· At first, the critical lens metaphor seems functionally equivalent to the critical toolbox metaphor. Both, for instance, can be used in isolation or combination with others of its kind. But whereas the tool serves a temporary usefulness, a lens suggests a permanent way of seeing, a way of seeing perhaps not otherwise blogger.com: Thomas L Martin All critical theories are lenses through which we can see texts. There is nothing to say that one is better than another or that you should only read according to any of them. The proponents of each theory believe their theory is the theory, but most of us interpret texts according to the “rules” of several different theories at a time Critical Lenses and Theory Approach The eight critical lenses below provide a framework for introducing students to literary analysis. At the beginning of the semester, I explain the concept of literary analysis and introduce students to these eight critical lenses. These are a distillation (and in some cases an amalgamation) of major literary
In any case, figuring literary theories as lenses appears to be the metaphor that embodies a widespread understanding of the role of theory today. Before this was the critical toolbox. For several decades leading up to the appearance of the first edition of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism incritics referred to the concepts and ideas in literary theory as tools.
The assortment of those tools taken together represented a toolbox the reader might carry from one text to another. That metaphor drops out of use around the turn of the century. The MLA Index clearly demonstrates the shift in the metaphor when in the s the toolbox metaphor trends down to nearly nothing, while the lens metaphor begins and in the later s rises to a peak, critical lens theory.
If it is indeed an end in itself, where does that leave the literature? Or perhaps he was out front of a major shift in our thinking about the role of theory and its relationship to the arts. New paradigms require new metaphors.
Does the paradigm behind the lens metaphor assume that the literature is just another commentary on, or exemplification of, the theory? Does that paradigm relegate the primary source to a secondary status?
It is significant to note that the adjective Literary in the titles of competing anthologies is absent from the Norton volume.
That is what the toolbox metaphor essentially suggested: meaning resides in the literary text, and some application of tools might be effectively used to recover that meaning. One does not need a phenomenological theory of the tool as equipment Heidegger: das Zeug to get there. The idea of an array of tools suggests that they might even be interchangeable as long as they accomplish the job. A screwdriver can be used as a gouge or pry bar, a pipe wrench used as a lever or hammer.
There are only seven simple machines, after all. The toolbox metaphor may be completely too mechanical in its implications to apply to the nature of meaning, but the idea that one tool may be as useful as any other to extract meaning does shift the attention from the tool to the meaning.
At first, the critical lens metaphor seems functionally equivalent to the critical toolbox metaphor. Both, for instance, can be used in isolation or combination with others of its kind. But whereas the tool serves a temporary usefulness, critical lens theory, a lens suggests a permanent way of seeing, a way of seeing perhaps not otherwise available. The lens metaphor likely succeeds because it relies on the figure of vision for understanding. As such, it also suggests a perspective on the object viewed.
But after this, the metaphor runs into problems, critical lens theory. In fact, both metaphors do, critical lens theory. One might naturally ask, critical lens theory, can we uncover meaning without a tool, and how many lenses are required to see a literary work? As we further consider both metaphors, we might wonder the degree to which either is really useful or clarifying. But if we follow the logic of the metaphor, clearly only one lens is needed.
That would be the lens that brings the object into sharp focus. All other lenses, to the extent that they deviate from those optics, would distort the object. For those wearing glasses to bring objects into the correct focus, using other lenses proves defeating and futile. This is where the metaphor fails and fails quite spectacularly, critical lens theory. The idea behind the metaphor might be that multiple perspectives are needed to understand a work of art, but lenses are not perspectives.
A single lens can be moved around an object critical lens theory generate all kinds of perspectives. But, opthalmically, lenses are corrections to faulty vision, focusing or orienting eyes in need of correction to a standard, optimal vision. Do those who use the metaphor mean optical filters like those photographers use? Photographically, these lenses render an object in various pronounced color tones.
Many of the color-bathed images they produce might presumably be added together to create a single composite image. Yet, filters by definition strain out portions critical lens theory the available light to create such effects. We know that filters miss important details, intentionally deviating from what is available to create varied effects.
Or we might expand the lens metaphor in the direction of vision augmentation devices. Maybe that is the sense in which critical lens theory who use the metaphor mean it. That would include technological innovations like infrared, heat imaging, and more.
The advantage of understanding the metaphor this way is that it captures a sense of the progress of knowledge to which we in the university long ago committed ourselves. These technologies open the wider spectrum of light radiation to human observers. They nonetheless view the same light band, and the object they illumine is still the same object.
But this is also problematic, as multiple perspectives have little to do with lenses since, as noted, critical lens theory, any single lens can generate multiple perspectives. As deficiently thought through as the metaphor is, the underlying idea of multiple incompatible perspectives is troublesome.
It raises the specter of interpretive relativism—which may not in itself sound objectionable—but the perpetual ambiguity and confusing chaos that relativism creates inevitably leads to textual interventionism. Maybe it is not a lens but more critical lens theory a recipe. Maybe critics mix in ingredients to make new concoctions. Maybe they make something new with a different look, taste, and texture. Why not stir critical lens theory dogma into our critical lens theory Why not revolutionary fervor or the sensibility of another place and time?
For one thing, there are very good critical lens theory reasons not to do so. For another, critical lens theory, there are good alchemical reasons not to do so.
Lye when mixed with one ingredient makes a mild cleanser for the skin; with another it dissolves human flesh. Otherwise, we are all just revolutionaries who continue to batter one another in every classroom, every social media encounter, every critical lens theory we talk to one another or pick up a book. Or if not like a recipe, maybe a lens is a kind of medical enhancement device.
Doctors prescribe lenses. Maybe the prescribed lens uses digital augmented reality to overlay a preferred form and message. Or maybe it is more like a pharmaceutical pill or ointment that when applied makes me feel like the text agrees with me? But before we begin the work of criticism, we must certainly read a work to understand it. I find that too many students who adopt this reading-with-a-lens approach are losing the ability to read literature.
They do not know how literary conventions convey meaning and that literature is a unique use of language that speaks a meaning over critical lens theory above ordinary language, critical lens theory.
Too many students have been taught how to use a lens to find the oppressor, for instance, critical lens theory, but somehow that singular focus critical lens theory away from other matters of which the text speaks.
At a sentence and discourse level, too many university students cannot engage a literary text. They are taught to favor partisan simplicity over complexity.
They are taught to pass over the ways authors use tone and a variety of viewpoints to explore complex issues that confront us as human beings. Sometimes those issues they can immediately relate to; sometimes not. But as they lose the ability to have a primary experience in their reading, critical lens theory, they lose what other minds and other cultures offer them. They miss the richness of figurative language that captures all kinds of ambivalences and intersections of human will and aspiration they might find there.
Sometimes I wonder if what the critics call a lens really is a lens at all. If that is the case, maybe the lenses critics advocate for are lenses after all: maybe they are cyborg lenses that sketch the barest outline around objects to find that one thing they are programmed to find. But this is not so much seeing as it is critical monomania.
Is a lens a kind of tunnel vision? Maybe the purpose of the lens is to conceal? Perhaps a lens is a set rose-colored glasses or maybe a terministic screen, critical lens theory. Maybe it is one of those mood spectacles or illusion glasses we find at parties, critical lens theory.
How about a kaleidoscopic lens with bits of sea shell, glitter, and tiny shapes rattling at one end to produce a captivating image at the other? Maybe our chosen lens produces an Escher pattern that tessellates across the field of vision, covering everything in sight?
A friend who went to medical school said he worked in the clinic his first year. This kind of awareness is greater than that critical lens theory any lens could provide. Is a lens simply what the text would say if someone with my philosophy or political persuasion wrote it? To metaphorize what they want to say about a text as a lens is to make it official. Henceforth, it is unquestionable. Or maybe reading is a kind of ventriloquism act?
Metaphors abound for the kind of reading practiced in our profession today. Do those who replace the meaning of a literary work with some understanding of the world critical lens theory favor regard the new meaning as somehow communicable and stable?
Or do they argue that all not only literary works but also literary interpretations require lenses, so we might as well adopt their lens as well as any other? Should we expect a battle of the lenses, a hermeneutic ground war where perspectival possibilities multiply and clash because other new critics with their respective lenses insist on the primacy of their visions?
In the end, how many acts of lens-viewing are a matter of withdrawing the veritable message in the bottle and simply inserting our own? Only in the postmodern did that change, critical lens theory.
But even though the discourse of discontinuity currently dominates academia, there is a pressing need for a semantic-cognitive opening in which evidence and the remaining laws of logic help us sort through the teeming plurality that overruns us even on a practical level each day.
Or does our egalitarianism extend to critical lens theory idea and impression we have irrespective of its plausibility and moral payoff? Truth is not so much plural as things manifesting themselves in a variety of ways, and individual perceivers with their various histories and values multiply perceptions as they interact with the world and one another.
In such cases, we rightly respect plurality as a means to access larger unified truths and discern broader patterns. When we do so, we account for the narrowness of singular viewpoints. Otherwise, we might as well have one eye on one side of our head arguing with the other about which one is right, critical lens theory.
Critical Literature Lenses
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Critical Lenses and Theory Approach The eight critical lenses below provide a framework for introducing students to literary analysis. At the beginning of the semester, I explain the concept of literary analysis and introduce students to these eight critical lenses. These are a distillation (and in some cases an amalgamation) of major literary · At first, the critical lens metaphor seems functionally equivalent to the critical toolbox metaphor. Both, for instance, can be used in isolation or combination with others of its kind. But whereas the tool serves a temporary usefulness, a lens suggests a permanent way of seeing, a way of seeing perhaps not otherwise blogger.com: Thomas L Martin All critical theories are lenses through which we can see texts. There is nothing to say that one is better than another or that you should only read according to any of them. The proponents of each theory believe their theory is the theory, but most of us interpret texts according to the “rules” of several different theories at a time
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