Module 2. Literary Theories

THEORIES
in
LITERATURE
OBJECTIVES
✓ Defined literary theory and
literary criticism
✓ Learned the different theories in
literature.
✓ Understood the functions of
literary theories in the study of
literature
2
Literary
Criticism
Literary Criticism
justification
analysis or judgment of the work of art
Purpose of criticism
(1) justifies one’s own work or to explain it and its underlying
principles to an uncomprehending audience
(2) to justify imaginative art in a world that tends to find its value
questionable
(3) to describe rules for writers and to legislate taste for the
audience
(4) to interpret works to readers who might otherwise fail to
understand or appreciate them
(5) to judge works by clearly defined standards of evaluation
(6) to discover and apply the principles which describe the
foundations of good art
“
Literary Criticism is the
application of critical
theory in a literary text.
(Tyson, 2006)
guides the critic to interpret

the text
5
In other words:
Literary Criticism is a process:
 Analyzing
 Evaluating
 Describing
 Interpreting literature
It can be based on:

 One work
 One author’s entire body of work
 The works of different authors
Literary Theories
 Semiotic / Structuralist Theory
 Deconstruction/Poststructuralist
 Psychoanalytic Theory
 Marxist Criticism and New Historicism
 Feminism
 Queer Theory
7
Semiotic / Structuralist Theory
• Began its movement in 1950’s in France.
• Proponent: Michael Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, and Lacan.
• Major Proponent:
Claude Levi-Strauss – “The Structural Study of Myth”
Roland Barthes
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) – “Father of Structuralism”
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• In the discussion of Eagleton (1996) structuralism, as the
term suggests, is concerned with structures, and more
particularly with examining the general laws by which they
work.
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• Also, in structuralism Barry (2002) clearly discussed that the structures
in question here are those imposed by our way of perceiving the world
and organizing experience, rather than objective entities already
existing in the external world. It follows from this that meaning, or
significance isn't a kind of core or essence inside things: rather,
meaning is always outside.
• structuralism has linguistic background
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BASIC TENET #1
In order to fully understand a concept
or idea one must look on its underlying
elements and structures and see the
common patterns involve.
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Language is not only about the names
Signifier Signified
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BASIC TENET #2
Language is relational. It
cannot be understood in
isolation.
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BINARY
OPPOSITIONS
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BINARY
OPPOSITIONS
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PARADIGMATIC CHAIN
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BASIC TENET #3
Language is constitutive.
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FREEDOM FIGHTERS
TERRORIST
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What kind of literary piece is this? How many lines does it have? How many syllable each lines? What is its idea? Where does it was 32
compared? What senses is used?
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Deconstruction / Post-structuralist
Criticism
-Early 19th century

-Became popular in 1960’s
Proponents:
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
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Criticism
ROLAND BARTHES (1915-1980)
-Confirmed structuralist.
-somehow, he still opposed its ideas.

‘The Death of the Author’
-Author is not the prime source of the work or

piece but instead the readers.
35
Criticism
JACQUES DERRIDA
-French author of the paper.

‘Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the Human
Sciences.
Father of Deconstructionism
-Greatly oppose the limitations provided by structuralism.
“Language is unstable”
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Criticism
37
Criticism
38
Criticism
39
Criticism
40
Criticism
41
Criticism
42
ii
“tokhang ang daigdig” tokhang
TILDE ACUNA ang daigdig ng tula
tokhang tokhang
ang daigdig ang tula ng daigdig
tokhang tokhang
ang tula ang malayang tokhang
tokhang matapat sa sarili
ang daigdig sa tokhang na daigdig
ang tula ng tula
tokhang tokhang
ang daigdig ang tula
ng tula sa daigdig
ang tula tokhang
ng daigdig ang daigdig
tokhang ng tula
ang walang maliw na tokhang tokhang
ang walang kamatayang tokhang
ang tula ng daigdig tokhang 43
iii iv
tokhang tokhang
ang damdaming ang daigdig
malaya
tokhang
sa tula
ang larawang tokhang
buháy ang tula
tokhang sa daigdig
ang búhay
na walang-hanggan
tokhang
tokhang ang daigdig
ang damdamin tokhang
ang larawan ang tula
ang búhay
damdamin daigdig
larawan tula
búhay tokhang
tula
44
tokhang
Criticism
45
Look at ones perspective: what if it talk about himself? (the tree=his decision) (from a little drop of paint = situation) (looks like a dancer = result)
Psychoanalytical Theory
✓ Adams (2011), discussed that the branch of psychology known
as psychoanalysis was originated by the Austrian neurologist
Sigmund Freud in the late nineteenth century
✓ If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we

might simply lie around all day doing nothing. Every human
being has to undergo this repression of what Freud named the
'pleasure principle' by the 'reality principle', but for some of us,
and arguably for whole societies, the repression may become
excessive and make us ill.
46
47
In analyzing a literary text using this theory, based on Barry(2002), these
are the things that Freudian psychoanalytic critics can follow:
1. They give central importance, in literary interpretation, to the

distinction between the conscious and the unconscious mind. They
associate the literary work's 'overt' content with the former, and the
'covert' content with the latter, privileging the latter as being what the
work is 'really' about, and aiming to disentangle the two.
48
2. Hence, they pay close attention to unconscious motives and feelings, whether
these be (a) those of the author, or (b) those of the characters depicted in the
work.
3. They demonstrate the presence in the literary work of classic psychoanalytic

symptoms, conditions, or phases, such as the oral, anal, and phallic stages of
emotional and sexual development in infants.
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50
51
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4. They make large-scale applications of
psychoanalytic concepts to literary history in
general, for example, Harold Bloom's book The
Anxiety of Influence (1973) sees the struggle for
identity by each generation of poets, under the
'threat' of the greatness of its predecessors, as an
enactment of the Oedipus complex.
53
5. They identify a 'psychic' context for the literary work, at the expense of
social or historical context, privileging the individual 'psycho-drama'
above the 'social drama' of class conflict. The conflict between generations
or siblings, or between competing desires within the same individual
looms much larger than conflict between social classes.
54
55
Marxism Criticism
 This approach focuses on ways texts reflect, reinforce,
or challenge the effects of class, power relations, and
social roles.
Literature itself is a social institution and has a specific
ideological function, based on the background and
ideology of the author
It determines whether its social content or its literary
form are progressive
It analyzes the class constructs demonstrated in the
literature
It focuses understanding how power, politics and money
play a role in literary texts and amongst literary
societies and characters
Marxism Criticism
Marxism Criticism
Marxism Criticism
Marxism Criticism
Marxism Criticism
 This approach focuses on ways texts reflect, reinforce,
or challenge the effects of class, power relations, and
social roles.
Literature itself is a social institution and has a specific
ideological function, based on the background and
ideology of the author
It determines whether its social content or its literary
form are progressive
It analyzes the class constructs demonstrated in the
literature
It focuses understanding how power, politics and money
play a role in literary texts and amongst literary
societies and characters
Marxism Criticism
 In analyzing a literary text using this theory, based from
Barry(2002), these are the things that Marxist critics can follow:
1. They make a division between the 'overt' (manifest or surface)

and 'covert' (latent or hidden) content of a literary work (much as
psychoanalytic critics do) and then relate the covert subject
matter of the literary work to basic Marxist themes, such as class
struggle, or the progression of society through various historical
stages, such as, the transition from feudalism to industrial
capitalism.
Marxism Criticism
 2. Another method used by Marxist critics is to
relate the context of a work to the social-class
status of the author. In such cases an assumption
is made (which again is similar to those made by
psychoanalytic critics) that the author is unaware
of precisely what he or she is saying or revealing
in the text.
Marxism Criticism
 3. A third Marxist method is to explain the nature
of a whole literary genre in terms of the social
period which 'produced' it.
Marxism Criticism
 3. A fourth Marxist practice is to relate the
literary work to the social assumptions of
the time in which it is 'consumed', a
strategy which is used particularly in the
later variant of Marxist criticism known
as cultural materialism (see Chapter 9, pp.
182-9).
Marxism Criticism
 4. A fifth Marxist practice is the 'politicisation of literary
form', that is, the claim that literary forms are themselves
determined by political circumstance. For instance, in the
view of some critics, literary realism carries with it an
implicit validation of conservative social structures: for
others, the formal and metrical intricacies of the sonnet and
the iambic pentameter are a counterpart of social stability,
decorum, and order.
Feminism
67
Feminism
✓ According to Queddeng (2013), this is a
challenge to male-centered thinking.
Feminist criticism seeks on the one hand to
investigate and analyze the differing
representations of women and men in
literary texts and, on the other hand, to
rethink literary history by exploring an
often-marginalized tradition of women’s
writing.
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Feminism
✓ Feminist criticism is concerned to question and
challenge conventional notions of masculinity
and femininity; to explore ways in which such
conventions are inscribed in a largely
patriarchal canon; and to consider the extent to
which writing, language and even literary form
itself are themselves bound up with issues of
gender difference.
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Feminism
70
Feminism
Susong-susong-suso
Jing Panganiban
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Feminism
72
Feminism
73
✓ In analyzing a literary text using this theory,
based on Barry(2002), these are the things
feminist critics can follow:
✓ 1. Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery

of texts written by women.
✓ 2. Revalue women's experience.
✓ 3. Examine representations of women in
literature by men and women.
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✓ 4. Challenge representations of women as 'Other', as
'lack', as part of 'nature’.
✓ 5. Examine power relations which obtain in texts and

in life, with a view to breaking them down, seeing,
reading as a political act, and showing the extent of
patriarchy.
✓ 6. Recognize the role of language in making what is

social and constructed seem transparent and 'natural'.
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Queer Theory
“ During the 1980s, the term ‘queer’ was reclaimed by
a new generation of political activists involved in Queer
nation and protest groups such as Act Up and Outrage,
though some lesbian and gay cultural activists and critics
who adopted the term in the 1950s and 1960s continue
to use it to describe their particular sense of marginality
to both mainstream and minority cultures.
In the 1990s, ‘Queer Theory’ designated a radical

rethinking of the relationship between subjectivity,
sexuality and representation.
76
Queer Theory
“
77
Queer Theory
“
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Queer Theory
“
In analyzing a literary text using this theory, based on
Barry(2002), these are the things lesbian/gay critics can
follow: 1. Identify and establish a canon of 'classic'
lesbian/gay writers whose work constitutes a distinct
tradition.
2. Identify lesbian/gay episodes in mainstream work

rather than reading same-sex pairings in non-specific
ways, for instance, as symbolizing two aspects of the
same character (Zimmerman)
79
Queer Theory
“
3. Set up an extended, metaphorical sense of
'lesbian/gay' so that it connotes a moment of
crossing a boundary or blurring a set of
categories. All such 'liminal' moments mirror the
moment of self-identification as lesbian or gay,
which is necessarily an act of conscious
resistance to established norms and
boundaries.
80
Thank you for listeni
81

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THEORIES

guides the critic to interpret

It can be based on:

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) – “Father of Structuralism”

-Early 19th century

Roland Barthes (1915-1980)

-somehow, he still opposed its ideas.

-Author is not the prime source of the work or

-French author of the paper.

✓ If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we

1. They give central importance, in literary interpretation, to the

3. They demonstrate the presence in the literary work of classic psychoanalytic

1. They make a division between the 'overt' (manifest or surface)

✓ 1. Rethink the canon, aiming at the rediscovery

✓ 5. Examine power relations which obtain in texts and

✓ 6. Recognize the role of language in making what is

In the 1990s, ‘Queer Theory’ designated a radical

2. Identify lesbian/gay episodes in mainstream work

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