English

• Literary criticism


  Comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of works of literature
• Literary criticism


  A study of an individual piece of literature
• Literary criticism is like when people read a book and talk about what they liked or didn't like about it
• Types of Literary Criticism

  • Formalism
  • Structuralism
  • Historicism
  • Feminism
  • Moralism
  • Marxism
  • Reader's Response
• Formalism


  • Seeks out meaning from a work by giving attention to the form and structure of a work and literary devices operating in it
  • All the elements necessary for understanding the work must be present on the work itself
  • The elements of form—style, structure, tone, imagery, etc. — must be in the work
• Form


  The structure, style, and organization of a literary work, including elements such as language, plot, characterization, setting, and imagery
• Close Reading


  A method of literary analysis which focuses on the specific details of a passage or text in order to discern some deeper meaning present in it
• Defamiliarization


  The artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way
• Poetic Foot

  • Iamb - unstressed, stressed
  • Trochee - stressed, unstressed
  • Dactyl - stressed, unstressed, unstressed
  • Anapest - unstressed, unstressed, stressed
  • Spondee - stressed, stressed
• Structuralism


  • Focuses on analyzing the underlying structures that shape human thought, behavior, and culture
  • A type of textual research, that literary critics use to interpret texts
  • Focuses on breaking down mental processes into most basic components
  • Sought to analyze the adult mind
  • Works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel
• Structuralism is like paying attention to how a book is written rather than just the story
• Post-Structuralism


  • Only focuses to respond in structuralism alone
  • Questions and challenges these structures, emphasizing the multiplicity of truths and the dismantling of oppressive power structures
  • There were no realities or truths; all such elements have to be understood as constructions
• Semiotics


  • A theory of communication, interpretation, and literacy
  • The study of how meaning is created
  • Study of signs and their meaning in society
• Sign


  • Composed of both a signifier and a signified
  • Any motion, gesture, image, sound, pattern, or event that conveys meaning
• Signifier


  Physical or sensory that stands for something else (the word ocean)
• Signified


  The concept or meaning that the signifier represents (image of an ocean)
• Referent


  Something which a sign refers to (a physical object, an actual ocean)
• Binary Opposition


  A pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning
• Narrative Structure


  • Refers to which a story is organized and presented to the reader or audience
  • The content of the story
  • Freytag's Pyramid
• Intertextuality


  • The shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies or by interconnections between similar or related works perceived by an audience or reader
  • Refers to any connection between two or more pieces of media
• Synchronic


  • Having reference to the facts of a linguistic system as it exists at one point in time without reference to its history
  • The geographic study of language
• Diachronic


  • Relating to the changes in a linguistic system between successive points in time; historical
  • Historical study of language
• Langue


  • The language system shared by speech community
  • The genuine topic of linguists
• Parole


  Signifies the act of speaking in actual situations by an individual
• Enounce


  It refers to the actual word uttered
• Enonciation


  It refers to the act of pronouncing words or parts of words clearly
• Phones


  The actual sound of a word that you can hear and is represented in phonology with square brackets surrounding it
• Phonemes


  The mental image we store in our brains of the specific word and is associated with the sound of the word
• Metaphor


  The expression of an understanding of one concept in terms of another concept, where there is some similarity between the two
• Metonymy


  An object of idea is referred to by the name of something closely associated with it, as opposed to by its own name
• Syntagmatic


  It involves a sequence of signs that together create meaning
• Associative


  Involves signs that can replace each other, usually changing the meaning of the substitution
• Vladimir Propp's Seven Archetypes

  • The Hero
  • The Princess
  • The Villain
  • The Dispatcher
  • The Helper
  • The Donor
  • The False Hero
• Historicism


  • Includes author's biography
  • Investigates how plot details, settings, and characters of the work reflect
  • Analyzes literature in light of historical evidence, author's life, and social circumstances
  • Originating in the 17th century, it gained popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries
  • Influenced by Protestant Reformation ideology
• Historicism


  • Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species
  • Mark Twain
• Feminism


  • The advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes
  • Asks us to use a wide variety of issues related to gender
  • Must include feminine consciousness/acceptance of the culturally defined gender role
• Feminism is about believing in equality for all genders and looking at how that idea is represented in books
• History of Feminism


  • First Wave (1848-1920) - Women have the right to vote. Suffragettes - women who supported the right to vote. Equal cont
• on of evolutionary theory and whilst contentious to those with opposing viewpoints on the origin of man, its global effect should not be underestimated
• Marktwain: 'The greatest humorist the United States has ever produced'