WRITING A REACTION

PAPER, REVIEW, AND

CRITIQUE
Prepared By Justerine A. Ubongen
 WHAT ARE REACTION
PAPERS, REVIEWS, AND
CRITIQUES?
REACTION PAPERS, REVIEWS, AND
CRITIQUES are:
◦ Specialized forms of writing in which a reviewer or
reader evaluates any of the following:
A scholarly work (e.g., academic books and articles)
A work of art (e.g., performance art, play, dance,
sports, film, exhibits)
Designs (e.g., industrial designs, furniture, fashion
design)
Graphic design (e.g., posters, billboards, commercials,
and digital media)
REACTION PAPERS, REVIEWS, AND
CRITIQUES:
◦Usually range in length from 250 to 750 words
◦Not simply summaries
◦Critical assessments, analyses, or evaluation of
different works
◦Involve skills in critical thinking and recognizing
arguments
REVIEWERS:
◦Use both proofs and logical reasoning to
substantiate their comments
◦Process ideas and theories
◦Revisit and extend ideas in a specific field of
study
◦Present an analytical response to a book or
article
CRITICAL APPROACHES
IN WRITING A CRITIQUE
FORMALISM
FORMALISM
◦Claims that literary works contain intrinsic properties
and treats each work as a distinct work of art.
◦It posits that the key to understanding a text is through
the text itself.
◦The historical context, the author, or any other external
contexts are not necessary in interpreting the
meaning.
FORMALISM
◦ Began in Russia in the early 20s
◦ Allowed literature to be viewed through a scientific lens
◦ Allows the reader to analyze a literary piece with complete
objectivity
◦ Determine the form, structure, and literary devices used in the
text
◦ Don’t check the biographical, social, and historical
background of the author to unlock the meaning of the text
FORMALISM: common aspects
◦Author’s techniques in resolving contradictions within
the work
◦Central passage that sums up the entirety of the work
◦Contribution of parts and the work as a whole to its
aesthetic quality
◦Contribution of rhymes and rhythms to the meaning or
effect of the work
◦Relationship of the form and the content
FORMALISM: common aspects
◦Use of imagery to develop the symbols used in the
work
◦Interconnectedness of various parts of the work
◦Paradox, ambiguity, and irony in the work
◦Unity in the work
FEMINIST CRITICISM
FEMINIST CRITICISM
◦Focuses on how literature presents women as
subjects of socio-political, psychological, and
economic oppression.
◦Reveals how aspects of our culture are
patriarchal (i.e., how our culture reviews men as
superior and women as inferior)
FEMINIST CRITICISM
◦Two basic premises:
1. Women presented in literature by male writers from
male POV.
2. Women presented in literature by female writers
from female POV.
oAims to understand the nature of inequality and focus
on analyzing the gender equality and the promotion
of women’s right.
FEMINIST CRITICISM: common aspects
◦ How culture determines gender
◦ How gender equality (or the lack of it) is presented in the
text
◦ How gender issues are presented in literary works and
other aspects of human production and daily life
◦ How women are socially, politically, psychologically, and
economically oppressed by patriarchy
◦ How patriarchal ideology is an overpowering presence
READER RESPONSE
CRITICISM
READER RESPONSE CRITICISM
◦Concerned with the reviewer’s reaction as an
audience of a work.
◦Claims that the reader’s role cannot be separated
from the understanding of the work
◦A text does not have meaning until the readers reads
it and interprets it.
◦Readers are not passive and distant, but are active
consumers of the material presented to them.
READER RESPONSE CRITICISM
◦Focused on finding meaning in the act of
reading itself and examining the ways individual
readers or communities of readers experience
texts.
◦The reader joins the author to “help the text
mean”.
READER RESPONSE CRITICISM:
common aspects
◦Interaction between the reader and the
text in creating meaning
◦The impact of reader’s delivery of sounds
and visuals on enhancing and changing
meaning
MARXIST CRITICISM
MARXIST CRITICISM
◦Concerned with differences between economic
classes and implications of a capitalist system
(i.e., continuing conflicts between the working
class and elite)
◦Attempts to reveal that the ultimate source of
people’s experience is the socioeconomic
system
MARXIST CRITICISM
◦Karl Marx: the dominant class or higher
class do control art, literature, and
ideologies.
◦Critics identify the ideology of the work and
point out its worth and deficiencies.
MARXIST CRITICISM: common aspects
◦Social class as represented in the work
◦Social class of the writer/creator
◦Social class of the characters
◦Conflicts and interactions between economic
classes
OTHER CRITICISMS
POSTMODERN CRITICISM
◦revolves around the idea that there's no
such thing as absolute truth or certain
reality
POST-COLONIAL CRITICISM
◦literary critics are especially interested in
analyzing colonial literature to see how
the colonial power influenced
the colonized in terms of "issues of power,
economics, politics, religion, and culture
STRUCTURALISM CRITICISM
◦in a broader sense, is a way of perceiving
the world in terms of structures.
◦belief that “things cannot be understood in
isolation, they have to be seen in the
context of larger structures they are part of”
PSYCHOLOGICAL CRITICISM
◦Also known as PSYCHOANALYTICAL CRITICISM
◦Literature comes from the unconscious of a
writer, expressing meaning that even he or she
may not recognize.
◦Pay close attention to unconscious motivations
and meanings expressed indirectly through
dreams, language, and symbols.
GENDER CRITICISM
◦is an extension of feminist literary
criticism, focusing not just on women
but on the construction of gender and
sexuality, especially LGBTQ issues, which
gives rise to queer theory.
GENDER CRITICISM
◦ WHAT DOES LGBTQ+ MEAN?
◦ People often use LGBTQ to mean all of the communities included in the
“LGBTTTQQIAA”:
◦ Lesbian ◦ + Pansexual
Gay + Agender
Bisexual + Gender Queer
Transgender + Bigender
Transsexual + Gender Variant
2/Two-Spirit + Pangender
Queer
Questioning
Intersex
Asexual
Ally
ECOCRITICISM
◦broad way for literary and cultural
scholars to investigate the global
ecological crisis through the
intersection of literature, culture,
and the physical environment.
BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM
◦analyzes a writer's biography to
show the relationship between
the author's life and their works
of literature.
HISTORICAL CRITICISM
◦Focuses on examining a text primarily in
relation to the historical and cultural
conditions of its production, and also of
its later critical interpretations.
MYTHOLOGICAL CRITICISM
◦ emphasizes “the recurrent universal patterns underlying most
literary works.”
◦ Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history,
and comparative religion
◦ “explores the artist’s common humanity by tracing how the
individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to
different cultures and epochs.”
DECONSTRUCTION CRITICISM
◦Focuses on the practice of reading a text in
order to “subvert” or “undermine” the
assumption that the text can be interpreted
coherently to have a universal determinate
meaning.