what is literary analysis?

week 3 of the "become a close(r) reader" series: today, we're talking "theories" of reading and how to find the ones for you

Hi, close(r) reader,

Welcome to week three of our series on becoming a close(r) reader! If you’re just joining us, you can review previous posts in this series.

This week, we’re talking about an important concept in the world of English majors and literary analysis: theory.

A writerly combination of beverages, writing + reading materials, and over-the-counter pain relief.

About a year into my English undergraduate program, I took a course called “Introduction to Theory.” I had no idea what this meant; I only knew it was a required course for my program and one of several prerequisites before I’d be allowed into the advanced seminars on things like Detective Fiction and Post-Modernist Literature.

What I learned within the first days of the course was that “theory” is just a general name for learning and studying literature through different critical lenses. There is no singular “theory” for how to read correctly or properly or most accurately. Instead, there are many theoretical lenses—feminist, Marxist, deconstructionist, psychoanalytical, to name a few—that you can use to help you delve into the meanings within a text.

The basic idea of “theory” and an introductory theory course is to help you, as a reader interested in becoming a closer reader, understand a multitude of ways you can approach the analytical work of reading.

Today, I’m sharing a few theoretical lenses you may want to learn more about. In no way is this meant to be a comprehensive review of all possible analytical methods. This is, instead, meant to expand your knowledge of many different approaches and styles and methods of reading, so that you can go deeper down these pathways yourself.

(Think of this, then, as an invitation to learn a few new “theories” of reading, and to then embark on your own journey to learn more about the ones that interest you most!)

Reading theoretical analyses typically requires a lot of highlighter ink.

Today, you don’t have any timed writing requirements, but I do recommend that you take notes and use Google judiciously as you work through these ideas.

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Let’s start with some definitions

As in prior weeks, I recommend having some note-taking materials at the ready for today’s exercise.

I also very much recommend Jonathan Culler’s tiny book, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction* if you want to dive more deeply into the different schools of thought I’m introducing today. It’s a fantastic primer.

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What is “theory”?

According to philosopher Richard Rorty, the idea of “theory” emerged in the nineteenth century:

“Beginning in the days of Goethe and Macaulay and Carlyle and Emerson, a new kind of writing has developed which is neither the evaluation or the relative merits of literary productions, nor intellectual history, nor moral philosophy, nor social prophecy, but all of these mingled together in a new genre.”

This genre tends to fall under the generic term theory. As Jonathan Culler puts it, works of theory are “works that succeed in challenging and reorienting thinking in fields other than those to which they apparently belong.”

This genre of theory includes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary works across fields of study: anthropology, art, art history, film studies, gender studies, musical studies, technological history, linguistics, philosophy, political theory, psychoanalytical theory, the sciences, social science, history (including intellectual history) and sociology.

Culler helpfully explains that works that become thought of as “theory” are those which “offer accounts others [not from that field of study] can use about meaning, nature and culture, the functioning of the psyche, the relations of public to private experience and of larger historical forces to individual experience.”

Why is theory valuable?

The real power of theory is the way that it offers opportunities to challenge assumptions, widely held beliefs, or even established cultural and social truths.

Theory helps us see and understand that what we take for “common sense,” for example, is often a historical construction or something so naturalized (or so often repeated to us during vulnerable times in our lives) that we mistake a construction or a story for capital-T Truth.

For example: have you seen Wicked yet? Wicked is a beautiful example of deconstructionist literature—a text/story that, through theoretical literary analysis, invites us to see that the story we’ve heard is not the whole truth of historical events. Who is “wicked”? Who is “good”? Who decides? Who creates and benefits from those definitions?

An image from the new Wicked film, starring Ariana Grande as Glinda (left) and Cynthia Erivo as Ephaba (right)

You could analyze Wicked through a number of theoretical lenses. I’ll give you some examples below, to show how the different lenses work. I’m following the same framework from Cullen’s book, in case you take it as a reference.

Through the lens of: Cultural studies

Cultural studies explores how culture works — and specifically, within a piece of literature, how cultural tensions, opportunities, power imbalances, and other cultural artifacts (anything from paintings, opera, automobiles, architecture to political events, marriage practices, or religious beliefs) are represented by that piece of literature.

So, if you wanted to do a cultural studies reading of Wicked, you might look at:

• How does Elphaba’s green-ness spark a cultural response in her peers? In her family? What does her green skin seem to represent for them? Are their beliefs about her green skin fair? Sensible?

• Relatedly, you might take a turn toward color theory within the culture of Oz: What else is green in Oz? What does green mean in other contexts there? What does green represent to the people of Oz?

Through the lens of: Linguistics or language theory

Linguistic theory looks at words themselves and focuses on linguistics: phonetics, monikers, and patterns of speech (dialects, regionalisms, and even made-up languages or words) along with the power of language itself: political tensions about who can speak, about which languages are spoken in certain places or by certain people, and the power of language (including literacy).

So, if you wanted to place a linguistic lens around your experience of Wicked, you might ask:

• What’s with all the made-up words in the Oz of Wicked? “Let us rejoicify,” or “the most swankified place in town,” or “degreenify”

• Why are Animals in Oz losing their powers of speech? How does their access to language signify a power imbalance? Why does Elphaba agree with Dr. Dillamond that “something bad is happening in Oz” when it comes to Animals and their ability to speak?

• You could also lean into a music-theory lens to ask about how the language of music transforms the story of the Wicked Witch of the West

Through the lens of: Hermeneutics (or “interpretation”)

Hermeneutics is the study of how meaning gets made and how interpretations are generated. Within this realm, you’ll find a lot of the terms you’ve likely seen around the world of literary analysis.

What does it mean to do a feminist reading of a text? What does it mean to look for Marxist tensions in a piece of literature? (Relatedly: doing a Marxist reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was one of the best learning experiences I ever had!) These are questions about disposition, as Culler explains:

“What are commonly seen as ‘schools’ of literary criticism or theoretical ‘approaches’ to literature are, from the point of view of hermeneutics, dispositions to give particular kinds of answers to the question of what a work is ultimately ‘about.’”

So, if you wanted to do a feminist reading of Wicked, you might ask questions about how to interpret certain elements of the story based on feminist thinking. For example:

• What are the differences between G(a)linda and Elphaba? They are both women, yes, but what makes them unique? What makes them different? What makes them similar? What drives them together? What drives them apart?

• How does NessaRose respond to being invited to the Oz Dust Ballroom by Boq? What are her assumptions about his feelings toward her? (Here, you might cross over into disability studies, too, to look at how NessaRose’s disability creates social circumstances and assumptions around her.)

If you wanted to do a Marxist reading of Wicked, you might ask questions about how to interpret certain elements of the story based on Marxist thought, like the means of production, workers’ rights, or economic theories. For example:

• What is the relationship between the “haves” and the “have nots” in Oz? (Compare Munchkinland to The Emerald City, or the speaking Animals to the non-speaking animals)

• Consider who performs labor and hard work in Oz, compared to those who do not work or who exploit the labors of others (the Wizard and those flying monkeys, eh?)

• What is “class” in Oz? Who has high class or higher social standing? Where does that social standing come from? On what traits is it based?

There are dozens more theoretical lenses that can aid your work of interpretation. A short list would include:

• Psychoanalysis (why is the Wizard so obsessed about seeing himself as a father figure? Does anyone in the text have a classic Freudian issue, like, oh I don’t know…an Oedipal complex?)

• Queer studies (is there queerness in Oz? What’s up with Fiyero having amazing chemistry with literally everyone? How does the film version depart from or dial-up certain connections between Elphaba, Fiyero, and Glinda?)

• Race/Critical Race studies (how does skin color operate in Oz? what types of power imbalances or inequalities do we see at work at Shiz University or within the Emerald City? Why does Elphaba hope that the Wizard will magically alter her skin color and “degreenify” her?)

• Deconstructionism (in what ways is the story metatextual, or self-aware? As a remake of a musical and a retelling of a famous piece of classical children’s literature, how does Wicked deconstruct pieces from past tellings or versions?)

• Disability studies (how are non-normative bodies, minds, and ways of thinking treated in Oz? what is “normal” in the land of Oz? Is Elphaba’s green skin a marker of difference? of disability? What about her sister’s wheelchair?)

• Post-colonial studies (what are the land politics of Oz? what are the politics of the Wizard? Is he a tyrant? In what ways are the speaking Animals being colonized?)

See how using different theoretical lenses can lead you to extremely different ways of thinking, interpreting, and engaging with a story?

Your goal: find the lenses you want to try on

For this week, as you work on becoming a close(r) reader, spend some time with these ideas. Think about which lenses you might already naturally bring to the reading experience. Think about which lenses you’ve never considered.

• Which lenses are you most curious about?

• Do any of these interpretive lenses feel exciting or energizing for you? Which ones? What excites you?

• Do any of the interpretive lenses frighten or bother you? Why? In what ways?

• What additional questions or lenses do you want to learn about?

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You’re doing amazing work!

Hold onto the observations you’re making. Make a short-list of the theoretical lenses that are most interesting to you. Next week, we’ll do more writing around these lenses, as well as explore other ways of reading and engaging to become a close(r) reader.

In the comments, feel free to ask questions or let me know what you’d like to see as part of this series, in the coming weeks.

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‘Til next time, happy reading!

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