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Using Critical Theory

“I know of no other book on critical theory for beginning and intermediate

students that offers the same depth and breath. It offers thorough and clear
applications of each theory while its rhetorical tone puts students at ease as
they attempt to think about the world in new and different ways ... [this] is
the perfect text for students new to critical theory and stands in a league of its
own.”
Gretchen Cline, Muskegon Community College, USA

Explaining both why theory is important and how to use it, Lois Tyson
introduces beginning students of literature to this often daunting area in a
friendly and approachable style. The new edition of this textbook is clearly
structured with chapters based on major theories that students are expected to
cover in their studies.
Key features include:

coverage of all major theories including psychoanalysis, Marxism,

feminism, lesbian/gay/queer theories, postcolonial theory, African
American theory, and a new chapter on New Criticism (formalism)
practical demonstrations of how to use these theories on short literary
works selected from canonical authors including William Faulkner and
Alice Walker
a new chapter on reader-response theory that shows students how to
use their personal responses to literature while avoiding typical pitfalls
new sections on cultural criticism for each chapter
new “further practice” and “further reading” sections for each chapter
 a useful “next-step” appendix that suggests additional literary examples
for extra practice.

Comprehensive, easy to use, and fully updated throughout, Using Critical

Theory is the ideal first step for students beginning degrees in literature,
composition, and cultural studies.
Lois Tyson is Professor of English at Grand Valley State University, USA.
She is the author of Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide (2nd
edition, Routledge, 2006).
Using Critical Theory

How to read and write about literature

Second edition

Lois Tyson
First edition published as Learning for a Diverse World 2001
by Routledge
This edition published as Using Critical Theory 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2001, 2011 Lois Tyson
The right of Lois Tyson to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tyson, Lois, 1950-
Using critical theory: how to read and write about literature / Lois Tyson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Criticism. 2. Critical theory. I. Title.
PN98.S6T973 2011
801’.95 – dc22
2011008274
ISBN: 978-0-415-61616-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-61617-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-80509-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Taylor & Francis Books
For Mac Davis and the late Stephen Lacey,
who both know that a good teacher is one
who remains a good student.
Contents

Preface for instructors

Acknowledgments
Permissions

1 Critical theory and you

What does critical theory have to do with me?

What will I learn about critical theory from this book?
Critical theory and cultural criticism
Three questions about interpretation most students ask
My interpretation is my opinion, so how can it be wrong?
Do authors deliberately use concepts from critical theories when they write literary works?
How can we interpret a literary work without knowing what the author intended the work to
mean?
Why feeling confused can be a good sign

2 Using concepts from reader-response theory to understand our own

literary interpretations

Why should we learn about reader-response theory?

Response vehicles
Personal identification
The familiar character
The familiar plot event
 The familiar setting
Response exercises
Personal-identification exercise
Familiar-character exercise
Familiar-plot-event exercise
Familiar-setting exercise
How our personal responses can help or hinder interpretation
The “symbolic leap”
The difference between representing and endorsing human behavior
Using our personal responses to generate paper topics
Food for further thought
Thinking it over
Reader-response theory and cultural criticism
Taking the next step
Exercises for further practice
Suggestions for further reading

3 Using concepts from New Critical theory to understand literature

Why should we learn about New Critical theory?

Basic concepts
Theme
Formal elements
Unity
Close reading and textual evidence
Interpretation exercises
Appreciating the importance of tradition: Interpreting “Everyday Use”
Recognizing the presence of death: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily”
Understanding the power of alienation: Interpreting “The Battle Royal”
Respecting the importance of nonconformity: Interpreting “Don't Explain”
Responding to the challenge of the unknown: Interpreting “I started Early—Took my Dog”
Food for further thought
Thinking it over
New Critical theory and cultural criticism
Taking the next step
Questions for further practice
Suggestions for further reading
4 Using concepts from psychoanalytic theory to understand literature

Why should we learn about psychoanalytic theory?

Basic concepts
The family
Repression and the unconscious
The defenses
Core issues
Dream symbolism
Interpretation exercises
Analyzing characters’ dysfunctional behavior: Interpreting “Everyday Use”
Exploring a character's insanity: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily”
Understanding dream images in literature: Interpreting “I started Early—Took my Dog”
Recognizing a character's self-healing: Interpreting “Don't Explain”
Using psychoanalytic concepts in service of other theories: Interpreting “The Battle Royal”
Food for further thought
Thinking it over
Psychoanalytic theory and cultural criticism
Taking the next step
Questions for further practice
Suggestions for further reading

5 Using concepts from Marxist theory to understand literature

Why should we learn about Marxist theory?

Basic concepts
Classism
Capitalism
Capitalist ideologies
The role of religion
Interpretation exercises
Understanding the operations of capitalism: Interpreting “Everyday use”
Recognizing the operations of the American Dream: Interpreting “The Battle Royal”
Analyzing the operations of classism: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily”
Resisting classism: Interpreting “Don't Explain”
Learning when not to use Marxist concepts: Resisting the temptation to interpret “I started Early
—Took my Dog”
Food for further thought
Thinking it over
 Marxist theory and cultural criticism
Taking the next step
Questions for further practice
Suggestions for further reading

6 Using concepts from feminist theory to understand literature

Why should we learn about feminist theory?

Basic concepts
Patriarchy
Traditional gender roles
The objectification of women
Sexism
The “cult of ‘true womanhood’”
Interpretation exercises
Rejecting the objectification of women: Interpreting “The Battle Royal”
Resisting patriarchal ideology: Interpreting “Don't Explain”
Recognizing a conflicted attitude toward patriarchy: Interpreting “Everyday Use”
Analyzing a sexist text: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily”
Understanding patriarchy's psychological oppression of women: Interpreting “I started Early—
Took my Dog”
Food for further thought
Thinking it over
Feminist theory and cultural criticism
Taking the next step
Questions for further practice
Suggestions for further reading

7 Using concepts from lesbian, gay, and queer theories to understand

literature

Why should we learn about lesbian, gay, and queer theories?

Basic concepts
Heterosexism
Homophobia
Homosocial activities
The woman-identified woman
Homoerotic imagery
Queer theory
 Interpretation exercises
Rejecting lesbian stereotypes: Interpreting “Don't Explain”
Analyzing homophobia: Interpreting “The Battle Royal”
Recognizing the woman-identified woman in a heterosexual text: Interpreting “Everyday Use”
Using queer theory: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily”
Drawing upon context: Interpreting “I started Early—Took my Dog”
Food for further thought
Thinking it over
Lesbian, gay, and queer theories and cultural criticism
Taking the next step
Questions for further practice
Suggestions for further reading

8 Using concepts from African American theory to understand

literature

Why should we learn about African American theory?

Basic concepts
African American culture and literature
Racism
Forms of racism
Double consciousness
Interpretation exercises
Analyzing the overt operations of institutionalized racism: Interpreting “The Battle Royal”
Recognizing the “less visible” operations of institutionalized racism: Interpreting “Don't
Explain”
Understanding the operations of internalized racism: Interpreting “Everyday Use”
Exploring the function of black characters in white literature: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily”
Learning when not to use African American concepts: Resisting the temptation to interpret “I
started Early—Took my Dog”
Food for further thought
Thinking it over
African American theory and cultural criticism
Taking the next step
Questions for further practice
Suggestions for further reading

9 Using concepts from postcolonial theory to understand literature

 Why should we learn about postcolonial theory?
Basic concepts
Colonialist ideology
The colonial subject
Anticolonialist resistance
Interpretation exercises
Understanding colonialist ideology: Interpreting “The Battle Royal”
Analyzing the colonial subject: Interpreting “Everyday Use”
Exploring the influence of cultural categories: Interpreting “A Rose for Emily”
Appreciating anticolonialist resistance: Interpreting “Don't Explain”
Recognizing the othering of nature: Interpreting “I started Early—Took my Dog”
Food for further thought
Thinking it over
Postcolonial theory and cultural criticism
Taking the next step
Questions for further practice
Suggestions for further reading

10 Holding on to what you've learned

A shorthand overview of our eight critical theories

A shorthand overview of our literary interpretation exercises
“Everyday Use”
“The Battle Royal”
“A Rose for Emily”
“Don't Explain”
“I started Early—Took my Dog”
A shorthand overview of the range of perspectives offered by each
theory
Critical theory and cultural criticism revisited
Critical theory and an ethics for a diverse world

Appendices

Appendix A: “I started Early—Took my Dog” (Emily Dickinson, c.

1862)
Appendix B: “A Rose for Emily” (William Faulkner, 1931)
Appendix C: “The Battle Royal” (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
Appendix D: “Everyday Use” (Alice Walker, 1973)
Appendix E: “Don't Explain” (Jewelle Gomez, 1987)
Appendix F: Additional literary works for further practice

Index
Preface for instructors

If you're planning to use this book in your undergraduate classroom, then you
know that critical theory is no longer considered an abstract discipline for a
select group of graduate students, as it was fifteen or twenty years ago.
Personally, I don't think critical theory should ever have been limited to that
mode of thinking or to that audience. In its most concrete and, I think, most
meaningful form, critical theory supplies us with a remarkable collection of
pedagogical tools to help students, regardless of their educational
background, develop their ability to reason logically; to formulate an
argument; to grasp divergent points of view; to make connections among
literature, history, the society in which they live, and their personal
experience; and of special importance on our shrinking planet, to explore
human diversity in its most profound and personal sense: as diverse ways of
defining oneself and one's world. From this perspective, critical theory is an
appropriate pedagogical resource not only for advanced literature courses, but
for the kinds of meat-and-potatoes courses that many of us teach: foundation-
level literature courses; introduction-to-literary-studies courses; diversity
courses; and composition courses that stress critical thinking, social issues, or
cultural diversity.

Creating pedagogical options

For most of us who see the pedagogical potential of critical theory, the
question then becomes: “How can I adapt critical frameworks to make them
useful to students new to the study of literature and to the social issues
literature raises?” That is precisely the question Using Critical Theory
attempts to answer by offering you: (1) a reader-response chapter to help
students recognize and make interpretive use of their personal responses to
literature; (2) seven carefully selected theoretical approaches to literary
interpretation—introducing the fundamentals of New Critical,
psychoanalytic, feminist, lesbian/gay/queer, African American, and
postcolonial theories—from which to choose; and (3) five different ways to
use each of these approaches through the vehicle of our “Interpretation
exercises,” the step-by-step development of sample interpretations of the five
literary works reprinted at the end of this book. Now, the key word here is
choice. I think we do our best teaching when we adapt our materials to our
own pedagogical goals and teaching styles. For example, you can employ
Using Critical Theory to structure an entire course, to create a unit or units on
specific theoretical approaches, or to supplement the teaching of specific
literary works with an increased repertoire of possible interpretations. To
provide maximum flexibility, each chapter is written to stand on its own, so
you can choose which of the selected theoretical frameworks you want to use.
Each interpretation exercise is also written to stand on its own, so you can
choose which of the selected literary works you want to use.
I hope the structure of these chapters will facilitate your own creation of
classroom activities and homework assignments. For example, students can
work in small groups to find the textual data required by a given
interpretation exercise, and that activity can be organized in a number of
ways. Each group can work on a different section of the same interpretation
exercise, thereby each contributing a piece of the puzzle to a single
interpretation. Or each group can work on a different interpretation exercise
from a single chapter, thereby using concepts from the same theory to
complete interpretation exercises for different literary works. Or if students
feel they fully understand a given interpretation exercise, you might invite
them to develop one of the alternative interpretations suggested in the
“Focusing your essay” section at the end of each interpretation exercise or to
develop an interpretation of their own. Finally, once the class has become
acquainted with a few different theories, different groups of students can use
different theoretical approaches to collect textual data from the same literary
work, thereby getting an immediate sense of the ways in which concepts from
different critical theories can foreground different aspects of the same literary
work or foreground the same aspect of a literary work for different purposes.
Similarly, the “Basic concepts” sections of Chapters 3 through 9 can be
used to generate activities by having students apply these concepts to short
literary works other than those used in this book. For example, students can
be given—singly, in pairs, or in small groups—one of the basic concepts of a
single theory and asked to find all the ways in which that concept is
illustrated in or relevant to any literary work you assign. Or you might allow
students to select one of the basic concepts of a theory the class is studying
and explain to their classmates how an understanding of that concept helps
illuminate the lyrics of a song of their own choosing, a magazine
advertisement, a video game, or some other production of popular culture.
To whatever uses you put this book, I think you'll find that the seven
theoretical approaches it introduces, taken in any combination, provide a
comparative experience, a sense of how our perceptions can change when we
change the lens through which we're looking. In this way, these theories, all
of which are in current academic use, can help students develop a concrete,
productive understanding of the diverse world in which we live. Our five
literary works—Emily Dickinson's “I started Early—Took my Dog” (c.
1862), William Faulkner's “A Rose for Emily” (1931), Ralph Ellison's “The
Battle Royal” (1952), Alice Walker's “Everyday Use” (1973), and Jewelle
Gomez's “Don't Explain” (1987)—were chosen because each lends itself to
our selected theories in ways that are accessible to novices and that are
typical of the kinds of perspectives on literature each theory offers us. Thus,
each interpretation exercise serves as a template for future literary analysis. In
addition, our five literary works are heavily weighted in favor of fiction
because I have found that most novices respond most readily to stories and,
indeed, most of the drama and much of the poetry we offer our introductory-
level literature and composition students have a perceptible narrative
dimension. Thus, the interpretive skills and strategies students learn here will
carry over to the interpretation of works from other literary genres, genres
which are represented in each chapter's “Questions for further practice” and
in the “Literary works for further practice” provided in Appendix F.

Responding to pedagogical challenges

Of course, Using Critical Theory is not intended as a complete introduction-
to-literature textbook: for example, it does not define such basic literary
vocabulary as plot, character, setting, stage directions, rhyme, or meter.
Nevertheless, the book addresses several common problems encountered by
students new to the study of literature, problems which I suspect you've
encountered in the classroom many times. For example, Chapter 1, “Critical
theory and you,” explains, among other things, the difference between an
opinion and a thesis, the purpose of a literary interpretation, and how we can
analyze the meaning of a literary work without knowing what the author
intended. Chapter 2, “Using concepts from reader-response theory to
understand our own literary interpretations,” includes an explanation of the
difference between a symbolic interpretation justified by the literary work
and a symbolic interpretation arbitrarily imposed by a reader's personal
response to the work. This same chapter also explains the difference between
a text's representation of human behavior and its endorsement of that
behavior, which students’ personal responses to a literary work often lead
them to confuse. Chapter 3, “Using concepts from New Critical theory to
understand literature,” aims to solidify students’ understanding of thesis-and-
support argumentation, which remains an area of pedagogical frustration for
many of us. Moreover, the interpretation exercises provided in Chapters 4
through 9, in addition to their primary function as sample literary applications
of our remaining selected theories, are all lessons in close reading, for each
exercise guides students through the process of collecting textual evidence to
support the interpretation at hand. Students are thus encouraged to see the
equal importance of two aspects of current critical practice that they often
mistakenly believe are mutually exclusive: (1) that there is more than one
valid interpretation of a literary text; and (2) that every interpretation requires
adequate textual support. The goal here is to correct a misconception you've
probably encountered in the classroom all too often: once students have
accepted that there is no single correct interpretation of a literary work, they
frequently conclude that their own interpretations do not need to be supported
with textual evidence. Finally, Chapter 10, “Holding on to what you've
learned,” in addition to its other functions, brings students back to the kind of
personal connection that opens Chapter 1: how their study of critical theory
can help them understand, develop, and articulate their personal values within
the context of the changing world in which they live.
Perhaps you will find, as I have, that this last connection—between
students’ sense of themselves as individuals and the cultures that shape them
—is the most valuable connection the study of critical theory can help
students make. For it is a connection that has the capacity to spark
imaginative inquiry in every domain of their education. And it seems to me
that few things motivate students more thoroughly—if we can just find the
keys that open those doors—than their own imaginations.
Acknowledgments

My sincere gratitude goes to the following friends and colleagues for their
many and varied acts of kindness during the writing of this book: the late
Forrest Armstrong, Kathleen Blumreich, Brent Chesley, Patricia Clark,
Dianne Griffin Crowder, Michelle DeRose, Milt Ford, Roger Gilles, Chance
Guyette, Michael Hartnett, Avis Hewitt, Rick Iadonisi, Regina Salmi,
Christopher Shinn, Gary Stark, Veta Tucker, and Brian White.
Special thanks also go to Dean Frederick Antczak; to Grand Valley State
University for its generous financial support of this project; and to my editors
at Routledge, Emma Nugent and Polly Dodson.
Finally, the deepest appreciation is expressed to Hannah Berkowitz,
Jeremy Franceschi, Gretchen Cline, and, especially, Mac Davis for service
above and beyond the call of friendship—and to Lenny Briscoe for his
untiring and invaluable support.
Permissions

“I started early—took my dog” by Emily Dickinson – Reprinted by

permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The
Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979,
1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner – Reproduced with permission of

Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Estate of William
Faulkner, Copyright © William Faulkner 1931.

“Rose for Emily”, copyright © 1930 and renewed 1958 by William

Faulkner, from Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner.
Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

“A Rose for Emily”. Copyright 1930 & renewed 1958 by William

Faulkner, from Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner.
Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

“Battle Royal”, copyright © 1948 by Ralph Ellison, from Invisible Man by

Ralph Ellison. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.

“Everyday Use” from In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women,

copyright © 1973 by Alice Walker, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders. The
publishers would be pleased to hear from any copyright holders not
acknowledged here, so that this acknowledgements page may be amended at
the earliest opportunity.
Chapter 1

Critical theory and you

If you're reading this textbook, then you've probably got a lot on your plate
right now. You might be preparing to enter college. Or you might be in your
first or second year of undergraduate studies. Perhaps you're taking your first
literature course. If you're specializing in literary studies, at this point you
might be a bit concerned about what you've gotten yourself into. If you're not
specializing in literary studies, you might be wondering if you can get away
with skipping this part of the course or putting forth a minimal effort. After
all, you might be thinking, “What does critical theory have to do with me?”
As I hope this book will show you, critical theory has everything to do with
you, no matter what your educational or career plans might be.

What does critical theory have to do with me?

First, most of my students find that the study of critical theory increases their
ability to think creatively and to reason logically, and that's a powerful
combination of vocational skills. You will see, for example, how the skills
fostered by studying critical theory would be useful to lawyers in arguing
their cases and to teachers in managing the interpersonal dynamics that play
out in their classrooms. In fact, as you read the following chapters I think you
will find that critical theory develops your ability to see any given problem
from a variety of points of view, which is a skill worth having no matter what
career you pursue.
As important, if not more important, than your future role on the job
market is your future role as a member of the global community. Many
people are coming to realize that the numerous and diverse cultures
inhabiting planet Earth each has its own history of struggle and achievement
as well as its own part to play on the modern stage of national and world
events. However, while each culture has its own unique heritage, we share
the need to learn to live together, to learn to work with and for one another, if
we want our planet to survive. And the issue becomes more complex when
we realize that cultures don't occupy tidy bins determined by race or ethnicity
alone. In reality, cultures consist of patchworks of overlapping groups that
define themselves in terms of many factors, including race, ethnicity,
religion, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class.
It's easy for each of us to think ourselves tolerant of cultural groups other
than our own, to believe that we are unbiased, without prejudice. But it's not
meaningful to say that we are tolerant of groups about which we know little
or nothing. For as soon as our tolerance is tested we might find that the
tolerance we thought we had doesn't really exist. For example, take a minute
to think about the schools you attended before you entered college. Didn't the
student population of at least one of those schools, if not all of them, divide
itself into social groups based largely on the kinds of cultural factors listed
above? If your school had a diverse student body, didn't students tend to form
close bonds only with members of their own race? Didn't students from
wealthy, socially prominent families tend to stick together? Didn't students
from poorer neighborhoods tend to stick together as well? Didn't students
with strong religious ties tend to be close friends with students of the same
religion? If your school environment was safe enough for gay students to
identify themselves, wasn't there a social group based on gay sexual
orientation, which may have been subdivided into two more groups: gay male
and gay female students? You can see the strength of these cultural ties if
your school had athletic teams made up of students from diverse
backgrounds. The athletes may have bonded with their teammates at school,
but how many of them formed close out-of-school friendships with athletes
of a different race, class, or sexual orientation?
Of course, it seems natural for us to form close ties with people who share
our cultural background because we have so much in common. The
unfortunate thing is that we tend to form only superficial relationships, or
none at all, with people from other cultural groups. And worse, we tend to
classify other groups according to misleading stereotypes that prevent us
from getting to know one another as individuals. We might even find
ourselves looking at members of another group as if they were creatures from
another planet, “not like us” and therefore not as good, not as trustworthy,
and in worst-case scenarios, not as human. One solution to this problem is to
begin to understand one another by learning to see the world from diverse
points of view, by learning what it might be like to “walk a mile in another
person's moccasins.” And though it might sound like a big claim, that is
precisely what critical theory can help us learn because it teaches us to see the
world from multiple perspectives.
Naturally, critical theory has specific benefits for students of literature. For
example, critical theory can increase your understanding of literary texts by
helping you see more in them than you've seen before. And by giving you
more to see in literature, critical theory can make literature more interesting
to read. As you'll see in the following chapters, critical theory can also
provide you with multiple interpretations of the same literary work, which
will increase the possibility of finding interesting essay topics for your
literature classes. Finally, a practice that is increasing in popularity in literary
studies is the application of critical theory to cultural productions other than
literature— for example, to movies, song lyrics, and television shows—and
even to your own personal experience, which will help you see more and
understand more of the world in which you live.

What will I learn about critical theory from this book?

So now that I've been trying to convince you of the value of critical theory for
the last several paragraphs, perhaps it's time to explain in some detail what
critical theory is. If you've looked at the table of contents of this textbook,
you've probably discovered that what is commonly called critical theory
actually consists of several critical theories. And what is most interesting,
each theory focuses our attention on a different area of human experience—
and therefore on a different aspect of literature—and gives us its own set of
concepts with which to understand the world in which we live and the
literature that is part and parcel of our world. Think of each theory as a
different lens or a different pair of eyeglasses through which we see a
different picture of the world and a different view of any literary text we read.
To help you get a feel for how each critical theory changes what we see in a
literary work, here's a brief overview of the theories from which we'll draw in
this book.
 Reader-response theory focuses on how readers make meaning—on what
happens to us as we read a particular literary work. It asks us to analyze how,
exactly, we interact with a given text as we read and interpret it. In Chapter 2
we'll use concepts from this theory to help you understand some of the
personal sources of your own individual interpretations of literature—that is,
to help you understand why each of us tends to interpret particular literary
texts the way we do. For this reason, Chapter 2 won't show you how to
analyze literary texts; instead, it will help you understand the ways in which
we bring our own beliefs and experiences to our literary interpretations. In
addition, Chapter 2 will offer you ways of dealing with the personal,
subjective nature of interpretation. Once you're in touch with the personal
factors influencing your interpretations, you'll be ready to bring that
awareness to subsequent chapters in which we use concepts from different
critical theories to analyze literary works.
Whereas reader-response theory focuses on the experiences of the reader
during the act of reading, New Critical theory focuses exclusively on the
ways in which language operates in a literary text to make meaning. Chapter
3 will provide concepts from New Critical theory to help you interpret
literature thematically—that is, in terms of a literary text's meaning as a
whole concerning general topics about human experience, such as love and
hate, tradition and change, the initiation into adulthood, conformity and
rebellion, and the like. And in order to help you analyze how a text's meaning
is linked to its language, this chapter will help increase your understanding of
such literary devices as, for example, setting, characterization, point of view,
ambiguity, imagery, symbol, and metaphor. Many of you will be familiar
with this approach because it resembles the way we are usually taught to
interpret literary works in high-school or preparatory-school literature
classes. In addition, Chapter 3 will help you improve and expand your ability
to generate a thesis (a debatable opinion that forms the main point of your
interpretation) and to support your thesis with evidence from the literary
work you are interpreting. Taken together, then, Chapters 2 and 3 should help
you develop both the self-awareness and interpretive skills that will serve you
well as you move on to the critical theories offered in the following chapters.
Chapters 4 through 9 introduce you to a range of critical theories that I
believe you will find very interesting as well as very helpful to your study of
literature. In Chapter 4, we'll use concepts from psychoanalytic theory to
interpret literature. Psychoanalytic theory asks us to examine the emotional
causes of the characters’ behavior and to view a given story, poem, or play as
the unfolding of the characters’ personal psychological dramas. In contrast,
Marxist theory, as we'll see in Chapter 5, asks us to look at the ways in which
characters’ behavior and plot events are influenced by the socioeconomic
conditions of the time and place in which the characters live. From a Marxist
perspective, all human experiences, including personal psychology, are
products of the socioeconomic system—which is usually some sort of class
system—in which human beings live. In Chapter 6, we'll see how feminist
theory asks us to look at the ways in which traditional gender roles, which
cast men as naturally dominant and women as naturally submissive, affect
characters’ behavior and plot events. Lesbian, gay, and queer theories, as
Chapter 7 demonstrates, ask us to examine the ways in which literary works
reveal human sexuality as a complex phenomenon that cannot be fully
understood in terms of what is currently defined as heterosexual experience.
In Chapter 8, we'll see how African American theory focuses our attention on
the many different ways in which race and racial issues operate in literary
texts. Postcolonial theory, as we'll see in Chapter 9, asks us to look at the
ways in which literature offers us a view of human experience as the product
of a combination of cultural factors, including race, class, gender, sexual
orientation, and cultural beliefs and customs.
Finally, Chapter 10, “Holding on to what you've learned,” offers shorthand
overviews both of the critical theories you encountered in Chapters 2 through
9 and of the interpretation exercises provided to help you learn to use these
theories. In addition, Chapter 10 revisits the relationship between critical
theory and cultural criticism discussed later in this chapter. Chapter 10 closes
by examining a question implied by our use of reader-response concepts in
Chapter 2, which is also a question raised whenever any critical theory
attempts to promote cultural understanding and the appreciation of cultural
difference: How can critical theory help us understand, develop, and give
voice to our personal values, particularly as those values affect and are
affected by the values of others?
Of course, there are many more critical theories than those introduced here.
For example, in addition to the theories we draw upon in this book, courses in
critical theory may include units on structuralism, deconstruction, new
historicism, rhetorical criticism, or Jungian theory, among others. The
theories I've chosen for you were selected because I believe you will find
them most helpful as you develop your understanding of literature and most
relevant to your life. And these theories will lay a strong foundation for
further study in critical theory, should you choose to pursue your education in
that direction.
Analogously, the five literary texts that appear at the end of this book
(Appendices A–E) and are used for our interpretation exercises were chosen
for specific reasons. Each text shows you something useful about our selected
theories. And collectively, these literary works offer a range of authorial
voices in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation. These works include
Emily Dickinson's poem #520, “I started Early—Took my Dog” (c. 1862);
William Faulkner's story “A Rose for Emily” (1931); Ralph Ellison's “The
Battle Royal,” which is the first chapter of his well-known novel Invisible
Man (1952); a story by Alice Walker entitled “Everyday Use” (1973); and
Jewelle Gomez's story “Don't Explain” (1987). Although, as you can see, we
focus primarily on fiction, our theories can be used to interpret any genre of
literature. For like short stories and novels, most plays and poems contain a
narrative element—they tell a story—and stories usually offer us the best
starting places for learning to use concepts from critical theory.
One secret for developing a good initial relationship to critical theory is to
not expect of yourself more than you should at this stage of the game. For
example, although you should be able to understand the interpretation
exercises I offer you in each chapter—or be able to ask questions about those
exercises that will allow your instructor to help you—you should not expect
yourself, at first, to come up with similar interpretations completely on your
own. At this point in your acquaintance with theory, it is quite natural that
you should need some guidelines to help you develop your own theoretical
interpretations. The “Interpretation exercises” found in Chapters 3 through 9
offer those guidelines: each interpretation exercise demonstrates a different
aspect of the theory at hand and thus serves as a model for analyzing
literature on your own.
In addition, to help insure that you take one step at a time, each chapter
presents only the basic concepts of the theory it addresses. This will help you
get a firm grasp of the theory at hand without overwhelming you with the
kind of full-blown explanations of each theory you would need in a course
devoted exclusively to critical theory. If you want to learn more about a
particular theory, I suggest you try “Taking the next step” at the end of any
chapter that especially interests you. There you will find “Questions for
further practice,” to help you gain experience using the theoretical concepts
you've learned in that chapter by applying them to additional literary works,
and a selected bibliography, “Suggestions for further reading,” to guide you
to additional discussions of the critical theory at hand. Finally, Appendix F,
“Additional literary works for further practice,” recommends a range of
specific titles that lend themselves readily to our selected critical theories.
To customize Using Critical Theory for your own purposes, you can study
just those theories that interest you or that your instructor selects for you.
Each chapter is written to stand on its own and will make sense without
requiring you to read other chapters. Once you have read the chapters you've
selected, it might also be useful to “read across” those chapters, so to speak,
by rereading the different interpretations of the same literary work offered in
different chapters. See what happens, for example, as Alice Walker's
“Everyday Use” is interpreted through the successive lenses of the theories
you've studied. You will notice, especially if you look at all of the
interpretation exercises offered for any one of our literary pieces, that some
theories work better than others for analyzing a particular text. Indeed,
literary works tend to lend themselves more readily to interpretation through
some theoretical frameworks than through others. For this reason, our
interpretation exercises analyze our sample literary works in the order in
which those works are most accessible to the theory being used in that
chapter.
Clearly, the ability to pick the appropriate theory for a literary work you
want to interpret, or to pick an appropriate literary work for a theory you
want to use, is a skill worth developing. For most of us, it's a question of trial
and error. We experimentally apply different theories to a piece of literature
we want to analyze until we find one that yields the most interesting and
perhaps the most thorough interpretation. Of course, the ability to use any
given theory to analyze any given text differs from person to person, so the
key is to find the combination of theory and literary text that works for you.
In fact, you might see some of the ways in which different readers can use the
same theory to come up with different readings of the same literary work if
you or your instructor interprets any of our five literary texts in ways that
differ from the interpretation exercises I offer you.

Critical theory and cultural criticism

One of the most eye-opening and enjoyable features of critical theory is the
way it can be used to practice cultural criticism. Contrary to what you might
be thinking, cultural criticism does not refer to the evaluation of works of
“high” culture, such as opera, ballet, symphonic music, or Renaissance
painting. Rather, cultural criticism sees works of “high” and “popular”
culture as equally important expressions of the societies that produce them.
Indeed, cultural criticism often crosses the line between the two, for instance,
by analyzing a work of “high” culture alongside a popular version of that
work in order to see what similarities and differences the two can reveal
about the societies from which they emerged. Think, for example, of
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595) and West Side Story (directed by
Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961), a musical film adaptation of
Shakespeare's play set amidst New York City gang rivalry in the late 1950s.
Cultural criticism focuses primarily, however, on works of popular culture,
on productions intended for popular consumption, such as movies, television
and radio shows, song lyrics, “pulp” fiction, cartoons, games, toys, television
and magazine ads, fairy tales, urban legends, children's books and curriculum
materials, self-help books, beauty contests, professional sports, state fairs,
and the like. And as this list indicates, cultural criticism also crosses the line
between forms of entertainment and information. So let's think of cultural
criticism as any analysis of any production of popular culture that seeks to
understand what that production is “saying” to members of the culture that
produced it. Let me explain.
As you develop your ability to interpret literature using concepts from
different critical theories, you'll probably catch yourself noticing new things
—related to one or more of these concepts—about your favorite television
program, about a movie you've recently seen, or even about a comic strip in
the newspaper or a magazine ad. That is, you'll probably start practicing
cultural criticism without realizing that you're doing so. For as we've just
seen, television shows, movies, comic strips, advertisements, and just about
any other cultural production intended for the general public are all examples
of popular culture. They all grow out of a particular set of customs and values
generally shared by a particular population. Therefore, they all reveal
something about the culture that creates them, whether they intend to do so or
not.
One way to discover what popular-culture productions reveal about the
culture that creates them—that is, one way to practice cultural criticism—is
to analyze the cultural “messages” these productions send to the members of
that culture or, as cultural critics put it, the cultural work these productions
perform in reflecting, reinforcing, or transforming the values, beliefs, and
perceptions of the culture that produces them. And concepts from the critical
theories we'll study in this book can help us do just that. For as we'll see
shortly, in addition to sharpening our interpretive skills, concepts from each
critical theory provide a foundation for asking specific questions about
cultural productions, questions that will help us “decode,” so to speak, the
cultural messages being sent by those productions. Let me offer you two brief
examples of cultural criticism suggested by my students. Although you may
be familiar with these examples, you may not have thought of them as
instances of cultural criticism.
Suppose I want to analyze the availability of a certain doll intended for
pre-teen American girls; offered with a variety of hair colors, eye colors, and
apparel; and extremely popular nationwide: the “doll of the year,” so to
speak, which every girl owns or wants to own. If I pay particular attention to
the dolls’ physical features in terms of their apparent race or ethnicity, I can
use concepts from African American, postcolonial, and psychoanalytic
theories to help me answer questions like the following. Do most or all of
these dolls have white skin and Anglo-European facial features? Do most of
them have blond or light-brown hair and blue or light-colored eyes? If the toy
company that makes these dolls has produced a version intended as an
African American doll, does that version have tan rather than medium-brown
or dark-brown skin? Does that version have the same Anglo-European
features as the white dolls? Can the African American version of the doll be
found as readily in stores—especially in stores located in racially integrated
regions—as the white versions? Can Latina, Asian American, or Native
American versions of the doll be found readily in stores located where these
Americans live and shop? How does a parent of color decide, when there are
no ethnic versions of the coveted doll available locally, whether or not to give
his or her child a white version of the doll? What does it mean if a young girl
of color prefers a white version or would reject a medium- or dark-brown
version of the doll?
In short, what cultural message does the racially based limited availability
of these dolls send to the doll-purchasing and doll-receiving members of the
community concerning the value of certain kinds of dolls? And what message
is being sent concerning the value of certain kinds of little girls? What
dangers to children's self-image and self-esteem are inherent in racially or
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