Critical Lenses

10 Critical Literary Lenses

A critical literary lens is a way of looking at a particular work of literature by focusing on style choices, plot devices, and character interactions and how they show a certain theme (the lens in question). It is a common literary analysis technique that offers perspective on a work of literature. Below is a list of eight critical lenses with definitions, questions, and strategies used for each literary lens. As you read, consider shifting your perspective or viewpoint, or the LENSES THROUGH WHICH YOU READ. What lenses might offer you more insight into the text?

Reader- Response Lens

This approach focuses on what is going on in the reader’s mind during the process of reading a text based on personal experiences.

Questions and Strategies:

• In what ways is the text familiar to your life? Think of events in the story, the types of characters, or the setting... Can you relate to it on a personal level?

• In what ways is the text different from your life?

• How did the text affect you?

• How has the text increased your interest in the subject matter?

• How has the text changed your worldview?

Historical Lens

Reading a text for its contextual significance. This would include information about the author, his or her historical moment, or the systems of meaning/knowledge (TOK) available at the time of writing.

Questions and Strategies:

• What is the author’s time (political history, intellectual history, economic history, etc.) and relate this information to the work.

• Why did the author write this piece? What is the author’s worldview? (Read about the author’s life and relate the information to the text)

• If the author is writing on a debatable issue does he or she give proper consideration to all sides of the debate? Does he or she seem to have a bias?

• Upon reading the text, how has your view on the given historical event changed?

Gender/ Feminist Lens

Reading a text for its gender related issues or attitudes towards gender. The assumption here is that men and women are different: they write differently, read differently, and write about their reading differently.

Questions and Strategies:

• Consider the gender of the author and the characters: what role does gender play in the text?

• How can gender stereotypes be reinforced or undermined?

• How does text reflect or distort the place men or women have in society?

• Imagine reading the text from the point of view of someone from the opposite gender.
  

Post- Colonial Lens

Reading a text for understanding colonized countries or post-colonial issues of race, identity, culture, politics, and economics.

Questions and Strategies:

• How does the literary text, explicitly or figuratively, represent various aspects of colonial oppression?

• What does the text reveal about the problematics of post-colonial identity, including the relationship between personal and cultural identity?

• What person(s) or groups does the work identify as "other" or stranger? How are such persons/groups described and treated?

• What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?

• What does the text reveal about the operations of cultural difference - the ways in which race, religion, class, gender, sexual orientation, cultural beliefs, and customs combine to form individual identity - in shaping our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world in which we live?

Critical Race Lens

Examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression.

Questions and Strategies:

• How are victims of systemic racism affected by cultural perceptions of race

• How they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice.

• What is the significance of race in contemporary American society?

• Where, in what ways, and to what ends does race appear in dominant American culture and shape the ways we interact with one another?

• What types of texts and other cultural artifacts reflect dominant culture’s perceptions of race?

• How can scholars convey that racism is a concern that affects all members of society?

• How does racism continue to function as a persistent force in American society?

• How can we combat racism to ensure that all members of American society experience equal representation and access to fundamental rights?

• How can we accurately reflect the experiences of victims of racism?

Psychological Lens

Reading a text for patterns in human behavior and how a person’s mental state affect their actions

Questions and Strategies:

• How does a person’s mental state affect their actions?

• What does the work suggest about the psychological being of its author?

• How can characters'/authors’ behavior, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic concepts of any kind (for example, fear or fascination with death, sexuality - which includes love and romance as well as sexual behavior - as a primary indicator of psychological identity or the operations of ego-id-superego)?

• What might a given interpretation of a literary work suggest about the psychological motives of the reader?

• Are there prominent words in the piece that could have different or hidden meanings? Could there be a subconscious reason for the author using these "problem words"?

• Think of the range of human emotions. How do they come to play in the text?
  (happiness, anger, depression, indifference, confusion, etc.)

Socio-Economic (Marxist) Lens

Reading a text for understanding economic and social issues.

Questions and Strategies:

• Explore the way different demographics are represented in texts.

• What world-view does the text represent?

• What does the text say about class structures?

• Analyze the social effects of the text.
  

Archetypal Lens

Reading a text for understanding how it connects to other literature, mythological, biblical allusions, symbols, characters, or themes

Questions and Strategies:

• How does this story resemble other stories in plot, character, setting, or symbolism?

• What universal experiences are depicted?

• Does the protagonist undergo any kind of transformation, such as movement from innocence to experience, that seems archetypal?

• How does the work reflect the hopes, fears, and expectations of entire cultures (for example, the ancient Greeks)?

• How do myths attempt to explain the unexplainable: origin of man? Purpose and destiny of human beings?

• What common human concerns are revealed in the story?

• How does the story reflect the experiences of death and rebirth?

• What archetypal events occur in the story? (Quest? Initiation? Scapegoats? Descents into the underworld? Ascents into heaven?)

• What archetypal images occur? (Water, rising sun, setting sun, symbolic colors)

Ecocriticism Lens

Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Ecocriticism examines the complex intersections between environment and culture, believing that “human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it.”

Questions and Strategies:

• How is nature represented in the text?

• How do characters/ humanity interact with his/her natural environment

• What global issues come to minds that have a direct threat to our ecosystem?

• How is writing about nature a meaningful practice or personal reflection?

• How has the concept of nature changed over time?

• How is the setting of the play/film/text related to the environment?

• What is the influence on metaphors and representations of the land and the environment on how we treat it?