LITERATURE QUESTIONS
LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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anytime!
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never. It’s quite useless
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only when you can’t determine a deeper understanding of a piece
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only when your teacher asks you to use that lens
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Detailed explanation-1: -A formalist critic examines the form of the work as a whole, the form of each individual part of the text (the individual scenes and chapters), the characters, the settings, the tone, the point of view, the diction, and all other elements of the text which join to make it a single text.
Detailed explanation-2: -A strictly formalist critic would, for example, approach The Great Gatsby as a structure of words, ignoring the details of Fitzgerald’s life and the social and historical contexts of the novel.
Detailed explanation-3: -What is the goal of formalism? The goal is to understand a text through the formal elements the writer used. Formalism ignores the cultural influences that might’ve changed the way a writer did something.
Detailed explanation-4: -Formalist Criticism emphasizes the form of a literary work to determine its meaning, focusing on literary elements and how they work to create meaning. Examines a text as independent from its time period, social setting, and author’s background. A text is an independent entity.