Critical Theory Today Quotes

“Similarly, a psychoanalytic reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) might analyze the ways in which the novel reveals the debilitating psychological effects of racism, especially when these effects are internalized by its victims, which we see in the belief of many of the black characters that their race has the negative qualities ascribed to it by white America. These psychological effects are evident, for example, in the Breedloves’ conviction that they are ugly simply because they have African features;”
― Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

“Sometimes a literary text doesn’t live up to the author’s intention. Sometimes it is even more meaningful, rich, and complex than the author realized. And sometimes the text’s meaning is simply different from the meaning the author wanted it to have. Knowing an author’s intention, therefore, tells us nothing about the text itself, which is why New Critics coined the term intentional fallacy to refer to the mistaken belief that the author’s intention is the same as the text’s meaning.”
― Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

“it replaced: the biographical-historical criticism that dominated literary studies in the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. At that time, it was common practice to interpret a literary text by studying the author’s life and times to determine authorial intention,”
― Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

“Literary criticism, by and large, tries to explain the literary work to us: its production, its meaning, its design, its beauty.”
― Lois Tyson, Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide