These questions are taken from Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, a title held by our library (and
well worth keeping on your bookshelf).
1.
How do the
operations of repression structure or inform the work? That is, what unconscious motives are
operating in the main character(s); what core issues are thereby illustrated;
and how do these core issues structure or inform the piece? (Remember, the
unconscious consists of repressed wounds, fears, unresolved conflicts, and
guilty desires).
2.
Are there any
oedipal dynamic – or any other family dynamics – at work here? That is, is it possible to relate a
character’s patterns of adult behavior to early experiences in the family as
represented in the story? How do these
patterns of behavior and family dynamics operate and what do they reveal?
3.
How can
characters’ behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of
psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, regression, crisis,
projection, fear of or fascination with death, sexuality – which includes love
and romance as well as sexual behaviors – as a primary indicator of
psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?
4.
In what ways can
we view a literary work as analogous to a dream? That is, how might recurrent or striking
dream symbols reveal the ways in which the narrator or speaker is projecting
his or her unconscious desires, fears, wounds, or unresolved conflicts onto
other characters, onto the setting, or onto the events portrayed? Symbols, relevant to death, sexuality, and
the unconscious are especially helpful.
5.
What does this
work suggest about the psychological being of its author? Although this question is no longer the
primary question asked by psychoanalytic critics, some critics still address
it, especially those who write psychological biographies. In these cases, the literary text is
interpreted much as if it were the author’s dream. Psychoanalyzing an author in this manner is a
difficult undertaking, and our analysis must be carefully derived by examining
the author’s entire corpus as well as letters, diaries, and any other
biographical material available.
Certainly, a single literary work can provide but a very incomplete picture.
6.
What might a
given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives
of the reader? Or what might a critical
trend suggest about the psychological motives of a group of readers (for
example, the tendency of literary critics to see Willy Loman as a devoted
family man and ignore or underplay his contribution to the family dysfunction)?
1.
Does the work
reinforce (intentionally or not) capitalist, imperialist, or other classist
values? If so, then the work may be said
to have a capitalist, imperialist, or classist agenda, and it is the critic’s
job to expose and condemn this aspect of the work.
2.
How might the
work be seen as a critique of capitalism, imperialism, or classism? That is, in what ways does the text reveal,
and invite us to condemn, oppressive socioeconomic forces (included repressive
ideologies)? If a work criticizes or
invites us to criticize oppressive socioeconomic forces, then it may be said to
have Marxist agenda.
3.
Does the work in
some ways support a Marxist agenda but in other ways (perhaps unintentionally)
support a capitalist, imperialist, or classist agenda? In other words, is the work ideologically
conflicted?
4.
How does the
literary work reflect (intentionally or not) the socioeconomic conditions of
the time in which it was written and/or the time in which it is set, and what
do those conditions reveal about the history of class struggle?
5.
How might the
work be seen as a critique of organized religion? That is, how does religion
function, in the text, to keep a character or characters from realizing and
resisting socioeconomic oppression?
1.
What does the
work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially, or
psychologically) of patriarchy? How are
women portrayed? How do these portrayals
relate to the gender issues of the period in which the novel was written or is
set? In other words, does the work
reinforce or undermine patriarchal ideology? (In the first case, we might say
that the text has a patriarchal agenda.
In the second case, we might say that the text has a feminist agenda.
Texts that seem to both reinforce and undermine patriarchal ideology might be
said to be ideologically conflicted)
2.
What does the
work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting
patriarchy and/or about the ways in which women’s situations in the world –
economic, political, social, or psychological – might be improved?
3.
What does the
work suggest about the ways in which race, class, and/or other cultural factors
intersect with gender in producing women’s experience?
4.
What does the
work suggest about women’s creativity?
In order to answer this question, biographical data about the author and
historical data about the culture in which she lived will be required.
5.
What might an
examination of the author’s style contribute to the ongoing efforts to
delineate a specifically feminine form of writing?
6.
What does the
history of the work’s reception by the public and by the critics tell us about
the operations of patriarchy? Has the
literary work been ignored or neglected in the past? Why?
Or, if recognized in the past, is the work ignored or neglected now?
Why?
7.
What role does
the work play in terms of women’s literary history and literary tradition?
1.
What single
interpretation of the text best established its organic unity? In other words, how do the text’s formal
elements, and the multiple meanings those elements produce, all work together
to support the theme, or overall meaning , of the
work? Remember, a great work will have a
theme of universal human significance.
1.
How does the
interaction of text and reader create meaning?
How, exactly, does the text’s indeterminacy function as a stimulus to
interpretation? (For example, what events are omitted or unexplained? What descriptions are omitted or incomplete?
What images might have multiple associations?) And how, exactly, does the text
lead us to correct our interpretation as we read?
2.
What does a
phrase-by-phrase analysis of a short literary text, or of key portions of a
longer text, tell us about the reading experience prestructured by (built into)
that text? How does
this analysis of what the text does to the reader differ from
what the text “says” or “means”? In
other words, how might the omission of the temporal experience of reading this
text result in an incomplete idea of the text’s meaning?
3.
How might we interpret
a literary text to show that the reader’s response is, or is analogous to, the
topic of the story? In other words, how is the text really about readers
reading, and what, exactly, does it tell us about this topic? To simplify further, how is a particular kind
of reading experience and important theme in the text? Of course, we must first establish what
reading experience is created by the text (see question #2) in order to show
that the topic of the story is analogous to it.
Then we must cite textual evidence – for example, reference to reading
materials, to character reading texts, and to characters interpreting other
characters or events – to show that what happens in the world of the narrative
mirrors the reader’s situation decoding it.
4.
Drawing on a
broad spectrum of thoroughly documented biographical data, what seems to be a
given author’s identity theme, and how does that theme express itself in the
sum of his or her literary output?
5.
What does the
body of criticism published about a literary text suggest about the critics who
interpreted that text and/or about the reading experience produced by that
text? You might contrast critical camps writing during the same period, writing
during different periods, or both. What
does your analysis suggest about the ways in which the text is created by
readers’ interpretive strategies or by their psychological or ideological
projections?
6.
If you have the
resources to do it, what can you learn about the role of readers’ interpretative strategies or expectations, about the reading experience
produced by a particular text, or about any other reading activity by
conducting your own study using a group of real readers (for example, your
students, classmates, or fellow book-club members)?
1.
Using a specific
structuralist framework (Frye/Scholes), how should the text be
classified in terms of its genre?
2.
Using a specific
structuralist framework (such as that of Greimas, Todorov, or Genette), analyze
the texts’ narrative operations. Can you
speculate about the relationship between the text’s “grammar” and that of
similar texts? Can you speculate about
the relationship between the text’s grammar and the culture from which the text
emerged?
3.
Using Culler’s
theory of literary competence, what rules or codes of interpretation must be
internalized in order to “make sense” of the text? Depending on the text in question, it might
be necessary to identify codes in addition to those specified by Culler. (In
other words, what does a given text contribute to our knowledge of literary
competence?)
4. What are the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or “texts,” such as high-school football games, television and/or magazines ads for a particular brand of perfume (or any other consumer product), or even media coverage of an historical event, such as “Operation Desert Storm,” and important legal case, or presidential election campaign? In other words, analyze the non-verbal messages sent by the “texts” in question, as well as the semiotic implications of such verbal “tags” as “Desert Storm” or “White Diamonds” (a brand of perfume). What is being communicated, and how, exactly, is it being communicated?Questions a Deconstructist asks
1.
How can we use
the various conflicting interpretations a text produces (the “play of
meanings”), or find the various ways in which the text doesn’t answer the
questions it seems to answer, to demonstrate the instability of language and
the undecideability of meaning?
2.
What ideology
does the text seem to promote – what is its main theme – and how does
conflicting evidence in the text show the limitations of that ideology. We can usually discover a text’s overt
ideological project by finding the binary opposition(s) that structure
the text’s main theme(s).
1.
What kinds of
behavior, what models of practice, does this work seem to enforce?
2.
Why might readers
at a particular time and place find this work compelling?
3.
Are there
differences between my values and the values implicit in the work I am reading?
4.
Upon what social
understandings does the work depend?
5.
Whose freedom of
thought or movement might be constrained implicitly or explicitly by this work?
6.
What are the
larger social structures with which these particular acts of praise or blame
[that is, the text’s apparent ethical orientation] might be connected?
7.
How does the
literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical/cultural
texts from the same period, for example, penal codes, birthing practices,
educational priorities, the treatment of children under the law, other art
forms (including popular art forms), attitudes toward sexuality, and the
like? That is, taken as part of a “thick
description” of a given culture at a given point in history, what does this
literary work add to our tentative understanding of human experience in that
particular time and place, including the ways in which individual identity
shapes and is shaped by cultural institutions?
8.
How can we use a
literary work to “map” the interplay of both traditional and subversive
discourses circulating in the culture in which that work emerged and/or the
cultures in which the work has been interpreted? Put another way, how does the text promote
ideologies that support and/or undermine the prevailing power structures of the
time and place in which it was written and/or interpreted?
9.
Using rhetorical
analysis (analysis of a text’s purpose and the stylistic means by which it
tries to achieve that purpose), what does the literary text add to our
understanding of the ways in which literary and non-literary discourses (such
as political, scientific, economic, and educational theories) have influenced,
overlapped with, and competed with one another at specific historical moments?
10.
What does the
literary work suggest about the experience of groups of people who have been
ignored, under-represented, or misrepresented by traditional history (for
example, laborerers, prisoners, women, people of color, lesbians and gay men,
children, the insane, and so on)? Keep
in mind that new historical and cultural criticism usually include attention to
the intersection of the literary work with non-literary discourse prevalent in
the culture in which the work emerged and/or in the cultures in which it has
been interpreted and often focus on such issues as the circulation of power and
the dynamics of persona and group identity.
11.
How has the work’s reception by literary critics and the reading
public – including the reception at its point of origin, changing responses to
the work over time, and its possible future relationship with its audience – been shaped by and shaped the culture in which that reception occurred?
1.
What are the
politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and
how are those politics revealed in, for example, the work’s thematic content or
portrayals of its characters?
2.
What are the
poetics (literary devices and strategies) of specific lesbian, gay, or queer
work? What does the work contribute to
the ongoing attempt to define a uniquely lesbian, gay, or queer poetics,
literary tradition, or canon?
3.
What does the
work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay or lesbian experience and
history, including literary history?
4.
How is queer,
gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are apparently heterosexual?
(This analysis is usually done for works by writers who lived at a time when
openly queer, gay, or lesbian texts would have been considered unacceptable, or
it is done in order to help reformulate the sexual orientation of a writer
formerly presumed heterosexual.)
5.
How might the
works of heterosexual writers be re-read to reveal an unspoken or unconscious
lesbian, gay, or queer presence? That
is, does the work have an unconscious lesbian, gay, or queer desire or conflict
that it submerges (or that heterosexual readers have submerged)?
6.
What does the
work reveal about the operations (socially, politically, psychologically) of
heterosexism? Is the work (consciously
or unconsciously) homophobic? Does the
work critique, celebrate, or blindly accept heterosexist values?
7.
How does the
literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual “identity,” that is, the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into the
separate categories defined by the words homosexual and heterosexual?
1.
How does the
literary text, explicitly or allegorically, represent various aspects of
colonial oppression? Special attention is often given to those areas where
political and cultural oppression overlap, as it does, for example, in the
colonizers’ control of language, communication, and knowledge in colonized
countries.
2.
What does the
text reveal about the problematics of postcolonial identity, including the
relationship between personal and cultural identity and such issues as double
consciousness and hybridity?
3.
What does the
text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist
resistance? For example, what does the
text suggest about the ideological, political, social, economic, or
psychological forces that promote or inhibit resistance? How does the text suggest that resistance can
be achieved and sustained by an individual or a group?
4.
What does the
text reveal about the operations of cultural difference – the ways in which
race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and
customs combine to form individual identity – in shaping our perceptions of
ourselves, others, and the world in which we live? “Othering” might be one area of analysis
here.
5.
How does the text
respond to or comment upon the characters, themes, or assumptions of a
canonized (colonialist) work? Following
Helen Tiffin’s lead, examine how the postcolonial text reshapes our previous
interpretations of a canonical text.
6.
Are there
meaningful similarities among the literatures of different postcolonial
populations? One might compare, for
example, the literatures of native peoples from different countries whose land
was invaded by colonizers, the literatures of white settler colonies in
different countries, or the literatures of different populations in the African
diaspora. Or one might compare literary
works from all three of these categories in order to investigate, for example,
if the experience of colonization creates some common elements of cultural
identity that outweigh differences in race and nationality.
7.
How does a
literary text in the Western canon reinforce or undermine colonialist ideology
through its representation of colonization and/or its inappropriate silence
about colonized peoples? Does the text
teach us anything about colonialist or anticolonialist ideology through its
illustration of any of the post colonial concepts we’ve discussed? (A text does not have to treat the subject of
colonization in order to do this).
1.
What can the work
teach us about the specifics of African heritage, African American culture and
experience, and/or African American history (including but not limited to the
history of marginalization)?
2.
What are the
politics (ideological agendas related to political, social, and economic power)
of specific African American works? For
example, does the work correct stereotypes of African Americans; correct
historical misrepresentations of African Americans; celebrate Afro-American
culture, experience, and achievement; or explore racial issues, including,
among others, the psychological effects of racism?
3.
What are the
poetics (literary devices and strategies) of specific African American
works? For example, does the work use
black vernacular or standard white English?
Does the work draw on African myths or African American folk tales or
folk motifs? Does the work provide
imagery that resonates with African American women’s domestic space, African
American cultural practices, history, or heritage? What are the effects of these literary
devices and how do they relate to the theme, or meaning, of the work?
4.
How does the work
participate in the African American literary tradition? To what group of African American texts might
we say it belongs in terms of its politics and poetics? How does it conform to those texts? How does it break with them, perhaps seeking
to redefine literary aesthetics by experimenting with new norms? In short, what place does it occupy in
African American literary history or in African American women’s literary
history?
5.
How does the text
compare with texts from other parts of the African diaspora (peoples of African
descent who do not live in Africa), for example texts by Afro-Cuban or other
black
6.
How is an Africanist
presence – black characters, stories about black people, representations
of black speech, images associated with