1. What is Literary Criticism? Distinct methods of reading, interpreting, and commenting on literature. Thinking CRITICALLY doesn’t necessarily mean criticizing.

2. Who was the first literary critic? Plato (early 4th century BC) Raised skeptical questions about the value of art and literature: –What is the nature of the work of art? –What are its sources in the artist, in the literary scene, in the society for which it is produced? –What are its properties, uses, powers, and value? –What are literature’s effects on individuals and communities?

3. What are the basic types of literary criticism? MIMETIC: relationship between the outside world and the work of art. RHETORICAL: relationship between the work of art and its audience. EXPRESSIVE: relationship between the work of art and the artist. FORMAL: purely aesthetic relationship between the parts of the work of art.

4. What are the prominent schools of literary criticism? TRADITIONAL –Historical, Biographical, Moral, Philosophical TEXTUAL –Formalist and Rhetorical PSYCHOLOGICAL/SOCIOLOGICAL –Freudian, Archetypal, Feminist, Marxist POSTMODERN –Deconstructionist and Reader-Response

5. What does this have to do with us? You will be preparing an annotated bibliography to fulfill your research requirement. You must use 5 sources from literary critical articles found in academic sources. DO NOT use articles that simply summarize. They must have an argument about how to interpret the text. These articles will form the evidence for your own thesis about one of the major works we have encountered so far.