Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

“As you read the following chapters, I hope it will become clear to you that even our ‘personal,’ ‘natural’ interpretations of literature and of the world we live in—interpretations ‘unsullied’ by theory—are based on assumptions, on ways of seeing the world, that are themselves theoretical and that we don’t realize we’ve internalized. In other words, there is no such thing as a nontheoretical interpretation.”

In this quote, Tyson underlines how theoretical understandings shape literary experiences, even if we have “naturalized” them, i.e., we have adopted them so entirely we can no longer recognize them. The role of critical theory as presented by Tyson is to make visible the ideologies that we have “internalized” and understand how they shape our understandings of the world and literature. The use of quotes around “personal,” “natural,” and “unsullied” indicates Tyson’s skepticism about these concepts.

“If we take the time to understand some key concepts about human experience offered by psychoanalysis, we can begin to see the ways in which these concepts operate in our daily lives in profound rather than superficial ways, and we’ll begin to understand human behaviors that until now may have seemed utterly baffling. And, of course, if psychoanalysis can help us better understand human behavior, then it must certainly be able to help us understand literary texts, which are about human behavior.”

This quote lays out Tyson’s view of psychoanalysis and the “concrete” application that the theory can be used for in daily life and literary analysis. She criticizes pop psychological understandings as “superficial,” implying that true psychological theory provides much “deeper” understanding of human behavior.

“Clearly, a psychoanalytic lens reveals a much different love story than the one ordinarily associated with The Great Gatsby. As the novel illustrates, romantic love is the stage on which all of our unresolved psychological conflicts are dramatized, over and over. Indeed, it’s the over-and-over, the repetition of destructive behavior, that tells us an unresolved psychological conflict is ‘pulling the strings’ from the unconscious.”

This quote provides an example of how psychoanalytic theory can be applied to literary analysis. Tyson here emphasizes how a psychoanalytic reading of the work reveals new understandings of The Great Gatsby that differ from traditional views of the work. Instead of a typical reading of the novel as a tragic love story, psychoanalysis shows how the characters’ relationships are the grounds for repetitive, destructive behavior.

“By posing as natural ways of seeing the world, repressive ideologies prevent us from understanding the material/historical conditions in which we live because they refuse to acknowledge that those conditions have any bearing on the way we see the world. In contrast, Marxism, a nonrepressive ideology, acknowledges that it is an ideology and works to make us aware of all the ways in which we are products of material/historical circumstances and of the repressive ideologies that serve to blind us to this fact in order to keep us subservient to the ruling power system.”

Tyson often toggles between a descriptive analysis of the critical theories under study and an interpretive/subjective analysis of the same. Here, Tyson is articulating what Marxist critical theories believe in a descriptive mode. This quote should not be taken as an indication of her endorsement or belief in this ideology.

“For Marxism, literature does not exist in some timeless, aesthetic realm as an object to be passively contemplated. Rather, like all cultural manifestations, it is a product of the socioeconomic and hence ideological conditions of the time and place in which it was written, whether or not the author intended it so.”

This quote describes one element of how Marxist theory views Literary Analysis as a Form of Social Justice. It illustrates how Marxists understand literature as both the product and the mode of transmission of ideology. The language implies that literature is not an object for “passive contemplat[ion]”; it is a subject with active uses.

“I consider myself a recovering patriarchal woman. By patriarchal woman I mean, of course, a woman who has internalized the norms and values of patriarchy, which can be defined, in short, as any culture in which men hold all or most of the power, usually through the establishment of traditional, or patriarchal, gender roles. I say that I’m recovering because I learned to recognize and resist that programming. For me, such recognition and resistance will always require effort—I’m recovering rather than recovered—not just because I internalized patriarchal programming at an early age but because that program continues to assert itself in my world.”

This quote is just one example of how Tyson asserts her own identity and subjectivity throughout Critical Theory Today, highlighting The Role of Personal Connections to Literature. In this way, she models how critical theorists argue that a writer or interpreter’s personal identity should be made explicit because it shapes the language, ideologies, and understandings one brings to a subject or literary work. Here, Tyson gives a background of her standing as a feminist to clarify how that might shape her description of feminist ideology.

“I think it useful to examine the ways in which literary texts reinforce or undermine patriarchy because the ability to see when and how patriarchal ideology operates is crucial to our ability to resist it in our own lives.”

In this quote, Tyson explains how literary analysis as a form of social justice functions in feminist theory. She connects a critical understanding of how the patriarchy is represented in literature to how it can support feminist action in the real world. The use of the personal pronoun “I” reinforces the emphasis on subjectivity in feminist analysis mentioned in the above quote.

“‘The text itself’ became the battle cry of the New Critical effort to focus our attention on the literary work as the sole source of evidence for interpreting it.”

Tyson here summarizes the new critical perspective on literary analysis. The use of the expression “battle cry” emphasizes the combative stance this mode of literary analysis took toward traditional, historical modes of literary analysis that often focused on authors’ biographies and other extratextual information.

“New Criticism asked us to look closely at the formal elements of the text to help us discover the poem’s theme and to explain the ways in which those formal elements establish it. For New Critics believed that this was the only way to determine the text’s value.”

One of the unusual elements of new criticism is that, unlike most other modes of literary analysis, it asserted that there could be one and only one correct way to interpret a work of literature. Tyson alludes to this characteristic here with her summation that “[analysis of formal elements to determine theme] was the only way to determine the text’s value.” Indeed, even the notion of “value” here is unusual because most critical theories see all texts as having some kind of value (historical, cultural, ideological) that may not necessarily be linked to the complexity of its formal elements.

“As we read a text, it acts as a stimulus to which we respond in our own personal way. Feelings, associations, and memories occur as we read, and these responses influence the way in which we make sense of the text as we move through it. Literature we’ve encountered prior to this reading, the sum total of our accumulated knowledge, and even our current physical condition and mood will influence us as well. At various points while we read, however, the text acts as a blueprint that we can use to correct our interpretation when we realize it has traveled too far afield of what is written on the page.”

This summary of transactional reader-response theory highlights how this and other modes of reader-response theories can be used to analyze the role of personal connections to literature. Tyson alludes to the universality of these personal connections with the use of the first-person plural pronouns in the statement “As we read a text,” implying that everyone brings their own personal background and understandings to a work, whether they are aware of it or not.

“Thus, while the text actively shapes the reader’s response to Gatsby in each of these scenes, as we move through the tale we experience a significant degree of indeterminacy. For we gradually learn that the text will support two opposing interpretations of Gatsby: (1) Gatsby the criminal, who will hurt anyone and do anything to get what he wants, and (2) Gatsby the romantic hero, who has pulled himself out of poverty and devoted his life to Daisy as ‘to the following of a grail’ (156; ch. 8).”

This quote provides an example of how reader-response theory can be applied to an analysis of The Great Gatsby. Like all the modes of critical analysis, it relies on the “close reading” technique used by the new critics, meaning that it provides detailed, specific citations of the work under study to support its argument about the work’s formal elements. This can be seen in the quote from The Great Gatsby at the end of the second sentence to support Tyson’s argument about the work in the prior clauses.

“For structuralism sees itself as a human science whose effort is to understand, in a systematic way, the fundamental structures that underlie all human experience and, therefore, all human behavior and production. For this reason, structuralism shouldn’t be thought of as a field of study. Rather, it’s a method of systematizing human experience that is used in many different fields of study: for example, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and literary studies.”

In this quote, Tyson summarizes structuralism as a mode of inquiry. It is notable that Tyson states that structuralism “sees itself” as a human science. This implies that parts of other disciplines like anthropology or economics may not consider structuralism a “science” in a way that conforms to the discipline’s conception of itself.

“For students of literature, structuralism has very important implications. After all, literature is a verbal art: it is composed of language. So its relation to the ‘master’ structure, language, is very direct. In addition, structuralists believe that the structuring mechanisms of the human mind are the means by which we make sense out of chaos, and literature is a fundamental means by which human beings explain the world to themselves, that is, make sense out of chaos.”

This quote provides an explanation of the relationship between structuralism and literary analysis. It emphasizes the relationship between language and reality, namely that the underlying structures of language in turn shape our understanding of reality. Without the ordering structures of language and mental processes for all the information (sensory, literary, etc.) we encounter, our experience of the world would be one of “chaos.”

“For many of us who consider ourselves lovers of literature, phrases such as ‘the random play of signifiers’ and ‘the transcendental signified’ evoke the kind of fear and loathing the Crusaders must have felt when they learned that the infidels had taken the Holy City.”

Tyson often uses a playful, personable voice to enliven the language in the textbook. This quote is one such example in that it uses a humorous analogy to highlight how incomprehensible and absurd deconstructive theory can seem. This mode is particularly relevant to deconstructive theory itself because its chief theorist, Jacques Derrida, emphasized the “play” of language in his works and his writing often employed humorous puns and metaphors.

“Because it is through language that a culture’s ideologies are passed on, it is not unreasonable to say that it is through language that we come to conceive and perceive our world and ourselves. To put the matter in philosophical terms, for deconstruction, language is our ‘ground of being,’ or the foundation from which our experience and knowledge of the world are generated.”

This quote summarizes how deconstructive theory understands the relationship between language and reality. This understanding can be found in many of the critical theories covered in Critical Theory Today, including feminist and queer theories, and provides the foundation for alternative poetics, or modes of expression.

“Meaning is not a stable element residing in the text for us to uncover or passively consume. Meaning is created by the reader in the act of reading. Or, more precisely, meaning is produced by the play of language through the vehicle of the reader, though we generally refer to this process as ‘the reader.’ Furthermore, the meaning that is created is not a stable element capable of producing closure; that is, no interpretation has the final word.”

This quote highlights how the role of personal connections to literature shapes the meaning we derive from texts. It emphasizes how deconstructive theory differs fundamentally from new criticism, in that it argues that “no interpretation has the final word,” in contrast with the new critical position that there is only one correct interpretation of a literary work.

“Most of us raised to think about history in the traditional way would read an account of a Revolutionary War battle written by an American historian in 1944 and ask, if we asked anything at all, ‘Is this account accurate?’ or ‘What does this battle tell us about the “spirit of the age” in which it was fought?’ In contrast, a new historicist would read the same account of that battle and ask, ‘What does this account tell us about the political agendas and ideological conflicts of the culture that produced and read the account in 1944?’”

This quote contrasts traditional historical analysis with new historical analysis. Like in many instances in Critical Theory Today, Tyson begins with a short summary of the traditional stance on modes of inquiry. This helps students understand what different critical theories are responding to, as well as emphasize how they are different from what they might be familiar with.

“For queer theory, then, our natural state, the state into which we are born, is fluid: we are capable of having any number of forms of sexual desire and gender expression. That is, sexual orientation and gender identity are not biologically essential.”

In this summary of queer theory’s understanding of sexuality and gender expression as fluid, Tyson uses the first-person plural pronoun “we” to emphasize how this quality is universal, meaning that it applies to everyone. This tacitly encourages students to apply this understanding to their own experiences.

“Critical race theory is important today because, as many Americans of all races and ethnicities know, racism has not disappeared.”

Critical race theory is a highly controversial theory in the contemporary United States. In this quote, Tyson articulates a normative, subjective statement to assert her view of the value of critical race theory as a defense against those who feel it is not necessary or important.

“Perhaps one of the most important abilities critical theory develops in us is the ability to see connections where we didn’t know they existed: for example, connections between our personal psychological conflicts and the way we interpret a poem; between the ideologies, or belief systems, we’ve internalized and the literary works we find aesthetically pleasing; between a nation’s political climate and what its intellectuals consider ‘great’ literature; and so forth.”

In this quote, Tyson articulates a normative statement about what she sees as the value of critical theory as it relates to literary analysis. She lists a number of “concrete” ways where its applications are useful. This argument supports the theme of literary analysis as a form of social justice.

“I was a young girl when Silent Spring was published, and I remember my father’s steadfast belief, shared by all our friends and family, in the power of nature. Animals don’t need our help, he told me. Their natural instincts will always protect them.”

As noted elsewhere, Tyson is upfront about her personal experiences and how they relate to her understanding of the world and literary texts, reflecting the role of personal connections to literature. In this quote, she provides insight into her childhood and the dominant popular “common sense” theory of the environment prevalent at the time. She connects this memory to a literary work, Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which fundamentally changed that understanding.

“Our primary goal, at this stage in our ecocritical education, is to see what the text can tell us about the relationship between human beings and the natural environment. Specifically, what does the text reveal about the ways in which human beings characterize nature and, therefore, behave toward the natural world?”

This quote summarizes the goal of ecocriticism. Tyson uses the phrase “at this stage in our ecocritical education” to highlight how the analytical question she provides is just an introduction to this mode of analysis. This is in keeping with her language throughout the text, encouraging students to study areas of interest more deeply than the overview provided in this introductory textbook.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that some of the schools of criticism listed above are overtly political: their goal is to change society for the better in some way. Other theories see themselves as ‘apolitical,’ as removed from the forces that shape history and politics. A striking example of this kind of theory is New Criticism, which was the dominant force in literary studies in the late 1940s and 1950s and which saw itself as occupying a purely aesthetic realm. However, most critical theorists today recognize that all critical theories are produced by historical realities and have political implications whether or not their advocates are aware of those realities and implications.”

In this quote, Tyson emphasizes the normative subjectivities inherent to most modes of critical theory. In other words, they are “political” and express a view about how the world should be. This passage supports the theme of literary analysis as a form of social justice.