Posted: March 24th, 2022

Critical Theory Cheat Sheet

Critical Theory Cheat Sheet

Donald E. Hall. Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications. Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

Theory

Key Ideas

Theorists

Comments

Formalism /New Criticism

1920’s forward

-analysis of literary structures (genre; character, plot, setting, etc.)

-rejected literature’s historical and biographical contexts

-intrinsic meaning of texts; literature expresses “universal truths”

-critic’s task to explore precisely through language and form how that truth is expressed

-“Close reading”; the TEXT holds THE meaning

-Aristotle (The Poetics)

-Plato (The Republic)

-John Crowe Ransom

-Cleanth Brooks

-T.S. Eliot

Reader Response

-emphasis on reader’s role in creating meanings

-meanings generated by a transaction between reader and a text; meaning is not wholly intrinsic to the text

-Louise Rosenblatt (The Reader, The Text, and The Poem)

-Robert Probst (Response and Analysis)

-Wolfgang Iser

-Stanley Fish

-Norman Holland

Rhetorical Analysis

-“an authorial presence [in a text] that leads the text’s rhetorically attuned reader toward an authorially desired interpretation or response” (44)

-Wayne Booth

Marxist/Materialist Analysis

-based on Marx’s theories of class and cultural production

-importance of class and economic conditions; power relationships and class ideologies presented within a text

-Terry Eagleton

-Karl Marx

-Frederich Engles

Psychoanalytic Analysis

-concept of the unconscious, conscious, ego and id

-human activity not always conscious

-nature/ nurture

-developmental stages; childhood trauma and its effect on development

-Sigmund Freud

-Jacques Lacan

-Northrup Frye

Structuralism and Semiotic Analysis

-principles of scientific linguistic study applied to literature

-signified (the concept), signifier (the word), sign (combination of concept and word)

-making meaning through binaries (oppositions)

-no sign is ever fully understandable

-language structures our perception of reality

-language is never neutral

-Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistics)

-Claude Levi-Strauss (anthropology)

-Romon Jakobsen (linguistics)

-Jonathan Culler

-Roland Barthes

-Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose)

-Robert Scholes

Deconstruction/ Post-structuralism

-calls into question all assumptions of comprehension and comprehensiveness; meaning never certain, always “deferred.”

-the power deployed and social relationships organized through discourse

-“difference”: meaning made through differences among signs, but never made certain

-texts betray traces of their own instability

-there is nothing outside the text

-“blindness and insight”

-the world is a text

-Jacques Derrida

-Michael Foucault

-Jonathan Culler

Feminist Analysis

-focuses on gender (the social roles performed by the sexes)

-draws upon and influences every other critical theory

-recognition of different degrees of social power granted to and exercised by women and men

-explores complex ways women have been denied social power and the right to free expression

-like Marxist and materialist analysis, feminist criticism sees texts as thoroughly social-language, institutions, and social power reflect patriarchal interests

-women resist and are subversive to patriarchal power

-Julia Kristeva

-Hekene Cixous

-Luce Irigaray

-bell hooks (race and gender)

Toril Moi

Elaine Showalter

Gay/Lesbian/Queer Analysis

-encompasses many different methodologies (post-structuralism, gender, race, class, psychology)

-focus on sexuality as a particularly important component of human identity, social organization, and textual representation

-influence of negative attitudes toward same-sex desire

-social attitudes about sexuality have changed dramatically; differ significantly for men and women

-issues of “normality” are appropriate subjects for critique and investigation

-Henry Abelove

-Margaret Cruikshank

-Michael Foucault

-Eve Sedgwick

Race, Ethnicity, and Post-Colonial Analysis

-explores relationships between a text and its social context

-examines how the belief systems of a time and place are reflected in, and potentially altered by literary representation

-racism and ethnocentrism are thoroughly entrenched in language, literature, art, and social institutions

-“race” = physical distinctions combined with distinct social history

-“ethnicity” = nonphysical aspects of cultural identity (religion, social customs, language)

-“post-colonialism” focuses on national and regional legacies of national and regional imperialism and colonialism

-commitment to challenging oppression based on cultural identity

-understanding that race and ethnicity have been used in ways that empowered and oppressed

-Gloria Anzaldua

-Henry Louis Gates

-bell hooks

-Elaine H. Kim

-Edward W. Said

New Historicism and cultural studies

-New Historicism uses many other forms of analysis but always rooted in historical research on past eras and pre-20th century texts

-cultural analysis also uses many other forms of analysis. Focuses on 20th century or present-day works; often emphasizes non-literary genres

-history is not linearly progressive and is not reducible to the activities of prominent individuals

-daily life reveals much about belief systems of a time period

-Wayne C. Booth

-John Brannigan

-Michael Foucault

-Stephen Greenblatt

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