CONTENTS OF THIS POWERPOINT

READER’S RESPONSE

a. Define literature and literary criticism,

b. Identify your role as the audience in the appreciation of literature
and
c. Evaluate a literary selection and write a reader’s response essay
based on said text.
 Literature
Literature – works that express ideas of
permanent or universal interest, in forms of
fiction and non-fiction, or prose and poetry.
Such text may include non-written forms as
well.

• Written works, especially those

considered of superior or lasting artistic
merit.
1.1. Fiction – works that are imaginary in
terms of characters, settings, events, and
other elements. They may or may not be
based on factual events and are typically
written in prose form.

1.2. Non-fiction – works that are

presented as historical and factual truths.
1.3. Prose – a form of literature that follows the structure of natural speech, with
fully formed sentences and paragraphs. It is derived from the Latin word prosa
meaning straightforward.

Prose Example . The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is a prose novel.

Prose Example . “Cinderella” is a prose fairy tale.
Prose Example . “The Declaration of Independence” is a prose document signed
by prominent American colonists who wished no longer to be under British rule.

1.4. Poetry – a form of literature where words are arranged artistically, typically
with attention to rhyme, rhythm, and symbolism. Poetry, on the other hand,
contains lines and stanzas.
 Literary Criticism
Literary Criticism – the argumentation and
analysis of literary text through different
views that focus on the text’s purposes,
principles, and perspectives.

Literary text as a whole can be seen in

different ways; the same way we can take a
photograph of a statue from different angles
and distances. With this, there are various
ways to analyse and criticize text.
Imagine that you and your friend are visiting
the city of Paris in France for the weekend.
You decide to explore the museums and
fashion houses, while your friend decides to
seek out the restaurants and cafes.

At the end of your trip, the two of you have

both explored Paris, but with different goals
and different sceneries.

You have experienced paintings and

clothes, while your friend has experienced
food and drink. Despite the differences, you
can both say that you have toured Paris,
nonetheless.
The same analogy can be said for reading a piece
of literature.
• You and your friend may have read the same
story, but the way that each will analyse the
book can be different from one another.

You may see Red Riding Hood as a simple

children’s tale for entertainment, while your
friend might see it as a precautionary tale of
wandering into the woods based on the fears of
16th Century German authors. Again, it all
depends on the initial purpose of reading the
text.
Literary criticism can be made through different schools of thought, such as:

1. Formalist Criticism
2. Biographical Criticism
3. Historical Criticism
4. Gender Criticism
5. Psychological Criticism
6. Sociological Criticism
7. Reader-Response Criticism and
8. Deconstructionist Criticism.

We will use only one in these for the entire lesson, Reader Response, however, it should
not hurt to be introduced to other schools of thought, so that when you explore other text
outside of this course, you are unrestricted with your tour of the work.
 Formalist Criticism
2.1. Formalist Criticism – literature is taken as a
form of knowledge that needs to be examined on its
own, with all the necessary elements for
understanding the text are contained within the text
itself.

A strictly formalist critic would, for

example, approach The Great Gatsby as a structure
of words, ignoring the details of Fitzgerald's life and
the social and historical contexts of the novel.
 Formalist Criticism
A formalist critic examines the form of the work as a whole, the form of each
individual part of the text (the individual scenes and chapters), the
characters, the settings, the tone, the point of view, the diction, and all other
elements of the text which join to make it a single text.

The context for the work, including the reason for its creation, the historical
background, and the life of the artist, is not considered to be significant.

They believe that true meaning of the text lies only in the text.
 Biographical Criticism

2.2. Biographical Criticism – the work is

analyzed through understanding the facts
of the life of the author, and how they have
affected the events and themes of the text.
To understand why the author wrote what
he/she wrote.

For example, critics who study the poetry

or drama of Amiri Baraka may concentrate
on his life growing up as an African
American or being involved in the Black
Arts Movement in the United States.
 Biographical Criticism
Biographical
Criticism enables readers to
approach the writer's work
with a deeper understanding
of how they were crafted and
their meaning.

The lens allows us to see the

imaginative spirit of how
writers have taken events
from their own lives and
shaped these experiences
into their works for the
readers to enjoy.
 Historical Criticism
2.3. Historical Criticism – the work
is analyzed through examining the
historical events that occurred
within the context of writing the
text, and how the zeitgeist
(tone/feel) influenced its themes.

The primary goal of historical

criticism is to discover the text's
primitive or original meaning in its
original historical context and its
literal sense.
 Historical Criticism
Mary had a Little Lamb was based on
actual incident when Mary Sawyer took
her lamb to school. The site of the little
lamb following her was so delightful,
Sarah Josephina Hale wrote a poem and
published it in 1830.

It is also known as the first recorded

poem.

Thomas Edison recorded the poem on

his invention, the phonograph in 1877.
Historical criticism relies heavily on the author and his world.

In the historical view, it is important to understand the author and

his world in order to understand his intent and to make sense of his
work.

In this view, the work is informed by the author’s beliefs, prejudices,

time, and history, and to fully understand the work, we must
understand the author and his age.

[Link]
criticism/
 Gender Criticism
Male Both Female

Cooking Shooting Guns Washing Dishes

Gaming Cleaning Engineering
Watching the Kids Doctors
 Feminist criticism
Feminist criticism concerns with the woman’s role in society as
portrayed through texts. It typically analyzes the plight of woman as
depicted in the story. It criticizes the notion of woman as a construct
through literature.

Feminist criticism focuses on how literature has represented women

and relationships between women and men, drawing attention to how
women have been marginalized and denied a voice of their own in
much of canonical literature, and to how literature reflects society's
prevailing ideological assumptions with regard to gender and power.
 Gender criticism
2.4. Gender Criticism – the work is analyzed with
how sexual identity influenced the creation and
reception of the text, most notably through a
feminist lens.

It refers to a form of literary criticism that is based

on gender studies. It explores how gender influences
the creation and reception of literary work.

For example, Rape Culture reinforces a male's

privilege in society – we tell women that they need
to dress modestly, to never walk alone at night, and
to be careful of what they say for fear of rape all the
while forgiving men's verbal transgressions or
dismissing their violent actions as “boys will be
boys.”
 Psychological Criticism
Psychological criticism attempts to explain the behavioral
underpinnings of the characters within the selection, analyzing the
actions and thoughts committed fall under any of the identifiable
neuroses, whether a psychological disorder is evident among them.
Aside from the characters, the author and even the reader may be
criticized as why they exhibit certain behavior during the actual
writing and reading experience.
 Psychological Criticism
2.5. Psychological Criticism – the work is analyzed with
methods influenced in large part by Freud’s
psychoanalysis, wherein characters, themes, and even
authors, are examined with a focus on the circumstances
that influence their motivations and/or behavior.

Psychological Criticism, also known as Psychoanalytical

Criticism, is the analysis of an author's unintended
message.

The main goal is to analyze the unconscious elements

within a literary text based on the background of the
author.
 Checklist of Psychological Critical Questions

1. Why did the author create such a text?

2. What may have been his/her unconscious motivations?
3. Why did the character act a certain way?
4. What may have been his/her unconscious motivations?
5. How does your understanding of the characters, their
relationships, their actions, and their motivations in a literary
work help you better understand the mental world and
imaginative life, or the actions and motivations of the author?
6. To what extent can you employ the concepts of Freudian
psychoanalysis to understand the motivations of literary
characters?
 Sociological Criticism
2.6. Sociological Criticism – the text is
examined with how societal elements
are represented in the work.

An influential type of this is Marxist

criticism, which focuses on the
economic and political impact of the
piece, following the idea that all art is
political i.e. it can be used to challenge
or endorse the status quo.
 Sociological Criticism
Animal Farm, written in 1944, is a book
that tells the animal fable of a farm in
which the farm animals revolt against
their human masters.

It is an example of social criticism in

literature in which Orwell satirized the
events in Russia after the Bolshevik
Revolution.
Sociological Criticism
Sociological Criticism
Mary Shelly’s Unavoidable Death – Connection to
Frankenstein the author
- Death in May Shelly’s life before
Major Theme in the she turned 24: Mother died in
Novel childbirth
- Unavoidable death - Half sister died before Shelley’s
- Life born from marriage
death - Husband's ex-wife died before
- Loss of innocence Shelley’s marriage
- Value of education - First daughter died before
adulthood
- Husband died in drowning
Sociological Criticism
Mary Shelly’s Life Born from Death – Connection to
Frankenstein the author
- The death of Shelley’s children at
Major Theme in the birth/during childhood resulted in
Novel postpartum depression.
- Unavoidable death - Her association of death with birth
- Life born from may have led her to contemplate
death the reanimation of the dead
- Loss of innocence
- Value of education
Sociological Criticism
Mary Shelly’s Loss of Innocence– Connection to the
Frankenstein author
- Shelley eloped and moved to Italy
Major Theme in the when she was just 16. For this
Novel reason, she was rejected by her
- Unavoidable death father and estranges from her
- Life born from family
death
- Loss of innocence
- Value of education
Sociological Criticism
Mary Shelly’s Value of Education– Connection to
Frankenstein the author
- Shelley’s stepmother allowed all
Major Theme in the of her children, except for Mary, to
Novel attend school. This may have led
- Unavoidable death Shelley to idealize the
- Life born from opportunities associated with
death education
- Loss of innocence
- Value of education
 Reader-Response Criticism
2.7. Reader-Response Criticism – the work is treated to
contain no meaning until unless a reader derives meaning
from it, with the fundamental idea that literature is a
transaction between the text and the mind of the audience.

Allows readers to bring personality traits, memories of the

past and present experiences to the text.

Forces the readers to look past the words of the text, and
search for deeper meanings.

Allows teachers to connect with their students on a more

personal level.
Reader-response criticism is concerned with how the work is viewed
by the audience.

In this approach, the reader creates meaning, not the author or the
work. Once the work is published, the author is no longer relevant.

Reader-response criticism revolves around the phenomena 'Respond

to Reading'. The theory identifies the reader as a significant and
active agent who is responsible to impart the real meaning of the
text by interpreting it.
A common mistake that students make in understanding and writing Reader
Response is that it can be done off the cuff, no holds barred, write whatever
you want as long as it’s personal.

In reality, it requires the critic, which is the reader, to examine their own
worldview in relation to the text, and how they reacted to the text because of
that worldview.

They must then explain and defend their ideas logically and precisely, basing
off their connections with the themes and facts of the text on hand.

The principles and form of the text itself are to be analyzed.

 Deconstructionist Criticism
Deconstructionist criticism also subject texts to careful, formal analysis;
however, they reach an opposite conclusion: there is no meaning in language.

They believe that a piece of writing does not have one meaning and the
meaning itself is dependent on the reader.

The deconstructionist critic recognizes how the text plays around with the
assumptions readers make based on the connotations of the words and the
images they create, enhancing the tension in the story, and undermining the
possibility of the text creating only one meaning.
 What is deconstruction?
The word "deconstruction" literally means to break something down into
parts in order to better understand its meaning.

In the philosophical context, deconstruction refers to the process of

dismantling language to discover what is really being said beneath the
surface; usually, this will be different from what is already considered to be
known about the text.

The deconstructionist examines not only what the text says but also what is
doesn't say in order to ultimately conclude that no text has one fixed meaning
and that if one can break down language enough, they will discover that it
can mean anything to anyone.
For example, consider the culinary industry. A
recent trend in the food world is deconstructed
dishes, or food that has been broken down into its
most significant parts and served dismantled.

Chefs who serve deconstructed dishes believe that

by breaking down a popular dish into parts and
serving it in an alternative way, they are
reintroducing people to the dish and giving them
an opportunity to experience it in a new way.

This use of deconstruction is similar to the

deconstruction definition as applied to literature.
 Deconstructionist Criticism
Deconstructionism argues that logical structures based on binaries, or binary pairs, are the
bones of society and language. A binary consists of two concepts that are presented as being
at odds with each other. Examples include life/death, mind/body, and masculine/feminine.

However, in analyzing these binaries, deconstructionists have found that the line separating
these opposing terms actually connects them, making them interdependent. Life means
nothing without the contrasting concept of death to compare it to, for example.

So, when practicing deconstruction, one is trying to understand a term or concept by looking
to what it is not. To understand life, one must study death.

The goal of deconstruction is to become aware of the binary pairs that comprise our thinking
and relationships and recognize their instability in relation to one another.
Deconstructionist Criticism – the work is examined with a focus on how
language is used in the text, not on what is said, in contrast to Formalist
Criticism.

The deconstructionist critic recognizes how the text plays around with the
assumptions readers make based on the connotations of the words and the
images they create, enhancing the tension in the story, and undermining the
possibility of the text creating only one meaning.
Deconstruction is defined as a way of analysing literature that assumes that
text cannot have a fixed meaning.

An example of deconstruction is reading a novel twice, 20 years apart, and

seeing how it has a different meaning each time.
THANKS!

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