Review of Critical Models from The Art of the Short Story

Review of Critical Models

(from The Art of the Short Story)

Formalist Criticism:

A focus on the works of literature themselves -- on the TEXT itself
A poem or a story is NOT primarily a social, historical, or biographical document
A literary work can be understood ONLY by reference to its intrinsic literary features -- that is, those elements found in the text itself
The critic would pay special attention to the formal features of the text -- the style, structure, imagery, tone, and genre
These features, however, are usually not examined in isolation, because formalist critics believe that what gives a literary text its special status of art is how all of its elements work together to create the reader's total experience
CLOSE READING: a careful step-by-step analysis and explication of a text
The purpose of close reading is to understand how various elements in a literary text work together to shape its effects on the reader
Since formalist critics believe that the various stylistic and thematic elements of literary work influence each other, they insist that FORM AND CONTENT CANNOT BE MEANINGFULLY SEPARATED
The complete interdependence of form and content is what makes a text literary. When we extract a work's theme or paraphrase its meaning, we destroy the aesthetic experience of the work

Biographical Criticism:

Biographical critics begin with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people and that understanding an author's life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the work
An author's experiences shape -- both directly and indirectly -- what he or she creates
A FORMALIST critic might complain that we would also have noticed those things through careful textual analysis, but BIOGRAPHICAL information provides the practical assistance of underscoring subtle but important meanings in the texts
BIOGRAPHY is, strictly speaking, a branch of history -- it provides a written account of a person's life -- and a biographer establishes and interprets the facts of an author's life using all available information (including literary texts)
A BIOGRAPHICAL CRITIC, however, is NOT concerned with re-creating the record of an author's life -- the focus is on explicating the literary work by using the insights provided by knowledge of the author's life
A reader, however, must use biographical interpretations cautiously -- writers are notorious for revising the facts of their own lives, often deleting embarrassments and inventing accomplishments while changing the details of real episodes to improve their literary impact -- the danger in the case of a famous writer is that the life story can overwhelm and eventually distort the work
Always remember to base an interpretation on what is IN the text itself -- biographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with irrelevant material

Historical Criticism:

Psychological Criticism:

Mythological Criticism:

Critics look for the recurrent universal patterns underlying most literary works
An interdisciplinary approach that combines the insights of anthropology, psychology, history, and comparative religion
Traces how the author's individual imagination uses symbols and situations -- consciously or unconsciously -- in ways that transcend its own historical milieu and resemble the mythology of other cultures or epochs
A central concept is the ARCHETYPE -- a symbol, character, situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response
CARL JUNG -- all individuals share a "collective unconscious" -- a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person's conscious mind
Archetypal images (which often relate to experiencing primordial phenomena like the sun, moon, fire, night, and blood) trigger the collective unconscious
NORTHRUP FRYE -- another definition -- an archetype is "a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one's literary experience as a whole"
Identifying archetypal symbols and situations in literary works, mythological critics almost inevitably link the individual text under discussion to a broader context of works that share an underlying pattern
JOSEPH CAMPBELL -- The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Sociological Criticism:

Examines literature in the cultural, economic, and political contexts in which it is written or received
Literature "is the work not simply of a person, but of an author fixed in time and space, answering a community of which he or she is an important because articulate part"
Explores the relationship between the artist and society
Analyzes the social context of literary works -- what cultural, economic, or political values a particular text implicitly or explicitly promotes
Also examines the role the audience has in shaping literature
An influential type of sociological criticism has been MARXIST criticism, which focuses on the economic and political elements of art -- it also often explores the ideological content of literature
Whereas a FORMALIST critic would maintain that FORM and CONTENT are inextricable blended, a MARXIST critic believes that CONTENT DETERMINES FORM and that therefore all art is political
Consequently, Marxist criticism is frequently evaluative and judges some literary work better than others on an ideological basis
There is always a danger in sociological criticism of imposing the critic's personal politics on the work in question and then evaluating it according to how closely it endorses that ideology

Gender Criticism:

Reader-Response Criticism:

Deconstructionist Criticism:

Cultural Studies Criticism:

Does not offer a single way of analyzing literature -- no central methodology is associated with it
Refers to a relatively recent interdisciplinary field of academic inquiry
At the start, it relied heavily on literary theory, especially Marxist and Feminist criticism -- it also employed the documentary techniques of historical criticism and political analysis
Is also deeply anti-formalist
Most often borrows from deconstruction, gender criticism, race theory, Marxist analysis, and psychology
Called NEW HISTORICISM in the United States
It is not solely -- or even mainly -- concerned with literary texts in the conventional sense
It analyzes a wide range of cultural products and practice
Does not study fixed aesthetic objects so much as dynamic social processes
Focuses on issues of SOCIAL CLASS, RACE, and GENDER -- on social inequality between the sexes and races
A chief goal is to understand the nature of social power
The relevant mission of cultural studies is to identify both the overt and the covert values reflected in a cultural practice
Is above all a political enterprise that views literary analysis as a means of furthering SOCIAL JUSTICE
Is anti-institutionalization