Lit+Crit+Lenses

Literary & Cultural Criticism notes –
 * Looking at a text through the “lens” of one particular concern

Reader Response Lens
 * Assumes the reader can’t know the writer’s intentions
 * Readers actively make meaning and this process is valuable
 * What we used in grade school and middle school. What we still use when we read for fun.
 * Ex.: I think of my sister when I read this. That really affects me because I worry about her.
 * How did I like the book? How does it affect me?

Archetypal criticism – (recurrent cultural symbol)
 * Looking in literature for narrative patterns, character types or images
 * These archetypes are assumed to be universal and deep within us all, so that they evoke a strong response in the reader.
 * Examples: forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden and the poison apple in Snow White
 * How does this story reflect the deep beliefs and myths of a culture?

Gender lens –
 * Assumptions:
 * Each reader’s status affects that person’s reading
 * Men and women have not had equal access
 * Men and women are different
 * Recognizes patterns in our culture
 * Patriarchal
 * Men’s power is overt
 * Historically, women were seen as passive objects
 * Women’s power is forced to be covert
 * Neither men nor women have options regarding their traditional roles
 * How does the text reinforce or undermine traditional gender roles?
 * How does gender affect the power roles in the text?

Privilege and Social Power Lens –
 * The economic organization of a society determines its attitudes and institutions
 * i.e., how wealth is produced makes society what it is
 * Who has the most opportunities in the story?
 * Is power shared? Is it transparent?
 * Focuses on money and power and control.

Psychological lens –
 * Reference to the author’s personality is used to interpret a literary work.
 * Reference to the text is used to understand the author.
 * Reading is a way to experience the consciousness of the author.

Historical lens –
 * How does the work reflect the time and place it was written?
 * How has that affected the author?
 * Apply specific information (social, political, economic, etc.) to explain the work
 * Ex.: Faulkner wrote many of his novels during WWII, a fact that explains the struggles and feeling of darkness in his novels.

Ecological lens – Post-colonial criticism/lens –
 * How does this work reflect the author or culture’s attitude toward land use and awareness of ecological balance?
 * This looks at underlying assumptions of the author and society, as reflected in the text, toward the role of humans in the environment
 * Ex.: In //One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest// the government builds a huge dam, sure that they have taken care of the salmon problem and unaware of any other problems they may be causing.
 * How does this text show the attitudes of the conquering culture and the culture they are attempting to overrun? What are the longer term implications of these attitudes?
 * Successful colonialism depends on a process of “Othering” the people colonized, making the conquered people seem dramatically different and lesser than the colonizers or conquerors.
 * Literature written by the colonizers often distorts the experiences of the colonized.
 * Literature written by the colonized includes attempts to reclaim culture and identity in the face of colonization.