"Literary criticism is the

evaluation of literary works. This

includes the classification by
genre, analysis of structure, and
judgement of value."

Beckson & Ganz

 "Literary criticism asks what
literature is, what it does, and
what it is worth."
 “ Literary criticism is
the method used to
interpret any given work of
literature. The different
schools of literary criticism
provide us with lenses
which ultimately reveal
important aspects of the
literary work.’’
- To take a critical eye or
sharper look at literature.

- Focusing in on the
literature and doing a close
reading in order to perform
criticism.
- Literary critics use the term
“lenses” to discuss the
perspective through which
they will analyze the work of
literature.
 Literary criticism is a view or
opinion on what a particular
written work means. It is about
the meanings that a reader finds
in an author's literature.
• Literary theories can offer various
ways of reading, interpreting, and
analyzing literature, but they do
not offer any easy solutions as to
what literature is, or what its study
should be.
• Ideas that act as different “lenses”
that critics use to view and talk
about art, literature, and even
culture.
• The different lenses also allow
critics to focus on particular
aspects of a work of literature
that they consider important.
 These theories aim to explain, or at
times demystify, some of the
assumptions or beliefs implicit in
literature and literary criticism.
 Literary theory also addresses
questions of what makes literary
language literary, as well as the
structures of literary language and
literary texts, and how these work.
 Literary theory is also concerned
with the study of the function of
the literary text in social and
cultural terms, which in turn leads
to a construction of its value.
“Big Questions” about Literature
Literary Theories/Critical Theories are attempts to
answer some of these questions.

 What is “literature”?
 Does the author matter?
 What are the influences on how we read a text?
 How do we make connections to others in distant
lands and times through a work of literature?
 The Basic Idea
 The point of criticism is to argue your point of view on
a work of literature.
 You don’t have to “criticize” a text (but you can)
 You do have to analyze a text and support your
assertions with specific evidence from experts and
the text.
 It’s crucial to go beyond plot development and into
more abstract, higher-level thinking like theme, tone,
purpose, etc.
The Basic Idea
 A critical analysis is an in-depth examination of
some aspect of the literary work
 you may examine any element of the text:
character development, conflicts, narrative point of
view, etc.
 Literary critical theories inform us of certain ways
to approach big ideas in the novel.
 The Basic Idea
 There are many different approaches we can take to
critical analysis
 Literary theories provide a framework for our
discussion of a text
 We don’t have to identify the theory we’re using,
though.
 We use it as a starting point for our own ideas and
opinions
LITERARY THEORIES/
APPROACHES
WHAT IS
FEMINISM?
Has three important FEMINISM
definitions:
 FEMINISM
1.The theory of the
political, economic, and
social equality of the
sexes.
 FEMINISM
Feminism DOES NOT
just refer to the
experience of women.
 FEMINISM
It is not just about
advancing the rights and
equality of women.
 FEMINISM
It is really about bringing
BOTH of the sexes to an equal
level in terms of political
power, economic power, and
social freedom/ liberation.
 FEMINISM
2. Organized activity
on behalf of women’s
rights and interests.
 FEMINISM
This is usually the
mental image that we
often have of what it
means to be a feminist.
 FEMINISM
3. Against gender
stereotypes and
gender-based
observations.
Stereotypes harm FEMINISM
both men and
women.
While in the Philippines… FEMINISM
 FEMINISM
And yep, there’s more!
 “LITERATUREis largely a
male-dominated domain.” FEMINISM

 Nobel Prize Laureates and

National Artists for
Literature are generally
populated by men.
FEMINISM

 VIRGINIA WOOLF’S “A Room of One’s

Own”

hypothesized that if any woman has the

same literary prowess as Shakespeare, she
would have been deprived of the opportunity
to write and gain fame.
 COMMON SPACE IN
FEMINIST THEORIES

 Though a number of different

approaches exist in feminist
criticism, there exist some areas of
commonality. This list is excerpted
from Tyson:
 COMMON SPACE IN
FEMINIST THEORIES

1. Women are oppressed by

patriarchy economically, politically,
socially, and psychologically;
patriarchal ideology is the primary
means by which women are
oppressed.
 COMMON SPACE IN
FEMINIST THEORIES

2. In every domain where patriarchy

reigns, woman is other: she is
marginalized, defined only by her
difference from male norms and
values.
 COMMON SPACE IN
FEMINIST THEORIES

3. All of Western (Anglo-European)

civilization is deeply rooted in
patriarchal ideology, for example, in
the Biblical portrayal of Eve as the
origin of sin and death in the world.
 COMMON SPACE IN
FEMINIST THEORIES

4. While biology determines our sex

(male or female), culture determines
our gender (scales of masculine and
feminine).
 COMMON SPACE IN
FEMINIST THEORIES

5. All feminist activity, including

feminist theory and literary criticism,
has as its ultimate goal to change the
world by prompting gender equality.
 COMMON SPACE IN
FEMINIST THEORIES

6. Gender issues play a part in every

aspect of human production and
experience, including the production
and experience of literature, whether
we are consciously aware of these
issues or not (91).
3 WAVES
FEMINISM
 Late 1700s-early
1900's: writers like
Mary Wollstonecraft
(A Vindication of the FIRST WAVE
Rights of Women,
1792) highlight the
FEMINISM
inequalities between
the sexes.
 Early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more
equal working conditions necessary in America
during World War II, movements such as the
National Organization for Women (NOW), formed
in 1966, cohere feminist political activism. SECOND WAVE
FEMINISM
Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le
Deuxième Sexe, 1949) and Elaine Showalter
established the groundwork for the dissemination
of feminist theories dove-tailed with the American
Civil Rights movement.
 Early 1990s-present: resisting the
perceived essentialist (over generalized, over
simplified) ideologies and a white,
heterosexual, middle class focus of second
THIRD WAVE
wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows FEMINISM
from post-structural and contemporary gender
and race theories to expand on marginalized
populations' experiences.
 FEMINIST
Involves looking at literature CRITICISM
through the lens of a feminist
perspective; looking at the
relationships between men and
women, power dynamics, money
dynamics, social and cultural
freedom, and gender-based
expectations.
 FEMINIST
CRITICISM
1. Literary criticism informed
by feminist theory, or more
broadly, by the politics of
feminism.
 FEMINIST
CRITICISM
- We are looking at the interaction
between genders and relate it to
the oppression of women in the
system of patriarchy.
 FEMINIST
CRITICISM
2. It uses feminist principles and
ideology to critiques the language
of literature.
 FEMINIST
CRITICISM
*critique – does not necessarily
mean to talk about the negatives
but instead, to look closer/perform
a closer reading.
 FEMINIST
We may look at the author’s
CRITICISM
messages and ideologies we can
find in the text that are related to
the dynamics between the
genders: the political, economic,
and social inequality of the sexes.
 FEMINIST
3. This school of thought seeks CRITICISM
to analyze the ways in which
literature portrays the narrative
of male domination by exploiting
the economic, social, political,
and psychological forces
embedded within literature.
 FEMINIST
economic, social, political, and CRITICISM
psychological forces

-these four ideas are what we

should be looking for when we are
reading a certain literary piece.
 Feminist criticism attempts to correct
this imbalance by analyzing and
combatting such attitudes—by
FEMINIST
questioning, for example, why none of the CRITICISM
characters in Shakespeare’s
play Othello ever challenge the right of a
husband to murder a wife accused of
adultery.
 Other goals of feminist critics
include “analyzing how sexual identity
influences the reader of a text” and FEMINIST
“examin[ing] how the images of men and
women in imaginative literature reflect or CRITICISM
reject the social forces that have
historically kept the sexes from achieving
total equality.”
 FEMINIST
CRITICISM
Like the other approaches, feminist
approach to literary criticism reads a text
within a social context.
 FEMINIST
In particular, it analyzes textual
CRITICISM
representations from the woman’s
perspective, such as those that
involve the stereotyping and
“objectification” of womanhood.
 How is the relationship between men
and women portrayed?
 What are the power relationships TYPICAL
between men and women (or characters
assuming male/female roles)? QUESTIONS:
 How are male and female roles defined?
 What constitutes masculinity and
femininity?
 How do characters embody these traits?
 Do characters take on traits from
opposite genders? How so? How does
this change others’ reactions to them?
TYPICAL
 What does the work reveal about the QUESTIONS:
operations (economically, politically,
socially, or psychologically) of patriarchy?

 What does the work imply about the

possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of
resisting patriarchy?
 What does the work say about women's
creativity?
TYPICAL
 What does the history of the work's
reception by the public and by the critics
QUESTIONS:
tell us about the operation of patriarchy?

 What role does the work play in terms of

women's literary history and literary
tradition? (Tyson)
 To what extent does the representation
of women (and men) in the work reflect
the time and place in which the work
was written? TYPICAL
QUESTIONS:
 How are the relationships between men
and women presented in the work?

 Does the author present the work from

within a predominantly male or female
perspective?
 How do the facts of the author’s life
relate to the presentation of men and TYPICAL
women in the work? QUESTIONS:
 How do other works by the author
correspond to this one in their depiction
of the power relationships between men
and women?
KARL
MARX
KARL MARX
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was primarily a
theorist and historian. After examining social
organization in a scientific way (thereby creating a
methodology for social science: political science),
he perceived human history to have consisted of a
series of struggles between classes--between the
oppressed and the oppressing.
MARXIST
CRITICISM
KARL MARX

• German philosopher (1818-1883)

• Most notable work is The Communist

Manifesto (1848)

• “All I know is I am no Marxist”

MARX’S VIEWS
 Was a materialist – to understand society, we have
to understand how it organizes production
 Forces of Production – land, technology, skills,
knowledge, etc.
 Social Relations of Production – who controls the
forces of production, and how
 The forces of production will come into conflict with
the relations of production
CLASS STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY
 Those is the top class control the wealth, and those
in the lower class do most of the work that produces
the wealth = exploitation
 This exploitation is the basis of class conflict
 Historical examples of class conflict i.e. slave vs slave
holder, feudal lord vs peasant; can you think of
modern examples??
 Capitalists (bourgeoisie) vs workers (proletariat) are
Marx’s focus
 Bourgeoisie alienates proletariat
THE ECONOMIC BASE AND
SUPERSTRUCTURE
 Economic Base – the forces and relations of production
(i.e. the bourgeoisie and proletariat)
 Superstructure – the legal and political structures of
society
 The economic base influences the superstructure;
economic power is the basis of all other types of power
 The bourgeoisie, therefore, control society’s institutions
to help maintain the status quo (capitalism)
MARX’S CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM
Capitalism is…

 Exploitative
 Alienating
 Undemocratic
 Irrational
 Environmentally destructive
 Prone to war
DIALECTICAL UNDERSTANDING OF
CLASS SOCIETY
 Eventually the bourgeoisie and proletariat will
conflict giving rise to a new economic system
 The large workforce under capitalism will realize
they are being exploited, and will mobilize a start a
popular revolution
 This will create a new social order where the
workers are in charge of production
COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM
 In his writings, Marx says very little about what a socialist or
communist society would look like

What he does say:

 Cooperation rather than division
 Economy democratically controlled
 Social equality exists and all forms of oppression would disappear
 The environment would be respected
 No profits for a minority of people
 Work would be fulfilling
MARXIST CRITICISM
According to Marxists, literature reflects those
social institutions out of which it emerges and is
itself a social institution with a particular
ideological function.
MARXIST CRITICISM
Tend to focus on the representation of class
conflict as well as the reinforcement of class
distinctions.
MARXIST CRITICISM
Use traditional techniques of literary analysis but
subordinate aesthetic concerns to the final social
and political meanings of literature.
MARXIST CRITICISM
Champions authors sympathetic to the working
classes and authors whose work challenges
economic equalities found in capitalist societies.

 Theories arising from the Marxist paradigm have

sought new ways of understanding the
relationship between economic and cultural
production as well as literature.
MARXIST CRITICISM
 Marxist theorist often champion authors sympathetic
to the working classes and authors whose work
challenges economic equalities found in capitalist
societies.
MARXIST CRITICISM
 Literature reflects class struggle and materialism: think how
often the quest for wealth traditionally defines characters. So
Marxists generally view literature "not as works created in
accordance with timeless artistic criteria, but as 'products' of the
economic and ideological determinants specific to that era"
(Abrams 149).
 Literature reflects an author's own class or analysis of class
relations, however piercing or shallow that analysis may be.
MARXIST CRITICISM
 Based on the theories of Karl Marx (and so influenced by
philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel), this school
concerns itself with class differences, economic and
otherwise, as well as the implications and complications
of the capitalist system.
 Is there an outright rejection of socialism in the work?
 Does the text raise fundamental criticism about the
emptiness of life in bourgeois society?
MARXIST CRITICISM
 How well is the fate of the individual linked organically to the
nature of societal forces? What are the work's conflicting
forces?
 At what points are actions or solutions to problems forced or
unreal?
 What role does class play in the work; what is the author's
analysis of class relations?
 How do characters overcome oppression?
MARXIST CRITICISM
 In what ways does the work serve as propaganda for the
status quo; or does it try to undermine it?
 What does the work say about oppression; or are social
conflicts ignored or blamed elsewhere?
 Does the work propose some form of utopian vision as a
solution to the problems encountered in the work?
 MARXIST CRITICISM
 What is the economic situation of the characters, and
what happens to them as a result of this status?
 To what extent are the lives of characters influenced or
determined by social (i.e. how an individual is expected to
behave in a given circumstance), political (i.e. the
directives of the state), and economic (i.e. the interplay
between production, supply, and demand) forces?
 What social forces and institutions are represented in the
work?
TRADITIONAL
HISTORICISM
 TRADITIONAL HISTORICISM

-perspectives tend to reflect a

concern with the period in which
a text is produced and/or read
TRADITIONAL HISTORICISM
 Considers the literary work in light of "what really
happened" during the period reflected in that work.

 It insists that to understand a piece, we need to

understand the author's biography and social
background, ideas circulating at the time, and the
cultural environment/setting.
TRADITIONAL HISTORICISM
 Historicism also "finds significance in the ways a
particular work resembles or differs from other works
of its period and/or genre," and therefore may involve
source studies. It is typically a discipline involving
impressively extensive research.
TRADITIONAL HISTORICISM
 Historical approach to literary interpretation and analysis
is perhaps the oldest and one of the most widely-used
critical approach.
 The historical approach involves understanding the
events and experiences surrounding the composition of
the work, especially the life of the author, and using the
findings to interpret that work of literature.
TRADITIONAL HISTORICISM

 Traditional historians ask, “What happened?” and “What

does the event tell us about history?”

 You can see it in literature classes that study literary works

in terms of historical periods, such as the neoclassical,
romantic, or modernist periods.

 “Old” historicists saw literature as merely reflecting the

world
 How do you think historical
influences are reflected in the
text?

 What key historical figures appear

or are alluded to in the text?

 What commonly held beliefs of

the period are shown in the text?
 How are discoveries/ inventions/
technology of the period evident in
the text?

 What do the historical elements of

the text teach us about the actual
history of the period?
 What are the author's political
inclinations? Do we see any
reflections on historical events in
this work?

 What aspects of culture are

important to this work?
References
 Feminist Literary Criticism Lecture by Maureen Wiley
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lc7cJuaBtU)
 "What is the feminist perspective of "Girl"?" eNotes, 14 Oct. 2010,
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-feminist-perspective-girl-207355.
Accessed 18 July 2018.
 https://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/marxist.crit.html
 https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-difference-between-old-historicism-new-
73643. Accessed 20 July 2018
NEW HISTORICISM
HISTORICISM
 -literary theory based on the idea that literature should be
understood and analyzed in the context it was written.
 2 types: Old (traditional) historicism and New historicism
NEW HISTORICISM
 Traditional historicism is similar to New Historicism in that the
idea is to investigate the historical, social, and cultural world
of the author and that these elements are always
interconnected with the literature of their time period. Both old
and new historicists believe that texts cannot be separated
from their historical context.
NEW HISTORICISM
The historical approach was somewhat abandoned in the
mid-twentieth century, in the wake of “New Criticism,” a school
which disregards the author to focus on the work
itself. However, in the last thirty years or so, it has made a
come-back with slightly a different approach and under the
name: “New Historicism.”
 NEW HISTORICISM
"New Historicism," a term coined
by Stephen Greenblatt, designates
a body of theoretical and
interpretive practices that began
largely with the study of early
modern literature in the United
States.
 NEW HISTORICISM
-understanding the cultural and
social influences on behaviors and
perspectives of the time the text
was written.
-was brought about by Michael
Foucault.
 MICHAEL FOUCAULT
A French philosopher and
historian, his works, including his
studies of prisons, were pivotal to
this movement (new historicism)
in criticism.
MICHAEL FOUCAULT

His book, “Discipline & Punish” was about how

modern prisons do not bring about positive change.
He argues that prison attempts to control inmates’
minds that they are categorized by experts, placed
under surveillance, scrutinized, and manipulated.
MICHAEL FOUCAULT

He argues that prison essentially reflected modern

society and that we are all under surveillance and
punished if we are found to be abnormal in some way.
(e.g. deviants, mental illness).

-this illustrated an oppression that could be seen

and understood by other individuals in society.
 NEW HISTORICISM
"New Historicism" takes particular interest in representations
of marginal/marginalized groups and non-normative
behaviors—witchcraft, cross-dressing, peasant revolts, and
exorcisms—as exemplary of the need for power to represent
subversive alternatives, the Other, to legitimize itself.
NEW HISTORICISM
New Historical critics, according to Lois Tyson, consider
literary texts to be “cultural artifacts that can tell us something
about the interplay of discourses, the web of social meanings,
operating in the time and place in which the text was
written”. They argue that “the literary text and the historical
situation from which it emerged are equally important because
text (the literary work) and context (the historical conditions that
produced it) are mutually constitutive: they create each other”.
 NEW HISTORICISM
 New Historicists aim to do two things: first, they want to study
how a work of literature reflects its historical and sociocultural
context.
 Second, they want to understand how a literary work comments
on and relates to its context. So the archive hunt won’t just
reveal that this thing was written in 1385, but also what it was
like to live in that year, and what people (or at least poets)
thought and felt at that starriest of historical moments.
 NEW HISTORICISM
 They throw together history, literature, anthropology, sociology,
economics and whatever else takes their fancy. They love mixing
things up by bringing together different types of texts, and
erasing usual lines that divide them—so, literary texts are
compared with nonliterary documents, “high” literature with
“low” literature, you name it.

 Only by mixing things up in this way, they say, can we arrive at full
understanding of a literary work and its context.
1. What events occurred in the writer’s life that
made him or her who he or she is? What has
affected his or her view of life?

2. Who influenced the writer? What people in his

or her life may have helped him or her form
this world view?

3. What did the writer read that affected his or

her philosophy?

4. In what level in the social order was the writer

raised? How did his economic and social
situation affect him?
5. At what level in the social order did the writer
want to be?

6. What was happening in the world at the time

the book was written? What was occurring during
the time in which it’s set?

7. What were some major controversies at the

time the book was written? The time in which it is
set?

8. How did the public receive the work when it

was first published? 17. How did the critics
receive the work when it was first published?
9. Did any change in culture result from the
work? What changed?

10. What different perspectives of history

does this text represent?

11. How does this text fit into the rules of

literature in the era in which it was written?
Applying this approach to Jamaica Kincaid’s
prose poem, “Girl”, we look at how the text
is historically situated.

Written in 1978- decade after Antigua

gained independence from British colony –
by a woman who experienced oppression
and powerlessness firsthand, “Girl” reveals
the deeply embedded culture of oppression
that remains in postcolonial context.
PSYCHOANALYTIC
CRITICISM
 Psychological criticism deals with
the work of literature as an expression of
the personality, state of mind, feelings,
and desires of it's author. A work of
literature is correlated with the author's
mental traits.
 Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical
endeavor seeks evidence of unresolved
emotions, psychological conflicts, guilts,
ambivalences, and so forth within what may
well be a disunified literary work. The author's
own childhood traumas, family life, sexual
conflicts, fixations, and such will be traceable
within the behavior of the characters in the
literary work.
 But psychological material will be
expressed indirectly, disguised, or encoded (as
in dreams) through principles such as
"symbolism" (the repressed object represented
in disguise), "condensation" (several thoughts or
persons represented in a single image), and
"displacement" (anxiety located onto another
image by means of association).
 The theory requires that we
investigate the psychology, and
personality of a character, and or author
to figure out the meaning of a text, and to
explain and interpret the work.
 If psychoanalysis can help us better understand human
behavior, then it must certainly be able to help us
understand literary texts, which are about human behavior
HOW TO READ A TEXT USING PSYCHOANALYSIS

 The job of the psychoanalytical critic is to see which

concepts are operating in the text that will yield a
meaningful psychoanalytic interpretation.
For example, you might focus on:
 the work’s representation of family dynamics (relation to the
mother, the father, etc)
 what work tells us about human beings’ psychological
relationship to death or sexuality
HOW TO READ A TEXT USING PSYCHOANALYSIS

 how the narrator’s unconscious problems keep appearing

over the course of the story, and the way the
repetition/symptoms of the conflict changes
 the formation of the self and the development of boundaries
(self/other)
 the way a text uses techniques of substitution and
displacement to help you understand the human mind
 To some extent, all creative works are a product of the
author’s conscious and/or unconscious mind.
 Any human production that involves images, that seems
to have narrative content, or relates for the psychology
of those who produce or use it can be interpreted using
psychoanalytic tools
 What unconscious motives are operating in the main
characters? What is being repressed? Remember that the
unconscious mind consists of repressed wounds, fears,
unresolved conflicts, and guilty desires?
 Is it possible to relate a character’s patterns of adult
behavior to early experiences in the family (as represented
in the story)? What do these behavior patterns and family
dynamics reveal?
 How can characters’ behavior, narrative events, and/or images
be explained in terms of regression, projection, fear of or
fascination with death or sexuality?
 What images or symbols are substituted for what unconscious
repressed, and how?
 What kind of ordering principle (Symbolic, law of the Father)
shapes the Imaginary into recognition? What gets lost,
repressed?
 In what ways can we view a literary work as a dream?
How might recurrent or striking dream symbols reveal
the ways in which the narrator/author is projecting his
unconscious desires, fears, wounds, or unresolved
conflicts onto other characters or the events portrayed?
 Look for symbols relevant to death and sexuality
 - Psychoanalytic criticism can reveal
useful clues to the sometime hard to
understand symbols, actions, and
settings in a literary work.

- It addresses the importance of the

unconscious that makes up the majority
of all human being's personalities.
Teaches readers how to recognize the
effects of the unconscious on their daily
lives (Iceberg analogy).
- The exploration of human behaviors based
on motivation, unconscious, past situations
and other defense mechanisms clearly
explain why people behave a certain way at
times

- Great for getting into the minds of the

author, character, or audience.

- Emphasizes the importance of childhood

experiences
- The readers are more focused on the
author’s purpose behind their choice of
words and their reasons why their wrote
the literary work instead of reading their
work

- Disregards the suspense that makes the

work entertaining. By using this theory it
loses the dramatic effect of the literary
work, it takes away from the whole work
itself
- The reader is focusing on the author’s
personality to interpret their literary work.
In other words, a reader is trying to
analyze the author’s type of diction to try
to predict their personality.

- The consciousness of the author is

taken into consideration by the readers
POST COLONIAL
CRITICISM
 POSTCOLONIALIST CRITICISM: THE LITERARY LENS

►Examining colonizers/colonized relationship in

literature
■ Is the work pro/anti colonialist? Why?
■ Does the text reinforce or resist colonialist
ideology?
 POSTCOLONIALIST CRITICISM: THE LITERARY LENS

► Types of oppression
■ What tools do the colonizers use to demean or
oppress the colonized?
■ What psychological aftermath are the colonized
people left with?
■ Considering the present as well as the past
■ Is the author using the language of a colonizer?
QUESTIONS TO PROMPT POSTCOLONIAL
ANALYSIS:
 How does the literary text, explicitly or allegorically,
represent various aspects of colonial oppression?

 What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-

colonial identity, including the relationship between personal
and cultural identity within cultural borderlands?

 What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other"

or stranger? How are such persons/groups described and
treated?
 What does the text reveal about the operations of
cultural difference - the ways in which race, religion,
class, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form
individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of
ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?

 How does a literary text in the Western canon reinforce

or undermine colonialist ideology through its
representation of colonization and/or its inappropriate
silence about colonized peoples? (Tyson 378-379)
 Emerged in the 1990’s
 Undermines universalist claims
 Universal claims disregard difference
Regional
National
Cultural
Social
 White Eurocentric norms should not be privileged
 First step for the “colonized” is to reclaim their own past
 i.e.. History did not begin with the Europeans
 Second step is to erode colonialist ideology that
devalued their past
 Filled with anonymous masses of people (not
individuals)
 Actions determined by instinct (lust, terror, fury, etc.) vs.
logic
 Their reactions are determined by racial considerations
rather than individual circumstance
 Edward Said’s Orientalism
 East is seen as “other”; inferior to the West
 East is portrayed as projection of negative aspects
cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness, etc.
 Yet East is also portrayed as exotic, mystical, seductive
1. An awareness of representation of non-Europeans as
exotic or ‘Other’
2. Concern with language
Some conclude the colonizer's language is permanently
tainted, to write in it involves acquiescence in colonial
structures
3. Emphasis on identity as doubled or unstable (identify with
colonizer and colonized)
4. Stress on cross cultural interactions
 Phase 1: Analyze white representation of colonial
countries…uncover bias

 Phase 2: Postcolonial writers explore selves and

society
(The empire writes back)
 Reject claims of universalism
 Examine representation of other cultures
 Show how literature is silent on matters of imperialism and
colonialism
 Foreground questions of diversity and cultural difference
 Celebrate ‘cultural polyvancy’ (belonging to more than one
culture)
 Assert that marginality, plurality and ‘Otherness’ are sources of
energy and potential change
 Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by Third
World countries after the decline of colonialism: for example, when
countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean
separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild
themselves.
 Many Third World writers focus on both colonialism and the
changes created in a postcolonial culture. Among the many
challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempts both to
resurrect their culture and to combat the preconceptions about
their culture.
 Postcolonial literatures emerged in their present
form out of the experience of colonization and asserted
themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial
power and by emphasizing their differences from the
assumptions of the imperial center. Language became a
site of struggle for postcolonial literatures since one of the
main features of imperial oppression is control over
language.
 LECTURE ON LITERARY CRITICISM (LITERARY
APPROACHES)

Prepared by

ANGELICA P. JOVEN, LPT

CBSUA-CDE Instructor