Improve your ability to read critically and interpret texts while gaining appreciation for different literary genres and theories of interpretation. Read samples of literary interpretation. Write a critique of a literary work. Texts that interpret literary works are usually persuasive texts.
The work of literary critics is similar to the work of authors writing evaluative texts. For example, the skills required to critique films, interpret laws, or evaluate artistic trends are similar to those skills required by literary critics. In school, English instructors ask students to critique literary texts, or works.
Literary criticism refers to a genre of writing whereby an author critiques a literary text, either a work of fiction, a play, or poetry. The genre of literary interpretation is more specialized than most of the other genres addressed in this section, as suggested by the table below. Students interpret literary works for English instructors or for students enrolled in English classes. Alternatively, students may read a text with a particular literary theory in mind, using the theory to explicate a particular point of view.
For example, writers could critique The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin from a feminist theoretical perspective. In turn, some students and English faculty publish their work in academic literary criticism journals. Over the years, literary critics have argued about the best ways to interpret literature.
As you can imagine—given that they were developed by sophisticated specialists—some of these theoretical approaches are quite sophisticated and abstract. Below is a summary of some of the more popular literary theories. Because it is a summary, the following tends to oversimplify the theories. Instead, your teacher may ask you to take an eclectic approach, pulling interpretative questions from multiple literary theories.
Powerful works of literature invoke multiple readings. In other words, we can all read the same story or poem or watch the same movie or listen to the same song and come up with different, even conflicting, interpretations about what the work means. Who we are reflects how we read texts. Importance of Literary Communication. What Are the Tenets of Postmodernism in Literature? Difference Between Poststructuralism and Postmodernism.
Importance of Literary Criticism. Shae Hazelton Updated February 21, Coverage: Gale products published through June Citations Only. Gale Literary Criticism Authoritative source of literary criticism, summarizing authors' lives and works. Includes excerpts from scholarly articles. Always look up the original source of the excerpted and reprinted articles. Coverage: Varied. Mostly Full-Text. Essay and General Literature Index Index to chapters and essays contained in books of collected works.
Focuses on humanities and social sciences, including works published in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. Covers archaeology, folklore, architecture, history, art, linguistics, literature, music, classical studies, poetry, drama, political science, economics, religion women's studies, and film. Instead of instituting a serious debate on the theories in vogue, their epistemological roots, and efficacy in interpreting literary texts, their very existence is being called into question.
They are being maligned and violently discarded. Literary criticism aims to analyse, interpret and evaluate the texts created by humans at a particular moment in time and in a specific cultural ambience. Analysis and interpretation are acts of intellect and rationality. But no critic, not even the most gifted one, has ever made such a claim. A critic can define, interrogate or negotiate the actual or supposed role of deities that have been traditionally associated with them in the moment of creation; they can also interpret or question how and in what way inspiration and supernatural agency is supposed to influence or orient the creative process, but their way of defining and presenting an argument would inevitably be based on reason and logic.
The quintessential element of criticism is human rationality. Poetry can surpass the limits of human rationality; and at times poetic imagination is claimed to have encountered rationality as a major hurdle in its way.
Iqbal in one of his oft-quoted couplet says:. Higher reality, being the destination of all truth-seekers, can be fully grasped only by intuition or imagination. Why Iqbal suggests surpassing reason or intellect is answered in another couplet:.
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