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COMPARISON OF THREE CRITICAL APPROACHES:
FORMALIST (NEW CRITICISM), DECONSTRUCTIVE AND FEMINIST
In this paper I'm going to speak about the following critical approaches: the Feminism, the Desconstruction and finally the Formalism/ New Cristicism.
Firstly, I'm going to explain the Feminist critical approach. To talk about this theme, we should talk about its origin, which took place some centuries ago. It's said that even in Aristotles times this approach existed because, as he said, "The female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities”, and ST Thomas Aquinas, another important philosopher, said that woman is an "imperfect man" (Oppermann - Feminist Literary Criticism). But when the feminist criticism became an actual dominant force in Western literary studies was in the late 1970s, when feminist theory was applied to linguistic and literary matters. Since the early 1980s, feminist literary criticism has developed and diversified in lots of branches, and now it is seen through a global perspective (Murfin & Ray - Definition of Feminist Criticism).
North American feminist critics of the 1970s and early 1980s began analyzing literary texts. One group practiced "feminist critique," examining how women characters were portrayed, exposing the patriarchal ideology implicit in the so-called classics, and demonstrating that attitudes and traditions reinforcing systematic masculine dominance are inscribed in the literary canon. Another group practiced what came to be called "gynocriticism", studying works written by women and examining the female literary tradition to find out how women writers across the ages have perceived themselves and imagined reality (Murfin & Ray - Definition of Feminist Criticism).
Another groups like British feminist critics of the 1970s and early 1980s objected to the tendency of some North American critics to find universal or "essential" feminine attributes, arguing that differences of race, class, and culture gave rise to crucial differences among women across space and time. “This feminist critics regarded their own critical practice as more political than that of North American feminists, emphasizing an engagement with historical process in order to promote social change” (Murfin & Ray - Definition of Feminist Criticism).
Some years later, in the 90s, the French, American, and British approaches had so thoroughly critiqued, influenced, and assimilated one another that nationality no longer automatically signaled a practitioner's approach. Today's critics seldom focus on "woman" as a relatively monolithic category; rather, they view "women" as members of different societies with different concerns. Feminists of color, Third World feminists, and lesbian feminists have stressed that women are not defined solely by the fact that they are female; other attributes (such as religion, class, and sexual orientation) are also important, making the problems and goals of one group of women different from those of another (Murfin & Ray - Definition of Feminist Criticism).
On the other hand, for some practitioners like Ellen Mores, Virginia Woolf, Sandra Gilbert, Judith Butler, Elaine Showalter, etc, this tendency has a lot of advantages and disadvantages. The advantadges are: Women have been somewhat underrepresented in the traditional cannon, and a femisnm approach to literature redresses this problem. And the disadvantadges are: Femisnist turn literary criticism into a political battlefield and overlook the merits of works they consider “patriarchal”, the feminism approach is often too theoretical (Blackmon - Feminist Approach).
In conclusion, the definition of feminism approach, could be: “it's concerned with the impact of gender on writing and reading. It is concerned with the place of female writers in the cannon.” (Blackmon - Feminist Approach). Another definition more complete could be that “many commentators have argued that feminist criticism is by definition gender criticism because of its focus on the feminine gender. But the relationship between feminist and gender criticism is, in fact, complex; the two approaches are certainly not polar opposites but, rather, exist along a continuum of attitudes toward sex, sexuality, gender, and language.” (Murfin & Ray - Definition of Feminist Criticism).
Now I am going to explain the Desconstruction. Firstly, Derrida's comments provide the best point of item to understand this topic/theme that is the deconstrucionism, Jacques Darridas, french philosopher, who coined the term deconstruction, argues that in Western culture, people tend to think and express their thoughts in terms of “binary oppositions.” Something is white but not black, masculine and therefore not feminine, a cause rather than an effect. Derrida suggests these oppositions are hierarchies in miniature, containing one term that Western culture views as positive or superior and another considered negative or inferior, even if only slightly so. Through deconstruction, Derrida aims to erase the boundary between binary oppositions and to do so in such a way that the hierarchy implied by the oppositions is thrown into question ( Murfin & Ray - Definition of Feminist Criticism).
For those of us who like neat definitions, this obviously isn't much help. Nevertheless, the passages gives us a working example of deconstruction and a taste of Derrida's style of writing. Paradoxes and neologisms about Derrida's work, and his description of descontruction as nothing recalls the playfull subtitle of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Derrida has been accused of being everything from an intellectual terrorist to a philosophical court jester (Ramey - Derrida and Deconstruction). For this reason and another more, Formalist critics, such as the New Critics, assume that a work of literature is a freestanding, self-contained object whose meaning can be found in the complex network of relations between its parts (allusions, images, rhythms, sounds, etc.). Deconstructors, by contrast, see works in terms of their undecidability . They reject the formalist view that a work of literary art is demonstrably unified from beginning to end, in one certain way, or that it is organized around a single center that ultimately can be identified. As a result, deconstructors see texts as more radically heterogeneous than do formalists. Formalists ultimately make sense of the ambiguities they find in a given text, arguing that every ambiguity serves a definite, meaningful, and demonstrable literary function. Undecidability, by contrast, is never reduced, let alone mastered. Though a deconstructive reading can reveal the incompatible possibilities generated by the text, it is impossible for the reader to decide among them (Murfin & Ray - Definition of Deconstruction).
In conclusion, the definition of deconstruction is very difficult, but these phrases, could be: Firstly, deconstructive critics believe that language doesn´t accurately reflect reality because it´s an unstable medium. Finally, another definition is that the deconstructive criticism resembles formalist criticism in its close attention to the text,etc. (Ramey - Derrida and Deconstruction).
Finally, I am going to speak about the last critical approach, the Formalism or New Criticism. This kind of critical approach is one of the most important approaches. What is Formalism? To talk about this theme, we should talk about its origin, which took place some decades ago. Formalism is a general term covering several similar types of literary criticism that arose in the 1920s and 1930s, flourished during the 1940s and 1950s, and are still in evidence today. Formalists see the literary work as an object in its own right. Thus, they tend to devote their attention to its intrinsic nature, concentrating their analyses on the interplay and relationships between the text's essential verbal elements . During these years, Formalism developed largely in reaction to the practice of interpreting literary texts by relating them to "extrinsic" issues, but nowadays, the formalists o the specialists who know this theme, have generally suggested that everyday language is stale and unimaginative, because they argue that "literariness" has the capacity to overturn common and expected patterns thereby rejuvenating language. This course, a serie of schools of literary criticism have been created. These have adopted a formalist orientation, or at least make use of formalist concepts (Murfin & Ray - Definition of Formalism).
The most famous type of formalism, is the New Criticism, was the dominant mode of criticism in English and American universities from the 1930s to 60s and into the 70s and even 80s in Australia (Ryan - New Criticism); but before, between the 1940s to 1950s, this kind of couse reached its height during this years and it and it received this name from John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism (Murfin & Ray - Definition of New Criticism). Some of the most relevant terms used by Formalists are the following:
• Tension: the integral unity of the poem which results from the resolution of opposites often in irony of paradox.
• Intentional fallacy- the belief tha the meanng or value of a work may be determened by the author´s intention.
• Affective fallacy- the belief that the meaning or value of a work may be determined by its affect on the reader
• External form: rhyme scheme, meter, stanza, form,etc
• Objetive correlative – originated by T.S. Eliot, this term refers to a collection of objects, situations or events that instantly evoke a particular emotion.
On the other hand, for some practitioners like I.A. Richards, William Empson, John Crowe Ranson, Allen Tate, etc, this tendecy has a lot advantadges and disadvantadges. The advantadges are: This approach can be performed without much research, and it emphasizes the value of literature apart from its context, all crtical approach, vitually must begin here. Finally this part of paper, the disadvantadges are: formalism ignores the context of the work, it tends to reduce literature to little more than a collection of rhetorical devices (Burris - Formalism / New Criticism).
In conclusion, a formalistic approach to literature, once called New Criticism, involves a close reading of text.
EXEMPLIFICATION & BIBLIOGRAPHY