Critical Theory Cheat Sheet
Donald E. Corridor. Literary and Cultural Theory: From Primary Ideas to Superior Purposes. Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Theory
Key Concepts
Theorists
Feedback
Formalism /New Criticism
1920’s ahead
-analysis of literary buildings (style; character, plot, setting, and many others.)
-rejected literature’s historic and biographical contexts
-intrinsic that means of texts; literature expresses “common truths”
-critic’s activity to discover exactly by way of language and kind how that reality is expressed
-“Shut studying”; the TEXT holds THE that means
-Aristotle (The Poetics)
-Plato (The Republic)
-John Crowe Ransom
-Cleanth Brooks
-T.S. Eliot
Reader Response
-emphasis on reader’s position in creating meanings
-meanings generated by a transaction between reader and a textual content; that means will not be wholly intrinsic to the textual content
-Louise Rosenblatt (The Reader, The Textual content, and The Poem)
-Robert Probst (Response and Assessment)
-Wolfgang Iser
-Stanley Fish
-Norman Holland
Rhetorical Assessment
-“an authorial presence [in a text] that leads the textual content’s rhetorically attuned reader towards an authorially desired interpretation or response” (44)
-Wayne Sales space
Marxist/Materialist Assessment
-based on Marx’s theories of sophistication and cultural manufacturing
-importance of sophistication and financial situations; energy relationships and sophistication ideologies offered inside a textual content
-Terry Eagleton
-Karl Marx
-Frederich Engles
Psychoanalytic Assessment
-concept of the unconscious, acutely aware, ego and id
-human exercise not at all times acutely aware
-nature/ nurture
-developmental phases; childhood trauma and its impact on growth
-Sigmund Freud
-Jacques Lacan
-Northrup Frye
Structuralism and Semiotic Assessment
-principles of scientific linguistic research utilized to literature
-signified (the idea), signifier (the phrase), signal (mixture of idea and phrase)
-making that means by way of binaries (oppositions)
-no signal is ever absolutely comprehensible
-language buildings our notion of actuality
-language isn’t impartial
-Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistics)
-Claude Levi-Strauss (anthropology)
-Romon Jakobsen (linguistics)
-Jonathan Culler
-Roland Barthes
-Umberto Eco (The Title of the Rose)
-Robert Scholes
Deconstruction/ Put up-structuralism
-calls into Question Assignment all assumptions of comprehension and comprehensiveness; that means by no means sure, at all times “deferred.”
-the energy deployed and social relationships organized by way of discourse
-“distinction”: that means made by way of variations amongst indicators, however by no means made sure
-texts betray traces of their very own instability
-there is nothing outdoors the textual content
-“blindness and perception”
-the world is a textual content
-Jacques Derrida
-Michael Foucault
-Jonathan Culler
Feminist Assessment
-focuses on gender (the social roles carried out by the sexes)
-draws upon and influences each different vital principle
-recognition of various levels of social energy granted to and exercised by ladies and men
-explores advanced methods girls have been denied social energy and the fitting to free expression
-like Marxist and materialist Assessment, feminist criticism sees texts as completely social-language, establishments, and social energy mirror patriarchal pursuits
-women resist and are subversive to patriarchal energy
-Julia Kristeva
-Hekene Cixous
-Luce Irigaray
-bell hooks (race and gender)
Toril Moi
Elaine Showalter
Homosexual/Lesbian/Queer Assessment
-encompasses many alternative methodologies (post-structuralism, gender, race, class, psychology)
-focus on sexuality as a very necessary element of human identification, social group, and textual illustration
-influence of unfavorable attitudes towards same-sex need
-social attitudes about sexuality have modified dramatically; differ considerably for women and men
-issues of “normality” are acceptable topics for critique and investigation
-Henry Abelove
-Margaret Cruikshank
-Michael Foucault
-Eve Sedgwick
Race, Ethnicity, and Put up-Colonial Assessment
-explores relationships between a textual content and its social context
-examines how the assumption programs of a time and place are mirrored in, and probably altered by literary illustration
-racism and ethnocentrism are completely entrenched in language, literature, artwork, and social establishments
-“race” = bodily distinctions mixed with distinct social historical past
-“ethnicity” = nonphysical elements of cultural identification (faith, social customs, language)
-“post-colonialism” focuses on nationwide and regional legacies of nationwide and regional imperialism and colonialism
-commitment to difficult oppression based mostly on cultural identification
-understanding that race and ethnicity have been utilized in ways in which empowered and oppressed
-Gloria Anzaldua
-Henry Louis Gates
-bell hooks
-Elaine H. Kim
-Edward W. Stated
New Historicism and cultural research
-New Historicism makes use of many different types of Assessment however at all times rooted in historic analysis on previous eras and pre-20th century texts
-cultural Assessment additionally makes use of many different types of Assessment. Focuses on 20th century or present-day works; typically emphasizes non-literary genres
-history will not be linearly progressive and isn’t reducible to the actions of outstanding people
-daily life reveals a lot about perception programs of a time interval
-Wayne C. Sales space
-John Brannigan
-Michael Foucault
-Stephen Greenblatt
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