Monika
Brown
GUIDE for INTERPRETING LITERATURE,
FILM, and ART
UNC Pembroke 2007
Part
I. Questions for Interpreting a Work of Literature, Film, or
Visual Art
Part II.
Critical Approaches to Literature and Film
Part III. Terms
and Techniques for Studying Literature, Film, Narrative Art
Part IV.
Close Reading Steps, Terms, and Techniques
see also: Film Literacy
Comparing Literature and Film
Part
I. Questions for Interpreting A Work of Literature, Film, or Visual Art
A. Content and Form: What is
presented, how, and what does it mean? (mimetic,
formalist)
Notice first what is this? type of work, genre, medium, form;
title; creators, contexts of creation
1. What is the main content:
what happens and why, or what is shown?
*narrative: tell what happens&why:
key events, characters, settings; poem or essay: speaker,
situation, main ideas
*visual art or film scene: describe what you
see–main visual content, such as figures, settings, objects,
shapes
2. What are features of overall
form or design: plot,
structure, and/or visual
composition?
*narrative: analyze plot or structure;
sequence, cause/effect, gaps; pacing; opening, flashback, suspense,
ending
pyramid: exposition,
conflict/rising action, climax, denouement
*poem: structure of ideas; use of form,
stanzas, meter, rhyme; essay: use of form, structure of ideas
*visual: analyze composition/mis-en-scene:
focal point, light, fore/backgrnd, frame, planes, shapes, emphasis
3. What are main characters, figures,
actors like and why? what does each contribute?
*describe & explain characters or figures:
looks, traits, social class, upbringing; stance, clothes, words,
behavior;
desires, values; decisions, actions;
interactions/conflicts; changes/growth; arrangement: position, grouping
*analyze characterization: how well developed or flat; how
lifelike, natural, or stylized, theatrical, or abstract
how acted by actors; how experiences&
inner life are presented/suggested; use of contrasts, foils, minor
figures
*analyze plot roles: protagonist, antagonist, foil;
hero, tragic hero, mythic hero, villain, helper, damsel in distress
4. What are settings or backgrounds
like (physical, social, cultural, abstract), and why do they matter?
*describe & interpret places, times, seasons,
decor, objects, activities, minor characters, contrasts; visuals,
sounds
*interpret effects of setting(s): realism,
emotion, atmosphere; reveal/affect character; symbolism, irony, themes
5. What is the point of view,
perspective, atmosphere: narrator, tone, cinematography; role of
reader/viewer?
*analyze point of view, narrator/speaker-impersonal, 1st person,
omniscient, limited; tone, engagement, strategies
*analyze visual perspective, cinematography, sounds:
perspective, planes, colors, lighting , brush strokes, music
*analyze ways of involving/distancing reader/viewer: centering,
light, lines, conceal/display art, gaze/being observed
6. What are other significant or surprising artistic features?
Interpret details, motifs, patterns, contrasts, gaps.
*analyze how conventions&technique of medium, genre, mode,
period style are used; intertextual comparisons
*analyze significant language: quote, image, metaphor, allusion,
rhyme; interpret symbolism, theme, irony, effects
*analyze visual and/or sound techniques: color, size, light,
lines, angle, focus; film shot, editing, sound, music
7. What overall themes, meanings, purposes are implied by interaction
of scenes, characters, settings, perspective?
Interpret themes, insights; symbolism & irony;
unity/disunity, tensions, concealed contradictions-deconstruction
B.
Cultural Contexts, Functions, and
Evaluation: Why is it this way, and So
what? ♬ ✌
8. How does the work depict & interpret social and cultural
contexts? (Marxist, feminist, cultural, postcolonial)
a. how it depicts, interprets, affirms, appeals to,
questions its culture: realities, values, ideology, other
works
b. how it
depicts&interprets cultural issues: ideology, power relations,
gaze, artifacts, race, class, gender,‘other’
c. how it depicts & interprets women: women’s roles,
relations of men & women, social restrictions
9. How does the work express biographical
and psychological contexts
(psychoanalytic, myth, gender&feminist)
a. what the work reveals about its author’s or creator’s
life, situation, and experiences
b. how the work reveals psychology: desires, repression;
family, experiences, initiation, archetypes & myth
10. What are the work’s purposes,
effects, and functions, in its culture
and later/elsewhere? (historical, cultural)
a. main purpose(s): teach, entertain, move
emotionally, aesthetic pleasure, innovation; serve interests or empower
b. role of original creators, public, patrons,
context & critics in shaping the work, interpretations, and effects
c. wider impact or legacy: adaptations into other
art works and reception by other cultures, publics, & critics
d. personal response: what the work means to you
personally and why, what your response says about you
11. What are the work’s significance,
achievements, & defects?
(evaluate by standards that reflect critical values)
a. truth to life and morality: how truthful,
morally responsible, complex, multi-layered, adaptable to context
OR how simplistic, trite,
sentimental, manipulative, superficial, narrow, or time-bound?
b. aesthetic merit: how well are aims
realized, media used, & content integrated with form, context,
functions?
c. sincere expression or authenticity by the
creator(s), able to evoke a similar response in a reader or viewer
d. cultural significance: originality,
innovation, or contribution to or influence on arts, culture, society
Part
II. Critical Approaches to Literature and Film
Monika Brown, fr. Russ Murfin in Bedford; Kristi Siegel;
kristisiegel.com/theory.htm, Meyer, Bedford Intro to
Lit
new criticism (aka liberal humanism) studies the
literary text as autonomous, separate from the author’s biography and
intentions, the reader’s experience, or social/historical
conditions. New Critics do close reading, find patterns of
repetition
and contrast that suggest themes, and seek reconciliation between
conflicting aspects of character, plot, & style.
1. How do elements of a work–plot, character, point
of view, setting, style, images, symbols–contribute to meaning?
2. What is the unifying theme or meaning of the
work? How can its contradictions and ironies be explained?
structuralism and narratology (formalism)
1. How does a text use, vary, or extend conventions
of a genre or recurring patterns?
2. How does the text incorporate standard narrative
patterns and/or illuminate narratives in general?
myth
criticism (Carl Jung and
Joseph Campbell) asserts that the
characters and plots of literary texts express archetypes
–recurring
experiences (such as sacrificial death&rebirth and journeys) found
in the myths, religions, & rituals of primitive
cultures and the
“collective unconscious” of the human race and dreams and
fantasies of individuals.
1. Does a
protagonist/hero go through mythic journeys or transformation (quest,
initiation, rebirth, scapegoat)?
2. Do plot, character, setting,
symbols suggests
archetypes such as death/rebirth, quest, innocence to experience?
psychoanalytic criticism
asserts with Sigmund Freud that
most human
motives are unconscious (from the id),
but our conscious ideas (ego)
and cultural values (superego) represses them. The
psychoanalytic critic interprets a literary text
like a
dream, finding evidence of hidden traumas, fantasies, & desires,
repressed by culture. Jacques Lacan
says growing up
involves moving
from an “imaginary order” of natural language, instincts, &
identifying with the mother, thru a “mirror” stage
of recognizing
separateness, into the “symbolic order”/”law of the father” of social
institutions & symbolic language.
Erikson's stages: child
(trust,autonomy, initiative, confidence),
adolescent (identity), adult (intimacy, generativity, integrity).
1. What do characters’ emotions and behavior reveal
about their psychological states, stages, experiences, problems?
2. What insights into character from: id, ego,
desire, repression, sublimation, Lacan's imaginary v. symbolic order,
Erikson stage?
historical and biographical criticism
(traditional)
1. What historical and literary
and cultural influences and values shaped the work?
2. How does the work reflect,
interpret, defend, or question its historical period and values?
3. How does the work reflect its
author’s experiences and values?
feminist and gender criticism views
the literary text as a reflection
of issues relating to women, gender, and sexuality.
1. (American
feminist-women's unique experiences and creativity): What
makes the women characters admirable?
How do
they reflect common women’s experiences? What difference does the
gender of the author make?
2. (British
feminist-social) How are women characters defined or affected by
oppression and identity issues? how do
they
respond to social conditions? Does the work affirm or challenge
traditional views of women, relationships?
3. (French feminist-language,
Lacan): How is language used by men in the text to confine women or
hold them back?
Do
the women resist men’s language, revise & use it, or develop their
own language? With what effects?
4. (gender, gay, lesbian) How are
sexually unconventional characters affected by oppression and identity
issues?
Does the
work affirm or challenge traditional views of men, women,
relationships, same-sex relationships?
Marxist criticism views the
literary text sociologically, as "a material product." A result of
human labor, a text also "does
identifiable work of its own": it reflects and supports its
culture's ideology, a body of unquestioned values, rooted in
economics and social class, that supports the power of the
powerful. Marxist critics explain how a text reflects and
contributes to and sometimes challenges established cultural values and
social and economic relationships.
1. How are socioeconomic class differences presented
in the work and how do they affect the characters?
Who
has power ("capital") and who doesn’t, and why? Are characters aware of
their situations in society, of the
values of their society? How do those with power express their
insecurities and perceived threats from others?
How
do those with limited power respond to, resist, undermine those in
power?
2. How important is
economics and class? Does the literary text affirm or challenge the
social order it depicts?
cultural studies criticism and new historicism consider the
literary text as part of a wider cultural network of high
and low culture and media, which is always changing. The cultural
critic may relate a text to its culture of origin
or to other/later cultures in which the text is studied or adapted into
other media. As with Marxist criticism, the text
reflects and influences values and power relationships of economic and
social class, but also of the media culture.
1. What does the work reveal about the culture
of its time? does it reflect or challenge cultural values?
2. What do cultural
documents or conditions contemporary with the work help us understand
about it?
3. (New Historicism) How do
literary and non-literary texts of a culture relate to each other and
their culture?
4. How do the cultural conditions of later
times, or our time, affect responses to the work.
postcolonial criticism argues
that Western literature is not “universal” and shows bias against
“other” cultures.
Postcolonial criticism focuses on how literature incorporates
experiences of countries after independence from
European empires, as they come to terms with the past and rebuild
countries, culture, government, etc.
More broadly, it criticizes dominant groups and their ideas about &
treatment of the “other,” and it values marginality and otherness.
1. How are the experiences,
behavior, & identity of characters affected by cultural differences
and biases.
2. How do Western and
non-Western (or dominant & oppressed ) characters view and treat
each other and why?
3. How does the postcolonial
writer attempt to resurrect his/her culture and/or combat
preconceptions about it?
Part III. Terms and
Techniques for Studying Literature, Film, Narrative Art
See also Michael Meyer's Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/glossary_a.htm
A. Themes, Meaning, and
Ideas
theme an
insight or idea about life (like a thesis): X is/was true, false,
good, bad, a cause/effect; X should be/happens;
any universally human, or culture-specific, or unique insight into
human behavior, society, nature, ethics, etc
thesis an obvious or
explicitly stated insight or purpose, argument or moral (usually in
nonfiction )
symbol any character, event,
setting, allusion, detail, pattern that suggests deeper (public or
private) meaning(s)
motif: a recurring element or
contrast with thematic
significance
irony: what is real, true,
present contrasts with what
seems, is desired/expected, or ought to be; suggests themes
B. Genres of Literature and
Film analyze
how used/varied; interpret effect on content,
meaning, experience, function
literature
fiction: novel, novella, short story; myth, legend, folk tale, parable,
fable
drama/plays: tragedy, comedy, history play, tragicomedy/realist,
poetic, experimental, etc
poetry: lyric (ode, elegy, carpe diem, hymn), narrative (epic,
ballad), dramatic (monologue)
nonfiction:
essay, speech, history, biography, science, journalism,
manuals, propaganda, ads
film
types: drama, docudrama,
art film, experimental film, genre film, animated
genre films & TV: comedy, drama, biography, western, mystery, sci
fi, horror, noir, romance, musical...
C. Modes and Styles analyze how used/varied;
interpret effects; choices reflect cultures, social values
realism (tragicomedy, drama)
evokes real experience in society: ordinary people/lives taken
seriously;
presentation is
faithful, consistent, believable with logical cause/effect
&connections with
social settings. Symbols&irony lend depth.
domestic realism (family and
community life),
epistolary (in letters)
social realism (individual in
relation to
social/history conditions)
Bildungsroman (coming-of-age, myth/
initation)
historical (set in past, based on
real events); panorama (wide scope in settings
and classes)
naturalism (scientific
approach,
determinism, lower
class)
psychological realism (individual
psychology)
realism plus imagination: gothic,
horror, sublime, magical realism (folk-tale like)
realist formulas/genre films:
picaresque,
romance,
pastoral, melodrama, mystery, detective, film noir
epic, myth, the sacred (may be
historical, biographical): an epic subject is heroic, important, on a
grand scale, and
often of national significance in plot, characters, settings, themes:
folk epic for
culture’s oral tradition: invocation, repetition, epithets, similes;
art epic is crafted, learned
myth/sacred/archetypes: hero,goddess, scapegoat, exile; orphan, bad
parent/witch, guide, beast/prince/savior
plots: death/rebirth,
quest/initiation (insight,experience), rescue, generation conflict,
passion/death
images/symbols:day/night, cycle of seasons,water (purification), sun
(energy), circle (whole), colors
epic formula/genre film
(standard plot, etc): action, western, science fiction,
history
tragedy "presents courageous
individuals who.confront[struggle with] powerful forces within or
outside themselves
with a dignity that reveals the breadth & depth of the human spirit
in the face of failure, defeat, even death"(Meyer).
Tragedies often use situational irony,
dramatic irony, and archetypes
Aristotle - tragic
plot is unified,
has morally significant struggle, brings reversal/fall from high to
low (peripiteia)
-a tragic
hero is admirable, undergoes
reversal, maintains dignity amid struggle/reversal, exhibits a
tragic
flaw (hamartia, hubris)--an
error of judgment or frailty, and may experience recognition (anagnorsis)
-catharsis:
the audience feels pity & fear for characters/selves; the ending
gives us catharsis, purges these emotions
comedy
is "intended to interest, involve and amuse the reader or
audience.”
Characters' actions, experiences, and
dialogue surprise in funny ways (exaggeration, repetition,
contradiction). Plot involves problems but ends happily.
Comedy may use satire and irony to ridicule and expose (usually public)
folly or vice.
-high comedy: drama, novel, genre
film--comedy of
manners, romantic comedy, domestic comedy, sitcom:
realistic and stock characters, wrong behavior for roles; sophisticated
word play, repartee
-low comedy: drama, novel, genre
film--farce,
comedia del arte: stock plot/characters (old man, girl, trickster,
dupe), slapstick
irony, satire, allegory, parody,
self-reflexive art
irony makes visible a contrast between
appearance and reality, between what is & what seems to be, what
ought
to be, what one wishes to
be, or what one expects to be; irony may help overturn a genre/mode
convention
satire uses irony and comedy to ridicule or express
outrage at foolish or immoral behavior, usually in public life
parody and burlesque satirize by imitating features of a
text or style
allegory, fable, and iconography use plot and
characters (etc) to stand for abstract ideas and messages
self- reflexive art calls attention to
itself as fiction or art (not "reality") , sometimes in a playful
way
period styles: folk,
non-western, Classical, medieval, Renaissance, baroque, romantic,
realist, modernist, postmodern
experimental, modernist, postmodern,
ironic modes: avant garde, violate mode & narrative
conventions
modernist: serious, elitist, art genius; innovative,
complex symbols, allusions: expressionism, cubism, spacial form
postmodernist: value process, performance,
production, intertextuality, surfaces, images, play; hi/lo&mixed
media
personal style: qualities
associated with an individual artist, writer, film director, actor
D. Formal Features:
techniques, arrangement, pacing, emphasis, perspective, patterns,
contrast
plot structure beginning,
middle, ending; sections, sequence (film segmentation); unified or
disjointed
-plot units: literature:
word, sentence, scene/stanza,
chapter/act film: frame,
shot, scene, sequence
-character functions in the plot:
protagonist(s) & antagonist(s), their conflicts, and how they are
resolved
-Freytag's
pyramid ▲ plot: inciting action,
exposition, rising action, climax
(reversal), denouement/falling action
-time order&sequence: linear, in
medias res, flashback, flash forward, place shift, montage, association
-the ending: happy, poetic justice,
ironic/twist, surprise, deus ex machina, recognition, epiphany, open
plot pacing and plot effects
(for film, see also film terms list--editing,
cinematography)
pacing: fast (short scenes,
sketchy details, montage), normal, slow (long scenes, descr., long
takes)
plot effects: unified,
disjointed; suspense, surprise, foreshadowing; flashback,
catharsis
situational irony (real vs.expected/should be) dramatic irony
(viewer knows,character doesn’t)
characterization types:
round or flat or stock; static or dynamic; foil character; hero:
tragic,epic,mythic,etc
literary
-external: tell:
description(appearance, gestures), placement in scene, analysis; show:
dialogue, actions
-internal/inner life:
diary, letter; direct, indirect, free indirect discourse; stream of
consciousness,
monologue
film&drama
-external: by
actor, costume, dialogue, gestures, visual symbols, camera angle,
setting, mis en
scene
-internal/inner life:
voiceover, visual memory/thought, diary or letter, POV and reaction
shots
point of view and narrator
(fiction, film, documentary, etc) or speaker
or persona (poem)
objective narration (like reporter):
events/characters speak for selves or “voice of god”-documentary-like
omniscient narrator: moves among people and places;
may conceal information
limited omniscient (central consciousness) from the
perspective of one character (or several, separately)
first person: participant or involved observer;
reveals inner life and information kept from others
narrator/speaker may be: intrusive,
subjective,detached,voyeur, self-conscious,unreliable, multiple,
frame
tone may be
detached or involved; objective, sympathetic or judging; humorous,
satiric, ironic; consistent or not so
narrative strategies
literature: summary, description, analysis,
scenes (actions, dialogue &/or indirect discourse, thoughts)
film scene: distance of shot;
mis-en-scene/arrangement, actors in roles, action,dialogue,lighting,
angles
sound effects, music; transitions/editing: smooth or abrupt;cuts or
special effects, montage or long takes
Part IV. Close Reading
Strategies and Terms
A. Close Reading Questions for
Interpreting a Poem, Passage, or
Scene
First notice author, title, genre,
form, subject
matter; read 2-3 times (once aloud) & mark interesting phrases, details,
patterns.
1. Explain the title, subject, speaker/narrator, and situation.
2.
Read aloud or
view for literal meaning and main
sections; then reread carefully to summarize by sections;
follow structure
of ideas: narrative, climax, repetition, contrast,
question/answer, stream of consciousness, argument
3. Identify a few significant details, patterns, contrasts,
images, and figures of speech such as
metaphor compares directly:
life is a journey (metaphor may be implied, or expressed as
simile, personification)
simile
compares: life is like, as, more than a journey
personification humanizes or
animates objects or abstractions: flowers smile, hope
springs eternal
allusion refers to a nameor object from
literature, myth, art: a
new Camelot, a Faustian bargain
sound
effects: rhythm, rhyme scheme, musicality, alliteration (lay
low), assonance (see me), onomatopoiea (buzz)
tone
(humorous, ironic, etc) style: level, diction, connotation, word
choice, sentence types
rhetorical figures(serious/comic): understatement,
repetition, pun (word play), sarcasm, euphemism, verbal irony
paradox
contradiction that has truth: one God
in 3 persons
verbal irony says opposite of meaning: thanks a lot; sure
I’ll
help you
oxymoron
self-contradiction: darkness visible, pleasing
pain
hyperbole exaggerates for effect: I’ll never
learn; understatement does
the opposite: we have a small problem
4. Describe use of formal features/choices and logical
structure and relate to content, meaning, function
poem
genre: lyric (ode, elegy, song, love, carpe diem), narrative (ballad,
epic), dramatic (monologue)
form: plot, idea structure; stanza (e.g. quatrain), English /Italian
sonnet, blank verse, free verse, rhyme scheme
prose
passage plot
effects: exposition, conflict, suspense, surprise, foreshadowing,
climax, etc
perspective: point of view; type of narrator, tone, and why effective;
characterization techniques
sections: description, summary, analysis, scene(actions, dialogue,
indirect spch, thoughts, arrangemt)
scene
from play or film plot
effects: exposition, conflict, suspense, surprise, foreshadowing,
climax, etc
shots: establishing,medium,closeup; mis-en-scene;action, dialogue,
visual image, lighting, angle, sound, music
scene transitions/editing: smooth or abrupt; simple cuts or
special effects, montage or long takes
(realism)
5:
Interpret overall themes, symbols,
ironies, effects,
relations of whole&details, significance in a longer work or
section.
6. Relate text to contexts,
functions, and value--social, cultural, biographical,
psychological; see Guide Part I. # 8-11
B. Close Reading Concepts and Terms for Analyzing Fiction and
Film
description (see Bland in
Stevick Theory of the Novel):
Novels used more localization of the characters than older literary
forms, . . . by setting them in a soldly constructed
environment. But soon description is being used more widely, to
reveal particular moods. In drama, participation in
the moods of characters is achieved through direct contact
between actor and audience. In the novel, a connection
can be made through the evocative power of descriptive passages.
Here the novelist learned from landscape painting.
Next, description can rise to the level of symbol, and so stand for
more than the writer expresses directly. The primary
requirement is relevance: then descriptive passages take their place in
the texture of the novel, and cannot be detached
and enjoyed for their own sake, nor wished away from the novel without
damaging its fabric.
narrative scene and summary
(Phyllis Bentley in Stevick, Theory
of the Novel):
The scene gives the reader a feeling of participating in the action
intensely, for he is hearing about it . . . exactly as it
occurs and in the moment it has occurred. . . . The scene is therefore
used for intense moments. The crisis, the climax,
of a sequence of actions is always . . . narrated in
scene. Summary occurs when the novelist requires to
traverse
rapidly large tracts of the work of the novel that are necessary to the
story, but not worth dwelling long upon.
characterization: presenting a
character’s words and ideas in fiction or poem (Lochte, Narrative in Fiction & Film):
direct discourse quotes
dialogue: She said, “I really like you.”
indirect discourse
tells (past) without regard to speaker’s style: She said that she
liked him very much.
free indirect discourse, in
between, tells in 3rd person and the character’s style: She
really liked him!
stream of consciousness
relates thoughts as interior monologue, by free association &
irregular syntax:
wow, she really liked him . . . if only I had the evening free . . .
yes she would go
irony (adapted fr. Kelley
Griffith in Writing Essays About
Literature):
Irony makes visible a contrast between appearance and reality, between
what is and what seems to be, what ought to be,
what one wishes to be, or what one expects to be.
Incongruity is the method of irony, opposites come suddenly together so
that the disparity is obvious. In verbal irony, a narrator
or characters obviously say the opposite of what they mean,
or distort meaning by hyperbole or understatement.
Attitudinal irony occurs when a narrator or character
(Candide, Don Quixote) consistently thinks everything is fine and
everyone is upright, when it is obvious to readers or
viewers that all is not well. In situational irony the situation
is different from what common sense dictates it is,
will be, or ought to be. It is ironic if someone we expect
to be upright--a minister in The
Scarlet Letter--should be
a scoundrel. Dramatic irony occurs when a character states or
acts on something he believes to be true while the audience
or reader, aware of the future or other information, knows it to be
false. (classic is the case of Oedipus).