LITERARY THEORY

CRASH COURSE
SOWMIYA K S
RESEARCH FELLOW
BHARATHIAR UNIVERSITY
NEW CRITICISM
• 1941- The New Criticism
• Text is everything
• Self contained & self referential (autotelic)
• Exclude author’s intention, historical &
cultural contexts

• I A RICHARDS
• CLEANTH BROOKS
• F R LEAVIS
• JOHN CROWE RANSOM
I A RICHARDS
F R LEAVIS
1924- The Principles of Literary Criticism
1932- New Bearings in English Poetry
1926- Science and Poetry
1936- Revaluation
1929- Practical Criticism
1948- The Great Tradition
1935- Coleridge on Imagination
1955- D H Lawrence, Novelist
1936- The Philosophy of Rhetoric
1970- Dickens the Novelist
4 kinds of meaning & 2 uses of language
Scrutiny- Journal
WILLIAM EMPSON
1930- 7 types of Ambiguity
1931- The Face of the Buddha
1935-Some Versions of Pastoral
1961- Milton’s God
CLEANTH BROOKS WIMSATT & BEARDSLEY
1938- Understanding Poetry 1954- The Verbal Icon: Studies in the
1943- Understanding Fiction Meaning of Poetry
1949- Well Wrought Urn: Studies in 1965- Hateful Contraries: Studies in
the Structure of Poetry Literature and Criticism
Paradox 1957- Literary Criticism: A Short History
(with Cleanth Brooks)
Intentional Fallacy
Affective Fallacy
JOHN CROWE RANSOM
R P BLACKMUR
1938- The World’s Body
1935- The Double Agent
1941- The New Criticism
1955- The Lion and the Honeycomb
1965- God without thunder: an
1983- Studies in Henry James
unorthodox defense of orthodoxy
3 different kinds of poem
R S CRANE
ALLEN TATE 1935- History Versus Criticism in the
1938- The Fathers (novel) Study of Literature
1969- Essays of Four Decades 1952- Critics and Criticism: Ancient
The Man of Letters in the Moden World and Modern
Miss Emily and the Bibliographer
Intention & extension
MATCH
• J. C. Ransom– Criticism, Inc.
• William Empson- Seven Types of Ambiguity
• Cleanth Brooks- Understanding Poetry
• R P Blackmur- In Search of the New Criticism
1. Which of the following terms are integral to New Criticism?
a. Tension b. mirror stage c. irony d. polyphony e. paradox
2. Which of the following works is associated with Cleanth Brooks?
a. The verbal icon b. the well-wrought urn c. seven types of ambiguity
d. understanding poetry
3. Who among the following is associated with the term Intentional
Fallacy in literary criticism?
• The terms ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’ to describe the components of
metaphor were introduced by ___
KEY CONCEPTS
• CLOSE READING
• THE GREAT TRADITION ROBERT PENN WARRE- PURE AND
• HERESY OF PARAPHRASE IMPURE POETRY
• FOUR TYPES OF MEANING RENE WELLEK & AUSTIN WARREN-
• TWO USES OF LANGUAGE
THEORY OF LITERATURE
• FALLACY
• PARADOX
• TENSION IN POETRY
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

• SIGMUND FREUD
State of mind
Consciousness • CARL JUNG
Study unconscious mind
• ERNEST JONES

• MELANIE KLEIN

• JACQUES LACAN
 ERNEST JONES
SIGMUND FREUD
1899- The Interpretations of JACQUES LACAN

Dreams 1957-The Insistence of Letter MELANIE KLEIN

Id, Ego & Super Ego Real stage

Freudian Slip Imaginary stage

Oedipus Complex Symbolic stage

Return to Freud

CARL JUNG
Analytical Psychology
1. Who among the following proposes that the unconscious comes into
being only in language?
a. Freud b. Lacan c. Hall d. Paul de Man
2. Which critic is associated with the concept of the Oedipus Complex?
b. Derrida b. Freud c. Jung d. Lacan
3. ____seeks immediate gratification and doesn't consider social norms
or consequences. And it is pleasure principle
____ operates on the reality principle. ____ represents the internalized
moral standards and values of society
4. Which feminist and psychoanalytic critic adopted plato’s idea of the
chora ____
5. The term ‘parapraxis’, also known as Freudian slip was coined by__
KEY CONCEPTS
• ID, EGO, SUPEREGO
• EROS, THANATOS
• PARAPRAXIS
• OEDIPAL COMPLEX
• COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
 RONALD SALMON CRANE
Founder of the Chicago Aristotelians

NEO-ARISTOTELIAN SCHOOL
1935- History Versus Criticism in the Study
of Literature
• Chicago School of critics 1952- Critics & Criticism: Ancient &
• Against New Criticism Modern

• Rhetorical Criticism
WAYNE C. BOOTH
The Rhetoric of Fiction
Modern Dogma & the Rhetoric of Assent
A Rhetoric of Irony
Herbert A Wichelns
The Literary Criticism of Oratory
• Who authored the critical work titled, The Idea of the Humanities?
RUSSIAN FORMALISM Viktor Shklovsky
Art as Device
Zoo or letters not about love
• MOSCOW LINGUISTIC CIRCLE
Theory of Prose
(OPOAJZ) Ostranenie
• PRAGUE LINGUISTIC CIRCLE
• INFLUENCED AMERICAN NEW Vladimir Propp
CRITICISM Morphology of the Folktale

Boris Eikhebaum
Theory of the Formal Method

Roman Jakobson
The Sound Shape of Language
STRUCTURALISM
• FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE
Semiotics • ROLAND BARTHES
Examining the underlying • CLAUDE LEVI STRAUSS
structures, patterns and systems • CHARLES SANDERS PIERCE
• TZVETAN TODOROV
 CLAUDE LEVI STRAUSS
FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE GERARD GENETTE 1955- The Structural Study of Myth
1916- Course in General Narrative Discourse 1958- Structural Anthropology
Linguistics Structuralism & Literary Criticism 1962- The Savage Mind
Langue & Parole 5 elements of text 1978- Myth and Meaning
Sign, signified & signifier Bricoleur
Synchronic & Diachronic study

TZVETAN TODOROV
1971-The Two Principles of
Narrative
 MIKHAIL BAKHTHIN
CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE
1963-Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics
1977- Semiotic & Significs: VLADIMIR PROPP
1965-Rabelais & his world
The Correspondence Morphology of Folktales
1975-Dialogic imagination: 4 essays
between C. S. Peirce & 31 Narratemes & 8
Discourse in the novel
Victoria Lady Welby Characters
Dialogism
Icon, Index & Symbol
chronotope
Carnivalesque
heteroglossia
ROLAND BARTHES
1953- Writing Degree Zero
1957- Mythologies
1970-S/Z
1973- The Pleasure of the Text
1977-A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments
1979- The Eiffel Tower and other Mythologies
1981- Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
1987- Criticism and Truth
1992- Incidents
Death of the Author
Readerly & Writerly text
• Camera Lucida is a seminal work by _____
• The Raw and Cooked is a critical work by ___
• The relationship between signifier and signified is ___
• Who is the author of the essay The Elementary Structures of Kinship?
KEY CONCEPTS
• SIGN-SIGNIFIER-SIGNIFIED
• DEATH OF THE AUTHOR
• READERLY & WRITERLY TEXT
• BRICOLEUR
• SYNCHRONIC & DIACHRONIC
• LANGUE & PAROLE
POST-STRUCTURALISM:
DECONSTRUCTION
• JACQUES DERRIDA
1960s and 1970s • PAUL DE MAN
Yale School of critics
Derrida, Paul de Man, J H Miller – Boa
deconstructionist
Harold Bloom,, Geoffrey Hartman- Barely
deconstructionist
JACQUES DERRIDA PAUL DE MAN
1966- Structure, Sign and Play in the 1971- Blindness and Insight:
Discourse of the Human Sciences Essays in the Rhetoric of
1967- Of Grammatology Contemporary Criticism
1967- Speech and Phenomena: And 1979- Allegories of Reading:
Other Essays on Husserl’s of Sign Figural Language in Rousseau,
1967- Writing and Difference Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust
Difference 1986- The Resistance to Theory
Hauntology
Aporia
Nothing outside the text
Bricolage
• The term ‘antithetical criticism’ often used in the context of literary
criticism, was coined by _____
• ‘Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels’ is a critical work by ___
KEY IDEAS
• DIFFERENCE
• CHORA
• INTERTEXTUALITY
• HETEROTOPIA
• EPISTEME
• PANOPTICON
FEMINISM
• THREE WAVES OF CRITICISM

• LIBERAL, RADICAL & SOCIALIST

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
• Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of
HELENE CIXOUS
Rights of Woman
JUDITH BUTLER
• Margaret Fuller- 1st feminist in America
ELAIN SHOWALTER
• J S Mill- Subjection of women
 JUDITH BUTLER
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR 1990- Gender Trouble:
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Feminism & the Subversion
Mandarins of Identity
Adieus: A Farewell to Sartre
VIRGINIA WOLF
1949- The Second Sex
1929- Room of one’s own
Empty nest Syndrome
Profession for women
1938- Three Guineas
KATE MILLETT
Modern Fiction
1970- Sexual Politics
Mr. Bennett & Mrs. Brown
ELAINE SHOWALTER
HELENE CIXOUS
Towards a Feminist Poetics
1975- The Laugh of Medusa
1977- A Literature of their own
Ecriture Feminine
Female Malady: Women, Madness &
English Culture
SANDRA GILBERT & SUSAN
Hystories: Historical Epidemics &
GULBAR
modern media
1979- Madwoman in the Attic: The
3 stages of women writing
woman writer & the 19th century
Gynocriticism
literary imagination
Betty Friedan- The Feminine Mystique
(1963)

Patricia Meyer Spack - The Female Woman shall have money & room of her
Imagination (1975) own to write fiction

Anna Julia Cooper- A Voice from the South Man is a Bourgeoise & women, a
proletariat
Patricia Hill Collins- Black Feminist thoughts

Urmila Pawar- The weave of my life

Baby Kamble- The Prison we broke

John Gray- Men are from Mars & women

are from Venus
• Sexual/Textual Politics is a feminist work written by ____
• Who coined the term ‘Amazon feminism’?
• The Female Gothic is the title of a critical work by ___
• Which feminists' theorists is known for the concept of ‘sexual
difference’?
• The term ‘anxiety of authorship’ is a key concept of feminist criticism
was proposed by ___
KEY TERMS
• ECRITURE FEMININE
• WHITE INK
• GYNOCRITICISM
• GENDER PERFORMATIVITY
READER RESPONSE THEORY
• Focuses on reader than NORMAN N. HOLLAND
author STANLEY FISH
• 1960s & 1970s WOLFGANG ISER
• Opposition to formalism &
HANS ROBERT JAUSS
New Criticism
LOUIS ROSENBLATT
 STANLEY FISH WOLFGANG ISER
NORMAN N HOLLAND 1967- Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Fonder of Constance School of Reception
Poems in Persons: An Paradise Lost Theory
Introduction to the 1972- Self Consuming Artifacts: The 2006- How to do theory?
Psychoanalysis of Literature Experience of 17th century Literature 2000- The Range of Interpretation
5 Readers Reading 2000- How Milton Works Toward an Aesthetic of Reception
Laughing: A Psychology of Interpretive Communities Hermeneutics
Humor Implied reader
LOUIS ROSENBLATT
The I Narrative gaps
1938- Literature as
Exploration
HANS ROBERT JAUSS 1978- The Reader, The Text,
Reception Theory The Poem: The Transactional
Horizon of Expectation Theory of Literary Work
Transactional theory
• 1. Who is considered the founder of Reader-Response Criticism?
• Stanley Fish is known for introducing which concept in Reader-
Response theory?
KEY IDEAS
• INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITIES
• AFFECTIVE STYLISTICS
• THE IMPLIED READER
• HORIZON OF EXPECTATIONS
• TRANSACTIONAL THEORY
• TWO STANCE OF READING
POSTMODERNISM
Counter culture • JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Structure of feeling • JEAN FRANCOIS
Fragmentation LYOTTARD
Accepted the world as it is
• JURGEN HABERMAS
• FREDRIC JAMESON
Unreliable narration
• MIKHAIL BAKHTIN
Self-reflexivity
• LINDA HUTCHEON
Intertextuality
• PATRICIA WAUGH
Pastiche • DELEUZE AND GUATTARI
JEAN BAUDRILLARD JULIA KRISTEVA
JURGEN HABERMAS
1st Gulf War did not take World, dialogue & novel
place Maladies of the soul
Mirror of Production FREDRIC JAMESON

System of objects
Simulacra & Simulation LINDA HUTCHEON
Irony’s Edge: The Theory and PATRICIA WAUGH
JEAN FRANCOIS LYOTTARD Politics of Irony
The Postmodern Condition: A A Theory of Parody Gilles DELEUZE
Report of Knowledge The Politics of Postmodernism Capitalism &
Schizophrenia: Anti-
Metanarrative A Poetics of Postmodernism Oedipus
A Thousand Plateaus
Historiographic Metafiction Difference & Repetition
• Which theorist is associated with the term ‘public sphere’ and the
theory of ‘communicative action’?
• Find the terms with its works. Dialogism- _____
• Heteroglossia- _______
• Carnivalesque- ________
KEY CONCEPTS
• HYPERREALITY
• SIMULACRA & SIMULATION
• POLYPHONY
• HETEROGLOSSIA
• CHRONOTOPE
• CARNIVALESQUE
• DIALOGISM
• METAFICTION
• MINOR LITERATURE
 POSTCOLONIALISM
• ANTONIO GRAMSCI

Imperialism & Colonialism • FRANTZ FANON

1492-1582- 1st Phase of colonialism • EDWARD SAID
1850- 1945- 2nd Phase of colonialism
• HOMI K BHABHA
ROBERT YOUNG- Tricontinentalism
• AIJAZ AHMED

• GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK

• RANAJITH GUHA
 ANTONIO GRAMSCI
HOMI K BHABHA
The Prison Notebooks
1989- The Commitment to Theory
1916- Men or Machines?
1990- Nation and Narration
1918-One Year of History
1994- The Location of Culture
Hegemony
Of Mimicry & Man: The ambivalence
GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK
of colonial discourse
1974- Myself Must I Remake: The Life and Poetry of
Hybridity
W B Yeats
Ambivalence
2006- In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics
Cultural difference
2003- Death of a Discipline
Concept of Mimicry
2010- Nationalism and the Imagination
Concept of third space
Epistemic Violence
EDWARD SAID
FRANTZ FANON
1974- Beginnings: Intention and Method
1952- Black Skin, White Masks
1978- Orientalism
1959- A Dying Colonialism
1979- The Question of Palestine
1961- The Wretched of the Earth
1981- Covering Islam
1964- Toward the African Revolution
1983- The World, the Text, and the Critic
2018- Alienation and Freedom
1988- Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature:
Yeats and Decolonization
1993- Culture and Imperialism
1994- The Politics of Dispossession
2000- The End of the Peace Process
AIJAZ AHMED RANAJITH GUHA
1992- In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures 1963- A rule of property for Bengal: an essay
2001- Lineages of the Present: Ideological and on the idea of permanent settlement
Political Genealogies of Contemporary South 1999- Elementary Aspects of Peasant
Asia Insurgency in Colonial India
2002- On Communalism and Globalization: 2002- History at the Limit of World-Hisotry
Offensives of the Far Right 1998- Dominance without Hegemony:
2007- In Our Time: Empire, Politics, Culture History and Power in Colonial India
2009- The Small Voice of History
PAUL GILROY
CARYL PHILLIPS AIME CESAIRE
The Black Atlantic: Modernity
The Atlantic School Negritude
& Double Consciousness
(1993)

• BILL ASHCROFT
• GARETH GRIFFITHS
• Which theorists conceptualized nation as an imagined political
community?
KEY IDEAS
• CULTURAL HEGEMONY
• DECOLONIZATION
• ORIENTALISM
• CONTRAPUNAL READING
• HYBRIDITY
• MIMICRY
• THIRD SPACE
• STRATEGIC ESSENTIALISM
• SUBALTERN
ARCHETYPAL LITERARY CRITICISM

• 1940s & 1950s

• Pattern

• Mythological

• Focusing on recurring myths

& archetypes in narrative,
symbols & image
 NORTHROP FRYE
AMY MAUD BODKIN
1947- Fearful Symmetry: A Study of
Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: SIR JAMES GEORGE
William Blake
Psychological studies of FRAZER
1957- Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays
Imagination 1890- The Golden
1.Historical Criticism: A Theory of Modes
The Quest for Salvation in an Bough
2. Ethical Criticism: A Theory of Symbols
Ancient and a Modern play Death-rebirth-myth
3. Archetypal Criticism: A Theory of Myths
J M W Turner’s
4. Rhetorical Criticism: A Theory of Genres
Painting
JOSEPH JOHN CAMPBELL Mythos, ethos & Dianoia
1949- The Hero with a Melos, lexis & opsis
CARL GUSTAV
Thousand Faces
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER JUNG
1959- The Masks of God
The Seven Basic Plots
Monomyth
ECOCRITICISM
• Ralph Waldo Emerson-
1960s and 70s Nature
Term coined by US critic William • Henry David Thoreau-
Walden
Rueckert
• Margaret Fuller- Summer at
Study of Literature & lakes
Environment • Raymond Williams- The
ASLE Country & City
ISLE
 LAWRENCE BUELL
CHERYL GLOTFELTY TERRY GIFFORD
Writing for an endangered World
Father of Eco-criticism Narrative of Nature
Emerson
The Future of Environment
Criticism

LAURENCE COUPE
Patrick De Murphy-
The Green Studies JONATHAN BATE
Literature of Nature: An
Reader: From The Song of the Earth
International Source Book
Romanticism to
Rachel Green- Silent Spring
Ecocriticism
 QUEER THEORY
Branch of Gender Studies
1970s- Gay Liberation Movement
1980s- Lesbian Feminism
1990s- Queer Theory
Theorisation of Gender and Sexual
practices that exists outside of
heterosexuality
Christopher Marlowe, William
Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud, Michael
Foucault and so
 GLORIA
TERESA DE LAURETIS MICHAEL WARNER
ANZALDUA
Queer Theory: Lesbian & Queerness

Gay Sexuality Heteronormativity Jeanette Winterson

Oranges are not the
only Fruit

ANDRIANNA RICHE
EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK
Compulsory Heterosexuality &
Epistemology of the closet
Lesbian Existence
NEW HISTORICISM
• 1980s STEPHEN GREENBLATT
• Opposite to New Criticism LOUIS MONTROSE
• To understand intellectual JONATHAN DOLLIMORE & ALAN
history through literature SINFIELD
STEPHEN GREENBLATT LOUIS MONTROSE-
American Shakespearean Shaping Fantasies
Editor of The Norton Shakespeare (2015) J W Lever-
Cofounder of the cultural journal The Tragedy of State: A Study
Representations of Jacobean Drama (1971)
1980- Renaissance Self- Fashioning: Richard Wilson & Richard
From Moore to Shakespeare Dutton- New Historicism &
1982- The Power of forms in the English Renaissance Drama
Renaissance
Towards a poetic of culture
Resonance & wonder
Find authors of Shakespearean critical works
1. Shakespeare’s imagery and what it tells us?-
2. Shakespeare’s politics-
3. On Shakespeare-
MARXIST LITERARY THEORY
• KARL MARX
Socio-economic analysis
• GEORG LUKACS
Social Theory
Oppose Industrialization • WALTER BENJAMIN
Concept of class • BERTOLT BRECHT
Proletarian & Bourgeoise
• LOUIS ALTHUSSER
Concept of Base & Superstructure
• RAYMOND WILLIAMS
Types of Society
Capitalist & Communist society • TERRY EAGLETON

• PIERRE BOURDIEU
KARL MARX
FRIEDRICH ENGELS
Das Capital PIERRE BOURDIEU
1848- The Communist Manifesto
Scorpion & Felix 1979-Distinction: A Social Critique
Condition of the Working class in
On the Jewish Question of the Judgment of Taste
England
The Holy Family The Logic of Practice
Class Consciousness The weight of the world
LOUIS ALTHUSSER
Ideology Science of science & Reflexivity
The Future Lasts forever
Historical Materialism The love of art
History & Imperialism
PAUL RICOEUR Algerians
Reading Capital
The rule of Metaphor Cultural capital
For Marx
Fallible man Habitus
Lenin & Philosophy & other essays
Time & Narrative Field
Radical Thinkers
Oneself as another Doxa
Ideology & the ideological state apparatus
Hermeneutics of suspicion
Repressive state apparatus
WALTER BENJAMIN
GEORGE LUKAS BERTOLT BRECHT
The Work of Art in the Age of
1923- History & Class Prison Diary
Mechanical Reproduction
consciousness Alienation Effect
The Arcades Project
Aura
The Aestheticization of Politics
Place of art in private & public sphere
RAYMOND WILLIAMS
1958-Culture & Society
TERRY EAGLETON
1961-The Long Revolution
Marxism & Literary Theory
1973- Country & the City
Why MARX was right?
• The phrase ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce’ is
attributed to ____
• Which drama is written by Raymond Williams ____
• The Theory of the Novel is a seminar work by ___
KEY TERMS
• AURA
• ALIENATION EFFECT
• INTERPELLATION
• ISA & RSA
• CULTURAL MATERIALISM
• HABITUS
• CULUTRAL CAPITAL
 SPATIAL THEORY
Examines how space and place are represented and utilized within
literary works
Geocriticism- relationship between literary texts and real-world
geographies
Spatial Turn- a shift in critical thought where space is viewed not as a
passive backdrop but as an active agent
Spatial Triad- perceived, conceived and lived space
• Betrand Westphal- Geocriticism
Michel Foucault- Heterotopia, Chronotopes
• Edward Soja- Third Space
The order of things
Seeking Spatial Justice, Postmetropolis , Discipline and Punish
Postmodern geographies Henri Lefebvre- Spatial Triad
• Robert T. Tally Jr.- Geocriticism: Real & The production of space
Fictional Spaces (Trans.) Critique of Everyday Life
Geocriticism & Spatial Literary Studies (ed.) Writings on Cities

Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the

Spatial Imagination
• The concept of Panopticism is introduced by __-