New Criticism is the name given to a formalist movement in British and American literary studies that emphasized studying literary texts in isolation without regard for anything external to the text, like history, psychology, or biography. The principles of New Criticism were first articulated in the 1920s by T. S. Eliot, who argued that critics must focus on the poem not on the poet, an effort to make literary studies more objective like the sciences. It viewed a literary work as a "naturally occurring object," similar to objects of scientific study rather than the product of conscious human effort or the articulation of individual perceptions and emotions. Although New Criticism was displaced in the 1960s by more socially conscious forms of literary study in the 1960s, it's insistence on close reading, the meticulous examination of the meaning and connotations of the words used in a text, remains a fundamental method for all literary studies.
Source: “New Criticism.” Key Terms in Literary Theory. Credo Reference. 2012.
Popular in the 1970s and 1980s, deconstruction is a form of language analysis that deals with the different ways meaning is "constructed" by writers, texts, and readers. To a deconstructionist, meaning includes not just what is written, but also what is left out of the text or ignored or silenced by it. It seeks to "deconstruct" ideological biases (gender, racial, economic, political, cultural) and traditional assumptions about histories, philosophies, and religions, which have led to various forms of domination - of nature, of people of color, of the poor, of homosexuals, etc. It challenges the claims of an ultimate truth which must be accepted or obeyed by all.
Source: "Glossary" PBS Faith and Reason. 1995.
Psychoanalytical criticism applies psychoanalytical methods to literary texts to similar to how an psychotherapist attempts to unlock a patient's repressed emotions. It starts from the premise that an author's repressed emotions affect the way he or she writes, and that examination of particular stylistic methods will reveal more about those emotions and therefore about the work. Its starting point is that hidden meanings and agendas of a text are assumed to have an existence independent of the person who created it
Source: "Psychoanalytic Criticism." Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought. Credo Reference. 1993
Holds that that artistic creators are, consciously or unconsciously, affected by the material, economic and social forces of their time and personal circumstances, and that these influences are perceptible in their work.
Source: "Marxist Arts Criticism." Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought. Credo Reference. 1993.
The starting point of feminist criticism is that women creators have been systematically marginalized by a male-dominated tradition, and that there is a current of ‘women's experience’ which should no longer be hidden, but should surface and be recognized as of equal importance to ‘men's experience’. There are three main ways to do this. First is the rediscovery and restoration to circulation of works by women of the past, and the sponsoring of new work. Second is the critical examination of ‘women's experience’ as depicted by both women and men—often involving a refocusing of our views about past creators and their works. Third is the search for and discussion of a specific ‘gender’ in literary or artistic work, in the grain of thought processes and style themselves.
Source: "Feminist Criticism." Bloombury Guide to Human Thought. Credoo Reference. 1993.
Queer theory is a term that has been applied to a body of work that has explored gay, lesbian and bisexual life experience. Crucial to queer theory is the recovery of the concealed and repressed presence of gay and lesbian ‘actors’ and activities within social and cultural life. More broadly, queer theory has explored the processes through which sexual identities are constituted within contemporary culture.
Source: "Queer Theory." The Sage Dictionary of Cultural Studies. Credo Reference. 2004.
Ethnicity means specific to a particular culture and is not the same as race. We think of ethnicity in terms of the markers of culture: ethnic foods, ethnic crafts, ethnic speech, ethnic beliefs. This point of view is usually from those who do not consider themselves "ethnic" — for example, white people which is taken as the norm or the standard. The dominance of whiteness in the United States has given the word "ethnic" the status of “otherness”; “ethnic studies,” for example, are assumed to include Hispanic, black, native American, and Asian cultures, but not white culture.
Example: The term “Asian American literary theory” describes collective concerns about, on the one hand, aesthetics, literature, and the construction of “Asian American” identity, and on the other, the racial and ethnic politics of Asian American cultural formation. Since its inception, it has systematically problematized the dominant way in which race is understood.
Source: "Ethnicity." Key Terms in Literary Theory. Credo Reference. 2012
Source: "Asian American Literary Theory." The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory. Credo Reference. 2011
African American literary theory responded to both the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s and the contemporaneous influx of Western literary theory in the academy. Theoretical arguments in this field address questions of the critic's audience and responsibilities, the use of European theory in reading black texts, and representations of gender, race, and sexuality in African American literature.
Source: "African American Literary Theory." The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory. Credo Reference. 2011.
New Historicism is the name given to interdisciplinary historical cultural studies. It states that a particular cultural moment or phenomenon can best be understood through examination of multiple factors, including economic, political, literary, religious, and aesthetic beliefs and practices - a full analysis of all cultural phenomenon or the close reading of the rhetoric of texts and practices from all aspects of a culture. New Historicists also insist that the writer be self-reflexive, making it clear that interpretations come from a specific scholar and perspective rather than presenting “truth.”
Source: "New Historicism." Key Terms in Literary Theory. 2012.