Module 4 LITERARY THEORIES 3

MODULE 4
THEORIES OF LITERATURE - 3
COURSE NUMBER: ENGLISH 119
COURSE TITLE: LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Literary Theory and Criticism introduces the students to the major theoretical approaches
to the study of literature. This is because the study of literature is no longer – if it ever
was – simply the study and evaluation of poems, novels and plays. It is also the study of
the ideas, issues, and difficulties which arise in any literary text and in its interpretation.
New critical theories emerge as literary scholars develop new methodologies of reading,
especially in the arts and humanities. By studying these theories, you would have been
provided with a tool kit for your own informed critical reading and thought about works
of literature.
2
OVERVIEW
Module 3 is entitled Theories of Literature (2). It consists of four (4) units which present
and discuss the basic concepts of and ideas on theories of literature. One (1) unit is
designed for the application of theories on literary criticism. Each unit is composed of the
learning outcomes, topics, and assessment that the students will comply at the end of the
module through journal entries. One major paper on literary criticism shall be complied
by you upon finishing the module.
INDICATIVE CONTENT
Unit 1 Feminist/Gender Criticism 3
Unit 2 New Historicism 9
Unit 3 Readers Response Criticism 14
Unit 4 Post-colonial Criticism 18
Unit 5 Application of Theories to Literary Criticism 25
English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

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UNIT 1 FEMINIST/GENDER
CRITICISM
1.0 Introduction
Feminist criticism grew out of the women’s movement that followed World War
II and seeks to analyze the role of gender in works of literature. A leading feminist critic,
Elaine Showalter, describes two purposes of feminist criticism: first, feminist critique (the
analysis of works by male authors, especially in the depiction of women’s writing); and
secondly, gynocriticism (the study of women’s writing). Beyond this, feminist critics
have also focused on recovering neglected works by women authors through the ages and
creating a canon of women’s writing. Importantly, gender issues play a part in every
aspect of human production and experience, including the production and experience of
literature, whether we are consciously aware of these issues or not. Feminist/gender
criticism examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of literary
works. A feminist critic sees cultural and economic disabilities in a “patriarchal” society
that have hindered or prevented women from realizing their creative possibilities and
women’s cultural identification as a merely negative object, or “Other,” to man as the
defining and dominating “Subject.” There are several assumptions and concepts held in
common by most feminist critics. First is that our civilization is pervasively patriarchal.
Second, is that the concepts of “gender” are largely, if not entirely, cultural constructs,
effected by the omnipresent patriarchal biases of our civilization. Third, is that this
patriarchal ideology also pervades those writings that have been considered great
literature. Such works, feminist critics aver, lack autonomous female role models, and are
implicitly addressed to male readers, leaving the woman reader an alien outsider or else
solicit her to identify against herself by assuming male values and ways of perceiving,
feeling, and acting. In this unit, you will be introduced to feminist/gender criticism and
the forces that influenced it.
2.0 Learning Outcomes
At the end of this unit, you are expected to:
a. trace the origin of feminist criticism

b. discuss the postulations of feminist criticism
c. explain the application of feminist criticism in a critiqued paper

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3.0 Discussions
3.1 The Emergence of Gender/Feminist Criticism
Feminist or gender criticism, according to Kelly Griffith (2002), bases its

interpretations on ideas about the nature of females and female experience. With the rise
of feminism in the 1950s and 1960s, feminist critics claimed that, over the years, men had
controlled the most influential interpretive communities. Men decided which conventions
made up “literature” and judged the quality of works. Men wrote the literary histories and
drew up the lists of “great” works - the literary canon. Because works by and about
women were omitted from the canon, women authors were ignored, and women
characters misconstrued. Since the 1960s, however, feminist literary critics have
successfully challenged these circumstances. Far more women now teach, interpret,
evaluate, and theorize about literature than ever before. Literary genres practiced by
women, such as diaries, journals, and letters, have gained more respect. Numerous
anthologies, literary histories, and interpretive studies explore women's contributions to
literature. Today, a new movement, “gender studies,” has evolved out of feminist studies
in order to address broader issues; notably, the nature of both femininity and masculinity,
the differences within each sex, and the literary treatment of men and homosexuals.
Feminist criticism is political in that it argues for the fair representation and treatment of
women.
3.2 Stages of Development of Feminist Criticism
Scholars have attempted to periodize the stages of emergence of feminist

criticism. However, it should be noted that this categorization is not cast on stone. Griffith
states that a survey of the history of feminist and gender criticism helps to spotlight their
concerns. The first stage of feminist criticism began with two influential books: Simone
de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) and Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1970). Both
authors criticized the distorted representation of women by well-known male authors.
Their work laid the foundation for the most prevalent approach of this stage, the "images
of women" approach. Following de Beauvoir and Millet, feminist critics called attention
to the unjust, distorted, and limited representation (images) of females in works of
literature, especially works authored by males. They celebrated realistic representations
of women and brought to light neglected works by and about women. They sought to
expose the “politics” of self-interest that led people to create stereotypical and false
images of women.
In the second stage of feminist criticism, beginning in the early 1970s, critics
shifted away from works by males to concentrate on works by females. Elaine Showalter,
a prominent critic from this period, called this approach “gynocriticism.” Gynocritics
urged women to become familiar with female authors and to discover their own female
"language," a language that supposedly enters the subconscious before the "patriarchal"

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language of the dominant culture. They tried to delineate a female poetics, a use of literary
conventions and genres that seems typically "female." Some critics based feminist poetics
on the possible connection between writing and the female body. Because women's
bodies have more fluids than men's, they argued, women's writing is more "fluid." It is
less structured, less unified, more inclusive of many points of view, less given to neat
endings, and more open to fantasy than writing by men. It rejects or undermines the
"marriage plot" and the "happy ending," in which a strong female protagonist submits to
a male by marrying him. Female poetics seeks to understand why female authors tend to
favor certain genres (lyric poetry, novel, short story, tale, letters, diaries, memoirs) over
others (epic, martial romance, drama, satire).
The third stage of feminist criticism rebelled against the “essentialist”

assumptions of gynocriticism with its focus on the cultural creation of identity. The third
stage of feminist criticism attempts to distinguish between “sex” and “gender.” While sex
is the biological difference between males and females, gender is the cultural difference.
Culture determines the traits and behavior that set masculinity apart from femininity.
Western culture, for example, has seen women as passive rather than active, irrational
rather than rational, subjective rather than objective, at home rather than at “work,”
spiritual rather than material, and impractical rather than practical. It has ruled that certain
kinds of behaviour are “abnormal” and “unnatural” for females to practice, such as
pursuing careers, doing construction work, being pastors or priests, wearing “male”
clothes, or being assertive. Such gender distinctions, feminist critics claim, are arbitrary
and almost always give women less power, status, and respect than men. They argued
that many women are “trapped” by the gender traits assigned to them by culture.
The three “stages” of feminist criticism highlighted, according to Griffith, have

overlapped and coexisted, and continued to be practiced.
3.3 Theoretical Postulations of Gender/Feminist Criticism
Feminist criticism covers almost anything that has to do with female emancipation
and empowerment. Jide Balogun (2011) holds that Feminist criticism is an attempt by the
women-folk to universally liberate itself from male chauvinism and patriarchy. He argues
that while the shift is not intended to cause gender terrorism, it aims at making the position
of women at home, at work, at school, in the street etc. more challenging to themselves
and their men-folk in the social phenomenon. The radical posture of feminist criticism is
reflected in its dissatisfaction with the place of women in global social and cultural
situations. Because of its interest in social issues, feminist criticism, like Marxism, is
historical, political and it proposes a dynamic ideological commitment.
The feminist literary critic’s interest is to pursue the cause of women in literary
texts. This is accomplished by encouraging women authors to write novels, plays and
poems. Furthermore, the feminist literary writer features and makes women characters
and ideas dominant in her works. Such writers endeavor to propagate feminist thought,

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female concerns, ideas - and accomplishments and to recover the largely unrecorded and
unknown history of women in earlier times‖ (Jerome Beaty, 2002).
According to Lois Tyson (2006), feminist criticism examines the ways in which
literary texts reinforce patriarchy because the ability to see when and how patriarchal
ideology operates is crucial to one‘s ability to resist it in one‘s life. Feminists have
observed that the belief that men are superior to women has been used to justify and
maintain the male monopoly of positions of economic, political, and social power, in
other words, to keep women powerless by denying them the educational and occupational
means of acquiring economic, political, and social power. That is, the inferior position
long occupied by women in patriarchal society has been culturally, not biologically,
produced. For feminist critics, patriarchal ideology works to keep women and men in
traditional gender roles and thereby maintain male dominance. Women are oppressed by
patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically and patriarchal
ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so. In every domain where
patriarchy reigns, a woman is the other: she is objectified and marginalized, defined only
by her difference from male norms and values, and by what she (allegedly) lacks but
which men (allegedly) have.
Self-Assessment (Journal Entry #1)
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHS9cYuJZA&t=11s
2. Read: The Bad Boy Meets the Mad Girl: The Tragic Characters in Leoncio P.
Deriada’s The Dog-Eaters by Leo Andrew B. Biclar
3. Examine how Feminist Criticism was applied in the paper
4.0 Conclusion
In this unit, you learnt that feminist criticism was influenced by such works as
Simone Beavoir‘s The Second Sex (1949) and Kate Millet‘s Sexual Politics (1970). You
also learnt that feminist critics believe that culture has been so completely dominated by
men to the extent that literature is full of unexamined ̳male-produced’ assumptions. To
this end, feminist critics tend to see their criticism as correcting the imbalance, by
analyzing and combating patriarchy. All feminist activity, including feminist theory and
literary criticism, has as its ultimate goal to change the world by promoting women’s
equality. Thus, all feminist activity can be seen as a form of activism that directly
promotes social change in favor of women. Among the foremost feminist writers in Africa
are Amata Aidoo, the Ghanaian playwright and author of The Dilemma of a Ghost (1965);
Zulu Sofola, the Nigerian playwright and author of Old Wives are Tasty (1991); Buchi
Emecheta, the Nigerian novelists and author of The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and Bina
Nengi- Ilagha the Nigerian author of Condolences (2002).

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5.0 References and Additional Readings
Abrams, M.H. (1953). The Mirror and the Lamp. London: Oxford UP.
Balogun, Jide. ̳Approaches to Modern Literary Theories‘.

www.unilorin.edu.ng/publications/balogun/Doc5.pdf. Accessed May 15th, 2013.
Beaty, J. et al. (2002). The Norton Introduction to Literature, 8th edition. New York:
W.W Norton Company.
Bennett, Tony. (1979). Formalism and Marxism. London: Methuen.
Blamires, H. (1991). A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan Press

Ltd. Childs, Peter & Fowler, Roger (2006). The Routledge Dictionary of Literary
Terms. Routledge: USA.
Culler, Jonathan. (1997). Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Derrida, Jacques.(1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.
During, Simon. (Ed.). (1999). The Cultural Studies Reader. London: Routledge.
Eagleton, Terry. (1996). Literary Theory: An Introduction. (2nd ed.). Minneapolis: The
University of Minnesota Press.
Eagleton, Terry. (1976). Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley: University of

California Press.
Fish, Stanley. (1989). Is there a Text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive
Communities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of Criticism. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Gbenoba, F.E. (2008). Tracing Ngugi‘s Journey of Commitment from Performance to

Narration.‖ Quill Pen, Journal of Communications, Issues and Events, Vol. 6, 48-
92.
Graff, Gerald. (1987). Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.
Griffith, Kelly.(2002). Writing Essays About Literature: (A Guide and Style Sheet).
Thompson Heinle Incorporation.
Haslett, Moyra.(2000). Marxist Literary and Cultural Theories. New York: St.
Martin’s.
Hough, G. (1966). An Essay on Criticism, London: Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd.

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Jancovich, Mark. (1993). The Cultural Politics of the New Criticism. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Lentricchia, Frank. (1980). After the New Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Litz, A. Walton, Louis Menand, & Lawrence Rainey. (Eds). (2000). ‘Modernism and
the New Criticism’ Vol. 7. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Lukacs, Georg. (1971). History and Class Consciousness. (1923 Trans. Rodney
Livingstone). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Marx, Karl. (1967). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. (1867 ed.). New York:
International Publishers.
Moore-Gilbert, Bart Stanton, Gareth, & Maley Willy. ((Eds). (1997). Postcolonial
Criticism. New York: Addison, Wesley, Longman.
Naas, Michael. (2003). Taking on the Tradition: Jacques Derrida and the Legacies of
Deconstruction. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Norris, Christopher.(1982). Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. New York: Methuen.
Ransom, John Crowe. (1941). The New Criticism. New York: New Directions.
Rice, Philip & Waugh Patricia. (1998). Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. (4th ed.).
New York: Routledge.
Richter, David H. (Ed.). (1998). The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and
Contemporary Trends. Bedford Books: Boston.
Rivkin, Julie & Ryan, Michael. (Eds). (1998). Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden,
Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Royle, Nicholas (ed.). (2000). Deconstructions: A User’s Guide. New York: Palgrave.
Tyson, Lois. (2006). Critical Theory Today: A User Friendly Guide. New York:
Routledge.
Williams, Raymond. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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UNIT 2 NEW HISTORICISM
1.0 Introduction
New Historicism is a term coined by Stephen Greenblatt. It designates a body of

theoretical and interpretive practices that began largely with the study of early modern
literature in the United States. According to “New Historicism,” the circulation of literary
and non-literary texts produces relations of social power within a culture. New Historicist
thought differs from traditional historicism in literary studies in several crucial ways.
Rejecting traditional historicism’s premise of neutral inquiry, “New Historicism” accepts
the necessity of making historical value judgments. According to “New Historicism,” we
can only know the textual history of the past because it is “embedded,” a key term, in the
textuality of the present and its concerns. For the “New Historicist,” all acts of expression
are embedded in the material conditions of a culture. Texts are examined with an eye for
how they reveal the economic and social realities, especially as they produce ideology
and represent power or subversion. “New Historicism” takes particular interest in
representations of marginal/marginalized groups.
As a theoretical concept, New Historicism views literature as part of history, and

furthermore, as an expression of forces on history. New Historicism compares literary
analysis to a dynamic circle whereby the work tells us something about the surrounding
ideology (slavery, rights of women, etc.) and a study of the ideology tells us something
about the work. Generally, New historicism takes two forms, namely: analysis of the work
in the context in which it was created and analysis of the work in the context in which it
was critically evaluated. New Historicists like Kirszner and Mandell (2008), assert that
literature “does not exist outside time and place and cannot be interpreted without
reference to the era in which it was written.” As a theoretical perspective, New
Historicism claims that readers are influenced by their culture, hence no objective reading
of a work is possible. Adherents of New Historicism are of the opinion that critics should
consider how their own culture affects their interpretation of the historical influence on a
work. The aim of this unit is to introduce you to the theoretical tenets of New Historicism.
a. trace the emergence of New Historicism

b. discuss the theoretical tenets of New Historicism

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3.0 Discussions
3.1 The Emergence of New Historicism
Lois Tyson (2006), documents that New Historicism emerged in the late 1970s,
rejecting both traditional historicism’s marginalization of literature and New Criticism’s
enshrinement of the literary text in a timeless dimension beyond history. Thus, for new
historicist critics, a literary text does not embody the author’s intention or illustrate the
spirit of the age that produced it, as traditional literary historians asserted; nor are literary
texts self-sufficient art objects that transcend the time and place in which they were
written, as New Critics believed. Rather, literary texts are cultural artefacts that can tell
us something about the interplay of discourses, the web of social meanings, operating in
the time and place in which the text was written. And they can do so because the literary
text is itself, part of the interplay of discourses, a thread in the dynamic web of social
meaning. For new historicism, the literary text and the historical situation from which it
emerged are equally important because text (the literary work) and context (the historical
conditions, that new historical and cultural criticism which produced it) are mutually
constitutive: they create each other. Like the dynamic interplay between individual
identity and society, literary texts shape and are shaped by their historical contexts.
When did New Historicism emerge and which critical

canons did it react to?
New Historicism is not interested in historical events as events, but with the ways
in which events are interpreted, with historical discourses, with ways of seeing the world
and modes of meaning. Historical events are viewed by New Historicists not as facts to
be documented but as “texts” to be “read” in order to help us speculate about how human
cultures, at various historical moments, have made sense of themselves and their world.
Even though we cannot really know exactly what happened at any given point in history,
nevertheless, we can know what the people involved believed happened and we can also
interpret those interpretations. For New Historical literary critics, the literary text, through
its representation of human experience at a given time and place, is an interpretation of
history. As such, the literary text maps the discourses circulating at the time it was written
and is itself one of those discourses. That is, the literary text shaped and was shaped by
the discourses circulating in the culture in which it was produced. Likewise, our
interpretations of literature shape and are shaped by the culture in which we live.
3.2 Theoretical Perspective of New Historicism
The key assumptions of New Historicism, according to Kelly Griffith (2002), are
embedded in its understanding of several related concepts: culture, text, discourse,
ideology, the self, and history. These concepts, in turn, establish the New Historicist
approach to the study of literature and are based on structuralist and post-structuralist

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theories of language. The first term, culture, is the most important. In an anthropological
sense, "culture" is the total way of life of a particular society—its language, economy,
art, religion, and attachment to a location. For New Historicists, culture is also a collection
of codes that everyone in a society shares and which allows them to communicate, create
artifacts, and act. These codes include not just language but every element of a culture -
literature, dress, food, rituals, and games.
What is culture for New historicists?
The New Historicist’s approach to literary study is based on three things—

literature, the author, and the reader - and this help distinguish it from other theoretical
approaches. New Historicism claims that literature is merely a “text” indistinguishable in
nature from all the other texts that constitute a culture. The concept “literature” is
“socially constructed”; every society decides what “literature” is and what its conventions
are, and these definitions always vary from society to society and age to age. Equally
relative are judgments about literary value. No single author’s works are better than those
of other authors, no single work is better than others, no one culture’s works are better
than those of other cultures. Rather, all texts, literary and otherwise (including “popular”
texts such as television shows, advertisements, and drugstore romances), are worthy of
study.
Other Critical Approaches and the New historicist approach
The author, for the New Historicists, is far less noble and autonomous than in other
approaches. Like everyone else, authors are “subjects” manufactured by culture. A culture
“writes” an author who, in turn, transcribes cultural codes and discourses into literary
texts. Authors' intentions about the form and meaning of their work merely reflect cultural
codes and values. Likewise, culture “programmes” the reader to respond to its codes and
forms of discourse. When readers read works of literature, they respond automatically to
the codes embodied by them.
How do New historicist see the literary writer and the

reader of literary text?
New Historicists believe that literature is history, is “enmeshed” in history. Hence,

when New Historicists study literature, they examine such things as how the work was
composed, what the author's intentions were, what events and ideas the work refers to,
how readers have responded to the work, and what the work means for people today.
They draw upon many disciplines-anthropology, sociology, law, psychology, and history-
to show what role literature has played in history, from the author's time to the present.
Again, New Historicists focus on literature as cultural text. They study the relationship
between literature and other texts, including non-literary and popular texts. They identify
the codes that constitute literary discourse and ascertain how people use such discourse
to communicate with one another and to comment on society. In addition, New
Historicists scrutinize the relationship of literature to the power structures of society.
They want to show how literature serves, opposes, and changes the wishes of the power

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elites and therefore what ideologies literature supports or undermines. Finally, many New
Historicists see criticism itself as an “intervention” in society.
Required Reading (Journal Entry #2)
Read: Formalistic Approach to Demetillo’s “Barter in Panay: An Epic”

by Biclar, 2015 https://www.galda-verlag.de/product/study-barter-in-
panay/
Self-Assessment
• Explain how New Historicism was applied to the text above.
4.0 Conclusion
In this unit, the origin and theoretical postulations of New Historicism were
outlined. You learnt that New Historicism views literature as part of history. New
Historicism compares literary analysis to a dynamic circle whereby the work tells us
something about the surrounding ideology (slavery, rights of women, etc.) and a study of
the ideology tells us something about the work. Generally, New historicism takes two
forms, namely: analysis of the work in the context in which it was created and analysis of
the work in the context in which it was critically evaluated. As a theoretical perspective,
New Historicism claims that readers are influenced by their culture, hence no objective
reading of a work is possible. Adherents of New Historicism are of the opinion that critics
should consider how their own culture affects their interpretation of the historical
influence on a work.
Balogun, Jide. Approaches to Modern Literary Theories.

www.unilorin.edu.ng/publications/balogun/Doc5.pdf.
W.W Norton Company.
Biclar, L. (2016). Assumptions Related to the Literary Persona in Demetillo’s ‘Barter in

Panay: An Epic . Kritike 10 (1).
http://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_18/biclar_june2016.pdf
’
Biclar, L. (2017). T.S Elliot’s ‘Little Gidding’: A Hermeneutical Reading. The RAP
Journal, Vol. 28.
Biclar, L. (2017). Formalistic Approach to Demetillo’s “Barter in Panay: An Epic”

https://www.galda-verlag.de/product/study-barter-in-panay/
Blamires, H. (1991). A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

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Childs, Peter & Fowler, Roger (2006). The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms.
Routledge: USA.
University Press.
Eagleton, T. (1996). Literary Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition. Minneapolis: The

Gbenoba, F.E. (2006). Contextuality in Ritual Performances of Osiezi Festival in Agbor,

Nigeria. Unpublished thesis submitted at the University of Ibadan.
Richter, David H. (Ed.). (1998). The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary
Trends. Bedford Books: Boston.
Routledge.
Welleck, Rene & Warren, Austin. (1973). Theory of Literature. Middlesex: Penguin
Books Limited.

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UNIT 3 READER-RESPONSE
CRITICISM
1.0 Introduction
Reader-response criticism focuses on the activity of reading a work of literature.

Reader-response critics turn from the traditional conception of a work as an achieved
structure of meanings to the responses of readers as they read a text. By this shift of
perspective, a literary work is converted into an activity that goes on in a reader’s mind,
that is, a reader's experience and the text. It is through this interaction that meaning is
made. Proponents of this school of criticism believe that literature has no objective
meaning or existence; rather readers bring their own thoughts, moods and experiences to
whatever text they are reading and get out of it whatever they happen to base on their own
expectations and ideas. This unit introduces you to the origin, tenets and criticism levelled
against reader-response criticism.

a. explain the concept of reader-response criticism
b. trace the origin of reader-response criticism
c. highlight some of the shortcomings of reader-response criticism
d. examine on the application of the theory in the text
3.0 Discussions
3.1 The Origin of Reader-Response Criticism
As its name implies, reader-response criticism focuses on readers’ responses to

literary texts. This attention to the reading process, according to Lois Tyson (2006),
emerged during the 1930s as a reaction against the growing tendency to reject the reader’s
role in creating meaning, a tendency that became a formal principle of the New Criticism
which dominated critical practice in the 1940s and 1950s.
Reader-response theory did not receive much attention until the 1970s. This
school of criticism maintains that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does.
Reader-response theorists share two beliefs: (1) that the role of the reader cannot be
omitted from our understanding of literature and (2) that readers do not passively
consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively
make the meaning they find in literature. This second belief, that readers actively make
meaning, suggests, of course, that different readers may read the same text quite
differently. In fact, reader-response theorists believe that even the same reader reading

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the same text on two different occasions will probably produce different meanings
because so many variables contribute to our experience of the text. The knowledge we
have acquired between our first and second reading of a text, personal experiences that
have occurred in the interim, a change in mood between our two encounters with the text,
or a change in the purpose for which we are reading it can all contribute to our production
of different meanings for the same text.
3.2 Theoretical Postulations of Reader-Response

Criticism
Kelly Griffith (2002) in Writing Essays About Literature, contends that reader-
response criticism is a school of criticism which maintains that readers actually contribute
to the meaning of works of literature. Reader-response criticism studies the interaction of
reader with the text. Reader-response critics hold that the text is incomplete until it is
read. Each reader brings something to the text that completes it and that makes each
reading different. For this school of thought, the literary text has no life of its own without
the reader.
Although reader-response criticism borrows its methodology from New Criticism,

Structuralism, and Post-structuralism, it challenges their dominance and rejects their
contention that the work must be studied in isolation from its context. Context—
historical, biographical, cultural, psychoanalytic—is relevant to the understanding of the
text. Reader-response criticism further rejects the post-structuralist claim that texts are
meaningless. Texts may be incomplete in themselves, but the reading of them makes them
potentially reflective of the real world—or at least the reader's experience of the real
world. Reader-response scholars, like the German critic Wolfgang Iser, agrees with
Jacques Derrida that works contain "gaps‖ which must be filled. Authors always leave
something unsaid or unexplained and thus invite readers to fill the resulting spaces with
their own imaginative constructs. Iser argues, therefore, that many equally valid
interpretations of a work are possible. Interpretations of a work will vary from person to
person and even from reading to reading.
Some groups of reader-response critics focus on how biographical and cultural

contexts influence the interpretation of texts. These critics argue that reading is a
collective enterprise. For instance, the American critic Stanley Fish states that a reader's
understanding of what “literature” is and what works of literature mean is formed by
“interpretive communities” (groups to which readers belong). These groups could be
small (a circle of friends) or large (a region or cultural entity). Fish rejects the idea that a
text has a core of meaning that everyone in any age would accept. Rather, shared
understandings of a text's meaning come from the beliefs of a community of readers, not
from the text. Each reader's preconceptions actually “create” the text. If, for example, a
reader believes that a miscellaneous collection of words is a religious poem, the reader
will perceive it as a religious poem. If a reader believes that the work fits a particular

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theory, the reader will find facts in the work to support that theory. The theory, in a sense,
“creates” the facts.
3.3 Criticisms against Reader-Response Criticism
You have been taught that reader-response criticism sees the reader as essential to
the interpretation of a work. Each reader is unique, with different educations, experiences,
moral values, opinions, and tastes, etc. Therefore, each reader’s interaction with a work
is unique. A reader- response critic analyses the features of the text that shape and guide
a reader’s reading. The critic emphasizes recursive reading - re-reading for new
interpretations. For reader-response critics, each generation has different experiences,
values, and issues; hence each generation will read a work differently. However, reader-
response theory has been criticized as being overly impressionistic and guilty of the
affective fallacy (too focused on the emotional effect of the work). Other critics have
plainly said that it is not intellectual. These attacks have led to the adaptation of another
version of reader-response criticism called reception theory.
▪ Read: Formalistic Approach to Demetillo’s Barter in Panay: An Epic,

Chapter 1.
▪ Examine how the author uses the approach in application to literary
criticism.
4.0 Conclusion
In this unit, you learnt that reader-response criticism is a school of criticism which
maintains that readers actually contribute to the meaning of works of literature. Reader-
response criticism studies the interaction of reader with the text. Reader-response critics
hold that the text is incomplete until it is read. Each reader brings something to the text
that completes it and that makes each reading different. For this school of thought, the
literary text has no life of its own without the reader.

W.W Norton Company.

’

Module 4
17
Biclar, L. (2017). T.S Elliot’s ‘Little Gidding’: A Hermeneutical . The RAP
Journal, Vol. 28.
Reading
Routledge: USA.
University Press.

Eco, Umberto. (1983). The Name of the Rose. San Diego: Harcourt.
Eco, Umberto.(.(1979). The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts.
Bloomington: Indiana.
Freeman, Donald C. (Ed.). (1970). Linguistics and Literary Style. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston.
Hawkes, Terence.(1977). Structuralism and Semiotics. Berkeley: U California P.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. (1986). Course in General Linguistics. La Salle, IL: Open Court.
Scholes, Robert. (1974). Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven: Yale

UP.
Todorov, Tzvetan.(1977). The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca: Cornell UP.
Routledge.

Module 4
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UNIT 4 POST-COLONIAL CRTICISM
1.0 Introduction
Lois Tyson (2006), in Critical Theory Today: A User Friendly Manual, holds that
as a domain within literary studies, postcolonial criticism is both a subject matter and a
theoretical framework. As a subject matter, post-colonial criticism analyses literature
produced by cultures that developed in response to colonial domination, from the first
point of colonial contact to the present. Some of these literatures were written by the
colonizers. Much more of it was written, and is being written, by colonized and formerly
colonized peoples. As a subject matter, any analysis of a post-colonial literary work,
regardless of the theoretical framework used, might be called post-colonial criticism.
Post-colonial criticism focuses on the literature of cultures that developed in response to
British colonial domination. However, as a theoretical framework, post-colonial criticism
seeks to understand the operations—politically, socially, culturally, and
psychologically—of colonialist and anti- colonialist ideologies. For example, a good deal
of post-colonial criticism analyses the ideological forces that, on the one hand, pressed
the colonized to internalize the colonizers’ values and, on the other hand, promoted the
resistance of colonized peoples against their oppressors, a resistance that is as old as
colonialism itself.
Post-colonial criticism is a term which has obviously become globalized.

However, a key problem remains in the actual naming. The prefix ‘post’ raises questions
similar to those arising from its attachment to the term ‘modernism’. Does ‘post’ signal a
break into a phase and consciousness of newly constructed independence and autonomy
‘beyond’ and ‘after’ colonialism, or does it imply a continuation and intensification of the
system, better understood as neo-colonialism? According to Raman Selden, Peter
Widdowson and Peter Brooker (2005):
The appearance of postcolonial criticism has overlapped with the debates on

postmodernism, though it brings, too, an awareness of power relations between
Western and ̳Third World’ cultures which the more playful and parodic, or
aestheticizing postmodernism has neglected or been slow to develop. From a
postcolonial perspective, Western values and traditions of thought and literature,
including versions of postmodernism, are guilty of a repressive ethnocentrism.
In this unit, our aim is to explain the concept of Post-colonialism as well as its
theoretical predilections.

a. Define Post-colonialism

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b. Outline the theoretical tenets of Post-colonialism
c. Examine how post-colonialism was employed in selected theoretical texts
3.0 Discussions
3.1. The Emergence of Post-Colonial Criticism
In the words of Jide Balogun (2011), Post-colonialism as a literary theory,

emerged in the late 19th century and thrived throughout the 20th century. Post-
colonialism is a literary approach that gives a kind of psychological relief to the people
(the colonized) for whom it was born. The focus of the post-colonial critic is to expose
the mechanism and the evil effect(s) of that monster called colonialism on the colonized.
Colonialism which is the capitalistic and exploitative method by a ̳ superior’ nation
(colonizer) to lord itself over a less privileged nation (colonized) leads to the
impoverishment of the latter. The concept of colonialism has political, economic and
cultural implications.
Post-colonialism sees literature as an avenue to probe into the history of society

by recreating its past experience with the mind of forestalling the repetition of history.
The ultimate for the post-colonial critic is to develop a kind of nostalgia about his
historical moment that produces a new dawn in his society. Post-colonialism is a
dominant feature in African and Caribbean literature as writers in these settings see
colonialism as an instrument aimed at reducing them to nonentities. An interesting feature
of post-colonial criticism is its attempt, not only to expose the oddities of colonialism but
to reveal and discuss what the independent nations make of themselves even after the
demise of colonialism.
What does the post-colonial approach to literature offer the

colonized people?
In another sense, post-colonial denotes a period of recovery after colonialism as

well as a signification of its ongoing cultural aftermath. Emphasizing its ideological
predilection, Kehinde argues that: P̳ ostcolonial African novelists use their novels to
facilitate the transgression of boundaries and subversion of hegemonic rigidities
previously mapped out in precursor literary canonical texts about African and her people.‘
In The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Postcolonial Literatures (1989), Bill
Ashcroft et al aver that post-colonial criticism covers “...all the cultures affected by the
imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present.” Awan Ankpa views
the concept in like manner as representing “...those fields of significations in which
people who had been colonized by Europe struggle to redefine themselves and their
environment in the face of Euro-centralism’s epistemological violence.” Thus, seen from
the perspective of a counter-discourse, post-colonial literatures become in the words of
Ayo Kehinde “..veritable weapons used to dismantle the hegemonic boundaries and the

Module 4
20
determinants that create unequal relations of power, based on binary oppositions such as
‘Us’ and ‘Them’ ; ‘First world’ and ‘Third world’; ‘White’ and ‘Black’; ‘Colonizer‘ and
‘Colonized.’
3.2. Theoretical Postulations of Post-Colonial Theory
Despite the polemics surrounding the concept of post-colonialism, it is unarguable

that the emergence of the ‘Post’ in literary and cultural studies in the 20th Century is a
significant development that has radically widened the scope of literary theorizing,
criticism and interpretation. Depending on the context in which it is employed, ’post’
connotes both ‘a succession’ as well as ‘a transcending of existing perspectives’. From
post-structuralism, post-marxism, postmodernism, to postcolonial criticism, the aim has
been to interrogate dominant epistemologies and re-theorize their claims in the light of
emerging new knowledge. This is the thrust of Esiaba Irobi’s (2010) argument that post-
colonialism is:
A reaction to Western imperialist history and intellectual ideology...It

seeks to dismantle the epistemologies of intellectual hegemony cultivated by the
west via its academics as well as confront the ex- colonized with the options
available for their critical redemption via alternative modes of discourse which
may be different from those traditions of discourse fashioned by the west.
This skewed politics of power and representation by the West which post-colonial
criticism seeks to interrogate has been examined critically by the Palestinian scholar,
Edward Said in his influential works, Orientalism (1978) and Culture and Imperialism
(1993) respectively. Known for his anti-colonial stance, Said in both works argues that in
order to bolster its claim of superiority, there is a condescending zeal by the West to
interiorize, marginalize and stereotype other history and cultures which it does not
understand or which it knows very little about. For him, the West has a limited and over-
simplified concept of the ‘East’ and believes in the supremacy of its values, while
relegating the values and cultures of others as ‘uncivilised’. Said questions the West’s
notion of history and authority of knowledge and calls for its re- valuation. Homi Bhabha
(1994) in the same mode of thinking posits that colonial ideology rests upon a
“Manichaean structure” that divides the world into dichotomous identity categories of the
civil and the barbaric, the “us” and the “them”. In his estimation: “the objective of
colonialist discourse is to construe the colonised as a population of degenerate types on
the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of
administration and instruction.”
Thus, post-colonial criticism on the one hand takes the garb of a counter-canon, a
revision of dominant Western postulation about its perceived ‘Other’. Boehmer Elleke in

Module 4
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Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995) concurs to this thinking. For her, the concept
emerged as a ‘resistance’ to imperial domination:
In writings as various as romances, memoirs, adventure tales or the later

poetry of Tennyson, the view of the world as directed from the colonial metropolis
was consolidated and confirmed. So, it also followed almost automatically, that
resistance to imperial domination-especially on the part of those who lacked guns
or money- frequently assumed textual form.
As a ‘radical’ literary construct, at least in its ideological commitment, post-colonial

criticism acquires different significations in the context of African and ̳Third World‖
literature. It is an epistemology which seeks to rupture the absolutist claims of Western
epistemology, including its representations of Africa and other ‘Third World’ countries
especially in literary, philosophical and cultural discourses. In other words, postcolonial
criticism sets out to ̳comment on, and criticize colonial hegemony and the process of
decolonization’ in former colonized nations. The leading post-colonial critics include
Homi Bhaba, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chinua Achebe, Salman
Rushdie, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott, and J.
M. Coetzee.
Edward Ako (2004), tracing the transition of Commonwealth Literature into post-
colonial literature observes that post-colonial critics deal with problems of migration,
slavery, suppression, resistance, representation, difference, caste, class, race, gender,
place and responses to the influential master discourses of imperial Europe such as
history, literature, philosophy, and linguistics, and the fundamental experiences of
speaking and writing by which all these come into being. Thus, in its engagement with
literature postcolonial criticism, especially for the ̳ Third World‘, is a politico-literary
discourse which in the words of Rehnuma Sazzad ‘opposes the power-knowledge nexus’
constructed by the West and devising in the alternative, fresh ways of approaching old
epistemologies. Thus, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) epitomizes the
postcolonial as a counter-narrative to Joyce Cary’s Mister Johnson (1902) and Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) respectively. J.M Coetzee’s Foe (1986), in the same
light represents a revision of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). These are Western
‘Master Texts’ which portray distorted images of Africa and its people. Postcolonial
criticism therefore takes as part of its objectives the critique of ‘Colonial ethos’ reflected
in ‘Colonialist texts’.
3.3. Criticisms against Post-Colonial Criticism
It has been stated that post-colonial theory tilts strongly towards the incorporation
of politics into literary theorizing. Post-colonial criticism often interrogates the
dichotomy between history and fictional representation, ‘Otherness’ and hybridity and
their relationship to issues of identity. However, as a theoretical construct, Post-

Module 4
22
colonialism provokes both ‘critical acclaim’ and ‘critical bashing’ especially among
‘Third World’ scholars. For instance, the Nigerian poet, Niyi Osundare, dismisses it as
another form of ‘imperialism of theory’; the Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo, rejects it
on the grounds that ‘colonialism has not been posted at all’. Aidoo’s observation finds
elements of validity as events in many African societies show that neo-colonialism in the
form of Western multinational conglomerates is very much alive, pauperizing and
inflicting hardship on the hapless poor. Advancing Aidoo’s line of thought, Tyson states
that another debate engaging the attention of post- colonial critics concerns the politics of
their own critical agenda. For example, the term post-colonial criticism implies that
colonialism is a thing of the past while in reality, it is not. Colonialism is no longer
practiced as it was between the late 15th and mid-20th centuries, through the direct, overt
administration of governors and educators from the colonizing country. But today,
through different means, the same kind of political, economic, and cultural subjugation
of vulnerable nations occurs at the hands of international corporations from such world
powers as the United States, Germany, and Japan. Again, there are fears that post-colonial
literature will be “colonized” - that is, interpreted according to European norms and
standards-by the cultural Euro-centrism that dominates literary education and literary
criticism the world over.
▪ Read some model essays on Post-colonial and examine how the approach
was used. (See Biclar’ essays on Post
Colonialism)
4.0 Conclusion
In this unit, you learnt that post-colonial criticism helps us see the connections
among all the domains of our experience - the psychological, ideological, social, political,
intellectual, and aesthetic - in ways that show us just how inseparable these categories are
in our lived experience of ourselves and our world. In addition, post-colonial theory offers
us a framework for examining the similarities among all critical theories that deal with
human oppression, such as Marxism, feminism and African American theory. Post-
colonial criticism defines formerly colonized peoples as any population that has been
subjected to the political domination of another population, hence post-colonial critics
draw examples from the literary works of African Americans as well as from the literature
of aboriginal Australians or the formerly colonized population of India.
Abrams, M.H. (1953). The Mirror and the Lamp. London: Oxford UP.


Module 4
23
W.W Norton Company.

’
Biclar, L. (2017). T.S Elliot’s ‘Little Gidding’: A Hermeneutical Reading. The RAP
Journal, Vol. 28.
Routledge: USA.
University Press.

Graff, Gerald. (1987). Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press.
Griffith, Kelly. (2002). Writing Essays About Literature: (A Guide and Style Sheet).
Thompson Heinle Incorporation.
Lentricchia, Frank. (1980). After the New Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Moore-Gilbert, Bart Stanton, Gareth, & Maley Willy. (Eds). (1997). Postcolonial
Criticism. New York: Addison, Wesley, Longman.

Module 4
24
Routledge.

Module 4
25
UNIT 5 APPLICATION OF THEORIES
1.0 Introduction
In this phase of the module, you will be applying the theories learned in writing
a literary criticism. Given are the three literary texts in which you will be analyzing as
critic employing the literary theories.
• Write a literary criticism on the given texts applying the specified literary
theories discussed in this module.
3.0 Activity Proper
1. Read: Post-colonial Reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Biclar and

examine how the theory was employed.
2. In a group of three (3), select and read Maya Angelou’s Poem “Still I Rise” and
write a position critical paper employing the theories discussed in this module.
3. Presentation will of outputs will be done next meeting.
Still I Rise
By Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Module 4
26
Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Module 4

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MODULE 4

COURSE TITLE: LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

Unit 2 New Historicism 9

Unit 3 Readers Response Criticism 14

Unit 4 Post-colonial Criticism 18

Unit 5 Application of Theories to Literary Criticism 25

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

2.0 Learning Outcomes

At the end of this unit, you are expected to:

a. trace the origin of feminist criticism

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

3.1 The Emergence of Gender/Feminist Criticism

Feminist or gender criticism, according to Kelly Griffith (2002), bases its

3.2 Stages of Development of Feminist Criticism

Scholars have attempted to periodize the stages of emergence of feminist

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

The third stage of feminist criticism rebelled against the “essentialist”

The three “stages” of feminist criticism highlighted, according to Griffith, have

3.3 Theoretical Postulations of Gender/Feminist Criticism

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

Self-Assessment (Journal Entry #1)

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

Balogun, Jide. ̳Approaches to Modern Literary Theories‘.

Bennett, Tony. (1979). Formalism and Marxism. London: Methuen.

Blamires, H. (1991). A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan Press

Derrida, Jacques.(1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

Eagleton, Terry. (1976). Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley: University of

Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of Criticism. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Gbenoba, F.E. (2008). Tracing Ngugi‘s Journey of Commitment from Performance to

Graff, Gerald. (1987). Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Chicago:

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

Norris, Christopher.(1982). Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. New York: Methuen.

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

New Historicism is a term coined by Stephen Greenblatt. It designates a body of

As a theoretical concept, New Historicism views literature as part of history, and

2.0 Learning Outcomes

At the end of this unit, you are expected to:

a. trace the emergence of New Historicism

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

3.1 The Emergence of New Historicism

When did New Historicism emerge and which critical

3.2 Theoretical Perspective of New Historicism

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

What is culture for New historicists?

The New Historicist’s approach to literary study is based on three things—

Other Critical Approaches and the New historicist approach

How do New historicist see the literary writer and the

New Historicists believe that literature is history, is “enmeshed” in history. Hence,

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism

Required Reading (Journal Entry #2)

Read: Formalistic Approach to Demetillo’s “Barter in Panay: An Epic”

• Explain how New Historicism was applied to the text above.

5.0 References and Additional Readings

Balogun, Jide. Approaches to Modern Literary Theories.

Biclar, L. (2016). Assumptions Related to the Literary Persona in Demetillo’s ‘Barter in

Biclar, L. (2017). Formalistic Approach to Demetillo’s “Barter in Panay: An Epic”

Blamires, H. (1991). A History of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

English 119: Literary Theory and Criticism