Literary Criticism & Theory

 

✅  1 – Structuralism

Structuralism is a theory that says every text has an underlying structure. We understand meaning by studying the system of language (not just the author or history).

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1. 
   Language as a system – Words get meaning by their relation to other words, not by themselves.

2. Influence of Linguistics – Developed from Ferdinand de Saussure’s ideas.

3. Concept of Binary Oppositions – Example: good/evil, life/death, male/female – meaning is created by differences.

4. Focus – Not on the author, but on structure, language, and signs.

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Imp Terms

• Sign = Signifier (word) + Signified (concept)

• Langue (language system) vs. Parole (individual speech)

• Structure = underlying rules that organize meaning

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Main Critics

• Ferdinand de Saussure – Founder (linguistics)

• Claude Lévi-Strauss – Applied structuralism to anthropology

• Roland Barthes – In literature, “Death of the Author” concept

• Roman Jakobson – Russian Formalist turned structuralist

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Ex

If you read a story like Cinderella, structuralists focus on:

• Roles (hero, villain, helper)

• Binary opposites (good/evil, rich/poor)

• Repeated patterns in many stories (myths, fairy tales)

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Structuralism studies the deep structures and language systems that shape meaning in texts, focusing on signs, differences, and binary oppositions, not the author.

✅  2 – Post-Structuralism

Post-Structuralism came after Structuralism — it says that meaning is never fixed.
While structuralists believed that language has a stable system, post-structuralists believed language is unstable and meaning keeps changing.

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There is no single truth or final meaning in a text.
Every reader can understand a text differently — multiple meanings exist.

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1. Language is unstable – Words change meaning depending on context.

2. Meaning is not fixed – It depends on the reader and situation.

3. Rejects structure – Says structure is not permanent.

4. Text is open to many interpretations.

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Imp Terms

• Decentering: No central truth or authority (no fixed meaning).

• Difference (Différance) – coined by Derrida, means meaning is always deferred (postponed) and different in every context.

• Intertextuality: Every text is connected to other texts (Julia Kristeva).

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Main Thinkers

• Jacques Derrida – Father of Post-Structuralism

• Roland Barthes – “The Death of the Author”

• Michel Foucault – Studied how power and knowledge affect meaning

• Julia Kristeva – Intertextuality concept

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Ex

In Hamlet, different readers see different meanings:

• Feminist sees gender roles

• Psychoanalyst sees Oedipus complex

• Marxist sees class struggle
  → Post-structuralism says all are valid — no single meaning.

Post-Structuralism says meaning is unstable, language is fluid, and every reading creates new interpretations of a text.

✅  3 – Deconstruction (by Jacques Derrida)

Deconstruction means breaking down a text to show that it has many meanings and even contradictions inside itself.

It says — every text looks stable, but if you read carefully, it contradicts its own message.

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👉 No text has one true meaning.
👉 Every text contains opposites that fight each other (like truth/false, male/female, reason/emotion).
👉 When you “deconstruct,” you show how the text undermines what it tries to say.

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1. Meaning keeps shifting – Words depend on other words.

2. Text deconstructs itself – It shows its own weaknesses.

3. Reader finds hidden meanings – Not the author.

4. No final truth – Only endless play of meanings.

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Imp Terms

• Binary oppositions: Pairs like male/female, good/evil, speech/writing. Derrida said one side is always given more power — we must question that.

• Différance: (by Derrida) means “difference + deferral” — meaning is always postponed and never complete.

• Logocentrism: Belief in one central truth or fixed meaning — Derrida rejects this.

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Main Thinker

• Jacques Derrida (main founder)
  Important works: Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference

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A poem that says “Love is eternal” —
Deconstruction will ask:

• If love is eternal, why does the poem talk about heartbreak?
  👉 So, the poem contradicts itself — it both believes and doubts love.

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Deconstruction is a method of reading that finds hidden contradictions and multiple meanings within a text.

✅  4 – Marxist Criticism

Marxist criticism studies literature through class, money, and power.
It says every story, poem, or play reflects the economic system and class struggle of its time.

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👉 Literature is not “neutral.”
👉 Every text shows how the rich (ruling class) control or exploit the poor (working class).
👉 Art and literature are tools of ideology — they support or challenge the system.

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1. Class Conflict: Society is divided into two groups —

   • Bourgeoisie (owners, rich)

   • Proletariat (workers, poor)

2. Base and Superstructure:

   • Base = economy (production, money, labor)

   • Superstructure = culture, religion, art, literature
     Literature belongs to the superstructure, shaped by the economic base.

3. Ideology: Hidden beliefs that support the ruling class.

4. Purpose: To expose injustice, oppression, and inequality.

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Main Thinkers

• Karl Marx – Father of Marxism (Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto)

• Friedrich Engels – Marx’s co-writer

• Georg Lukács – Realism reflects true social conditions

• Raymond Williams – Culture is part of class struggle

• Terry Eagleton – Famous Marxist critic (Literary Theory: An Introduction)

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Ex

In Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens):

• Shows poverty, child labor, and class difference.

• Marxist critics see it as a critique of capitalist society.

Marxist criticism studies how literature reflects class conflict, power, and ideology shaped by economic systems.

✅ 5 – Feminist Literary Theory

What is it?
Feminist theory studies how women are represented in literature and how literature reflects or challenges patriarchal (male-dominated) society.

It aims to give voice to women and question gender inequality in writing, language, and culture.

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1. Patriarchy – Society is controlled by men; women are marginalized.

2. Representation – How women are shown in texts: as weak, emotional, or dependent.

3. Gynocriticism – (Elaine Showalter) study of women’s writing and female literary tradition.

4. Language and Gender – Women’s language and experience are different from men’s.

5. Feminist Reading – Re-reading old texts to show hidden gender bias.

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Key Waves of Feminism

1. First Wave (19th–early 20th century) – Focused on women’s rights, suffrage (voting).

   • Example: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman – Mary Wollstonecraft

2. Second Wave (1960s–1980s) – Equality in society and representation in literature.

   • Critics: Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex), Kate Millett (Sexual Politics).

3. Third Wave (1990s–present) – Focus on diversity, race, sexuality, intersectionality.

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• Mary Wollstonecraft – Early feminist writer

• Simone de Beauvoir – The Second Sex (“One is not born, but becomes, a woman.”)

• Elaine Showalter – A Literature of Their Own (Gynocriticism)

• Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own (need for women’s space to write)

• Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar – The Madwoman in the Attic

• Judith Butler – Gender Trouble (Gender is performed, not fixed)

• Patriarchy – Male-dominated social system

• Gynocriticism – Study of women’s writing (Showalter)

• Androgyny – Unity of male and female mind (Woolf)

• Gender Performativity – Gender is created through repeated behavior (Butler)

• Female Gaze – Women’s perspective in looking/representation

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Ex

In Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë):
Feminist reading shows how Jane fights for independence and equality in a patriarchal world.

Feminist criticism studies how literature reflects or resists patriarchy, focusing on women’s voices, identity, and representation.

✅  6 – Psychoanalytic Criticism

What is it?
Psychoanalytic criticism studies literature through psychology — how a writer’s or character’s unconscious mind, dreams, and desires shape the text.
It started with Sigmund Freud’s theories about the human mind.

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Main Idea

👉 Every text expresses hidden desires, fears, or conflicts.
👉 Characters (and sometimes writers) act based on their unconscious mind.
👉 Dreams, symbols, slips of tongue — all reveal hidden meanings.

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Key Thinkers & Concepts

🧠 Sigmund Freud (Father of Psychoanalysis)

• Id – desires, instincts (pleasure)

• Ego – reality, balance between id and superego

• Superego – moral control, rules of society

• Oedipus Complex – a child’s unconscious desire for the opposite-sex parent

• Dreams = royal road to the unconscious
  📘 Works: Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Civilization and Its Discontents

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🌙 Carl Jung (Student of Freud)

• Collective Unconscious – shared memory of all humans

• Archetypes – universal symbols in stories (hero, mother, shadow, wise old man)
  📘 Work: Psychological Types
  👉 Example: In Hamlet, “Ghost” = archetype of “Father” and moral authority.

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🪞 Jacques Lacan (Modern Psychoanalyst)

• Mirror Stage – child recognizes self in mirror (beginning of ego)

• Imaginary Order – world of images (illusion)

• Symbolic Order – world of language and rules

• Real – that which cannot be expressed in language
  📘 Famous Line: “The unconscious is structured like a language.”

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Application in Literature

• Hamlet – Oedipus complex (love for mother, hatred for father figure)

• Frankenstein – creator’s guilt and repressed desire

• The Turn of the Screw – children’s behavior shows repression and desire

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Imp Terms

• Repression – pushing unwanted desires into unconscious

• Projection – seeing your feelings in others

• Sublimation – turning desires into art

• Unconscious – hidden mental world that controls behavior

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Psychoanalytic criticism studies how unconscious desires, dreams, and repressed emotions shape the creation and meaning of literature.

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🧾 

Q: “The unconscious is structured like a language.” Who said this?
A) Freud B) Jung C) Lacan D) Foucault
✅ Answer: C) Jacques Lacan

✅ 7 – New Criticism

New Criticism focuses only on the text itself — not the author, not the reader, not history.
It says: “Everything you need to understand a poem or story is inside the text.”

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Main Idea

👉 Study the form, language, symbols, and structure of a text.
👉 Ignore author’s life or social background.
👉 Every text is a self-contained unit with a single, unified meaning.

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Key Points

1. Close Reading:
   – Analyze words, images, irony, symbols, paradox, tension.

2. Text as Autonomous:
   – Text stands alone; no outside reference needed.

3. Unity:
   – Good literature has balance between emotion and intellect.

4. Rejection of Author’s Intentions:
   – What the author meant is irrelevant.

5. Objective Interpretation:
   – Meaning comes from structure and language.

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Important Terms

• Intentional Fallacy: Mistake of judging a work by what the author intended.

• Affective Fallacy: Mistake of judging a work by how it makes readers feel.

• Paradox: Opposite ideas creating truth.

• Irony: Difference between appearance and reality.

• Tension: Opposite forces working together to create meaning.

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Main Critics & Books

• I. A. Richards – Practical Criticism, Principles of Literary Criticism

• T. S. Eliot – Tradition and the Individual Talent (impersonal art)

• Cleanth Brooks – The Well-Wrought Urn, The Language of Paradox

• W. K. Wimsatt & M. C. Beardsley – Intentional Fallacy, Affective Fallacy

• John Crowe Ransom – The New Criticism (term giver)

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Ex

In John Donne’s poem “The Canonization”,
New Critics study irony, paradox (“Love makes us saints”), and structure —
not Donne’s biography or religion.

New Criticism studies the text as an independent object, focusing on close reading, structure, and unity — not author or reader.

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🧾 

Q: Who coined the term Intentional Fallacy?
A) T.S. Eliot B) I.A. Richards C) Wimsatt & Beardsley D) Cleanth Brooks
✅ Answer: C) Wimsatt & Beardsley

✅  8 – Reader-Response Theory

Reader-Response theory says that meaning is created by the reader, not just by the text.
A poem or novel becomes complete only when someone reads it and gives it meaning.

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Main Idea

👉 The reader is active — not passive.
👉 Each reader may understand a text differently.
👉 There is no single fixed meaning — meaning depends on the reader’s feelings, experience, and imagination.

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Key Points

1. Text + Reader = Meaning

2. The text gives gaps and clues, but the reader fills them.

3. Reading is a creative act.

4. Meaning changes with time, culture, or reader’s mood.

5. Every reading = new interpretation.

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Main Critics & Concepts

Critic	Key Idea / Book
Louise Rosenblatt	Transactional Theory — reading is an interaction between reader and text.
Wolfgang Iser	The Implied Reader — the text invites readers to fill its “gaps.”
Stanley Fish	Interpretive Communities — meaning depends on groups of readers who share the same beliefs.
Norman Holland	Reading depends on the reader’s psychology (identity theory).
Hans Robert Jauss	Reception Theory — readers’ response changes over time (horizon of expectations).

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Important Terms

• Implied Reader: the ideal reader imagined by the author (Iser).

• Gaps: missing parts the reader must fill (Iser).

• Interpretive Community: a group of readers with shared understanding (Fish).

• Horizon of Expectations: readers’ cultural background that shapes reading (Jauss).

• Transaction: the active connection between reader and text (Rosenblatt).

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Example

If you read Hamlet today, you may see him as depressed.
A reader in Shakespeare’s time may see him as a tragic hero.
👉 Meaning changes with readers and time.

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Reader-Response theory says meaning is not fixed in the text but created through the reader’s personal interpretation and interaction with it.

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🧾

Q: Who introduced the idea of the “implied reader”?
A) Stanley Fish B) Wolfgang Iser C) Louise Rosenblatt D) Hans Jauss
✅ Answer: B) Wolfgang Iser

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🧩 Quick Comparison:

Aspect	New Criticism	Reader-Response
Focus	Text	Reader
Meaning	Fixed, within text	Changes with reader
Author	Ignored	Ignored
Method	Close reading	Reading experience
Key Idea	“Text is self-contained”	“Reader creates meaning”

✅  9 – Postcolonial Literary Theory

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Postcolonial theory studies how colonialism and imperialism affected literature, culture, and identity — especially in countries that were once colonized (like India, Africa, the Caribbean).

It looks at how colonizers (Europeans) represented the colonized (Asians, Africans, etc.), and how writers from colonized nations resist that power through literature.

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Main Idea

👉 Literature is not neutral — it reflects power, race, and cultural domination.
👉 Western writing often shows non-Western people as inferior or exotic.
👉 Postcolonial writers rewrite history from the native or oppressed point of view.

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Key Concepts

1. Colonialism: Political, economic, and cultural control by one country over another.

2. Orientalism: (Edward Said) — The West’s false image of the East as strange, weak, and uncivilized.

3. Hybridity: (Homi Bhabha) — Mixing of cultures; colonizer and colonized influence each other.

4. Subaltern: (Gayatri Spivak) — The oppressed group whose voice is not heard.

5. Mimicry: (Bhabha) — Colonized people imitate the colonizer’s culture but never fully become like them — creating tension.

6. Other / Otherness: (Said, Bhabha) — How colonizers see natives as different and inferior.

7. Decolonization: Reclaiming native identity and culture after colonial rule.

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Major Thinkers & Works

Critic / Writer	Major Work	Key Idea
Edward Said	Orientalism (1978)	The “Orient” is a Western invention; exposes Eurocentric bias.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak	Can the Subaltern Speak?	Subaltern (oppressed people) have no voice in colonial systems.
Homi K. Bhabha	The Location of Culture	Concepts of hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence.
Frantz Fanon	Black Skin, White Masks, The Wretched of the Earth	Psychological effects of colonization; violence in decolonization.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o	Decolonising the Mind	Advocates writing in native languages.
Chinua Achebe	Things Fall Apart	Rewrites African identity from African perspective.

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Important Terms 

• Eurocentrism: Viewing the world from a European perspective.

• Diaspora: Movement of people away from homeland (e.g., Indian diaspora writers).

• Hybridity: Cultural mixing that creates new identities.

• Subaltern: Marginalized people excluded from power and history.

• Othering: Treating colonized people as outsiders.

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Examples

• Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) → shows colonial mindset; Africans as “savages.”

• Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) → African voice reclaiming identity.

• A Passage to India (E.M. Forster) → tension between British and Indians.

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Postcolonial theory studies how literature reflects and resists colonial power, exploring identity, race, and cultural conflict between colonizer and colonized.

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🧾 

Q1: Who wrote Orientalism?
A) Homi Bhabha B) Edward Said C) Spivak D) Fanon
✅ Answer: B) Edward Said

Q2: “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is written by —
✅ Answer: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Q3: Who introduced the term Hybridity?
✅ Answer: Homi K. Bhabha

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🧠 Key Quote 

“The Orient was almost a European invention.” — Edward Said, Orientalism
“Can the subaltern speak?” — Spivak
“Mimicry is at once resemblance and menace.” — Bhabha

 10): New Historicism & Cultural Materialism

1. New Historicism New Historicism says literature and history are connected — both shape and influence each other. It studies a text in its historical, political, and cultural context, not as an isolated work of art. “Literature is a product of its time.” Reaction Against New Criticism: New Criticism focused only on the text. New Historicism said — we must also study the social and power structures around the text. Influence of Michel Foucault: Foucault’s idea: Power and Knowledge are connected. Society controls people through language, culture, and institutions. Literature both reflects and challenges these powers. Stephen Greenblatt – Main Figure Founder of New Historicism in the 1980s. Important book: Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980) He said writers “fashioned their identities” according to cultural and political pressures of their time. Focus of New Historicism: Aspect Description Focus Relation between literature and history Key Concept Power, ideology, discourse Major Thinkers Stephen Greenblatt, Michel Foucault, Louis Montrose Text Study Text + historical documents + cultural background Goal To understand how literature shapes and is shaped by power and culture Example: When reading Hamlet, a New Historicist will study: Elizabethan politics, religion, gender roles, and the idea of monarchy. How these influenced Shakespeare’s writing and audience interpretation. 2. Cultural Materialism Cultural Materialism is the British version of New Historicism. It also studies literature through history and culture — but with more focus on class, politics, and power (especially Marxism). It asks: “Who has the power? Who is oppressed? How does literature support or resist authority?” Origin: Developed in 1980s Britain. Influenced by Marxism, Raymond Williams, and New Historicism. Main Thinkers: Raymond Williams (Culture and Society, Marxism and Literature) Jonathan Dollimore & Alan Sinfield (Political Shakespeare: Essays in Cultural Materialism) Difference from New Historicism: New Historicism → Focus on power and culture generally. Cultural Materialism → Focus on political resistance and social class (Marxist approach). Focus of Cultural Materialism: Aspect Description Focus Culture, politics, class struggle Key Concept Ideology, hegemony, resistance Major Thinkers Raymond Williams, Alan Sinfield, Jonathan Dollimore Goal Show how literature reflects and resists social and political power Base Idea Literature is part of material (economic + cultural) history Example: In King Lear, Cultural Materialists study how the play shows class conflict, authority of the king, and resistance of lower classes — not just family tragedy. Feature New Historicism Cultural Materialism Origin USA (1980s) Britain (1980s) Founder Stephen Greenblatt Raymond Williams, Dollimore, Sinfield Influence Michel Foucault Marxism + New Historicism Focus Power, discourse, identity Class, politics, ideology Goal Understand cultural power Critique social inequality Approach Descriptive Political & Critical New Historicism reads history in literature; Cultural Materialism reads politics in literature.

11. Queer Theory 

Queer Theory examines how gender and sexual identities are constructed, represented, and regulated in literature and culture. It questions assumed “norms” (especially heterosexuality) and explores fluidity, performance, and instability of identities.

Queer Theory explores how sexualities and genders are socially constructed, fluid, and contested in texts and culture.

• Emerged in the late 20th century (1980s–1990s) from gender studies, LGBTQ+ activism, and post-structuralist thought.

• Builds on Foucault (history of sexuality) and on feminist theory; grew from critiques of heteronormativity and identity essentialism.

• Key moment: 1990s institutionalization in literary/cultural studies, queer studies programs, and journals.

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Key Concepts & Terms

• Heteronormativity: Cultural assumption that heterosexuality is the normal/ideal sexuality.

• Performativity: (Judith Butler) Gender is not an essence but a repeated social performance—“doing” gender.

• Closet / The Closet: Social institution of secrecy around non-heterosexual identities (Sedgwick).

• Queer: Originally derogatory, reclaimed as umbrella for non-normative genders/sexualities and as a verb/adjective meaning to challenge norms.

• Sexuality as Constructed: Sexual identities are historically and culturally produced, not purely biological.

• Intersectionality (in queer studies): Sexual identity intersects with race, class, gender, nation—queer reading must account for these axes.

• Normal/Abject: What culture normalizes vs. what it excludes as deviant.

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 Major Thinkers & Texts (useful for NET)

• Michel Foucault — The History of Sexuality (on how power shapes sexuality).

• Judith Butler — Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies That Matter (1993): performativity, gender as enacted.

• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick — Epistemology of the Closet (1990): ambivalence, the closet, critical method.

• Gayle Rubin — essays on sexual hierarchies and social organization of sexuality.

• Teresa de Lauretis — introduced "queer theory" as a term in early 1990s contexts.

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• Look for norm disruption: Scenes, characters, or structures that destabilize gender/sexual norms.

• Read subtext and erotic economies: Pay attention to desire, coded behaviors, silences, and hints.

• Trace power/knowledge: How institutions (law, family, religion) regulate sexualities in a text.

• Read performance: How characters ‘perform’ gender; how language enacts identity.

• Unpack binaries: Male/female, public/private, normal/deviant — show how the text collapses or polices these binaries.

• Attend to intersectional identity: Don’t treat sexuality in isolation.

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 Ex

• Virginia Woolf, Orlando — gender change across centuries; gender fluidity and social construction.

• Shakespeare, Twelfth Night — cross-dressing and gender ambiguity; questions of desire and identity.

• Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit — coming-out, religious oppression, queer formation.

• Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (read queerly for coded critiques of Victorian sexual norms).

Q: Who argued that gender is a repeated performance rather than an innate attribute?
A: Judith Butler (Gender is performed through repeated acts — Gender Trouble).

Q: Define heteronormativity.
A: Heteronormativity is the cultural assumption that heterosexuality is the default/normal sexual orientation, producing norms that marginalize other sexualities.

Q: Discuss the queer reading of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
A structure: 1) Intro — define queer reading; 2) Textual analysis — Viola’s cross-dressing, gender ambiguity, Malvolio subplot; 3) Discussion — how play disrupts fixed gender identities; 4) Conclusion — queer implications and relevance.

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 Imp Quotes 

• Judith Butler: “Gender is performative.” (Often paraphrased in NET answers.)

• Sedgwick: “The closet is a central institution in modern Western culture.” (Useful to cite.)

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• 
  

1. Who coined the idea of “the closet” as central to modern sexual subjectivity?
   A) Judith Butler B) Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick C) Michel Foucault D) Gayle Rubin
   Answer: B (Sedgwick)

2. “Gender Trouble” argues that gender is:
   A) A biological fact B) A textual motif C) A performed set of acts D) A historical constant
   Answer: C (performed acts — Butler)

✅ 12. Eco-Criticism (Ecological Literary Theory)

🧩 :

Eco-Criticism studies the relationship between literature and nature/environment.
It looks at how texts depict nature, animals, pollution, ecology, and human impact on Earth.

“It gives voice to nature and criticizes human-centered thinking (anthropocentrism).”

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🧠  Thinkers:

• Cheryll Glotfelty – Defined eco-criticism as “the study of literature and the physical environment.”

• Lawrence Buell – The Environmental Imagination

• Greg Garrard – Ecocriticism (key textbook)

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💡 :

• Human vs. Nature conflict

• Environmental ethics and sustainability

• Nature writing (Wordsworth, Thoreau, etc.)

Example: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson warned about ecological destruction.

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✅ 13. Postmodernism

🧩 :

Postmodernism rejects the idea of one single truth or meaning.
It says reality is fragmented, subjective, and full of contradictions.

“There is no single meaning — everything is multiple and uncertain.”

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🧠 Thinkers:

• Jean-François Lyotard – “Incredulity towards metanarratives.”

• Jean Baudrillard – Simulacra and Simulation → reality replaced by copies (media images).

• Linda Hutcheon – A Poetics of Postmodernism → irony, parody, metafiction.

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💡 Features:

• Parody, irony, pastiche

• Fragmentation and chaos

• Intertextuality (texts within texts)

• Metafiction (fiction about fiction)

Ex: Midnight’s Children (Rushdie) – mixes history, fantasy, irony, and parody.

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✅ 14. Neo-Aristotelian (Chicago School of Criticism)

🧩 :

Founded in the 1940s–50s at the University of Chicago, this school revived Aristotle’s Poetics — focusing on plot, character, theme, and unity.

“A work of art should be judged by how well its elements work together.”

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🧠  Thinkers:

• R.S. Crane – Leader of the Chicago Critics.

• Elder Olson, Richard McKeon – Members.

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💡 :

• Text as an organic whole.

• Emphasis on form, structure, and purpose (like Aristotle’s beginning–middle–end).

• Rejects personal emotions or biography.

Example: Studying Oedipus Rex for how plot and character create tragedy.

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✅ 15. Cambridge School of Criticism

🧩 :

Founded at Cambridge University (UK) in the 1920s–30s — they focused on close reading, moral interpretation, and practical criticism.

“Criticism should focus on the text — not the author or history.”

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🧠  Thinkers:

• I.A. Richards – Practical Criticism (1929)

• F.R. Leavis – The Great Tradition (moral seriousness in literature)

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💡 :

• Reading poems without author name or background (to test pure response).

• Literature as moral and cultural education.

Ex: Close reading of poetry — analyzing tone, imagery, irony.

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✅ 16. Formalism (Russian Formalism)

🧩 :

Formalism studies the form, structure, and style of literature — how it’s written, not what it says.

“Art makes language strange — that’s what makes it literary.”

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🧠 Thinkers:

• Viktor Shklovsky – Art as Technique → concept of defamiliarization (making familiar things strange).

• Roman Jakobson, Boris Eichenbaum

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💡 :

• Literary devices, rhythm, syntax, imagery

• “How” a text means, not “what” it means

• No biography, history, or psychology — only language

Ex: Studying rhyme and metaphor in a poem instead of author’s life.

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✅ 17. Phenomenology

🧩 :

Phenomenology studies how we experience things — how meaning is formed in the mind of the perceiver (reader or character).

“Meaning exists in the act of perception — between text and reader.”

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🧠 Thinkers:

• Edmund Husserl – founder of phenomenology.

• Roman Ingarden, Wolfgang Iser (reader-response theorists influenced by it).

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💡:

• Conscious experience of reading.

• How reader interprets text based on awareness.

Ex: How a reader “feels” the tragedy of Hamlet — not the plot, but the inner experience.

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✅ 18. Subaltern Studies

🧩 :

Subaltern Studies examines voices of the oppressed, especially in colonial and postcolonial societies.
It asks: How can the marginalized speak?

“History is written by the powerful; subaltern studies seeks to recover voices of the powerless.”

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🧠  Thinkers:

• Ranajit Guha – Founder of the Subaltern Studies group.

• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak – Can the Subaltern Speak?

• Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee

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💡 :

• Colonialism, class, caste, gender oppression

• Representation of marginalized voices (peasants, women, colonized)

Ex: Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe) — showing African voices against colonial narrative.