Critical Theory Cheat Sheet
Critical Theory Cheat Sheet
Donald E. Hall. Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications. Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Theory
Formalism /New
Criticism
1920’s forward
Reader Response
Rhetorical Analysis
Marxist/Materialist
Analysis
Psychoanalytic
Analysis
Key Ideas
-analysis of literary structures (genre; character, plot, setting, etc.)
-rejected literature’s historical and biographical contexts
-intrinsic meaning of texts; literature expresses
“universal truths”
-critic’s task to explore precisely through language and form how that truth is expressed
-“Close reading”; the TEXT holds THE meaning
-emphasis on reader’s role in creating meanings
-meanings generated by a transaction between reader and a text; meaning is not wholly intrinsic to the text
-“an authorial presence [in a text] that leads the text’s rhetorically attuned reader toward an authorially desired interpretation or response” (44)
-based on Marx’s theories of class and cultural production -importance of class and economic conditions; power relationships and class ideologies presented within a text -concept of the unconscious, conscious, ego and id
-human activity not always conscious
-nature/ nurture
-developmental stages; childhood trauma and its effect on development
Theorists
Comments
-Aristotle (The Poetics)
-Plato (The Republic)
-John Crowe Ransom
-Cleanth Brooks
-T.S. Eliot
-Louise Rosenblatt (The
Reader, The Text, and
The Poem)
-Robert Probst
(Response and
Analysis)
-Wolfgang Iser
-Stanley Fish
-Norman Holland
-Wayne Booth
-Terry Eagleton
-Karl Marx
-Frederich Engles
-Sigmund Freud
-Jacques Lacan
-Northrup Frye
1
Structuralism and
Semiotic Analysis
-principles of scientific linguistic study applied to literature -signified (the concept), signifier (the word), sign
(combination of concept and word)
-making meaning through binaries (oppositions)
-no sign is ever fully
Donald E. Hall. Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications. Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Theory
Formalism /New
Criticism
1920’s forward
Reader Response
Rhetorical Analysis
Marxist/Materialist
Analysis
Psychoanalytic
Analysis
Key Ideas
-analysis of literary structures (genre; character, plot, setting, etc.)
-rejected literature’s historical and biographical contexts
-intrinsic meaning of texts; literature expresses
“universal truths”
-critic’s task to explore precisely through language and form how that truth is expressed
-“Close reading”; the TEXT holds THE meaning
-emphasis on reader’s role in creating meanings
-meanings generated by a transaction between reader and a text; meaning is not wholly intrinsic to the text
-“an authorial presence [in a text] that leads the text’s rhetorically attuned reader toward an authorially desired interpretation or response” (44)
-based on Marx’s theories of class and cultural production -importance of class and economic conditions; power relationships and class ideologies presented within a text -concept of the unconscious, conscious, ego and id
-human activity not always conscious
-nature/ nurture
-developmental stages; childhood trauma and its effect on development
Theorists
Comments
-Aristotle (The Poetics)
-Plato (The Republic)
-John Crowe Ransom
-Cleanth Brooks
-T.S. Eliot
-Louise Rosenblatt (The
Reader, The Text, and
The Poem)
-Robert Probst
(Response and
Analysis)
-Wolfgang Iser
-Stanley Fish
-Norman Holland
-Wayne Booth
-Terry Eagleton
-Karl Marx
-Frederich Engles
-Sigmund Freud
-Jacques Lacan
-Northrup Frye
1
Structuralism and
Semiotic Analysis
-principles of scientific linguistic study applied to literature -signified (the concept), signifier (the word), sign
(combination of concept and word)
-making meaning through binaries (oppositions)
-no sign is ever fully