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Cambridge School (1920s-1930s): - Answers✔A group of scholars at Cambridge University who
rejected historical and biographical analysis of texts in favor of close readings of the texts
themselves.
Chicago School (1950s): - Answers✔A group, formed at the University of Chicago in the 1950s,
that drew on Aristotle's distinctions between the various elements within a narrative to analyze
the relation between form and structure. Critics and Criticisms: Ancient and Modern (1952) is
the major work of the Chicago School.
Deconstruction (1967-present): - Answers✔A philosophical approach to reading, first advanced
by Jacques Derrida that attacks the assumption that a text has a single, stable meaning. Derrida
suggests that all interpretation of a text simply constitutes further texts, which means there is no
"outside the text" at all. Therefore, it is impossible for a text to have stable meaning. The practice
of deconstruction involves identifying the contradictions within a text's claim to have a single,
stable meaning, and showing that a text can be taken to mean a variety of things that differ
significantly from what it purports to mean.
Feminist criticism (1960s-present): - Answers✔An umbrella term for a number of different
critical approaches that seek to distinguish the human experience from the male experience.
Feminist critics draw attention to the ways in which patriarchal social structures have
marginalized women and male authors have exploited women in their portrayal of them.
Although feminist criticism dates as far back as Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792) and had some significant advocates in the early 20th century, such as
Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, it did not gain widespread recognition as a theoretical
and political movement until the 1960s and 1970s.
Psychoanalytic criticism (1930-present) - Answers✔Any form of criticism that draws on
psychoanalysis, the practice of analyzing the role of unconscious psychological drives and
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impulses in shaping human behavior or artistic production. The three main schools of
psychoanalysis are named for the three leading figures in developing psychoanalytic theory:
Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Jacques Lacan.
Freudian criticism (c. 1900-present): - Answers✔The view of art as the imagined fulfillment of
wishes that reality denies. According to Freud, artists sublimate their desires and translate their
imagined wishes into art. We, as an audience, respond to the sublimated wishes that we share
with the artist. Working from this view, an artist's biography becomes a useful tool in
interpreting his or her work. "Freudian criticism" is also used as a term to describe the analysis of
Freudian images within a work of art.
Jungian criticism (1920s-present): - Answers✔A school of criticism that draws on Carl Jung's
theory of the collective unconscious, a reservoir of common thoughts and experiences that all
cultures share. Jung holds that literature is an expression of the main themes of the collective
unconscious, and critics often invoke his work in discussions of literary archetypes. These
archetypes are Shadow, Anima, Animus, Spirit.
Lacanian criticism (c. 1977-present): - Answers✔Criticism based on Jacques Lacan's view that
the unconscious, and our perception of ourselves, is shaped in the "symbolic" order of language
rather than in the "imaginary" order of prelinguistic thought. Lacan is famous in literary circles
for his influential reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter.
Marxist criticism (1930-present) - Answers✔An umbrella term for a number of critical
approaches to literature that draw inspiration from the social and economic theories of Karl
Marx. Marx maintained that material production, or economics, ultimately determines the course
of history, and in turn influences social structures.These social structures, Marx argued, are held
in place by the dominant ideology, which serves to reinforce the interests of the ruling class.
Marxist criticism approaches literature as a struggle with social realities and ideologies.
Frankfurt School (c. 1923-1970): - Answers✔A group of German Marxist thinkers associated
with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. These thinkers applied the principles of
Marxism to a wide range of social phenomena, including literature. Major members of the
Frankfurt School include Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Herbert
Marcuse, and Jürgen Habermas.
New Criticism (1930s-1960s): - Answers✔Coined in John Crowe Ransom's The New Criticism
(1941), this approach discourages the use of history and biography in interpreting a literary work.
Instead, it encourages readers to discover the meaning of a work through a detailed analysis of
the text itself. This approach was popular in the middle of the 20th century, especially in the
United States, but has since fallen out of favor.
New Historicism (1980s-present): - Answers✔An approach that breaks down distinctions
between "literature" and "historical context" by examining the contemporary production and
reception of literary texts, including the dominant social, political, and moral movements of the
time. Stephen Greenblatt is a leader in this field, which joins the careful textual analysis of New
Criticism with a dynamic model of historical research.