Literary Approaches

• Literary Approach, or literary criticism, is an interpretation, analysis and judgement of a text
• Literary approach helps a reader engage with or challenge that writing
• Feminist Literary Criticism - critique literature while considering how it is portrayed and influenced by patriarchal narratives
• Formalism Literary Theory - focuses on the text itself or stylistic purity of a work of literature rather than its social contexts and authorial intent
• Feminist Literary Criticism : The Female Experience

  Formalism Literary Theory : Narrative techniques, structure
• Marxist Literary Criticism - examines how literature becomes a site for ideological battles and propaganda, and how it portrays the class struggles and conditions of the world
• Queer Theory - critiques the representation of LGBTQIA+ identities and themes in literature, often challenging heteronormative persepectives, and binary categorizations of gender and sexuality
• Marxist Literary Criticism : Powerless vs Powerful

  Queer Theory : Historical Silences, Closet
• Reader Response - the readers' interpretation of the text, and how activley engaged they are in the creation of its meaning
• Implied Reader - the reader the text's expects to be reacted and interpreted to
• Literary Criticism can broaden a reader's understanding of an author's work by summarizing, interpreting and exploring its value
• Doing Literary Criticism will help you:

  • make better sense of the work
  • form judgements about it
  • study ideas from different points of view
  • and determine to yourself if a literary work is worth reading
• Literary criticism recognizes that different people view works differently and their interpretation may change over time
• Reading a text through the lens of literary theory:

  • provides a new persepective to better understand literature
  • learn more about authors' intentions
  • improve the quality of literature for both authors and readers
• 5 Literary Approaches

  • Feminist Literary Criticism
  • Formalist Literary Theory
  • Marxist Literary Criticism
  • Queer Theory
  • Reader Response