Feminist criticism:

A criticism advocating equal rights for women in a political, economic, social,

psychological, personal, and aesthetic sense. On the thematic level, the feminist
reader should identify with female characters and their concerns. The object is to
provide a critique of phallocentric assumptions and an analysis of patriarchal visions
or ideologies inscribed in a literature that is male-centered and male-dominated.
Such a reader denounces the outrageously phallic visions of writers such as D. H.
Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer, refusing to accept the cult of masculine
virility and superiority that reduces woman to a sex object, a second sex, a
submissive other. As Judith Fetterley puts it, "Feminist criticism is a political act
whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it by changing the
consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read. . . [The first
act of a feminist critic is] to become a resisting rather than an assenting reader and,
by this refusal to assent, to begin the process of exorcizing the male mind that has
been implanted in us." On the thematic level, then, the reader rejects stereotypes
and examines woman as a theme in literary works.

On the ideological level, the reader seeks to learn not to accept the hegemonic
perspective of the male and refuses to be coopted by a gender-biased criticism.
Gender is largely a cultural construct, as are the stereotypes that go along with it:
that the male is active, dominating, and rational, whereas the female is passive,
submissive, and emotional. Gynocritics strive to define a particularly feminine
content and to extend the canon so that it might include works by lesbians,
feminists, and women writers in general. According to Elaine Showalter,
gynocriticism is concerned with "woman as the producer of textual meaning, with
the history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women. Its subjects
include the psychodynamics of female creativity; linguistics and the problem of a
female language; the trajectory of the individual or collective female literary career;
literary history; and, of course, studies of particular writers and works."

On the deconstructionist level, the aim is to dismantle and subvert the logocentric
assumptions of male discourse -- its valorization of being, meaning, truth, reason,
and logic, its metaphysics of presence. Logocentrism is phallocentric (hence the
neologism "phallogocentrism"); it systematically privileges paternal over maternal
power, the intelligible over the sensible. Patriarchal authority demands unity of
meaning and is obsessed with certainty of origin. The French feminists in particular
construe "woman" as any radical force that subverts the concepts, assumptions,
and structures of traditional male discourse -- the realism, rationality, mastery, and
explanation that undergird it. By contrast, the American and British feminists mainly
engage in empirical and thematic studies of writings by and about women.
Feminism/Literary Criticism
< Feminism

Feminist criticism focuses on how literature has represented women and relationships between
women and men, drawing attention to how women have been marginalized and denied a voice of
their own in much of canonical literature, and to how literature reflects society's prevailing ideological
assumptions with regard to gender and power.

Reading as a Literary Critic[edit]

The most important pre-requisite to literary criticism is the ability to read like a literary critic. You must
read not only for content and understanding of the subject, but you must also be careful to read for
any and all literary devices, as well as trying to understand the reason and motivation behind every
line. This is a difficult habit to get into, but it is helpful to take notes while you read.
In other words, a careful reader does not just read a text for the 'story'. Rather than just being
interested in what happens or what is being described by a literary work, a critical reader is
interested in how the writer has used language, form and style in order to convey meaning and affect
the reader's response to the subject matter. A critical reader pays attention to patterns in texts and to
how these establish tone, register, atmosphere and mood.
Reading Novels
Develop a sensitivity to the 'voice' telling the story. From whose perspective is the story being told?
Is there a first person narrator? How does the way in which he or she describes events reflect his or
her perspective and attitudes, and is his or her narration 'reliable'? If the story is told in the third
person, does it focus on describing the thoughts and feelings of one character, does it only describe
external actions, or does the author allow us to 'see inside' the thoughts of many different
characters?
You must be able to visualize the 'flow' of a story, understanding where the character(s) go, where
events happen, how the characters and the plot develop, and the themes within the story.
It is helpful to construct a flow chart after reading showing prominent characters, where they go,
what happens to them, how they change (for this you must look very carefully at their actions and
dialogue and ask yourself 'Is that what they would have done/said at a previous point in the story?),
and what events caused that change.
The most important thing to read for is character development, where you analyze characters to see
how they have changed over the course of the story.
Reading Plays The most important thing to remember when studying a play is that most plays were
not written to be read but to be performed in front of an audience. It is important to pay attention not
just to what is said by characters, but to whom, to who else on stage can overhear this and to how
other characters would react. Also pay attention to stage directions and to implicit directions in what
characters say so that you can form a mental picture of what characters are doing. Consider how
characters' lines might be spoken differently by different actors and how this would affect the
meaning.
A good exercise is to look at a play from the perspective of a director, a casting director, a props and
scenery manager, a costume-team leader or a lighting engineer. Think about the decisions that all
these different people would make in order to bring the script to life on the stage. It is very difficult to
understand how plays work as theatre without having first-hand experiences of performances, so if it
is at all possible, you should see a live performance of the play that you are studying. Failing this,
watching film versions of the play is also helpful. Seeing more than one production is a good way to
understand how different directors can interpret the same script in very different ways and will help
you to start thinking about what you would do in their position.

Formal Literary Criticism[edit]

Formal literary criticism focuses mainly on the clarity, quality and complexity of the writing of the
subject. A formal critic looks primarily at syntax, literary devices, and the flow of the writing. Formalist
literary criticism can be divided into two categories: descriptive and prescriptive.
Descriptive formalism focuses on the technical analysis of the literary and linguistic devices in texts,
with especial regard for how these make a text 'literary' i.e. how the text uses language in a special
way which sets it apart from everyday discourse. Prescriptive formalists advocate a style of literary
writing which is as distinct as possible from everyday discourse, as they believe that it is the
responsibility of literary writers to make readers see things in a new way.
Prescriptive formalism is often associated with Marxism; the early Soviet critic Shlovsky argued that
the function of literature was to "make the stone stonier" i.e. to use the alienating effect of
challenging devices in order to avoid offering up an immediate, transparent meaning to readers so
that they would have to engage actively with texts and discover new meanings from them, in a way
analogous to the development of political consciousness. Bertold Brecht argued that such literary
forms as satire operate through a 'Verfremdungseffekt' - i.e. they present the familiar in unfamiliar
ways and therefore arouse readers' and audiences' awareness of the ideological nature of their
assumptions.
Descriptive formalism was at the heart of the New Criticism school which emerged at Cambridge in
the 1930s under F.R. Leavis, William Empson and Cleanth Brooks, and which encouraged students
to engage in 'practical criticism', looking at literary texts as self-contained artefacts which should be
explained on their own terms rather than by reference to external information such as biographical
and historical details. This approach, encouraging close analytical reading, was very similar to that of
the structuralist school which emerged after the Second World War and was advocated by figures
such as Roland Barthes, Lacan, Bhaktin and Levi-Strauss.
Post-structuralism and deconstructionism emerged from the structuralist school but criticised
structuralism's analytical approach as being reductive and simplistic. Post-structuralists drew
attention to the relationships between texts and their referents and to the limitless possibilities of
reading as a creative process, seeing texts not just as self-contained structures but as structures
sitting within the larger meta-structures of society and ideology, with readers equally forming their
readings from within these structures. Deconstructionists similarly see textual interpretation as a
process which can never arrive at a final, fixed 'authoritative' reading of any text because it takes
place within the constraints of readers' ideological assumptions, and also draw attention to the
contradictions within texts and to the flawed ideological assumptions of their authors. Derrida,
Foucault and Culler are some well-known critics in this field.

FEMINIST LITERARY CRTICISM

Also known as: Feminist Criticism

Feminist literary criticism is literary analysis that arises from the viewpoint
of feminism, feminist theory and/or feminist politics. Basic methods of feminist
literary criticism include:
 Identifying with female characters: This is a way to challenge the
male-centered outlook of authors. Feminist literary criticism suggests that
women in literature were historically presented as objects seen from a male
perspective.

Reevaluating literature and the world in which literature is

read: This involves questioning whether society has predominantly valued
male authors and their literary works because it has valued males more
than females.

A feminist literary critic resists traditional assumptions while reading. In

addition to challenging assumptions which were thought to be universal, feminist
literary criticism actively supports including women's knowledge in literature and
valuing women's experiences.

Feminist literary criticism assumes that literature both reflects and shapes
stereotypes and other cultural assumptions. Thus, feminist literary criticism
examines how works of literature embody patriarchal attitudes or undercut them,
sometimes both happening within the same work.

Women through the ages have written feminist theory and various forms of
feminist critique. During the period of second-wave feminism, the loftiest
academic circles increasingly challenged the male literary canon.

Feminist literary critcism has since intertwined with postmodernism and

increasingly complex questions of gender and societal roles.

Feminist literary criticism may bring in tools from other critical disciplines:
historical analysis, psychology, linguistics, sociological analysis, economic
analysis, for instance.

Feminist criticism may also look at intersectionality, looking at how factors

including race, sexuality, physical ability, and class are also involved.

Feminist literary criticism may use any of the following methods:

Deconstructing the way that women are described, especially if the author
is male. This applies to both fictional characters in novels, stories, and
plays, and women characters in nonfiction including biography and
history.
 Deconstructing how one's own gender influences how one reads and
interprets a text, and which characters and how the reader identifies
depending on the reader's gender.

Deconstructing how women autobiographers and biographers of women

treat their subjects, and how biographers treat women who are secondary
to the main subject.

Describing relationships between the literary text and ideas about power
and sexuality and gender.

Critique of patriarchal or woman-marginalizing language, such as a

"universal" use of the masculine pronouns "he" and "him."

Noticing and unpacking differences in how men and women write: a style,
for instance, where women use more reflexive language and men use more
direct language (example: "she let herself in" vs. "he opened the door").

Reclaiming women writers who are little known or have been marginalized
or undervalued, sometimes referred to as expanding or criticizing the
canon -- the usual list of "important" authors and works. The retrieval
of Zora Neale Hurston's writing by Alice Walker is an example. Another
example: raising up the contributions of early playwright Aphra Behn,
showing how she was treated differently than male writers from her own
time forward.

Reclaiming the 'female voice' as a valuable contribution to literature, even

if formerly marginalized or ignored.

Analyzing multiple works in a genre as an overview of a feminist approach

to that genre: for example, science fiction or detective fiction.

Analyzing multiple works by a single author (often female).

Feminist literary criticism is distinguished from gynocriticism because feminist

literary criticism may also analyze and deconstruct literary works of men.

Just a few books written from the perspective of feminist literary criticism:

Barr, Marleen S. Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and

Beyond. 1993.
 Burke, Sally. American Feminist Playwrights: A Critical History. 1996.

Carlin, Deborah. Cather, Canon, and the Politics of Reading. 1992.

Castillo, Debra A. Toward a Latin American Feminist Literary

Criticism. 1992.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, ed. Feminist Literary Theory and
Criticism: a Norton Reader. 2007.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, ed. Shakespeare's Sisters: Feminist

Essays on Women Poets. 1981.

Lauret, Maria. Liberating Literature: Feminist Fiction in America. 1994.

Lavigne, Carlen. Cyberpunk Women, Feminism and Science Fiction: A

Critical Study. 2013.

Lorde, Audre and Cheryl Clarke. Sister Outsider: Essays and

Speeches. 2007.

Perreault, Jeanne. Writing Selves: Contemporary Feminist

Autography. 1995.

Plain, Gill, and Susan Sellers. A History of Feminist Literary

Criticism. 2013.

Smith, Sidonie and Julia Watson, ed. De/Colonizing the Subject: The
Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography. 1992.

Stern, Madeleine B., ed. The Feminist Alcott: Stories of a Woman's

Power. 1996