Scarlet Letter / / BAV

Literary Interpretation and Criticism

This last week we examined Hester Prynne as a scapegoat for the wealthy citizens and their disregard and flaunting of the sumptuary laws and the current parallels in society-- moral issues becoming more prominent than big issues: like obfuscating the national debt with emotional issues like same-sex marriage etc. rather than the way the rich are getting richer and the middle class has more debt than it ever has.

We also explored the book from the feminist perspective when we looked at the role of religion and intermingling of religious belief and law -- connecting the patterns of rule through the original sin and the vilification of women and matriarchal religious belief systems such as the original sin, sexuality, and agency. In brief, we examined the state of women and the roles of women in this narrative.

To look at gender equity, please look here to gain better understanding of global rights based upon gender

http://genderindex.org/

These two perspectives come from established traditions of literary theory and criticism.

You should not be surprised if this type of content is on your next open-book exam after Thanksgiving Break.

Literary Theory

In 1957 Northrop Frye published the influential Anatomy of Criticism. In his works Frye noted that some critics tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on the basis of their adherence to such ideology.

Marxism

The English literary critic and cultural theorist Terry Eagleton defines Marxist criticism this way:

"Marxist criticism is not merely a 'sociology of literature', concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is to explain the literary work more fully; and this means a sensitive attention to its forms, styles and meanings. But it also means grasping those forms, styles and meanings as the product of a particular history."^[1]

The simplest goals of Marxist literary criticism can include an assessment of the political "tendency" of a literary work, determining whether its social content or its literary form are "progressive"; however, this is by no means the only or the necessary goal. From Walter Benjamin to Fredric Jameson, Marxist literary critics have also been concerned with applying lessons drawn from the realm of aesthetics to the realm of politics.
  
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in women's studies and gender studies by "third-wave" authors. In the most general and simple terms, feminist literary criticism before the 1970s -- in the first and second waves of feminism -- was concerned with the politics of women's authorship and the representation of women's condition within literature. Since the arrival of more complex conceptions of gender and subjectivity and third-wave feminism, feminist literary criticism has taken a variety of new routes. It has considered gender in the terms of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, as part of the deconstruction of existing relations of power, and as a concrete political investment.^[1] It has been closely associated with the birth and growth of queer studies. And the more traditionally central feminist concern with the representation and politics of women's lives has continued to play an active role in criticism.
Lisa Tuttle has defined feminist theory as asking "new questions of old texts." She cites the goals of feminist criticism as: (1) To develop and uncover a female tradition of writing, (2) to interpret symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view, (3) to rediscover old texts, (4) to analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective, (5) to resist sexism in literature, and (6) to increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style.^[2]