Critism Notes
New Criticism/ Formalism:
Definition
• Involves reading the text closely.
• Every bit of detail is essential to interpret the text.
• Interpretation will be found in the text.
• Interested in the setting, characters, symbols, and point of view.
• Do not look at the text with feminism, psychology, mythology, or other standpoints.
• Analyze irony, paradox, imagery, and metaphors.
Historical Development
Methodology
• 20th century critics looked at historical and biographical researches.
• They tried to figure out how the writer’s past influenced the text.
• Extrinsic Analysis: looking at elements outside of the text to interpret it.
• Look at the text’s diction; look at the denotation, connotation, and etymological roots of all the words in the text.
• Examine all allusions found within the text.
• Analyze all images, symbols, and figures of speech in the text.
Reader Response:
Definition
Historical Development
• Explores reader’s role in the finding of the meaning.
• The reader makes the meaning.
• Says works aren’t universal.
• It is the opposite of formalism.
• Became more common in the 1970’s.
• Roots can be traced back to the 1920’s and 1930’s.
• You can’t put a date to RR’s origins because reader’s always respond to what they read.
Methodology
• Assumption that readers are passive.
• Readers absorb the text.
• Reader’s responses will be different depending on their background, world knowledge, vocabulary.
• Every text is different and every person is different.
• Not all interpretations are valid or of equal importance.
• Uses wide variety of critical approaches.
• Reader Response critics fall into one of three groups.
• Each group has its own distinct theoretical and methodological concerns.
Structuralism:
Definition
• Think about
Definition
• Involves reading the text closely.
• Every bit of detail is essential to interpret the text.
• Interpretation will be found in the text.
• Interested in the setting, characters, symbols, and point of view.
• Do not look at the text with feminism, psychology, mythology, or other standpoints.
• Analyze irony, paradox, imagery, and metaphors.
Historical Development
Methodology
• 20th century critics looked at historical and biographical researches.
• They tried to figure out how the writer’s past influenced the text.
• Extrinsic Analysis: looking at elements outside of the text to interpret it.
• Look at the text’s diction; look at the denotation, connotation, and etymological roots of all the words in the text.
• Examine all allusions found within the text.
• Analyze all images, symbols, and figures of speech in the text.
Reader Response:
Definition
Historical Development
• Explores reader’s role in the finding of the meaning.
• The reader makes the meaning.
• Says works aren’t universal.
• It is the opposite of formalism.
• Became more common in the 1970’s.
• Roots can be traced back to the 1920’s and 1930’s.
• You can’t put a date to RR’s origins because reader’s always respond to what they read.
Methodology
• Assumption that readers are passive.
• Readers absorb the text.
• Reader’s responses will be different depending on their background, world knowledge, vocabulary.
• Every text is different and every person is different.
• Not all interpretations are valid or of equal importance.
• Uses wide variety of critical approaches.
• Reader Response critics fall into one of three groups.
• Each group has its own distinct theoretical and methodological concerns.
Structuralism:
Definition
• Think about