CNF WEEK 1

• Critique


  (n) an analysis and evaluation of a subject, situation, literary work, etc.
• Critique


  (v) to analyze and evaluate a subject, situation, literary work, etc.
• Memoir


  Focus on an individual's subjective reflection about events that he/she experienced
• Memoir


  • Filled with vivid descriptions and the writer's own interpretations of the experience
  • Shorter because the writer includes only specific events and need not to be written chronologically
• Where are memories stored in the brain? New research suggests they may be in the connections between your brain cells.
• Global book reading statistics for 2022 and 2023 (survey data).
• Literary Criticism


  Enables the readers to craft interpretative, yet scholarly judgments about the specific literary nonfiction
• Historical/Biographical Approach


  Critics see works as the reflection of an author's life and times (or of the characters' life and times)
• Checklist of Historical Questions


  • When was the work written? When was it published? How was it received by the critics and public and why?
  • What does the work's reception reveal about the standards of taste and value during the time it was published and reviewed?
  • What social attitudes and cultural practices related to the action of the work were prevalent during the time the work was written and published?
  • What kind of power relationships does the word describe, reflect, or embody?
  • How do the power relationships reflected in the literary work manifest themselves in the cultural practices and social institutions prevalent during the time the work was written and published?
  • To what extent can we understand the past as it is reflected in the literary work? To what extent does the work reflect differences from the ideas and values of its time?
• Checklist of Biographical Questions


  • What influences—people, ideas, movements, events—evident in the writer's life does the work reflect?
  • To what extent are the events described in the word a direct transfer of what happened in the writer's actual life?
  • What modifications of the actual events has the writer made in the literary work? For what possible purposes?
  • What are the effects of the differences between actual events and their literary transformation in the poem, story, play, or essay?
  • What has the author revealed in the work about his/her characteristic modes of thought, perception, or emotion? What place does this work have in the artist's literary development and career?
• Moral/Philosophical Approach


  Moral / philosophical critics believe that the larger purpose of literature is to teach morality and to probe philosophical issues
• Checklist of Moral/Didactic Critical Questions

  • What enduring truth is revealed in the theme of this work?
  • How are the actions of the protagonist rewarded and the actions of the antagonist punished?
• Formalism/New Criticism


  A formalistic approach to literature, once called New Criticism, involves a close reading of the text. Formalistic critics believe that all information essential to the interpretation of a work must be found within the work itself; there is no need to bring in outside information about the history, politics, or society of the time, or about the author's life.
• Checklist of Formalistic Critical Questions


  • How is the work structured or organized? How does it begin? Where does it go next? How does it end?
  • What is the work's plot? How is its plot related to its structure? What is the relationship of each part of the work to the work as a whole? How are the parts related to one another?
  • Who is narrating or telling what happens in the work? How is the narrator, speaker, or character revealed to readers? How do we come to know and understand this figure?
  • Who are the major and minor characters, what do they represent, and how do they relate to one another?
  • What are the time and place of the work—it's setting? How is the setting related to what we know of the characters and their actions? To what extent is the setting symbolic?
  • What kind of language does the author use to describe, narrate, explain, or otherwise create the world of the literary work? More specifically, what images, similes, metaphors, symbols appear in the work? What is their function? What meanings do they convey?
• Marxist Criticism


  A type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of work and whose practitioners emphasize the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate, and even challenge the prevailing social order.
• Checklist of Marxist/Cultural Criticism


  • What is the economic status of the characters?
  • What happens to them as a result of this status?
  • How do they fare against economic and political odds?
  • What other conditions stemming from their class does the writer emphasize?(e.g., poor education, poor nutrition, poor health care, inadequate opportunity)
  • To what extent does the work fail by overlooking the economic, social and political implications of its material?
  • In what other ways does economic determinism affect the work? How should readers consider the story in today's modern economic setting (nationally, globally, etc.)?
• Read the text "A Celebration of Grandfathers" Memoir by Rudolfo A. Anaya
• Present an analysis/critique of the text "A Celebration of Grandfathers" Memoir by Rudolfo A. Anaya.
• You may consider the following points in writing your analysis: Introduction- present the article and source, writer, thesis statement of the article/major points of the writer, and your opinion about the text. Body- the writers main ideas and your arguments