Literary Lenses (Theory) Cheat Sheet
Archetype:
Archetypes are the unknowable basic forms personified or concretized in recurring images, symbols, or patterns which may include motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent, recognizable character types such as the trickster or the hero, symbols such as the apple or snake, or images such as crucifixion (as in King Kong, or Bride of Frankenstein)--all laden with meaning already when employed in a particular work.
Gender:
Gender studies explore issues of sexuality, power, and marginalized populations (woman as other) in literature and culture. A primary concern in gender studies and queer theory is the manner in which gender and sexuality is discussed.
Marxist:
Marxism answers the overarching question, whom does it [the work, the effort, the policy, the road, etc.] benefit? The elite? The middle class? And Marxists critics are also interested in how the lower or working classes are oppressed - in everyday life and in literature.
Historical:
Historical theory seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time. It assumes that literature is a reflection of the social issues during the time it was written.
Reader
Response: reader-response theorists share two beliefs: 1) that the role of the
reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and 2) that
readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective
literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in
literature"