Literary Criticism

- the general term used to describe the most traditional and "common sense" approach to the study of literature

- "liberal" because it claims to be free of any particular social or political viewpoint for interpretation (a literary text can be understood alone) 

- "humanism" because it assumes there is a common and unchanging human nature that is relevant to all people (regardless of time/place) 

Central Ideas: 

• language is an accurate way of recording reality and experience 
• all people share a common human nature with common human values that are essential/unchanging 
• a literary text enriches our lives and promotes universal human values 
• a literary text does not require prior knowledge of historical context, literary context or author biography to understand its independant intention

- the political philosophy out of which ideas of communism were derived. 

- criticises individualistic aquisition of material resources (i.e capitalism) 

- promotes a classless society based on shared ownership and social responsibility 

Some key ideas: 

• bourgeois - the higher classes of society that own the means to production
• proletariat - the lower classes that operate the means of production 
• class struggle - those who own resources and industry exploit and abuse those who operate the functioning of resources and industry 
• reification - the dehumanisation of human beings into human resources 
• ideology - the cultural values promoted by a given society 
• hegemony - the social situation in which an ideology is made so prevelant that it feels "normal" and "natural" when it is actually created and controlled by social powers

- a form of psychotherapy that aims to cure mental disorders by investigating the interaction of the conscious mind with the unconscious mind. 

Some key ideas include: 

• the conscious mind - our aware, calculating, decision making selves with which we attempt to control our lives
• the unconcious mind - our instinctual, emotional, animal selves of which we are not fully aware and which actually controls our lives 
• repression - moving unresolved issues from the conscious mind to the unconscious 
• projection - a form of repression wherein one attributes aspects of one's own personality onto someone else
• displacement - a form of repression wherein one substitutes a person, object or event with something symbolically similar

- the social and political perspective that explores issues of women's historical inequality in the majority of human cultures. 

Some key ideas: 

• female/male - a biological designation defined by genetics and morphology 
• feminine/masculine - or gender - a cultural designation created and reinforced by society through conditioning or socialisation
• patriarchy - "father-rule" - the term used to describe social and political systems that are dominated by the logic and attitudes of men
• phallocentrism - the thinking process by which patriarchy is established and reinforced. Phallus = symbol of power and influence 

- centralises sexual orientation as a fundamental category of analysis and is a direct response to the ideological and institutional attitudes of heterosexual normality and privilege. 

Some key ideas: 

• sexuality - like gender, is a social construct and can be shaped and altered by culture and personal experience. It is also a spectrum far more complex that the simple binary of homosexual versus heterosexual. 

- the belief that things cannot be understood in isolation and can only be understood within the contexts of the larger systems or structures of which they are a part of 

Key Ideas: 

• the meaning of a word cannot be defined in isolation and is categorised by that word's relationship with other words and the rules of language in which it belongs
• the meaning of a word is established by usage and convention 
• ultimately, our use and commitment to language constitutes and shapes our experiences and provides a common structure for understanding reality