Literary Criticism

Different ways of looking at texts

Why Criticize Texts?

There are three main objectives for criticizing and analyzing texts.
1. To help us resolve difficulties or conflicts in the text
2. To allow us to see things in the text that our “eyes” alone cannot/would not see
3. To enable us to form judgments about the text

What does Literary Criticism look like?

There are a few ways of “looking at” literary criticism. First, it helps to look at the big picture.
Start with the text. The root of (almost) all literary criticism starts with the text.
Next, we have to look at the relationships the text has with other people and texts.
There are relationships that exist between the author and the text, the reader and
the text, the text and other texts, and the text and the world.

Other Texts
Reader

Beyond the
world
The World Author

The author’s world,

biographical and
historical
The Text

Finally, we have to consider the relationships that exist beyond the text, things that connect to
the reader, the author, the world, and other texts.

How do we perform Literary Criticism?

By examining the relationships above, we can begin to look at texts in different ways. Using a
literary criticism is like looking through a magnifying glass, except each magnifying glass makes
different things more apparent and important.

What Literary Criticisms are there and which relationship influences them?
There are certainly more literary criticisms than we can focus on in class, but we will look at the
majority of criticisms on this list. Each criticism came about as the product of different ages and
philosophies, similar to the different types of literature that we read (Classicism, Neoclassicism,
Romanticism, etc.) The following criticisms are some of the most widely used and well-known.

Historical: text-author, text-world
Language: text

Intertextual: text-other text

Symbolic: beyond the world-text

Psychoanalytical: author, reader, world,
beyond the world – text

Mimetic/Cultural: text-world

Feminist: text-world, author-text

Marxist: text-world

Reader-Response: text-reader

Deconstruction: text

Strause/Wright 2006
 Literary Criticism Information Sheet

Criticism Relationship Focus Questions Other Info.

Historical

Intertextual

Symbolic

Psychoanalytical

Language

Feminist

Marxist

Reader-
Response

Mimetic/
Cultural

Deconstruction

Strause/Wright 2006