Some Approaches Used to Analyze Literary Texts

(Literary Criticism)

Reader-Response Criticism -- “Reading is as much a creative act as the writing of a text.”

Formalist Criticism -- Focuses solely on a text, using the “elements” of literature and nothing else. The meaning resides in the text, not in the reader, and we need to analyze the text to discover the meaning.

Biographical Criticism -- Uses events from the author’s life to illuminate the text.

Historical Criticism -- Uses a text’s historical context -- e.g., slavery, wars, depression, etc. -- to illuminate the text.

Psychological Criticism -- Applies psychological and psychiatric concepts (esp. S. Freud) to texts, characters, and/or authors.

Mythological Criticism -- Uses the “collective unconscious” and “archetypes” (esp. C. Jung and J. Campbell) to study texts.

Feminist / Gender Criticism -- Focuses on the gender and/or the sexual orientation of either the author or the characters or both.

Sociological Criticism -- Uses economic, racial, and political contexts -- e.g., Marxism, Social Darwinism, etc.

Cultural / New Historicist Criticism -- Uses interdisciplinary approaches to study a text -- e.g., using popular music or advertisements to illuminate a text.

Post-Structuralist / Deconstructionist Criticism -- Believes that language is fundamentally unstable, which leads to multiple, sometimes self-contradictory meanings in a text.

(Taken from Charters/Charters, Literature and Its Writers, Compact Second Edition, Chapter 24, pages 1543-1552.)