"Criticism," however, is much more than rendering a verdict. Many other factors must be taken into consideration when making a judgment. An affirmation or rejection really represents just the end of a much more complicated process.

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What are the components of criticism?
The process of criticism involves the following steps:

1) Learning the basics
In the criticism of literature, the "basics" include knowledge of the elements of literature such as character, action, types of literature, conflict, plot, motif, symbol, language, image, rhetorical patterns in prose and poetry, narrative line, time and setting, and theme.  Without a vocabulary for discussing literature, any kind of justifiable response (other than a purely emotional reaction) is all but impossible. So the first step in literary criticism is familiarization with basic concepts.

2) Analyzing literary elements
The process of analysis is identifying, clarifying, defining, and isolating the distinctive parts of a subject. You should be able to identify, for example, primary and secondary characters, that is, those who control the action vs. those characters which play only subordinate or supporting roles. You should be alert to recurring image patterns and be able to classify them by types such as "nature" images or "color" images, etc. 

3) Interpreting the literature
To interpret a literary work is to explain "what it means." Meaning in literature may be a point an author either states (maybe through a character) or implies (perhaps through images that become symbols). When Huckleberry Finn refuses to go back to St. Petersburg at the end of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we sense, as careful readers, that Huck has grown as a person and can no longer justify the racism and inhumanity that he has left behind. So we might say that the "meaning of the story" is "the necessity to live with integrity," or "the evils of racism," or perhaps "Huck growing up."  Each of these broad observations or generalizations constitute possible "themes" of the story.

Sometimes the meaning may be a concept "demonstrated" by what happens and how it happens in a work like "realism" or "naturalism." Sometimes meaning evolves or unfolds gradually throughout a work as more an more details are revealed. You should be able to identify statements from characters which seem to sum up a point an author may be making about what's going on inside the literature or outside the literature. Sometimes stated, just as often implied, such generalizations are called "themes."

4) Judging the literature
While each of us tends quickly to jump to judgement--we want to say right away whether we like or dislike something, we all know that anyone can rip off an opinion or judgment without it meaning very much. To make a meaningful evaluation, however, assumes that 1) we know what we're talking about (we have learned the basics), 2) we have a thorough grasp of the details of a work and their relationships to each other (we have analyzed the elements), and 3) we have a sense of the author's stated or intended meanings developed in a literary work (we have interpreted the work from the author's perspective). Only if we have met these three conditions can we really make a significant judgment.

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Some "Critical Approaches" to Literature
A "critical approach" is a study of a literary work from a single perspective. You might write a paper analyzing and characterizing the type of work (a genre approach) or an essay interpreting the meaning of the story from the point of view of a Jungian psychologist ( a psychological approach). You could explore how certain nineteenth-century events help determine the narrative line of a novel (an historical approach), or you might be called upon to explain the significance of Christian imagery in a poem (a religious or symbolic approach).

There are many possible "critical approaches," then, to the study of literature. Why we make such investigations is because of the complexity of literary works. Every possible human experience, emotion, and relationship can find expression in imaginative literature. No single perspective can account for such complexity. In A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (1967), Wilfred Guerin compares a literary work to a finely cut gemstone. It is impossible to view the entire piece from any one angle, that is, from any one perspective.  Rather, it must be turned, ever so slowly, from one angle to another before the fine nuances of the whole stone can be more fully appreciated.

One example might help clarify Guerin's metaphor. A study of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "Young Goodman Brown, " generates a variety of interpretations, each determined by the critical approach taken. From the genre approach, the story reflects a rather familiar "Christian allegory" in which every element of the story is meant to be read symbolically. As such, the story would seem to convey a distinctively Christian theme: "Like Young Goodman Brown (the main character), we, too, might be 'saved,' by 'looking to heaven' and 'resist[ing] the wicked one.'" On the other hand, from an historical perspective which places the tale in New England's Salem Village during the 1692 "witchcraft trials and hysteria," Brown is nothing like a mentor for emulation, but comes off, rather, as a naive fool; as a member of that community, he, like others at the time, should have doubted what was obviously "spectral evidence" in his condemnation of others. Clearly, we can gain a more rewarding appreciation of a work only by suspending our judgment until we have examined it from at least several points of view.

Any critical approach to a literary work will derive a reliable judgment only after a full examination from that particular perspective. In other words, we will suspend judgment until we have, first, learned the basic concepts belonging to that approach; second, analyzed the related elements within the work; and third, formulated an interpretation based upon a very close reading of the work from that limited point of view. Only then should we render a verdict on the work.

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Typical Literary Assignments
While it is possible, of course, to take an investigation of a piece of imaginative literature through the full cycle of steps from any perspective like the critical approaches introduced above, most undergraduate assignments will stop short of a fully developed criticism. You may be asked only to analyze some aspect or to interpret a work. Such exercises might include assignments like the following:

Analysis
Explain how the author uses color images to . . .
Identify key characters in . . .
Compare/contrast the effects of the ending rhyme patterns in three sonnets by . . .
Describe the central conflict in . . . 

Interpretation
Identify two themes in . . .
Explain why the author has chosen to . . .
Discuss the possible meanings of the clothing in . . .
The message for a contemporary audience might be that . . .
Interpret the symbolism in the author's use of . . .

Evalution
Explain why the images support the theme of the . . .
Explain why one work makes better use of . . . than the other
Discuss your reason for . . .

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A Note on Developing Your Essay: Beware of Summary!
Only immature papers fall into simply summarizing a literary work (unless, of course, that is what the instructions for the assignment have directed you to do specifically). When developing your paper, assume that the reader is already familiar with the text. You don't have to retell the narrative line from start to finish. On the other hand, you can introduce your approach directly and make references to supporting passages from the work in the body of your paper, confident that your reader will understand them and, with you, appreciate their importance as supporting examples. See the sample paper, "Tragedy and the Ethic of Responsibility."

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This page was last modified on September 5, 2003,
and is maintained by Dr. Geoffrey A. Grimes.