Literary Theory with Chris

Literary theory encompasses the varying ways to read and make meaning of a text. From the 1920s to 1950s, there was the idea of "New Criticism." It was a way of seeking out contradictions in a text and figuring out how those contradictions unified the text and created meaning. These contradictions are there for a reason, and create meaning rather than canceling each other out. In this way of thinking, you look at just the text itself, centered around what the author meant. With the evolution of literary theory, this notion of authorial intent loses its importance. In the 1960s, there are cultural revolutions in America, England, and France. A lot of the ideas carried over into the study of English literature. Some of these ideas included psychoanalysis and studies of the unconscious. Such Freudian views are supposed to direct our thoughts and actions so that we understand the latent contents of dreams (books) in order to understands ourselves(books). This idea developed into the Psychoanalytic theory of literature. A similar thing happened with Feminist theory, in which we read texts to discover hidden (or not hidden) meanings about female desire, empowerment, equality, sexuality, gender politics, and POWER. Queer theory also develops, focusing upon gender issues, power, hetero-normative ways of thinking, etc. Basically, Queer theory asks 'How is queer identity constructed in a text?' Deconstruction is a theory that came about in the 1970s. It maintains that there are a lot of privileged oppositions in the world, and that speech is always privileged over writing. Accordingly, we privilege the faculty of reason over all else. Historically (in the West) reason has been used to judge what makes a human a human. Thus, we are logocentric-- historically, Westerners have judged "others" as lacking the faculty of reason, privileging out culture over others'. Beyond this, the work of deconstruction looks to question these ideas of opposition and privilege. It is a way of questioning how language discloses meaning.

Literary theories thus quickly become charged with political meaning. This is really the beginning of the Academy as a political space; it has come a long way from New Criticism. Such ideas come up against a lot of criticism for those who say that we should not be looking for such political elements within texts. We are now looking for cultural significance rather than the intentions of the author. Within the larger picture, each text has a cultural meaning. Texts are now seen has having larger social significance, and we cannot analyze them without analyzing the culture as well.

The definition of "text" also emerges and expands. Text is now thought of as including poems, novels, plays, films, television, digital images, art, CD's, music, clothing, graffiti, advertising, etc. A text is a thus a cultural artifact and can be interpreted in some way. This also causes trouble because we are dealing with so many different texts that can be brought into the classroom and studied. Thus, the classroom becomes highly politicized. Conservatives do not want all this "stuff" contaminating the "real art/text" of the academy.

Common to all these theories are ideas of power, subjectivity, political significance, cultural significance, and types of representation. With so many different theories, we are able to analyze texts from a variety of perspectives.