Reading a Text through a Lens

Why is this important?

• We always bring our own perspective (“lens”) to anything that we read.– Our values, experiences, and social expectations

shape the way we read.– No “natural” response.

Reading and Personal Experience

. . . a man must bring To music what his mother spanked him forWhen he was two: bits of forgotten hate,Devotion: whether or not his mattress hurts: The little dream his father humored: the thing His sister did for money: what he ateFor breakfast—and for dinner twenty yearsAgo last autumn: all his skipped desserts. —“The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith”

Gwendolyn Brooks

All of us read through our own lenses . . .

But in literary theory, that lens is more explicit (stated rather than implied).

We can also “try on” different lenses to develop different points of view.

“Literary theory functioned in my life as a prism, which I could turn to refract different spectral patterns of language use in a text, as one does daylight. Turn the prism this way, and one pattern emerges; turn it that way and another pattern configures.” -

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

What is “Theory”?

• It used to refer to theories about literary form and language.

• Now, it has expanded—philosophy, social histories, intellectual histories, etc.

• All of this is considered “Critical Theory” or “Theory.”

Theories of Language and Form

• Structuralism• Post-Structuralism• New Criticism– Now considered more “old-fashioned”– Focus on the text itself (apart from social or

political context)– “Close Reading”

Social Criticism and Cultural Studies

• Post-colonialism• Critical Race Theory• New Historicism• Marxist Theory• Feminist Theory• Gender Studies• Queer Theory– Grew out of Gay and Lesbian Studies

Social Criticism and Cultural Studies

• Post-colonialism• Critical Race Theory• New Historicism• Marxist Theory• Feminist Theory• Gender Studies• Queer Theory– Grew out of Gay and Lesbian Studies

Social Criticism and Cultural Studies

• Post-colonialism• Critical Race Theory• New Historicism• Marxist Theory• Feminist Theory• Gender Studies• Queer Theory– Grew out of Gay and Lesbian Studies

Social Criticism and Cultural Studies

• Post-colonialism• Critical Race Theory• New Historicism• Marxist Theory• Feminist Theory• Gender Studies• Queer Theory– Grew out of Gay and Lesbian Studies

How does this work?

Let’s look at Cinderella . . .

Marxist Reading

Feminist Reading

Intersectionality

• Combines multiple theories – Acknowledges that no identity or social force exists in

isolation.

Snow White

Snow WhiteFeminist Theory

Snow WhiteFeminist Theory + Critical Race Theory