Reader-Response Criticism

Reader-Response Criticism and the related Reception Theory focus on the ways readers create meaning from a text. They are fundamentally opposed to the other linguistic criticisms, which exclude the reader's experience from literary analysis.

Associate the following ideas and people with Reader Response Criticism:

-reader's experience = central literary event
-books have an "implied reader" or "ideal reader," discernible through the book's implicit assumptions about how the reader will read
-aesthetic impact (breaking the "horizon of expectations")

Note that Reception Theory and Reader-Response Criticism makes heavy use of terms and ideas from a variety of other critical fields.

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is the most prominent example of the post-structuralist criticisms, which both use and critique structuralism.

Deconstruction focuses on the displacements and gaps in the meaning structures generated by structuralism, which structuralists dismiss as exceptions. In other words, every text includes irreconcilable differences in meaning, and is therefore essentially meaningless--which is why people hate Deconstruction so much.

Associate the following terms and people with Deconstruction:

-erasure, trace, bracketing, differance, slippage, dissemination, logocentrism, indeterminacy, decentering
-(Structuralism) mimesis, alterity, marginality, desire, lack
-Jacques Derrida

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Structuralist Criticism

Structuralism operates from the assumption that meaning is not inherent in any word, sign, type, etc, but rather that meaning is produced by the structure of relationships among terms.

In literary criticism, the focus is on the "grammar of literature," or the set patterns of plot and character that recur across time and genre.

The classic example compares Romeo & Juliet and West Side Story:

(boy +LOVE girl)(boy's group -LOVE girl's group)

Associate the following terms and people with Structuralism:

-Ferdinand de Saussure & Semiotics
-sign, signifier, signified, relative difference
-binary oppositions, spatial metaphors, equations

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

New Criticism

New Criticism, an outgrowth of Formalism, was the dominant mode of criticism in the English-speaking world from about 1920 to 1960. It is still widely practiced at an undergraduate level today.

New Criticism focuses on features of the text to the total exclusion of authorial intention or socioeconomic influence. Ambiguity is a major criterion for evaluation; close reading is the main method.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following terms and people with New Criticism:

-intentional fallacy, affective fallacy, the heresy of paraphrase, close reading
-T.S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, I.A. Richards, John Crowe Ransom, F.R. Leavis

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Formalist Criticism

Formalism, especially as practiced by the Russians, was a predecessor to Structuralism and New Criticism in that it focused primarily on the features of the text itself.

The goal was to find objectively discernible features that made a work of literature Literature.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following terms and people with Formalism:

-defamiliarization; devices
-Viktor Shklovsky

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Identity Criticisms

Identity Criticisms, like Marxism, are sociological criticisms in that they see literature as primarily the product of social forces. However, instead of focusing on class struggle, they allow for various forms of identity beyond that of the social class.

There are three main types. Each is a vibrant field of critical debate, but on the GRE Literature exam, you'll rarely be asked to do more than identify a caricature almost certain to include the buzzwords below.

1. Feminist Criticism
-phallocratic hegemony, patriarchy
2. Black Criticism
-Euro-American patriarchy
3. Post-Colonial Criticism
-subaltern; marginalization of the other
-Edward Said, Orientalism

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Linguistic Criticisms

Linguistic Criticisms focus on the language of the text itself, with "language" referring also to internal structures, signs, styles, etc.

There are five main types:

1. Formalism
2. New Criticism
3. Structuralism & Semiotics
4. Post-Structuralism & Deconstructionism
5. Reader-Response Criticism

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Psychological Criticisms

Psychological Criticisms treat literature as the expression of universal attributes of human consciousness. They can focus either on aspects of the work itself, or on the work as the psychological expression of the author.

There are two main types:

1. Freudian/Psychoanalytic Criticism
-Oedipal complex, libido, id, ego, superego, subconscious, repression, resistance
-Harold Bloom: strong-poet theory (authors subconsciously react to predecessors)

2. Archetype/Myth Criticism
-"collective unconscious" revealed through archetypes
-some overlap with Formalism & Structuralism
-Jung; James G. Frazier, The Golden Bough; Joseph Campbell; Northrop Frye

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Marxist Criticism

Marxist Criticism treats literature as the product of social and economic pressures. Marxists believe that literature tends to reflect the ideology of the socioeconomic class in (or sometimes for) which it was produced.

Associate the following terms with traditional Marxism:
1. Base & superstructure
2. Class; proletariat; means of production
3. Bourgeois
4. (Capitalist) imperialism
5. Dialectical materialism

Major writers include:
Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels; Georg Lukacs; Walter Benjamin; Raymond Williams; Frederic Jameson.

Marxism influenced the later New Historicism & Sociological Criticism as well as Identity Criticism in that they all treat literature as primarily the product of external, historical forces.

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Literary Criticism

The GRE Literature exam will assume that you know the basics of several prominent schools of 20th-century literary criticism. They can be divided roughly into three major groups, as follows (with more information if you follow each of the links):

Marxist Criticism

1. Identity Criticism
2. Historicism & Sociological Criticism
   

Linguistic Criticism

1. Formalism
2. New Criticism
3. Structuralism
4. Post-Structuralism & Deconstructionism
5. Reader-Response Criticism

Psychological Criticism

1. Freudian Psychoanalysis
2. Archetype/Myth Criticism

If you didn't get a lot of theory as an undergrad, it's worth adding at least one short theory survey to your reading list for the GRE Literature exam. I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. It's short, but enough to get you through the exam.

If you have the time, though, every aspiring grad student in literature should read A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. It's a little more thorough.