English for Academic and Professional Purposes
2st Semester 2020-2021
Date:
TOPIC: Approaches in Literary Criticism Week: 3 Learning Sheet: 2
I. OBJECTIVE
At the end of the lesson, the learners CAN…
1.1 Use appropriate language for a specific discipline
1.2 Raise legitimate, contrary views in an appropriate manner.
II. ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
1.1 Summary of Essential Concept
Lesson 1 taught you how to make an objective assessment. This lesson will now lead you to some
critical approaches in writing a critique. The diagram below shows the coverage of this lesson.
Read about the critical approaches. You can highlight some important ideas. You can use these in
expressing your views.
1. Formalist Criticism: This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge that needs
to be examined on its own terms.” All the elements necessary for understanding the work are contained
within the work itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the elements of form—style, structure,
tone, imagery, etc.— that are found within the text. A primary goal for formalist critics is to determine how
such elements work together with the text’s content to shape its effects upon readers.
2. Gender Criticism: This approach “examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of
literary works.” Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism today includes a number of
approaches, including the so-called “masculinist” approach recently advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk
of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have
dominated western thought have resulted, consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined
‘male-produced’ assumptions.” Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and
combatting such attitudes—by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare’s play
Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals of feminist
critics include “analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text” and “examining how the
images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically
kept the sexes from achieving total equality.”
3. Historical Criticism: This approach “seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social,
cultural, and intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography
and milieu.” A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a literary work upon its original
readers.
4. Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that “literature” exists not as an
artifact upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind of a reader. It
attempts “to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a text” and reflects that reading,
like writing, is a creative process.
5. Media criticism: Media criticism is the act of closely examining and judging the media. When we
examine the media and various media stories, we often find instances of media bias. Media bias is the
perception that the media is reporting the news in a partial or prejudiced manner. Media bias occurs when
the media seems to push a specific viewpoint, rather than reporting the news objectively. Keep in mind that
media bias also occurs when the media seems to ignore an important aspect of the story. This is the case in
the news story about the puppies.
6. Marxist criticism focuses on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the
ideological content of literature; because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is political, either
challenging or endorsing (by silence) the status quo, it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency
that “can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London better than William Faulkner,
Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the principles of class struggle
more clearly.” Nonetheless, Marxist criticism “can illuminate political and economic dimensions of
literature other approaches overlook.”
7. Structuralism focused on how human behavior is determined by social, cultural and psychological
structures. It tended to offer a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines. The
essence of structuralism is the belief that “things cannot be understood in isolation; they have to be seen in
the context of larger structures which contain them. For example, the structuralism analysis of Donne’s
poem, Good Morrow, demands more focus on the relevant genre, the concept of courtly love, rather than on
the close reading of the formal elements of the text.
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1.2 Testing of Knowledge
Summarize what you have read by completing the table with what you understood.
APPROACHES IN WHAT IT IS HOW IT IS DONE
LITERARY CRITICISM (DEFINITION) (TECHNIQUE IN
WRITING)
Example: This approach regards literature A primary goal for formalist
as “a unique form of human critics is to determine how
Formalism knowledge that needs to be elements of form (style,
examined on its own terms.” structure, tone, imagery, etc.)
work together with the text’s
content to shape its effects upon
readers.
1.3 Knowledge Scanning
Since you have learned that it is important to use appropriate language, you can already express
your ideas appropriately.
Let us try to use appropriate language and manner in raising our contrary views about the issue on
“Teenage Pregnancy.”
Target Audience: Students aged 13-19
Purpose: State your views about the issue
Language: Formal and Simple so that the target audience can easily understand it
Directions: Write your stand about the issue and consider the given information. Use terms that are familiar
to students like you. Remember also to apply what you learned in lesson 1. Use the given space. You can
use another sheet if the space is not enough.
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1.4 Integration of Learning
You have learned the following important points in this lesson:
1. One must use appropriate language for a specific discipline.
2. It is important to raise legitimate, contrary views in an appropriate manner.
3. There are different critical approaches that you can apply when making a critique and you
need also to apply the appropriate critical approach in your critique.
LESSON:
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WHAT I WANT TO SAY ABOUT THE LESSON:
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WHAT I FOUND OUT:
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IV. REFLECTION/ACTION
1. As student, how do the literary criticism approaches help you to give your opinions on a certain topic.
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Reference: Saqueton, Grace M. and Uychoco, Marikit Tara A. (2016). English for Academic and Professional
Purposes. Sampaloc, Manila: Rex Book Store, Inc.
Prepared by:
Ms. Jhan Mikaella A. Reyes
Subject Teacher
