Literary and Cultural
Theory
Semester V:
Spring 2024/2025 Literary Theory and
Session I /23rd Sept.
Criticism: Introduction
Professor A. El Bakkali
Literary Theory and Criticism:
Introduction
• Introduction
• The Beginnings
• Literary Theory
• New Schools
• Age of Interpretation
• Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Conditions of the Texts
• Schools Ahead…
Introduction
• Literary theory is the body of ideas and methods used in the practical reading of literature. By
literary theory, both the meaning of a work of literature and the theories that reveal what
literature can mean seem important.
• Literary theory describes the underlying principles and tools used to understand literature. All
literary interpretation draws on a basis in theory but can serve as a justification for very
different kinds of critical activity.
• Literary theory formulates the relationship between author and work; literary theory develops the
significance of race, class, and gender for literary study, both from the standpoint of the author's
biography and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts.
• Literary theory offers varying approaches to understanding the role of historical context in
interpretation as well as the relevance of linguistic and unconscious elements of the text.
• Literary theorists trace the history and evolution of the different genres—narrative, dramatic,
lyric—in addition to the more recent emergence of the novel and the short story, while also
investigating the importance of formal elements of literary structure.
• Literary theory has recently sought to explain the degree to which the text is more the product
of a culture than an individual author and how those texts help to create the culture.
The Beginnings
• Attention to the etymology of the term “theory,” from the Greek “theoria,” alerts us to the partial nature of
theoretical approaches to literature. “Theoria” indicates a view or perspective of the Greek stage.
• This is precisely what literary theory offers, though specific theories often claim to present a complete system
for understanding literature.
• The current state of theory is such that there are many overlapping areas of influence, and older schools of
theory, though no longer enjoying their previous eminence, continue to exert an influence on the whole. The
once widely-held conviction (an implicit theory) that literature is a repository of all that is meaningful and
ennobling in the human experience, a view championed by the Leavis School in Britain, may no longer be
acknowledged by name but remains an essential justification for the current structure of American universities and
liberal arts curricula.
• The moment of “Deconstruction” may have passed, but its emphasis on the indeterminacy of signs (that we
are unable to establish exclusively what a word means when used in a given situation) and, thus, of texts, remains
significant.
• Many critics may not embrace the label “feminist,” but the premise that gender is a social construct, one of
theoretical feminism's distinguishing insights, is now axiomatic in many theoretical perspectives.
Literary Theory
• “Literary theory,” sometimes designated “critical theory,” or “theory,” and now undergoing a
transformation into “cultural theory” within the discipline of literary studies, can be understood as
the set of concepts and intellectual assumptions on which rests the work of explaining or
interpreting literary texts.
• Literary theory refers to any principles derived from internal analysis of literary texts or from
knowledge external to the text that can be applied in multiple interpretive situations.
• All critical practice regarding literature depends on an underlying structure of ideas in at least two
ways: theory provides a rationale for what constitutes the subject matter of criticism—” the
literary”—and the specific aims of critical practice—the act of interpretation itself.
• For example, to speak of the “unity” of Oedipus the King explicitly invokes Aristotle’s theoretical
statements on poetics. To argue, as does Chinua Achebe, that Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of
Darkness fails to grant full humanity to the Africans it depicts is a perspective informed by a
postcolonial literary theory that presupposes a history of exploitation and racism.
• The structure of ideas that enables criticism of a literary work may or may not be acknowledged
by the critic, and the status of literary theory within the academic discipline of literary studies
continues to evolve.
New Schools
• Modern literary theory gradually emerges in Europe during the nineteenth century. In one of the
earliest developments of literary theory, German “higher criticism” subjected biblical texts to a radical
historicizing that broke with traditional scriptural interpretation.
• “Higher,” or “source criticism,” analyzed biblical tales in light of comparable narratives from other
cultures, an approach that anticipated some of the method and spirit of twentieth-century theory,
particularly “Structuralism” and “New Historicism.”
• In France, the eminent literary critic Charles Augustin Saint Beuve maintained that a work of literature
could be explained entirely in terms of biography, while novelist Marcel Proust devoted his life to refuting
Saint Beuve in a massive narrative in which he contended that the details of the life of the artist are utterly
transformed in the work of art.
• The French theorist Roland Barthes reopened this dispute in his famous declaration of the “Death of the
Author.” See “Structuralism” and “Poststructuralism.”
• Perhaps the greatest nineteenth-century influence on literary theory came from the deep epistemological
suspicion of Friedrich Nietzsche: that facts are not facts until they have been interpreted. Nietzsche’s
critique of knowledge has profoundly impacted literary studies and helped usher in an era of
intense literary theorizing that has yet to pass.
Age of Interpretation
• While literary theory has always implied or directly expressed a conception of the world outside the text, in the twentieth century three
movements—” Marxist theory” of the Frankfurt School, “Feminism,” and “Postmodernism”—have opened the field of literary
studies into a broader area of inquiry.
• Marxist approaches to literature require an understanding of the primary economic and social bases of culture since Marxist
aesthetic theory sees the work of art as a product, directly or indirectly, of the base structure of society.
• Feminist thought and practice analyze the production of literature and literary representation within the framework that
includes all social and cultural formations as they pertain to the role of women in history.
• Postmodern thought consists of both aesthetic and epistemological strands. Postmodernism in art has included a move toward
non-referential, non-linear, abstract forms, a heightened degree of self-referentiality, and the collapse of categories and
conventions that had traditionally governed art. Postmodern thought has led to the serious questioning of the so-called
metanarratives of history, science, philosophy, and economic and sexual reproduction. Under postmodernity, all knowledge comes to be
seen as “constructed” within historical self-contained systems of understanding.
• Marxist, feminist, and postmodern thought have brought about the incorporation of all human discourses, interlocking fields of
language and knowledge) as a subject matter for analysis by the literary theorist. Using the various poststructuralist and
postmodern theories, on disciplines other than the literary, linguistic, anthropological, psychoanalytic, and philosophical.
• Taking as its premise that human societies and knowledge consist of texts in one form or another, cultural theory is now applied
to the varieties of texts, ambitiously undertaking to become the preeminent model of inquiry into the human condition.
Literature
• Literary theory is a site of theories: some theories, like “Queer Theory,” are “in;” other literary theories, like
“Deconstruction,” are “out” but continue to exert an influence on the field.
• “Traditional literary criticism,” “New Criticism,” and “Structuralism” are alike in that they held to the view
that the study of literature has an objective body of knowledge under its scrutiny.
• The other schools of literary theory, to varying degrees, embrace a postmodern view of language and reality
that seriously questions the objective referent of literary studies.
• The categories are certainly not exhaustive, nor are they mutually exclusive, but they represent the major
trends in literary theory of this century.
• Literature could hence be dissatisfied with a mere reflection of any lived social or psychological experience
but a critical analysis and synthesis of a given social phenomenon, all in such a beautiful linguistic and
artistic production that pleases the eye and the ear of a receiver.
• The study of literature is called Literary theory and criticism which asks what literature is, what it does, and
what it is worth." "Literary criticism also generally deals with the evaluation of literary works.
Literary Criticism
• Literary criticism (which is the practical side of theory) as the study, discussion, evaluation,
and interpretation of literature. This includes the classification by genre, analysis of
structure, and judgment of value."
• Literary criticism is the method used to interpret any given work of literature. Thus,
"literary theory" is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of
literature.
• Literary theory refers not to the meaning of a work of literature but to the theories that
reveal what literature can mean.
• Literary theory describes the underlying principles by which we attempt to understand
literature. Sometimes designated "critical theory" or "theory," literary theory, which is now
undergoing a transformation into "cultural theory" within the discipline of literary studies,
can be understood as the set of concepts and intellectual assumptions on which rests the
work of explaining or interpreting literary texts.
• Literary theory refers to any principles derived from internal analysis of literary texts or
from knowledge external to the text that can be applied in multiple interpretive
situations.
Literary criticism-2
• Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature.
• Literary criticism is the evaluation of literary works. This includes the classification by genre, analysis of
structure, and judgment of value.
• Literary criticism asks what literature is, what it does, and what it is worth.
• Literary criticism is the method used to interpret any given work of literature. The different schools of literary
criticism provide lenses that ultimately reveal important aspects of the work.
• Talking about experiences enhances our enjoyment of them. Talking about experiences involves the search for
meaning which increases our understanding of them.
• Literary criticism helps us to understand what is important about the text its structure, its context: social,
economic, historical, what is written, and how the text manipulates the reader.
• Literary criticism helps us understand the relationship between authors, readers, and texts. It ultimately
enhances our enjoyment of literary works.
• Literary criticism has two main functions:
• 1- To analyze, study, and evaluate works of literature.
• 2-To form general principles for the examination of works of literature.
Conditions of the Texts
• Since the 1970s, literary theory has entered a new phase dominated by philosophy, history, politics, and
psychoanalysis and several introductory texts have emerged to explain the main theoretical trends –
Marxism, Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Feminism, Cultural Studies, New Historicism, and so on.
• Literary theory can be understood in terms of principles and concepts, strategies and tactics needed to
guide critical reading. Researchers of theory might see a rift in the historical development of the late
twentieth century between text-based theories like New Criticism, Structuralism, and Poststructuralism and
historicist theories like Marxism, Feminism, New Historicism, and Postcolonialism.
• The theory is fundamentally different in both of these very broad contexts: in one, it is restricted to the
analysis of language, rhetoric, signs, or other systems of signification.
• -It is directed towards critiquing social, cultural, and historical conditions and how they are reflected in
and altered by cultural forms like literary texts.
• Ideological differences often complicate the differences in method and object of study. For example, a New
Critical or Deconstructionist approach to literature might strike some readers as conservative or apolitical,
while a Marxist or feminist approach might appear radically progressive or even insurrectionary.
• Methodological and ideological differences multiply once individual theories are examined closely, for
each theory has a complex history of relations with more general theories of society, politics, language,
knowledge, history, psychology, and gender.
THE 4 CRITICAL VARIABLES
of LITERARY THEORY &
1. The World
CRITICISM
2. The Author
Beyond the Real Other
3. The Text
World World Texts
Text = ITS CONTEXT Text = Ideologically
Text = Symbol,
Archetype Objective reality constructed language
4. The Reader
Formalism: the TEXT (as art) Gender Studies: WORLD/author/text/reader
Structuralism: the TEXT (as language system) Postcolonial: AUTHOR/world/text/reader
Psychoanalytic: AUTHOR/READER/text Marxist: WORLD/text
Reader Response: READER/TEXT/community Territorial: TEXT/[reader/ author/world])
of readers w/shared values
Schools Ahead…
• The following schools of literary criticism constitute the main focus of this course.
1. Historical & Sociological Theory and Literature
2. Marxist Theory and Literature
3. Russian Formalism
4. New Criticism
5. Structuralism and Semiotics
6. Post-structuralism:
7. Modernism and Postmodernism
8. Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan
9. Feminism and Gender Theories
10.Post-colonialism and literature
11.New Historicism
12.Reader Response theory
13.Reception Theory
References
• Atkins, G. D., & Morrow, L. (Eds.). (1989). Contemporary literary theory (p. 81). Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press.
• Belsey, C. (2004). Culture and the real: theorizing cultural criticism. Routledge.
• Culler, J. D. (2007). The literary in theory. Stanford University Press.
• Easthope, A. (2003). Literary into cultural studies. Routledge.
• Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 2nd edition, 2002.
• Easthope, A., & McGowan, K. (Eds.). (2004). A critical and cultural theory reader. University of Toronto Press.
• Milner, A., & Browitt, J. (2013). Contemporary cultural theory: An introduction. Routledge.
• Rollason, C., & Mittapalli, R. (Eds.). (2002). Modern Criticism. Atlantic Publishers & Dist.
• Showalter, E. (1975). Literary criticism. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1(2), 435-460.
• Templeton, A. (1992). Sociology and literature: Theories for cultural criticism. College literature, 19(2), 19-30.
• Zhenzhao, N. (2023). Introduction to ethical literary criticism. Taylor & Francis.
• Waugh, P. (Ed.). (2006). Literary theory and criticism: An Oxford guide. Oxford University Press.
• Wood, N., & Lodge, D. (2014). Modern criticism and theory: A reader. Routledge.
