Definitions of Literary Theories

From digitalhumanities

New Criticism

A literary movement that started in the late 1920s and 1930s and originated in reaction to traditional criticism that new critics saw as largely concerned with matters extraneous to the text, e.g., with the biography or psychology of the author or the work's relationship to literary history. New Criticism proposed that a work of literary art should be regarded as autonomous, and so should not be judged by reference to considerations beyond itself. A poem consists less of a series of referential and verifiable statements about the 'real' world beyond it, than of the presentation and sophisticated organization of a set of complex experiences in a verbal form.
Introduction to Modern Literary Theory, Dr. Kristi Siegel at http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm

Archetypal Criticism

These critics view the genres and individual plot patterns of literature, including highly sophisticated and realistic works, as recurrences of certain archetypes and essential mythic formulae. Archetypes, according to C.G. Jung, are "primordial images"; the "psychic residue" of repeated types of experience in the lives of very ancient ancestors which are inherited in the "collective unconscious" of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in the works of literature (Abrams, p. 10, 112).Dr. Siegel

Structuralism/Semiotics

At its simplest, structuralism claims that the nature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself, and in fact is determined by all the other elements involved in that situation... "By this formulation, "any activity, from the actions of a narrative to not eating one's peas with a knife, takes place within a system of differences and has meaning only in its relation to other possible activities within that system, not to some meaning that emanates from nature or the divine"(Childers & Hentzi, p. 286.).
Semiotics, simply put, is the science of signs. Semiology proposes that a great diversity of our human action and productions--our bodily postures and gestures, the the social rituals we perform, the clothes we wear, the meals we serve, the buildings we inhabit--all convey "shared" meanings to members of a particular culture, and so can be analyzed as signs which function in diverse kinds of signifying systems.
Dr. Siegel

Reader response

Phenomenology

1. A philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness. 2. A movement based on this, originated about 1905 by Edmund Husserl.

Hermeneutics

The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text.

Deconstruction

A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings: “In deconstruction, the critic claims there is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various, often mutually irreconcilable, ‘virtual texts’ constructed by readers in their search for meaning” (Rebecca Goldstein).

Psychoanalysis

The method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts, in order to free psychic energy for mature love and work.

Feminism

"Feminism is a collection of social theories, political movements, and moral philosophies largely motivated by or concerned with the liberation of women from subordination to men. Themes explored in feminism include patriarchy, stereotyping, sexual objectification and oppression." Wikipedia. Feminist criticism applies these themes to the experience women have while reading and writing literature. Feminist theorists look closely at how women have been signified as "other" in literature and the cultural meanings of those implications. Jack Lynch of Rutgers provides valuable links to Feminism and Women's Literature at [1]

Political

Of, relating to, or dealing with the structure or affairs of government, politics, or the state.

Dialogical Criticism

covering a diverse set of critical practices that ... The discussion of dialogical criticism is restricted here to Bakhtin as ... sociocritique.mcgill.ca/theorie/dcriticism.htm

New Historicism

is an approach to literary criticism and literary theory based on the premise that a literary work should be considered a product of the time, place and circumstances of its composition rather than as an isolated creation. It had its roots in a reaction to the "New Criticism" of formal analysis of works of literature that were seen by a new generation of professional readers as taking place in a vacuum. New Historicism developed in the 1980s, primarily through the work of the critic Stephen Greenblatt, and gained widespread influence in the 1990s. Answers.com

Many definitions found at Answers.com [Answers.com] --Mccwen31 18:20, 18 February 2007 (PST)