Assignment

Length: minimum 2,500 words

Format: MLA, Calibri (or equivalent sans serif font)

Directions: Develop an interesting, focused thesis on Othello in a paper employing one critical perspective, using at least four relevant scholarly sources, including both journal articles and books: a minimum of five sources, including the play.

What do we mean by critical theory? Critical theory, or literary theory, is a set of concepts and intellectualassumptions that form the basis of explanations and interpretations of literarytexts.In the humanities, a theory is a framework or set of ideas that transcends theindividual example, but that cannot be proven.It isn't about coming up with the "right answer" but about exploring how anygiven theory helps provide insights and new ways of understanding.Theories are in dialogue with each other, and often contradict. Consider thempart of an ongoing dialogue between theorists. Ultimately, theories are toolsmeant to be put into practice.

Literary criticism has two main functions:

1. To analyze, study, and evaluate works of literature
2. To form general principles for the examination of works of literature

New Criticism:

o 1930s (when literature was establishing itself asan academic discipline)
o Focuses on the text itself (usually poem)
o Uses "close reading"-analyze language, the text
o Ignores what is outside the text (author'sintentions, social or historical contexts, biography of author, etc.)
o Avoid "intentional fallacy"-confusing meaning ofa work with the author's intention
o Avoid "affective fallacy"-interpreting textsaccording to emotional responses of readers, confusing what the text is with what it does
o Pays attention to elements of the genre (irony, coherence, metaphor, point of view, etc.) and how all elements contribute to overall meaning

Feminist Criticism:1970s (second-wave women's movement)

o Calls attention to and challenges "the patriarchalpoint of view as the standard for all moral, aesthetic, political, and intellectual judgments"(1096)
o Argues that gender roles are learned as part ofculture, not fixed as part of nature
o Focuses on issues of identity
o Examines how characters are portrayed

PsychoanalyticCriticism:

Began with Sigmund Freud's theories of howunconscious affects behavior: how what happens in childhood can unconsciously shape adult behavior

o Literature shows symbolic elements of suchbehavior, influenced by author's experiences
o Literary text can express unconscious desires andanxieties of its author

Marxist Criticism:

Based on Karl Marx's political and economictheories

o Focuses on specific issues of race and class withina text
o Economy drives society, class system driveseconomy, and proletariat (labor) do not understand these economic and social forces on them
o Believes that social values are constructed in waysthat benefit the wealthy and hold back the laborers

Deconstruction:

o 1950s (France)
o A philosophical movement particularly popular withfeminist and Marxist critics to uncover concepts in literature
o Follows philosophy of Jacques Derrida:
o Western thought divided into binaries, with onepreferenced (good/evil, male/female, freedom/slavery,etc.)
o However, this binary opposition is artificial, a socialconstruct that reflects social norms
o Argues instead of being opposites, binaries areinterconnected, defined only in relation to each other(différance)
o Our language reflects our biases, altering ourperception; language is not stable or reliable as words can be understood from a variety of perspectives

ReaderResponseCriticism:

o 1960s

o Literary texts gain meaning from readers, fromtheir act of reading and bringing to the text theirown assumptions and personal experience; readeris not passive recipient of objective text

o But this is not an entirely subjective, free-for-allon a text

o Examine how communities influence readers'responses

o Stanley Fish: "Interpretation is not the art ofconstruing but the art of constructing. Interpretersdo not decode poems; they make them"

o Opposite of New Criticism, which would arguethat all meaning resides only inside the text itself,that nothing outside the text matters

PostcolonialCriticism:

o 1990s
o Focuses on literature produced by those informerly colonized areas, particularly on thecolonizer-colonized experience
o Examines the effects of 19th-century Europeanpolitical domination, both on colonizers andcolonized
o Examines how dominant culture's values becomenormative, displacing those of the less politically powerful cultures
o Looks for us-vs-them mentality, seen as artificialboundaries, challenging the vision of the Other

NewHistoricism:

o 1980s

o Relates a literary text to its cultural and historicalmoment, relating it to power, society, or ideology of its time

o Sees history as selective, biased, and only onepossible perspective, too often told from a topdown view; we subjectively interpret what weobserve

o Writers and readers (everyone) cannot escapeinfluence of their culture, and examining thisculture beyond the text is useful to shed light onthe literary text

o Therefore, other artifacts of cultural moment(stories, speeches, newspapers, etc.) are allrelevant in the study of a literary text.