Literary Theory

1. Literary Theory Term Four

2. Gender Theory

3. Gender Theory Look back at feminist theory. What were the major facets?

4. Gender Theory • Look back at feminist theory. What were the major facets? • Male/Female Relationships

5. Gender Theory • Look back at feminist theory. What were the major facets? • Male/Female Relationships • Power in a patriarchy

6. Gender Theory • Look back at feminist theory. What were the major facets? • Male/Female Relationships • Power in a patriarchy • The roles of masculinity

7. Gender Theory • Look back at feminist theory. What were the major facets? • Male/Female Relationships • Power in a patriarchy • The roles of masculinity • The weakness of femininity

8. Gender Theory • Look back at feminist theory. What were the major facets? • Male/Female Relationships • Power in a patriarchy • The roles of masculinity • The weakness of femininity • An examination of the canon

9. Gender Theory Gender theory is closely related to feminist. However, while Feminist examines how a patriarchy controls feminine traits, gender theory examines:

10. Gender Theory Gender theory is closely related to feminist. However, while Feminist examines how a patriarchy controls feminine traits, gender theory examines: Sexuality

11. Gender Theory Gender theory is closely related to feminist. However, while Feminist examines how a patriarchy controls feminine traits, gender theory examines: Sexuality Power

12. Gender Theory Gender theory is closely related to feminist. However, while Feminist examines how a patriarchy controls feminine traits, gender theory examines: Sexuality Power marginalized populations in literature and culture

13. Gender Theory The most important thing: gender is influenced by feminist theory, but it concerns itself as much with the role of sexuality and gender identity as it does feminine/masculine traits and ideals

14. Gender Theory The most important thing: gender is influenced by feminist theory, but it concerns itself as much with the role of sexuality and gender identity as it does feminine/masculine traits and ideals Ask yourself: how is gender and sexuality discussed?

15. Gender Theory • The most important thing: gender is influenced by feminist theory, but it concerns itself as much with the role of sexuality and gender identity as it does feminine/masculine traits and ideals • Ask yourself: how is gender and sexuality discussed? • While feminist theory is effective in changing how you read, there are parts of feminist theory that are just the “same old game” – in order to counter patriarchy, you begin to work AWAY from the male/female binary.

16. Gender Theory Binaries:

17. Gender Theory • Binaries: • While feminist studies looks at how the binary exists, gender studies seeks to break down this binary

18. Gender Theory • Binaries: • While feminist studies looks at how the binary exists, gender studies seeks to break down this binary • Cultural definitions of sexuality and what it means to be male/female are in flux

19. Gender Theory • Binaries: • While feminist studies looks at how the binary exists, gender studies seeks to break down this binary • Cultural definitions of sexuality and what it means to be male/female are in flux • Thirty years ago, women couldn’t wear baseball caps and men could comfortably wear frilly shirts barely 100 years ago. Feminist theory examines this existence – gender theory breaks down the arbitrary assignment of these ideas and examines how “alternative” identities and sexualities are repressed.

20. Gender Theory Typical Questions:

21. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What elements of the text can be perceived as masculine (active/powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized), and how do the characters support these traditional roles?

22. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What elements of the text can be perceived as masculine (active/powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized), and how do the characters support these traditional roles? • What support (if any!) is given to elements of characters who question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to these elements/characters?

23. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both?

24. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both? • How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative?

25. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both? • How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? • What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay, lesbian, or queer works, and how are these politics revealed in the work’s content or characters?

26. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer work?

27. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer work? • How does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history?

28. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a specific lesbian, gay, or queer work? • How does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay, or lesbian experience and history, including literary history? • Think of it like this: there’s HISTORY that we know…and this lens, like the post-colonial lens, reveals a hidden truth.

29. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who are apparently homosexual?

30. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are by writers who are apparently homosexual? • Or how do traditionally “straight” characters exhibit alternate gender identities?

31. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What does the work reveal about the operations (social, political, psychological) of homophobia?

32. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What does the work reveal about the operations (social, political, psychological) of homophobia? • How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual “identity”; that is, the ways in which human sexuality does not fall neatly into separate categories defined by the words “homosexual” and “heterosexual”?

33. Gender Theory • Typical Questions: • What does the text reveal about the conflict/clash given when gender identity is repressed?

34. Psychoanalytic Theory

35. Psychoanalytic Theory Dude. This is gonna get weird.

36. Psychoanalytic Theory There are as many methods of using the psychoanalytic lens as there are psychologists and psychological theories. We’re only going to focus on three.

37. Psychoanalytic Theory There are as many methods of using the psychoanalytic lens as there are psychologists and psychological theories. We’re only going to focus on three. Let’s start with Freud.

38. Freud Facets:

39. Freud • Facets: • Freud believed that our unconscious was influenced by our childhood. He developed these ideas into developmental stages involving relationships with parents and children. • There are drives of desire and pleasure where children focus “on different parts of the body – starting with the mouth…shifting to the oral, anal, and phallic stages”

40. Freud • Facets: • These three stages reflect base levels of desire, but they also involve fear of loss (loss of genitals, affection from parents, life) and repression

41. Freud • Facets: • These three stages reflect base levels of desire, but they also involve fear of loss (loss of genitals, affection from parents, life) and repression • Repression doesn’t ELIMINATE our painful experiences and emotion; we unconsciously behave in ways that will allow us to play out our conflicted feelings about the painful experiences and emotions we repress.

42. Freud • Facets: • To keep all of this conflict buried, Freud argued that we develop defenses: Selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death (among many others).

43. Freud • Facets: • To keep all of this conflict buried, Freud argued that we develop defenses: Selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death (among many others). • Freud believed that our desires and unconscious conflicts give rise to three areas of the mind, wrestling for dominance from infancy to adulthood:

44. Freud • Facets: • Id: the location of the drives (instinct, libido)

45. Freud • Facets: • Id: the location of the drives (instinct, libido) • Ego – the primary defense against the power of the drives and home of the defenses listed above. Think of this as the conscious mind.

46. Freud • Facets: • Id: the location of the drives (instinct, libido) • Ego – the primary defense against the power of the drives and home of the defenses listed above. Think of this as the conscious mind. • Superego – the area of unconscious that houses judgment (of self and others) and begins formation in childhood as a result of the Oedipus complex.

47. Freud • Facets: • Oedipus!

48. Freud • Facets: • Oedipus! • Freud called this impulse one of the most powerfully determinative elements in the growth of the child; he theorized that it is only by overcoming this base desire that we can be psychologically whole.

49. Freud • Facets: • Oedipus! • Freud called this impulse one of the most powerfully determinative elements in the growth of the child; he theorized that it is only by overcoming this base desire that we can be psychologically whole. • This impulse is built around the idea that we wish to take over the place of our same-sex parent. Freud maintained that there is a conflict of attention to the opposite-sex parent and a desire to overtake the life, skills, and placement of the same-sex.

50. Freud • Facets: • Boys handle, Freud says, the Oedipus desires differently, focusing on rivalry between the boys and their fathers, fantasies of rage against those who fit the model of the father figure – this could be literal fathers or metaphorical.