Title: Literary Criticism and the Scholarly Conversation

In this tutorial, you will learn about:

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Locating & recognizing literary critisicm

Participating in the scholarly conversation

Common lenses used in literary criticism

Literary criticism vocabulary

Text: This term is used to indicate the object being studied. It can be a book, an essay, a poem, a piece of music, a dramatic production, or a piece of visual art. In literary criticism, this is almost always a poem, book, or story. It's a good idea to add the text you want to study as a search term.

Lens: This is an idea through which you filter your understanding of a topic. For instance, a researcher might study the works of Plato through a feminist lens, meaning they will interpret and evaluate Plato's works from a feminist perspective. If you have a specific lens in mind, add it as a search term.

Close reading: One way to conduct literary criticism is by conducting a detailed analysis of a text. This type of analysis is called close reading because it examines the text at a very detailed level, attempting to find possible meanings in word choice, sentence structure, or character names. Close reading is the equivalent of taking a magnifying glass to a specific object in the hope of finding meaning in the details.

Test your understanding

Vocabulary Match

Match the vocabulary term to the description that best fits it.

Q: The [...] is the object or work being studied. This can be a book, poem, essay, piece of art, or any other

A [...] is an idea or concept which is used to help interpret the text. Common types include feminist, postcolonial, postmodern, and Marxist.

One type of literary analysis is [...]. In this process, the text is examined and analyzed in detail, considering the possible meanings of word choice, thematic elements, and motifs.
A: text; lens; close reading

Identifying the text

[Image: Beloved book cover]

The first step to engaging with literary criticism is to identify the text being studied. For this lesson, our text will be the book 'Beloved' by Toni Morrison.

You can familiarize yourself with the basics of the text by reading the Credo Reference entry on Beloved. You can also check out the physical book from the CCCC library.

Locating Literary Criticism using Summon

[Image: subject term filters: literary criticism and related terms]

You can often locate literary criticism in the CCCC Libraries' online resources by using the main Summon search on the library homepage.

- Do a Summon search for the name of the text and the author or artist name, and then use the subject terms filter to select subject terms like 'literary criticism' and 'criticism & interpretation'. As an example, here is a Summon search for Beloved with some of those filters selected.

Locating literary criticism in subject databases

Using lit crit databases

In each database on this slide, search for:

Toni Morrison Beloved

and note the number of search results. Match each database to the closest number of results returned.

Q: [...] returned about 750 results,

[...] returned about 1000 results.

[...] returned about 300 results.
A: JSTOR; ProQuest Arts & Humanities; Literature Resource Center

Summon searches almost all of the available digital resources, but if you're having trouble locating literary criticism using Summon, you may want to try conducting your search in a subject database. These are some of your best bets for finding interpretations of texts through CCCC Libraries:

- JSTOR
- Literature Research Center
- ProQuest Arts & Humanities

Common literary criticism lenses

A lens is an idea through which you filter your understanding of a work. Three of the most common lenses are described here with examples of reading Beloved through that lens.

Social Class: Sometimes referred to as Marxist criticism, this lens focuses the reader's attention on the depictions of social structure, economic difference, and class dynamics within a work.

- Example of the social class lens applied to Beloved

Gender: This lens focuses on depictions of gender in a work and reflects on how those depictions conform or do not conform to gendered expectations and roles. Some authors use this lens to criticize patriarchal influence on a work, leading many to refer to this lens as Feminist criticism.

- Example of the gender lens applied to Beloved

Race: This lens focuses on the impact of race and ethnicity in the work being studied. This lens is often associated with Postcolonial criticism, which specifically studies the influence of European settlers on the lives of the societies they colonized.

- Example of the race lens applied to Beloved

The Scholarly Conversation

As you engaged with the examples of literary criticism lenses, you likely noticed that the authors of the criticism referenced not only the original text Beloved, but also other works of criticism and interpretation. This engagement with the work of other scholars in a field is called the scholarly conversation.

This means that any time a work of criticism is created, the criticism is in conversation or dialogue with the original text and other criticisms of it - responding to ideas and themes that have been brought up in previous scholarly works, similar to how one responds to an idea brought up in a verbal conversation.

When you write essays about literature, you are adding your voice to the scholarly conversation and engaging with the ideas that other scholars and the author of the original text have provided.

Scholarly conversation quick check

Q: The scholarly conversation is
- a conversation instructors have about student learning
- how scholars engage with each other, communicate their research, and build on existing scholarship to create new knowledge. (correct)
- the title of an book containing multiple critical interpretations of Beloved.

Getting help

Sometimes it can be difficult to locate literary criticism on a specific text.

If you have tried all the strategies detailed in this lesson and still cannot locate what you are looking for, consider contacting a librarian for help!

You can email us or use the chat box on the library homepage to recieve assistance with your search.