12 Techniques from Literary Criticism That Will Make You a Better Reader

The readers often get caught off-guard by how deeply a piece of literature can resonate with them. To dissect the captivating power of the written word, the secret sauce used by the reviewers is literary criticism. You must understand the literary devices and techniques to get the best out of your experience. 

According to Matrix Education, literary techniques are the parts of figurative language used to convey or heighten the meaning of a given phrase. Such literary criticism techniques work alongside characters and plot to elevate a written piece of work and get a prompt contemplation on society, life, and what it is like to be a human. 

In this article, we shall explore the top ten techniques for literary criticism that can make you a better reader and improve your comprehension skills. 

Let’s get into the details.

What Is Literary Criticism?

According to Green River College, the literary criticism definition pertains to the involvement of the analysis, interpretation and evaluation of authors and their works of literature including novels, short stories, essays and plays. You can also apply it to the Humanities texts, including the popular texts in the arts, philosophy and popular culture. This is not necessarily negative; it is more like a thoughtful critique of the work of an author to understand the meaning in a better way. 

Students who are not great at presenting their psychoanalytic literary criticism can seek dissertation writing services from professionals to fulfill the demands of their papers. Expert writers can write tailored papers to clients’ demands. 

How Literary Criticism Can Improve Your Reading? 10 Must-know Techniques

When pursuing this type of criticism, students use different kinds of approaches for the analysis and interpretation of literature. They have to view the historical, sociological, formalist, biographical and feminist criticism and then review the literature in light of these themes. 

By following specific techniques, you can improve your reading by a greater deal. We have provided you with a list of well-thought-out techniques that can help you improve your reading skills. Let’s discuss it all in further depth and detail. 

1. Allusion

In this kind of literary device, the writers develop the frame storylines, and characters and make associations with the well-known works. These are basically references to the works of other people. 

These might be some well-known phrases, situations or the names of characters that are used in a play, story or other written work to link towards another book or piece of work. The connection makes the writing much more profound for the readers.

2. Allegory

By using this device in literary criticism, the writers express complex and large ideas to the audience in an approachable manner. Due to this, the writers may be able to make some sort of distance between themselves and the conflicts they are shedding light on when writing literary criticism. It is most likely to be used in the areas where the issues are linked to strong critiques of societal or political realities. 

3. Cliff-hanger

It is a plot device that appears at the completion of a narrative with the sole intent of keeping the audience engaged in the storyline. You might be on the 59th minute of an hour-long Netflix episode where the main hero is about to face the villain and that particular episode ends there. It is done on purpose to keep the viewers hooked on the story. 

4. Anachronism

Imagine you read a story about a caveman who is using a microwave oven to heat his dinner. Or think about a film version of Jane Austen novels where characters have to text message each other instead of writing letters. 

These situations point towards anachronism. The audience may have to raise their eyebrows when it comes to content like this because it is no less than a blunder. Sometimes, these kinds of literary devices are used intentionally to add humor to the written work.

5. Extended Metaphor 

Extended metaphor is an important part of literary criticism as it builds evocative images in the form of a piece of writing and can convert the written work into emotionally resonant in its form. Examples of such metaphors are found in all forms of prose and poetry. When you learn to utilize these metaphors in your papers, you can engage with your readers in a better way and improve your writing. 

6. Dramatic Irony

If you remember the first time you watched an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, you will have noticed the tragic ending of that iconic drama. It exemplifies the concept of dramatic irony. The audience is aware that both the lovers are not dead but alive at the moment, but the lovers themselves don’t know anything about it. Such kind of irony is used to add great effects in film, television and literature. 

7. Humor

By humor, you can bring people together and transform the ways people think about the world. Of course, not everyone is skilled at being funny, but making people laugh requires much skill and finesse, which is usually missing in most contemporary authors. Quite a lot of writers can benefit from learning how to use humor in literary criticism from reliable sources. 

8. Foreshadowing

Using this technique in literary criticism, you can capture and sustain the attention of your readers and keep them hooked on your story. It usually indicates the possibility of a future event in a person’s writing. By using this technique, the writers can build strong suspense in the readers and make them want to read more about your work. You can structure your interpretative essay using this figure of criticism. 

9. Imagery

If you have studied or practiced creative writing, chances are that you have heard about the phrase of painting a picture by merely using words. In literature and poetry, you call it imagery. 

It is a figurative and literary language that evokes a sensory response in the readers. When a poet resorts to using descriptive language in a well-defined manner, they can play with the senses of the readers. It involves providing the readers with the sights, smells, sounds, tastes and other external feelings. 

10. Irony

Students call it a literary device which is often misunderstood as it hinges on the opposites of situations. The irony is all about the difference between what things appear on the surface and how they actually might be. 

The Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare sheds light on the dramatic irony and the same can be seen in the Oedipus Rex crafted by Sophocles. Irony is no less than a reliable tool that adds substance and depth to the work under examination. 

11. Metaphor, Analogy, and Simile

These are three techniques of writing and speech which are used for making comparisons. Each of them is used in a different way, and it might be a bit tricky to differentiate between them. 

For example, a simile can be considered a sub-category of the literary device called a metaphor. Knowing the key differences between a simile, analogy and metaphor can help students identify which is best to use in any scenario to strengthen the writing. 

12. Motif

It is more like a repeated figure that has symbolic emphasis linked to a story. Sometimes, it appears as a recurring image and sometimes, it is in the form of a repeated topic or phrase. It may also be about a recurrent situation or action. 

You may also refer to it as a smell, temperature or color. The repetition is the important feature of a motif, and using this repetition, a motif can shed light on the central themes, ideas and deeper meanings of a given story. 

Approaches Followed for Literary Criticism

Now that we are done with the discussion of the popular literary devices and techniques used for the critical dissection of a literary piece of work, it is time to talk about the approaches that can be useful to know for literary criticism. Literature and literary criticism are linked deeply, and here are the most common approaches that can be studied to understand that link:

• Formalism 

New criticism or formalism focuses solely on the literary text. It has the least amount of focus on the historical or cultural context or on the author of a creation. Usually, it takes a story, poem or play on its own terms and views it as a self-contained unit carrying its own meaning. 

It was a certain type of formalism that first surfaced in the mid of the 20th century and enjoyed much influence for quite some time. The form and content of a written piece must be able to illuminate each other. 

• Reader-Response Criticism

The main emphasis of this literary criticism type focuses on the subjective understanding of the reader. The school of literary criticism is based on the assumption that literary pieces of work do not have a stable meaning and that they are dependent on the readers to decide what they will signify. It says that each reader engages with the written work in a different way and hence, all their understanding is subjective in nature. 

• Historical Criticism

It puts great emphasis on the social and historical circumstances that span the writing of a written piece of work. It may be about the biographical situations or facts about the life of an author or about the influence of national, political, international or social events. In the historical criticism of literature, the most common types of questions that are raised are mentioned here:

1. How accurately does the written work shed light on the historical period in which it was documented? 
2. What specific events in history impacted the writer?
3. How important is it to study the historical background of a given paper in order to understand it? 
4. In what way does the work represent the interpretation of its culture and time?

Apart from all of this, the influence of other literary works may also be studied in this kind of historical criticism. Some may also focus on the ways a certain historical event is interpreted. 

• Feminist Criticism 

This type of literary criticism focuses on the prevailing societal beliefs about women that are considered essential for studying the oppression of women in various fields. The study of the oppression by the patriarchal systems and feminists in literary criticism can be both historical and temporary in nature. You may also explore the marginalization of women in the realm of literature itself. The typical questions that may be asked in this criticism type are the following:

1. In what way does the work portray the lives and daily routines of women? 
2. How are the female characters discussed and portrayed in that piece of work? 
3. What is the portrayal of the relationships between men and women in the work?
4. Does the language of literary work reflect the sexual or gender stereotypes or not?

• Critical Race Theory

This type of theory focuses on systematic racism and it is used for the interrogation of the dynamics of race relationships. It came forward from the American school of critical theory because white racism has become a part of everyday life in America. As a literary critical approach, it studies the significance of the implicit and explicit aspects of race in the literary work that is examined. 

• Post-Colonial Criticism 

This studies the impact of the colonial powers of Europe on the literature. Using this sort, you can understand how European political, religious, and hegemonic and other power types shaped the portrayal of relationships and stays difference between colonized people and Europeans themselves. 

It takes into account the literature written by both the colonizers and the colonized. The typical examples include the study of the worldview offered by the text and the portrayal of the psychology of both parties. 

• Marxist Theory 

Marxist literary criticism involves the study of the political and sociological ideology which was introduced by Karl Marx. It examines the literature along the lines of relations of different classes and socialist ideals. Usually, you can analyse the literature in this Marxism and literary criticism theory through the lens of political and socio-economic ideologies. You can use the dynamics to uncover how the literature reinforces and reflects or challenges the existing structures. 

• Post-Modernism

This basically emerged in the middle of the twentieth century for the reflection on the dissonant and fractured experience of life in the 20th century. While there are many definitions of post-modernism, it is most commonly understood as the rejection of modernist ideas that portray a unified narrative. 

The most common features of this literary criticism technique are relativism, questioning of established norms and values and the manifestation of it all in philosophy, art and literature. 

• Post-Structuralism

This theory in literary criticism rejects the ideas of structural and formal cohesion and questions the assumed ‘universal truths’ that either get influenced by the social structures in the society or rely on them. One of the writers who shaped such theory is Roland Barthes who is also considered the Father of Semiotics. It is more like a philosophical movement that questions the stability or objectivity of various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism. 

Types of Literary Criticism

Each kind of criticism offers a unique perspective on the understanding of texts. Using the experiences of the author’s life and getting an understanding of their work, students can interpret different themes in the given genre of poetry. Among the various kinds of literary criticism, the most common examples, as mentioned by Dickinson College, are the following: 

1. Biographical Literary Criticism

It is that type of criticism in which you have to analyse a writer’s biography to show the relationship between the life of the author and their literary works. It examines the interaction of the life events of a person with different social, economic and political contexts surrounding his or her life. You can also draw different inferences as to why the person made some specific contributions or decisions. 

2. Historical Literary Criticism

It is applied for the examination of literature within its historical or cultural context and it considers the author’s life, the time period and the events that shaped the work. It takes into consideration the literary works of a person by placing them within the historical and cultural contexts of a given time period. Students are also expected to talk about the intellectual environment in which the creation and reception of the text were influenced. 

3. Expressive Literary Criticism

Such kind of criticism usually focuses on how well the author has expressed their feelings or visions. It is one of the modes of literary criticism which puts much emphasis on the subjective experience and the emotional impact of work on the mind of a reader. Usually, it focuses on the unique perspectives offered by the author and the depth of their emotional expression. 

4. Feminist Literary Criticism

This analyses the literature through a feminine lens and examines how power, gender and societal structures influence the literary characters, texts and the responses of the readers. It is one of the forms of literary criticism where the works by women and alternative voices are explored and reviewed in detail. Often, it starts by questioning the assumption that the literature is primarily produced from a male-centric perspective. 

5. Comparative Literary Criticism

It involves the analyses and comparison of literary works across different cultures, historical periods and languages. It helps in the understanding of similarities, differences and various cultural contexts in a given environment. Also, students can use it as an opportunity to broaden their horizons and expand their understanding of human experiences and literature. It is considered inherently interdisciplinary in nature. 

What Is Literary Criticism In Literature?

As per Wikipedia, it is considered a genre of criticism which talks about the study, evaluation and interpretation of the literature. Usually, it is influenced by literary theory which offers a philosophical analysis of the goals and methods of literature. Although, both these activities are closely related, the literary critics are not always related and they are not always considered the theorists. 

Literary Criticism Essay Example

Now that all the guidelines have been discussed in detail, it’s time to review a well-written paper on literary criticism. We have also added an example of a well-written literary criticism essay that can help students fulfill all the requirements of their papers. Do ensure to check the individual guidelines of your college or university so that you do not miss anything when writing your literary criticism papers for college. We have taken this example from the Germanna Academic Center For Excellence. 

Image Source: Germanna Academic Center For Excellence

Conclusion

We have explored in detail the top 10 techniques from literary criticism that can make you a better reader and help you evaluate a given piece of literature in a better way. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your literary criticism in literature is on point and it is worth reading. 

However, some students need personalized help writing detailed criticism on a given work price because they lack the required evaluation skills. They can seek expert help from London-based dissertation writing services. Such companies have a dedicated team of professional writers who can make it easier for students to craft papers on any topic. 

Lastly, you must also be aware of all the key format guidelines provided by your university teacher when working on the literary criticism for your papers. It will help you ensure that you have fulfilled all the writing requirements of your work. 

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Author Bio 

Declan Hopkins is a seasoned dissertation writer who has been helping literature students fulfil their academic responsibilities for the past 16 years. He is experienced enough to craft all kinds of academic papers from scratch, tailored to the needs of the students. You can count on him to produce research-backed and well-crafted academic papers. When not working, Declan can be found writing Sunday features and columns for the local magazines.