1. Part 5
Modern Schools of Interpretation
Objectives:
By the end of this part, you will be able to:
1. To list the main modern schools of interpretations.
2. To identify the historical setting of each school.
3. To describe the main characteristics of each school.
4. To differentiate between the strategies of interpretations used
in the schools.
5. To discuss some ideas in these schools.
Activities:
Online Activities for this part:
1. DF-4 Psychoanalytic Criticism
2. DF-5 Formalism
3. Quiz-6 Modern Schools of Interpretation
4. Quiz-7 Structuralism & Deconstruction
5. Assign-3 Modern Criticism
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2. Part (5):
Modern Schools of Interpretation
1. Schools of interpretation that are classified as textual analysis
1) Russian Formalism (1915–1929)
2) Cambridge School (1920s–1930s)
3) Chicago School (1950s)
4) New Criticism (1930s–1960s)
5) Structuralism (1950s–1960s)
6) Post-structuralism (1960s–1970s)
7) Deconstruction (1967–present)
2. Schools of interpretation that are classified as psychological analysis
1) Psychoanalytic criticism
2) Freudian criticism (c. 1900–present
3) Jungian criticism (1920s–present).
4) Lacanian criticism (c. 1977–present)
3. Schools of interpretation that are classified as social and political analysis
1) Feminist criticism (1960s–present)
2) Marxist criticism
3) New Historicism (1980s–present)
4) Queer theory (1980s–present)
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3. Schools of textual
analysis
Russian Formalism
Cambridge School
Chicago School
New Criticism
Structuralism
Post-structuralism
Deconstruction
Schools of
psychological analysis
Psychoanalytic
criticism
Freudian criticism
Jungian criticism
Lacanian criticism
Schools of political
analysis
Feminist criticism
Marxist criticism
New Historicism
Queer theory
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4. Russian Formalism
Russian Formalism (1915–1929) is a school of literary interpretation. It
attempted a scientific analysis of the formal literary devices used in a text. The
Stalinist authorities criticized and silenced the Formalists, but Western critics
rediscovered their work in the 1960s. Ultimately, the Russian Formalists had
significant influence on structuralism and Marxist criticism. Major critics are
Victor Shklovsky (1893–1984), Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1895–1975) and Roman
Jakobson (1896–1982)
New Criticism
New Criticism (1930s–1960s) is a school of literary interpretation. Coined in
John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism (1941), this approach discourages the
use of history and biography in interpreting a literary work. Instead, it
encourages readers to discover the meaning of a work through a detailed
analysis of the text itself. Major critics are I. A. Richards (1893-1979), John
Crowe Ransom (1888–1974), Cleanth Brooks (1906 –1994) and Robert Penn
Warren (1905 –1989).
Structuralism
Structuralism (1950s–1960s) is a school of literary
interpretation. Structuralist literary critics read texts as an interrelated system
of signs that refer to one another rather than to an external “meaning” that is
fixed either by author or reader. Major critics are Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857–1913), Roland Barthes (1915–1980) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 –
2009).
Deconstruction
Deconstruction (1967–present) is a school of literary interpretation. It is a
philosophical approach to reading that attacks the assumption that a text has a
single, stable meaning. It suggests that all interpretation of a text simply
constitutes further texts, which means there is no “outside the text” at all.
Therefore, it is impossible for a text to have stable meaning. Major critics are
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), Paul de Man (1919 –1983) and J. Hillis Miller
(1928-present).
Psychoanalytic Criticism
Psychoanalytic criticism (c. 1900–present) is a school of literary
interpretation. It refers to any form of criticism that draws on
psychoanalysis, the practice of analyzing the role of unconscious psychological
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5. drives and impulses in shaping human behavior or artistic production. Major
critics are Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), Carl Jung (1875-1961) and Karen
Horney (1885-1952).
Feminist Criticism
Feminist criticism (1960s–present) is a school of literary interpretation. It is
an umbrella term for a number of different critical approaches that seek to
distinguish the female experience from the male experience. Feminist critics
draw attention to the ways in which patriarchal social structures have
marginalized women and male authors have exploited women in their portrayal
of them. The writings of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) are considered pioneering
in this approach.Major critics are Barbara Christian (1943-2000), Julia
Kristeva (1941-present) and Hélène Cixous (1937-present).
Marxist Criticism
Marxist criticism (c. 1920s-present) is a school of literary interpretation. It is
an umbrella term for a number of critical approaches to literature that draw
inspiration from the social and economic theories of Karl Marx. Marxist
criticism approaches literature as a struggle with social realities and ideologies.
Major critics are Terry Eagleton (1943-present), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1952)
New Historicism
New Historicism (1980s–present) is a school of literary interpretation. It is
an approach that breaks down distinctions between “literature” and “historical
context” by examining the contemporary production and reception of literary
texts, including the dominant social, political, and moral movements of the
time. Major critics are Stephen Greenblatt (1943-present), Stephen Orgel
(1930-present) and Peter Thornton (1925-2007).
1. Cambridge School (1920s–1930s): A group of scholars at Cambridge University
who rejected historical and biographical analysis of texts in favor of close readings
of the texts themselves.
2. Chicago School (1950s): A group, formed at the University of Chicago in the
1950s, that drew on Aristotle’s distinctions between the various elements within a
narrative to analyze the relation between form and structure. Critics and
Criticisms: Ancient and Modern (1952) is the major work of the Chicago School.
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6. 3. New Criticism (1930s–1960s): Coined in John Crowe Ransom’s The New
Criticism (1941), this approach discourages the use of history and biography in
interpreting a literary work. Instead, it encourages readers to discover the meaning
of a work through a detailed analysis of the text itself. This approach was popular
in the middle of the 20th century, especially in the United States, but has since
fallen out of favor.
4. Freudian criticism (c. 1900–present): The view of art as the imagined fulfillment
of wishes that reality denies. According to Freud, artists sublimate their desires and
translate their imagined wishes into art. We, as an audience, respond to the
sublimated wishes that we share with the artist. Working from this view, an artist’s
biography becomes a useful tool in interpreting his or her work. “Freudian
criticism” is also used as a term to describe the analysis of Freudian images within
a work of art.
5. Jungian criticism (1920s–present): A school of criticism that draws on Carl Jung’s
theory of the collective unconscious, a reservoir of common thoughts and
experiences that all cultures share. Jung holds that literature is an expression of the
main themes of the collective unconscious, and critics often invoke his work in
discussions of literary archetypes.
6. Lacanian criticism (c. 1977–present): Criticism based on Jacques Lacan’s view
that the unconscious, and our perception of ourselves, is shaped in the “symbolic”
order of language rather than in the “imaginary” order of prelinguistic thought.
Lacan is famous in literary circles for his influential reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s
“The Purloined Letter.”
7. Queer theory (1980s–present): A “constructivist” (as opposed to “essentialist”)
approach to gender and sexuality that asserts that gender roles and sexual
identity are social constructions rather than an essential, inescapable part of our
nature. Queer theory consequently studies literary texts with an eye to the ways in
which different authors in different eras construct sexual and gender identity.
Queer theory draws on certain branches of feminist criticism and traces its roots to
the first volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality (1976).
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