Information at a Glance
Approach Purpose(s)
Familiar To understand literature in the context of
an author’s biography and/or historical
period.
Formalist To value a literary work for its own
intrinsic properties
To determine meanings that are suggested
but not overtly stated.
Archetypal To identify universal images and patterns
of conduct that carry emotional power.
Marxist To reveal how those in control of the
means of production manipulate the rest
and thereby change the system.
Feminist (1) To read with heightened awareness of
the nature, social roles, and treatment of
female characters.
(2) To recognize ignored and undervalued
female writers.
(3) To explore more sexual identities than
the traditional male/female binary.
Reader-Response To include the reader in constructing the
meaning of a text.
Deconstructionist To demonstrate the multiplicity of
meanings in a given text.
New Historicist To understand a text as a product and
maker of complex and sometimes
conflicting historical forces.
Postcolonialist To examine the literature of colonized
peoples and that of the descendants of
their colonizers, featuring what happens
when one culture is dominated by another.
Multiculturalist To identify and analyze the literatures of
racial and ethnic minorities in order to
discover their unique characteristics and
worldviews.
Ecocritical To examine the relationship of literature
and nature as a way to renew a reader’s
awareness of the nonhuman world and his
or her responsibility to sustain it.
Assumption(s)
Literature reflects the life and world of its
author.
Literature is an utterance of abstract,
absolute truths about reality.
(1) Literature comes from the unconscious
of a writer, expressing meanings that even
he or she may not recognize.
(2) A character’s nature is revealed by more
than external actions: dreams, symbols,
slips of language. Some literary patterns can
be universally recognized.
Some literary patterns are universally
recognized
Economics controls all aspects of a society.
The material, not the spiritual, is all
important
(1) Because society is and has been basically
patriarchal, the talents and products of
women have been undervalued, leaving
them without visible power.
(2) Sexual orientation is central to critical
analysis and understanding.
Whatever a text means is at least partially
the product of a reader’s interaction with it.
Meaning is always provisional, not stable,
united, or unchanging.
Because a text is the product of more than a
single contributing source, it is not
explainable simply as the reflection of a
controlling idea of a given period.
Physical conquest of a culture leads to loss
or serious modification of it, resulting in
uncertainty of identity for both the
conquered and the colonizers, who live in a
mixed culture often marked by contrasts
and antagonisms, resentment, and blended
practice.
The literature of historically marginalized
groups provides a rich source of works for
analysis.
Because all life is inter-related, the impact of
human activity on the environment should
be minimized.
 Strategy or Strategies
Read literature as a reflection of
major events, figures, and ideas of
a period.
Read closely to see how tensions in
diction and style are resolved into
a unified whole.
Pay close attention to unconscious
motivations and meanings
expressed indirectly through
dreams, language, and symbols.
Identify characters or behaviors
similar to those you have met in
other narratives.
Identify the powerful individuals
or groups in the text and show how
they create the superstructure that
controls the proletariat.
(1) Examine the roles and
treatment of female characters.
(2) Discover (or reintroduce)
works by neglected female writers.
(3) Look for fluidity of characters’
sexual identities.
Connect the life experiences and
worldviews of the reader with the
text.
Identify those places where
misstatements, gaps, and
inconsistencies in a text undermine
what it claims to be saying.
Acknowledge all the social
concerns that surround and infuse
a text, particularly the power
structures of the culture it depicts
and that of the author’s world.
Determine the stance of a text
regarding colonialism,
postcolonialism, and/or
neocolonialism.
Identify materials, purposes, and
styles that are characteristic of a
racial or ethnic minority.
Pull traditionally disregarded
elements of nature into the center
of your reading.
Strength
Provides a framework for tracing
growth and development of literary
ideas and styles.
Shows how meaning is a product of
form.
Reveals meanings that are not
explicitly stated.
Deepens the emotional and thematic
impact of a text.
Connects literature with life—that is,
with everyday concerns about
economics, class, and power.
Gives attention to traditionally
overlooked aspects of a text and to
heretofore ignore writers.
Makes the reader an active
coparticipant in creating a text, not
simply a passive receiver of it.
Opens up a text to an unending series
of new interpretations.
Accepts any written text as worthy of
serious analysis (not just those
composed in traditional literary
genres).
Generates understanding of cultures
as well as texts.
Liberates the minority from
dependence on mainstream standards
of performance
Makes the reader aware of his or her
obligation to treat nature with
respect.
Weakness
Subordinates literary concerns to
nonliterary ones
Looks for a single best
interpretation.
Can degenerate into nonliterary
jargon or arrive at unjustified
interpretations.
Can overlook meaningful details
in the search for universal
patterns.
Is essentially nonliterary— that
is, does not take aesthetic matters
into account.
Can become narrowly focused,
leaving out other important
aspects of a text.
Can produce idiosyncratic
readings.
Uses difficult, specialized
vocabulary.
May neglect literary elements of a
text for its political aspects.
Can be more concerned with
social criticism than literary
criticism.
Divides cultural groups from one
another.
Is more interested in social
change than in literary analysis.