The Lenses of Literature; HW Due 2/27

Choose your lens by tomorrow start of class by posting your name on one of the LIT CRIT charts. Find instances of your lens in your past readings (chapters 1-19).

Biographical Criticism: Considering literature in light of its author’s life. There is an implied truth that there is a direct relationship between the author’s life and his or her writing. Authors embed their own experiences into their plots and characters. If readers understand an author deeply, then they can understand their products deeply. (Gillesspie 2010)

Historical Criticism: Literature is a product of the author’s historical circumstances. Readers who look at text through an historical lens are considering the times in which the author lived and wrote - politically, socially, economically, military, scientific, intellectual.  (Gillesspie 2010)

Psychological Criticism: Analyzing the human mind and behavior of literary characters and/or their author. (Gillesspie 2010)

Feminist Criticism: A close, critical look at the female experience - characters and authors - in a patriarchal society. (Gillesspie 2010)

Formalist Criticism: A critical investigation into the formal elements of literature - diction, syntax, literary techniques with an eye on assessing how the work of literature achieves the noted effects. (Gillesspie 2010)

Marxist Criticism: Based on the theories of Karl Marx and philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, this school concerns itself with class differences, economic and otherwise, as well as the implications and complications of the capitalist system: "Marxism attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experience" (Tyson 277).

Due Monday 2/27: Complete Jane Eyre. Minimum 20 pages of dialectical journal entries.