Writing · Writing: Essays and Literary Analysis

Literary Analysis II: A Toolkit of Critical Lenses

2.1 1.2About 70 minutes

Learning goals

I can explain what a critical lens is and how it differs from a personal opinion.
I can describe the central questions and key terms of at least eight critical lenses.
I can apply several lenses to the same text and generate different, evidence-based interpretations.
I can choose a lens that fits a text and an essay task, and explain the choice.

Words to know

critical lens
A way of reading shaped by a literary theory; it directs attention to certain questions and certain kinds of evidence.

literary theory
A body of ideas about what literature is, how it makes meaning and how it should be read.

ideology
A system of beliefs and values that a society treats as natural or common sense, often serving those with power.

patriarchy
A social system in which men hold most power and authority and women are kept in subordinate roles.

archetype
A pattern, character type or symbol that recurs across many cultures' stories, such as the quest or the cycle of seasons.

the Other
In postcolonial and feminist theory, a person or group defined by those with power as different, lesser or strange.

What a lens is (and is not)

In Grade 11 you used a few lenses (power, gender, class, race) on novels and plays. Grade 12 asks you to use lenses deliberately and by name, as university courses do.

A critical lens is a way of reading shaped by a literary theory. It is not an opinion and not an accusation. It is a set of questions that brings certain evidence into focus. A feminist lens does not decide in advance that a text is sexist; it asks how the text represents gender and power, and the answer might be that the text challenges the views of its time.

Three rules for using any lens:

Evidence first. Every lens claim must rest on specific words in the text (the close reading from Literary Analysis I).
Use the lens's terms precisely. Define ideology or the Other if your essay depends on them.
A lens reveals and hides. Each lens shows some things clearly and leaves others out of focus. Strong essays acknowledge this.

Each lens asks a different question of the same text. Close reading sits at the centre because every lens needs evidence from the words on the page.

Lens	Central question	Key terms	Example from this unit
Formalist / New Critical	How do form, language and structure create meaning?	tension, paradox, ambiguity, unity	Sonnet 73's shrinking metaphors
Historical / New Historicist	How does the text belong to the beliefs, power and other writing of its time?	context, discourse, ideology	the 1890s "rest cure" in "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Biographical	How do the author's life and experiences illuminate the text (without reducing it to them)?	author, experience, influence	Gilman's own illness and treatment
Feminist / gender	How does the text represent gender, power and voice? Who is silenced?	patriarchy, agency, gender roles	the narrator's forbidden writing
Marxist	How does the text represent class, money, labour and power?	class, ideology, labour, privilege	the sculptor and the king
Psychoanalytic	What unconscious desires, fears or conflicts shape characters or texts?	repression, desire, projection	the woman behind the wallpaper
Reader-response	How do readers create meaning? How do different readers respond?	gaps, expectations, interpretive communities	who is the "thou" of Sonnet 73?
Postcolonial	How does the text represent empire, colonized peoples and cultural power?	colonizer, Other, voice, representation	a European traveller describing Egypt
Archetypal	What universal patterns, symbols and story shapes recur?	archetype, cycle, quest, seasons	autumn and night as images of ageing
Ecocritical	How does the text represent nature and our relationship to the land?	environment, land, nonhuman world	the sands that outlast the empire

Ten lenses you may meet in Grade 12 and first-year university. Formalism was taught in Literary Analysis I.

A little history (so the names make sense)

Feminist criticism grew rapidly from the 1970s. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), a landmark study of nineteenth-century women writers, discusses "The Yellow Wallpaper".
Marxist criticism applies Karl Marx's ideas about class, labour and ideology to literature.
Psychoanalytic criticism draws on Sigmund Freud's ideas about the unconscious, repression and desire.
Reader-response criticism includes Louise Rosenblatt, who described reading as a transaction between reader and text, and Stanley Fish, who argued that interpretive communities shape how we read.
New Historicism, associated with Stephen Greenblatt in the 1980s, reads literature alongside other texts of its time (laws, medical writing, letters) to show how power and ideas circulated.
Postcolonial criticism owes much to Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) and to Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe's lecture criticizing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for how it represents Africa and Africans.
Archetypal criticism was shaped by the Canadian critic Northrop Frye, who taught at the University of Toronto; his Anatomy of Criticism (1957) traced recurring patterns such as the cycle of the seasons.
Indigenous literary criticism, developed by First Nations, Métis, Inuit and other Indigenous scholars, asks that Indigenous texts be read in relation to the specific nations, lands, languages and relationships they come from. You will look at it closely in Literary Analysis IV.

The same five words produce three different readings. None is the "right" one; each is as strong as the evidence and reasoning behind it.

Choosing a lens

Ask three questions:

Does the text invite it? A story about a woman confined by her husband and doctor invites feminist and historical lenses; a sonnet about ageing invites formalist and archetypal lenses.
Does the task require one? Some prompts name a lens; others ask you to choose.
Will it produce an arguable claim? A lens that only confirms the obvious (the king was powerful) is not worth the space.

Worked example

Let's run three lenses on Ozymandias

Generate one arguable claim about Ozymandias through each of three lenses: historical, archetypal and ecocritical. (The full poem is in Generating and Developing Ideas.)

Historical lens, question: How does the poem belong to its time? Shelley published it in 1818, when many British readers were fascinated by ancient Egypt and when European empires were expanding.
Historical claim: Published as European powers were collecting the monuments of other empires, Ozymandias reads as a warning that Britain's own power could end in sand. (A careful essay would need sources on the period; here the claim is a starting point.)
Archetypal lens, question: What universal pattern does the poem use? The fall of the proud ruler, a pattern found in many cultures' stories.
Archetypal claim: Ozymandias retells the ancient pattern of pride before a fall, but removes the gods: here time and sand alone do the humbling.
Ecocritical lens, question: How is the land represented? The desert is boundless, lone and level; it outlasts the empire.
Ecocritical claim: The poem gives the last word to the land itself: the "lone and level sands" (line 14) are not a backdrop but the force that erases human claims to permanence.
Evaluate the choices: the ecocritical claim rests most directly on the poem's words; the historical claim is interesting but needs outside evidence; the archetypal claim connects well to the poem's structure. A writer might combine the ecocritical and archetypal lenses.

Three arguable claims, each produced by a different question, each tied to specific words. The final step, judging which lens yields the best-supported essay, is part of the skill.

Hands-on activity

Lens cards

You need: ten index cards or paper scraps, a pen, and a text you know well (a novel, a film, a song, or one of this unit's texts).

Write one lens name on each card, with its central question from the table.
Shuffle and draw three cards.
For each card, write one arguable claim about your text and one piece of evidence that supports it.
Put the three claims in order from best supported to least supported. Explain the order in two sentences.
Challenge someone at home: draw a card for them and ask them to apply it to a film or show they love. Help them find evidence.

What to look for: claims that are specific and arguable; evidence from the text, not from guesses; honest judgement about which lens fits best.

Just for fun

How many literary critics does it take to change a light bulb? The formalist examines the bulb itself. The reader-response critic asks what the light bulb means to you. The Marxist asks who owns the light bulb factory. Meanwhile, the room is still dark.

Your turn

What is a critical lens, and how is it different from an opinion?

Give the central question of the Marxist lens.

Which lens asks how readers create meaning?

Name the Canadian critic associated with archetypal criticism and his best-known book.

Why is it wrong to think a feminist lens must prove a text is sexist?

Which two lenses does "The Yellow Wallpaper" most obviously invite, and why?

More practice: warm-up

Which lens focuses on the natural world and the land?

Whose book Orientalism (1978) influenced postcolonial criticism?

What is an archetype?

Which lens draws on Freud's ideas?

Which lens is the foundation for all the others, and why?

More practice: on your own

Apply the psychoanalytic lens to "The Yellow Wallpaper" in one arguable claim.

Apply the reader-response lens to Sonnet 73.

Explain what it means that a lens reveals and hides. Give an example.

A student writes: Through a Marxist lens, the king is bad. Improve it.

Choose a lens for this task and justify it: Discuss how a novel represents a small town's attitudes toward newcomers.

Challenge

Write two claims about the same quotation from Sonnet 73 using two different lenses, then explain where they agree and where they conflict.

Explain why New Historicists read literary texts alongside non-literary texts. Suggest two non-literary texts that could illuminate "The Yellow Wallpaper".

Argue whether using a lens risks forcing a text to say what the lens expects. How can a writer guard against this?

Check your understanding

Quiz

Which lens asks how the text represents class, money and labour?

A critical lens is best described as:

Northrop Frye, a Canadian critic, is associated with which lens?

Which claim uses the ecocritical lens?

Reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" alongside 1890s medical writing about the rest cure is typical of:

Why does every lens depend on close reading?

For parents and teachers

Big idea: Critical lenses are a major Grade 12 skill that leads directly into first-year university English. This lesson supports expectation 2.1 (writing literary essays) and 1.2 (generating and developing ideas), because each lens is a way to generate new, arguable ideas about a text.

How to help: pick a movie you have both seen. Ask your teen to read it through two lenses (for example, who has money and power? how are women portrayed?). You will likely find you disagree in interesting ways; ask Where is your evidence?

Common difficulties: treating a lens as an accusation; naming a lens without using its questions; claims that need outside research the student has not done; forgetting close reading. Historical details given here (dates and names of critics and books) are well established; any further claims about a text's historical context should be checked against reliable sources.