ENERAN, Kylah Deneez HUMSS 12 - JAENA

FORTEZ, Stephanie Sir Pat

MENDOZA, Catelyn

1. Classical Literary Theory – Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation,
and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is
the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Though the two activities are closely
related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Literary criticism is often
published in essay or book form.

2. Historical Biographical Approach - Historical / Biographical critics see works as the reflection of an
author's life and times. They believe it is necessary to know about the author and the
political, economical, and sociological context of his times in order to truly understand his works.

3. Moral Philosophical Approach - Moral / philosophical critics believe that the larger purpose of
literature is to teach morality and to prove philosophical issues.

4. Mythological – Archetypal Approach - A mythological / archetypal approach to literature assumes

that there is a collection of symbols, images, characters, and motifs that evokes basically the same
response in all people. Myth critics identify these archetypal patterns and discuss how they function in
the works. They believe that these archetypes are the source of much of literature's power.

5. Formalism - A formalistic approach to literature, once called New Criticism, involves a close reading of
the text. Formalistic critics spend a great deal of time analyzing irony, paradox, imagery, and metaphor.
They are also interested in a work's setting, characters, symbols, and point of view.

 Russian Formalism - Russian Formalism was a literary movement and primarily a school of
literary criticism/theory which developed in Russia in the early 20th century. Although the
practitioners of this method had diverse ways of approaching formalism, the general idea is that
these critics focused on poetic techniques, language, and the structure of literature. This was an
attempt at making the study of literature more scientific.

 New Criticism - New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that
dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It
emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned
as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. The movement derived its name from John
Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism.

6. Psychoanalytical theory - Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the
dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating
psychopathology.

7. Structuralism - structuralism is the methodology that implies elements of human culture must be
understood by way of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover
the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.
8. Post Structuralism:Deconstruction – Post-Structuralism is a late 20th Century movement in
philosophy and literary criticism, which is difficult to summarize but which generally defines itself in its
opposition to the popular Structuralism movement which preceded it in 1950`s and 1960s France.
Deconstruction is a critique of the relationship between text and meaning originated by the philosopher
Jacques Derrida. The purpose of deconstruction is to show that that the usage of language in a given
text, and language as a whole, are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible.

9. Marxism - Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and
dialectic theories. Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which
they originate.

10. Feminism –.Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that
share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality
of sexes. Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the
politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature

11. Post Colonial Colonism - Post Colonial criticism is part of a larger field called cultural studies, or
race and ethnicity studies. It is a recent development. Formerly known as commonwealth studies,
postcolonial literary studies includes examinations of works by authors from colonized nations. After
nationalism, indigenous novelists and poets finally were able to express freely their own thoughts and
feelings about the effects of the long-term conquest of their peoples, their traditions, and their customs.

12. Post Modern Literary Theory- Post modernism represents the rejection of the modernist tenets of
rational, historical, and scientific thought in favor of self-conscious, ironic, and experimental works. In
many of these works, the authors abandon the concept of an ordered universe, linear narratives, and
traditional forms to suggest the malleability of truth and question the nature of reality itself, dispensing
with the idea of a universal ordering scheme in favor of artifice, temporality and a reliance on irony. Many
postmodern writers believe that language is inherently unable to convey any semblance of the external
world, and that verbal communication is more an act of conflict than an expression of rational meaning.

13. New Historican - New Historicism, a mode of cultural inquiry that would change the direction of
literary theory in the final two decades of the twentieth century. Desire is the keystone of New Historical
inquiry, which aims to explore the past through its documents and to do so not as objective observers
governed solely by reason, but as subjective participants fully cognizant that scholarly impartiality is
impossible.