ital relationships in the town, and other elements. Some critics say it demonstrates blind adherence to ritual, the evils of fascism, communism, and the deadly consequences of conservatism. Perhaps your reading of the story can provide a new argumentative approach. Writing to Evaluate You are probably familiar with writing that evaluates if you have ever read a movie review or a book review in your favorite paper or magazine. Many people turn to these reviews in helping them plan their entertainment if they feel they can safely rely on the judgment of the reviewer. When you write to evaluate, you are judging what you are reading. You are considering whether what you have read has merit or not. Evaluation, however, is a complex matter, and much personal bias goes into an evaluation. Perhaps the best way to write a competent evaluation of literature is to read as much of it as possible. For example, if you critically and carefully read selections in any literature anthology, you will probably come up with a few favorites. You can then return to these selections and ask yourself, “Why do I favor this selection over these others?” Writing to evaluate will help you understand what qualities are considered meritorious in literature, and at the same time help you understand yourself. Through analyzing which works of literature you prefer and why, you can discover your own literary tastes. To substantiate any evaluation, the writer must show through example how the work possesses various positive and/or negative attributes. We shall continue to deal with some of these approaches in subsequent chapters. For now, it is important for you to know that writing about literature enjoys a long tradition. After all, Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, provided us with a study of dramatic literature in his Poetics over 2,000 years ago. From the age of classic Greece to the present, we have been writing about literature. The Chapter 1 Reading and Responding to Literature and Film 13 22 Ways In: Approaches To Reading Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e I. Critical Reading and Writing 1. Reading and Responding to Literature and Film © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 concerns and approaches of literary critics and interpreters have been greatly influenced and shaped by the political, social, religious, and ideological forces of their times. Given these variables, we can agree that there is no single meaning in a text. When you read a text, you interact with it to create those meanings that you plan to write about. APPROACHES TO LITERATURE Thus far, you may have noticed that we have discussed literature in general and several works in particular by focusing on the works themselves. A school of literary criticism that had its roots in the 1920s and flourished in the 1950s, often referred to as “The New Criticism,” popularized the approach of centering all meaning of a work of literature based on what was written on the page. But if you think for a moment, it should be obvious that there are many other ways to examine a poem, a short story, or a play. For example, you could examine the biographical elements of a work of literature by studying the writer’s life. Or, if you’re interested in the works of Freud or Jung or Lacan, you might apply a psychological perspective to a work, trying to understand, perhaps, the unconscious meanings of a play or story. Actually, for the past quarter of a century, many approaches to studying and thinking critically about literature have emerged. Some have remained popular; others have diminished in their influence. Nevertheless, a brief cross section of these various methods can enrich the way you look at literature and expand the ways you think about it. The following summary is provided to give you a basic understanding of these different methods. If any of them intrigue you, it is easy to follow up your interest by asking your instructor or by referring to the literary criticism of your library or on an Internet site. Psychological Criticism You are probably familiar with the concept of interpreting dreams. You may relate a dream to a close friend, and together try to figure out what the symbolism might signify. This activity is similar to the methods used in psychological criticism. This form of criticism attempts to apply modern psychological theories, primarily Freudian (and more recently Lacanian), to understanding literature. Freud, after all, in The Interpretation of Dreams explains what he terms the Oedipal complex by analyzing Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex. There are various ways that you may critique a work of literature from a psychological perspective. As noted above, you may take a work that has obvious symbolism and interpret what each image means. Another use of psychological criticism in literature is to attempt to understand the underlying motivations of a character in a short story or novel. What are the unconscious wishes of the characters in a play or work of fiction? Or what desires lie hidden in the relationship between Hamlet and his mother? Psychological criticism has also proved fruitful in examining so-called stream of consciousness. Historical Criticism Historical criticism attempts to study literature by placing it within the context of the time in which it was written. Thus, styles and forms of writing may be historically based. Much of Shakespearean drama is written in blank verse, as in Othello. However, you would be hard-pressed to find a contemporary play written in verse today. Most likely, we would think the author was being either old-fashioned or naive. Content as well as style is greatly influenced by historical forces. If you read Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” without a knowledge of the changes in European culture at the turn of the twentieth century, you cannot hope to understand many of the poem’s references. The same holds true for William Butler Yeats’ “Easter 1916.” You must not only be aware of the Irish Liberation Movement to appreciate the poem, but you must have some inkling of the personages referred to throughout the poem. The New Historicism New Historicist critics take the concept of history and give it a new perspective. These critics argue that indeed literature can be studied from a historical point of view, but you must be careful not to inject your own historical perspective into a text that was written in another century. For example, the issues of jealousy raised in Othello, the issues of incest raised in Oedipus Rex, or the issues of the American dream addressed in Death of a Salesman may seem familiar and obvious to us. They might appear typical subjects for an afternoon TV show, in fact. However, the significance of the themes in these plays must be considered within the social, economic, political, and aesthetic contexts of the time they were written. Death of a Salesman, for example, opened the eyes of a generation to the reductionist, distorted view that the goal in life was to make a good impression on others, and to the need to make as much money as possible to prove your self-worth. Biographical Criticism Biographical criticism bears some similarities to historical criticism, only its concerns focus more on the particular life of the author, rather than the time he or she was writing in. Knowing that Wilfred Owen witnessed the horrors Marxist and Social Criticism Although the philosopher Karl Marx wrote his major works in the nineteenth century, many literary critics have used his analysis of class conflict to examine even the earliest forms of literature. Perhaps because issues of class conflict seem to have existed at all times in human history (there were strong class divisions among the Greeks, for example), and since literature is often about people in conflict with one another and with society-at-large, Marxist criticism lends itself quite readily to explanations of literature. Although issues of race and ethnicity are implicated in much modern literature, many stories and plays can simultaneously be interpreted using a Marxist paradigm. Even if the theories of Marx are not applied directly, the importance of power between and among individuals and groups, and the powerful influences of the conventions of society over our behavior tend to have at least some relevance to a Marxist reading. Much of Richard Wright’s fiction subtly shows the potentially insidious effects of class and racism on the future of one young man. Just as graphically, Bertolt Brecht’s plays can be read as studies in the effects of sanctioned economic inequality on human beings and entire societies. Structuralism The literary method of structuralism takes its inspiration from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist whose major ideas were transcribed by his students at the beginning of the twentieth century. The basic thesis of structuralism is that language is a system, a code of communication with its own rules and regulations. For example, sentences in English have a particular syntax which, if broken, ruptures the sense of the language. Literary critics have taken this basic idea and applied it to literature, primarily in their attempt to raise the importance of genre as an explanatory principle in discussing works of literature. For example, a structuralist might read a detective story, and rather than discuss merits of the style or the symbolic significance of the locale, use the story as a tool to understand the conventions of detective story type. Therefore, structuralist critics are often interested in examining works of literature to understand literature as a whole. So, for example, reading “The South” by Jorge Luis Borges, a structuralist might be more interested in discussing the concept of initiation and relating this concept to other work where initiation plays a significant role. Many advocates of structuralism have claimed that the idea of quality in literature must be reconsidered. Rather than ask whether a poem or story or play is well-written, the question a structuralist might ask is, “How well does this work of fiction fulfill the conventions of the genre it is a member of?” Reader-Response Criticism If a tree falls in the forest and no ones sees or hears it, has it really fallen? This old riddle bears considerable significance to the school of reader-response criticism. People who advocate this approach to literature claim that a play or story or poem only exists in its relationship to the reader. Without the reader, it is not literature. The one who reads fulfills an essential aspect of the literary process. While this may seem rather obvious, reader-response criticism was an important reaction to the strong tendency of some critics—particularly the New Critics mentioned earlier—to consider the text in isolation, as though it were an immutable thing whose essence could be uncovered if one simply had the right tools and perspicuity. But reader-response critics hold that we construct meanings from what we read based upon our own individual experience, our cultural background, and the “community” within which we operate. You are a college student, for example, and you constitute with your peers a community. Your study of literature is obviously being influenced by the views that the academic community holds in so far as the way literature should be examined. Even your class itself may have its own biases toward interpretation (most likely controlled by the instructor or perhaps the philosophical perspective of your English department). That a text is incomplete in itself, and that reading it makes it come to life, gives more power to the reader, and some reader-response critics place as much if not more importance on the role of the reader as they do that of the author. Suppose, for example, your father works as a traveling salesman. This may have quite a bearing on your response to the play Death of a Salesman. Your response to any of the selections in any anthology may be strongly determined by your own class, racial, and ethnic background. Or take something even more basic: your gender. Chances are that male and female students may see a work of literature quite differently. After reading the story “The Lady with the Pet Dog” by Chekhov, your focus on character might be a result of how you identify with the characters, and that identification may well be based on your sex. Feminist Criticism Feminist criticism is an outgrowth of the feminist movement that began in the 1960s, but has been used retroactively to examine works wherein gender issues are prominent. In fact, feminist critics often uncover issues of gender in older texts that previously may not have been considered literature that had feminist implications. One major and legitimate complaint of feminist critics has been that women writers have been ignored since it has been mainly men Chapter 1 Reading and Responding to Literature and Film 17 26 Ways In: Approaches To Reading Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e I. Critical Reading and Writing 1. Reading and Responding to Literature and Film © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005 who have ruled on what is considered literature and what is not. Feminist critics have adopted many writers that have lived in obscurity, so that today authors like Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Zora Neale Hurston have been recognized as major writers where formerly their works went unread. Feminist critics often look for and find themes of women’s oppression, and stories by such writers as Kay Boyle, Alice Walker, and Nadine Gordimer are seen as works that not only examine women’s lives but advocate for them. INTERPRETING LITERATURE In a class full of literature students, there is a strong possibility that there will be many interpretations of the same literary work. At the same time, the teacher’s interpretation may differ from the students’. Who determines which is the correct interpretation? Or is it safe to say that there is more than one correct interpretation? Literature is open to so many readings, interpretations, and opinions that readers seldom agree on every aspect of a literary work. One may say that there are various competent readings, but not all readings are valid. You may even change your mind over an interpretation of a particular poem or story depending on when you read it, how often, and in what context. Regardless of your personal interpretation of a story, it is most probable that the more carefully you read a work of literature, the more likely your interpretation will be valid. If you believe you understand the theme of a work, the particulars of it must back up your comprehension of it. The theme or meaning of a work is a generalization; the elements in it are the particulars. Put another way, your interpretation of a theme is your argument; its various elements are your proofs. If the proofs don’t follow, then chances are you have a weak argument. Some works are easier to interpret than others, however. The play Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett, for example, has been analyzed, studied, debated, and interpreted over and over. On the other hand, a play like Suppressed Desires by Susan Glaspell is fairly direct in its presentation of its theme, and few major arguments over its meaning are likely to be forthcoming. There are quite a few factors that influence the difficulty of interpretation of a work of literature. Two major ones are the degree to which the work breaks the conventions of genre; the other is the degree to which the motivations and/or the actions of a character are ambiguous. There have been many classroom arguments over whether the main character in Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” actually becomes a man by escaping the provincial town he is living in or whether he is merely running away from his problems and therefore remaining a boy
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