AP
Literature and Composition
Mr.
Steen
To
the average man or woman on the street, literary criticism conjures up images of
book reviews in the Sunday paper, brief synopses of the books that conclude by
telling the reader whether or not to spend the time reading the work. To the
beginning student of literature, literary criticism is the place to turn when
facing a term paper on Romeo and Juliet—an essay that purports to tell
the student what the inexplicable text means. Though this latter view is
closer to the truth, it nevertheless falls far short of presenting an accurate
picture of the art of criticism. For the question—even after we have divined
what the text “means”—is “means how”?
Think
back to the old story of the blind men and the elephant. When asked to describe
the elephant, one blind man touched its side and proclaimed the elephant was
like a wall. Another felt of his trunk and pronounced him to be a snake. A third
described him as a spear after handling the trunk. And so on. Their problem was
not describing the elephant; their problem was one of perspective. Depending on
where they stood, each perceived a different elephant, yet all the various
perceptions were correct. Thus it is with literary criticism.
Though
the beginning student of literature would dearly love to find one essay
which simply answers what Hamlet or Invisible Man is about,
we are fortunate indeed that that is impossible. Every reader—young or old,
professional or amateur, male or female—creates his or her own meaning when
confronting the text, and though some of these approaches have been lumped under
the headings discussed below, criticism remains an active and vibrant process
which constantly changes the meanings of texts we thought we knew. If this seems
confusing, perhaps a few examples would help.
Let
us suppose for our present purposes that Hamlet is the text under
discussion. Listed below you will find some of the possible
approaches to the play:
| Feminist Criticism will focus on the disenfranchisement of Gertrude
and Ophelia and will concentrate its energies on the complex dynamics
between the powerful male figures of the play and the weaker female
“victims.” It will be interested in why there is no “Mrs. Polonius.” |
| Marxist Criticism will examine the class struggle as exemplified
by the aristocratic Claudius, the servants Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and
the peasant gravediggers. It will perhaps see Hamlet as a mediating factor
that cuts across various class strata. It may even focus on Osric as
representative of the new bourgeois. |
| New Historicism will concentrate chiefly on the aristocratic
class and try to see how it gains power, struggles for it, and keeps it.
Claudius, Fortinbras, and Hamlet will be of primary interest here. |
| Cultural Criticism will be focused on the lower classes and the
proletariat. It will examine the ways that power is subverted by the
disenfranchised, and its primary focus will be Hamlet and Polonius. |
| Psychoanalytic Criticism will focus on Hamlet’s mental state, his
madness and neurosis as reflected in his soliloquies, and his somewhat
Oedipal attachment to his mother. It will also be profoundly interested in
his constant sexual talk and in his ambiguous relationship to Ophelia. |
| Archetypal Criticism will look at the large patterns of Hamlet,
those which seem to be reflective of major themes of world literature and
mythology. The forbidden woman in Ophelia, the resurrection theme in the
ghost, the revenge motif, and the evil woman in Gertrude will all be of
interest to the archetypal critic. |
| Deconstruction will chiefly be interested in the ambiguities of the text and the
impossibility of completely “answering” Hamlet. Whether Hamlet is
mad or not, whether Gertrude is guilty, whether Ophelia is pregnant, and
whether Polonius is treacherous will all intrigue the deconstructionist. Of
particular interest will be the contradictions in Hamlet’s soliloquies.
Basically, the deconstructionist will argue that the play is beyond meaning. |
| Reader Response Criticism will
concentrate on the phenomenon of the meaning of the play unfolding each time
it is read before a different audience. Hamlet will certainly mean
different things to an audience of kings, of peasants, of women, of
teenagers, and of scholars, and reader response critics will want to know
how the play is changed by its viewers and readers. |
| New Criticism believes that the play exists, essentially, in a vacuum.
Everything needed to interpret it is contained within the play, and
everything not contained in the play is non-essential. New critics look
primarily at the language, the plot structure, the order of the scenes, and
even the frequency of the words and images used to interpret the play. For
many of you, this is the critical approach most often used by late 20th
century English teachers. |
| Biographical Criticism will be chiefly interested in what the play says
about Shakespeare and his biases. It will try to compare incidents in the
play to incidents in Shakespeare’s life and will attempt to draw parallels
between the art and the man. This has been, traditionally, another very
popular approach to criticism. |
Obviously, the above survey has only taken a brief look at the art of criticism, but you get the idea. Depending on where you stand and on what your particular training or bias is, you can get many different views of the same work. Which one, then, is correct? Well, it should be obvious that none of them is. However, they all, working together, can come very close to the central meaning of a work. Interestingly, the best critics often see things in an author’s work that the author herself was unaware of. After all, authors choose language, order scenes, emphasize character traits, and view events as a result of who they are and of how they were raised and educated; they do not carefully craft every scene with a particular artistic purpose in mind. The perspicacious critic can, then, tell the author things about herself that even she didn’t know.
As you pursue this unit on criticism, you may find yourself drawn to one or another of the critical approaches more than to another. That’s fine. Go with it. As you become a more aware reader, you will add more approaches to your repertoire until you are a discerning reader indeed.