Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

This chapter begins with a summary of the kinds of questions that each critical lens might ask about a work of literature:

• Psychoanalytic criticism: How does the text reflect psychological dynamics?

• Marxist criticism: To what extent does the text reflect capitalist ideologies?

• Feminist criticism: To what extent does the text reflect the patriarchy?

• New criticism: Does the text have “organic unity and a theme of universal significance” (463)?

• Reader-response criticism: How does the reader’s understanding of the text relate to the text itself, and how does the text shape that understanding?

• Structuralist criticism: What is the “structural system” of the text?

• Deconstructive criticism: What do the text’s contradictions reveal about its ideologies?

• New historicism: How does the text reflect and perpetuate ideological discourses in the culture it was made in and/or received?

• Cultural criticism: How do “working-class cultural productions” reflect hegemonic ideologies (464)?

• Lesbian, gay, and queer criticism: How does the text present LGBTQ+ people? How does it problematize traditional understandings of gender and sexuality?

• African American criticism: How does the text present Black people? To what extent does the text reflect racist ideologies?

• Postcolonial criticism: How does the text present cultural difference? To what extent does the text reflect colonialist ideologies?

• Ecocriticism: How does the text reflect the natural world? Is it ecocentric, anthropocentric, and/or androcentric?