critics totally discount the importance of historical context, authorial intent, effects on the reader, and social contexts, choosing to focus instead on the layers in the next. This school of criticism works with the elements of a text only irony, paradox, metaphor, symbol, plot, and so on by engaging in extremely close textual analysis.

5. SYTECTIC 6. SEMIOTIC

Semiotics, simply put, is the science of signs. Semiology proposes that a great diversity of our human action and productions--our bodily postures and gestures, the the social rituals we perform, the clothes we wear, the meals we serve, the buildings we inhabit--all convey "shared" meanings to members of a particular culture, and so can be analyzed as signs which function in diverse kinds of signifying systems. Linguistics (the study of verbal signs and structures) is only

one branch of semiotics but supplies the basic methods and terms which are used in the study of all other social sign systems (Abrams, p. 170). Major figures include Charles Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, Michel Foucault (fou-KOH), Umberto Eco, Grard Genette, and Roland Barthes (bart).

7. MARXIST

Marxist criticism is a type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of work and whose practitioners emphasize the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate, and even challenge the social order. Rather than viewing texts as repositories for hidden meanings, Marxist critics view texts as material products to be understood in broadly historical terms. In short, literary works are viewed as a product of work (and hence of the realm of production and consumption we call economics). Marxist criticism, which focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of literature; because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is political, either challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status quo, it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the principles of class struggle more clearly. Nonetheless, Marxist criticism can illuminate political and economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook.

8. SOCIOLOGICAL

One type of historical criticism is this approach which "examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received," exploring the relationships between the artist and society. Sometimes it examines the artist's society to better understand the author's literary works; other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the literature itself. One influential type of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism.

9. NEW HISTORY OR BIOGRAPHICAL ANALYTIC New history or biographical critics see works as the reflection of an authors life and times (or of the characters life and times). They believe it is necessary to know about the author and the political, economical, and sociological context of his time in order to truly understand his works. In other words, This approach "begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author's life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work." . However, a biographical critic must be careful not to take the biographical facts of a writer's life too far in criticizing the works of that writer. The advantages of this approach are this approach works well for some works like those of Alexander Pope, John Dryden, and Milton which are obviously political in nature. Historical approach also necessary to place allusions in there proper classical, political, or biblical

background. The disadvantages of this approach is biographical analytic or new history tends to reduce art to the level of biography and make it relative (to the times) rather than universal.

10. STRUCTURALISM Structuralism notes that much of our imaginative world is structured of, and structured by, binary oppositions (being/nothingness, hot/cold, culture/nature); these oppositions structure meaning, and one can describe fields of cultural thought, or topoi, by describing the binary sets which compose them. Structuralism forms the basis for semiotics, the study of signs: a sign is a union of signifier and signified, and is anything that stands for anything else (or, as Umberto Eco put it, a sign is anything that can be used to lie). Structuralism introduces the idea of the subject, as opposed to the idea of the individual as a stable indivisible ego. Structuralism enables both the reading of texts and the reading of cultures: through semiotics, structuralism leads us to see everything as textual that is, composed of signs, governed by conventions of meaning, ordered according to a pattern of relationships.

11. FEMINISM

Feminist criticism is concerned with the impact of gender on writing and reading. It usually begins with a critique of patriarchal culture. It is concerned with the place of female writers in the canon. Finally, it includes a search for a feminine theory or approach to texts. Feminist criticism is political and often revisionist. Feminists often argue that male fears are portrayed through female characters. They may argue that gender determines everything, or just the opposite: that all gender differences are imposed by society, and gender determines nothing. Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combating such attitudes-by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare's play Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist critics include "analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text" and "examin[ing] how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality." From a feminist vantage point we might assume that because the experiences of the sexes differ, their values and ideas differ, and therefore the way men write and read texts and the way women write and read texts also differs.