Ib English Critical Perspectives

POSTMODERNISM

STRUCTURALISM

HISTORICISM

Depends heavily on IRONY. We need to be aware that what the writer or the character says may not be what she means; also, that what we as readers ʻgetʼ from the text might not be what the author intended. There are no ʻdefiniteʼ messages, no ʻgood and badʼ, and itʼs artificial to pretend that the writer has more ʻinsightʼ than the reader.

A text is a linguistic structure or system. As critical reader, our job is to focus on and make sense of the linguistic structures in the text. In a literary text, the focus will presumably be on word and sentence choice, structure, linguistic device, images, metaphor and so on. Everything else springs from those linguistic features.

The most important shaping feature of a literary text is the historical context in which it is written (as well, to a lesser extent, as the historical context in which it is set.) Understanding the historical context, and the authorʼs relation to and opinion of that contest, is the starting point of any literary critique.

MARXISM

FEMINISM

POST-COLONIALISM

All texts are constructed, consciously or not, as responses to a capitalist or postcapitalist society. Itʼs all about power relations, which in turn are structured economically or politically. Characters and writers are primarily motivated by their socio-economic status; texts are studies of economic and social systems in action.

All texts are constructed, consciously or not, as responses to gender-based social rules, conventions and expectations. Itʼs all about power relations, which are based more powerfully than anything else on gender. Texts are primarily studies of the relationships and struggles between genders and sexes.

Texts, especially those from post-colonial societies or those written about one culture from the point of view of a writer from another, will reveal tensions betwen cultures or between the past and present states of that culture. These texts are shaped by the cultures from which they spring; those cultures are shaped by their post-colonial status (or their status as colonisers.)