L i t e r a r y

T e r m s

G e n e r a l - M i s c . T e r m s

ALLEGORY:• a story in verse or prose with a double meaning: a primary

surface meaning and a secondary or under-the-surface meaning

A system of comparisons rather than one comparison Differs from symbolism in that it puts less emphasis on

the images for their own sake and more on their ulterior meanings and the meanings are more fixed; meanings do not ray out from allegory as they do from symbols

– Example: the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is an allegory for redemption and salvation

– Example: Moby-Dick is an allegory for man’s quest to understand his existence

ALLEGORYS

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Aesthetic:

• the study or philosophy of beauty in art, literature, and nature

ALLUSION:

• a reference to another work of art, a piece of literature [especially The Bible], mythology, person, or event

An appeal to the reader to share an experience with the writer

–Example: In Heart of Darkness, Conrad makes an implicit reference to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice

Anachronism:

• Placing something in a time where it does not belong to underline a universal verisimilitude and timelessness

– Example: the clock in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

Analogy:

• the comparison of two things alike in some respects

ANALYSIS:

• a detailed separation and examination of a work of literature into its important parts and a discussion of their significance– A close study of the various elements

and the relationship between them

Antihero:

• a non-hero or the antithesis of a hero of the old-fashioned kind who was capable of heroic deeds, who was dashing, strong, brave, and resourceful

– Example: Don Quixote-Holden Caulfield

Antithesis:

• contrasting ideas sharpened by the use of opposite or noticeably different meanings

– Example: “Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them” Bacon

Aphorism:

• a short witty statement of dogma or truth– Example: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes

a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Benjamin Franklin

– Example: “Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself.” Erich Fromm

ARCHETYPE:• an image, story-pattern, or character type

which recurs frequently and evokes strong, often unconscious, associations in the reader– Symbols existing universally and instinctively in

the collective unconscious of the human race• Example: the wicked witch-light = hope-renewal-

intellectual illumination vs. darkness = ignorance-unknown-despair

Connotation:

• the suggestion or implication evoked by a word or phrase, over and above what they mean or actually denote

– Example: cockroach [fear-derision and scientific meanings]

Diction:

• the vocabulary or word choice of a writer

Didactic:

• a teaching type of tone, usually lesson-like or boring in nature

Deductive:

• logical reasoning from the general to the specific

Denotation:

• the most literal and limited meaning of a word, regardless of what one may feel about it or the suggestions and ideas it connotes

Deus Ex Machina:

• literally “god in the machine”

– Greek idea from when the gods would come on stage to rescue the hero

– Applies to anytime the hero is saved by a miraculous event

Ellipsis:

• the omission of one or more words with the use of the symbol [ . . . ]

Epigram:

• a short, witty statement in verse or prose which may be complimentary, satiric, or aphoristic

– Example: “We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow,/Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.” Alexander Pope

Epiphany:• In its simplest terms, the epiphany is a revelation of such power and

insight that it alters the entire world-view of the thinker who experiences it. In this sense, it is similar to what a scientist might call a "paradigm shift."

• Another definition proffered by Shelley, in his Defense of Poetry (1821), describes epiphany as the “best and happiest moments . . . arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, visitations of the divinity” which poetry “redeems from decay.”

• James Joyce brought the term to modern art and literature when he used it to designate an event in which the essential nature of somethinga person, a situation, an objectwas suddenly perceived. It is thus an intuitive grasp of reality achieved in a quick flash of recognition in which something, usually simple and commonplace, is seen in a new light, and, as Joyce says, “its soul, its whatness leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance.” This sudden insight is the epiphany.

Ethos:

• the character, emotions, disposition, and-or attitude of the writer reflected in the speech or writing

Figurative language:

• language that uses figures of speech [any way of saying something other than the ordinary way] [metaphor-simile-alliteration-symbol-etc.]

GENRE:

• A fancy word for literary type or class

– Major genres: • epic• tragedy• lyric• comedy• satire• novel• short story

Homeric epithet:

• joining of adjectives and nouns to make compound adjectives

– Use by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey

• Example: “wine-dark sea” and “rosy-fingered lawn”

Hyperbole-overstatement:

• to overstate or exaggerate an issue for emphasis

– Example: AP English is the most difficult and boring class ever

IMAGERY: • the use of language to represent

objects, actions, feelings, thoughts, ideas, states of mind and any sensory or extra-sensory experience

– Example: Robert Browning, "Meeting at Night"

Meeting at Night

The gray sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each!

Robert Browning

Inductive:

• reasoning from the specific to the general

IRONY: • a mode of expression, through words

[verbal irony] or events [irony of situation], conveying a reality different from and usually opposite to appearance or expectation– The ability to detect irony is

sometimes heralded as a test of intelligence and sophistication

Techniques for creating irony are to:•say the opposite of what one means

•create a reversal between expectation and its fulfillment

•give the audience knowledge that a character lacks

Verbal irony: the writer’s meaning or even his attitude may be different from what he says

–Example: after Mr. Rishel gives a very hard and very unfair exam, the students proclaim as they walk out: “Have a nice weekend Mr. Rishel!”

Situational irony: a situation in which there is an incongruity between actual circumstances and those that would seem appropriate or between what is anticipated and what actually comes to pass

–Example: if a professional pickpocket had his own pocket picked just as he was in the act of picking someone else’s pocket

Dramatic irony: where the audience has knowledge that gives additional meaning to a character’s words

•Example: In Oedipus the King, King Oedipus, who has unknowingly killed his father, says that he will banish his father’s killer when he finds him

HAROLD BLOOM’S DEFINITIONS OF IRONY

• When a writer or character says one thing and means another, often the opposite of what was explicitly stated

• Juxtaposition of “antithetical ideas” or ideas that are in direct opposition to one another

• Multiple, and sometimes differing, definitions of a single subject

• The imaginative ideas that spark our interests and curiosities as a reader; Remember Thoreau’s “free and wild thinking”?

Literal:

• taking the meaning of a word in its primary and nonfigurative sense

– an exact rendering of something

Lyrical:

• maintaining the qualities of song or poetry

– Example: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

METAPHOR: • a figure of speech in which an implicit

comparison is made between two things essentially unlike– Differs from a symbol because it represents

a single object or idea• Example: “Life's but a walking shadow; a

poor player,/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.” Shakespeare, Macbeth

• Example: Frances Cornford, "The Guitarist Tunes Up"

The Guitarist Tunes UpWith what attentive courtesy he bentOver his instrument;Not as a lordly conqueror who couldCommand both wire and wood,But as a man with a loved woman might,Inquiring with delightWhat slight essential things she had to

sayBefore they started, he and she, to play.

Frances Cornford

Mood-atmosphere: • the emotional feeling of the setting,

something like tone but specifically related to the setting

– Example: the use of the color yellow in the various settings of St. Petersburg to produce a feeling of despair-sorrow-decay in Crime and Punishment

Oxymoron:

• a self-contradictory combination of words

– Example: jumbo shrimp

– Example: In Paradise Lost, Milton describes hell as: “No light, but rather darkness visible”

Parable:

• a short, simple story related to allegory and fable, which points to a moral

PARADOX:

• an apparently self-contradictory, even absurd, statement which, on closer inspection, is found to contain a truth reconciling conflicting opposites

– Example: “I must be cruel only to be kind” Shakespeare, Hamlet

Parallelism: • the coordination of sentence syntax, word

order, and ideas used for effect and emphasis– Example: “The people that walked in

darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Isaiah

Parody:

• the imitative use of the words, style, attitude, tone and ideas of an author in such a way as to make them ridiculous

Personification:

• the attribution of human qualities to an inanimate object

– Example: In “To Autumn,” Keats describes autumn as a harvester “sitting careless on a granary floor”

POINT OF VIEW: • the position of the narrator in relation to his story;

thus the outlook from which events are related Four (4) variations of point of view:

– Omniscient: Third person; narrator’s knowledge is

unlimited Narrator can reveal as much or as little as

they please Most flexible and permits the widest scope

– Limited omniscient: Third person; viewpoint of one character Approximates more closely than the omniscient the

conditions of real life

– First person: Author disappears into one of the characters Offers no opportunity . . . for direct interpretation by

the author Offers excellent opportunities for dramatic irony Must question narrator reliability

– Objective: Narrator disappears into a kind of roving sound

camera . . . the camera can go anywhere but can only record what is seen and heard

Readers are merely spectators

Rhetoric:

• the art of persuasion and employing the devices to persuade

SATIRE: • a technique used to expose, censure, and ridicule

the mistakes and vices of society in an attempt to help people understand civilized, moral values– Swift defined satire as “a sort of glass wherein

beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it

– Example: In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain satirizes the contradictions of religion and slavery in Southern society

SETTING:

• the combination of place, historical time, and social environment– Provides the general background for

character and plot

– Determines the atmosphere of the text

– Can symbolize whole ways of life or value systems

Simile:

• an explicit comparison between two objects using the words like, as, than, similar to, resembles, or seems

– Example: “The great blast furnaces of Liège rose along the line like ancient castles burning in a border raid.” Graham Greene, Stamboul Train

Stream of consciousness: • writing that reflects a character’s flow of

perceptions, thoughts, memories and feelings; exemplifies the way the modern mind attempts to make meaning in a fragmented world– Example: “I AM BELOVED and she is mine. I see her

take flowers away from leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass . . .” Toni Morrison, Beloved

Structure

• The arrangement of ideas, images, and thoughts

Syllogism:

• a form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion

– Example: All men are mortal. Greeks are men. Therefore, all Greeks are mortal.

SYMBOL: • from the Greek meaning “to throw together” and “mark-emblem-

token-sign”

– Something that means more than what it is; an object, animate or inanimate, which represents or “stands for” something else

– Suggests a great variety of specific meanings; meanings “ray out” from a symbol

– Differs from allegory in that it has a real existence, whereas an allegorical sign is arbitrary

– Differs from metaphor in that it represents multiple objects and-or ideas, whereas a metaphor represents a single object and-or idea

• Example: “The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost

• Example: the green light in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Syntax:

• the physical arrangement of words in a sentence or a line of verse

THEME: • the controlling idea or its central insight; a unifying

generalization about life stated or implied by the story Readers must understand what view of life [the

text] supports or what insight into life it reveals To state the theme a reader must select the

“central insight” and explain the “greatest number of elements”

“the function of interpretive writers is not to state a theme but to vivify it”

“We may know in our minds, for instance, that ‘War is horrible’ or that ‘Old age is often pathetic and in need of understanding,’ but these are insights that need to be periodically renewed. Emotionally we may forget them, and if we do, we are less alive and complete as human beings. Story writers perform a service for useinterpret life for uswhether they give us new insights or refresh and extend old ones.”

Readers must value and weigh all themeseven themes that appear irrelevant to us personallybecause we can benefit from other perspectives

To determine theme focus on: Changes in main character Knowledge gained by main character The nature of the central conflict and

its outcome The title Important words

Important principles for theme: Theme should be expressible in the form of a

statement with subject and predicate Theme should be stated as a generalization

about life Do not make broad generalizations (avoid terms

like every, all, always, etc.) Theme is the central and unifying concept of a

story There is not one way of stating the theme of a

story Avoid any statement that reduces the theme to

some familiar saying-cliché

Thesis:

• an attitude or position taken by the speaker or writer

– Example: Dostoevsky communicates that Hegel and Nietzche were not exactly correct in their philosophical stances

TONE-attitude:

• the reflection of a writer’s attitude, manner, mood, and moral outlook in her work; even the way his personality pervades the work

P r o s e

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Anadiplosis:

• the repetition of the last word of one clause at the beginning of the following clause to gain a special effect– Example: “Labour and care are rewarded with

success, success produces confidence, confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which diligence had raised.” Dr. Johnson, Rambler No. 21

Anaphora:• a rhetorical device involving the repetition

of a word or group of words in successive clauses– Example: “Said Sir Ector . . . Sir Lancelot . . .

thou wert never matched of earthly knight’s hand; and thou wert the courteoust knight that ever bare shield; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrad horse . . .” Malory, Le Morte Darthur

ANTAGONIST:

• the force acting against the protagonist– Example: In The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn, Huck opposes his moralistic society

Asyndeton:

• a rhetorical device where conjunctions, articles and even pronouns are omitted for the sake of speed and economy– Example:

The first sort by their own suggestion fell

Self-tempted, self-depraved; man falls, deceived

By other first; man therefor shall find grace

The other none . . .

Milton, Paradise Lost

Bildungsroman:

• a novel about upbringing, education, or coming-of-age– Deals with the youthful development of a hero

or heroine– Describes the processes by which maturity is

achieved through various ups and downs of life\

• Example: Jane Austen, Emma

• Example: Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Chiasmus:

• a reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses– Example: “His time a moment, and a point his

space.” Alexander Pope, Essay on Man [Epistle 1]

Confidant[e]:

• a character who has little effect on the action but whose fuction is to listen to the intimate feelings and intentions of the protagonist– Confidant = male– Confidante = female

• Example: Horatio in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

CONFLICT:

• the tension in a situation between characters, or the actual opposition of characters– Conflicts can be external and internal

• Example: Hamlet predicament of wishing to avenge his father and yet knowing when and how to do it

Epigraph:

• a quotation on the title page of a book– Example: from The Great Gatsby

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;

If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,

Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high bouncing lover,

I must have you!”

Thomas Parke D’Invilliers

Epistrophe:

• a figure of speech in which each sentence or clause ends with the same word

Flashback:

• derives from the cinema, which is now also used to describe any scene or episode in a play, novel, story, or poem that show events that happened at an earlier time

FORESHADOWING:

• the technique or arranging of events and information in a narrative in such a way that later events are prepared for or shadowed forth beforehand

Hubris:

• the shortcoming or defect in a Greek tragic hero that leads him to ignore the warnings of the gods and to transgress their laws and commands

Litotes-understatement:

• a figure of speech which contains an understatement for emphasis, and is therefore the opposite of hyperbole– Example: “not bad” usually means “good”

MOTIF:

• one of the dominant ideas in a work of literature that recurs throughout the work; a part of the main theme– May consist of a character, a recurrent

image, or a verbal pattern• Example: cars in The Great Gatsby

• Example: music in Invisible Man

Polysyndeton:

• the repetition of conjuctions– Example: Hemingway is addicted to the use of

the word “and” to create psuedo-biblical rhythms

PROTAGONIST:

• the principal character in a work of literature and equivalent to the hero

Zeugma:

• a figure of speech in which a verb or an adjective is applied to two nouns, though appropriate only to one of them

• Example: “Kills the poys and the luggage.” Shakespeare, Henry V

Rhetorical Approaches:

Chronological

Anachronistic

Comparative

Persuasive

Frame story

Cause and effect

Propaganda technique

Ethos

Logos

Pathos

Inductive

Deductive

Conversational

Formal

Instructive

Prose Style Analysis:• Idiom: a form of expression, construction or phrase

peculiar to a writer

• Major elements of style analysis:

– diction

– point of view

– tone

– organization

– narrative pace

– imagery

– shape of sentences

– shape of paragraphs

Vocabulary:tone

attitude

diction

language

figurative lang.

detail

imagery

point of view

organization

structure

irony

sentence structure

syntax

phrasing

FORM REFLECTS CONTENT

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Accent-stress:

• a syllable given more prominence in pronunciation– Example: re-hearse

APOSTROPHE:

• a figure of speech in which a thing, a place, an abstract quality, an idea, a dead or absent person, is addressed as if present and capable of understanding– Example: “Milton! Thou should’st be living

at this hour . . .”

Ballad:

• a fairly short narrative poem written in a songlike stanza form– Example: John Keats, “La Belle Dame sans

Merci”

Caesura:

• a break or pause in a line of poetry, dictated, usually, by the natural rhythm of the language– Example:

With hinm ther was his sone, a yong Squier

A lovyere and a lusty bacheler,

With lokkes crulle as they were leyd in presse.

Chaucer, Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

Conceit:

• a fairly elaborate figurative device of a fanciful kind which often incorporates metaphor, simile, hyperbole, or oxymoron

COUPLETS:

• two successive lines, usually in the same meter, linked by rime– Example:

Whilom ther was dwellynge in Lumbardye

A worthy knyght, that born was of Pavye,

In which he lyved in greet prosperitee;

And sixty yeer a wyflees man was hee,

And folwed ay his bodily delyt

On wommen, there as was his appetyt

Chaucer, The Merchant’s Tale

Dramatic monologue:

• a poem in which there is one imaginary speaker addressing an imaginary audience– Example: Robert Browning, “My Last

Duchess”

Elegy:

• a poem of mourning for an individual or a lament for some tragic event

Enjambment: • running on of the sense beyond the second line of one

couplet into the first line of the next– Example:

Who, of men, can tell

That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell

To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,

The earth its dower or river, wood, and vale,

The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,

The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,

Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet

If human souls did never kiss and greet?

John Keats, Endymion

EPIC:

• a long narrative poem, on a grand scale, about the deeds of warriors and heroes

– A polygonal, ‘heroic’ story incorporating myth, legend, folk tale, and history

– Often of national significance in the sense that they embody the history and aspirations of a nation in a lofty or grandiose manner

• Example: Anonymous, Beowulf

• Example: Homer, Odyssey

Heroic couplets:

• comprises rimed decasyllables, nearly always in iambic pentameters rimed in pairs– Example: “All humane things are subject to

decay,/And, when Fate summons, Monarchs must obey:” Dryden, Mac Flecknoe

Metonymy: • a figure of speech in which some significant aspect or

detail of an experience is used to represent the whole experience

– Example: we refer to the leadership of our nation as “The White House

– Example: Robert Frost in his poem “Out, Out ” describes an injured boy holding up his cut hand “as if to keep/The life from spilling,” which literally means keep the blood from spilling.

Ode:

• a lyric poem with an elaborate stanza-structure, a marked formality and stateliness in tone and style, and lofty sentiments and thoughts– Example: John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

SONNET: • a fixed form of fourteen lines, normally

iambic pentameter, with a rime scheme conforming to or approximating on of two main types:

ENGLISH-SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET: • a sonnet riming ababcdcdefefgg

The content or structure usually parallels the rime scheme, falling into three quatrains [a four-line stanza] and a concluding couplet [two successive lines, usually in the same meter, linked by rime]

The units marked off by the rimes correspond to the development of thought Three quatrains present three examples or metaphorical statements

of an idea and the couplet a conclusion or application

The principal break in thought usually comes at the end of the eighth line Example: William Shakespeare, “That Time of year”

ITALIAN-PETRARCHAN SONNET: • a sonnet consisting of an octave [an eight-line stanza] riming

abbaabba and of a sestet [a six-line stanza] using any arrangement of two or three additional rimes, such as cdcdcd or cdecde

– The division in rime scheme corresponds to a division of thought; the octave presents a situation and the sestet a comment, or the octave an idea and the sestet an example

– Example: John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”

STANZA:

• a group of lines whose metrical pattern [and usually its rime scheme] is repeated throughout the poem

Synecdoche:

• a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole– Example: “Give us this day, our daily bread”

where bread = daily meals– Example: In “Terence, this is stupid stuff,” A.

E. Housman’s narrator explains: “malt does more than Milton can/To justify God’s ways to man,” where malt = beer

Villanelle:

• a poem consisting of five three-lined stanzas or tercets and a final quatrain– Example: Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle

into That Good Night”

P o e t r y T e r m s -

M e t r i c a l T e r m s

ALLITERATION:

• the repetition at close intervals of the initial consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words– Example: map-moon, kill-code, preach-

approve

ASSONANCE:

• the repetition at close intervals of the vowel sounds of accented syllables or important words– Example: hat-ran-amber-vein-made

BLANK VERSE:

• unrimed iambic pentameter– Example: Shakespearean tragedies

CONSONANCE:

• the repetition at close intervals of the final consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words– Example: book-plaque-thicker

Continuous form:

• The element of design is slight

• Lines follow each other without formal grouping

• There are different degrees of pattern

End-stopped line:

• a line that ends with a natural speech pause, usually marked by punctuation

Feminine rime:

• a rime in which the repeated accented vowel is in either the second or third last syllable of the words involved– Example: ceiling-appealing, hurrying-scurrying

Fixed form:

• A traditional pattern that applies to a whole poem– Example: limerick, sonnet, haiku, lyric, terza

rima

FOOT:

• the basic unit used in the scansion or measurement of verse– Usually contains one accented syllable and

one or two unaccented syllables• Example: The dewshall weepthey fallto night

Names of feet-meter:

• Iamb [iambic] in - ter'

• Trochee [trochaic] en' - ter

• Anapest [anapestic] in - ter - vene'

• Dactyl [dactylic] en' - ter - prise

• Spondee [spondaic] true' - blue'

Free verse:

• nonmetrical verse; contains no fixed metrical pattern

IAMB:

• a metrical foot consisting of one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable– Example: re-hearse

Internal rime:

• a rime in which one or both of the rime-words occur within the line– Example: “ ‘Surely,’ said I, ‘surely that is

something at my window lattice; / Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore” Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”

Masculine rime:

• a rime in which the repeated accented vowel sound is in the final syllable of the words involved– Example: dance-pants, scald-recalled

Meter:

• regularized rhythm; an arrangement of language in which the accents occur at apparently equal intervals in time

Onomatopoeia:

• the use of words that supposedly mimic their meaning in their sound– Example: boom-click-plop

Rhythm:

• any wavelike recurrence of motion or sound

Stanzaic form

• A series of stanzas; repeated units having the same number of lines, usually the same metrical pattern, and often an identical rime scheme

Terza rima:

• an interlocking rime scheme with the pattern aba bcb cdc, etc.

D r a m a T e r m s

FREYTAG’S PYRAMID:

• the structure of most five-act plays follows this pattern:

climax

rising action falling action

exposition resolution-denouement

CATHARSIS:

• Aristotle in Poetics explains that “Tragedy through pity and fear effects a purgation of such emotions

HAMARTIA:

• an error of judgement which may arise from ignorance or some moral shortcoming– Aristotle explains that a tragic hero comes to

misfortune through no vice or depravity, but some error usually in judgement

TRAGEDY:• In his Poetics, Aristotle defined tragedy

as:– The imitation of an action that is serious and

also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

SOLILOQUY:

• a speech in which a character alone on the stage expresses his thoughts and feelings

ASIDE:

• a few words or a short passage spoken in an undertone or to the audience

Schools of Literary Criticism

Basic perspectives:

• Textual

• Social

• Cultural

• Topical

Textual perspective:

• New Critical Approach

• Focus on literary form; text onlyFocus strictly on what the text isQuestion the formarrangement,

purpose, voice, syntax, tone and audienceCompare to other texts of similar genreBuild an understanding of a genre, which

helps to develop a set of expectations and also informed interpretations

Textual perspective:Focus on how separate parts relate to the overall form

(analysis)Involves a careful examination of literary elements and devicesExcludes factors outside of the text (i.e. author’s

background/reader response) Intentional fallacy: it is impossible/irrelevant to determine

an author’s intention Affective fallacy: readers’ feelings are irrelevant to the

meaningImportant to place your reading of a particular text within a

network of previous reading; readers can accomplish this by examining the following elements:

Roles: prototypical figures (i.e. “western cowboy) Settings: social or cultural world Problems: typical conflicts characters deal with Storyline: manner in which the problem is solved

Social perspective:

a.k.a. Reader response criticismFocus on what we experienceOur own personal experience of the subject

being addressedReaders test an artist’s ideas against personal

experience and review the validity of the argument-theme

Encourages personal connections with textImportant to seek to expand social attitudesImportant to imagine an “implied audience”

(e.g. Huck Finn)

Social perspective:

Methods of formulating an informed social response:

Map relationships to characters-“implied audience”

Examine character dialogue; use the following questions:

• Is the dialogue relevant to the topic of conversation?

• Does the character provide enough information?

• If not, then what are the consequences?

Cultural perspective:

• Marxist-socialist: examine social-economic hierarchies in a text

• Feminist: explore gender roles in a text

• Psychoanalytic: text as record of author psychology

• Pop culture: influence of popular culture on texts

• Multicultural: examine perspective of marginalized cultural groups

• Postcolonial: literature of formerly colonized peoples; locate texts in a global sense

Cultural perspective:

Focus on who we are as a culture and how we came to be

Readers explore the affects of a text’s cultural environment

Focus on the influence of peer groups, mass media, family, school, religion, historical period, and religious/social/political group

Examine the affects of cultural institutions on the world the author creates

Topical perspective:

• Historical: text as historical document

• Biographical: emphasis on author background

• Literary tradition: texts as representative of ideological movements

Topical perspective:

Focus on what we knowIndividual readers contribute personal

perspectives/knowledges in order to create larger, composite meanings

Responses differ because of interest and background knowledge of readers

Readers can carry away part of what the text meansApply background knowledge of different academic

fieldsmath, science, etc.Important to identify areas of expertise and

contribute to an open discourseMost important areashistory, art, music and

science

WORKS CITED

• Perrine, Laurence and Thomas A. Arp. Sound and Sense.

• Cuddon, J.A. Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 3rd ed.

• Potter, Nancy. "Bellevue High School Advanced Placement Institute."