The act of analysing, assessing, and interpreting literary works is known as literary criticism. We develop our creativity, sense of what is possible, and capacity for empathy through reading and talking about literature. Literary criticism provides readers with fresh perspectives on an author’s work, much like literary theory, which offers a more comprehensive philosophical foundation for how to study literature.
It typically discusses the work’s topic and combines your views with further research-based learnings. Literary criticism can be a study of a single work of literature or an author’s entire body of work, and it can have a positive or negative bias.
Literary criticism is NOT a narrative summary, an author biography, or just pointing out the flaws in the literature, even though it may contain some of the above components to support a concept.
Purpose of Literary Criticism
By summarising, interpreting, and analysing an author’s work, literary criticism aims to deepen the reader’s knowledge of it. You can improve your understanding of the work, create opinions about literature, examine concepts from various points of view, and decide for yourself whether a literary work is worthwhile to read by researching, reading, and writing literary criticism. Literary criticism makes it possible for readers to better comprehend the complexity and beauty of the world through writing.
What is Literary Theory?
A school of thought or method of literary analysis known as literary theory provides readers with a way to evaluate the concepts and tenets of literature. Hermeneutics, which refers to the analysis of a literary work, is another name for literary theory. To determine the similarities and contrasts in similar types of literary works, literary theory analyses a cross-section of literature from a certain era, geographic place, or from writers of specific origins or identities.
Literary Criticism vs. Literary Theory
Although they have a close link and are frequently used interchangeably, literary theory and literary criticism are two different concepts.
A particular work of literature can be understood using a framework of concepts called literary theory. The study, assessment, and interpretation of literature, on the other hand, is known as literary criticism. The former is hypothetical, whereas the latter is real-world.
Literary criticism is the process by which you apply those tools to comprehend the meaning of a literary work, whereas literary theory offers the framework for doing so.
15 different types of Literary Criticism
Readers can analyse any literary work using a special language provided by a wide variety of theoretical schools. Some of the most important theories are listed below:
- Practical criticism: Readers are encouraged to evaluate the text without taking into account any external context, such as the author, the time and place of composition, or any other contextual information that may be instructive.
- Cultural studies: Unlike practical criticism, which looks at a text in isolation from its socio-cultural setting, cultural theory examines a work in its overall socio-cultural context. According to cultural critics, a text should be completely interpreted in the context of its culture.
- Formalism: Formalism forces readers to evaluate a work of literature’s artistic worth by scrutinising its formal components, such as language and technical expertise. Formalism supports a canon of literary works that represent the highest literary ideals as assessed by formalist critics.
- Reader-response: This type of criticism is founded on the idea that a reader’s response to or interpretation of a text can be just as valuable as the text itself as a source for critical analysis.
- The new criticism: Rather than emphasising the sentimental or ethical aspects of literature, new critics concentrated on analysing the formal and structural components. The school of the new criticism was founded by the poet T.S. Eliot and the critics Cleanth Brooks and John Crowe Ransom.
- Psychoanalytic criticism: Psychoanalytic criticism looks to the neuroses and psychological states of literary characters to evaluate a text’s meaning by applying Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas, such as dream interpretation. The critics of psychoanalysis Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva are two others to mention. Learn more about Examples of Psychoanalytic criticism theory.
- Marxist theory: It was founded by socialist philosopher Karl Marx along with Marxism, his political and sociological worldview. Literature is examined in accordance with class dynamics and socialist principles according to Marxist theory. Read more on Examples of Marxist Criticism Theory.
- Post-modernism: In the middle of the 20th century, post-modernist literary criticism first appeared in an effort to capture the fragmented and dissonant reality of life at that time. Although post-modernism has numerous conflicting definitions, it is most frequently regarded as abandoning modernist notions of a cohesive narrative.
- Post-structuralism: Post-structuralist literary theory rejected the notions of formal and structural cohesiveness and questioned any presumptions of “universal truths” as being dependent on the social context in which they were expressed. Roland Barthes, the founder of semiotics—the study of signs and symbols in art—is one of the authors who contributed to the development of post-structuralist thought.
- Deconstruction: Developed by Jacques Derrida, deconstructionists dissect a text’s concepts or claims in search of inconsistencies that preclude any single interpretation.
- Postcolonial theory: Examining the effects of colonialism in critical theory, postcolonial theory questions the dominance of Western thought in literature. Orientalism by Edward Said is a key work in postcolonial theory.
- Feminist criticism: In the middle of the 20th century, as the feminist movement gained momentum, literary critics started to look to gender studies for fresh approaches to literary analysis. In her groundbreaking essay “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf was one of the first advocates of feminist criticism. Elaine Showalter and Hélène Cixous are two other prominent feminist critics.
- Queer theory: Queer theory expanded on feminist theory’s analysis of gender roles in literature, especially when viewed through the perspectives of sexual orientation and gender identity.
- Critical race theory: In the United States, the civil rights movement gave rise to critical race theory. It focuses mostly on using racial analysis to examine legal, criminal, and cultural texts. Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw are two prominent CRT detractors.
- Critical disability theory: There are an increasing number of intersectional fields of critical research, including critical disability theory. Critical disability theorists look at ableist societal institutions because they think that racism and ableism are mutually exclusive.
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