Overview of Literary Criticism: Ideas on How to Find Topics for Your Research Paper

There are a number of critical approaches to interpreting literature. Specializing in one of these forms of criticism will help you focus your reading and help you construct well supported essays. This article will give you a brief overview of some of those approaches.

Historical Criticism

During the nineteenth century, the growing faith in science influenced both literature and the interpretation of literature. Historical criticism became a popular approach. Historical criticism emphasizes the social and cultural environment that surrounds a work. Influenced by the philosophical outlook of an era, literature can be grouped into periods or movements which demonstrate common methods of composition and subject matter. Historical criticism is responsible for terms like neoclassicism, romanticism, modernism and is generally the method used to categorize literature in anthologies.

Historical criticism has several goals including the study of a particular culture and the evolution of literary tradition. Historical criticism attempts to understand literary references in the context of the environment in which they were written since both language and taboos change overtime.

Biographical Criticism

Closely related to historical criticism, biographical criticism studies how an individual author’s life and thoughts influence a work. This approach is particularly useful when a work is ahead of its time or seems to breach two historical periods. Biographical criticism is not the attempt to draw parallels between the author’s life and his fiction, but rather a study of the author’s intention and audience.

Biographical criticism seeks to illuminate the deeper meaning of themes, conflicts, characters, settings and literary allusions based on the author’s own concerns and conflicts. One drawback to this approach is the reliance of source material that may not be accurate or complete. How reliable is the biography? How objective is the autobiography?

Social Criticism

Social Criticism is also very similar to historical criticism in that it recognizes the influence of environment on literature. Social criticism became very popular during the Great Depression as many critics attempted to apply Marxist solutions to the overwhelming issues of poverty and class distinction.

Social criticism is still a valid form of literary interpretation, however. Literature not only serves as a reflection of the social issues of its time, but it may attempt to reform them as well. Social criticism seeks to define the social situations represented in a work as well as the author’s attitude towards them.

Psychological Criticism

Just as the economic theories of Carl Marx engendered social criticism, the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud inspired a new form of literary interpretation. Psychological criticism is usually applied in one of three ways. A work of literature can be viewed as a “dream”, the expressive manifestation of the subconscious. By interpreting the symbolic nature of the work, we gain insight into the psyche of the author.

Psychological criticism can also focus on the characters of a work, analyzing their motives, desires and conflicts. Although these characters are fictional, it is a valid form of criticism. Characters, as well as their underlying traits, are often drawn from real people and therefore can display some of the same psychological patterns. Psychological theory also influenced authors as they utilized these new ideas to create more complex characters.

Psychological criticism can also be used to interpret the relationship between the text and the reader. In this approach critics acknowledge that a work of literature functions as the secret expression of what the reader wants to hear. It is this aspect that creates our enjoyment of a book.

Archetypal Criticism

Freud’s protégé Carl Jung broke away from his doctrine of the “individual unconscious” and proposed a “collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is a set of shared “memories” represented in the form of cultural myth, symbols, rituals, and literature. Patterns that recur generation after generation are known as archetypes.

When using Archetypal criticism to discuss literature, there are three basic categories: archetypal characters (i.e. rebel, outcast, tyrant, saint), archetypal situations (i.e. the quest, the fall, the initiation), and archetypal symbols (i.e. light/dark, water/desert, spring/winter).

Although Jung’s theories are controversial among psychologists, literary critics have found extensive cross cultural similarities. Joseph Campbell is the most renowned scholar in this field with his ground breaking works like The Masks of God and The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

New Criticism

New Criticism proposes that literary works are self-contained. According to this philosophy, the reader does not need to know anything about the historical, biographical or social context. Everything needed to understand the work is contained in the work itself.

However, because of this self-contained ideal, new critics believe “good’ works are complex. According to new critics a good work should balance conflicting ideas and utilize indirect representation through the use of symbolism, metaphor, and connotation. For this reason, they dismiss work that is simplistic in structure or realistic in representation.

Structuralism

Like New Criticism, Structuralism denies the importance of historical, biographical, and social influences. Structuralism is based on linguistics and asserts that language is the self-contained unit. Literature is a form of this language. Therefore, Structuralists study the linguistic form of a text.

Post-Structuralism

Post-Structuralism, also known as deconstructionism, notes that since the signifier (the linguistic sound used to represent an object) is arbitrary, words represent concepts not actually objects. This creates a gap between the reader and the text that will never really be breached.

Post -structuralism asserts that it is impossible to find true meaning in a text because whatever connection seems to exist between the work and the real world is nothing more than the clever manipulation of language.

Reader-Response Criticism

Reader-Response Criticism lies on the opposite end of the biographical spectrum. Instead of relating to the author’s intention, it is related to the reader’s intention. Although it borrows the linguistic methodologies found in New Criticism, structuralism, and post-structuralism; proponents of Reader-Response believe a text is incomplete until the reader interacts with it. It is the reader who creates meaning as he interprets what the words mean. The reader’s biographical and cultural experiences will influence the contextual meaning of the literature. Even the longest book will leave some things unsaid inviting the reader to fill in the blanks, creating their own version of the text.

New Historicism

New Historicism (Cultural Materialism) is based on the idea that historical, biographical, and social issues do affect a work but tends to sympathize with the marginalized peoples of those cultures. New Historicists believe that the dominate culture imposes an ideology on the minority. From this perspective a work either upholds that majority or undermines it. New Historicists believe that individuals who do not maintain the values of the majority are devalued and exploited. They also believe that literature cannot transcend its culture because it is culturally constructed.

Feminist and Gender Criticism

Feminist and Gender criticism called for a re-evaluation of literature based on the idea that men had previously dominated literary interpretation. This literary philosophy proposes that male dominance resulted in an under representation of female authors in the canon of “great literature” and that female characters were misconstrued. Since the advent of Feminist and Gender Criticism, diaries, journals and letters have gained more respect. These, of course, were forms of writing widely practiced by women.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I have kept these descriptions brief in order to provide a quick over view. If you find yourself intrigued by anyone of these forms of criticism, now is the best time to start your research. By becoming a specialist in your favorite form of criticism it will be much easier to find an A+ writing topic and develop it into an A+ essay.