Achieved
content, textual structure, hegemony, purposive activity . . . the list goes on and on.
The amazing thing is that I know most (if not all) the words on that list. In fact, I've
learned more than just the words and definitions. For nine weeks, I've spent my days
trying to find a way to make the various methods of literary criticism more accessible to
others. This includes summarizing several critical articles, writing biographies of
critics, helping to compose glossary terms and quizzes, and drafting sample essays,
applying different critical methods and assumptions. I've already taken the literary
criticism class, so a lot of what I was working on was familiar. However, there were also
times when even the concept "Literary Criticism" seemed overwhelming.
Criticism doesn't have to be so overwhelming, though, and one of the concerns in
creating this webpage is to present information in a manner so that it doesn't appear as
daunting as it could be. For example, every type of criticism that is included begins with
a brief introduction explaining the basic concepts, methods, and assumptions of that
particular theory. These introductions are not complicated definitions of a theory, but
beginning points to perhaps more complex critical articles or summaries. Another helpful
component of the webpage are the student essays that apply different critical theories. By
referring to these, it might be a little easier to understand how certain critics approach
literature.
In addition to introductions and sample essays, there are also several more
items that will benefit anyone who is trying to understand literary criticism better:
critical articles and summaries, biographies of critics, a glossary of terms, quizzes. All
of these have been included not only to broaden one's comprehension of critical theories,
but also to make the comprehension process less painful. Hopefully, Dr. Fish and I have
succeeded in doing that, and it's now easier to grasp the concepts of gynocritics,
naturalization, ideologemes, vraisemblance. . . .
updated 07/29/99
