Understanding Interpretive Strategies

(Literary Criticism)

Phenomenological Reader Response criticism analyzes the ways individual readers experience texts, to find meaning in the act of reading itself. This is the kind of criticism we use most often in class as a "way into" the text -- we then often touch on other kinds of criticism once we get going.

Formalism finds meaning in the direct relation between a text’s ideas and its form, the connection between what a text says and the way it’s said. Formalists may find tension, irony, or paradox in this relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence of meaning. This kind of criticism focuses only on the text itself, with NO outside considerations.

Biographical criticism looks for a text’s significance in terms of its author, either by comparing events and attitudes in the text with those in the author’s life, or by comparing textual features with the author’s other works.

Historical criticism finds meaning by looking at a text within the framework of the prevailing ideas and assumptions of its historical era, or by considering its contents within the context of “what really happened” during the period that produced the text.

Literary-Historical criticism finds significance in the ways a particular work resembles or differs from other works of its period and/or genre. This interpretive strategy relies heavily on the techniques of descriptive poetics, differing from poetics in its main goal: to determine what a text means, rather than “how it means.”

Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the systems of explanation suggested by Freud (or later theorists who have built upon Freud’s work, such as Lacan or the feminist psychoanalysts) to interpret what a text signifies. We can use ideas from our psychology classes here, such as the Id, Ego, and Superego, or the Oral, Anal, and Genital phases, or the Oedipal or Electra complexes, or even some of Carl Jung's theories.

Archetypal criticism traces cultural and psychological “myths” that shape the meaning of texts. This kind of criticism is largely based on the work of Carl Jung, a student and colleague of Freud's, who eventually "broke away" to form his own ideas about psychology and psychoanalytical approaches.

Political criticism looks at the ideas in a text through an explicit overlay of political ideology (for example, Marxism or some forms of feminist theory) to find meaning. GLBT criticism (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) or "Queer Theory," along with Afro-American criticism and other forms of Cultural criticism, are also "located" in this general category.

Semiotics looks at the “codes,” or ways of making a text intelligible, that come into play when readers encounter texts. Semioticians attend to linguistic “signs” (connotations and denotations of words), as well as those that are outside language (typography and cover illustration of books) and those that refer to the operations of language (literary conventions). This kind of criticism is largely used also in studying popular culture.

Deconstruction, too, looks at the relation of a text’s ideas to the way the ideas are expressed. Unlike formalists, though, deconstructionists find meaning in the ways the text breaks down: for instance, in the ways the rhetoric contradicts the ostensible message.