Modern Critical Theories Resume

 

Modern Critical Theories

Name : Muhammad Husain Nur Faiz Assyifa
NIM : 2109010001

Summary Chapter 1

As you have seen in this chapter, the reading–writing relationship is not a simple

one. Making analyses and writing papers that explain those analyses are made

manageable, however, by adopting a method that does not require you to

work on all aspects at once but instead allows you to concentrate on one or

two tasks at a time. Engaging a text, shaping a response, and finally sharing it

with other readers is demanding but satisfying, because it not only leads to new

insights about yourself and your world but also puts you in touch with a com-

munity of thinking people.

Summary Chapter 2

The approaches to reading texts and writing literary analyses that are explained in

this chapter are probably not new to you, given that they have been standard

classroom methods of teaching for many years. That they have been popular

with teachers for decades is evidence of their usefulness. They will provide a

good starting place for you to begin your literary explorations, and later they

can be valid means of extending other approaches.

 

Summary Chapter 3

F ormalism probably has the distinction of having more names than any other recently developed school of criticism. The model, as defined by American and English critics, has been called the New Criticism (long after it was no longer new), as well as aesthetic or textual (because of its primary concerns) or ontological (because of its philosophical grounding). Then, too, there is Russian formalism, which shares some fundamental characteristics with its Western cousin, but it is the ideas of the writers known as the New Critics, referred to here as formalist criticism, that in the 1930s revolutionized the work of scholars, critics, and teachers in the United States. For decades people learned to read, analyze, and appreciate literature using this approach, making it one of the most influential methods of literary analysis that twentieth-century readers encountered. Formalism’s sustained popularity among readers comes primarily from the fact that it provides them with a way to understand and enjoy a work for its own inherent value as a piece of literary art. Emphasizing close reading of the work itself, formalism puts the focus on the text as literature. It does not treat the text as an expression of social, religious, or political ideas; neither does it reduce the text to being a promotional effort for some cause or belief. As a result, formalism makes those who apply its principles and follow its processes better, more discerning readers.